March 9, 2021 • 41 mins
Today's world is full of fearful, scary things. In this episode, Chef Todd gets real as he talks about what makes him scared and how his fear of failure becomes his motivation for success.
Listen as Chef Todd tells tales of himself as a much younger chef and how those experiences and failures have made him the chef and leader he is today.
Join him today for an introduction into the world of events from a back of house, culinary and operations point of view.
Mentioned on Today's Show:
- Scimitar Consulting Group| Cutting Edge Consulting for the Catering Industry
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Proceed with caution.
This episode has a few"F" words.
Discretion is advised.
Welcome back to catering, WTF,episode 10.
What makes you scared?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
The catering WTF tonight's episode is called
am scared.
So now I'm going to unload asteaming pile of sh@t on you,
because this is not a rant.
This is not something thatangers me about our industry or
that is passionate for myindustry.
(00:50):
This is about me being scared.
And it's about fear, right?
With the situation going on inthe world today.
Uh, there's a lot of fear.
So it means I have fear.
So when the catering world rightnow, there's a lot to be fearful
of.
I've never been through this.
(01:11):
No one has been through this.
No caterer I've ever talked tohas been like, Oh yeah, we've
been through a pandemic.
So we got this.
We we've been through three andwe're really good at it.
Like none of this has happened.
So there's a tremendous amountof fear out there.
I have fear.
I'm scared.
I don't know what to do.
(01:32):
And there's multiple differentideas and conflicts.
And what do we do?
And, and employees feeling oneway, employees feeling the other
way, staff that it's crazy.
So this episode is about fearand it's going to turn into my
personal fear and I'm going tobe really deep and very
(01:56):
introspective about mepersonally.
So bear with me.
I need to express this because Ineed to let this out.
And I need to let other peopleknow who are also very fearful
and very scared about what'sgoing on in the future.
My personal fear, as we talkabout some of the things I'm
(02:16):
going to talk about tonight isfailure.
That's my personal fear.
It was because of my childhoodbecause of some of the things
that I went through because ofwhatever it is.
It's my personal fear, right?
I do not want to be a failure.
Number one, personal fear.
I will lay in a bed of snakes.
(02:38):
I will jump off a cliff and Iwill overcome those.
Now I did that.
I've done those things.
I pushed myself to do fearfulthings.
And some people say, Oh, they're, you know, you're a adrenaline
junkie or whatever.
Well, I've jumped off a cliff,but the reason I off that cliff
(03:00):
wasn't because my fear ofHeights, which I do have, I
don't want to jump off somethingthat's super high and I may be
die.
That's that's not what I want todo.
But when I get up there to jumpand I looked down and I'm like,
Holy, this is far.
And I'm scared.
The next thing that kicks in isyou're a failure.
(03:23):
If you don't jump my fear offailure overcomes my fear of
Heights.
So I now know what my personalmotivation is and its failure.
So I jumped off that Clift and Iwas very proud of myself for
doing that because I overcamethe fear of Heights.
(03:46):
No I didn't.
I overcame the fear of failure.
I overcame the fear of settingyour goal to do something and
then following through and doingit.
That's the fear of failure.
It's not the fear of Heights.
And so that's what I'm lookingfor.
And now in this age that we havenow, and this year, it's been
(04:09):
super crazy.
Now we're going into the end ofCOVID or, or what most people
are saying in the end of COVID,right?
So we've had a, super year andcatering and in restaurants and
in hospitality, nothing'savailable, nothing's done.
We're all struggling.
(04:29):
We're all about to fail asbusinesses and everything else.
And that's also a fear offailure.
And now here we are.
And all of a sudden we'relooking super busy.
We're looking slammed.
And now I have a fear of failureof producing.
And that is a huge issue.
(04:52):
So here's the, here's the fears.
COVID, COVID the fear, right?
Everybody's scared of COVID someor most people, some people
aren't, but COVID does scare.
