FULL INTERVIEW: Stratis Morfogen Discusses Tupac & Madonna Story, "Be A Disruptor" Mob Story + More

Stratis Morfogen Discusses Tupac & Madonna Story, "Be A Disruptor" Mob Story + More

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
What's up. It's way up at Angela Yee. Jasmine brand
is here with me and Stratus. I've never pronounced your
last name, is that right? Yeah? Okay, more Fogin Stratus
Morphogan is here with us now. I'm gonna tell you guys.
He has this book out is called Be a Disruptor,
and it's street wise lessons for entrepreneurs from the Mob

(00:25):
to the mandates. But we all know Stratus, I think
in general, just for being one of the owners of
Brooklyn chop House. But what people may not have known
is that he also was one of the owners of Philip's.
I created Philippe in two thousand and five and I
sold it in fourteen. Wow. Okay, So we got to
get into some of these lessons from this book because

(00:47):
you've been in the rest of our business since you
were six years old. So talk about that a young Stratus,
what you were around, that education you had. My dad
was an old school Greek and he always brought me
around adult situations. I mean I literally used to go
to closings when I was six, seven, eight years old
when he was buying one of his fourteen restaurants, and

(01:07):
on the top of it, he also used to go
the Fulton Fish Market. The more Folgan family are probably
the largest buyers in the Fulton Fish Market from like
the sixties to the eighties. And I would you know,
there's a part of my book where I said, you know,
my mom was taking my brother and sister to Disney World,
and I knew my dad had to truck that week
and he was going to be at the Fulton Fish
Market like three times that week. I said, Mom, you

(01:27):
guys can go. I'm going with Dad, because the Fulton
Fish Market was my Disney World. If a people who
don't know what the Fulton Fish Market is here in
New York. By the way, as soon as you go there,
the whole things about like fish. It takes a while
to get adjusted. But like I mean the whole area.
I used to be like this, think so bad, yeah that,
but I picked there. That's where I picked there. Yeah,
well it actually moved. So the Fulton Fish Market was

(01:49):
at Souse Street Seaport, and about ten years ago they
moved it up to uptown. Okay, but the old traditional
weight is not with the old ships. That's where a
fish used to come into New York City from like
eighteen eighty two, twenty fifteen. Now, one of the things
that you learned from an early age is discretion being
in the restaurant business. And this is something I didn't

(02:10):
think about because from the first time I've met Jadis
and you had another restaurant. It was like an Asian
steakhouse before Brooklyn Chop House. What was that called a
Jade sixty. It was on sixty Street. Yeah, Jade sixty.
I didn't see that in here, and now it was
only about it didn't even last nine months. We had
a major flood and it just didn't you know. We
actually I took the chefs out of there and that's
where we did Brooklyn Chop House with Dampoo. Okay, So yeah,

(02:32):
so I remember that restaurant though, because oddly enough I've
been there many a time. But discretion is really important
when it comes to owning a restaurant and being in
that business. So you learned that in an early age.
Explain that because this is actually a mob story that
you guys would love to hear. Yeah, So my dad
had the Chelsea chop House. One of them was in
Howard Beach and about six seven years old, I was
a bus boy and the first lesson of discretion I

(02:53):
had was what there was a little diminutive guy used
to come in with a lot of big guys around him,
and they used to go very discreet. My father would
like drop what he was doing. You know. I was like, Wow,
who is this guy that my father like looks at
with such reverence, you know, And then he would go
sit him down. Then I hear him tell the manager
just get mister Gambino his drink, Get mister Gambino this.
And it was Carlo Gambino, you know, the boss of

(03:15):
the Gambino family. And you know, so here's a little
short bus boy who's really not shy. You know. I'm
walking up to his table, and you know, I start
pouring water and I say hi, mister Gambino, and no
one says yeah, you could hear a pin drop and
and and you know, I felt so weird, like what
did I do wrong? I'm just being nice, That's what
my because my father actually calls him sir. So after

(03:38):
after he puts me down on his knee and he
talks to me, he goes, hey, how school like like
like a grandfather. How this is like nineteen seventy three.
That was six, and he goes, how school, you know,
how are you doing in school? And I'm like, I'm like,
I think i'm talking like my grandfather. I'm doing really well,
you know. And he's and he slips a twenty dollar
bill in my in my pocket and he just says,
next time, high as enough, and I'm like, all right,

(04:00):
all right, I have no idea what I did, but
I'll keep taking the twenties and I'll just say hi.
And then so as I could see my father peeking
around the table, going, oh my god, Stratus is sitting
with the gangsters, you know. And I'm living there for
like ten minutes. And so as I get up, my
father goes, come here, what was that about, I said, Dad,
I don't know what I did. I just said high
missed agambeing. I goes, oh my god, this guy goes

(04:21):
so far out of his way to be discreet and
here comes a six year old chubby bus boil. It
knows exactly who you are. And I saw when I
left the table, they all started laughing like it was
so innocently done. But it was very funny, and there
was a lot of lessons to learn there, because you know,
like I do say in my book Fast Forward, you know,
two thousand and six is two lessons I learned. I

(04:42):
just opened Felipe Chow on my honeymoon at Micanos, and
I get a call for I think it was like
the Inquirer or something. They said, we're offering you a
million dollars for the tape. And I said, what tape?
And it's like literally the fifth week that I opened Chow.
It was like February, February, March, March, March of twenty

(05:04):
twenty six. I said, what tape and they're like, there's
a tape, you know. And they mentioned the names which
I'm not going to mention um and they were having
sex in your restaurant. So I'm like, So I called
my managers right away and I'm like, what happened. I
gotta be careful because I could easily say the names.

