Wine, Wisdom, and Wild Rides: The Untold Stories Of Mark Tarbell

How would you define hospitality?

Well, the never ending. Strive to be of service and for the guest experience and be able to read every table, read every person, and look at how you can elevate their experience when they come in. We anticipate all their needs. We ask the right questions, but not too many. So we can really understand and deliver an experience that is truly with a servant's heart. We've had a couple complaints over the years, and you just welcome them, validate them. Had a person one time, all I want is a piece of fish. No oil, no butter, no sauce, no parsley, nothing. Just a piece of fish on a plate. I hand deliver it. Walked away. And all of a sudden the server comes running back to the kitchen, says, you gotta talk to table 41. They're pissed. I went up there and they're like, what is this? I don't know. That's what you wanted. Well, there's absolutely no flavor, no color. It's the worst plate I've ever seen. Let me fix that for you. And I just gave him the fish special that I did that night earlier. And she was thrilled.

So I'm going to introduce my friend and guest. Over 8,000 years ago, people began drinking wine and they haven't stopped. That's a lot longer than people have been drinking Coke and Peps. Why? Wine has been used by many religions and social settings. And with our meals, there are many different types of wine. Well over 200 today of all different tastes. Mark Tarbell has been a member of Genius network for over 10 years and is the owner of Tarbell's Restaurant, an iconic landmark in Arizona in the food and wine scene. Tarbell's restaurant has won over 100 awards during the past 30 years and has raised millions of dollars for community charities. Mark is not only a world renowned iron chef, a title he won in a famous TV competition, but he's also a wine expert. Mark completed training at the most celebrated wine school in Paris, then was hired by the Italian government to certify sommeliers. Is that how you pronounce it? Sommelais? Some words that are just very hard for me, not well educated. Mark's also been a judge at the prestigious international wine competition. And get this, for over 23 years, he's been invited back as a judge. Mark knows wine and he also knows how to build a brand, think out of the box and be unique in the marketplace. Get set for an exciting interview and insights that you can use in your business even if you don't serve wine. So please help me welcome. My buddy, Mark Darvell. Thank you, sir. Which side do you want?

It doesn't matter.

Okay, Here, I'm going to switch out the water since I've been drinking this one. There you go. Make sure that the genus. Yeah. We're supposed to have pillows for these. Would you like a pillow? Since we.

It was a short joke.

Yeah, yeah. So, look, there's a million things I can ask you. I'm going to ask you some stuff about this new brand you have, Cha Cha Mooch. Since you just did that, what do people not know about you that you find would be kind of interesting? Even though you're not a person that brags about yourself? I mean, I've never seen you to be that sort of thing. Everyone I know, so many people that know Mark, and I never hear anyone say a bad thing about you, which is rare for chefs, because some of them are angry.

And it is rare. Yes. And it's rare also that I don't have a lot of body pain, because I'm not complaining. Yeah. Because there's a reason for that. And it's something that a lot of people don't know. And I don't talk about it very often. But when I was very young, I was in France. We were in Bordeaux, and I was with my wine mentor, my teacher from wine school, and we were touring Bordeaux, and in the afternoon, we'd go to the beach, and at this beach, it had riptides. Anyone know about those things? I didn't. I had no respect for anything. I was young, and I got taken out by a riptide and drowned. And I was saved. Thankfully. That's why I'm here. But it's. Ever since that point, I went through a period of depression, didn't understand I needed help to get saved. I felt very vulnerable. I was also very sick because I took a lot of water in my lungs, like pneumonia type sickness or flu. And after all that, that slap in the face at 22 years old, that we're just a breath away. And the interesting part of this, it was a beautiful beach, and there was these sand dunes. The sun was going down, and people on top of the dunes were having wine and cheese. And I'm going, and I'm dying out. You know, like, I'm like, what the. It was very bizarre, and we're all just one breath away. So some of my appreciation and gratitude for life is the understanding that it is so fragile. And so that is really what's driven my level of appreciation and kindness and wanting to be of service and hospitality. It is from that moment because I was a complete. I was a lot like Joe actually before that. Pretty obnoxious and an asshole.

That's like the best.

So you should go to this beach.

I need a rip tide is what you're saying. Awesome. Well, good. Okay. And also when we both first met, which was we were in a forum group together for eo. It was called YEO back then. Young Entrepreneurs Organization. Then everyone got older and they dropped the young. And we both had much different hairstyles back then.

Yes, mine was. I was long, but I didn't do ponytail.

Yeah, I had a ponytail and stuff. And he had these crazy ass sideburns.

It was jet black.

Yeah, there you go.

I've been posed as Elvis once. I have pictures.

Yeah, that's funny. All right, so let's talk. We'll talk about. Here's the thing too, the way I set this up because I want to ask you about your wine business. And also I am not a big drinker. Right. I've been Addiction Recovery Foundation. I was not an alcoholic. Although alcohol always helped with the other forms of addictions that I struggled from when I mean helped, it made it more susceptible. So it's always interesting for me to talk about alcohol and stuff. And so many people drink. But wine is sort of a different category than other types of alcohol because there's so much community and there's so much stuff built around it. So what do you think? I want to kind of understand why is wine so special to some people? Because there's a lot of people. I have many friends whose vacations and lives are built around the, I guess the ritual of drinking wine and they seem to enormously enjoy it.