What happens if we're slammedand we're busy and somebody gets
COVID, how do we deal with that?
(05:12):
How do we execute the partiesthat we're executing right now
in April?
We're very busy.
We have five, six, seven partieson a Saturday, four parties on
our Friday, two parties on aSunday.
If we get COVID, how do weexecute those things?
And right now we have verylittle staff.
(05:33):
Everybody has cut staff down.
So we're at the bare minimum ofstaff, right?
So that's, that's fearful.
That's scary as.
How do we do that?
Um, we now are in conversationsabout what happens if somebody
gets COVID, how do we deal withthat?
How do we eat corn team, theteam, if we quarantine the team
and we have very little team,how do we execute that?
(05:55):
All the parties that we have tothat's super scary.
And how do we deal with that?
The level of business coming islike a tsunami.
It's a huge wave.
And we have limited staff andlimited things that we're doing.
So how do we overcome that?
And then how do we hire forthat?
(06:17):
So now we're hiring just likeevery person in the hospitality
industry right now is hiringacross the United States and
across the world.
We're all now hiring.
Cause everybody's now gearingback up.
We went down to a bare minimumand now we're gearing up.
So we went from six employeesand now we need 75 employees.
(06:41):
How the are we supposed to dothat and be successful?
How are we supposed to do that?
That's super scary to me.
And it gives me a tremendousamount of fear.
So I don't know how to do that.
And then when we get them, let'ssay we do get them, which we're
struggling.
Even getting people.
I mean up, especially in SouthCarolina, I've heard it from
(07:03):
Georgia and Atlanta.
They're struggling because mostpeople went into HPAC or they
went back to school oreverything else.
So we're missing a large portionof the hospitality industry.
So how does that work?
How do we train them?
We can't afford to bring them inweeks and weeks ahead of time,
(07:24):
train them and do everythingelse because we have no money.
We're barely surviving.
So now it becomes magic aprontheory, right?
You, you hire people, you givethem a magic apron.
They're immediately supposed toknow exactly what they do and
how they do it.
And it performed to the best oftheir ability that that doesn't
work.
It's proven every time andrestaurants, hotels everywhere.
(07:46):
It doesn't, it doesn't work.
You have to give people theability to train, understand
your system, know what's goingon and all that type of stuff.
And we don't, we don't have themoney to do that.
So that's super scary to me,right?
And I'm looking at theprojections coming up the end of
(08:07):
this month, April, may, June.
And I'm like, this is, this is atsunami.
That's going to kill hundreds ofthousands of people.
Like it's just not good.
And we have to be prepared.
How do we get prepared?
How do we choose to spend ourmoney to get prepared?
How do we hire people?
(08:27):
Who do we get?
And right now it's, it's thebuyer's market because people
are out of jobs and we have topay more than unemployment.
We have to play, pay more thanwhat they're doing and they're
going to go through hell.
So we, if, if you're going to goto hell, then you have to pay
good because you could just sitat home, collect unemployment.
(08:50):
You don't go through hell.
So it's those types of things.
And that's super scary to meright now.
So it's about culture and whatcan we do for culture?
So now I have to change theculture to make this the best
job ever and super cool, superhip, best food, all of the
things that you have to do toinspire people to more want to
(09:13):
do this.
And that's also hard.
And it's also a source ofcontention with me because I
don't want to fail at that.
Again.
Fear of failure team.
I have a small core team.
How do I protect them?
What is my fear for them?
(09:35):
I don't want them.
These people have been with meand my company through the
entire thing.
They need to be rewarded.
They're my superheroes.
So they get precedence overeverything.
So I can't hire people abovewhat they're getting paid
because these have gone to thetrenches with me and they
(09:59):
deserve it.
So that becomes an issue.
And how do you maintain them andhow do you protect them from
COVID and how do you protectthem for these things?
Now, all of a sudden, SouthCarolina is open to do all kinds
of parties.