(05:24):
So a hip hop mogul and a Hollywood starlet. We're
having sex in one of the private rooms at Philippe.
And they've noticed that we had security cameras. And I
said to the manager, Eddie, I said, Eddie, get on,
get on the security cameras and tell me what you see.
Oh mister fucking I can't. This is serious. Yeah, He's like, yes,

(05:47):
so and so reserve the whole room last night to
have a private dinner with on a date, you know,
two very big names. And I'm like, Eddie, give me
a favorite before I before I even get an inch
of temptation, deleted off the server, right, get rid of it.
That's not how I do business. Yeah, get rid of it.
I don't care if it's a million or five million.
Get rid of it. And he's like, oh, you're sure.
I'm like, yes, get rid of it because and we

(06:10):
deleted it. Yeah, and it was over because if you
would have leaked that out, that's something that could destroy
your business. And that's not the way I've become successful.
On the other hand, I've always protected people's privacy, especially
well known people. They come from me, they come with
to me with trust, and in turn, I you know,
I think I've done pretty well in twenty five years
respecting you know, from VIPs to celebrities to presidents to

(06:33):
you name it. Because I know, if I go into
C status at a restaurant, I don't have to worry
about anybody know who I was with in case I'm
out here creeping or something that you know, and and
and let's thank Carlo Gambino for that, because he told
me about discretion early on. Yeah, so you know, and
you know, take Away the hip Hop and the Hollywood
side in two thousand and nine. You know John Paulson,
you know, I go down and says, how to mister Paulson,

(06:55):
he's a big hedge fund um takeover king. I saw
that in the book. Yeah, and you know I go
down to say, mister Paulson, I see down the power
point it says the hostile take over a Bank of America.
So right, so it's you know, they didn't because they
didn't want any servers in there. They just wanted the
food to be presented. Everybody leave the room because they
want to do a power point wow on how they're

(07:17):
going to take over a Bank of America tomorrow. And
the world doesn't know it yet, right, but I know it.
And if I was corrupt, I'd be buying options and whatever.
But you know that's not how I roll. And you
know I shook his hand. I looked up at the thing.
I'm like, oh boy, I'm like and you could see
that he did not want me in there and to
say hello, at that moment, but it never left the room.
And I've always taken a lot of you know, that's

(07:38):
really been a thing that I've really gone out of
my way to protect privacy. Now another thing, because this
is streetwise lessons from entrepreneurs from the Mob to the mandates. Right,
this book that you have about being a disruptor, you
also talk about your relationship with so many people from
the Mob are coming to your restaurants and how some
of them actually might be more stand up than people

(08:00):
who works day in for the government or in politics.
Yeah so um in nineteen ninety three. Well but this
way so now I know most of them mop because
they run the Fulton Fish Market and they're like extended
family to me. I mean I never looked at them
as like they were criminals. You know, it was like, hey,
how's your dad? Then I'd be keeping my hands warm
at the fire in the garbage cans next to the
like you know, underbosses and capos of different parts of

(08:23):
the Genevese family and what have you. And they were
like extended family as I was growing up six ten, eleven, fifteen.
So here I go. I opened up my restaurant in
ninety three called Gotham Diner. And you know, at that
time I became very close with like Ralph Coppola, who
was the underboss of the Genevese family. And these guys
were friends of mine, Bucky Carbone, and they were just
customers and they paid their bill, and you know, it

(08:45):
was like a mutual like you know, customers friends. They
didn't ever make you pay them, you said, nothing left
like it. They were my friends and they knew that,
you know, my family had some roots going back to
the market, and it was always like a mutual respect um.
And then you know, so in ninety three ninety four
it became like the hottest place, not just as a diner.

(09:07):
We had Mark Ronson spinning, we had you know, his
sister's spinning. I mean, it became like the who's who
of that crowd. But they were not famous at the time, right,
but it just became a huge nightlife business. Lights came down,
the music went up. By the time we were finished
at five in the morning, we were getting ready for
a typical diner breakfast. It was likely going twenty four hours.

(09:27):
And and then at the time I opened Rouge nightclub,
so that's what he turned away by the way, Madonna
and two path, we need your story. Okay, So so
getting back to my in my book, My book is
a story of inspiration and a journey of an entrepreneur.
But it's not the typical book that you would read

(09:48):
where it's all based on analytics. If you do two
out of three, do this, you'll get that. If you
get one percent of the market, well you're worth a billionaire. No,
it's basically like I could curse you, right, I fucked
up and this is what I did to fix it.
So all my analytics are supported by true life stories
and lessons. Yeah, and that's why it's hit a nerve
with a lot of people because I actually beat myself

(10:08):
up in the book quite a bit, because I want
people to learn from my mistakes and how I handled it.
Because I'm tired of reading business books where you know,
it's just like I'm successful. I'm successful, and I did
it's a check mark, right. My story is a bowl
of yarn. You know, this is my success story, and
it's important because there were mistakes that you made along
the way. There was a time you bought a strip mall, yes,

(10:30):
oh yeah, and I never would imagine that anybody would
do something like this, but the guy set up some
like fake businesses so it looked like they were in operation,
but you didn't do your due diligence. I'm sure that
was a lesson. Yeah, it was. It was a less
expensive one. So what happened was is, um, well, let
me go back a little bit. So when I opened
up Gotham Diner to answer the question regarding how I

(10:50):
got involved with with with organized crime, um like that. Yeah,
So what happened was, so I became friends with the
heads of the Genevc family and they were my friends.
But simultaneously I had John Gotti Junior beating up my managers,
his crew beating up my managers, shaking down my store.

(11:10):
And then they finally came to see me. They wanted
ten thousand dollars a month or they we're going to
break all my windows. So I told him to fuck off.
You know, it was actually well known in the industry
because everybody was paying them. They owned the whole Upper
East Side. I told him, fuck off. I said, I'm
not afraid of you. I'm not paying you. So every
night they're throwing black paint all over my windows, and
every night I would clean every morning. I would clean
it up. So Ralph Copel and those guys saw me

(11:33):
one day clean that what is this, what's going on here?
I said, well, John Gotti Junior and those guys want
a payment and I'm not doing it. And this is
what I get. Sit tight. So literally, like six hours later,
they say, go to Ferry, a bistro on sixty fifth
in Madison, which I knew was a Gambino hangout. Go
there eleven o'clock tonight. We're gonna we're gonna squash this thing.