Yes. I think there's the truth of that and then there's the reality. The truth is the French are incredibly good at marketing. And so they've made it very important and very a lifestyle and they've made it healthy and all kinds of other things. The reality is how wine is used is more social. You don't see people doing wine shots in college towns. You don't see them chugging out of the bottle of a fifteen hundred dollar bottle and just going unless they want to get a lot of clicks or likes on YouTube. But it really is. It's used as something very social, communal, bringing people around the table. There's a lot of celebrated stories with famous people and how they commune around tables and wine makes them laugh and joy and it opens people up and it frees up conversation. And probably the reason for it is it's hard to chug wine. It is easier just to sip it, and it is relatively low in alcohol. So it's not like vodka or Everclear, which is my favorite drink.

Everclear or vodka.

No, I'm kidding. Just kidding. So it really is designed in a way to be social, but also there's a lot of story around it, and there's a lot of magic, and there's a lot of history and beauty and things like that. You know where it's made and how it's made. Yeah.

So I don't know how many years ago this was, but Gary Vaynerchuk sent me cases of wine, and he was trying to show me how to, like, which ones are the best tasting wine for the best price and how to. And I honestly could not make heads or tails about it. You know, it tasted good, but I didn't, you know, I didn't kind of get it. So I want to see if you could help educate us on. I have a question on it, which is there are many different wines out there. How does the average person know what to order or buy?

Well, the answer to that question directly is to find someone you do trust and then just, you know, take their. Have them ask you a few questions, like, what do you normally drink? Do you like dry, sweet, white, red? I always like the California versus Europe because there's very basically different styles. California is a little richer, more forward, thicker, maybe a little bit more sweet, higher in alcohol, where in Europe they tend to be leaner, lower alcohol, higher in acidity. So you have someone ask a few questions. But if you're like me when I first went to wine school, I spent the first six weeks there going, what the hell are they talking about? I mean, we're tasting wine day after day, and I'm just like, oh, yeah, I smell forest floor, and it's been turned up by black sheep. And, yeah, I can smell all that. But I couldn't. But I wasn't. I'm not a quitter. So four years later, I started to begin to understand language around it. So basically, everyone has these ability to sense different nuances in taste and smell. Everybody. It's just developing language, you know, to attach to that sense you already have and you own. So the best thing about picking wine is going to a trusted restaurant or going to a trusted store and having them totally rip you off. Yeah.

You know, it's funny when you said, but I'm not a quitter. This is where my brain goes. So I have it's somewhere in this office, I have a magnet that says aa, as in Alcox Anonymous. It's like AA is for quitters. Which I think, since you're talking about alcohol. So you're obviously known to be not just a food expert, but a wine expert. So what finally inspired you to start your own brand? Because you've done so much TV about food and wine over the years. So why all of a sudden?

Well, it's interesting. It was always a dream of mine to do it. Mostly a professional challenge. But I would say if I'm like you, I'm an entrepreneur. And I just said, well, I really want to do this. And I didn't think about it at all. In fact, after I started getting in the project, people were like, well, people aren't drinking wine anymore. They're doing medicinal trips. They're doing gummies. Everything's. You know, people are drinking more beer and more really good water like we have here today. So I was hearing a lot of these negatives, and of course, I thought, well, that's.

That's.

I shouldn't listen to that. I'm just going to do it anyway because I'm an entrepreneur, and I believe with all my heart what I'm doing is so important and it has to be done. I don't think I answered the question because I have add, but what was the question?

So you decided to start your own wine brand, so, like, you needed another project on your plate?

I didn't need another project, and I didn't need. And the challenges that went with it. But really I wanted to do it because I wanted to see if I could take all of my experience and create a new conversation about wine and community and be able to use all the expertise and the knowledge I have and the connections around the world to present something different. And that's challenging because there's a lot in wine. But my idea is to really put it at the bottom of the table, not at the top of the table, and have it support your lifestyle, friendships, and conversation. I wanted to build a community a lot like I have here in Arizona with Tarbells, and do it through wine and do it throughout the nation and actually make it more than a wine club. Use wine as the platform and then be able to share my knowledge, ideas, recipes, create experiences that are exclusive to the wine club and also share ingredients that might be really fun and special you can't get anywhere else from time to time.

All right, so how does all of this get made? Like, where do these. Where do you Grow the grapes. How does this exist? What are the pros and cons of that? What are some of the challenges with it? I mean, how long does it take to become profitable in a business like this?

Well, profitable is yet to be seen. So I'm the. As Joe calls me, I'm the vice president of sales, Prevention. So I actually waited for an entire year to launch it after I was ready to launch, because I was like, well, when you don't launch it, you can't fail. You know, no one's ever experienced that, right? And so I didn't fail for that entire year. And then I actually presented it to a very small group. There was 22 people there. And I'm going along and I'm like, the room is really not buying into what I'm selling. And I'm really trying to be helpful and sell and all that stuff. And finally I said, who in this crowd likes to drink wine? And five people raised their hand. I said, well, why don't you drink wine? They're like, well, I'm in recovery. I said, how many are in recovery? 15 people.

So as an entrepreneur, depends on the room, right?

You'll understand. You have to kind of know your audience. So I didn't. But I learned a great lesson there. And I'm riffing a little bit, but what was the question again?

Like, for instance, how do you protect yourself from a drought? I mean, what happens when all this stuff happens?