We're going to do parties to 300people.
And sometimes we're going to doan on the same night, five of
those parties.
(10:19):
I don't know if those people areCOVID safe.
Most of them aren't.
So how do I protect my team?
That's a fear.
I'm fearful of that.
I'm scared as about that.
The other thing is executingabove expectation.
One of my pride things I'vealways done is I want to have a
(10:42):
bride and groom have a corporateclient.
I don't care who it is.
I'm going to talk to you aboutyour party, do your party.
And then the day of your party,my goal is to exceed your
expectations.
How am I going to do that?
Now, when I have nobody workinghere and nobody doing what they
(11:03):
need.
Yeah.
I just don't have the staff.
I don't have the training.
I don't have any of the toolsthat I need to have to build
what I need to build.
How am I going to do that?
Okay.
That's failure for me.
So that's super scary.
And I'm very scared about that.
I don't want to be the personwho's not good enough.
(11:25):
I want to be the person whorises above that.
And I try very hard.
I work my off to do that.
I plan for that and everythingelse, but it's crazy.
I want respect.
I want respect from my team.
I'm respect for my business.
I want respect from my clients,right?
So fear of being not respectedbecomes a huge issue because if
(11:50):
you're not respected, it'sfailure again, fear of failure.
And that's super hard for me todeal with.
Um, I went through a week lastweek.
That was tremendously hard forme because we failed at a party
and I haven't done this in along time.
(12:12):
And it wasn't very busy.
I had my AA team on this I had,it was like the seal team.
There is nothing that can happenat a party that this team can
not overcome and do and exceedexpectations only we didn't.
And so in my anger anddepression and fear of failure
(12:38):
and everything else, I wanted toquit.
I wanted to be like, this is.
I'm done.
But I didn't.
It reminded me of a story when Iwas in 1989.
So now you guys know how longI've been doing this when I was
just at carbos in a restaurantin Atlanta.
(12:59):
And I did a huge, huge dinnerwho was up, but at the time was
150 people.
It was a shin dinner.
It had tons, half the group waschefs, right?
So you want to perform for thesepeople that was back in the day
when I was young and pissy.
And like, I really like, I'mgoing to make a name for myself.
(13:21):
I'm going to recreate what theculinary world is.
I'm going to do all this great.
Right?
And I spent hours and days doingthis, like literally three hours
of sleep, back and forth to workthree days in a row, doing all
the things that you need to dohave my best team on it.
Put labor dollars against it andeverything else.
And we did.
(13:42):
We want, I want us to do like aPusan with a stuffing in it and
doing all this crazy French.
Cause that's what I thoughtwould be cool back then.
And back then, you have toremember in 1989, everything was
put in a hotbox with caps on it,right?
You, you guys know that, youknow, all older chefs, they know
this is plated put on a plate,put a metal cap on it, put it in
(14:07):
a hot box, right?
That's the way food used to bedone.
It's crap.
We all know it's crap.
So I refuse to do that for thisparty.
I unplugged all the hot boxes.
I would like, we're nevercapping anything.
We're going to do it to order ablah, blah, blah.
I set it up.
I hired the staff, I goteverything done.
It was super planned out to theminute to the person, everything
(14:30):
and the person pulling the poosongs out of that, which Tucsons
are like small chickens.
They pulled them out of the ovenand we had it coordinated that
we rotate in the oven.
What's done first and what'sdone last.
What?
Like what, what PanIN went infirst, what Pam went in last.
And unfortunately the personthat was doing that somehow mix
(14:53):
that up.
So the pan that went in firstwas still in there.
And the pan that went in lastwas the first one polled.
So as you can imagine, the firsthalf of the party got raw
chicken.
The last thing you want to dowith a group with chefs and
everybody else in a fine diningdinner, that's five courses.
And you're trying to make a namefor you.
(15:14):
Yourself is send out rawchicken, right?
I don't care.