(11:53):
So I get there at eleven o'clock at night and
you could see all the suits in the back, which
were all the Gambino heads. And I know these guys,
they're always really good to me. I just hate the
John Gotti Junior and those guys and a whole a
bunch of thugs. And I had no problem saying it
in the nineties and I still can say it today.
Yeah yeah, not afraid and yeah yeah. And so what

(12:14):
happened was I get to this meeting and it's like
something out of like Gretfellas had just come out, and
I'm like, wow, this is like my life now. I'm
like i'd a sit down, and then Ralph's like, listen,
he's my nephew. He's around us. Tell Junior, next time
he comes near him, come correct, or we're gonna have
a problem. And I was like, oh my god, because
I know the guys he's talking to are like the
bosses of the Gambino family. I'm like, and my guys

(12:35):
walk around with like a Yankee bomber jacket and old cars,
and these guys have chauffeurs with five thousand dollars suits.
So in my head, I'm like, they're the big guys
and my guys are not right. But I learned very
quickly that the discreet ones I walked around with a
bomber jacket and a pair of jeans and a nineteen
seventy eight Cadillac and not a driver and like, you know,
wearing a hoodie on and whatever. These guys ruled the country,

(12:57):
maybe the world. And all of a sudden, I saw
the respect that the suits, the five thousand dollars suits
were given their fifty dollars jeans. They were saying, hey,
you know, we like this Greek here. We're good. We're
gonna squash this, Ralph. We apologize, We're sorry, what happened
after the meeting. So after the meeting, as we were leaving,
So the guy who actually beat up Noel Ashman was

(13:19):
my head of promotions. Noel Ashman. You guys might know him.
He does a lot of clubs for the last thirty years.
Some of the guy who beat him up actually was
having dinner with his girlfriend at the same restaurant. So
I said, Ralph, that's the guy. That's the guy that
gave Nola bloody, bloody face. He's like, okay, watch he
goes up to and he grabs him like a cat
and he says, you see this kid, he's with us,

(13:40):
and then he goes RAFFI I didn't know I'm here.
I didn't know. I didn't know. I said, the next
time you walk into that restaurant, was you gonna do
this week? You're gonna pay, and you're gonna bring all
your friends and you're gonna pay, and you're gonna support
that restaurant. And if you ever go there again and
cause any trouble, I promise you the next time we
see each other, I'm gonna have you crawl on the
floor like the dog that you are, and I'm going

(14:00):
to kick you in the ass until you bark in
front of all these people. Oh my gosh. And I
was just like very descriptive. Oh yeah, and that's exactly
what happened. I'm like, I'm like, all of a sudden,
I think I grew six inches. As I'm walking out
the door, I'm like, wow, I got friends like this.
So as I'm talking to my dad the next day
about what happened, He's like, well, you may have just
exchanged one devil for the other. And I would be

(14:21):
thinking that too. Yeah, and the truth be told, it's
not true, right, no these guys, because that's what you
would think from like, we're protecting you. Now you got
to pay us, right, These guys continued to come to
Gotham Diner, and basically they continued to pay, and they
wouldn't they would never hear of it. If I want,
I think the first time I try to take the check,
he's like no, no, no, no, no no, put the
check down. And and they always pay with a credit card,

(14:43):
which is really funny. You think mob's always paying with
a credit card? They want yeah, they wanted a paper
trail that you know what. We're just we just we're
just like this kid and and there's no nothing attached
um and everything stopped, and all of a sudden, I
had like friends coming to me, Yo, bro, I got
a problem with like the Hell's angels, can you like
help me out here? And and all of a sudden,

(15:05):
you know, through the industry, the word was always around saying, hey,
you know, is this guy mobbed up? And I really,
I mean, on one hand, I'm not. But on the
other hand, these guys love me and I do love
them back. Yeah, and the truth be told us. They's
been saying for the last twenty years, write a book, right,
a book, because no one's ever heard that story where
you could actually be friends with honorable people that are

(15:27):
the heads of the most powerful family in the world.
And these guys love me and I love them, and
they call me uncle and I call them uncle. They
call me nephew. But they protected me right and then
what happened, And they never asked me for anything except
well not not except. But I actually came to them
through Patti Stisso was their lawyer, and Patty gave me,

(15:47):
you know, full permission to discuss it, because yeah, I
was just wondering. I was going to ask you that next,
because I know how private this can be. And well,
the truth is the guys I talk about unfortune not
with us. Yeah. So with that said, I said, Patty,
I found this place called Corollas on fifty fourth between
Park and lex This is June ninety four. I said,

(16:09):
I want to make a nightclub. I have the name.
It's called Rouge. And so Patty put up the money.
But I wasn't stupid. He was the lawyer for the game,
for the generess, so I knew that. But but but
he gave it to me in a check. You know,
me and him were on the liquor lins was in cash.
Nothing was in cash. So I was very careful. I
knew where it was coming from. But as long as
I got a check, right, you know, when you hire,

(16:30):
when you got a liquor license, they want to know
where the funds were we're in they generate. They definitely
check into everything. You can't have like a criminal record,
You can have a duy, which is a great lesson.
If that story about you learned that, right, and that's
why it's important not to drink and drive. Your father
said that to you when you were fifteen. Yeah, you
were drinking a fifteen Oh yeah, so so oh my story.

(16:52):
When I was fifteen, as I snuck out of my
house before eleventh grade, I met Peter Stringfellow on a
plane from Greece to um to New York and he's like,
I'm opening my new club, String Fellows. It's like nineteen
eighty three or something. And I'm like, oh my god.
He thinks I'll come twenty five or so because I'm
kind and he's like, I guess I don't know because
he's a plane. Oh yeah, it's September. All my friends

(17:15):
are in school, and I always missed the first two
weeks of school. That's why I graduated three sixty three
out of three sixty five. Had a great conversation. I'm
sure you guys talked about I'm talking about restaurants and
all that, and it's like, I need you to come
to my opening tomorrow night. So I my mom thought
I was sleeping, sluck out my backside of my house.
I took the Long Island Railroad. I got to Penn Station,

(17:37):
I took the subway, and I went to the opening
of String Fellows. And that was my world. That was
my my my hook into New York nightlife, okay, because
all I knew was an Irish barn Garden City, Long Island.
I didn't know. And part of the story I said,
when Peter brought me in smoke machines and the dancers,
and it wasn't a strip club. It was a real nightclub,
string fellows. It turned later into a strip club. This

(17:58):
was just a hot nightclub in New York. And I
was like, wow, this is what hospitality. My father never
showed me this, right, you know. And then and I'm
a type of kid where we were paying three dollars
a drink in Garden City and then I get here
and it's twenty dollars for a vodka cranberry in nineteen
eighty three. Oh my god, and I and most hundred
dollars today. Yeah. Yeah, most kids would have been like
that's a rip off. Me. I had a smile from

(18:20):
year to year, like this is this possibility. Yeah, my
dad didn't teach me this. Yeah. And to your point,
you said your dad didn't teach you this, what was
that like for you? Because your father was a successful
business owner, right, but he also was more old school
in his way of thinking, and sometimes somebody like you
who's been in the business, like you said, since you

