September 13, 2025 • 46 mins
Ever wondered what it takes to build a thriving business empire from scratch? Tony DiSilvestro, founder of Ynot (Tony spelled backwards) Pizza and serial entrepreneur with over 30 companies under his belt, pulls back the curtain on his remarkable journey from pizza maker to business mentor.
Starting in 1993, Tony bootstrapped his way to success, eventually expanding to eight locations before COVID forced him to scale back. But what makes his story truly fascinating isn't the number of businesses he's built; it's the philosophy behind them. "I'm only in one business, the people business," he explains, revealing how this mindset transformed his approach to entrepreneurship.
Tony shares the pivotal moment when he finally "took off his apron" after 15 years of 100-hour workweeks. This shift from being merely a business owner to becoming a true entrepreneur allowed him to scale beyond what he thought possible. His insights on creating robust systems rather than relying on individual talent are gold for anyone struggling to grow their business while maintaining quality.
What sets Tony apart is his approach to failure; rather than blaming employees, he looks inward first and creates systems to prevent future mistakes. This self-critical approach has fueled his success across industries, from restaurants to construction to his current focus on business coaching.
His three brand pillars - family, quality, and community - have guided his decisions for decades, resulting in loyal customers and Little League sponsorships. We dive into branding, social media, and franchising all in one fast-paced episode!
Whether you're just starting your entrepreneurial journey or looking to scale an existing business or restaurant, Tony's wisdom on leadership, situational awareness, and the power of systems will transform how you approach your venture.
Find his book "The Business Scaling Blueprint" anywhere books are sold, or visit him at Ynot Pizza in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake to experience his philosophy in action.
https://www.ynotitalian.com/locations/
Welcome to the show! Burnt Hands Perspective
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Thank you to our location sponsor, Luce Secondo, located in Summit Pointe in Chesapeake, VA www.lucesecondo.com
For sponsorship opportunities, don't hesitate to get in touch with us directly.
*The views and opinions on this show are meant for entertainment purposes only. They do not reflect the views of our sponsors. We are not here to babysit your feelings, if you are a true industry pro, you will know that what we say is meant to make you laugh and have a great time. If you don't get that, this is not the podcast for you. You've been warned. Enjoy the ride!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Boom, we're back, baby.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Boom, great guest today.
I mean, why not, why not?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Hey, I see what you did there, tony DeSimestro,
sorry, that was like the totaldad joke at the start of the
episode.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So why not?
We love it.
It's a great name.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So I'm throwing in a little something secret.
Today I got on.
Oh, okay, I didn't even tellnobody I did this, but I we put
these out on Friday.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Red Friday.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Remember everyone deployed.
I'm here for it.
Oh yeah, You're doing yourFriday.
It's my little touch, my littlepart.
I like it, we live in a Navycity, military city, so I'm just
doing it out of my own.
I didn't even plan it.
I just said, let me go redtoday.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
You are fancy On a Friday, right town and we got to
finally have.
So tony, tony, there's no othertony, so we can't finish the
song.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Larry one day we will , yeah, so t squared, so we're
gonna go with that today, so youget to come and hang out with
us.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Obviously we've both kind of known you in the
community forever.
So for the people who don'tknow because we do put the show
out around the world, so there'sother countries they don't know
who you are, so go ahead andintroduce yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So so I'm Tony DiSavestro, just an entrepreneur
.
I love entrepreneurship.
Business Founded, you know,over 30 companies in my life and
you know it's a little serialcrazy, but I just love people.
So everybody always asks meabout business, but I'm only in
one business I'm in the peoplebusiness.
It's a pleasure to be heretoday, so being in a restaurant
for me is like being at home, soI'm honored to be here today
(01:48):
and to share with you, glad tohave you.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So listen, what your niche is, what people around
here know you for, is your pizzaplace.
Right, you have a pizza.
Why Not Pizza, which is thename came quite unique.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, it's my name backwards.
I spelled my name backwards infirst grade and it's a little
bit of a story there.
But then my mom and my familyand my friends all called me why
not, since I was a little kid.
So that's so funny.
It makes sense, right?
So it's why not?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
pizza is the name of your pizzeria, and here in
virginia beach area, hamptonroads, it's kind of hard to find
really good pizza, especiallyfrom where you're from.
You're from new jersey, I'mfrom new haven, connecticut,
which is pizza capital for me.
Um, and everywhere in betweenthat's real tri-state area right
up there is.
We're really known for pizza,so you bring that style here, oh
yeah, and you have been foryears.
(02:32):
So I remember back in the 90sgoing to your first and only
location at the time, which isgreat neck road, and it was the
first place I can go andactually get a true sausage and
pepper pizza that I liked whenit was done right where the
peppers were already cooked andput it on there they.
They weren't raw when they wenton the pizza.
The sausage was sliced thin.
I still remember that to thisday.
(02:53):
It was just a small littlejoint.
Now watching you open up and goall over the place.
Now you have one off ProvidenceRoad where I live off that way.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
How many do you have now?
I have three right now.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
We closed like four of them, covid, had an effect on
you.
Even being a takeout carryoutpizzeria, you still felt that
weight.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
It really wasn't until, like you know, when
everybody was getting theirincentive checks and everything,
we were busy as anything.
I didn't fire any employees.
We had 350 employees at thatpoint.
I didn't fire any of them.
But then once those incentivechecks stopped, inflation went
through the roof.
It really started affectingfamilies.
So different.
But then once those incentivechecks stopped, inflation went
through the roof.
It really started affectingfamilies.
So my different than thisrestaurant where you're a little
more upscale, higher end for me, but I'm dealing with mom and
(03:35):
pop and the three, four kidscoming in and it's really hurt
that part of the economy, really, really bad.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, they couldn't do shit they couldn't buy a
pizza.
They can't go to thesupermarket.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
They can't go to the supermarket Right, so that was a
hard time for everybody.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
In one of our past things we just did recently we
were talking about brieflybecause I don't like to harp on
COVID.
It is what it was and it waswhat it was.
But we all had to suffer.
But I feel the restaurantindustry really took the hit.
I felt like it was just to shutus down.
I really took it personal whenit was happening.
It really fucked with us andour whole life's dreams were
(04:07):
going down the tubes quick.
Yeah, you know.
So, moving on from that, youwere able to move forward.
So what was the highest pointof your career or your business?
Why not?
How many locations did you haveat?
once we had eight locations atone time, at one time.
So let's just talk about thatfor a minute, because I have
questions.
Okay, I have two, and I want toslit my throat sometimes.
(04:28):
But I know if I slit my ownthroat I'm going to have to
clean up the fucking messbecause probably no one's going
to do it.
So I don't even want to do that.
So how do you deal with that?
Give us a little couple ofhints.
Anybody out there who wants toexpand their businesses.
The biggest question is how doyou mock yourself to go in
different places?
What's your biggest?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
takeaway from that.
This is what took me intocoaching and teaching and
coaching businesses all over theworld.
So one of the biggest things Itell anybody I told a kid last
night I was coaching a young kidlast night and he goes hey,
he's got a fencing business.
He's like I want to grow mybusiness.
I said you can't grow yourbusiness without people.
So the thing is when and thenyou can't invest in your
(05:13):
employees, so I don't hirepeople.
I invest in people right, so Imake an investment.
But when you're scaling,there's always that that point
when you say why can't I grow?
And I talk to owners, I'm likewhat do you do for?
What do you do for the company?
He, I'm the head of sales.
Well, I'm the head of marketingWell, you're never going to
grow your business If you'restuck in the kitchen cooking
every day, like I was.
(05:33):
It took me 15 years to become anentrepreneur.
All I was was a business owner.
For 15 years I had my apron onevery single day.
I had a guy come in every dayand tell me take your apron off.
If you want to grow, take togrow, take your apron off.
I'm like I can run my businesswith my apron on.
I'm really good.
This is more comfortable.
The day I took my apron off, Ibecame an entrepreneur and I'm
realizing that myself.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So so the more time I spend in the kitchen, the less
time I spend growing.
I just become a redundantfaction of the kitchen.
I become another.
I come, I become the sixth orseventh cook there and and it's
hard to create and and build andgrow when you're doing exactly
what you said.
So my biggest thing, and maybeyou can relate to this, I don't
give a shit if it's pizza,rajele or fucking ossobuco, it
(06:16):
doesn't matter what it is.
When you're making somethingand you don't give the, it's
hard for us to give up the, toaccept the fact that it's not
going to be perfect.
It's hard to say, okay, it'snot going to be the way I make
it every single time, but wehave to do it as close as we can
.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Right.
But if we talk about failuresright.
If I talked to, if there was100 entrepreneurs sitting in
this room right now, the onething they would tell me why
they're successful would theytell me it was because of their
successes or their failures.
I would say failures Right.
So it's the same thing I tellrestaurateurs all the time
you're never going to grow yourcompany if you don't accept
(06:52):
failure to a certain extent.
But in my book it says failwell.
How do you fail?
Well, right, that's what youneed to make sure that we're
doing.
Every time I fail, I create asystem.
Every time a cook makes amistake, I create a system.
I say I look at that mistakethat the cook.
He didn't do the asabuco right.
So what I do?
I say, okay, I need a bettertraining process.
I'm gonna shoot a video on howto cook asabuco.
(07:12):
I'm gonna sit them down andtrain them.
But every time a failurehappens, that's when I grow
Right and I use the same type ofideology.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
In a sense it's along the same lines, and I tell
people all the time you can askme a thousand questions as long
as you don't ask me the same onetwice, because that means you
learn from it and I taught youright, right, you know.
So you're not going to learnunless you have the questions.
But if you, if you keep askingthe same question over and over,
either you're incapable oflearning or I'm incapable of
teaching, and I try andeliminate the part that I'm not
(07:42):
capable of teaching so theinteresting part.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
So what you just said is criticizing yourself.
So, a young manager, whatthey'll do is criticizing
yourself.
So, a young manager, whatthey'll do is they'll criticize
the employee right away,constantly, instantly, I mean
just say, hey, the employee'sstupid, they don't understand.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Every time and that's the go-to and, and that's the
hardest part, is when you saidthe term right there, manager,
when the manager doesn't realizethat now you have a problem
because now you have a managermanaging wrong, right, and
that's the problem.
But we need leaders we needleaders right.
We need leaders that inspireand train and coach correct, and
the best way to do that, though, is to find people who have
(08:15):
confidence in what they're doingin themselves, first and right
now.
That is a dying breed.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
It is a we could talk about that for a long time, but
the thing is is we, as theleaders, create the confidence
through our systems, process andprocedure right.
So the beauty of what I did isI went through franchising for
almost 15 years.
I the thing is is we, as theleaders, create the confidence
through our systems, process andprocedure right?
So the beauty of what I did isI went through franchising for
almost 15 years.
I was in a franchise or and afranchisee, and what that taught
me was the importance ofsystems Like.
Mcdonald's isn't a restaurant,it's a system.
(08:41):
That's all it is.
They don't sell food, they sellsystems.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And you know so the more that once I learned that it
changed every single businessI've ever opened.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So once you get a system you can rely on, the
system proved to work.
The system is what.
You focus more on the systemthan you do the product at the
end.
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
McDonald's has a problem.
They have problems.
They spilled hot coffee onsomebody who got sued for
millions of dollars, right.
But then they created a system.
They put insulated cups.
They put sleeves on the cup.
So yeah, we.
But that's how they adapt right, you have to.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, so when you, when you're talking about your
system, I mean, the way I lookat it is this if I spend a
little bit more on betteringredients, it's harder for
them ingredients to be fucked up.
If you buy cheap ingredients,it's easier for that to come out
even worse because you'restarting with it.
You're starting with someonewho has to learn how to make a
cheap ingredient taste good,instead of starting with a good
ingredient and making it.
(09:28):
There's room to move down.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
There's no room to move up if you don't do it right
, you and I are both chefs, so Iknow that for the same thing I
visit every manufacturer in mycountry.