So I've had this front row seat to the wine business, and largely it's an entertainment business. So usually people like all of you have made billions of dollars in this industry that you're in, and you go, I'm going to have a Napa Valley winery. So you do that, you overpay for the land. You build a building, you have three guests house, and you get to go around and say, I have a winery, while you're losing millions of dollars a year. And I was the beneficiary of that because they have to sell their wine to me. So, like, we're losing money. Can you take my wine? And what happens eventually is people get tired of that, and then they sell it to. They build a brand, a really great brand sometimes, and they sell it to a large international company or national company, and they only, you know, they walk away from $10 million. It's no big deal. So I saw this and I thought, well, a. I don't have that kind of money. I sell French fries for a living. And I also saw that, you know, with one of the things that really influences winemaking is drought, rain, hail, fires, all kinds of things. So I thought, well, I'm going to make a wine like a lot of these small, very boutique wineries do and lie about it. I'm going to actually make wine all over. Renting vineyards from the best farmers, actually renting them and also renting space in really great wineries, true wineries, with people that I know buying all my equipment and being very mobile. So I can do this now. And I'm making wine in France and in California and my goal and dream is to make it with friends all over the world in the Southern hemisphere and just create experiences that are really unique. Yeah, no bricks and sticks. That was my plan.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Is my plan.

So how can people, so this is not just like sell wine. You're really trying to create a community. Like if someone goes to Tarbell's, you will notice that there's a tremendous amount of repeat business. I mean, you have people that have been going there for years and you've had all kinds of well known people and you, I mean you've served dinners for the Dalai Lama, the Pope, the leaders of country, all kinds of things. And so you have a community. How are you doing building community around Cha Cha Mooch?

One person at a time. How am I going to do that? And a lot of this, you know, I'm up here with a little bit of stage fright. So I had all these great things I was going to say about that, but I can't remember any of them. Has anyone ever that ever happened to you? I don't know. Well, I think how I'm going to build community is to create value and be very pivot, be very reactive. Take a lot of information, see what's working, see what isn't, seeing where trends are going, seeing if I can get ahead of it. And ultimately I want to be there if there is another pandemic because I will be the number one supplier of toilet paper and I'll go off the wine business.

It's not a bad idea. Well, I may ask you about that in your restaurant. Not toilet paper, but about surviving in, in the midst of something like that. So how does someone. How many of you in this room are you like wine? You're wine drinkers, right, jj? Thank you. That's a good number. You guys still doing your wine cave events and all that sort of stuff? Doing one in May. Yeah. So, see, they turn this whole ritual into it, and people fly in from all over the place just to go hang out and drink wine. So there's obviously something to this business mastermind. Oh, yeah. It's a mastermind anytime.

Yeah, I do that every night of the week at Tarbell.

I have two friends that I will not because they're both sweet people and they're starting a psychedelic mastermind, and I'm like, there's gonna be masterminds for everything. Yeah. Just there's so many ways. There's so many places my brain could go right now, but I won't.

So.

All right, how does someone sign up for this if they want to do it? And how do you charge for it? Like, what's the business model here?

The business model is simple. Chachamoosh.com and I encourage you not to C H A. That's correct. I encourage you not to sign up. Thank you very much.

No, tell me. It's part of the sales prevention department. Like, everyone has a sales prevention department in their company that let's really figure out how to not sell stuff.

Yeah. So what we're doing now is we basically do quarterly deliveries, but there'll be a lot of gifts and surprises in between. So it's essentially six bottles every quarter. I will be aging them for you. I will be picking them for the right time of year. I will be telling you how to use them, giving a recip recipes, and also making it super simple. And I also encourage you to use ice cubes and freeze it, shake it, you know, pour it over coffee, whatever. We're going to break a lot of rules over time as part of this journey. I'm going to take you on because I like breaking rules. And I also think that wine has become way too stuffy and way too overplayed, and it's used as a social weapon. And I want you to be able to take this and actually take it to your table with some, you know, guidelines and rules where you can really break it up and have some fun. So I'll give you the tools for that. And it's 375 a quarter. Get six bottles a quarter, but you're going to get gifts. So, like, right now as an inaugural offer, and because I like to have fun, I'M working with the top ceramicist, Bluedoor Ceramics, Christiane Barbato. She makes plates for people all over the world at Michelin star restaurants. And she's right here in Phoenix. And we're doing 30. It takes about two weeks to make 30 plates. And for the, you know, first 120 that we've had signed up, and we'll do it for genius number two, you're gonna get this amazing plate, which is numbered and signed and also very pretty and I think useful.

Awesome. That's cool.

So there'll be other things that I want to share with ingredients that I can get for, you know, like Arborio rice, made from two acres in Piedmont Italy that no one gets. Or on Mount Etna, they make pistachios twice a year, every two years. Super hard to get these pistachios, incredibly. And I want to share those with our club members. So there'll be a lot more than wine, but it will be very specific to, you know, food and wine and maybe what, what I put in the box for wine.

No, that's really cool. Okay. So, all right, so you're, you're a, you are a hospitality expert. And how many employees do you have now in the, in your restaurants?

85 or 90.

Okay. And they're very professional. I mean, like, but really, if you've been to Tarbell, how many of you have been to Tarbell's? Yeah. So, you know, really well run restaurant. And you've had it for how many years now?

29.

29 years. Okay. How would you define hospitality?

