November 24, 2025 • 44 mins
What happens when you have the ‘perfect’ corporate job at a top-tier firm with a clear path to partnership, but deep down, you feel a pull towards something else? For Alex Marks, the founder of New York’s cult-favourite ‘Sushi Counter’, that pull wasn’t just a distraction - it was the catalyst for trading a high-flying legal career for a world of total uncertainty.
Before she was serving thousands of rolls a day, Alex was a successful M&A lawyer at the top-tier firm Herbert Smith Freehills. She loved the late nights, the adrenaline, and the "in the trenches" camaraderie. But a dream transfer to New York became the catalyst for her pivot when she faced an immediate culture clash. Realising the US corporate world was an "individual sport" she didn't want to play, Alex was faced with a choice: Stay in a job that wasn't a fit, or risk it all.
She chose risk. Pouring her entire $100,000 USD life savings into an idea, she quit her job and, a week later, signed a lease for a tiny shop to sell the Australian-style sushi she couldn't find anywhere in the city.
In this episode of Pivot Club, Sarah Davidson speaks with Alex about this massive industry leap. They unpack the "messy middle" of her entire journey: From the "primitive" Excel model that convinced her to take the leap, to the humbling reality of hand-filling 50,000 soy sauce fish with a syringe in her living room. Alex shares the unfiltered story of how she navigated intense online backlash just one week after opening and how she scaled from a team of one (plus a supportive boyfriend) to a staff of 30.
Join us for a raw and practical lesson in naive optimism, a look into the grit required to build a business from the ground up and a powerful reminder that sometimes, the fear of regret is far scarier than the fear of failure.
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CREDITS:
Guest: Alex Marks
Host: Sarah Davidson
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
What happens when you have the perfect corporate job at
a top tier law firm, with an impressive title and
a clear path to partnership. On paper, it's the definition
of success. But what if deep down you feel a
pull towards something else, A tiny idea, a passion project,
or just a nagging feeling that this perfect path isn't
(00:39):
actually your path. That's the turning point, the realization that
it's time for a new chapter. Welcome to Pivot Club.
I'm your host, Sarah Davidson, and I know this feeling well.
My own journey took me from the structured world of
corporate law to the unknown territory of founding my own
business matcha maiden. This is a show for anyone who
(01:01):
has ever felt that poll to find a different path
each week, or unpacking professional plot twists, getting into a messy,
unglamorous and complex journey that leads to our major life pivots.
Today we're talking to someone who traded one of the
most defined career paths for a world of total uncertainty,
all because of a gut feeling. That person is Alex Marx,
(01:24):
the founder of New York's cult favorite sushi counter. But
before she was serving thousands of roles a day, Alex's
journey looked very different. She was a successful em and
a lawyer at the top tier firm Herbert Smith Free Hills,
working in the fast paced world of corporate deals in Melbourne.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Alex loved her job.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
She loved the late nights, the adrenaline, and that in
the trenches camaraderie. The plan was simple, keep climbing the
ladder all the way to partnership. In a leap of faith,
she transferred to the New York firm, fulfilling a long
standing dream of hers. But that dream move became the
catalyst for her pivot. Upon facing an immediate culture clash.
Realizing the US corporate world was an individual sport she
(02:04):
didn't want to play, Alex was faced with a choice
staying a job that wasn't a fit or risk at all.
She chose risk, pouring her entire life savings that's one
hundred thousand dollars US into an idea. She quit her
job and a week later signed a lease for a
tiny shop to sell the Australian style sushi she couldn't
(02:24):
find anywhere in the City. This is an honest and
unfiltered insight into what it really takes to build a
business from the ground up. We cover the primitive Excel
model that convinced her to leap, the humbling reality of
hand filling fifty thousand soy sauce fish with a syringe,
and the intense online backlash that hit just one week
after opening. Get ready to learn why sometimes the fear
(02:47):
of regret is fascarier than the fear of failure.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Alex, Welcome to Pivot Club.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well, thank you so much for joining all the way
from the Big Apple. Well, I am so excited to
chat to you because not only have I loved following
your journey, but so many parts of it kind of
intersect with parts of mind and that's what I would
love to start to pivot into where you are now.
So you were a successful m and a lawyer at
a top tier firm in Melbourne. What did that fast
(03:20):
pace life actually look like for you?
Speaker 4 (03:23):
I mean I loved it it. I mean I was
there for sort of four or five years in the end,
and went in as a grad you know, straight out
of UNI, and fell into a wonderful, wonderful team who
I just I loved working with and I loved you know,
I loved the hard work. I loved the late nights.
I loved getting things done, and we got to see
(03:45):
so many cool things, and I think that was one
of my favorite parts of the job, just getting to
see lots of businesses come across our desks and see
what founders were doing really well and all these sort
of success stories, and you know, we were the ones
getting to dig into what that business looked like and
you know, what made it teak and what made it successful.
(04:05):
And I found that really really exciting. I've always been
really interested in business in general, and for me.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That was just a really exciting part of the job.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
And getting to work with amazing people was probably my
other favorite part of the job, just working with really intelligent,
switched on but also really kind and supportive people. You know,
it was lots of late nights, and it was lots
of week at work and all of the things you
hear about top tier law firms. But I feel really
feel very grateful that I was able to do it
(04:36):
in an environment that was really really genuinely supportive and
collaborative and really team based.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I actually loved reading that you loved that part of
your life, because I think there is a really common
narrative out there, and sometimes for good reason, of corporate
refugees who left their jobs and often lawyers because the
hours are oppressive and because it startled their creativity. And
you've said that missing the camaraderie of that life, being
(05:02):
in the trenches together at the three am deal closings,
delirious eating a snacks. Paint a picture for us of
what that felt like, like, the adrenaline of why those
hours weren't actually as hard as they might sound from
the outside.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
I think often, I mean this was not always a case,
but often the late hours were the exciting parts of
the work. You know, they were the times you were
about to get a deal closed or get a deal signed,
and they.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Were kind of the times you were there for.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You know, you were there for that excitement of getting
to the finish line as a team and with the
client and then getting that I suppose that satisfaction of
getting to that finish line and all having done it
together and all having worked really hard.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
And I think the working hard part of.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
It makes it feel really good when you get it done,
and I really miss those, you know, four or five
am in the office finally getting something signed.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And delirious is the.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Exact right word. That's exactly often what it was.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
But you're all delirious.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Together, you know, And it was real bonding experience and
I think they were the times you learned the most from.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, And I think they were the most satisfying often.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, I really loved that team environment and the clarity
of all working towards a very clear goal with clear timelines.
And similarly, there's a lot of gratification in climbing a
ladder that has really clear first year, second y, ar
third year lawyers versus now in business there's no clear milestones.
We don't ever really clear colleagues or peers. So it's
(06:36):
a very different experience. But back then, if you were
at a dinner party, how would you introduce yourself? Was
Alex Marks the M and a lawyer a big part
of your identity?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? I think it was.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I mean, I think it's one of those things that
always comes up when you meet someone. You know, the
first thing people ask what do you do? And you know,
you say, oh, I'm a lawyer, and it's an interesting thing.
I think to introduce yourself as I think it comes
with a lot of sometimes stereotypes, sometimes you know, admiration,
(07:11):
sort of this whole spectrum of things. And I think
for a long time it was something that I was
really proud of, and I you know, I loved being
able to say, oh, yeah, I'm a lawyer, and you know,
I love what I do, and I do something really
interesting that I love doing, and that I think is
I mean, I would say objectively maybe subjectively fascinating and
(07:33):
you know, seen as successful. Yeah, you know, and I
think I was pretty toughed to hire Alex.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I'm a lawyer. Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You made a huge move within that career from Melbourne
to New York. Can you mention you've also worked in London,
so huge centers of business for the m and a lawyer.
I worked in Hong Kong and had that same experience
of just moving to where the action is really happening.
Was the plan to just keep going as a high
flying lawyer and move from big deal to big deal
(08:04):
and keep learning and climbing that ladder.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Yeah, asolutely when I moved to here, one hundred percent
of one. Yeah, and to be quite honest with you,
I think if I'd never.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Moved, I would still be there.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Yeah, I'd still be a lawyer, and I'd still be
loving it, I think. And I think I'd been in
a position now where I'd be several years in and
looking at wanting to be a partner and all of
those sorts of things. And I think in another version
of my life, I could have very happily stayed there
forever and done my whole career there.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah. I often talk about the fact that you can
have a really big pivot in life without hating the
pathway that you're on, and I love that You're Like,
in another world, I would have still maybe enjoyed what
I was doing. I think a lot of the time
we think we have to be really unhappy to deserve
a big change, But I don't actually think that's the case.