I milk cows in Wisconsin.
I'm in the produce fields inModesta California, so when I go
out there I'm looking for thehighest quality product because
I know if I start out with thehighest quality product it's the
same thing you just said.
I have a 90% chance better tofor that dish to be.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Unbelievable when it gets it's right, because even if
they mess it up a little bit,the ingredients gonna speak for
itself Anyhow.
A really good tomato, you haveto butcher, but if you have a
really bad tomato, you have tomake it taste better.
And if you don't know how tomake that taste better, you're a
victim of the tomato.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
So I'd rather be a victim of the tomato now, no
doubt.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So I'd rather be a victim of the expensive, better
tomato that at least stilltastes like a tomato, even if
done wrong.
So when you're making yourpizza and everything, you
started out in a small littleplace with this dream of being a
pizza guy.
You wanted to bring it downhere.
People took to it right away,oh, no doubt.
And they went to it.
So did you find yourselfcutting corners on ingredients
(10:28):
as you grew?
Not cutting corners, that's thewrong word.
But you do, at some point intime, have to make sense of cost
and if you're going to produceand make profit on a pizza, it's
not as easy as it used to be.
$14 worth of dough 20 years ago, $40 worth of flour would make
you 20 pizzas, whatever it costs, and you could do that.
(10:48):
But now that dough is tripledand the pizza has to stay the
same, you can't.
How much, how higher can youraise the price of a pizza?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, it becomes price justification, for sure.
But the thing is like ifanything.
over 42 years in the restaurantbusiness, I've only increased
the quality of my food and at acertain point you have to say to
yourself what market do youwant to be in?
Do you want to be in thelow-end, cheap market or do you
want to be in the high-endquality market?
So being a pizzeria in Jerseylike if you say the word
pizzeria in Jersey everybodyfrom Jersey or Connecticut, new
(11:16):
York, they all know that youhave a full-scale Italian
restaurant with a pizzeria.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
When.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I moved down here like, oh, you're why talking
about, so then I changed my namethree different times over the
course of it.
So now we're like why notItalian?
So we serve a full Italian menu, Not at the same level.
You guys white tablecloths.
But the thing is, quality hasalways been where I started.
So I have three pillars in mybrand.
It's family, quality andcommunity.
That is my mission statement,my vision statement.
(11:43):
Everything that's family,quality and community.
So family quality, community.
So if I say the word quality,it's not just the food that I
serve on the table, it's how domy servers look, how do I train?
How's the front door feel?
When you open up the front door, what is the feeling?
Even when you touch the frontdoor, Every single aspect of my
business is quality.
So I can't use that as my threepillars of my brand and lower
the quality of my food?
It never happens, Because thenyou're dismantling the whole
(12:05):
Right.
Sure, I'm not true to my brand.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Right.
So when you're going now let'stalk about the good stuff of a
pizza world, right.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We can talk business all night, which we will, I'm
sure she'll have a bunch ofbusiness questions for you, but
when?
It comes to the food part, doyou notice now that when you
were starting out the pizzathing, it wasn't cool to be a
pizza guy?
Everyone loves pizza, but beingthe pizza guy wasn't cool.
I mean, now it seems like it'strending so much that all
younger people are doing it tobe cool, right?
(12:34):
So now it's like almost cool tobe a pizza person, right?
I see it changed all network andthen you got like david portnoy
doing his ratings and right,you have all that stuff
happening and it's like now it'slike pizza is becoming.
I'm looking at people onlinedoing sourdough pizza and oh
yeah, cool, that's really cool.
I want to try it all andeverything.
But it's like how the hell didbecoming a pizza guy become?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
you're famous now, you know well, I got a funny
story about pizza, like in italy, like back in the day, like the
pizza guys they would like theywere getting jealous.
So the pizzerias used to hirejugglers and out front like have
people come?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
in, it would entertain them.
Oh my god what's going on?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
pizza guys got pissed off this is a the legendary
story and they started flippingpizza, spinning pizzas.
So, like all of a sudden, theyfired the jugglers, now the
pizza guys.
So it's been cool for a longtime that's right.
But like for me, like I was inthe pizza olympics in 1994 in
vegas and like I was like thefastest pizza man in the world
94 against 600 people.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
That's crazy.
That's a fun fact I think Iknow about you.
Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, so, but like for me.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
We have an Olympian here.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Pizza, Olympian Pizza for me has always been I love
making pizza.
It's like I have a huge Italianpizza oven at my house.
Sure.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So like everybody comes over to my house for a
party like I just love it.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
But I think the art of making pizza it's creative.
Usually the pizza guys are inthe front of the store, they're
not in the back kitchen.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Right, so it's a different personality.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Even when I'm hiring pizza guys, I'm looking for a
certain personality.
Sure, they have to be outgoingBecause they're going to
communicate with guests Talk tothe customers.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah right, it's the front of the house basically.
It's the first thing you see isthat, and that's what you want
to see oh yeah, you have to seethat you go to a pizza shop and
don't see the pizza being made.
What are you?
Where are you exactly?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
so, kristen, I know you have you you have a lot of
uh relations, in a sense a lotof business sense and stuff like
that.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
What are some of the things that you talk about?
I mean, as far as turning yourpizza place into a lucrative um
enterprise, right, that, thatnow goes away from the kitchen
where I'm comfortable and I'mlearning, and I'm learning that
part of it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, I mean I'm more curious about the timeline side
because we have constructiontoo.
So a lot of people in the area,I mean they kind of know now
but they know you as that therestaurateur, but they don't
know the side of theentrepreneur.
So timeline-, wise, when youstarted, what was the timeline
when it was like restaurantstarting, the construction
company and any of the otherbusinesses, like how did those
(14:56):
kind of piece together?
And then the follow up is howdid the construction and that
kind of business help you as abusiness owner in the
restaurants?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Sure, so it all started in 1993.
I opened my first restaurantand from that day on I just
started building.
So I built my restaurants.
I did all the tile work, didall the stone work, so you were
doing the actual work.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh, I did it all.
We couldn't afford it.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I started with $60,000.
I had no money we were broke.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Louder for the people in the back.
Yeah, we were broke.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
So I mean, we had nothing so so when I started the
business, I was bootstrappingeverything.
So then I start doing all thetower work and customer will
come in and say, hey, do youknow a plumber, you know
electrician?
I'm like, yeah, I sent them myplumber, my electrician.
And then all of a sudden theywere coming back to me and
saying, hey, we have a problemwith the plumbing.
I'm like, I didn't hire him,you did.
So, then I just started myconstruction company from there.
So, I've been in constructionalmost 30 years.
And most people in town don'thave any idea that I do
(15:58):
restaurants, but I am mytimeline with business and
everybody always says why didyou start?
Why have you opened so manybusiness?
I always open businesses out offrustration, for the most part,
and people are always like ohmy God, side hustles aren't good
.
Don't do a side hustle.
(16:18):
That's all I do is side hustles, and side hustles just turn
into a business.
I told you earlier I started amarketing company because I
fired four marketing agencies.
I fired them all.
I'm like this is stupid.
I'm just going to do it myself.
And every business I've everstarted was the same thing.
I have a company calledEmployee Launch.
It's a full-scale SaaS trainingcompany.
Why did I start it?
Because I was tired of tellingemployees the same thing over
(16:39):
and over and over again.
I'm like I can build a softwarethat can do this.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Okay, so similar to like a trainual kind of software
like training program.
Yeah, it kind of sits on top oftrain rules, so it sits on top
of an LMS.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
It's all upper mobility training, almost like
if the military.
They have levels of trainingand then we give people a clear
path out of growth.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
So all of your businesses came from problems.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Opportunities.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Opportunities.
We'll call them opportunities.
So when you were doing likecoming up through the
construction side of it now andI think people find that
interesting how did that affectyou as a business owner in the
restaurants?
Because I think what a lot ofpeople do is they open a
restaurant because they'reeither, you know, a good chef or
whatever, but they don'tunderstand the business of it.
So how different is it in thosetwo businesses for your systems
(17:21):
Like?
What is the real difference forpeople that are in the
restaurant business?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
So what?
The biggest thing that happenedto me was the coming to the
realization that, no matter ifI'm making a wholesale bakery,
we distributed the whole stateof Virginia with bread, pastries
, everything every business I'veever opened.
When I started to realize thatevery single business was
identical, that it was thepeople business.
So if you take construction orrestaurants, you start out with
(17:46):
a raw product right Inconstruction.
I start out with two by foursand nails and sand and mortar
and concrete, and what do I do?
I build something no differentthan you in the kitchen and me
in the kitchen.
We just build something.
But the thing that the mostcritical piece of the restaurant
business and construction ispeople.
So if I can't get mysubcontractors to actually
perform at the highest level andexecute, then I can't build
(18:07):
houses.
If I do the same thing with mywaitresses, I can make the best
meal in the world and mywaitresses can screw it up in
two seconds, right.
So that's what it is.
It's the same exact business,but as entrepreneurs, we become
expert at a certain thing andthen we say we're going to go
open a business, but we don'ttake time to invest in our
people and create the systemsand processes that actually make
(18:28):
us entrepreneurs, and by nomeans was I an expert at that.
I mean, I worked 100 hours aweek for almost 15 years
straight, no days off, andthat's a very common story in
the restaurant industry.
yeah, because I I thought I wasthe one.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I thought I had to do , it had to be there, I had to
be the person.
It wasn't going to work, butthey're obviously working and
you're not there all the time.
You are still there quite a bit, I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I'm in my restaurants at night and for mainly primary
one reason is to shake handsand kiss babies, because I love
my customers.
Yeah, but am I in the kitchenanymore?
I'm never in the kitchen.
If I had to get in the kitchen,I'd kick all the young guys out
of the way and say get out ofmy way because they You're way
faster than us.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I'm the fastest pizza champion in 1994.
1994.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
That was a long time ago, right?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I need a photo of that too, so we can put that on
here, because I don't thinkpeople know that.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It's cool you say that, because I'm in the same
boat when it comes to that.
I'm trying to learn how to getout of the kitchen now and make
a little bit more of a businessout of it as I age.
No-transcript, and that's whatI'm working on now.
With this type of dining, withthis type of chef-curated stuff,
(19:38):
it's a little bit different,because a pizza is a pizza.
You follow the recipe and itcomes down right.
You make your dough, you makeyour sauce.
Everything works together.
You just got to find someonewho understands the temperatures
and makes it happen.
Here it's a little bitdifferent, because the steps of
the service and the steps of thewhole process are a little bit
more intense, a little bit moreeducated, and it's hard to find
those people.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
You make me think about something, though I want
to interrupt you for one second.
So, like when I had my firstrestaurant and then I opened at
ODU in Norfolk, I'm like this isgoing to be easy.
And that's when I realized howcritical systems were for my
brand.
When you open that secondlocation the first one was easy.
I was like I'm like we'reinvincible, I'm making a crazy
amount of money, it's no bigdeal.
(20:18):
I opened that second locationand I was like why isn't this
working Right?
I lost.
I lost half a million dollarsat ODU because I didn't have
systems, I didn't have the rightpeople, I didn't know what it
was to hire the right person orto actually motivate them,
inspire them and lead them.
And I think that was the bestthing.
One of the best failures I everhad was that location, because
(20:39):
it really taught me before Iopened up another location,
before I opened up anotherbusiness, I have to work on the
system so much more in thebeginning, and I think your
second location probably taughtyou more, way more than your
first.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, the first one was first one just worked
because it was small.
It was sought after.
It still is.
I have a great team there, butthe systems don't apply because
there's so much different hereRight Now.
It gave me a base on what notto do, but it didn't really
teach me what to do.
Here I'm learning what to doRight, but the first one taught
me a lot of what not to do again.
That's amazing, you know.
So it just opened up a lotthere.