Well, the never ending strive to be of service and to be for the guest experience and to be able to read every table, read every person, and look at how you can elevate their experience. Also, it's to create a bubble around people when they come in of a carefree environment. And for that, we anticipate all their needs. We ask the right questions, but not too many. So we can really understand and deliver to you an experience that is truly unique and also especially creative for you. You have to take ego out of it, actually. Really lead with a servant's heart. You know, we talked about big gifts are making big problems. You know, we've had a couple complaints over the years, and you just welcome them, you actually validate them. I've had a person one time that I went to their table, I was cooking in the kitchen at the time a few years ago, and they said, no one ever does this. Right. All I want is a piece of fish. No oil, no butter, no sauce. No parsley, nothing. Just a piece of fish on a plate. And I was like, okay, I can do that. So I hand delivered it to the table. It was table 41. I remember it. And I hand delivered it, walked away. And all of a sudden, the server comes running back to the kitchen, says, you gotta talk to table 41. They're pissed. And I was like, okay. I went up there and they're like, what is this? And I'm like, I don't know. That's what you wanted. And I. Well, there's absolutely no flavor. There's no color. It's the worst piece of plate I've ever seen. And I'm like, oh, you're absolutely right. Let me fix that for you. And I just gave him the fish special that I did that night earlier. And she was thrilled. I could have said, well, that's what you told me, you know, And I was like, no, whatever.

Wow.

Yeah, it actually happened.

You have got to deal with so many irrational people all the time. What's your view on humanity?

That's a really great question. I mean, I don't know if you have this experience, because we all deal with people. I am very optimistic about humanity. I deal with people, both employees, young and old, and deal with customers all the time. And I have for 30 years, you know, about, I don't know, 6 to 10,000amonth for 30 years. Do the math. A lot of people shaking a lot of hands.

Do you kiss babies?

Ever?

Kiss?

Well, if the people allow me and don't beat me off, like, you know, you're weird. Don't kiss my baby. Usually I'm very, you know, very standoffish with babies because, you know, there's a whole thing there. But anyway, mainly protectiveness. That's all from the parents. But what I think is over 90% of the people are good, 5%, even if they're not good, will make a good decision in a random or good situation or put in a good environment. And then there's 5% of the people that are really, you know, it's challenging, you know, whatever their atmosphere was growing up. But I think it's really interesting. I also say, because I employ a lot of young people, very optimistic about our future. Everyone says, well, they don't want to work, they want to do this. Yeah, there's that. A lot of that messaging out there. But all they really need is something to latch onto, something to believe in, get some good training, feel valued, feel like the experience is going to give them something and they can give back and once you get them over that hump of, you know, not being brainwashed to go, I can serve tables from Bali. You can't do that. I even had a manager, a general manager of my restaurant said during that whole discussion about, let's work from home, and they wanted to work from home. And I was like, how is that going to work? Who's going to seat the people, you know, anyway? And it gets ridiculous, but then you just kind of reframe it and say, well, you know, let's talk about reality here. And I think everyone likes to feel like they've accomplished something and that they've given value. And once they get more addicted to that than all the BS that's out there, then it usually works really well.

Yeah. So what is her name? She's been with you since, I think, the really sweet woman.

Zephyrino.

Yeah. How long has she been with you?

She was the very first employee I hired in November of 1994 at a plastic table in the parking lot of Tarballs while it was under construction.

Wow.

Number one employee, very first person. She's the only person that showed up for a job that day. So I did hire her.

Yeah. That reminds me of.

I said, do you have friends? And there was second and third person the next day. So, yeah, two more people showed up.

That's funny.

That's a true story.

Yeah.

Nobody showed up.

Well, you know, my buddy Jesse Cole, who. He started Savannah Bananas, the baseball team. And, you know, I finally, a couple months ago, was with Whitney. That's when I had a cold. I was pretty sick. And that was one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen in terms of, you know, six years ago, he was. Him and his wife were sleeping on air mattresses, and they had a budget of $30. And now they've got two and a half million people on a waiting list wanting to buy tickets for the Savannah Bananas. I've never seen anything like it. If you get a chance to go see it. But the reason I bring it up here is it's just enthusiasm put into a business, and that's what I've seen you do over the years, is you just are. You care. It's not just a career. It's like you take it very seriously, but. But you also know how to have fun with it. And there's a lightness you bring to it and you're dealing with. Why do some chefs. Crazy health problems, a lot of depression. I mean, you were buddies with Anthony Gordon. Yeah. Who committed suicide. I mean, what is it about either that industry that attracts that sort of chaos or when the pressure becomes overwhelming and how they engage with it.

Well, I think we, we all as entrepreneurs joke about add, but the natural drug I've been told for like Adderall is adrenaline. So the restaurant business is very high pressure. It's very reactive, and kitchen's incredibly intense. I mean, the steak either gets done in eight minutes perfectly or it doesn't. And then there's 50 more. To give you an example, there's a piece of stainless steel about 12ft long at Tarbells, and we'll do anywhere from 220 to 400 dinners a night. And they're usually, it's three courses. So just imagine it could be 1200 plates going over that 12 foot piece of stainless steel with six people coordinating a dance to get it out at the same time and right over the course of about three and a half hours. So just that kind of math makes it very, very complicated. So as a chef, you are getting pumped up. And usually most chefs are add, most of the great ones, because you're really calm during that time. But when you leave the line that night, you are jacked up and you need something to depress you. You need alcohol and a lot of it. And then after the alcohol you need cocaine and then you need, in your case, hookers. And then, and I didn't know how I was going to weave that in.

There, but that was fantastic. I mean, you did a great job. That's a good segue. The whole hooker thing is.

And it's also, it's an alternate reality. Like, I worked in this industry for my whole entire life to the point that I didn't even understand what holidays meant. And that was pretty crazy. And then I spent a year opening my own restaurant and the construction workers worked Monday through Friday mostly, and from like 4am or 5am to 4. And so I was off every night. And I found out a couple things about how most y' all live. You have traffic. Yep. Not at midnight, no traffic. You have lines at grocery stores. Not at midnight, no lines at all. No. You have a lot of, you know, like you can go to movies on Monday after the weekend and have the whole theater to yourself or big opening movie or a week later or go at midnight after work. And it's just, we live in this alternate reality. So you're, you're also, you kind of are isolated to the group you work with because no one else is going to stay up until 10am every morning drinking after leaving at midnight. So what it does is, to answer your question, it breeds a lot of bad behavior, a lot of bad environment, and it can lead to a lot of trouble.