You can explore lots of different things for lots of
different reasons, And for you, it was spurred on by
(08:57):
seeing the US work culture perhaps is maybe not a
good fit compared to back home. For you, was there
a specific moment where you were confronted by that clash
of culture and sort of thought, isn't me to.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Be honest, I think it was pretty much day one.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Really, Wow, how did it matter that?
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I just I could feel it very quickly that culturally, socially,
it just wasn't a good fit for me. It was
a very very different culture to what I'd come from
at home, where you know, it was very team based,
very collaborative, very supportive, and you know, a lot of
my best friends still in the world where people I
worked with at home, and there was a real culture
(09:35):
of being friends with your colleagues and spending time together
outside of work, and the culture is just very different here.
You know, it is very competitive, it is it's an
individual sport in a lot of ways. And I felt
very quickly, very early on that it just wasn't the
environment for me. Not to say it's not a good environment,
(09:58):
but it just wasn't wasn't the right fit for me
at all.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I think that's really brave of you too, have been
able to notice that as well, when externally working in
a huge New York law firm tick so many boxes
from a societal perspective. To then feel some kind of
dissonance and actually do something about it is a big deal.
Was your perception of success at that time, still very
(10:21):
tired to kind of your intellectual journey as a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think for the first little while, I really grappled
with it.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
And you know, I say, I knew day one and
I was there for another. I was there for eighteen
months or so. Oh wow, Yeah, And it took a
little while to I think, to grapple with that, and
you know, what do I do here? I really wanted
to be in New York and I've always wanted to
live in New York. I came here for the first
(10:48):
time when I was twenty one with my family on holiday,
and immediately it was like, I have to live here.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
This is my city.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
So it had been a long time coming, and I
really desperately wanted to be here and stay here. And
it took a little while for me to just grapple
in the background with what do I do if I'm
not if I'm not loving this job, and if this
isn't the right fit for me, and you know, lots
of options at that point. Do I go continue down
(11:16):
the law path and do I go to another firm,
do I try something.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Something slightly different, Do I go in house.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Do I stay in the law field, or do I
try something completely different, and obviously you know how the
story ends, but it took a little while, I think,
to sort of sort through that in my mind, and
I think I felt a little like saying goodbye to
that job and a job in law at all. Was
(11:44):
whether this is true or not, probably closing the door
a little bit to going back to the law, particularly
in the US, given I was so fresh to begin with,
and it's not always easy to get a job here
as an Australian lawyer, unfortunately very market dependent. So I
sat with it for a little while. It took me
(12:05):
a little while to make that miss, but I eventually
realized that I could stay in the job and be
content enough. You know, I really did enjoy the work,
and I found it really interesting and really challenging, and
I loved a lot.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Of what I did.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
But I knew I would be sitting there not one
hundred percent feeling like it was the right fit, And
to be honest, I was probably more so fearful that
I would still be sitting there in five years, ten
years time, still thinking it's not quite the right fit,
and not having explored something else.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So I decided to just do it.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I'm interested that you didn't go in house or didn't
try something more sideways and low risk as your first jump.
What was that timeline from kind of feeling those feelings,
sitting in it for another eighteen months to then go,
you know what, it's sushi.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
It's it's a really good question, and it's really quite
quite a funny story. Actually, I think about it often.
I decided pretty quickly that I thought I wanted to
try something different, and I probably decided that maybe six
to twelve months in.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I sort of thought, it's time.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
I need to try something else, and if I'm ever
going to try something else, now is the time, and
I should just go for it. I'm still pretty young,
no kids, no dependents, no one relied on me, like
now's the time. So I thought about it for a while,
and sushi was always in my mind, but it wasn't
always the obvious choice. I spent a few months thinking
(13:49):
about it, and I'd always wanted to start a business,
and it had always been something I'd been interested in.
So I sat there for a few months and I thought, right,
I started business, but what is it? And I had
a few different ideas, and I remember very clearly one
night coming home. My boyfriend was sitting on the couch
and I say to him, right, I've got three ideas
(14:10):
for different businesses. I'm going to tell you what they are.
You tell me what you think. And they were all
completely different things. Sushi was obviously one of them. I
wanted to start a perfume business at one point, and
I love perfume, and I mean I don't know a
whole lot about the perfume industry, nor did I know
a lot about the sushi industry, but it was something
(14:31):
I loved. And my third idea was that I wanted
to be a luxury travel consultant.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Amazing, very different ideas.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
That was the spectrum that we were working with. And
I remember delivering these three ideas to him and him
looking back at me like I was somewhat crazy, which
was probably absolutely fair, and it was absolutely fair enough.
I had been complaining the whole time I had lived
here that I couldn't find the kind of sushi we
have everywhere at home, and I just had a feeling
(15:04):
that was the right decision. And I then tink it
around for a while with a little Excel model that
I made, a very very primitive one lawyer absolutely not
a banker, and I, you know, put in all these
sort of assumptions. I put in what I could think
(15:25):
of that might be the costs of running a business
like this, And I really should dig it out one day,
because I am absolutely sure it was nowhere near any
kind of accurate. And I had absolutely no idea what
kind of costs were involved, you know, fish.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Rice, I had no idea about. I mean, the million.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Different costs are to run a business that you would
never know about behind the scenes. So I built this
very primitive little model, and I used to tinker around
with it every you know, every night, and I basically
just wanted to get myself to a place where the
model was spitting out a number of roles I had
to sell a day that sounded doable and like it
(16:05):
might make some moneyed up getting to a place where
I think it was spitting out about one hundred and
fifty roles. It was telling me I had to sell
a day to break even. And I thought about it,
and I thought, oh, you know, several million people in
New York one hundred and fifty roles a day. If
people buy three rolls on average, I only need to
get fifty people to come in a day, and I thought,
(16:26):
you know what, I think I could probably do that.
So we did it. When I say we, I mean I,
And I don't know if you know this as well, actually,
but I always speak in we always, and people often
stop me.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And say, oh, who's we. I say, oh, yeah, I
yeah me. I don't know why we do that, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I got to the point where I thought, this sounds feasible,
it sounds like something I could do, and I started
looking for a lease. I thought the first step was
to sign a lease. I needed a space to do
it out of, and then I'd figure the rest out.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Oh my gosh, I love this so much, and I
love how it diverges from the very typical pathway, which
is what mine fell into, where you kind of accidentally
fall into a gap in the market and you accidentally
have it on the side, and then it grows, and
then one day you get to this, like, I need
to leave my job because I've already built this thing
on the side that model you're it's still risky, but
(17:21):
it's managed a little bit because you've let the side
thing grow, whereas you've kind of reverse engineered and gone
something's missing what is it. This is a possible business model,
here are the figures. I'm just going to do it.
That is way scarier and way riskier. And the thing
that makes us great M and A lawyers is being
risk averse, highly attuned to risk, and then very avoidant.
(17:46):
How did you manage that?
Speaker 4 (17:48):
I mean, I think for starters, I think I am
slightly more risk taking than maybe your average lawyer, and
in hindsight, maybe I wouldn't have turned out to.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Be a very good lawyer. But I think for me
it really was.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
I was more fearful of regretting not having tried it,
and as I said, still sitting there in five to
ten years, not loving what I was doing, and sitting
there thinking what if I had have tried it? And
I think that was scarier to me at the time
than the risk was. I think I am also the
perfect combination of optimistic and naive, and I think you
(18:25):
have to be a little bit of both of those
things to do something like this. You know, you have
to be a little bit crazy, and it is a
leap of faith.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I love that because I think most people when they're
sort of overcome by fear, fear of failure, fear of
the unknown, fear of uncertainty, they're not actually thinking about
fear of the alternative, which, as you mentioned, is often
much greater. Fear of regret is a way more permanent
thing that you will live with. So I think it's
(18:55):
really important for anyone who's sitting on an idea they're
scared about, or a big move that they're scared about,
think of the fear you have of the alternative. And
I love that you just went I'm going to do it.
And I've got this image of you kind of walking
along the streets of the West Village being like, somebody leased.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Me a store.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I'm a first time business owner.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
So I basically finished up at the firm and I
signed the lease the week after that. I'd been looking
for the last sort of couple of months at the firm.