(18:41):
were six years old. But now you're introducing things that
may have been far into him. So how was it
for you just trying to convince him to try something
new or to mark up the price on this, or
to step up the products that you guys were selling,
the food that you were selling. So when he brought
Hilltop Diner in nineteen eighty nine at one sixty fourth
and Union Turnpike and Queens and Flushing, Queens, he wanted

(19:04):
me to join him as a partner. Now and I
had an amusement park out in Long Island. I was
on my own. I was really doing well, and I said, Dad,
if I'm going to go into it Diner and Queens
because right now by that time, I'm in Manhattan. I
don't even know what Garden City is. I have an
apartment in Manhattan. I'm living in Manhattan. I'm out in Manhattan.
You know. Telling me to go do a diner and

(19:24):
Queens is not exciting to me, you know. But I said,
what could be really fun is disrupting the diner model.
I said. I said, if we do it the way
I want, I'll respect what you're doing. With the sandwiches
and the eggs and the breakfast and all that, because
that's the core core business and I think it's a
great part of the industry of being a diner. But
I said, but I want to bring a three star
in New York Times chef in, and I want him

(19:44):
to focus on the fish, the pasta, vegetables and salads.
And he's like, hell no, you know, he argued with me,
and then finally he gave in. And what we did
was basically, I brought Gabrielle Moran, who was a chef
at Van Dam, which I had just gotten three stars,
and I convinced that the to a Greek diner with
me and queens. So the diner opened up in nineteen
eighty nine ninety and it was crazy. It was the

(20:06):
only diner in the industry ever that you needed a
reservation only on Friday and Saturday night. Can you imagine that?
And these are things that a person wouldn't think. But
that's why being a disruptor is really important to your point.
You know, the restaurant business people talk all the time
about statistically restaurants fail a lot. Yeah, right, And you've
had things that haven't worked out so where do you
find the resilience to say, let me pick myself back up.

(20:28):
Was there ever a time that you would like I'm out. Yeah.
So it's a great question because when you disrupt things,
you have to be a little bit more a thick
skin for failure because you're going to fail more. But
when you hit it, you're not going to hit a
single or a double. You're going to hit a grand slam.
So that's the difference when you disrupt things. So when
I identify something like I did the Greek diner, I
identify it. And I've been doing this since a kid.

(20:50):
I deconstructed, I reimagine it, and I rebuild it in
my way. And again it could be the odds of
failure are much higher that I'm going to fail. But
when you do hit it, there's no base hits here.
It hits big and um. And so with the diner
and with a bunch of things I did, And that's
why I really wanted to write the book. It speaks

(21:11):
to all different age groups. It speaks people that I
want to be entrepreneurs. But I'm telling them, don't look
at things as status quo. Look at things and and
and do it your way. But again the flip side
is you're gonna have to accept failure because it's gonna happen.
There's no path to success without failure. How do you
define disruptor how do you define it? Um? Looking at
a conventional opportunity or a business to construct it, reimagine

(21:34):
it and do it your way, and people will tell
you you're crazy. Yeah yeah, the more crazy is the better. Yeah.
So if you hear you're crazy, you know you're on
the right path. Now let's get back to this Tupac.
We have to do that. So you open up Ruge Nightclub.
Yeah right, everybody's coming here. It's the hot spot. Yeah,
this is so, this is actually so. The night before
the grand opening, um, Julia Cooke came to me and said,

(21:56):
I want to throw a birthday party from my husband
David Cooke, who is the energy conglomerate and you know,
multi billionaire family. And I said, wow, that's a great
way to open it. Because only celebrity I knew at
the time was Susan lue Cheeks. I grew up in
Garden City. I didn't know. Actually, I saw her last week.
She looks amazing. I saw I saw her last week
in Garden City. But she's like the only celebrity I

(22:18):
ever knew. I didn't know what a celebrity was. And
actually the young kids that I met at Gotham Diner
there weren't celebrities yet. David Blaine's and all this. They
were all working for me for a hundred bucks a night,
but they weren't celebrities. So here I opened up the
nightclub and the night and I told, like, my big
fat Greek wedding, that's my family. I said, doesn't matter
who comes to the door tonight, no one's coming in.

(22:38):
This is Thursday night. They could all come on Friday Thursday.
No one's coming in. And it's a black tie event.
You've got like Henry kissing your Murradocks. You got It's
Who's Who a fifth Avenue in Park Avenue for David
Cooke's birthday party. And that's a pretty cool way to
open your club, especially when you're on fifty fourth in Park.
So putting that my next till this is before the internet.

(23:00):
The next song going off, and I'm like, what They're like,
you have to come to the front. There's someone trying
to get in. I said, if they're not on the
list and are coming in. They're like, you gotta make
that you're making this call. I'm not making the call.
That's what my security said, okay, And this time I'm
so intoxicated at this time, and I'm just like, I'm like,
oh my god. I'm thinking it's like, you know, maybe
one of my cousins pretending to be a countess or something.

(23:20):
So so I get to the front and as you know,
black guy there gold chains looking pretty cool, but not
for tonight. There's a little blonde girl with like a
bomber jacket and a Yankee hat. And I look at
them and I go, fuck no, And I turned on
like I want to hear it. There's all like black
tie in there, you know there. No, I don't want to.
I don't care who they are. And I walked away.

(23:42):
So the next morning, here a round seven am. I
saw that that David Coke's party got some press. I
was like, all right, cool, They're like, bro, look at
page two, and I'm like, what you know, before the internet,
I gotta put the jacket over the over the pajamas.
Right down the street. Go get the New York Post,
open it up up and it says the picture of
me going like this, and it says new Kid on

(24:03):
the Block rejects Tupacket Madonna and going like this is
him saying like never so wow, but that's not bad press.
So I didn't really exclusive, yeah, yeah, and I'm not.
I'm like Forrest Gump of clubs right now. I had
no I was not cool at all. It was a
total mistake, and I had thought, oh my god, I
just ruined my club. I don't understand press at the time.