(21:12):
You know what not to do, whatto do, and hopefully there I can
do it better, you know, andthat's when the systems start
coming in, I hope.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Sure, no doubt.
And even though it's a deli,it's a different type of
business If you focus more onthe systems of people and how
the people are going to function.
If you took anybody off thestreet and say, hey, make this
sandwich or slice this meat,anybody off the street's got to
be able to come in and do itseamlessly, like it's not a big
deal, but the amount of timethat that takes for you to
(21:49):
create that system for that oneprocess.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
that's where the investment is, and then it
becomes not somebody learninghow to make pizza or make my
sauce.
It becomes finding someone whocan follow a system, because if
you can follow the system, youcan make the pizza.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
You can make the sauce.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
But if you don't follow it, then I have to rely
on you making pizza.
But that's what I do, that'swhat you do.
You just need to do how I wantit done.
I don't need you to come in anddo it different.
I need you to do it the way Ineed it done.
So Finding someone who canfollow the system is almost, if
not more important than findingsomeone who can actually cook
100%.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I can teach anybody how to cook Because they have to
follow.
In our restaurants we havepasta creations Every time they
make that meal.
It's different every singletime, so they need to understand
the process of saute toactually perform at the highest
level.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Exactly what ingredients do what, when and
when they're introduced to thesauce, to the oil, production
everything oil Production Allthat stuff.
So when do you add this type ofingredient, no matter how your
creation goes?
You add this red onion now.
Right, you know.
You add bacon now.
You add prosciutto now.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You don't add shrimp first, exactly, so you do it now
, right.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
So you can create your own shit, as long as you
understand the system of thecreation.
Yeah exactly, and that's.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
That's not easy, and that's the people, I think is
the one thing that we're talkingabout here and I think in
today's environment.
You know, covid definitelychanged the environment of
employees and diners, and 100percent diners especially.
We're a family orientedrestaurant, very like you know,
families, young kids coming inhigh chairs everywhere.
That's what we are as a brandand the environment's definitely
(23:25):
changed.
But I think work ethic haschanged a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And we're trying to adapt to that Sure, and I don't
know if it'll ever come back.
I'm not sure.
I do see that the youngergeneration I'm talking about the
kids that are coming in, 19, 18years old are starting to be a
little bit more receptive toworking.
Yeah, then I do in a 25 30 yearolds.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
that's the hardest part right now is that 25, 27,
20, I like 19 year olds and 50year olds, yeah if you could go
back to when you were way back,when you first started, what
would the most crucial hirewould you have made back then to
take one of your hats off?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I would have hired a coach, a business coach Like
your own coach to walk youthrough it 100%, because I came
from Jersey and we were a littlecocky up there and I came down
I knew everything and like I hada business consultant come in
the very first time and I'm like, have you ever been in a
restaurant business?
He goes, no, I'm like, then getthe hell out of here.
It's a really stupid mistake.
(24:19):
I really needed a mentor and atthat point, when you're a young
entrepreneur, you don't want totell anybody you're failing or
you don't know what you're doing.
You're afraid to tell peoplethat and, unfortunately, you
need to be honest and you needto surround yourself with people
that have.
And when I talk about hiringcoaches, I'm going to hire a
coach.
They need to have done thatbefore.
They need to have been in abusiness, hired employees done
(24:41):
this.
There's a lot of businesscoaches out there that I work
with, I'm around, that havenever owned a business.
They watch YouTube.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
They have you a fail too, I like to call those coach
in a box.
You can't talk about thefailure if you've never
experienced it.
I don't care what it is.
The emotional connection to afailure is is the same, no
matter what you're doing, nodoubt, but I think the time
collapsing because, again, youspent years making costly
mistakes.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I did.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
And if you had someone that was like, yeah,
don't do that, it's going tocost you $10,000 or half a
million.
You know it's going to cost youmoney, don't do that.
And you pay them a littlepercentage yes, in the long run
you're going to actually makemore money.
So I mean it's time collapsingwith knowledge.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
For me it's like I've hired over 20,000 people in my
life, and when you hire 20,000,I'm like, oh, that sounds like
amazing.
That's amazing.
How did you do that?
No, it's 20,000 situations thatI've had to handle.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
It's all about situational management for me
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So every time, the only thing that changes is the
face will change, but everysituation is different, so it
gives you a different skilllevel and it's painful I mean
it's it.
It's been a very challengingpiece of my business, but every
single day I'm grateful for theopportunities I've had, because
it creates a different awarenessevery single day yeah, no, I
get it.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, it definitely makes a big difference.
But yeah, I think that's that'sthe restaurant business isn't
for the faint of heart.
Anyways, I have three daughters.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
They're not in the restaurant business.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, so your kids are all in that entrepreneur
space too.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
They are.
They all like, everybody's like.
Why aren't your daughters inthe restaurant business?
I'm like I don't want them inthis business unless they love
it.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
And you know, my girls grew up watching my wife
and I work every day till 9, 10o'clock at night, every night,
and they're like I don't wantthis for my life.
I said.
But if one of them would havecame to me and said this is my
passion, they would be runningall my restaurants right now.
But they're all entrepreneurs,they're all on their own in the
lanes.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
That's cool, that's really cool, that's good news
too.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You know, the first thing we think is our kids are
going to take this over.
And I don't know if that's true.
My kids love to eat, they lovewhat I do and everything like
that, but I don't think they'renot passionate.
They're passionate eaters, butthey're not passionate in doing
it.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
This is a special place for somebody, a different
level of passion.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, if you force it on them or if you push them
into it, you're definitely notgoing to get results there, no
doubt.
So it's a matter of you know, Ibring my kids around and if
they grow into it, they do.
If they don't, that's theirchoice.
You know, that's great.
But I do know that I don't wantthem to do the same thing I'm
doing as far as not being aroundand always being at work.
And you know, I get up in themorning, still right now, and it
(27:20):
seems like the more I go, theharder it is.
It's not the opposite.
Where you think it's easier,it's not.
I wake up in the morning, Iwill go to bed thinking about
specials, what I'm going to do,my ingredients, the losses, the
gains.
You're thinking about that allday long because we don't have
much room for error here.
It's not like if we're going todeliver a ship we're building
and make a million dollars, itcould be a little paint chip or
something.
We could fix that later here.
If our paint chip's here, we'rein trouble.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
We're in the penny business Exactly.
I tell everybody all the timethey don't understand, but I
love the restaurant industry andwe could complain about the
restaurant all day long.
But I was so blessed to be inthe restaurant business because
I was able to diversify andactually take any dollars I had
and invest it in other placesand really grow my life because
(28:01):
of it.
It was a skill that I wasfortunate enough in Jersey at 15
years old for a boss to give methat opportunity and I could
easily look back and say, god,the restaurant business was
horrible, but the restaurantbusiness is who I am today yeah,
I couldn't see it any other way.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
My level of success from the restaurant, or from
working and being, is from therestaurant business.
I've tried it other places andit just didn't suit me.
I couldn't find a passion forit.
It was always just a job and no, I didn't like doing anything
else.
And I do like doing thisbecause I'm comfortable in it
and it's a lot different whenyou have your own and you've
worked for it and your staffworks for you.
I didn't have so much of apassion for it when I was
(28:38):
working for other people, but Istill loved doing it because
it's where I was comfortablegoing to work Well, and why not?
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I mean, you've turned it into a brand, it's not just
a restaurant.
So I think for people out therethat we've said this on the
show your brand is your business, you are your brand, your brand
is your business and ifbusiness Like you are your brand
, your brand is your businessand if you don't treat it like a
business, it fails.
So I've always lived by that andthe marketing side of things.
But when you had the restaurant, when did you know Cause you
(29:05):
have?
You know why not Wednesdays?
You had the stuff with.
You know the?
The um sports are like you hadall the arenas, you have all
those things.
When did you know that it wastime to invest in that?
Was there times where their key?
When did you know that it wastime to invest in that?
Was there times where therewere key indicators where you're
like, okay, I have enough money, I want to expand this way, I
want to invest in this.
Or were those justopportunities that were brought?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
to you.
When I first started in 93,everybody said, oh my gosh, this
is a franchise.
Because from the very beginningmy brand was so critically
important to me, we registered,trademarked all of our logos,
our shirts, all of our employeeshave 401k health benefits from
day one.
And so all of a sudden westarted sponsoring little league
teams, soccer teams, and that'swhere it kind of grew from.
(29:48):
Then all of a sudden Isponsored three little league
teams, then I sponsored theentire league.
Now we sponsor over 20,000little league players and like
25,000 soccer players.
Then all of a sudden everybodysees us sponsoring the Little
Leagues and then ODU comes andsays, hey, can you sponsor our
ticket system?
And then, you know, the soccerarena says, hey, can you sponsor
us?
Then the amphitheater.
(30:09):
And so it just kind of grewfrom there.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
And with that, when kids are playing youth, they're
growing up with that name infront of them and then eating
that pizza after the game andgoing to yeah it becomes now it
becomes a brand.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
It's a brand, yeah, so you built into that, so it
didn't.
And tracking, like for peoplewho don't know how to do that,
like tracking roi on that kindof stuff, do you?
I mean, do you have any systemsfor that?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I what my suggestion with tracking roi, I'm a big roi
person but tracking I alwayslook at all of my vending and my
outside catering as marketing.
Okay, so it's in your marketingbudget.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
It's a marketing budget for me.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
If I make money on, why Not Wednesday?
But see a day like today whereit's raining.
I know you can't see outside,but a day like today it's
raining, I lose the entire day.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
You know, if it rains and I'm at the amphitheater and
it's a concert going on, I'lllose the whole day.
So I look at it as a normalbusiness where I can scale it.
We're in four walls, you know,you can predict that this
business is going to be busytoday, but on outside vending,
when you're scaling in yoursponsorships, it's purely
marketing for me.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Do you have a percentage that you guys put
towards marketing?
Do you have a set percentage?
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Typically we're always like 4%, 4.5%, 4% for
marketing.
And you know when we werefull-fledged with all of it,
when we were spending almost400,000 a year on marketing
alone, just in sponsorships, andthen another 400,000 on top of
it.
So it was a big, big expensefor us so we've cut down since
COVID.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
We're probably half of that right now Put a big
payout in the back.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Huge.
I mean just building a brand,so like notoriety, trust that
brand yeah is is so important,and I've always been hyper brand
focused.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Oh yeah, I know yeah and I know you.
So I mean I know what you do inthe businesses.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I mean just the event last week.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, you do events all the time and we all know the
name, which is cool.
But I just think a lot of notjust restaurant owners, business
owners in general don'tquantify, like marketing budgets
.
Like don't quantify marketingbudgets.
They don't look at it andthey're like, oh, we're just
gonna have someone in thekitchen do social media every so
often.
When you pay someone, yes,that's an expense, but you gotta
(32:06):
do something at some point.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
You can't look at the labor.
The problem is people look athiring that social media person
and say, oh, that's a labor cost, like hiring someone.
But that is purely a marketingexpense Marketing Everything I
do.
If I give away free food, if Igive away, say I give away 100
pieces, I don't look at it asfood costs, I look at it as
marketing.
Take that expense and put it tomarketing.
Okay, and I don't thinkrestaurateurs focus enough on
(32:28):
their brand.
And how are they sending theirmessaging?
What is the messaging they'reprojecting out?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, well, obviously the book.
You wrote the book.
You have the speaking businessnow, so you started doing that.
This parlayed into businesscoaching.
So how many technical LLCs doyou have right now?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I think 16 or 17.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Okay, it's just a couple.
Just a couple, we're justadding to it all.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
So tell us about your book.
How long did it take you towrite that book?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
And what's the name of Anywhere you can buy a book?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
It's everywhere I actually saw it in the airport
when, I was in Atlanta orwhatever.
And I walked by and took apicture because I was like, oh,
that's my friend, how are youdoing?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It was in every airport all the way across the
country.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
It was awesome.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Forbes produced my book for me, so I'm on Forbes
podcast.