I'd been looking around on the side. I'd spend weekends,
and your image of me just wandering the streets is
actually very accurate. I would go and spend half a
(19:36):
day on the weekend just wandering around Midtown, and I
would get a map and I would walk every block
just looking to see if there were a lease sign
in a window. Somewhere and just trying to get a
real gauge of the neighborhoods and you know where it
might be a great place for it.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I mean, I got really lucky. I think in the end,
it's not easy.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
As a first time business owner to get someone to
give you a lease. And you know, I had no
business history, I had no track record. I you know,
had some money to put into it, and I'm so
grateful that I did. And it wasn't, by any means
a small amount of money. It literally was my entire
life savings. But in the scheme of other business people
(20:17):
coming to them asking for lisas that, you know, it
wasn't that much to show them.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And I got a little bit lucky. I think.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
I just got a landlord who was happy to take
a bit of a chance. And it was a really
small space, which worked in my favor. There are a
whole lot of businesses that can go into a tiny space,
and it was a block that at the time was
having a little bit of a resurgence and a bunch
of things had just closed. And I just got a
(20:44):
bit lucky, I think, And they were happy to take
a chance on me, and we have you know, another
couple of stores now and they're all going really well,
and it's all really exciting. But that store is to
this day still every day of the year, our best
performing store. And we got a really great deal and
a really great location somehow, and honestly, I think a
(21:05):
lot of that was just a bit of aln.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
My question has always been for business owners, where do
you even order stock at wholesale prices? And there's a
really funny story we'll get to about the soy sauce
in the fish that is in every sushi store. How
did you, once you signed the lease, work out how
to open the store and all of the dot points
that you needed to get through.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
It's a really good question.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
I honestly, it was just one step at a time,
I think, and a lot of trial and error, and
quite frankly, a lot of googling.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Google was so helpful.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
I mean, I had absolutely no idea how to do
any of the things you just spoke about. I have
been a waitress when I was eighteen as a part
time job, never worked in the industry before, certainly never
opened a store or run a store in the industry,
And a lot of it was trial and error for example,
you know you talk about suppliers the way I found
(21:57):
most of my suppliers, and to this day they are
still our suppliers, and thankfully they turned out to be amazing.
One of our produce suppliers I got recommended by a
lovely Australian girl who lives nearby, who I met at
my favorite wine bar because it's also her favorite wine bar,
and she happened to know a produce supplier, so she
(22:17):
gave me their details. Our avo guys, we have amazing
avocado suppliers, and as you can imagine, we go through
a lot of avocados. I found them because I was
sitting out the front of a cafe in the West
Village one day with my mum. She was visiting, and
I saw avocados get delivered and I thought I need avocados,
so I followed them to his van and took a
(22:40):
photo of the name, and to this day we get
several hundred avocados from them still a week. So a
lot of it was honestly luck. I literally googled fish
wholesalers New York and picked the closest one, and to.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
This day we order I think something outrageous.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
I think I figured out the other day about a
quarter of a million dollars worth of salmon.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Far But it also just goes to show that, really
as much as when you describe it at a macro level,
we opened a business, We've opened several stores, I had
no experience. I've got a hugely successful outlet in New York.
You can't actually open a store without doing the small steps.
And I think if you just break down any big,
(23:24):
overwhelming task into the tiny steps that's composed of, it's
not nearly as scary as you think it is. But
I'm sure there were moments, for example, the soy sauce fish,
which we have to cover, where you were hand filling
fifty thousand mini soy sauce fish with a syringe because
you couldn't get them supplied. Were there moments where you
(23:45):
were doing that at two hours?
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Yeah, cramps, absolutely, And there were lots of moments top
tier the hours of the day, and it was getting
to the point where I was doing it for a
few hours every day. Here I should be seeing we
because my boyfriend probably did more of them than I did,
which I'm incredibly grateful for. But two years ago I
(24:07):
had about a dozen friends around my coffee table with
a big pot of soy sauce in the middle, everyone
with gloves on, trying to figure out we hadn't got
to the syringes at that point, trying to figure out
how to get the soy sauce inside the fish. And
it was absolutely comical. In hindsight. My apartments smelled like
soy sauce fro about a month. There were so many times,
(24:31):
and to this day there still are so many times
where it is not glamorous at all, and it's late
nights and it's early mornings, and it's dealing with all
sorts of weird and wonderful problems that come up during
the day. I mean, we have three stores that are
open seven days a week, just about three hundred and
sixty five days a year, twelve till nine every day,
(24:52):
and the amount of things that can go wrong is
astounding still to me sometimes. And you never know what's
going to break, what bit of equipment's accidentally going to
get thrown out, you know who's going to call in sick,
or whatever the case might be. I think people look
at things like this from the outside. It looks fun
and it looks glamorous and I look like a professional
(25:16):
business woman that the reality of it often is incredibly unglamorous,
but I've never regretted it.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
It's so funny that from the outside it is always
so polished and shiny and business highs, and then every
business owner, particularly in those early days, to just make
things happen when you don't know how else to make
them happen. But it's not just the scrappy moments. I
think there's also some really hard setbacks in starting anything new,
(25:47):
and you face some of those pretty early on opening
peak stress, realizing you know you've actually done the thing,
you're letting customers in, and you're hit with this huge
online backlash, which, again in an age where you can
get real time feedback and everyone can be a keyboard warrior,
is quite a unique modern day be his own a problem,
but it's a problem. Nonetheless, you had people calling you
(26:10):
a colonizer. Being a white woman opening a sushi shop
was called appropriation. And instead of everyone celebrating this huge
achievement of this huge risk you've taken to make a
pivot and do it so successfully, you're getting attacked on
a personal level for what you're doing. How did you
find the strength to ignore all that and just press on.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
It was incredibly hard, incredibly difficult few weeks. I mean,
I have never experienced anything like that before, you know,
as a relatively normal person who's not normally out there
on the internet. It I mean, I didn't know how
to deal with it at all. And it was incredibly,
incredibly tough. And it was genuinely a week after we opened,
(26:56):
which you know, is hard enough as it is very
much in the starting stages of trying to find my feet,
figure out how to open a store, how to run
the store, how to get sushi out there every day,
and it was it was a really tough time. But
all I could do really was just focus on the
day to day, you know, and there was so much
(27:16):
day to day to focus on, and in some ways,
I think it was probably a blessing that it was
so early on when I really had so much to
do in the business and so much I had to
be focusing on.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
I was there seven days a week, nine am till
midnight as it was trying to figure out how to
do this. I had one employee, I had one chef
when we opened. Otherwise it was just the Alex Show,
and I did everything else, so I was busy, you know,
and I kind of had to just focus on that
(27:52):
and focus on the day to day and you know,
getting in there in the morning and filling the soy
salce fish and getting the shop open.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah. I can't imagine there's already so much internal chatter
going on in your mind when you first launch a
business without a public pylon. When you look back at
that time sort of two years on, what would you
say was the hardest part of that initial stage of
the pivot where you were really finding your feet as
a whole new person.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
I mean, that whole saga was probably the most challenging.
I think the other thing that was really challenging about it,
which I don't know if I had really thought about beforehand,
or I mean, I hadn't really thought about what would
happen when the doors actually opened. I don't think you
spend so much time planning and trying to figure out
(28:39):
all the things and all the little steps, and all
you're trying to do is get to opening, and then
you open the doors day one and you actually have
to run it. And you know, I didn't hire the
one chef, my one employee until three weeks before we opened.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Which I had this weird idea. I don't know, I
couldn't make the sushi app tell it.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
I don't really know what I was thinking there, but
I realized pretty last minute I needed someone, so, you know,
I hired someone. But then I had to figure out
how to do everything else, and it was really physically taxing.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
I was used to late night, so I was used
to working lots of hours, but a really really different
type of work being there on your feet, you know,
twelve fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours a day sometimes and cleaning
and scrubbing and talking to people all day.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I lost my voice.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Every week for the first maybe six to eight weeks
of being open. Thankfully, we were only open five days
a week at that stage, so we'd close on Sunday
and then have a couple of days off, and by
the end of every Sunday my voice was completely gone,
and then I'd spend Monday Tuesday getting it back and we'd.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Do the whole thing over again.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
It was probably like that for the first I mean
really for the first year, until we actually had a
few more employees and I felt like the business was
at the stage where I could spend money on some
employees to be there, and it felt like such a
luxury when I had just a couple of people to
do a couple of shifts that I didn't have to
(30:12):
be there for. I mean, it's a luxury now having
thirty something employees and I no longer have to be
there all day, every day, and I'm so grateful for that,
because for the first year it was, it was a lot.
It was pretty grueling, and I don't think people necessarily
think about that. I certainly didn't before the doors opened.
(30:35):
But no matter.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
How tired you are, you've got to be there.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
You know, you've got to go in the next morning
and do the cleaning early before we open the doors,
and stay there late at night doing whatever it is
it has to be done for the next day. And
you really don't have a choice back up plan is
you close for the day.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Fast forward to now, you, as you said, have thirty staff,
a fourth location.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
On the way.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
What does the day to day look like for you
now as the same of sushi counter, and you know,
at that higher level, being able to work kind of
on the business a bit more and less in the
business all day every day.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Well, that's always the goal. It doesn't always happen, but
I mean, look, my day to day is completely wild
and varied, and I absolutely love that about what I
do now. I thrive in chaos. I'm quite a chaotic
person and I actually love chaos. I love doing something
different every day, and as frustrating as it is sometimes,
(31:38):
I love that I don't know where the day's going
to go. Often I can have a plan and have
all the best intentions to you know, block out the
day to sit down and work on you know, some forecasting,
some planning, some high level stuff, and suddenly your day
gets completely thrown off because there's been a problem somewhere
and you have to rush into a store and deal
with something, and you never know what's going to happen.