(24:26):
I'm twenty five years old, twenty six years old. I'm like,
oh man, I killed my business. This is crazy. But
obviously you know what happened, as we know. What that
does is that we're like, you know, who is this guy?
Who is this guy? Strategy? I know? Then Nil Rogers
calls me a week later and he's like, bro, she
wants to come back. Are we cool? I mean, well,
I have to put it on mute, like because I
have an office of like six people, and I'm like,

(24:48):
I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. So I'm like Nile,
as long as she dresses right, we're cool. We're cool
like this, and so craz doesn't end right Forrest Gump.
She comes with Sam Cassell. Sam Cassell now was playing
for the Houston Rockets, and the Houston Rockets are playing

(25:10):
the Knicks. This is June ninety four. She comes in,
she's gracious, She's like, I'm sorry, I go no, no,
I'm sorry, I'm no sit down. Whenever I got out
of Champagne closed the curtain. They were having like a
little dinner, a little you know, brondezvous, whatever that was.
I thought it was over. We're all friends, everything is good.
I saved my club. But meanwhile, the buzz on the
street walls, Wow, we got to go to this place,

(25:31):
and how do you reject like the hottest couple of
the moment. So soone the next tail stout's going off.
Put on ET on channel two. I think it was CBS.
I'm like, oh, what did I do? Now? I put
on two and Sam Cassell's wife is throwing all his
clothes out of the second story window. Pictures came out
with McDonald leaving with Sam Cassell from my mid So

(25:53):
that's how I became the Forrest Gump of my class.
We need a series, so exciting enough, definitely we need
There are two options, thanks are they are like a series?
Or yeah, that's what they're discussing now, like, is it
a Sex and the City type thing for business and
street smarts or is it like, you know, a doctor

(26:13):
series and sex in the City, speaking of which there's
a connection there. I'm not going to give it all
away though, because you guys do have to get the
book to even see. This is not even the tip
of the iceberg of all the things that you learn
and be a disruptor. But I do want to bring
it to present day now, right, because there's a lot
of history lessons about you. How you got where you are.
The Philippe story to me is amazing too because it's
kind of out of pettiness. Um, some thing's happen, yeah,

(26:37):
out of anger, and then it's a long drawn out,
you know process that costs a lot of money with
lawsuits and everything, and there's some lessons to be learned
from that too. Yeah. So, um, well, how how Philip
Chow and I got together? Was you know, my wife
at the time was you know, the accessories director at
Vogue magazine, So you know, all the after parties for

(26:57):
the met Ball were at Philip Chow, Carlagerfeldt hosting. It
was just it was it was unbelievable because I knew
I had music in sports. I knew I had socials,
and then my wife just finished it off by bringing
in the fashion room. So I had like a perfect
storm for Philly Chow and that's why Philippe did so well.
But how I got Philippe was interesting, so weird. Anna
Winter would always have our parties at Mister Chow and

(27:18):
at the table with David Bowie, David Bowie, Rupert Murder Bono.
But it was like like everybody that was on my
wall as a poster or sitting next to me, and
I know them on a first name basis, and I'm thinking, God,
this is like heaven, you know, heaven um and and
basically with that um I I I there was another.
Then the next day I went there. I was with

(27:39):
some Greek friends trying to put it back in chronological
and Brian comes to me. I'll mentioned his name because
he's in the book, the manager of Mister Chow. I said, Brian,
I got some friends from Greece. I said, can you
just show me the menu. He's like, next time you
asked for the menu, I'm going to ask you to leave. Oh.
I'm like, wow, that's not the way I was brought
up in hospitality, and you would you have said that

(28:00):
if I was sitting next to Grace Cottington and I
Winter or Philippe, you know, and all and all the
Vogue girls, you wouldn't talk like that to me. I said,
you know what, fuck off and you know, and maybe
I'll repeat it to them and see if the next
party will be here. But I got really mad, and
as I got mad, I pulled out my business card.
I said, bus boy came here, give with a twenty
dollar bill wrapped in it. I said, give this to
the chef. I was sewing the head chef. Yeah. So,

(28:23):
and that was part of when the lawsuit when he
said that Felipe cho was a choppers. All the bus
boy disagrees with you because I said give it to
the chef and I didn't say give it to the chopper.
So anyway, gave him the card and the next day
I got a call from Philippe and he says to me, Hey,
what do you want? I said, can we just meet
a beyond diner in eighty six straight and can we
just you know, talk. I said, I've got this spot
on sixtieth Street, and you know what everything you guys

(28:44):
are doing at mister Chow basically is so anti customer service.
I don't like the idea of not getting a menu.
I don't like every time I go there. I hate
the same thing and it's always different pricing. I hate it.
I want to I love your food, but I hate
the guest experience. Right. So I offered him twenty percent
above his salary of from ten percent equity and he
put his coat on. He said thank you, but no
thank you, and he's walking out the door. I said,

(29:04):
why are you walking out? And he goes, I've been
offered that before. I said, sit down, and in the
story I write, like Tommy Mutola taught me a story
when he's trying to sign an artist and they're run
by a parent. He sends a Ferrari to the mother
and with the contract wrapped up in it, signed the
contract in the fight, you know. So I said to him,
all right, let me think of that one. I said,
I said, how about we go to the Porsch dealer tomorrow.

(29:25):
You pick out any porschee on that's a signing bonus
and broken Chinese. I hope no one gets offended. Show
me Porsche I show you partner, and I'm like, let's go.
That's crazy. So we went. We went to Salschuer Porsche
and Rosalind you got a black Cayenne. But I was
very smart. I called up Evan. I said, Evan, how
many cars have I gotten from there in the last
twenty years. He's like a lot. I said, Okay, get

(29:46):
rid of every GT and every turbo out of that
showroom or we're done cart car equity. I wouldn't have
done it, okay, So was timed your cap? Yeah? Was
my cap? Because usually we assume that people don't go
in with their cat. We really assumed that I wanted
to do a quick deal. I knew ten percent was fair,
but you know what, I don't think twenty percent would

(30:07):
have done it either. It wasn't tangible. Twenty percent twenty
percent of nothing something. Right now, we don't know what
we got there. And that location has failed seven times
in fifteen years. Okay, we don't really have a good
track record here for that. Spite that spot. And then
when you know, when I said you could have a
brand new car, wait a second. He went from making

(30:27):
sixty thousand a year to eighty five thousand a year
and ten percent equity a brand new car. You can say,
I'm an owner. That's something. You know, he got a
lot of those offers before. It was the car that
closed the deal. And the joke was, you know, his
cut was like twenty thirty thousand dollars a month, and
then I would put in parentheses six sixty one because
I leased it. You know, at least the car for

(30:50):
six hundred and sixty one dollars that I'm paying, I
would put in parenthesis as a joke at that six
sixty one got you the thirty forty thousand a month.
That's hilarious. What do you attribute the success to Brooklyn
chop House too? Because you've opened UM now in New
York you have two locations when in times where which
is not an easy place to open a business, that
financial district where UM when you guys first opened. I