I'm on the Forbes blogs.
Eight Fundamentals of Businesshow to Scale your Business all
the way from people a lot ofwhat I talked about today.
But my book took.
Everybody asked me how long didit take you to write the book?
It took me 42 years to write thebook Because it is in my entire
(33:31):
chapter of my life in businessand my passion is to inspire
entrepreneurs and leaders allover the world, and that's
really my goal.
That's the next chapter of mylife I'll probably be in.
I don't know how long I'll bein the restaurant business I was
going to say are you going toopen another restaurant?
No, my full business is going tobe just helping inspire people
over the world.
I want to impact the world, andbeing in a restaurant or stuck
(33:53):
in construction is I'll never beable to do that.
So I'm 56 right now, so my nextit was.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
It was a good vehicle to get you there, though Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
I mean I could that's when I say 42 years to write a
book I would never be the coachor the mentor or the speaker
that I am today.
Without all that.
I mean, I am who I am becauseof the experiences in my life.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Sure, when you're around people all the time and
you're trying to please them,you learn quickly how to do it
and how not to.
And you learn a lot abouttemperamental.
You learn about people'sfeelings and emotions.
And reading a room and readingtheir faces, reading their eyes,
knowing what's hitting what'snot, If you're not being in the
hospitality business allows you,gives us a direct no doubt.
Direct to that, and it'simportant because I'm now
(34:35):
learning it myself, whereasbefore I was shut off to it.
I just I want to make good food.
I'm a chef, don't bother me,da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Well, now it's the totalopposite.
Now it's like let's be a littlepatient and see what they have
to say, let's think about it,let's move forward.
How can I turn this intosomething?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
that I don't have to be cooking every day Because
there's going to be a.
It'll be hard for you to growyour business without it.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Without it right.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
If you're stuck in behind that.
It took me forever to learnthis, but you brought up
awareness and I always teasepeople and I say on my tombstone
it'll be the man that tried tosolve awareness.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Because it's probably one of the most frustrating
things for me.
I have crazy 3D vision.
I see things in 3D, but youknow as well as I do, the
restaurant business trains us tohave awareness.
Sure, we see the person thatdrops their fork or the person
that comes out of the bathroomand they're waving their hand.
I'm like, oh, the paper towel'sout of the bathroom.
Yeah, we see that.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
And a lot of people don't have that nowadays.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
No, Well it's funny because she's on our team, but
she's also one of our serversfor a while here, Right, and and
she can tell you that I say toeverybody in our meetings a lot
of times the biggest thing Iworry about here is situational
awareness.
If you can master situationalawareness, you can master the
rest of the room.
It's that easy.
You know how to do your job,you know how to serve, you're
(35:50):
skilled to be here in this place.
Now you have to worry aboutsituational awareness.
What's going on?
outside of your bubble is what'sgoing to make us better.
If everyone pays attention toyour bubble, your bubble and
your bubble, and you drop asilver on the floor and it's not
your table, then obviouslythat's situational awareness.
If a guest walks through thefront and they're looking around
and you can tell they haven'tspoke to anybody and they're
kind of lost.
Going to them directly issituational awareness Without it
(36:12):
, we're nothing.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
You know what I mean?
We're nothing.
I'll go back to the thing.
We can't scale our businesswithout people, so situational
awareness creates scaling.
If we look at scaling in thesefour walls, you're scaling
through your people.
You can't grow your business ifthe servers are constantly not
doing the right thing.
You won't scale, you'll grow,you'll out of business.
If you look at business frominside these four walls of a
(36:37):
restaurant, it's no differentthan opening up another 50
locations.
It's the same exact process ofthat waitress seeing that person
at that front door.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
And what you said about scaling is interesting
because the other thing aboutawareness is, in order to grow
as well, you have to be aware ofyour scaling down.
When things start scaling down,you have to admit it, find the
problem quick, and a lot of thetimes, a lot of the times, I
find out the problem sometimeswas me, no doubt.
Not addressing it, not takingcharge of it, or letting it
(37:05):
slide or putting someone else onit.
These are things that Irealized in time from the other
place, the original place.
One of those things I learnednot to do is that is let things
slide or not address them when Ishould, or not admitting that.
Okay, I should have just did itthis way.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
My father was a police officer and he always had
this thing, the man in themirror he's like because
whenever I did something wronghe goes go look in that mirror,
because that's the problem.
And it didn't really resonatewith me as a kid.
But like I train my managersnow criticize yourself first no
matter what Assume in delegation, there's four steps to
(37:42):
delegation.
It's to task the person, set anexpectation and follow through.
I said if you think you've setthe expectation and they still
make a mistake, you probablydidn't set the proper
expectation.
If it happens three times, man,maybe I'm looking at the person
at that point, but first thingI'm going to do is criticize
myself that I did not set theexpectation properly, right?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
That's smart.
Set the expectation properlyRight.
Smart, that's smart, it's justdifferent.
I mean leadership and kind ofuniversal.
It doesn't matter what yourbusiness it doesn't matter, it
doesn't matter.
I think, that's the best part,but you've taken a lot of risks.
So I think that's another partof the success factor is you
have to be somewhat not crazybut just be able to take the
risks without as much fear asother people.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
My daughters would tell me, because I used to say
all the time that I'm crazy.
And my daughters would starttelling me Dad, stop saying
you're crazy, you're blessed.
But my wife would probably notlike me saying that I'm a risk
taker.
She thinks I probably.
No more businesses.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I know Lord bless her .
She puts up with it, she does agreat job, it's in my veins
it's in my veins.
It's who you are.
It's who you are.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
People don't understand that.
About people like us, orentrepreneurs, it doesn't matter
what you're doing.
Once you have that in yourblood, you can't stop you want
it more People say oh, you'remarried to work, you're addicted
?
No, I'm not.
This is who I am and this isit's how I function.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
It's more comfortable I'm comfortable Like people
think you're money-driven.
That's the furthest thing fromme.
I am so success-driven and now,as I've become later in life, I
am people-driven to help otherpeople be successful because
I've had the opportunities inlife.
I've been a crazy risk takerand you know, in business it's
usually some very simplisticthings that stop a business from
(39:22):
growing and succeeding andgoing out of business.
Yeah yeah, very simple.
And you and your branding world, you know people just don't
even understand the companythey're working for.
They don't understand theirpurpose and as founders, we
think it's X but it doesn't makesense to the customer or the
employees.
So I spend a lot of timecoaching companies through their
people and their customers andthen going back and seeing their
(39:44):
vision.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, it's a feeling or a solution.
I mean if you have one of thosetwo things, you'll be
successful.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
I love solutions.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, I love solutions.
So if you have a solution to aproblem which you've solved by
opening multiple otherbusinesses to solve those
problems, or if you just createa feeling, so your brand itself
should boil down to one word,Like how does it make you feel
it should be one word?
And if you can't do that, thenyou haven't done enough work on
the back end to actually figureout the ethos of your brand.
So, yeah, I mean that's alwaysa thing.
(40:12):
We could talk brand forever Iknow We've had these like
discussions and he operates insome of the same circles I do.
It's fun because a lot ofpeople don't realize it.
It's the most overlooked partof some of these businesses.
It's not the dollar all thetime, it's the longevity.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
I think the dollar will come.
If you do the right thing, themoney will come.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
If you sit there and focus on the money.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
You're going to make a lot of mistakes trying to make
money.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
You'll never make money.
I tell young entrepreneurs.
I'm like why do you want toopen a business?
I want to be rich.
I'm like don't go in business,don't do that, I'm like do not
go in business Because you can'tcontrol that, don't do it.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
You can't control it.
The only thing you can controlis how you go about your day and
how you go about putting outthere what you want to project.
You can't control if everyone'sgoing to bite it or not.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
If Then there's a lot of other things you could be
the best chef in the world andyou could lose your business.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Oh, yeah, of course it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
You're not in the food business, right.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, it's just creating.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I'm not in the food business, I'm in the people
business.
Yeah, because I have to getevery single person that's in
that restaurant has to performat the highest level for me to
execute.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Right to want to come back.
If they don't come back, you'regoing out of business.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
The bus boy.
The bus boy, they can destroyyour restaurant.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, of course, in two seconds, like we said, the
cancer is like when you'retrying to cut things out.
You just, yeah, just cut it off, Just get rid of it.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
There's been many restaurants.
I've gone to that.
The server has messed upBecause the experience was so
bad, but I didn't mind theexperience from a waitress
giving bad service.
But where was the manager?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Like nobody stepped in.
They didn't react.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
That's a problem too, is when people don't go after
it.
Yeah, you have to handle it.
Look, problems happen, but it'snot the problem, it's the
solution.
If your solution is bigger thanthe problem, you'll fucking
succeed.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
The best customer.
That's right, exactly, that'strue, exactly, a hundred percent
, great yes.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I mean that's, that's an amazing thing for every
restaurateur to learn, rightthere Yep Treat every yep.
So many managers are like, oh,they're a pain in the ass,
they're a horrible customer.
The same problem.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Exactly, yeah, no, you can kill them with you can
kill them with kindness,sometimes too, and they come
back around Well when it comesto the servers, everyone's,
every.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Every server is the customer is the piece of shit.
It's always the way it is, butmaybe they're not wrong.
Let's see what they have to say.
Yeah, Not every bad.
Not every review, not every badreview talk about reputated
reviews.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I mean 30.
I'm open 32 years I didn't havethat yeah I didn't have it when
I was.
That is gold.
I mean in your business, in thebranding business, it's gold
you can find out a lot of things, and how many people use it,
everyone.
How many people use the actualreview, though, to change your?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
business?
Well, I do, and I look at themall and I do realize there is a
big window now of where thereview system has gone a little
awry, where people are justbitching and they're complaining
about their moment, yeah, butall that aside though you can
learn a lot from them.
That's where I learn a lot ofwhat's going on in dining room
If you read the same review andyou know it's the same person
(43:15):
over and over again.
Obviously every customer is notan asshole.
Maybe, you're an asshole, maybeyou serving asshole.
Maybe you're an asshole.
Maybe you serving sucks.
Maybe you're the problem.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Maybe you're an asshole, you know what I'm
saying.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
If somebody says three reviews in a row, that
they waited forever to see theirserver, and you look back and
it's the same server, well thenthere's your answer, you know
what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
It's quite simple and even the bad reviews that I get
, I always look for something10% in it.
It's like when you're playingbilliards Somebody says I don't
have a shot.
I'm like you always have a shot.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
There's something in there, but it's every review.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
It may be two words.
I'm like mm.
I can get that, I'm trying toput myself in there.
I'm sitting in the dining room,that's right, that's where
front door.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I tell her all the time Something happened at that
front door when they walked in.
That set this chain of events.
Man, something happened andmost of it was how you didn't
handle it.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
I'm a Nazi with my front door.
I see somebody standing at thatfront door for more than 20
seconds.
I'm like who's got the door?
Speaker 1 (44:14):
I do it too.
He knows, I'm here a lot.
I'll be in here and I'm likethis light's off, Like I do it
too, but I'm also that type ofperson, so I'm like, yeah, we
all have to be, you have to be.
I mean, sometimes people don'tnotice things You've got to call
it out.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
If you have situational awareness, you have
it, no matter where you are.
You could be in a subwaylooking around saying why is
that sticker?
Peeled on the wall that'stelling you how to get off the
damn thing.
It's navy seals.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
I mean they come in my restaurant and they're the
most stoic people in the worldwhen they come in.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
So I know I'm like navy seal, navy seal, navy seal
but they're so hyper aware ofeverything that's going on they
sit there, very stoic, just mostof them, yes, until they get
older, and then they just don'tnotice it, they don't care
anymore, they don't care anymore.
So that's yeah, welcome to myworld.
Sometimes they're just likeit's fine, everything is fine,
but no, but it's great havingyou on.
(45:04):
I think that a lot of people inthis area they know the name,
they know the brand, but theydon't know everything else you
have done.