You send out raw fish.
Yeah.
It's still, you know,questionable.
If it's tuna, it's fine.
If it's beef and it's rare andit's not medium, then okay.
You can cook it back.
Like the, all those are justlike, ah, this kind of like a
gray area, raw chickens, not agray area, dude.
(15:37):
It's raw chicken.
No one wants chicken tar.
That's why we don't do it.
I was mortified.
Servers were coming back,chickens, raw.
I'm like, what the is going on?
Then I realized they pulled itfrom the wrong oven at the time.
Now we're pulling the rightthing.
So we're still sending platesout.
(16:00):
But now I have to read it, cookchicken.
I don't have the chicken toreally cook.
So I have to re cook eachperson's plate that didn't go
well.
And that turned into a giantcluster.
of.
And my reaction to that was doesquit.
Just quit, go away, leave rightnow and never come back to the
(16:21):
food industry because my name'snever going to have this.
I'm done.
You know, I'm never going to bethe great.
And back then there was noAnthony Bordain or Gordon Ramsey
or food network.
It was what I was trying to do.
And it was a total.
(16:41):
Then I had actual chefs comeback from the table while they
were eating and come back andsay your chicken's raw.
And this is what you should havedone.
They're all trying to help me.
They're trying to inspire me.
And at that time I looked like adead man there.
I'm not listening to any ofthat.
(17:01):
Um, I, I look like I jumped intoa pool filled with ice.
I'm just no blood, no anythingstanding there frozen walking
around like a zombie because atthis point, my life's over.
And so I did that somehow madeit through that day and was
(17:24):
mortified.
And then the next day had to goback to work, listen to the
owners of the restaurant, say,what the happened?
What are you doing?
I knew we shouldn't have hiredyou as the chef.
I knew you were not good enough.
I knew that eventually this wasgoing to happen, blah, blah,
(17:44):
blah, all that crap that theygive you.
And I took it.
And I'm, you're right.
Except for the fact that theysaid, we knew you.
Weren't going to be good enoughif you knew I wasn't going to be
good enough.
Why the did you hire me?
Because you don't know either.
And your fear is fear offailure.
(18:07):
Your fear is, do I hire thisguy?
And if I hired this guy, are wegoing to be a failure, but we're
going to hire him anyway.
And then the minute the shipturns it's me.
And it was me and I totally getit.
It's my fault.
I owned it.
I understood it.
But at that point, I said tomyself, get your up off the
(18:31):
ground.
Reach out to those chefs thatcame and talked to you.
Talk to them about whathappened.
Learn from their experience,learn from my experience and get
your up off the ground and dobetter.
And here's the deal never, ever,ever let that happen again.
Swore to myself that will neverhappen again.
Well, guess what happened again?
(18:53):
It's happened five times and thelast time it happened was 14
days ago.
So it's still happens, right?
These are mistakes.
People make mistakes.
And I'm not saying that that'sthe answer I'm saying, it's what
happens, right?
We're human.
We make mistakes, but it stillkills you to the core.
(19:17):
And then it drives for mepersonally, it drives the fear
spear and to my heart.
And what that says is you're notgood enough.
You failed again.
You did not do the things thatyou need to do and you can't go
back and fix them.
So now you have an option.
What do you do?
(19:38):
Do you run away?
Do you quit?
Do you do all this?
I don't know.
That's what I wanted to do.
I mean, I met it head on when Iwas there, but now I'm like, I
don't know if I, should I bedoing this?
I have no idea.
So, you know, what I do is Iconfront fear and I try and deal
(19:59):
with this whole thing.
So I look up quotes and do somethings like that.
And I have two quotes.
I want to give you tonight.
And they're both quotes that are, um, pretty well-known and
they're, you know, fear quotes.
So the first one is fear, forgeteverything and run.
(20:21):
And I love that because that'swhat I want to do.
I wanted to forget everythingand run.