(31:12):
don't know what other restaurants are even right there. But
the success the two guys have achieved, what would you say,
because I know you talk about location, and we all
know when you have a brick and mortar location is
super important. I wouldn't have probably bet on something. You're
very smart right there either, But what do you attribute
that to? Brooklyn Chop House five is the worst location
for a restaurant in New York City. Just you can't

(31:33):
get you can't even get to it. You got to
go around the bridge, you gotta go around Pace University.
You gotta go around. It's really hard to get you. Yeah,
and um, so how this came about was Robert Dampoo comming,
So is my friend for twenty years, Dampoo. He's you know,
he's my brother. And um he said, listen, I'm thinking
about doing a Caribbean restaurant. I know. And at this

(31:54):
point I say it in my book, I'm really down
now I've lost everything. Um. I had a really falling
out with the guys who stole Phelip Chow and I
write about it in my book and not to really
go too deep into that. You guys got to buy
the book. Yeah, it tells you the inner happenings of
what really happened there and was borderline criminal. And you know,
I was down, you know, I was really depressed. I

(32:16):
was really out. And again I don't hide from it
in the book, because there's no way to be an
entrepreneur and not have your roller coaster, right, you know,
and with that, Robert says, you know, Pooh says, hey,
I need the old stratus back. I need the old
stratus back. I need the old stratus back, the one
that got me excited about Philip Da Da Da. I said,
what are you doing? He's like, I'm doing a Caribbean
restaurant and fight. I just want you to help me.
I do a lot of you know, fast food restaurants. Yeah,

(32:40):
And so I went there, and you know, at the
last couple of years, I've been writing a business plan.
What about a Philippe Chow met Peter Luger and we
married them together. Because every time I go to a
great steakhouse where my wife doesn't eat meat, that's me.
She feels like a step child. Yeah, that's how I am. Yeah.
So I said, wouldn't it be cool if we did LSD?
And I mentioned it like LSD, you're promoting drugs. I said, no,

(33:04):
salt and pepper, ginger, garlic, lobster, which is married with
you know, child style, married with dry age porterhouse steak
with some sea salt, nothing Chinese about it, married with
pe king duck and dumplings. And I said, wouldn't it
be cool that's the ultimate surf and turf where someone
who doesn't like beef, it's not feeling like a step

(33:25):
child right yet. And they're having like sea bass with
black bean and garlic. They're having nine season prawns. They're
having salt and pepper lobster, and then you marry that
as lobster, steak and duck. It got hashtag so many
times in two years, I got a letter from Instagram
that I'm being investigated for promoting a narcotics Wow. So
hashtag LST to this day has been removed from Instagram

(33:45):
because it was hashtag over four thousand times. So then
I said, and then I give a lot of credit
to Pooh and our other partner, Dave Thomas, because they
were already in getting the kitchen equipment for this Caribbean restaurant.
They I love the concept so much of like dim
summon chops, of marrying chow and lugar together. Because I
had all the chefs. They're all loyal to me, right,

(34:07):
you know, they all left Philippe and came with me
right away, Okay. And and then I give them a
lot of credit because they were already you know, they
had to return equipment that they're already paid for to
jump into something that you know. Now, you guys look
at Brooklyn chop House as a pretty big brand, but
it was an unknown at the time, and those guys
were like, I see it, I love it. And what
about the name. I'm like, it's chop house because I

(34:28):
owe that to my dad. And my dad owned the
Chelsea chop House, and I was like kind of a
tribute to my daddy. I just passed and and I'm like,
what's the name? City Hall chop House, Spruce Street shop House.
And We're sitting out a big bay window and I'm
looking at the Brooklyn Bridge and like, I got it,
the Bridge chop House. And then Poo's like no, no,
I'm like, oh wait, a second Brooklyn chop Let me

(34:50):
go on Google, let me go on cheap dot com.
Let me find out if Brooklyn chop House is even
even available. Because chop house, if you know the history
of it, were originated in Brooklyn. I didn't know at
eighteen fifty by the Irish. And then that makes even
more yeah, because that was the whole idea. Let's to
attribute to the Irish, because the Irish brought the first
chop houses to America in the eighteen fifties and it
was mutton chop, lamb chops, what have you. And the

(35:12):
Irish brought the first culinary wave to New York and
it was all in Williamsburg area, the last one being
Peter Luger. Okay, And I'm like, all right, that's it,
Brooklyn Chop House. I go on cheap domain nine dollars.
I'm ripping my pants. I got the credit card. I
put the credit card, and I'm like, this is crazy.
That's the name I got. I'm not a very spiritual
in Brooklyn. I just want to let you know what
it's in Manhattan. Everybody that's on the Manhattan side of

(35:35):
the Brooklyn Bridge. Yes, yes, okay, So now it's um.
When you guys first opened, how long did it take?
It was great? So I mean we opened up and
and our projections were like four million a year because
it's a really tough location. It was a Denny's, right,
you know, really bad looking. Oh yeah, so I told
I told Mayor Adams. Fast forward. I said, I pooh,

(35:56):
and I and David Thomas we have we need the
key to the city. He's like, He's like, for I
got rid of the only Buffalo while Wings and the
only Dennis in Minute because because the time spur location
was a Buffalo Wilo Wings. So I said, I get
the key to the city with Pooh and David because
because we got rid of those two brands out of
New York and replace them with Brooklyn chop Outside and

(36:16):
so yeah, the location was really really tough. But all
of a sudden it clicked. Yeah, like you know what,
wait a second, it's remember chop house menu hasn't been
changed for one hundred and fifty years. Now, all of
a sudden, we're disrupting the whole chop house menu. It's
not creamas spinache, baked potatoes, shrimp cocktail, you know, with
a steak and a piece of fish and parsley. You know,
it's salt and pepper, lobster, pe king, duck, chicken. Ste's

(36:39):
no extensive dumpling. Yeah. So yeah, I love how you think.
Right very before, I said, you're so good Angel. So
so then we got down to the advertiser. I said,
let's do a bacon cheeseburger. No, let's do it bacon
cheeseburger shoe am, which is a form of dumpling. I said,
let's do a pastrami, a rubin peanut butter and jelly. Yeah. Yeah,
and then when it gets to the suit, let's do

(37:00):
lobster bisk or French onion soup dumplings. And like, if
we're going to see this through, there's two things are
gonna happen here. We're going to confuse the funk out
of everybody. It's going to be a monumental failure, which
I'm okay taking that shot, or it's going to be
a Grand Slam. Like I said before, it's Grand Slam
or failure. There's no double in between, and thank god
grand Slam. So we had a great business. Everything was