(32:00):
And truly my days are different every day of the week,
but we try. We have a little bit of an
office now, which is really exciting, which is new. In
one of our stores. We've got a bit of space.
So if we set up an office there and our
little sort of I suppose what we call the corporate team,
(32:21):
we work in there a few days a week together,
which is really really nice to be able to spend
some time actually working together, because when we didn't have
an office, it was all everyone all over the place.
So I try to spend some time in there with
the team. I spend some time in the stores. It
completely depends on the day which store I'm in and why,
but I try to sort of drop in everywhere and
(32:42):
spend some time everywhere as much as I can. And
then often it's other things. You know, it's admin. It's
going to the accountant's office to go through the monthly financials.
It's having a phone call with you know, the tax
people to get last year's taxes done. It's again more
walking the streets, and we still do that, looking for
(33:02):
locations and inspecting places and you know, talking to the
real este brokers and all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
But I really love getting time to work on the
business and think about strategy and think about growth and
where we're going and what we want to do. And
I think there's so much opportunity and it's so so
(33:24):
exciting for me and for the whole team thinking about
where we might be this time next year or in
five years. And that's that's what I really love getting
to spend some time doing Now, what did.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You find harder learning to be a lawyer or learning
to be a boss and a manager and a leader.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
That is an easy question for me to answer, and
it's absolutely doing what I do now is so much harder,
I think, and it has been so much harder to learn.
And I think it's a lot of soft skills that
you kind of just get thrown into having to figure out.
You know, at a law firm, they train you so well,
and you kind of you know, you work up the
ranks and you work at the pace you're meant to,
(34:05):
and you know they're there are steps along the way
and you do eventually manage people and there are people
under you, but there's a real clear framework and pathway,
and you see what it looks like both above and below.
This is really hard in terms of managing people. I
found that to be the hardest thing in the business.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
For sure. I am naturally the people pleaser, way too nice.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Usually I am very conflict devoidant. I hate having to
have a hard conversation with people. I am absolutely atrocious
at telling anyone they're doing something wrong or not doing
something the way I would like them to do it.
And that has been a real learning curve for me
figuring out the last couple of years, as we've started
(34:53):
to have stuff, and now lots of stuff. You know,
how do you manage people in a way that balances.
And to me, it's really important to balance you know,
kindness and empathy and understanding and and you know, fostering
a really great team culture and a welcoming environment and
a comfortable place where people feel like they can express
(35:15):
themselves and they can speak up and they can ask questions,
but also making sure that people are.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Doing what they need to be doing.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And in our business in particular, there are so many
rules that we need to be following, you know, health
department rules and this and that, and there are things
that people have to be doing the way they have
to be doing them, and I find it really difficult
to balance those things.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I am literally you, My conflict avoidance is at an
all time But not only did you start with a
lot less staff than you have and have to learn
to manage the team you have, you also started with
a model that hoped for fifty customers a day, and
now you know, very soon after that you were selling
(35:59):
two thousand rolls across two stores.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Did you ever.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Expect this level of success and then how did you
cope with the rapid nature of that scaling while you
were also dealing with everything you've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
I didn't foresee this at all, to be honest, I
felt in my gut that it was a really you know,
that it was a really good idea and that it
would do well and that people would like it. And
I really truly thought it filled a gap in the market.
And I do still think that very much so. But
(36:36):
I don't think I could have foreseen how just how
quickly we've grown, which has been so exciting. And you know,
that's the kind of stuff that makes me really excited
and gets me up every day.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And I know for a lot of my team that's
the same.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
But it is it's hard, you know, adding people really quickly,
adding more stores into the mix. We've had to change
a lot about our processes. We've had to I mean,
our processes was so organic when we first opened and
it was just me and one other person. The processes
didn't have to be and down because it was the
two of us there every day and we knew what
we were supposed to be doing, and you know, you
(37:13):
add one more person, and then a second, and then
a third, and at some point you realize we probably
need to write some of these things down and give
people a checklist and you know, actually articulate things in
a written manner, and maybe we need to actually have
some sort of training program. And I think it's hard
doing that as you grow anyway, let alone at a
(37:33):
really rapid rate. And we kind of fell into a
bit of a cycle where it was difficult to train
people well because we needed people quickly because we were
getting busy so quickly. But because we needed people quickly
and we were understaffed, we didn't really have time to
put into developing a training program or you know, writing
(37:54):
things down properly or getting some really good checklists going.
So for a little while, I think it was just
very much hamstering the wheel and figuring it out as
we went. And now I'm really excited to be it's
something we've been working on a lot in the last
sort of six months, just get in our processes nailed down,
you know, and starting to have some handbooks, some checklists,
(38:15):
some documents, some training materials. When people come on board,
which is so necessary and so hard to manage with
this many people.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
I think there's this perception that growth, in all cases
in a business is what you're after, like you just
want to get bigger, faster, as quick as you can,
and in so many cases it can actually topple a
business if you scale too rapidly. You're still growing as
quickly as you can. But I've heard you say that
it's within reason and that you are pacing yourself to
(38:44):
make sure that you don't lose the essence of what
your business is as you grow and expand really quickly.
How do you make those strategic decisions on where but
also when to expand, especially in a city as ruthless
as New York.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Yeah, that's a really good question, and it is. It's
a real balance because it is so tempting when things
are going well and the demand is there too.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Want to pop up ten more stores.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
I think in a lot of ways we are limited
just by our capacity. We have a really small team
still who deals with the sort of corporate part of
the business, and you know, the signing leases and the
getting stores built and the hiring people and all of that.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Sort of thing. So I think we have.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
There's a bit of a natural choke on that in
terms of what we have the time and brain space
to focus on.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
But it is tempting. I've thought about it before.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Do we just go out and hire a few new,
you know, corporate team members who have opened stores for
other people and they could just roll them out? But
I think the magic of what we do is really important.
And we have such great community and really really loyal customers.
(39:57):
Our staff are fantastic, and we're really really well known
for our great service and you know, being a warm
and inviting place and treating customers really well, and and
for me, that is really really important to keep, you know,
And I'm so conscious that that's sort of part of
our magic. And I think the other part of our
magic is having a really really great product, and I
(40:18):
will not sacrifice that because exactly as you say, that's
when it starts to topple. So I think it's just
about keeping those really cool pillars in front of mind,
and I'm not going to do anything that's going to
jeopardize those. So it's really just about our capacity and
where we are. And we've done a lot in the
last six months or so to set ourselves up to
(40:40):
be able to keep that growth going and you know,
open more stores and keep things working properly. So I
don't think it's so much as a you know, a
mapped out timeline as it is get into a place
where we feel that we have the capacity to say,
open another store and do it in a way that
is really true to our brand and what we do.
(41:02):
So the next door, you know, we signed the least
a few months ago, that one we're actually.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Taking our time with to get built out and to
get up.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
And running, because if we do feel like we need
a bit of that time just to really make sure,
you know, everything's in place and we can open that
store with exact same standards as we have in our others.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah, I love that. Now when you look back, was
it all worth it? And what advice would you give
to the person listening who's sitting at their corporate desk
right now, not even not loving what they're doing, but
dreaming of their own sushi counter idea.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I mean, my advice is do it. I am obviously
a very biased advice giver here, but I.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Just think life is short and if there's something you
want to do, I think you have to give it
a go. You know, obviously, within reason, have as much
of a plan as you can, have as much for
safety net as you can, and you know, de risk
it as much as possible, but sometimes it just can't
be de risked, and it.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Is a leap of faith.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
And I mean if you said to me five years ago,
in five years time, you'll be living in New York,
have multiple sushi shops, I would have told you were crazy.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
But anyone could do anything.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
Truly, if I can figure out how to do this,
you can figure out how to do whatever your dream is.
I am incredibly confident of that. So I think sometimes
you just have to give something a go. And you know,
I always thought, if this doesn't work, I go back
to being a lawyer, you know.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Worst case scenario.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
I thought, if I have to move back home, and
I sloped back into my old job and I moved
back in with my parents because I've lost all of.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
The money I have.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
You know, I was really lucky to be in a
position where that safety net was there to that extent,
and that was enough for me to feel like I
could do it. And if things absolutely didn't go to plan,
I would be fine. Someone will be there to catch
me if it doesn't go to plan. I'm so glad
(43:08):
I did it, and people ask me all the time
whether I'm happier, and I am so so much happier.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Well, what a beautiful, inspiring, reassuring example of the power
of the pivot and what magic you can make when
you take a risk on a big leap. And I
can't wait to see if this is what you've achieved
in two years so far. I mean I literally thought
it'd been like eight years for what you've been able
(43:36):
to achieve. I can't wait to see what comes next.