So it's pretty cool.
So thank you for like takingtime out for all of our 16
businesses.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Can you give us a little something on where they
can find a?
Your book is on amazon.
Repeat that if you don't mind,and where else you?
You got anything else you wantto put out there, yeah it's
where the Business ScalingBlueprint's my book.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
You can go to TonyDeSilvestrocom, so a full
website with that and I'm at myrestaurant six nights a week
shaking hands with kids andbabies on Great Neck Road.
So if you need to find me there, find it.
Why not pizza?
Great stuff, good pizza in thearea I know 757.
So we're supporting and it'sgreat.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
So, yeah, thank you.
Well, thank you for having me.
Thanks for all you do for thecommunity.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Thanks for all you do for the restaurants and
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
You keep the standard , at least in the pizza world to
where everyone else has to stayup with you, and that, in turn,
is good for everybody, becausewe get a better product all the
way around.
No doubt we'll have a marketing, we'll have a marketing
discussion.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
I'm ready.
I love it sounds good.
All right, my friend soundsgood.
All right, ciao for now.
Boom, we're back, baby.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Boom, great guest today.
I mean, why not, why not?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Hey, I see what you did there, tony DeSimestro,
sorry, that was like the totaldad joke at the start of the
episode.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So why not?
We love it.
It's a great name.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So I'm throwing in a little something secret.
Today I got on.
Oh, okay, I didn't even tellnobody I did this, but I we put
these out on Friday.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Red Friday.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Remember everyone deployed.
I'm here for it.
Oh yeah, You're doing yourFriday.
It's my little touch, my littlepart.
I like it, we live in a Navycity, military city, so I'm just
doing it out of my own.
I didn't even plan it.
I just said, let me go redtoday.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
You are fancy On a Friday, right town and we got to
finally have.
So tony, tony, there's no othertony, so we can't finish the
song.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Larry one day we will , yeah, so t squared, so we're
gonna go with that today, so youget to come and hang out with
us.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Obviously we've both kind of known you in the
community forever.
So for the people who don'tknow because we do put the show
out around the world, so there'sother countries they don't know
who you are, so go ahead andintroduce yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So so I'm Tony DiSavestro, just an entrepreneur
.
I love entrepreneurship.
Business Founded, you know,over 30 companies in my life and
you know it's a little serialcrazy, but I just love people.
So everybody always asks meabout business, but I'm only in
one business I'm in the peoplebusiness.
It's a pleasure to be heretoday, so being in a restaurant
for me is like being at home, soI'm honored to be here today
(01:48):
and to share with you, glad tohave you.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So listen, what your niche is, what people around
here know you for, is your pizzaplace.
Right, you have a pizza.
Why Not Pizza, which is thename came quite unique.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, it's my name backwards.
I spelled my name backwards infirst grade and it's a little
bit of a story there.
But then my mom and my familyand my friends all called me why
not, since I was a little kid.
So that's so funny.
It makes sense, right?
So it's why not?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
pizza is the name of your pizzeria, and here in
virginia beach area, hamptonroads, it's kind of hard to find
really good pizza, especiallyfrom where you're from.
You're from new jersey, I'mfrom new haven, connecticut,
which is pizza capital for me.
Um, and everywhere in betweenthat's real tri-state area right
up there is.
We're really known for pizza,so you bring that style here, oh
yeah, and you have been foryears.
(02:32):
So I remember back in the 90sgoing to your first and only
location at the time, which isgreat neck road, and it was the
first place I can go andactually get a true sausage and
pepper pizza that I liked whenit was done right where the
peppers were already cooked andput it on there they.
They weren't raw when they wenton the pizza.
The sausage was sliced thin.
I still remember that to thisday.
(02:53):
It was just a small littlejoint.
Now watching you open up and goall over the place.
Now you have one off ProvidenceRoad where I live off that way.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
How many do you have now?
I have three right now.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
We closed like four of them, covid, had an effect on
you.
Even being a takeout carryoutpizzeria, you still felt that
weight.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
It really wasn't until, like you know, when
everybody was getting theirincentive checks and everything,
we were busy as anything.
I didn't fire any employees.
We had 350 employees at thatpoint.
I didn't fire any of them.
But then once those incentivechecks stopped, inflation went
through the roof.
It really started affectingfamilies.
So different.
But then once those incentivechecks stopped, inflation went
through the roof.
It really started affectingfamilies.
So my different than thisrestaurant where you're a little
more upscale, higher end for me, but I'm dealing with mom and
(03:35):
pop and the three, four kidscoming in and it's really hurt
that part of the economy, really, really bad.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, they couldn't do shit they couldn't buy a
pizza.
They can't go to thesupermarket.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
They can't go to the supermarket Right, so that was a
hard time for everybody.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
In one of our past things we just did recently we
were talking about brieflybecause I don't like to harp on
COVID.
It is what it was and it waswhat it was.
But we all had to suffer.
But I feel the restaurantindustry really took the hit.
I felt like it was just to shutus down.
I really took it personal whenit was happening.
It really fucked with us andour whole life's dreams were
(04:07):
going down the tubes quick.
Yeah, you know.
So, moving on from that, youwere able to move forward.
So what was the highest pointof your career or your business?
Why not?
How many locations did you haveat?
once we had eight locations atone time, at one time.
So let's just talk about thatfor a minute, because I have
questions.
Okay, I have two, and I want toslit my throat sometimes.
(04:28):
But I know if I slit my ownthroat I'm going to have to
clean up the fucking messbecause probably no one's going
to do it.
So I don't even want to do that.
So how do you deal with that?
Give us a little couple ofhints.
Anybody out there who wants toexpand their businesses.
The biggest question is how doyou mock yourself to go in
different places?
What's your biggest?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
takeaway from that.
This is what took me intocoaching and teaching and
coaching businesses all over theworld.
So one of the biggest things Itell anybody I told a kid last
night I was coaching a young kidlast night and he goes hey,
he's got a fencing business.
He's like I want to grow mybusiness.
I said you can't grow yourbusiness without people.
So the thing is when and thenyou can't invest in your
(05:13):
employees, so I don't hirepeople.
I invest in people right, so Imake an investment.
But when you're scaling,there's always that that point
when you say why can't I grow?
And I talk to owners, I'm likewhat do you do for?
What do you do for the company?
He, I'm the head of sales.
Well, I'm the head of marketingWell, you're never going to
grow your business If you'restuck in the kitchen cooking
every day, like I was.
(05:33):
It took me 15 years to become anentrepreneur.
All I was was a business owner.
For 15 years I had my apron onevery single day.
I had a guy come in every dayand tell me take your apron off.
If you want to grow, take togrow, take your apron off.
I'm like I can run my businesswith my apron on.
I'm really good.
This is more comfortable.
The day I took my apron off, Ibecame an entrepreneur and I'm
realizing that myself.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So so the more time I spend in the kitchen, the less
time I spend growing.
I just become a redundantfaction of the kitchen.
I become another.
I come, I become the sixth orseventh cook there and and it's
hard to create and and build andgrow when you're doing exactly
what you said.
So my biggest thing, and maybeyou can relate to this, I don't
give a shit if it's pizza,rajele or fucking ossobuco, it
(06:16):
doesn't matter what it is.
When you're making somethingand you don't give the, it's
hard for us to give up the, toaccept the fact that it's not
going to be perfect.
It's hard to say, okay, it'snot going to be the way I make
it every single time, but wehave to do it as close as we can
.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Right.
But if we talk about failuresright.
If I talked to, if there was100 entrepreneurs sitting in
this room right now, the onething they would tell me why
they're successful would theytell me it was because of their
successes or their failures.
I would say failures Right.
So it's the same thing I tellrestaurateurs all the time
you're never going to grow yourcompany if you don't accept
(06:52):
failure to a certain extent.
But in my book it says failwell.
How do you fail?
Well, right, that's what youneed to make sure that we're
doing.
Every time I fail, I create asystem.
Every time a cook makes amistake, I create a system.
I say I look at that mistakethat the cook.
He didn't do the asabuco right.
So what I do?
I say, okay, I need a bettertraining process.
I'm gonna shoot a video on howto cook asabuco.
(07:12):
I'm gonna sit them down andtrain them.
But every time a failurehappens, that's when I grow
Right and I use the same type ofideology.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
In a sense it's along the same lines, and I tell
people all the time you can askme a thousand questions as long
as you don't ask me the same onetwice, because that means you
learn from it and I taught youright, right, you know.
So you're not going to learnunless you have the questions.
But if you, if you keep askingthe same question over and over,
either you're incapable oflearning or I'm incapable of
teaching, and I try andeliminate the part that I'm not
(07:42):
capable of teaching so theinteresting part.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
So what you just said is criticizing yourself.
So, a young manager, whatthey'll do is criticizing
yourself.
So, a young manager, whatthey'll do is they'll criticize
the employee right away,constantly, instantly, I mean
just say, hey, the employee'sstupid, they don't understand.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Every time and that's the go-to and, and that's the
hardest part, is when you saidthe term right there, manager,
when the manager doesn't realizethat now you have a problem
because now you have a managermanaging wrong, right, and
that's the problem.
But we need leaders we needleaders right.
We need leaders that inspireand train and coach correct, and
the best way to do that, though, is to find people who have
(08:15):
confidence in what they're doingin themselves, first and right
now.
That is a dying breed.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
It is a we could talk about that for a long time, but
the thing is is we, as theleaders, create the confidence
through our systems, process andprocedure right.
So the beauty of what I did isI went through franchising for
almost 15 years.
I the thing is is we, as theleaders, create the confidence
through our systems, process andprocedure right?
So the beauty of what I did isI went through franchising for
almost 15 years.
I was in a franchise or and afranchisee, and what that taught
me was the importance ofsystems Like.
Mcdonald's isn't a restaurant,it's a system.
(08:41):
That's all it is.
They don't sell food, they sellsystems.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And you know so the more that once I learned that it
changed every single businessI've ever opened.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So once you get a system you can rely on, the
system proved to work.
The system is what.
You focus more on the systemthan you do the product at the
end.
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
McDonald's has a problem.
They have problems.
They spilled hot coffee onsomebody who got sued for
millions of dollars, right.
But then they created a system.
They put insulated cups.
They put sleeves on the cup.
So yeah, we.
But that's how they adapt right, you have to.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, so when you, when you're talking about your
system, I mean, the way I lookat it is this if I spend a
little bit more on betteringredients, it's harder for
them ingredients to be fucked up.
If you buy cheap ingredients,it's easier for that to come out
even worse because you'restarting with it.
You're starting with someonewho has to learn how to make a
cheap ingredient taste good,instead of starting with a good
ingredient and making it.
(09:28):
There's room to move down.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
There's no room to move up if you don't do it right
, you and I are both chefs, so Iknow that for the same thing I
visit every manufacturer in mycountry.
I milk cows in Wisconsin.
I'm in the produce fields inModesta California, so when I go
out there I'm looking for thehighest quality product because
I know if I start out with thehighest quality product it's the
same thing you just said.
I have a 90% chance better tofor that dish to be.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Unbelievable when it gets it's right, because even if
they mess it up a little bit,the ingredients gonna speak for
itself Anyhow.
A really good tomato, you haveto butcher, but if you have a
really bad tomato, you have tomake it taste better.
And if you don't know how tomake that taste better, you're a
victim of the tomato.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
So I'd rather be a victim of the tomato now, no
doubt.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So I'd rather be a victim of the expensive, better
tomato that at least stilltastes like a tomato, even if
done wrong.
So when you're making yourpizza and everything, you
started out in a small littleplace with this dream of being a
pizza guy.
You wanted to bring it downhere.
People took to it right away,oh, no doubt.
And they went to it.
So did you find yourselfcutting corners on ingredients
(10:28):
as you grew?
Not cutting corners, that's thewrong word.