Yeah, well, you're in better physical shape now in your 60s than you were when I first met you, so you.

Started not saying much, but.

Yeah, no, no. I took him cold plunging for the first time he ever got in a cold plunge. He. He literally was in there for five minutes. Could have stayed in there longer. I was like, let's get out of here. Just. I don't know if you're complete agony or you just somehow have learned how to center yourself. So that was quite impressive. But you box how frequently now?

I do the training for boxing. I don't actually.

You don't get punched?

I don't want to get hit or hit anybody. But the training is super intense. I do it one hour, three times a week at least. I do a lot of hiking and actually I do something every day just to keep moving. And, you know, a lot of toughness is mental toughness. And, you know, Martha McSally can talk about this and does well, but, you know, a lot of these things you don't think you can overcome. And as you gracefully go through the years and I'm 60, as you mentioned. Thank you very much. I know you're all thinking I was like 59. Right. Pegged it. So is that it's just a number. And I know there's a physiological change that will happen and does happen, but I also, as an entrepreneur and an ADD person, refuse to accept that at some level until I have to, which is, I hope, the end.

So who are some of your favorite people that you ones that you've had. Boy, you're friends with Muhammad Ali, with Sandra Day o'. Connor. I mean, a lot of these are not just people you've served, but they were like your friends. So who are people that you admire?

Gosh, there's so many. You mentioned a couple that were greatly admirable. So I'll just kind of riff on those. Sandra Day o' Connery was the first female Supreme Court justice as a woman. And so I think that's putting it in too small a box. She was an extraordinary person, and I think that's the most important thing. Not only as a human, but a friend, an intellectual giant. Very balanced, very thoughtful, very thorough, very curious, and very, very passionate about our judicial system and the belief that we have in our judicial system. And she always, she taught me something very important. Is that all that Supreme Court building and what it Entails is just a belief system that we believe there is a rule of law and it's very fragile. And she used to try to educate me, and she educated a lot of young kids on how fragile that is and how we need to protect it. And that was pretty profound. She spent a lot of her life doing that. But my favorite thing with her is I would go twice a year to her chambers, which are offices. I'm sorry. The Victorian chambers were very different. Boy, y', all their bedrooms. Okay, forget it. No, I went to her chambers a couple times a year and she would cook me like a casserole. And we'd sit there, the two of us. I used to think this is the most bizarre thing in the world. And we were there on the day we invaded Iraq having lunch. She was very sad, I can say that now, very distraught. But, you know, it was great experience. And Muhammad Ali, you know, I met him when he was still communicative and he could. He put himself to science. So he had Parkinson's. And in the mornings he could communicate. So if you went over to his house at breakfast, which I know you all did all the time, I'm just bragging. And you could talk. And the first time he said something, he started asking me something. I was like, holy shit, you know, the champs talking to me. But for those of you your age, you know, I also have met every Harry Styles, that type of person in the world. And I'm sure they're famous, but you.

Know, Taylor, well, so here's the funny thing. So I had. I interviewed Sandra Day O' Connor in this room. I think it was in 2013, when her team asked me to help with civics.org and, you know, of course, I don't even think I understood what the word civics meant at the time. So I had to do some, you know, but anyway, so she was. That was a fascinating. We never released that interview. It's not super high quality video because we have better video quality today. But make a note, if anyone's interested in watching that interview of Sandra Day o', Connor, let's maybe just put it on because we've never put that video out. And I played cards with her when she was in the assisted living home, but I couldn't say that publicly because they didn't want anyone to know. And she recently passed away. And the thing with how that happened, so I had not seen her in a few years. I'd seen her once and then she ended up going into the assisted living home and I was doing A gratitude gathering for. In celebration of my friend Dr. Janice Dorn, who had passed away. And on the day of her memorial, before we went to her memorial, and she was an incredible woman, helped me so much. And she was double PhD, struggled with addiction, and she spent. She lost her license after becoming a really bad drug addict. And then she spent a year and a half in a Betty Ford treatment center for physicians for addiction. And then she got out and became this, you know, spent, you know, over a decade just helping addicts. This incredible woman. And for her gratitude gathering, we're going to take people, 60, 60 of us, we went to the place where, I didn't know it at the time, where, you know, Sandra was. And we go up and I'm supposed to go to the third floor to. We're going to volunteer there and spend time with people that were in the home just to show that volunteering really makes you feel good. And we spend time with that. And so they get off on the second floor and then the door closes. And I was like, oh, I'm in the wrong floor. But it's the. It's the dementia ward, Alzheimer ward. So they, you know, you couldn't go in and out. And I'm like, looking for, like, security or someone so they can get me to. And I'm there with a couple people, including Sam Qurashi, who's the genius network member. And then I see a woman in a wheelchair and she's like, Joe. And I'm like, Sandra. She's like, how are you? I was like, what? Like, it was so out of context for me, you know. And so we ended up playing cards for two hours and it was super cool. And the. Now, the contrast, the reason I bring that up is when I interviewed her here two weeks before the interview, Secret Service had to sweep the building. It was a big deal. And then the day of the interview, I mean, there were caravans of people like they had sniffing bomb dogs, like. Cause, you know, of course we have bombs here. No. And it was. But what was so interesting is one day you could be this world famous person, and then the next day and that day was like, oh, wow, you know, all of this, you know, but she was just a really, you know, I didn't know her at all like you did. She's just this, you know, very incredible person, but incredibly sweet and. Yeah, super.