That's what fear means.
Forget everything and run, that.
Get away, Don finished, whateverit is.
And so you look at that andyou're like, ah, is that what
I'm doing on my career?
Is that what I'm going to do?
This job, all those kinds ofthings, or is it forget
everything and rise, rise to thechallenge, rise above the
(20:44):
mistake.
Learn from the stake, be abetter person, be a better chef,
be a better father, be a betterfamily member.
That's what it is.
So that's from Zig Ziglar and itwas used in the movie, the
joker, one of my favorites, theother one is the only thing you
have to fear is fear itself,right?
(21:07):
So everybody knows that quittoo.
So right.
It's all about fear.
And what's going on.
If you're in a war, it's fearabout dying.
If you're in a business, it'sfear about you're gonna fail at
a business, whether that'sfinancially, whether that's from
an area of respect from achef-driven area where it's like
(21:30):
your food's not good.
It's old and old school.
And I deal with that now too,with not only me, but where I'm
working.
Um, there there's challenges too, to fear of not doing that.
So it's crazy.
So, so I am scared.
Um, so now it comes down to howdo I deal with this?
(21:50):
How do you deal with fear,especially when your fear is
failure?
Right?
So the first thing I do, this isme personally.
The first thing I do ischallenge.
Fear.
You challenge, fear.
That's the way to get rid offear.
Yes.
I'm scared of this.
Yes.
This could be bad.
Yes.
This is possibly the wrong moveto in my life.
(22:14):
I know it's the wrong move and Ido a anyway.
So it's challenging fear andyou're going to be okay.
And that's what I say.
You're going to be okay now youmay not be better off.
You may have a different job.
This why I left Atlanta.
That's why I moved toCharleston.
You know, I, I left and youknow, I, I left a frying pan and
(22:36):
jumped into the fire here.
So it's fear.
That's what it is, but it'sokay.
That's what it, that's how itworks.
Um, what you have to do tocombat that prepare for it,
prepare for fear, keep yourselfstable, understand that you have
a job to do understand thatyou're good at other things,
(22:59):
prepare for the busy season.
Prepare for COVID.
Even though we all couldn't, butwe pivoted and that's preparing,
this is the situation.
This is what's coming up.
How are we going to survive?
Here's how we're going tosurvive.
Let's try these things.
Let's do these things.
I know we didn't do them in thepast.
I know they're different.
I know that's not what wenormally do, but we have to do
(23:21):
it.
We have to challenge herself andit could, we fail at it.
You God right.
We could.
But we didn't.
And that's the, when we didn't,we challenged ourselves.
We did things.
We did the things that we neededto do.
And we succeeded.
That is not failure, but that'schallenging fear.
And that's preparing for fearafter preparing for it.
(23:46):
Here's the other thing you needto watch and listen, fear is
based on not knowing what'sgoing on, right?
It's the unknown.
That's where it was.
That fear is the unknown, allthat.
But here's the thing.
If you watch and you listen andreally watch and really listen,
listen to your team, watch whatyour team does.
(24:07):
Watch the sales team, watch thecommunity, watch that atmosphere
, uh, the surroundings aroundyou.
And if you pay attention, ifit's like being in nature, if
you go kayaking and just sit inyour kayak and you listen to
nature, it's watching andlistening.
If you do that, you will beprepared to overcome fear.
(24:29):
It's super importantcommunication.
That's another one, alwayscommunicate.
I'm fearful of this.
This scares me.
I need help with this.
I'm scared that we may not beable to accomplish this.
How do we move forward?
That's communication do not bethe person that thinks you're
the.
(24:50):
And you never tell anybody, telleverybody all the time.
I'm scared that this may notwork.
I'm scared that we can notaccomplish the goals that we
have set.
I'm scared that we're not goingto be able to execute the seven
parties coming up.
I'm scared of that.
I'm letting everybody know Ineed help.
(25:11):
We need help.