So congratulations on everything, and thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
That's all for this week's Pivot Club.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
We'll be back next week with another inspiring story of reinvention.
Make sure you're following the show on your podcast app
so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed
this episode, please share it or leave a quick rating
to help our community grow. This episode of Pivot Club
was produced by Sally Best with audio production by Tom Lyon.
The executive producer is Courtney Ammenhauser. Thanks for listening and
(44:08):
catch you here next week.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Mumma mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
What happens when you have the perfect corporate job at
a top tier law firm, with an impressive title and
a clear path to partnership. On paper, it's the definition
of success. But what if deep down you feel a
pull towards something else, A tiny idea, a passion project,
or just a nagging feeling that this perfect path isn't
(00:39):
actually your path. That's the turning point, the realization that
it's time for a new chapter. Welcome to Pivot Club.
I'm your host, Sarah Davidson, and I know this feeling well.
My own journey took me from the structured world of
corporate law to the unknown territory of founding my own
business matcha maiden. This is a show for anyone who
(01:01):
has ever felt that poll to find a different path
each week, or unpacking professional plot twists, getting into a messy,
unglamorous and complex journey that leads to our major life pivots.
Today we're talking to someone who traded one of the
most defined career paths for a world of total uncertainty,
all because of a gut feeling. That person is Alex Marx,
(01:24):
the founder of New York's cult favorite sushi counter. But
before she was serving thousands of roles a day, Alex's
journey looked very different. She was a successful em and
a lawyer at the top tier firm Herbert Smith Free Hills,
working in the fast paced world of corporate deals in Melbourne.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Alex loved her job.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
She loved the late nights, the adrenaline, and that in
the trenches camaraderie. The plan was simple, keep climbing the
ladder all the way to partnership. In a leap of faith,
she transferred to the New York firm, fulfilling a long
standing dream of hers. But that dream move became the
catalyst for her pivot. Upon facing an immediate culture clash.
Realizing the US corporate world was an individual sport she
(02:04):
didn't want to play, Alex was faced with a choice
staying a job that wasn't a fit or risk at all.
She chose risk, pouring her entire life savings that's one
hundred thousand dollars US into an idea. She quit her
job and a week later signed a lease for a
tiny shop to sell the Australian style sushi she couldn't
(02:24):
find anywhere in the City. This is an honest and
unfiltered insight into what it really takes to build a
business from the ground up. We cover the primitive Excel
model that convinced her to leap, the humbling reality of
hand filling fifty thousand soy sauce fish with a syringe,
and the intense online backlash that hit just one week
after opening. Get ready to learn why sometimes the fear
(02:47):
of regret is fascarier than the fear of failure.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Alex, Welcome to Pivot Club.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well, thank you so much for joining all the way
from the Big Apple. Well, I am so excited to
chat to you because not only have I loved following
your journey, but so many parts of it kind of
intersect with parts of mind and that's what I would
love to start to pivot into where you are now.
So you were a successful m and a lawyer at
a top tier firm in Melbourne. What did that fast
(03:20):
pace life actually look like for you?
Speaker 4 (03:23):
I mean I loved it it. I mean I was
there for sort of four or five years in the end,
and went in as a grad you know, straight out
of UNI, and fell into a wonderful, wonderful team who
I just I loved working with and I loved you know,
I loved the hard work. I loved the late nights.
I loved getting things done, and we got to see
(03:45):
so many cool things, and I think that was one
of my favorite parts of the job, just getting to
see lots of businesses come across our desks and see
what founders were doing really well and all these sort
of success stories, and you know, we were the ones
getting to dig into what that business looked like and
you know, what made it teak and what made it successful.
(04:05):
And I found that really really exciting. I've always been
really interested in business in general, and for me.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That was just a really exciting part of the job.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
And getting to work with amazing people was probably my
other favorite part of the job, just working with really intelligent,
switched on but also really kind and supportive people. You know,
it was lots of late nights, and it was lots
of week at work and all of the things you
hear about top tier law firms. But I feel really
feel very grateful that I was able to do it
(04:36):
in an environment that was really really genuinely supportive and
collaborative and really team based.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I actually loved reading that you loved that part of
your life, because I think there is a really common
narrative out there, and sometimes for good reason, of corporate
refugees who left their jobs and often lawyers because the
hours are oppressive and because it startled their creativity. And
you've said that missing the camaraderie of that life, being
(05:02):
in the trenches together at the three am deal closings,
delirious eating a snacks. Paint a picture for us of
what that felt like, like, the adrenaline of why those
hours weren't actually as hard as they might sound from
the outside.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
I think often, I mean this was not always a case,
but often the late hours were the exciting parts of
the work. You know, they were the times you were
about to get a deal closed or get a deal signed,
and they.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Were kind of the times you were there for.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You know, you were there for that excitement of getting
to the finish line as a team and with the
client and then getting that I suppose that satisfaction of
getting to that finish line and all having done it
together and all having worked really hard.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
And I think the working hard part of.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
It makes it feel really good when you get it done,
and I really miss those, you know, four or five
am in the office finally getting something signed.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And delirious is the.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Exact right word. That's exactly often what it was.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
But you're all delirious.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Together, you know, And it was real bonding experience and
I think they were the times you learned the most from.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, And I think they were the most satisfying often.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, I really loved that team environment and the clarity
of all working towards a very clear goal with clear timelines.
And similarly, there's a lot of gratification in climbing a
ladder that has really clear first year, second y, ar
third year lawyers versus now in business there's no clear milestones.
We don't ever really clear colleagues or peers. So it's
(06:36):
a very different experience. But back then, if you were
at a dinner party, how would you introduce yourself? Was
Alex Marks the M and a lawyer a big part
of your identity?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? I think it was.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I mean, I think it's one of those things that
always comes up when you meet someone. You know, the
first thing people ask what do you do? And you know,
you say, oh, I'm a lawyer, and it's an interesting thing.
I think to introduce yourself as I think it comes
with a lot of sometimes stereotypes, sometimes you know, admiration,
(07:11):
sort of this whole spectrum of things. And I think
for a long time it was something that I was
really proud of, and I you know, I loved being
able to say, oh, yeah, I'm a lawyer, and you know,
I love what I do, and I do something really
interesting that I love doing, and that I think is
I mean, I would say objectively maybe subjectively fascinating and
(07:33):
you know, seen as successful. Yeah, you know, and I
think I was pretty toughed to hire Alex.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I'm a lawyer. Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You made a huge move within that career from Melbourne
to New York. Can you mention you've also worked in London,
so huge centers of business for the m and a lawyer.
I worked in Hong Kong and had that same experience
of just moving to where the action is really happening.
Was the plan to just keep going as a high
flying lawyer and move from big deal to big deal
(08:04):
and keep learning and climbing that ladder.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Yeah, asolutely when I moved to here, one hundred percent
of one. Yeah, and to be quite honest with you,
I think if I'd never.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Moved, I would still be there.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Yeah, I'd still be a lawyer, and I'd still be
loving it, I think. And I think I'd been in
a position now where I'd be several years in and
looking at wanting to be a partner and all of
those sorts of things. And I think in another version
of my life, I could have very happily stayed there
forever and done my whole career there.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah. I often talk about the fact that you can
have a really big pivot in life without hating the
pathway that you're on, and I love that You're Like,
in another world, I would have still maybe enjoyed what
I was doing. I think a lot of the time
we think we have to be really unhappy to deserve
a big change, But I don't actually think that's the case.
You can explore lots of different things for lots of
different reasons, And for you, it was spurred on by
(08:57):
seeing the US work culture perhaps is maybe not a
good fit compared to back home. For you, was there
a specific moment where you were confronted by that clash
of culture and sort of thought, isn't me to.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Be honest, I think it was pretty much day one.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Really, Wow, how did it matter that?
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I just I could feel it very quickly that culturally, socially,
it just wasn't a good fit for me. It was
a very very different culture to what I'd come from
at home, where you know, it was very team based,
very collaborative, very supportive, and you know, a lot of
my best friends still in the world where people I
worked with at home, and there was a real culture
(09:35):
of being friends with your colleagues and spending time together
outside of work, and the culture is just very different here.