So she could be very tough.

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, if she would have met me in my younger years, I don't know if she would have been so sweet to me. So My question is, how do you balance status? And look, there's a lot of people that they are. Fame is an interesting thing. And you're friends with your good friends with Shep Gordon, which they made the movie Supermensch about. And has anyone ever seen that movie, Supermensch about Shep Gordon? So he was like the one that. Yeah, great, great movie. He invented the celebrity chef. He had. You could have gone that path where you could be this world fame. And you just looked at it and said, I've seen where fame takes people. I don't really want to go there, talk about that, because I think it's.

Supermetch is an entertaining movie. You should watch it. And. But anyway, I was with him and I'm going to drop a lot of names here, so my back might get a little sore from picking them up, but. So I was in New York with a bunch celebrities, and I was cooking with him for the Dalai Lama. And part of that is I would get a private, private audience with him and. Which was incredibly special. Very joyful, man giggling all the time. But, you know, I worked up the courage to say, would you take me on as one of your clients? You know, I'd known him about nine or so years, and it takes me a while to. I'm not like this guy. But yeah, I was like, you know, and he looked at me and you'll see this in the movie. He took off his glasses and he goes, mark, if I do my job, you're going to be divorced, an alcoholic and a drug addict. And if I do my job well, you'll be dead. And I was like, well, let me think about that. And, you know, the next morning I got up and had breakfast with him. I said, how about we just be friends? And it was the best decision ever made. There were times during our friendship that I thought I might have missed some things because he really could have, you know, made me famous and possibly and put me on TV and all kinds of things. But being the. With him all of those years and being the who's that with the who's who was just one of the blessings of my life because I could be around it at all or cook with celebrities or cook for celebrities at his home or hang out with them or do whatever, do some medicinal therapies from time to time with celebrities who I can't name. But it was just a great experience. And I think as far as fame goes, it's really very fleeting. Some very few people have lasting fame and very few people have everlasting fame even fewer. And to me, where I've always connected with famous people is if they're good people and most of them are just in very unusual circles, circumstances, they're like the hunted. You know, they're almost. It's a prison sentence. Being a famous person. You lose freedom. And the thing I value most in life is freedom. And so my choice not to go down. I'm no, I'm a known person, which is comfortable because people are nice. But I'm not hunted. And I never. I always wanted to walk that line of, you know, doing what I needed to do to promote my business and be a representative of it and not be hunted and have a prison sentence.

That is a really good distinction. I actually. That's very useful to hear. And yeah, and Shep, you know, Shep's been the manager for, you know, Alice Cooper for over 50 years, and they've never even had a signed agreement together. It's like literally handshake. And so there's a, you know, there's a level of trust there. And, you know, I think he was scoring drugs for like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and all that. That's how he ended up becoming a rock star manager in the 60s. But yeah, anyway, so let me see, just how did you handle running your business during COVID They shut everything down. You're in a restaurant business. That had to be tough. Well, many failed. Many just many did.

And I don't know if you all had businesses during COVID and we all had to really pivot. I'm sure I'm in the restaurant business and I had done six months prior to that, a study with my team whether we should do. To go and deliver as another business. And we decided, it's a terrible business. We're not going to do it. So the day it was like March 16, I think it was a Monday, if I can remember. Right at about 4 o' clock, they made the announcement. It was 401, something like that. My business ended. Literally my whole business model ended. I was closed without my being able to vote on it. And as an entrepreneur, it was probably, as I look back on it, I still was thinking about it today. I didn't know you were going to have asked this question is it was our shining moment. If you're an adrenaline junkie and you have ADD and you're an entrepreneur, it was awesome. Awesomely awful, but awesome. So within 24 hours, we were in the to go and delivery business in a big way. Within two weeks, we had 13 cars running. I rented cars from Hertz, by the way. That was really funny. And. And all my servers became drivers because I thought I'd put a familiar, comfortable face in front of all my customers when they were ordering. It wasn't like Uber Eats, which is like a hostage exchange. When you're getting your food, just leave it there and you're looking through your curtains. So we had well dressed people in beautiful masks and gloves and everything, but in their uniforms and they were all familiar people. And so we just went nuts with it and it became a big, big business and it was great. We were very successful with it. So I think any kind of adversity, you have a choice. And we were talking about that earlier today is you have a choice. And it was really well said. You can choose to be a victim or you can choose it as an opportunity. At the time, I didn't think I had many opportunities. And the other thing, I had an undying belief that it was would end someday, it would be over. So I went all in. I put all my chips on the table and I said, I'm going to do everything I need to do to actually rebuild my team, do some more training, invest in some of the infrastructure of my restaurant, invest in people and talent, invest in their training, invest in the culture. I invest a lot of money during that time and time to take this little blip in our current operations to make it a better business.

So you were also serving a lot of emergency workers and hospital workers and stuff like that that could not easily get food?