(37:23):
going great and it was funny. I went to my
doctor in January twenty twenty. I said, you know, my
kids are healthy, my marriage is good, and my business
is thriving. It's got to be my health. I've never
had a trifecta anytime. I never have all three working
at the same good. It's going too good here, I'm
I'm you know, paranoia is starting to kick in. I've
never had at all. I've had a great business with

(37:44):
a terrible marriage. I've had a great marriage, terrible business.
I've never had at all. So what was So I
get to the doctor and he checks me out and
he says, Stratus, everything's fine, And this is January twenty twenty,
and I said, it's like strategy. Now, you've been through
a lot. Just to enjoy it. I said, I'm not gonna.
I'm not gonna. Something's gonna happen. March COVID, COVID, COVID,

(38:07):
so COVID hit and we went from ten million dollar
business to uh to basically one and and that, but
again we found something good out of it. So yeah,
I remember I spoke to you during that time, and
you were doing a lot to help people who were
frontline workers at that time and making sure that they
were actually getting food. Yea, So I went the first

(38:28):
thing we started doing in March twenty twenty, when they
closed this down and everybody really the morale was so low,
I said, well, we're gonna do something good here. I
want to explain to my grandkids one day that we
helped the healthcare heroes. I never said workers heroes. They
could be janitorial made, doesn't have to just be doctors
and nurses. Janitorial made first doctors, nurses, These are our

(38:48):
heroes because they're cleaning up, they're taking care of us
while we're dying sick, and they're going back to their families.
That is, that is basically a human like no other.
I mean, that's so I started bringing food there incognito,
lobster dinners, steak Dinners and just dropping it off. Then
they started picking it up, and all of a sudden,
they started putting on Instagram Brooklyn chop House, thank you,

(39:10):
you know, and it started getting like, you know, on
and on on. But I didn't do it because I
don't think charity should be exposed like that. But they
were doing it, and it was nice because it actually
started to lift our morale yea. And then the New
York Post hit got onto it and they said hero
of the Day, Brooklyn chop House. At that point, we
were up to about nine hundred meals complimentary in the
month of March or this just started right And when

(39:31):
that happened, all the big boys called me, like Cisco Foods,
Junior's Cheesecake, Voss Water, they all after five coffee, they
all started calling me and saying, hey, you have a
go fund me page. I said, I don't believe in
go fund me because honestly, we're all hurting. But if
you want, donate stuff to me and I can make
this thing bigger. It got so big, Jasmine, I basically

(39:51):
had we got this in six months to nine thousand
meals complimentary. It got nineteen hospitals, three police department. Isn't
even a nursing home on Mother's Day and I got
to tell you, the morale in my restaurant was so high.
You know, we were we were all felt so good.
And these are the people that could have went on
unemployment and we're going to lead to the mandates unemployment.

(40:13):
And they didn't take unemployment, and they worked for us
for about the same that they would have collected on unemployment,
you know, because there was no tips. You know, we
just had them on salaries, and you know, they could
have made a little bit more and they could have
made a little bit less on unemployment and stay home.
I meanwhile, they're going to hospitals and they're seeing bodybags
and they're seeing all this. Fast forward two years, when
Governor Hokell said, you know, jab for a job, I said,

(40:36):
fuck you, arrest me. I went on Fox News, I
went on a New York Post, I said, fuck you
arrest me. I am not firing one of my staff
members for a job, for a job, and thank god,
I'm going to be on the right side of history
because they threatened me so many different ways. I had
every city agency coming down to me, every state agency
coming down on me. When I told Governor Hokell to

(40:56):
arrest me, they were sending everyone I called Cuomo, Comrade
Cuomo and Mayor Dalouzio instead of de Blasio. I was
doing this on air, right, I didn't care. If you
guys want to fight, let's fight, let's fight. And it
comes down to the book. I've been partners with the Mob.
I dealt with these politicians. I had the CEOs of
the top three banks in the world that brought into Philippe,

(41:16):
who are the most corrupt guys you'll ever meet, criminals
to the half of them with the jail already. Um,
And I gotta tell you, if I had to pick
those three groups again, I'd be partners with the Mob
because they're the most loyal, right, you know, respectful and
you know you know what you got. You like a
good fight too. I love a good fight, yeah, but
I love I love fighting for the one that doesn't

(41:38):
have my platform. Okay, Brooklyn shop House was doing okay
during COVID we had the outdoor decks. You know, even
some of the partners were saying, Hey, do we need
this fight. We're doing good. Let's just stay under the radar.
I said, no, I'm going to fight for the ones
that are being shut down. They're the ones that are
being told to open and close, open and close. Like restaurants,
not a light switch. It takes weeks and weeks to
prepare to open a restaurant. Is it during this time

(42:00):
that with technology, you've also opened Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, right,
So I just want you to because I know we've
done a lad and I know we're running out of time,
but talk about Brooklyn Dumpling Shop and technology and how
you feel like that is going to be something that's
a game changer also and it has been already. Yeah,
So Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, because the dumplings were so successful
a chop house. This is before COVID. We figured let's

(42:23):
do a fast food, fast casual version of dumplings because
dumplings have never been explained. No, I mean burgers, pizza,
you know, fries, cookies, tacos. Everything has been so overexplained.
But who doesn't love a dumpling. When I introduced new
foods to my kids, when they didn't like fish and vegetables,
I'd go take some fish, vegetables, friedgside, give them a dumpling,

(42:44):
and they're eating fish and vegetables. It's like the greatest
product like to eat. It's like it's like it's like
a two ound sandwich, right, That's how I look at it.
So I said, let's do Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, an offshoot
of Brooklyn Shop House, but just dumplings. And then so
then I started researching on why so many restaurants and
fast casual fail, and I said, number one reason is

(43:05):
they can't meet peril. This is before COVID. So I
was in love with the automat as a kid, I
love the automat, and I started researching why the automat failed.
And the automat failed in the seventies because technology failed
the automat. There were no dollar bill receivers in credit
card processes. On these machines. You had to go get coins,
hold the coins, and put the coins in and basically,

(43:25):
you know, it was so so prehistoric as fast food
was rising people out of choice. I can go to
McDonald's with a credit card, be out in three minutes
instead of going getting on change and getting food. You know,
automat fell out of favor. Make a long story short,
automat is gone. So I'm saying, you know, today the
kids basically live off their phone. I said, this is