But you do, at some point intime, have to make sense of cost
and if you're going to produceand make profit on a pizza, it's
not as easy as it used to be.
$14 worth of dough 20 years ago, $40 worth of flour would make
you 20 pizzas, whatever it costs, and you could do that.
(10:48):
But now that dough is tripledand the pizza has to stay the
same, you can't.
How much, how higher can youraise the price of a pizza?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, it becomes price justification, for sure.
But the thing is like ifanything.
over 42 years in the restaurantbusiness, I've only increased
the quality of my food and at acertain point you have to say to
yourself what market do youwant to be in?
Do you want to be in thelow-end, cheap market or do you
want to be in the high-endquality market?
So being a pizzeria in Jerseylike if you say the word
pizzeria in Jersey everybodyfrom Jersey or Connecticut, new
(11:16):
York, they all know that youhave a full-scale Italian
restaurant with a pizzeria.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
When.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I moved down here like, oh, you're why talking
about, so then I changed my namethree different times over the
course of it.
So now we're like why notItalian?
So we serve a full Italian menu, Not at the same level.
You guys white tablecloths.
But the thing is, quality hasalways been where I started.
So I have three pillars in mybrand.
It's family, quality andcommunity.
That is my mission statement,my vision statement.
(11:43):
Everything that's family,quality and community.
So family quality, community.
So if I say the word quality,it's not just the food that I
serve on the table, it's how domy servers look, how do I train?
How's the front door feel?
When you open up the front door, what is the feeling?
Even when you touch the frontdoor, Every single aspect of my
business is quality.
So I can't use that as my threepillars of my brand and lower
the quality of my food?
It never happens, Because thenyou're dismantling the whole
(12:05):
Right.
Sure, I'm not true to my brand.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Right.
So when you're going now let'stalk about the good stuff of a
pizza world, right.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We can talk business all night, which we will, I'm
sure she'll have a bunch ofbusiness questions for you, but
when?
It comes to the food part, doyou notice now that when you
were starting out the pizzathing, it wasn't cool to be a
pizza guy?
Everyone loves pizza, but beingthe pizza guy wasn't cool.
I mean, now it seems like it'strending so much that all
younger people are doing it tobe cool, right?
(12:34):
So now it's like almost cool tobe a pizza person, right?
I see it changed all network andthen you got like david portnoy
doing his ratings and right,you have all that stuff
happening and it's like now it'slike pizza is becoming.
I'm looking at people onlinedoing sourdough pizza and oh
yeah, cool, that's really cool.
I want to try it all andeverything.
But it's like how the hell didbecoming a pizza guy become?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
you're famous now, you know well, I got a funny
story about pizza, like in italy, like back in the day, like the
pizza guys they would like theywere getting jealous.
So the pizzerias used to hirejugglers and out front like have
people come?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
in, it would entertain them.
Oh my god what's going on?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
pizza guys got pissed off this is a the legendary
story and they started flippingpizza, spinning pizzas.
So, like all of a sudden, theyfired the jugglers, now the
pizza guys.
So it's been cool for a longtime that's right.
But like for me, like I was inthe pizza olympics in 1994 in
vegas and like I was like thefastest pizza man in the world
94 against 600 people.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
That's crazy.
That's a fun fact I think Iknow about you.
Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, so, but like for me.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
We have an Olympian here.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Pizza, Olympian Pizza for me has always been I love
making pizza.
It's like I have a huge Italianpizza oven at my house.
Sure.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So like everybody comes over to my house for a
party like I just love it.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
But I think the art of making pizza it's creative.
Usually the pizza guys are inthe front of the store, they're
not in the back kitchen.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Right, so it's a different personality.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Even when I'm hiring pizza guys, I'm looking for a
certain personality.
Sure, they have to be outgoingBecause they're going to
communicate with guests Talk tothe customers.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah right, it's the front of the house basically.
It's the first thing you see isthat, and that's what you want
to see oh yeah, you have to seethat you go to a pizza shop and
don't see the pizza being made.
What are you?
Where are you exactly?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
so, kristen, I know you have you you have a lot of
uh relations, in a sense a lotof business sense and stuff like
that.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
What are some of the things that you talk about?
I mean, as far as turning yourpizza place into a lucrative um
enterprise, right, that, thatnow goes away from the kitchen
where I'm comfortable and I'mlearning, and I'm learning that
part of it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, I mean I'm more curious about the timeline side
because we have constructiontoo.
So a lot of people in the area,I mean they kind of know now
but they know you as that therestaurateur, but they don't
know the side of theentrepreneur.
So timeline-, wise, when youstarted, what was the timeline
when it was like restaurantstarting, the construction
company and any of the otherbusinesses, like how did those
(14:56):
kind of piece together?
And then the follow up is howdid the construction and that
kind of business help you as abusiness owner in the
restaurants?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Sure, so it all started in 1993.
I opened my first restaurantand from that day on I just
started building.
So I built my restaurants.
I did all the tile work, didall the stone work, so you were
doing the actual work.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh, I did it all.
We couldn't afford it.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I started with $60,000.
I had no money we were broke.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Louder for the people in the back.
Yeah, we were broke.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
So I mean, we had nothing so so when I started the
business, I was bootstrappingeverything.
So then I start doing all thetower work and customer will
come in and say, hey, do youknow a plumber, you know
electrician?
I'm like, yeah, I sent them myplumber, my electrician.
And then all of a sudden theywere coming back to me and
saying, hey, we have a problemwith the plumbing.
I'm like, I didn't hire him,you did.
So, then I just started myconstruction company from there.
So, I've been in constructionalmost 30 years.
And most people in town don'thave any idea that I do
(15:58):
restaurants, but I am mytimeline with business and
everybody always says why didyou start?
Why have you opened so manybusiness?
I always open businesses out offrustration, for the most part,
and people are always like ohmy God, side hustles aren't good
.
Don't do a side hustle.
(16:18):
That's all I do is side hustles, and side hustles just turn
into a business.
I told you earlier I started amarketing company because I
fired four marketing agencies.
I fired them all.
I'm like this is stupid.
I'm just going to do it myself.
And every business I've everstarted was the same thing.
I have a company calledEmployee Launch.
It's a full-scale SaaS trainingcompany.
Why did I start it?
Because I was tired of tellingemployees the same thing over
(16:39):
and over and over again.
I'm like I can build a softwarethat can do this.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Okay, so similar to like a trainual kind of software
like training program.
Yeah, it kind of sits on top oftrain rules, so it sits on top
of an LMS.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
It's all upper mobility training, almost like
if the military.
They have levels of trainingand then we give people a clear
path out of growth.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
So all of your businesses came from problems.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Opportunities.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Opportunities.
We'll call them opportunities.
So when you were doing likecoming up through the
construction side of it now andI think people find that
interesting how did that affectyou as a business owner in the
restaurants?
Because I think what a lot ofpeople do is they open a
restaurant because they'reeither, you know, a good chef or
whatever, but they don'tunderstand the business of it.
So how different is it in thosetwo businesses for your systems
(17:21):
Like?
What is the real difference forpeople that are in the
restaurant business?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
So what?
The biggest thing that happenedto me was the coming to the
realization that, no matter ifI'm making a wholesale bakery,
we distributed the whole stateof Virginia with bread, pastries
, everything every business I'veever opened.
When I started to realize thatevery single business was
identical, that it was thepeople business.
So if you take construction orrestaurants, you start out with
(17:46):
a raw product right Inconstruction.
I start out with two by foursand nails and sand and mortar
and concrete, and what do I do?
I build something no differentthan you in the kitchen and me
in the kitchen.
We just build something.
But the thing that the mostcritical piece of the restaurant
business and construction ispeople.
So if I can't get mysubcontractors to actually
perform at the highest level andexecute, then I can't build
(18:07):
houses.
If I do the same thing with mywaitresses, I can make the best
meal in the world and mywaitresses can screw it up in
two seconds, right.
So that's what it is.
It's the same exact business,but as entrepreneurs, we become
expert at a certain thing andthen we say we're going to go
open a business, but we don'ttake time to invest in our
people and create the systemsand processes that actually make
(18:28):
us entrepreneurs, and by nomeans was I an expert at that.
I mean, I worked 100 hours aweek for almost 15 years
straight, no days off, andthat's a very common story in
the restaurant industry.
yeah, because I I thought I wasthe one.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I thought I had to do , it had to be there, I had to
be the person.
It wasn't going to work, butthey're obviously working and
you're not there all the time.
You are still there quite a bit, I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I'm in my restaurants at night and for mainly primary
one reason is to shake handsand kiss babies, because I love
my customers.
Yeah, but am I in the kitchenanymore?
I'm never in the kitchen.
If I had to get in the kitchen,I'd kick all the young guys out
of the way and say get out ofmy way because they You're way
faster than us.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I'm the fastest pizza champion in 1994.
1994.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
That was a long time ago, right?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I need a photo of that too, so we can put that on
here, because I don't thinkpeople know that.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It's cool you say that, because I'm in the same
boat when it comes to that.
I'm trying to learn how to getout of the kitchen now and make
a little bit more of a businessout of it as I age.
No-transcript, and that's whatI'm working on now.
With this type of dining, withthis type of chef-curated stuff,
(19:38):
it's a little bit different,because a pizza is a pizza.
You follow the recipe and itcomes down right.
You make your dough, you makeyour sauce.
Everything works together.
You just got to find someonewho understands the temperatures
and makes it happen.
Here it's a little bitdifferent, because the steps of
the service and the steps of thewhole process are a little bit
more intense, a little bit moreeducated, and it's hard to find
those people.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
You make me think about something, though I want
to interrupt you for one second.
So, like when I had my firstrestaurant and then I opened at
ODU in Norfolk, I'm like this isgoing to be easy.
And that's when I realized howcritical systems were for my
brand.
When you open that secondlocation the first one was easy.
I was like I'm like we'reinvincible, I'm making a crazy
amount of money, it's no bigdeal.
(20:18):
I opened that second locationand I was like why isn't this
working Right?
I lost.
I lost half a million dollarsat ODU because I didn't have
systems, I didn't have the rightpeople, I didn't know what it
was to hire the right person orto actually motivate them,
inspire them and lead them.
And I think that was the bestthing.
One of the best failures I everhad was that location, because
(20:39):
it really taught me before Iopened up another location,
before I opened up anotherbusiness, I have to work on the
system so much more in thebeginning, and I think your
second location probably taughtyou more, way more than your
first.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, the first one was first one just worked
because it was small.
It was sought after.
It still is.
I have a great team there, butthe systems don't apply because
there's so much different hereRight Now.
It gave me a base on what notto do, but it didn't really
teach me what to do.
Here I'm learning what to doRight, but the first one taught
me a lot of what not to do again.
That's amazing, you know.
So it just opened up a lotthere.
(21:12):
You know what not to do, whatto do, and hopefully there I can
do it better, you know, andthat's when the systems start
coming in, I hope.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Sure, no doubt.
And even though it's a deli,it's a different type of
business If you focus more onthe systems of people and how
the people are going to function.
If you took anybody off thestreet and say, hey, make this
sandwich or slice this meat,anybody off the street's got to
be able to come in and do itseamlessly, like it's not a big
deal, but the amount of timethat that takes for you to
(21:49):
create that system for that oneprocess.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
that's where the investment is, and then it
becomes not somebody learninghow to make pizza or make my
sauce.
It becomes finding someone whocan follow a system, because if
you can follow the system, youcan make the pizza.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
You can make the sauce.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
But if you don't follow it, then I have to rely
on you making pizza.
But that's what I do, that'swhat you do.
You just need to do how I wantit done.
I don't need you to come in anddo it different.
I need you to do it the way Ineed it done.
So Finding someone who canfollow the system is almost, if
not more important than findingsomeone who can actually cook
100%.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I can teach anybody how to cook Because they have to
follow.
In our restaurants we havepasta creations Every time they
make that meal.