You know, it is very competitive, it is it's an
individual sport in a lot of ways. And I felt
very quickly, very early on that it just wasn't the
environment for me. Not to say it's not a good environment,
(09:58):
but it just wasn't wasn't the right fit for me
at all.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I think that's really brave of you too, have been
able to notice that as well, when externally working in
a huge New York law firm tick so many boxes
from a societal perspective. To then feel some kind of
dissonance and actually do something about it is a big deal.
Was your perception of success at that time, still very
(10:21):
tired to kind of your intellectual journey as a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think for the first little while, I really grappled
with it.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
And you know, I say, I knew day one and
I was there for another. I was there for eighteen
months or so. Oh wow, Yeah, And it took a
little while to I think, to grapple with that, and
you know, what do I do here? I really wanted
to be in New York and I've always wanted to
live in New York. I came here for the first
(10:48):
time when I was twenty one with my family on holiday,
and immediately it was like, I have to live here.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
This is my city.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
So it had been a long time coming, and I
really desperately wanted to be here and stay here. And
it took a little while for me to just grapple
in the background with what do I do if I'm
not if I'm not loving this job, and if this
isn't the right fit for me, and you know, lots
of options at that point. Do I go continue down
(11:16):
the law path and do I go to another firm,
do I try something.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Something slightly different, Do I go in house.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Do I stay in the law field, or do I
try something completely different, and obviously you know how the
story ends, but it took a little while, I think,
to sort of sort through that in my mind, and
I think I felt a little like saying goodbye to
that job and a job in law at all. Was
(11:44):
whether this is true or not, probably closing the door
a little bit to going back to the law, particularly
in the US, given I was so fresh to begin with,
and it's not always easy to get a job here
as an Australian lawyer, unfortunately very market dependent. So I
sat with it for a little while. It took me
(12:05):
a little while to make that miss, but I eventually
realized that I could stay in the job and be
content enough. You know, I really did enjoy the work,
and I found it really interesting and really challenging, and
I loved a lot.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Of what I did.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
But I knew I would be sitting there not one
hundred percent feeling like it was the right fit, And
to be honest, I was probably more so fearful that
I would still be sitting there in five years, ten
years time, still thinking it's not quite the right fit,
and not having explored something else.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So I decided to just do it.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I'm interested that you didn't go in house or didn't
try something more sideways and low risk as your first jump.
What was that timeline from kind of feeling those feelings,
sitting in it for another eighteen months to then go,
you know what, it's sushi.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
It's it's a really good question, and it's really quite
quite a funny story. Actually, I think about it often.
I decided pretty quickly that I thought I wanted to
try something different, and I probably decided that maybe six
to twelve months in.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I sort of thought, it's time.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
I need to try something else, and if I'm ever
going to try something else, now is the time, and
I should just go for it. I'm still pretty young,
no kids, no dependents, no one relied on me, like
now's the time. So I thought about it for a while,
and sushi was always in my mind, but it wasn't
always the obvious choice. I spent a few months thinking
(13:49):
about it, and I'd always wanted to start a business,
and it had always been something I'd been interested in.
So I sat there for a few months and I thought, right,
I started business, but what is it? And I had
a few different ideas, and I remember very clearly one
night coming home. My boyfriend was sitting on the couch
and I say to him, right, I've got three ideas
(14:10):
for different businesses. I'm going to tell you what they are.
You tell me what you think. And they were all
completely different things. Sushi was obviously one of them. I
wanted to start a perfume business at one point, and
I love perfume, and I mean I don't know a
whole lot about the perfume industry, nor did I know
a lot about the sushi industry, but it was something
(14:31):
I loved. And my third idea was that I wanted
to be a luxury travel consultant.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Amazing, very different ideas.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
That was the spectrum that we were working with. And
I remember delivering these three ideas to him and him
looking back at me like I was somewhat crazy, which
was probably absolutely fair, and it was absolutely fair enough.
I had been complaining the whole time I had lived
here that I couldn't find the kind of sushi we
have everywhere at home, and I just had a feeling
(15:04):
that was the right decision. And I then tink it
around for a while with a little Excel model that
I made, a very very primitive one lawyer absolutely not
a banker, and I, you know, put in all these
sort of assumptions. I put in what I could think
(15:25):
of that might be the costs of running a business
like this, And I really should dig it out one day,
because I am absolutely sure it was nowhere near any
kind of accurate. And I had absolutely no idea what
kind of costs were involved, you know, fish.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Rice, I had no idea about. I mean, the million.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Different costs are to run a business that you would
never know about behind the scenes. So I built this
very primitive little model, and I used to tinker around
with it every you know, every night, and I basically
just wanted to get myself to a place where the
model was spitting out a number of roles I had
to sell a day that sounded doable and like it
(16:05):
might make some moneyed up getting to a place where
I think it was spitting out about one hundred and
fifty roles. It was telling me I had to sell
a day to break even. And I thought about it,
and I thought, oh, you know, several million people in
New York one hundred and fifty roles a day. If
people buy three rolls on average, I only need to
get fifty people to come in a day, and I thought,
(16:26):
you know what, I think I could probably do that.
So we did it. When I say we, I mean I,
And I don't know if you know this as well, actually,
but I always speak in we always, and people often
stop me.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And say, oh, who's we. I say, oh, yeah, I
yeah me. I don't know why we do that, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I got to the point where I thought, this sounds feasible,
it sounds like something I could do, and I started
looking for a lease. I thought the first step was
to sign a lease. I needed a space to do
it out of, and then I'd figure the rest out.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Oh my gosh, I love this so much, and I
love how it diverges from the very typical pathway, which
is what mine fell into, where you kind of accidentally
fall into a gap in the market and you accidentally
have it on the side, and then it grows, and
then one day you get to this, like, I need
to leave my job because I've already built this thing
on the side that model you're it's still risky, but
(17:21):
it's managed a little bit because you've let the side
thing grow, whereas you've kind of reverse engineered and gone
something's missing what is it. This is a possible business model,
here are the figures. I'm just going to do it.
That is way scarier and way riskier. And the thing
that makes us great M and A lawyers is being
risk averse, highly attuned to risk, and then very avoidant.
(17:46):
How did you manage that?
Speaker 4 (17:48):
I mean, I think for starters, I think I am
slightly more risk taking than maybe your average lawyer, and
in hindsight, maybe I wouldn't have turned out to.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Be a very good lawyer. But I think for me
it really was.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
I was more fearful of regretting not having tried it,
and as I said, still sitting there in five to
ten years, not loving what I was doing, and sitting
there thinking what if I had have tried it? And
I think that was scarier to me at the time
than the risk was. I think I am also the
perfect combination of optimistic and naive, and I think you
(18:25):
have to be a little bit of both of those
things to do something like this. You know, you have
to be a little bit crazy, and it is a
leap of faith.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I love that because I think most people when they're
sort of overcome by fear, fear of failure, fear of
the unknown, fear of uncertainty, they're not actually thinking about
fear of the alternative, which, as you mentioned, is often
much greater. Fear of regret is a way more permanent
thing that you will live with. So I think it's
(18:55):
really important for anyone who's sitting on an idea they're
scared about, or a big move that they're scared about,
think of the fear you have of the alternative. And
I love that you just went I'm going to do it.
And I've got this image of you kind of walking
along the streets of the West Village being like, somebody leased.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Me a store.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I'm a first time business owner.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
So I basically finished up at the firm and I
signed the lease the week after that. I'd been looking
for the last sort of couple of months at the firm.
I'd been looking around on the side. I'd spend weekends,
and your image of me just wandering the streets is
actually very accurate. I would go and spend half a
(19:36):
day on the weekend just wandering around Midtown, and I
would get a map and I would walk every block
just looking to see if there were a lease sign
in a window. Somewhere and just trying to get a
real gauge of the neighborhoods and you know where it
might be a great place for it.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I mean, I got really lucky. I think in the end,
it's not easy.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
As a first time business owner to get someone to
give you a lease. And you know, I had no
business history, I had no track record. I you know,
had some money to put into it, and I'm so
grateful that I did. And it wasn't, by any means
a small amount of money. It literally was my entire
life savings. But in the scheme of other business people
(20:17):
coming to them asking for lisas that, you know, it
wasn't that much to show them.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And I got a little bit lucky. I think.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
I just got a landlord who was happy to take
a bit of a chance. And it was a really
small space, which worked in my favor. There are a
whole lot of businesses that can go into a tiny space,
and it was a block that at the time was
having a little bit of a resurgence and a bunch
of things had just closed. And I just got a
(20:44):
bit lucky, I think, And they were happy to take
a chance on me, and we have you know, another
couple of stores now and they're all going really well,
and it's all really exciting. But that store is to
this day still every day of the year, our best
performing store. And we got a really great deal and
a really great location somehow, and honestly, I think a
(21:05):
lot of that was just a bit of aln.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
My question has always been for business owners, where do
you even order stock at wholesale prices? And there's a
really funny story we'll get to about the soy sauce
in the fish that is in every sushi store. How
did you, once you signed the lease, work out how
to open the store and all of the dot points
that you needed to get through.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
It's a really good question.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
I honestly, it was just one step at a time,
I think, and a lot of trial and error, and
quite frankly, a lot of googling.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Google was so helpful.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
I mean, I had absolutely no idea how to do
any of the things you just spoke about. I have
been a waitress when I was eighteen as a part
time job, never worked in the industry before, certainly never
opened a store or run a store in the industry,
And a lot of it was trial and error for example,
you know you talk about suppliers the way I found
(21:57):
most of my suppliers, and to this day they are
still our suppliers, and thankfully they turned out to be amazing.