How do we do this?
That's huge.
You have to fight the battles.
Now, if you say those things andcommunicate those things, then
everybody can be on your team.
We can fight the battles now sothat when we get to that bad
time, we have a plan.
We know what's going on.
(25:32):
Everybody knows that it's allin.
Like that's part of it.
So you got to fight thosebattles.
You got to do those things.
And that's where it gets crazy.
The last thing is you have toaccept failure, okay?
We all fail.
And honestly, failure is a greatthing.
(25:53):
And being afraid of having themost thing you're scared are
scared of is failure is probablythe most motivating thing.
That's why I say you got to hugyour failure sometimes because
that's how you learn.
That's the pain.
That's the anxiety.
That's the depression.
That's all of that.
All of that is pain from failureor how you feel.
(26:16):
You look at yourself, but it'snot always like that to other
people.
So get the up and make sure thatyou're doing the things that you
need to do and move past the,hugged, the failure and move on.
And that's the way it works.
And I'm gonna tell you the laststory about failure.
That really changed my life.
(26:36):
And there's, there's been a lotof instances, but this one is
very specific to me when I wasvery young.
My first culinary, probably mythird Conor job, my first one as
an executive chef, when you'reyoung and you're 24, 25, and you
(26:57):
think you are the and you'relistening, you're reading art
culinary.
And you're you're.
This is even before TV andeverybody's on food network and
all the different things thatare doing you.
You are striving to be the bestculinary person you can be.
And in your head, you're like,I'm going to be the.
(27:19):
And so when that happens, yourego takes over and you treat
people like crap sometimesbecause that's the kitchen
mentality.
And it definitely was way backwhen now it's not so much that
way.
But back then, if you couldn'thang, you couldn't do what you
were doing.
Then you got pounded, right?
Everybody jumped on you.
They jumped on you like hyenasto a dead animal.
(27:43):
It was, it was crazy.
And that's, but that's just thenorm.
So I had my first executive chefjob.
I've been doing pretty good.
I had some studs online.
You know, guys and girls aredoing great.
Pastry chef.
She was wicked good.
Like it was all this.
And I hired an older guy.
(28:03):
Uh, we needed a position filled.
He did.
Okay.
He was okay.
He was slow.
He had years of experience, buthe was slow.
It was different, differentstyle from what I was doing, we
were fine dining.
He didn't come from that field.
And he got murdered.
He literally got killed by myguys.
I had 20 year olds and 24 yearolds.
(28:26):
It was right around that age.
And they ran circles aroundthis.
Right.
They totally did.
He wasn't great.
And this is the, this is thething in most restaurants, like
if you're slow and you can'tcatch on and you're not really
good at what you're doing, theyattack you.
And then they fire you.
Right?
There's no training.
There's no like, Hey, what areyou good at?
(28:48):
Let me find, let me find whatyou're good at.
And, uh, accentuate the good anddecelerate, the bad that didn't
happen.
I didn't even know that backthen.
So we're in the middle of aSaturday night.
It's crazy as.
He's way behind.
Now.
(29:08):
I got to move people because I'mthe exec chef.
I'm moving people to help him onthe line.
I'm like, stop what you'redoing.
Go help this get out of theweeds because that's what
happens.
And halfway through that, hetook off his apron and said,
you, I'm outta here.
And he walked out, walked out ofthe line and the middle of the.
(29:34):
All right, everybody's in therestaurant.
Business has experienced thateverybody in the catering world
has experienced that.
Right?
And the first thing you do islike that.
Guy's a piece of.
Terrible.
Shouldn't have been bad hire.
I did a bad job.
Hiring should have had a linecook should have had this,
whatever it is, he sucks.
(29:54):
Nobody walks out on their shift.
That's you know, if you do that,you're a lame, take all the
abuse and deal with it, all thatcrap.
And so we managed to get throughthe night we're at the night,
we're at the end of the night,cleaning up, we have a beer and
everybody's talking about this.