It's different every singletime, so they need to understand
the process of saute toactually perform at the highest
level.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Exactly what ingredients do what, when and
when they're introduced to thesauce, to the oil, production
everything oil Production Allthat stuff.
So when do you add this type ofingredient, no matter how your
creation goes?
You add this red onion now.
Right, you know.
You add bacon now.
You add prosciutto now.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You don't add shrimp first, exactly, so you do it now
, right.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
So you can create your own shit, as long as you
understand the system of thecreation.
Yeah exactly, and that's.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
That's not easy, and that's the people, I think is
the one thing that we're talkingabout here and I think in
today's environment.
You know, covid definitelychanged the environment of
employees and diners, and 100percent diners especially.
We're a family orientedrestaurant, very like you know,
families, young kids coming inhigh chairs everywhere.
That's what we are as a brandand the environment's definitely
(23:25):
changed.
But I think work ethic haschanged a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And we're trying to adapt to that Sure, and I don't
know if it'll ever come back.
I'm not sure.
I do see that the youngergeneration I'm talking about the
kids that are coming in, 19, 18years old are starting to be a
little bit more receptive toworking.
Yeah, then I do in a 25 30 yearolds.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
that's the hardest part right now is that 25, 27,
20, I like 19 year olds and 50year olds, yeah if you could go
back to when you were way back,when you first started, what
would the most crucial hirewould you have made back then to
take one of your hats off?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I would have hired a coach, a business coach Like
your own coach to walk youthrough it 100%, because I came
from Jersey and we were a littlecocky up there and I came down
I knew everything and like I hada business consultant come in
the very first time and I'm like, have you ever been in a
restaurant business?
He goes, no, I'm like, then getthe hell out of here.
It's a really stupid mistake.
(24:19):
I really needed a mentor and atthat point, when you're a young
entrepreneur, you don't want totell anybody you're failing or
you don't know what you're doing.
You're afraid to tell peoplethat and, unfortunately, you
need to be honest and you needto surround yourself with people
that have.
And when I talk about hiringcoaches, I'm going to hire a
coach.
They need to have done thatbefore.
They need to have been in abusiness, hired employees done
(24:41):
this.
There's a lot of businesscoaches out there that I work
with, I'm around, that havenever owned a business.
They watch YouTube.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
They have you a fail too, I like to call those coach
in a box.
You can't talk about thefailure if you've never
experienced it.
I don't care what it is.
The emotional connection to afailure is is the same, no
matter what you're doing, nodoubt, but I think the time
collapsing because, again, youspent years making costly
mistakes.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I did.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
And if you had someone that was like, yeah,
don't do that, it's going tocost you $10,000 or half a
million.
You know it's going to cost youmoney, don't do that.
And you pay them a littlepercentage yes, in the long run
you're going to actually makemore money.
So I mean it's time collapsingwith knowledge.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
For me it's like I've hired over 20,000 people in my
life, and when you hire 20,000,I'm like, oh, that sounds like
amazing.
That's amazing.
How did you do that?
No, it's 20,000 situations thatI've had to handle.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
It's all about situational management for me
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So every time, the only thing that changes is the
face will change, but everysituation is different, so it
gives you a different skilllevel and it's painful I mean
it's it.
It's been a very challengingpiece of my business, but every
single day I'm grateful for theopportunities I've had, because
it creates a different awarenessevery single day yeah, no, I
get it.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, it definitely makes a big difference.
But yeah, I think that's that'sthe restaurant business isn't
for the faint of heart.
Anyways, I have three daughters.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
They're not in the restaurant business.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, so your kids are all in that entrepreneur
space too.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
They are.
They all like, everybody's like.
Why aren't your daughters inthe restaurant business?
I'm like I don't want them inthis business unless they love
it.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
And you know, my girls grew up watching my wife
and I work every day till 9, 10o'clock at night, every night,
and they're like I don't wantthis for my life.
I said.
But if one of them would havecame to me and said this is my
passion, they would be runningall my restaurants right now.
But they're all entrepreneurs,they're all on their own in the
lanes.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
That's cool, that's really cool, that's good news
too.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You know, the first thing we think is our kids are
going to take this over.
And I don't know if that's true.
My kids love to eat, they lovewhat I do and everything like
that, but I don't think they'renot passionate.
They're passionate eaters, butthey're not passionate in doing
it.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
This is a special place for somebody, a different
level of passion.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, if you force it on them or if you push them
into it, you're definitely notgoing to get results there, no
doubt.
So it's a matter of you know, Ibring my kids around and if
they grow into it, they do.
If they don't, that's theirchoice.
You know, that's great.
But I do know that I don't wantthem to do the same thing I'm
doing as far as not being aroundand always being at work.
And you know, I get up in themorning, still right now, and it
(27:20):
seems like the more I go, theharder it is.
It's not the opposite.
Where you think it's easier,it's not.
I wake up in the morning, Iwill go to bed thinking about
specials, what I'm going to do,my ingredients, the losses, the
gains.
You're thinking about that allday long because we don't have
much room for error here.
It's not like if we're going todeliver a ship we're building
and make a million dollars, itcould be a little paint chip or
something.
We could fix that later here.
If our paint chip's here, we'rein trouble.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
We're in the penny business Exactly.
I tell everybody all the timethey don't understand, but I
love the restaurant industry andwe could complain about the
restaurant all day long.
But I was so blessed to be inthe restaurant business because
I was able to diversify andactually take any dollars I had
and invest it in other placesand really grow my life because
(28:01):
of it.
It was a skill that I wasfortunate enough in Jersey at 15
years old for a boss to give methat opportunity and I could
easily look back and say, god,the restaurant business was
horrible, but the restaurantbusiness is who I am today yeah,
I couldn't see it any other way.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
My level of success from the restaurant, or from
working and being, is from therestaurant business.
I've tried it other places andit just didn't suit me.
I couldn't find a passion forit.
It was always just a job and no, I didn't like doing anything
else.
And I do like doing thisbecause I'm comfortable in it
and it's a lot different whenyou have your own and you've
worked for it and your staffworks for you.
I didn't have so much of apassion for it when I was
(28:38):
working for other people, but Istill loved doing it because
it's where I was comfortablegoing to work Well, and why not?
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I mean, you've turned it into a brand, it's not just
a restaurant.
So I think for people out therethat we've said this on the
show your brand is your business, you are your brand, your brand
is your business and ifbusiness Like you are your brand
, your brand is your businessand if you don't treat it like a
business, it fails.
So I've always lived by that andthe marketing side of things.
But when you had the restaurant, when did you know Cause you
(29:05):
have?
You know why not Wednesdays?
You had the stuff with.
You know the?
The um sports are like you hadall the arenas, you have all
those things.
When did you know that it wastime to invest in that?
Was there times where their key?
When did you know that it wastime to invest in that?
Was there times where therewere key indicators where you're
like, okay, I have enough money, I want to expand this way, I
want to invest in this.
Or were those justopportunities that were brought?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
to you.
When I first started in 93,everybody said, oh my gosh, this
is a franchise.
Because from the very beginningmy brand was so critically
important to me, we registered,trademarked all of our logos,
our shirts, all of our employeeshave 401k health benefits from
day one.
And so all of a sudden westarted sponsoring little league
teams, soccer teams, and that'swhere it kind of grew from.
(29:48):
Then all of a sudden Isponsored three little league
teams, then I sponsored theentire league.
Now we sponsor over 20,000little league players and like
25,000 soccer players.
Then all of a sudden everybodysees us sponsoring the Little
Leagues and then ODU comes andsays, hey, can you sponsor our
ticket system?
And then, you know, the soccerarena says, hey, can you sponsor
us?
Then the amphitheater.
(30:09):
And so it just kind of grewfrom there.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
And with that, when kids are playing youth, they're
growing up with that name infront of them and then eating
that pizza after the game andgoing to yeah it becomes now it
becomes a brand.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
It's a brand, yeah, so you built into that, so it
didn't.
And tracking, like for peoplewho don't know how to do that,
like tracking roi on that kindof stuff, do you?
I mean, do you have any systemsfor that?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I what my suggestion with tracking roi, I'm a big roi
person but tracking I alwayslook at all of my vending and my
outside catering as marketing.
Okay, so it's in your marketingbudget.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
It's a marketing budget for me.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
If I make money on, why Not Wednesday?
But see a day like today whereit's raining.
I know you can't see outside,but a day like today it's
raining, I lose the entire day.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
You know, if it rains and I'm at the amphitheater and
it's a concert going on, I'lllose the whole day.
So I look at it as a normalbusiness where I can scale it.
We're in four walls, you know,you can predict that this
business is going to be busytoday, but on outside vending,
when you're scaling in yoursponsorships, it's purely
marketing for me.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Do you have a percentage that you guys put
towards marketing?
Do you have a set percentage?
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Typically we're always like 4%, 4.5%, 4% for
marketing.
And you know when we werefull-fledged with all of it,
when we were spending almost400,000 a year on marketing
alone, just in sponsorships, andthen another 400,000 on top of
it.
So it was a big, big expensefor us so we've cut down since
COVID.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
We're probably half of that right now Put a big
payout in the back.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Huge.
I mean just building a brand,so like notoriety, trust that
brand yeah is is so important,and I've always been hyper brand
focused.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Oh yeah, I know yeah and I know you.
So I mean I know what you do inthe businesses.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I mean just the event last week.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, you do events all the time and we all know the
name, which is cool.
But I just think a lot of notjust restaurant owners, business
owners in general don'tquantify, like marketing budgets
.
Like don't quantify marketingbudgets.
They don't look at it andthey're like, oh, we're just
gonna have someone in thekitchen do social media every so
often.
When you pay someone, yes,that's an expense, but you gotta
(32:06):
do something at some point.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
You can't look at the labor.
The problem is people look athiring that social media person
and say, oh, that's a labor cost, like hiring someone.
But that is purely a marketingexpense Marketing Everything I
do.
If I give away free food, if Igive away, say I give away 100
pieces, I don't look at it asfood costs, I look at it as
marketing.
Take that expense and put it tomarketing.
Okay, and I don't thinkrestaurateurs focus enough on
(32:28):
their brand.
And how are they sending theirmessaging?
What is the messaging they'reprojecting out?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, well, obviously the book.
You wrote the book.
You have the speaking businessnow, so you started doing that.
This parlayed into businesscoaching.
So how many technical LLCs doyou have right now?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I think 16 or 17.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Okay, it's just a couple.
Just a couple, we're justadding to it all.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
So tell us about your book.
How long did it take you towrite that book?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
And what's the name of Anywhere you can buy a book?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
It's everywhere I actually saw it in the airport
when, I was in Atlanta orwhatever.
And I walked by and took apicture because I was like, oh,
that's my friend, how are youdoing?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It was in every airport all the way across the
country.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
It was awesome.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Forbes produced my book for me, so I'm on Forbes
podcast.
I'm on the Forbes blogs.
Eight Fundamentals of Businesshow to Scale your Business all
the way from people a lot ofwhat I talked about today.
But my book took.
Everybody asked me how long didit take you to write the book?
It took me 42 years to write thebook Because it is in my entire
(33:31):
chapter of my life in businessand my passion is to inspire
entrepreneurs and leaders allover the world, and that's
really my goal.
That's the next chapter of mylife I'll probably be in.
I don't know how long I'll bein the restaurant business I was
going to say are you going toopen another restaurant?
No, my full business is going tobe just helping inspire people
over the world.
I want to impact the world, andbeing in a restaurant or stuck
(33:53):
in construction is I'll never beable to do that.
So I'm 56 right now, so my nextit was.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
It was a good vehicle to get you there, though Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
I mean I could that's when I say 42 years to write a
book I would never be the coachor the mentor or the speaker
that I am today.
Without all that.
I mean, I am who I am becauseof the experiences in my life.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Sure, when you're around people all the time and
you're trying to please them,you learn quickly how to do it
and how not to.
And you learn a lot abouttemperamental.