Yes, everybody. I mean, we were doing a lot of that, but that's just a part of being a community member and a good member of your community as a business person. So, yes, we did a lot of that. I'd forgotten about that. But we did a lot hospital workers, we fed a lot of firemen and policemen and schools. We did school lunches, we served schools. We served people that had, you know, trouble getting access and source to food. Made sure we made that available. We did, you know, box lunches and all kinds of things. And we also did fun stuff like pizza kits and, you know, can make your own pizza at home and stuff. But the 13 cars, by the way, so everything shut down at, you know, all the Hertz locations. And they kept calling me, where's your car? Where's the car? Where's the car? I said, I want to drop it off. Because I bought cars and rented cars by that point. And they're like, yeah, did your car go to Mexico? Where is it? They kept Wanting me to drop it off. And I said, there's no place to drop it off. So eventually I went to the Skyrier airport and it was like nothing was happening there. And there was, you know, when you rent a car in the airport, there's all kinds of activity and people and people trying to crash into each other. There was not even an employee. I just left the car there with a note and the keys and left 13 cars. I was like, I hope they get them.

Wow, crazy times.

Well.

There's so many. We're going to cook here in a few minutes. We'll take a break and then we'll go into cook. So what do you high standards and creating a unique experience mean to you?

Well, I think that it's, you know, being someone who, you know, is, strives for perfection and we can talk about that. I mean, is perfect okay with you? Okay, good. I just ask my staff that a lot. You know, they asked me like, what should we do? And I said, how about perfect? Would that be okay? And, and they get it immediately and go do it. But I really do think that you're either going up or going down. And when you're in a business that's very reactive and you're dealing with perishable items and it's very complicated, the challenge of making things consistently perfect all the time is probably a never ending, lifelong search. So it's perfect for someone with hyper focus because for 29 years I've been hyper focused on trying to make it perfect. And you know, I really am, you know, I'm never going to be happy with it.

Well, okay, let's talk about being happy. I mean, part of the OCD or whatever, just wanting excellence, I think. I mean, have you read the Elon Musk book?

I did. It was great. Yeah.

And you know, and then there's these well known sort of like famous entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs that just really demanding tyrants and all that.

And, and.

Elon's the richest person in the world. There's maybe other people that are more like warlords that maybe have his wealth, but there's shrapnel that's left in the wake. Very hard for most people to deal with the level of demands and intensity. Same with Steve Jobs. Right. One of my friends was a counsel for Steve Jobs for 10 years, outside counsel and sat through hundreds of meetings and would tell me these stories of how Steve would, they'd be in these meetings and he would be screaming at the top of his lungs about what they wanted to do. Crying, tears, rolling down his eyes, snot coming out of his nose, flailing. And he would scare the shit out of people and they would follow what it is he said to do and most people would not. You know, I've never sat in one of those meetings, so you know, he. But I know, you know, John is very, you know, he's not making this up.

There goes client privilege, I suppose.

Yeah, well that's a long time ago too. Well, he left the council and they spent two years suing him because he thought he was an asshole. But that's a whole nother thing.

How can you sue for someone for what they are?

So now I'm forgetting my question. What was the question? I was asking perfection.

High demand people.

Yeah.

Why am I not an asshole?

Well, no.

Why am I such a. No.

Well, the point is there are times when you're just not going to have people that are going. You're employing them, you have a particular expectation, it's not being met. How do you let people go? Because I think one of the biggest empathetic people have a hard time firing people. And how many of you have caused so much pain to your life by trying to hold onto a team member? Not that they're bad people, they just weren't a right fit. It just wasn't there. Right. And you struggle with it and you ruminate on it and ultimately you make the decision. You're like, what the hell? It's a lot easier to say hire slow and fire fast than it is to actually do it. So where does your demands and stuff, how does that play out in your life without burning bridges, I guess?

Well, I think that it comes down to empathy is very important, but that doesn't have to be replaced for stupidity. And I think the good of the whole is where I live. You know, we have a great team and a great culture and it's my job to protect that. And sometimes there is like you say someone that doesn't fit into that and usually if you let that go, it can really erode what you've worked. It's harder to build culture than it is to take it down. So I've had to set that aside and just become practical. And then I really believe that it is all about communication and it's all about open communication, direct communication, written communication. I think write ups and things like that are very important. But not as important is talking about where we are today and if we've done our job well. And when I've done my job well, when we part, it's not unfriendly it's not a surprise, it's not emotional, it's not anger ridden, because we fully understand where we are. And unless it's someone who's been stealing or doing something really awful, I'm there to help them in their career. I usually get them jobs in places that I think will be a better fit, really, because they're good people. They're just not a good fit. And so oftentimes with some of the people I've terminated over the years, I've kept in touch for many years and mentored them. So I think it's not a transaction, it's just they're not right for you at this point. And sometimes they've come back because they've gone and learned some things and matured professionally. And I think that. And there's people that I've just. Just, you know, have done bad things. And because you can't talk about it legally, you can get, you know, sued for that. And they'll tell you stories, tell everybody stories about how you are, but you can't talk about it. So you have to let that hurt go away because you know the true story and you know how good you were and you know exactly what they did. And sometimes it's something pretty horrific. Yeah. And you can't share that with your friends or competitors and say, yeah, don't hire, because that's blackballing, and get sued for it.

So, so, so there's a lot to this. And what didn't I ask you that I should have? This will be the last question.

I don't. You asked a lot of questions. You know, that's a great question.

Favorite dish to cook.

Dish is to cook. Well, it really is a mood thing and a season thing and. But I have always loved cooking fish. I'm from a fishing village back in New Hampshire. It's a very delicate thing to do. It's sensitive. The timing of it's very sensitive. I like using a wood fire for everything, live wood for everything. It's challenging for me and I like to be like. Put in very challenging situations, like given an onion and a goat and a campfire and try to make something good. And I've done a lot of that.

An onion and a goat and a campfire. Yeah.

And try to make something fabulous and delicious. And look.

Are you talking like a live, actual goat?

Start there. And then you make a bloody mess and a lot of blah. You know, that's horrible. This is a great way to end this one.