Guy's a piece of, terrible,blah, blah, blah, all this crap.
(30:15):
Then we leave.
I go out to my car on my car.
Windshield is a letter from him.
And the letter reads, I havenever worked in a place that's
this abusive.
I have never worked in a placethat doesn't give somebody a
chance.
I have never worked in a placethat has been so badly managed.
(30:40):
I have never worked in a placethat has treated people like
this.
You will never ever make it as achef.
You will never ever make it inthis industry.
You will never ever be somebody.
And I have that letter to thisday from 19 89.
(31:02):
And I read it all the timebecause he's absolutely right.
He said the things that I neededto hear, I did not help him.
I did not coach him.
I did not train him.
I did not do the things I needto do to make sure that he was
successful and our team.
(31:26):
And to this day, it haunts me.
And to this day is why Ichallenge every single employee
that I have to be the best thatthey can be.
And I work around their faultsand I work around their anger
and I work around theirattitudes and I work around all
that to put them in the bestposition they can be to be the
(31:46):
best person they can be for theteam.
And some people say, you shouldjust fire them or you should get
rid of them.
And that's not the answer.
And I learned it from thisletter on my car, underneath my
windshield wiper.
That's the difference.
That's failure.
(32:07):
That's what true failure is.
And that's what I learned thatday.
My fear of failure is realbecause of that.
I never ever want that to happenagain.
I don't want to serve rawchicken.
I don't wanna serve raw fish.
I don't want to serve rawanything.
I want to make your experiencethe best it could possibly be
every single time that I do myjob, but that's not reality.
(32:31):
happens.
People make mistakes.
The difference is how do youdeal with them?
How do you make those changes?
How do you make somebody betterthan who they are?
How do you make me better thanwho I am?
That's how you do it.
You listen, you read, you keepthose letters.
(32:52):
You understand the dinners thatyou serve, raw chicken.
And you say, I'm going to learnfrom this.
I'm going to get my back up offthe floor.
I'm going to make somebody inmyself and I'm never going to
let this happen again.
And that's how I choose to doit.
So that's my story and how I getthrough these things.
And it's hard.
I don't want to read that letterand I haven't read it in a
(33:14):
couple of years, but because ofthe incident this week and in my
failure this week, I read thatletter again.
I will never amount to anything.
I will never be a good chef.
These are the words that weresaid to me, and that is failure.
And so I decide to rise againstthat and say, because of your
(33:35):
letter, I am going to besomebody good.
I am going to be a good chef.
I am going to be a good businessowner.
I am going to make it throughCOVID.
I'm going to make it in thiscatering world.
When April comes and we have 14parties on a Saturday and we
have no employees, we're goingto make it happen.
You know why?
Because that's who I am.
And that's what I do.
So the answer to this is not thequotes, right?
(34:02):
They're not the quotes.
The only thing you had to fearis fear itself.
What the does that mean?
It doesn't mean.
It just means that your fear ofsomething fearful when I'm
fearful of is I don't want toknow the letter on my
windshield.
That's real.
That's a real quote.
(34:23):
The answer to fear is giving thebest at, at the time that you
have letting it stand for whoyou are while accepting fault,
you have to accept fault and youhave to understand them and you
have to work with them and youhave to grow from them, right?
That's the whole thing grow fromthose things.
Use that experience so that youcan take on the next failure
(34:48):
because you're going to havethem all the time.
Every day is a failure and everyday is a success.
So that's how you deal with fearof failure.
Jump off the cliff, get to yourcar and not have a letter on it.
Understand that there's peopleat work that may not be the
best, but they're still avaluable part of the community.
(35:11):
I have somebody right now thatworks for me, that people at all
the time, he's a valuable partof our community.
And they don't understand.
And they're going to, they'rethe letter writers.
They're the people who are goingto do that.
And I'm going to write a letterand put it on their car.