You learn about people'sfeelings and emotions.
And reading a room and readingtheir faces, reading their eyes,
knowing what's hitting what'snot, If you're not being in the
hospitality business allows you,gives us a direct no doubt.
Direct to that, and it'simportant because I'm now
(34:35):
learning it myself, whereasbefore I was shut off to it.
I just I want to make good food.
I'm a chef, don't bother me,da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Well, now it's the totalopposite.
Now it's like let's be a littlepatient and see what they have
to say, let's think about it,let's move forward.
How can I turn this intosomething?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
that I don't have to be cooking every day Because
there's going to be a.
It'll be hard for you to growyour business without it.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Without it right.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
If you're stuck in behind that.
It took me forever to learnthis, but you brought up
awareness and I always teasepeople and I say on my tombstone
it'll be the man that tried tosolve awareness.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Because it's probably one of the most frustrating
things for me.
I have crazy 3D vision.
I see things in 3D, but youknow as well as I do, the
restaurant business trains us tohave awareness.
Sure, we see the person thatdrops their fork or the person
that comes out of the bathroomand they're waving their hand.
I'm like, oh, the paper towel'sout of the bathroom.
Yeah, we see that.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
And a lot of people don't have that nowadays.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
No, Well it's funny because she's on our team, but
she's also one of our serversfor a while here, Right, and and
she can tell you that I say toeverybody in our meetings a lot
of times the biggest thing Iworry about here is situational
awareness.
If you can master situationalawareness, you can master the
rest of the room.
It's that easy.
You know how to do your job,you know how to serve, you're
(35:50):
skilled to be here in this place.
Now you have to worry aboutsituational awareness.
What's going on?
outside of your bubble is what'sgoing to make us better.
If everyone pays attention toyour bubble, your bubble and
your bubble, and you drop asilver on the floor and it's not
your table, then obviouslythat's situational awareness.
If a guest walks through thefront and they're looking around
and you can tell they haven'tspoke to anybody and they're
kind of lost.
Going to them directly issituational awareness Without it
(36:12):
, we're nothing.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
You know what I mean?
We're nothing.
I'll go back to the thing.
We can't scale our businesswithout people, so situational
awareness creates scaling.
If we look at scaling in thesefour walls, you're scaling
through your people.
You can't grow your business ifthe servers are constantly not
doing the right thing.
You won't scale, you'll grow,you'll out of business.
If you look at business frominside these four walls of a
(36:37):
restaurant, it's no differentthan opening up another 50
locations.
It's the same exact process ofthat waitress seeing that person
at that front door.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
And what you said about scaling is interesting
because the other thing aboutawareness is, in order to grow
as well, you have to be aware ofyour scaling down.
When things start scaling down,you have to admit it, find the
problem quick, and a lot of thetimes, a lot of the times, I
find out the problem sometimeswas me, no doubt.
Not addressing it, not takingcharge of it, or letting it
(37:05):
slide or putting someone else onit.
These are things that Irealized in time from the other
place, the original place.
One of those things I learnednot to do is that is let things
slide or not address them when Ishould, or not admitting that.
Okay, I should have just did itthis way.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
My father was a police officer and he always had
this thing, the man in themirror he's like because
whenever I did something wronghe goes go look in that mirror,
because that's the problem.
And it didn't really resonatewith me as a kid.
But like I train my managersnow criticize yourself first no
matter what Assume in delegation, there's four steps to
(37:42):
delegation.
It's to task the person, set anexpectation and follow through.
I said if you think you've setthe expectation and they still
make a mistake, you probablydidn't set the proper
expectation.
If it happens three times, man,maybe I'm looking at the person
at that point, but first thingI'm going to do is criticize
myself that I did not set theexpectation properly, right?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
That's smart.
Set the expectation properlyRight.
Smart, that's smart, it's justdifferent.
I mean leadership and kind ofuniversal.
It doesn't matter what yourbusiness it doesn't matter, it
doesn't matter.
I think, that's the best part,but you've taken a lot of risks.
So I think that's another partof the success factor is you
have to be somewhat not crazybut just be able to take the
risks without as much fear asother people.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
My daughters would tell me, because I used to say
all the time that I'm crazy.
And my daughters would starttelling me Dad, stop saying
you're crazy, you're blessed.
But my wife would probably notlike me saying that I'm a risk
taker.
She thinks I probably.
No more businesses.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I know Lord bless her .
She puts up with it, she does agreat job, it's in my veins
it's in my veins.
It's who you are.
It's who you are.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
People don't understand that.
About people like us, orentrepreneurs, it doesn't matter
what you're doing.
Once you have that in yourblood, you can't stop you want
it more People say oh, you'remarried to work, you're addicted
?
No, I'm not.
This is who I am and this isit's how I function.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
It's more comfortable I'm comfortable Like people
think you're money-driven.
That's the furthest thing fromme.
I am so success-driven and now,as I've become later in life, I
am people-driven to help otherpeople be successful because
I've had the opportunities inlife.
I've been a crazy risk takerand you know, in business it's
usually some very simplisticthings that stop a business from
(39:22):
growing and succeeding andgoing out of business.
Yeah yeah, very simple.
And you and your branding world, you know people just don't
even understand the companythey're working for.
They don't understand theirpurpose and as founders, we
think it's X but it doesn't makesense to the customer or the
employees.
So I spend a lot of timecoaching companies through their
people and their customers andthen going back and seeing their
(39:44):
vision.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, it's a feeling or a solution.
I mean if you have one of thosetwo things, you'll be
successful.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
I love solutions.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, I love solutions.
So if you have a solution to aproblem which you've solved by
opening multiple otherbusinesses to solve those
problems, or if you just createa feeling, so your brand itself
should boil down to one word,Like how does it make you feel
it should be one word?
And if you can't do that, thenyou haven't done enough work on
the back end to actually figureout the ethos of your brand.
So, yeah, I mean that's alwaysa thing.
(40:12):
We could talk brand forever Iknow We've had these like
discussions and he operates insome of the same circles I do.
It's fun because a lot ofpeople don't realize it.
It's the most overlooked partof some of these businesses.
It's not the dollar all thetime, it's the longevity.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
I think the dollar will come.
If you do the right thing, themoney will come.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
If you sit there and focus on the money.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
You're going to make a lot of mistakes trying to make
money.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
You'll never make money.
I tell young entrepreneurs.
I'm like why do you want toopen a business?
I want to be rich.
I'm like don't go in business,don't do that, I'm like do not
go in business Because you can'tcontrol that, don't do it.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
You can't control it.
The only thing you can controlis how you go about your day and
how you go about putting outthere what you want to project.
You can't control if everyone'sgoing to bite it or not.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
If Then there's a lot of other things you could be
the best chef in the world andyou could lose your business.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Oh, yeah, of course it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
You're not in the food business, right.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, it's just creating.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I'm not in the food business, I'm in the people
business.
Yeah, because I have to getevery single person that's in
that restaurant has to performat the highest level for me to
execute.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Right to want to come back.
If they don't come back, you'regoing out of business.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
The bus boy.
The bus boy, they can destroyyour restaurant.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, of course, in two seconds, like we said, the
cancer is like when you'retrying to cut things out.
You just, yeah, just cut it off, Just get rid of it.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
There's been many restaurants.
I've gone to that.
The server has messed upBecause the experience was so
bad, but I didn't mind theexperience from a waitress
giving bad service.
But where was the manager?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Like nobody stepped in.
They didn't react.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
That's a problem too, is when people don't go after
it.
Yeah, you have to handle it.
Look, problems happen, but it'snot the problem, it's the
solution.
If your solution is bigger thanthe problem, you'll fucking
succeed.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
The best customer.
That's right, exactly, that'strue, exactly, a hundred percent
, great yes.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I mean that's, that's an amazing thing for every
restaurateur to learn, rightthere Yep Treat every yep.
So many managers are like, oh,they're a pain in the ass,
they're a horrible customer.
The same problem.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Exactly, yeah, no, you can kill them with you can
kill them with kindness,sometimes too, and they come
back around Well when it comesto the servers, everyone's,
every.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Every server is the customer is the piece of shit.
It's always the way it is, butmaybe they're not wrong.
Let's see what they have to say.
Yeah, Not every bad.
Not every review, not every badreview talk about reputated
reviews.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I mean 30.
I'm open 32 years I didn't havethat yeah I didn't have it when
I was.
That is gold.
I mean in your business, in thebranding business, it's gold
you can find out a lot of things, and how many people use it,
everyone.
How many people use the actualreview, though, to change your?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
business?
Well, I do, and I look at themall and I do realize there is a
big window now of where thereview system has gone a little
awry, where people are justbitching and they're complaining
about their moment, yeah, butall that aside though you can
learn a lot from them.
That's where I learn a lot ofwhat's going on in dining room
If you read the same review andyou know it's the same person
(43:15):
over and over again.
Obviously every customer is notan asshole.
Maybe, you're an asshole, maybeyou serving asshole.
Maybe you're an asshole.
Maybe you serving sucks.
Maybe you're the problem.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Maybe you're an asshole, you know what I'm
saying.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
If somebody says three reviews in a row, that
they waited forever to see theirserver, and you look back and
it's the same server, well thenthere's your answer, you know
what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
It's quite simple and even the bad reviews that I get
, I always look for something10% in it.
It's like when you're playingbilliards Somebody says I don't
have a shot.
I'm like you always have a shot.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
There's something in there, but it's every review.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
It may be two words.
I'm like mm.
I can get that, I'm trying toput myself in there.
I'm sitting in the dining room,that's right, that's where
front door.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I tell her all the time Something happened at that
front door when they walked in.
That set this chain of events.
Man, something happened andmost of it was how you didn't
handle it.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
I'm a Nazi with my front door.
I see somebody standing at thatfront door for more than 20
seconds.
I'm like who's got the door?
Speaker 1 (44:14):
I do it too.
He knows, I'm here a lot.
I'll be in here and I'm likethis light's off, Like I do it
too, but I'm also that type ofperson, so I'm like, yeah, we
all have to be, you have to be.
I mean, sometimes people don'tnotice things You've got to call
it out.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
If you have situational awareness, you have
it, no matter where you are.
You could be in a subwaylooking around saying why is
that sticker?
Peeled on the wall that'stelling you how to get off the
damn thing.
It's navy seals.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
I mean they come in my restaurant and they're the
most stoic people in the worldwhen they come in.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
So I know I'm like navy seal, navy seal, navy seal
but they're so hyper aware ofeverything that's going on they
sit there, very stoic, just mostof them, yes, until they get
older, and then they just don'tnotice it, they don't care
anymore, they don't care anymore.
So that's yeah, welcome to myworld.
Sometimes they're just likeit's fine, everything is fine,
but no, but it's great havingyou on.
(45:04):
I think that a lot of people inthis area they know the name,
they know the brand, but theydon't know everything else you
have done.
So it's pretty cool.
So thank you for like takingtime out for all of our 16
businesses.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Can you give us a little something on where they
can find a?
Your book is on amazon.
Repeat that if you don't mind,and where else you?
You got anything else you wantto put out there, yeah it's
where the Business ScalingBlueprint's my book.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
You can go to TonyDeSilvestrocom, so a full
website with that and I'm at myrestaurant six nights a week
shaking hands with kids andbabies on Great Neck Road.
So if you need to find me there, find it.
Why not pizza?
Great stuff, good pizza in thearea I know 757.
So we're supporting and it'sgreat.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
So, yeah, thank you.
Well, thank you for having me.
Thanks for all you do for thecommunity.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Thanks for all you do for the restaurants and
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
You keep the standard , at least in the pizza world to
where everyone else has to stayup with you, and that, in turn,
is good for everybody, becausewe get a better product all the
way around.
No doubt we'll have a marketing, we'll have a marketing
discussion.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
I'm ready.
I love it sounds good.
All right, my friend soundsgood.
All right, ciao for now.
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