Yeah, exactly. The beauty of editing can we grab the mic, too, and we'll take two questions. And then I got, just for timing purposes, to do the cooking show. And then you also got.

Well, just real quick, are you selling wholesale to restaurants as well, or just to individual?

It is directly to your porch. There is no retailer restaurant, even at my restaurants or retail store.

But you would sell to a restaurant. My nephew's opening a restaurant in Asheville, and he's a French chef. And that's why this whole wine that you're doing, are you going to have a wholesale business to other restaurants? No, it's strictly the individual.

The reason I'm not doing that, just to answer it more fully, is I'm in that business.

Right.

And brands have no control over pricing, where it's placed, how it's viewed, how it's stored, how it's treated. So there's a lot of failure that happens between the winemaker and the consumer. And it can degrade a brand. It can do a lot of things. Someone can buy it and not sell it and then dump it for a buck a bottle. And all of a sudden your wine's worth a buck a bottle. And it may not be. So I've taken that out of it, the risk thing, and going direct to the customer.

And you said that for individuals, it's per quarter. So you can just buy a.

A quarter.

Or are you wanting people to sign up for a year?

I'd like it. A year or 10 years would be better because. And it's not about money. It's about a journey, you know, because it's hard to tell the story I want to tell in one quarter. I'm gonna do my best to get people excited about it in the first quarter, but, you know, as entrepreneurs, you'll understand I'm kind of putting the wings on the plane after it's already taken off. And I've learned a lot. Like, I need a welcome package, and it shouldn't come out the same day, and the next day you get a ball. I'm like, that's a great idea. I think I learned that at Genius. So, you know, in five years or so, I'll probably have a welcome package. But.

Well, they get a welcome plate.

They're going to get a welcome plate.

Signature signed.

And that should have been smarter because that takes literally almost three weeks to make 30 plates. And that's not a good. That's a slow process anyway.

It is kind of cool, though, to just see these things evolve because, you know, everyone is making it up and making it real to the best of their ability. And here's how you do it. Here's how you think about it. All right, so we're going to wrap. So how do they to not have your sales prevention department have to get upset here? This is your opportunity to say whatever you would like to say to either promote your brand or just tell everyone that you think they're beautiful.

What I'd like you to do is just email me if you have any questions about wine or travel or. Or mushrooms, the kind you cook with. Anything, really. I want to be here as a service to you, as genius network members. Occasionally people will come up at me and say, I need a list of restaurants. I'm going to be here for a week. I know we gave that to Eunice, but for all of you, I'd really like to be that resource all over the world. As a matter of fact, hospitality's been my life. Wine's been my life. Food and restaurants have been my life. And you're all friends, and I'd like to be of service to you. And that's all I'm gonna do as far as selling.

That's really. Thank you. And by the way, this is like kind of, you know, to name drop and see different ways to leverage another person. So, you know, I've been buddies with Mark for a long time, and I go to the French Laundry and. What's Thomas's last name?

Keller.

Thomas Keller. So I just mentioned. Could you let Thomas Keller know that you know that? Because I texted Mark, I'm over here. He's like, oh, if you see him, tell him I said hello, that Mark Tarbell said hello. So I tell this to Thomas, comes out, and then shaves truffles for me on my plate and everything because I name dropped Mark Carbell. It's just a good benefit of this sort of shit.

That's not the usual treatment you get. I usually help under an alias or something.

No.

Okay.

No, but here's the thing. So if anyone, while you're in genus, get an opportunity to go to Tarbell's, you have room tonight for anyone that wants to go to there?

Yeah, sure. We always make room.

Okay. So if you guys don't have dinner plans or whatever, you know, go tonight. If you want to check out our. Whenever you come to Phoenix the day before. Yeah, let. Let Mark know and more to tell.

People not to come to Charbel's. So I do this TV show. It's Arizona. It's got a, you know, a bunch of recognition. So I'm going to Restaurants all the time. You know, friends, restaurants. So my, My recommendations are legitimate. Like, I've actually been to so many restaurants and being a restaurateur here for 29 years, I've. I've mentored a lot of people that have gone open. Open restaurants and done really well. That was really selfish because I got tired of not having good choices of people I could trust. So I decided to train people and encourage them to leave and open restaurants. That wasn't funny anyway. It wasn't meant to be, but kind of funny to say it.

Yeah, it is.

Anyway, so I. I don't know. I'm going to go. You know, I think you can tell that I'm supremely uncomfortable with selling. And if you're interested in the wine thing, great. I think it's going to be a great. I'm going to work very hard to make it a great experience if that's the kind of thing you like. And you're going to have things that you probably haven't had. And we're going to turn it upside down.

Well, let me give you the website so you can write it down. Just so I have to be his PR agent here. This is not an affiliate program. And I can't believe I'm even promoting wine. Come from my Chacha Mooch dot com. C H A C H A M O U C H E dot com. Did I get that right? Oh, good. Okay. Thank God. Because it's.

I did bring a prop. Oh, my God, that was so hard. So this is. This is the label. Have you noticed something about it that.

It looks upside down? Yeah, that's very.

So this is gonna be. This is the first time anyone's seen. This is the spring. The spring release. It's a magnum of a real grape porch pounder, that Biodynamic Vineyards from a grape called Pickpool. And I put the grape. The label intentionally upside down and I put a white wine in a red wine bottle. What I really want you to do is take pictures with it right side up. But it's also, you know, we're turning the wine biz upside down.

Humble.

Awesome.

What do you think of Mark? Yeah, it's great. Thank you. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.