One of our produce suppliers I got recommended by a
lovely Australian girl who lives nearby, who I met at
my favorite wine bar because it's also her favorite wine bar,
and she happened to know a produce supplier, so she
(22:17):
gave me their details. Our avo guys, we have amazing
avocado suppliers, and as you can imagine, we go through
a lot of avocados. I found them because I was
sitting out the front of a cafe in the West
Village one day with my mum. She was visiting, and
I saw avocados get delivered and I thought I need avocados,
so I followed them to his van and took a
(22:40):
photo of the name, and to this day we get
several hundred avocados from them still a week. So a
lot of it was honestly luck. I literally googled fish
wholesalers New York and picked the closest one, and to.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
This day we order I think something outrageous.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
I think I figured out the other day about a
quarter of a million dollars worth of salmon.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Far But it also just goes to show that, really
as much as when you describe it at a macro level,
we opened a business, We've opened several stores, I had
no experience. I've got a hugely successful outlet in New York.
You can't actually open a store without doing the small steps.
And I think if you just break down any big,
(23:24):
overwhelming task into the tiny steps that's composed of, it's
not nearly as scary as you think it is. But
I'm sure there were moments, for example, the soy sauce fish,
which we have to cover, where you were hand filling
fifty thousand mini soy sauce fish with a syringe because
you couldn't get them supplied. Were there moments where you
(23:45):
were doing that at two hours?
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Yeah, cramps, absolutely, And there were lots of moments top
tier the hours of the day, and it was getting
to the point where I was doing it for a
few hours every day. Here I should be seeing we
because my boyfriend probably did more of them than I did,
which I'm incredibly grateful for. But two years ago I
(24:07):
had about a dozen friends around my coffee table with
a big pot of soy sauce in the middle, everyone
with gloves on, trying to figure out we hadn't got
to the syringes at that point, trying to figure out
how to get the soy sauce inside the fish. And
it was absolutely comical. In hindsight. My apartments smelled like
soy sauce fro about a month. There were so many times,
(24:31):
and to this day there still are so many times
where it is not glamorous at all, and it's late
nights and it's early mornings, and it's dealing with all
sorts of weird and wonderful problems that come up during
the day. I mean, we have three stores that are
open seven days a week, just about three hundred and
sixty five days a year, twelve till nine every day,
(24:52):
and the amount of things that can go wrong is
astounding still to me sometimes. And you never know what's
going to break, what bit of equipment's accidentally going to
get thrown out, you know who's going to call in sick,
or whatever the case might be. I think people look
at things like this from the outside. It looks fun
and it looks glamorous and I look like a professional
(25:16):
business woman that the reality of it often is incredibly unglamorous,
but I've never regretted it.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
It's so funny that from the outside it is always
so polished and shiny and business highs, and then every
business owner, particularly in those early days, to just make
things happen when you don't know how else to make
them happen. But it's not just the scrappy moments. I
think there's also some really hard setbacks in starting anything new,
(25:47):
and you face some of those pretty early on opening
peak stress, realizing you know you've actually done the thing,
you're letting customers in, and you're hit with this huge
online backlash, which, again in an age where you can
get real time feedback and everyone can be a keyboard warrior,
is quite a unique modern day be his own a problem,
but it's a problem. Nonetheless, you had people calling you
(26:10):
a colonizer. Being a white woman opening a sushi shop
was called appropriation. And instead of everyone celebrating this huge
achievement of this huge risk you've taken to make a
pivot and do it so successfully, you're getting attacked on
a personal level for what you're doing. How did you
find the strength to ignore all that and just press on.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
It was incredibly hard, incredibly difficult few weeks. I mean,
I have never experienced anything like that before, you know,
as a relatively normal person who's not normally out there
on the internet. It I mean, I didn't know how
to deal with it at all. And it was incredibly,
incredibly tough. And it was genuinely a week after we opened,
(26:56):
which you know, is hard enough as it is very
much in the starting stages of trying to find my feet,
figure out how to open a store, how to run
the store, how to get sushi out there every day,
and it was it was a really tough time. But
all I could do really was just focus on the
day to day, you know, and there was so much
(27:16):
day to day to focus on, and in some ways,
I think it was probably a blessing that it was
so early on when I really had so much to
do in the business and so much I had to
be focusing on.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
I was there seven days a week, nine am till
midnight as it was trying to figure out how to
do this. I had one employee, I had one chef
when we opened. Otherwise it was just the Alex Show,
and I did everything else, so I was busy, you know,
and I kind of had to just focus on that
(27:52):
and focus on the day to day and you know,
getting in there in the morning and filling the soy
salce fish and getting the shop open.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah. I can't imagine there's already so much internal chatter
going on in your mind when you first launch a
business without a public pylon. When you look back at
that time sort of two years on, what would you
say was the hardest part of that initial stage of
the pivot where you were really finding your feet as
a whole new person.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
I mean, that whole saga was probably the most challenging.
I think the other thing that was really challenging about it,
which I don't know if I had really thought about beforehand,
or I mean, I hadn't really thought about what would
happen when the doors actually opened. I don't think you
spend so much time planning and trying to figure out
(28:39):
all the things and all the little steps, and all
you're trying to do is get to opening, and then
you open the doors day one and you actually have
to run it. And you know, I didn't hire the
one chef, my one employee until three weeks before we opened.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Which I had this weird idea. I don't know, I
couldn't make the sushi app tell it.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
I don't really know what I was thinking there, but
I realized pretty last minute I needed someone, so, you know,
I hired someone. But then I had to figure out
how to do everything else, and it was really physically taxing.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
I was used to late night, so I was used
to working lots of hours, but a really really different
type of work being there on your feet, you know,
twelve fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours a day sometimes and cleaning
and scrubbing and talking to people all day.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I lost my voice.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Every week for the first maybe six to eight weeks
of being open. Thankfully, we were only open five days
a week at that stage, so we'd close on Sunday
and then have a couple of days off, and by
the end of every Sunday my voice was completely gone,
and then I'd spend Monday Tuesday getting it back and we'd.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Do the whole thing over again.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
It was probably like that for the first I mean
really for the first year, until we actually had a
few more employees and I felt like the business was
at the stage where I could spend money on some
employees to be there, and it felt like such a
luxury when I had just a couple of people to
do a couple of shifts that I didn't have to
(30:12):
be there for. I mean, it's a luxury now having
thirty something employees and I no longer have to be
there all day, every day, and I'm so grateful for that,
because for the first year it was, it was a lot.
It was pretty grueling, and I don't think people necessarily
think about that. I certainly didn't before the doors opened.
(30:35):
But no matter.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
How tired you are, you've got to be there.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
You know, you've got to go in the next morning
and do the cleaning early before we open the doors,
and stay there late at night doing whatever it is
it has to be done for the next day. And
you really don't have a choice back up plan is
you close for the day.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Fast forward to now, you, as you said, have thirty staff,
a fourth location.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
On the way.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
What does the day to day look like for you
now as the same of sushi counter, and you know,
at that higher level, being able to work kind of
on the business a bit more and less in the
business all day every day.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Well, that's always the goal. It doesn't always happen, but
I mean, look, my day to day is completely wild
and varied, and I absolutely love that about what I
do now. I thrive in chaos. I'm quite a chaotic
person and I actually love chaos. I love doing something
different every day, and as frustrating as it is sometimes,
(31:38):
I love that I don't know where the day's going
to go. Often I can have a plan and have
all the best intentions to you know, block out the
day to sit down and work on you know, some forecasting,
some planning, some high level stuff, and suddenly your day
gets completely thrown off because there's been a problem somewhere
and you have to rush into a store and deal
with something, and you never know what's going to happen.
(32:00):
And truly my days are different every day of the week,
but we try. We have a little bit of an
office now, which is really exciting, which is new. In
one of our stores. We've got a bit of space.
So if we set up an office there and our
little sort of I suppose what we call the corporate team,
(32:21):
we work in there a few days a week together,
which is really really nice to be able to spend
some time actually working together, because when we didn't have
an office, it was all everyone all over the place.