(43:47):
the cash register. Let's create a restaurant that speaks to
this as a smartphone. I said, wouldn't it be cool
if we brought back the automat but have it controlled
by your smartphone. You could say, I want to pick
it up at three o'clock. I'm paying, I pay for
the order, this is what I want. Three am in
the morning, I'm picking it up. You get a QR
code texted or email back to you. You appear at

(44:08):
the store, you scan your phone. You're in and out
in ten seconds, not four to six minutes, which is
an industry food and a heated and refrigerator concept. Yeah,
and it's all controlled by your smartphone. It's funny. I
just did that thing at Murtech in Vegas, like front
of fifteen hundred people, and Starbucks and McDonald's got up
and saying we have the latest technology in the self

(44:28):
ordering Kiosk. Oh, we are so advanced with the self
ordering Kiosk. And then I felt like such a dick. Sorry,
So I get on next and I say, the self
ordering Kiosk is my fax machine. I did because I
already done. I said the self ordering Kiosk, I said,
the self ordering Kiosk is my fax machine. This is
your cash register. You know, the self ordering Kiosk is

(44:50):
only good for like the fifty and overs. That is
still not comfortable during complete transactions. So people say, oh,
so it's an automat. I said it is, and they go, wow,
so it's contactless is but there I've shifted the staff
from transaction, which is a cash register, to being in
the front and talking to you. Right, hey, first time here,
Try the chicken palm dumpling. Try the peanut butter and
jelly dumpling. Blah blah blah blah. So that is morph

(45:13):
now into two hundred franchises. Really, that's what I'm sorry.
I mean, you better thank them for pushing you out
of Philish. Yeah. No, no, it's funny. We have that
conversation all the time. So, um, when when when the
original partners were bought out. These were friends of mine,
They were bought out for a lot of money. They
kept me on. It was all scam. They started bankrupting

(45:35):
good stores because I had PGS on them. And basically
what they did was they did the unthinkable. They basically
started close like almost like the producers. They were closing
good restaurants because I was exposed and then put me
into involuntary bankruptcy. And that's what they did to me
in twenty thirteen. And that's what kind of guys were there.
So can you imagine going from making millions of dollars

(45:55):
a year and not even being able to afford to
get on a subway and then this full circle moment
of the latest restaurant you just opened. Yeah, so what? So?
My grandfather had the first Greek restaurant from nineteen ten
to nineteen seventy five called Pappus. So I was another
COVID deal we did. And it's in one of three
McDougall in the West Village. I teamed up with chef
taught English because again I want to just run. Was

(46:17):
right in a grill village? Isn't that next to Minetta Tavern? Okay?
So what we're interesting enough about disrupting is I um?
I said, okay, I want to do a woodburning Greek,
because that's how Greek food started. Most of the Mediterraneans
started that way, with a woodburning oven. I started speaking
to the best Greek chefs in the business. I said,
I want to do a woodburning Greek. You know, when
I went to my father's village and Sparta, they used

(46:38):
to get wood before dinner. And I'm and they're like woodburning.
I don't know what you're talking about. You know, the
chefs of Avaron, Milos and all these restaurants, which is
right here, like, I don't know what that is, you know.
So I make a long story short. I connected with
chef Todd English, who's a master at the wood burning oven,
and I said, I just want a new fresh set
of eyes on Greek food. And boy, oh boy, what

(47:00):
dud is insane? Greek onion soup, Greek salad in a
bottle um, you know, lamb vetsy with figs. Calm down,
as we figured out the best Greek salad. You know,
when they put it in a bowl and they toss it,
that's not the best. A guy in Rhodes came up
with a better formula. You put it in a big
bottle with a fork and shake it like a cocktail.

(47:21):
All the sauce gets thick, and all the sauce evenly distributes,
because after a Greek salad you kind of mop it
up with bread. Yea, yeah, no, this goes all the
way through by shaking it. And it's like it's already got,
It's already got like so many views online. And you know,
we are in the reaction business, right, so it's a
great reaction when people see, would you like your Greek salad? Well,
here we go a cocktail first. Yeah, that's exactly what

(47:45):
I would if you ever need a food tested No,
actually opening, the opening is tonight. Oh yeah, we were
on soft opening for like ten days and tonight's seficial opening.
Look at what statis? You gotta come back again because honestly,
I know you're first of all, your opening business is right,
but honestly, like just knowing you from when I first
met you, and how great you've been just as a person.

(48:07):
That is like owning a restaurant in this business of service,
because it is a service business, it matters a lot.
You've always been really amazing. You know every time I've
kind of any time I hit him up, it could
be no matter what. He could be in the Hampton's
when you guys had to pop up. He'll be like,
all right, answer is taken care of. I could walk
in two minutes later and it's good. You know, I
can send people there and know that everybody's gonna be like,

(48:28):
I loved it. I had a great experience. Tell your
funny story very quick. So on Instagram three o'clock in
the morning, just two days ago, someone's on Brooklyn chop
House Instagram and says, hey, what is that steak? It
looks amazing. I said, Oh, that's the thirty eight ounts Tomahawk.
Like it's three o'clock in the morning. You respond, So
listen here here, here's the best part, because I'm gonna
tell Stratus and Pooh, you are AMAZINGA is like this.

(48:53):
I fall asleep with my phone in my hand, I
mean my pajamas like this. I take a selfie and
I send it to him. I'm like, He's like, no,
go way, you're answering you are Can I just say
you are a great storyteller? Yeah. And because he's very passionate. Yeah,
but that's how it goes to show you when you
are an entrepreneur, you're very involved in your business, you
know the ends and the outs, You're willing to take

(49:14):
a risk. But just caring that much, you can see
how much Status cares about everything that he does. That's
what I think is you know the special touch that
that is necessary to be a successful entrepreneur. You can't
just say I'm gonna open a business and then step
back and not care that much and not go really
hard for yourself. My dad, my dad brought me up
saying twelve hours a half day. Well all right, I

(49:37):
don't know you trying to get this sport day work. Yeah,
but Status again, thank you so much and much love
to your partners. And Dampoo was a great friend of
mine too. I talk to him about business all the time,
and you know, be a disruptor is available now and

(49:59):
anything us that we missed we got. We got to
three of the fifteen children. Well, thank you Jantus again.
I appreciate and thank you always supporting us. Thanks Angela,
way up with Angela, yee up.