So I try to spend some time in there with
the team. I spend some time in the stores. It
completely depends on the day which store I'm in and why,
but I try to sort of drop in everywhere and
(32:42):
spend some time everywhere as much as I can. And
then often it's other things. You know, it's admin. It's
going to the accountant's office to go through the monthly financials.
It's having a phone call with you know, the tax
people to get last year's taxes done. It's again more
walking the streets, and we still do that, looking for
(33:02):
locations and inspecting places and you know, talking to the
real este brokers and all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
But I really love getting time to work on the
business and think about strategy and think about growth and
where we're going and what we want to do. And
I think there's so much opportunity and it's so so
(33:24):
exciting for me and for the whole team thinking about
where we might be this time next year or in
five years. And that's that's what I really love getting
to spend some time doing Now, what did.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You find harder learning to be a lawyer or learning
to be a boss and a manager and a leader.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
That is an easy question for me to answer, and
it's absolutely doing what I do now is so much harder,
I think, and it has been so much harder to learn.
And I think it's a lot of soft skills that
you kind of just get thrown into having to figure out.
You know, at a law firm, they train you so well,
and you kind of you know, you work up the
ranks and you work at the pace you're meant to,
(34:05):
and you know they're there are steps along the way
and you do eventually manage people and there are people
under you, but there's a real clear framework and pathway,
and you see what it looks like both above and below.
This is really hard in terms of managing people. I
found that to be the hardest thing in the business.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
For sure. I am naturally the people pleaser, way too nice.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Usually I am very conflict devoidant. I hate having to
have a hard conversation with people. I am absolutely atrocious
at telling anyone they're doing something wrong or not doing
something the way I would like them to do it.
And that has been a real learning curve for me
figuring out the last couple of years, as we've started
(34:53):
to have stuff, and now lots of stuff. You know,
how do you manage people in a way that balances.
And to me, it's really important to balance you know,
kindness and empathy and understanding and and you know, fostering
a really great team culture and a welcoming environment and
a comfortable place where people feel like they can express
(35:15):
themselves and they can speak up and they can ask questions,
but also making sure that people are.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Doing what they need to be doing.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And in our business in particular, there are so many
rules that we need to be following, you know, health
department rules and this and that, and there are things
that people have to be doing the way they have
to be doing them, and I find it really difficult
to balance those things.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I am literally you, My conflict avoidance is at an
all time But not only did you start with a
lot less staff than you have and have to learn
to manage the team you have, you also started with
a model that hoped for fifty customers a day, and
now you know, very soon after that you were selling
(35:59):
two thousand rolls across two stores.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Did you ever.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Expect this level of success and then how did you
cope with the rapid nature of that scaling while you
were also dealing with everything you've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
I didn't foresee this at all, to be honest, I
felt in my gut that it was a really you know,
that it was a really good idea and that it
would do well and that people would like it. And
I really truly thought it filled a gap in the market.
And I do still think that very much so. But
(36:36):
I don't think I could have foreseen how just how
quickly we've grown, which has been so exciting. And you know,
that's the kind of stuff that makes me really excited
and gets me up every day.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And I know for a lot of my team that's
the same.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
But it is it's hard, you know, adding people really quickly,
adding more stores into the mix. We've had to change
a lot about our processes. We've had to I mean,
our processes was so organic when we first opened and
it was just me and one other person. The processes
didn't have to be and down because it was the
two of us there every day and we knew what
we were supposed to be doing, and you know, you
(37:13):
add one more person, and then a second, and then
a third, and at some point you realize we probably
need to write some of these things down and give
people a checklist and you know, actually articulate things in
a written manner, and maybe we need to actually have
some sort of training program. And I think it's hard
doing that as you grow anyway, let alone at a
(37:33):
really rapid rate. And we kind of fell into a
bit of a cycle where it was difficult to train
people well because we needed people quickly because we were
getting busy so quickly. But because we needed people quickly
and we were understaffed, we didn't really have time to
put into developing a training program or you know, writing
(37:54):
things down properly or getting some really good checklists going.
So for a little while, I think it was just
very much hamstering the wheel and figuring it out as
we went. And now I'm really excited to be it's
something we've been working on a lot in the last
sort of six months, just get in our processes nailed down,
you know, and starting to have some handbooks, some checklists,
(38:15):
some documents, some training materials. When people come on board,
which is so necessary and so hard to manage with
this many people.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
I think there's this perception that growth, in all cases
in a business is what you're after, like you just
want to get bigger, faster, as quick as you can,
and in so many cases it can actually topple a
business if you scale too rapidly. You're still growing as
quickly as you can. But I've heard you say that
it's within reason and that you are pacing yourself to
(38:44):
make sure that you don't lose the essence of what
your business is as you grow and expand really quickly.
How do you make those strategic decisions on where but
also when to expand, especially in a city as ruthless
as New York.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Yeah, that's a really good question, and it is. It's
a real balance because it is so tempting when things
are going well and the demand is there too.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Want to pop up ten more stores.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
I think in a lot of ways we are limited
just by our capacity. We have a really small team
still who deals with the sort of corporate part of
the business, and you know, the signing leases and the
getting stores built and the hiring people and all of that.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Sort of thing. So I think we have.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
There's a bit of a natural choke on that in
terms of what we have the time and brain space
to focus on.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
But it is tempting. I've thought about it before.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Do we just go out and hire a few new,
you know, corporate team members who have opened stores for
other people and they could just roll them out? But
I think the magic of what we do is really important.
And we have such great community and really really loyal customers.
(39:57):
Our staff are fantastic, and we're really really well known
for our great service and you know, being a warm
and inviting place and treating customers really well, and and
for me, that is really really important to keep, you know,
And I'm so conscious that that's sort of part of
our magic. And I think the other part of our
magic is having a really really great product, and I
(40:18):
will not sacrifice that because exactly as you say, that's
when it starts to topple. So I think it's just
about keeping those really cool pillars in front of mind,
and I'm not going to do anything that's going to
jeopardize those. So it's really just about our capacity and
where we are. And we've done a lot in the
last six months or so to set ourselves up to
(40:40):
be able to keep that growth going and you know,
open more stores and keep things working properly. So I
don't think it's so much as a you know, a
mapped out timeline as it is get into a place
where we feel that we have the capacity to say,
open another store and do it in a way that
is really true to our brand and what we do.
(41:02):
So the next door, you know, we signed the least
a few months ago, that one we're actually.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Taking our time with to get built out and to
get up.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
And running, because if we do feel like we need
a bit of that time just to really make sure,
you know, everything's in place and we can open that
store with exact same standards as we have in our others.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah, I love that. Now when you look back, was
it all worth it? And what advice would you give
to the person listening who's sitting at their corporate desk
right now, not even not loving what they're doing, but
dreaming of their own sushi counter idea.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I mean, my advice is do it. I am obviously
a very biased advice giver here, but I.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Just think life is short and if there's something you
want to do, I think you have to give it
a go. You know, obviously, within reason, have as much
of a plan as you can, have as much for
safety net as you can, and you know, de risk
it as much as possible, but sometimes it just can't
be de risked, and it.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Is a leap of faith.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
And I mean if you said to me five years ago,
in five years time, you'll be living in New York,
have multiple sushi shops, I would have told you were crazy.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
But anyone could do anything.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
Truly, if I can figure out how to do this,
you can figure out how to do whatever your dream is.
I am incredibly confident of that. So I think sometimes
you just have to give something a go. And you know,
I always thought, if this doesn't work, I go back
to being a lawyer, you know.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Worst case scenario.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
I thought, if I have to move back home, and
I sloped back into my old job and I moved
back in with my parents because I've lost all of.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
The money I have.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
You know, I was really lucky to be in a
position where that safety net was there to that extent,
and that was enough for me to feel like I
could do it. And if things absolutely didn't go to plan,
I would be fine. Someone will be there to catch
me if it doesn't go to plan. I'm so glad
(43:08):
I did it, and people ask me all the time
whether I'm happier, and I am so so much happier.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Well, what a beautiful, inspiring, reassuring example of the power
of the pivot and what magic you can make when
you take a risk on a big leap. And I
can't wait to see if this is what you've achieved
in two years so far. I mean I literally thought
it'd been like eight years for what you've been able
(43:36):
to achieve. I can't wait to see what comes next.
So congratulations on everything, and thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
That's all for this week's Pivot Club.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
We'll be back next week with another inspiring story of reinvention.
Make sure you're following the show on your podcast app
so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed
this episode, please share it or leave a quick rating
to help our community grow. This episode of Pivot Club
was produced by Sally Best with audio production by Tom Lyon.
The executive producer is Courtney Ammenhauser. Thanks for listening and
(44:08):
catch you here next week.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Mumma mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
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