So they understand where theystand compared to the other
person.
You may be better than them atcooking.
(35:32):
You may be better than atworking, but that's not.
What makes you the best?
What makes you the best is notfailing at that and helping that
other person.
That's the difference.
I work with John Zucker, who hasfailed a lot of things all his
life.
And he overcomes them everytime.
(35:55):
He has a 25 year business.
He owns two restaurants and a,super successful catering
company.
I know Ryan Whitten.
I know.
Well, Adam, I have a guy namedhot sauce.
That's the.
And he has failed at a ton ofcrap, but he's, he gets the up
and does what he needs to do.
And he's successful.
(36:16):
I have Andrea, I have ChrisReinhardt.
I have me, I have pretty mucheverything.
I have Steve Boyer who isleaving us as executive chef to
pursue something else.
And let me tell you that scaredas.
Cause he's making a huge changeand taking a huge gamble to do
(36:36):
what he wants to do to make himhappy.
And I support it a hundredpercent.
And that's what we're doing.
That makes the difference.
That's the letter on thewindshield, do what you need to
do.
How can I help you?
Don't be angry.
Don't be upset.
Don't be better.
Don't talk bad about otherpeople make them successful.
(37:00):
That's the difference.
And that's what beat fearbeating fear is confidence,
communication, all the things Ijust talked about.
So am I scared about what'scoming up?
You're right.
I am.
COVID killed our staffs.
And this is for every catereracross the country.
Everybody's limited staff.
(37:22):
Now, all of a sudden the gonnahit the fan and nobody has
anybody and they're not trained.
And we have to perform aboveexpectation and that's scary and
it scares me, but that's what wehave to do.
And we will overcome that withplanning and all the things that
we've talked about, but it'shard.
(37:43):
It's hard.
So this episode is not about arant.
It's not about the cateringindustry.
It's really not about anythingother than my personal fear and
how I've overcome that and howI'm still scared and fearful and
how I failed.
Like literally 14 days ago I hadan Epic failure and that does
(38:04):
not who I am.
And it's shaking me to my core.
And I have to go back and dothese things and look at these
things.
And I have to do this podcasttonight because that's how I
know I have to be successful indoing this and I'm not going to
give up and I'm gonna learn fromthis and it won't happen there
again.
So that's how it's gonna work.
(38:26):
And it is what it is.
So again, you can forget aboutit and run away or you can about
it and rise up.
It's really up to you.
And I want you to rise.
I want everybody that I know torise and do the best they can be
(38:46):
because we only have one lifeand what we have to do.
Don't, don't be scared offailure.
Don't be scared of anything.
So that's my story for tonight.
Very impactful to me, it haschanged who I am and what I do
and how I interact with otherpeople and how I try to do the
best job I can.
(39:06):
I just try to do the best I canand that's what you have to do.
And I want you guys to staysafe.
I want you to be understanding,I also want, I want you guys to
listen to this and if you knowanybody who actually wants to
work in Charleston and wouldlike to pick up some shifts, I
would love to have them.
So this is a plug on staffing.
(39:28):
So please, please anyone, anyonewho wants to come out and I'll
I'll schedule you.
Um, so I want to do that too,but at the same time, always
keep your passion high.
Always keep your head abovewater, understand that you're
going to fail, but understandalso with failure comes success
(39:48):
and always, always
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Keep your boots on the ground.
(40:13):
That's what I keep good track.
(40:54):
[inaudible].
Proceed with caution.
This episode has a few"F" words.
Discretion is advised.
Welcome back to catering, WTF,episode 10.
What makes you scared?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
The catering WTF tonight's episode is called
am scared.
So now I'm going to unload asteaming pile of sh@t on you,
because this is not a rant.
This is not something thatangers me about our industry or
that is passionate for myindustry.
(00:50):
This is about me being scared.
And it's about fear, right?
With the situation going on inthe world today.
Uh, there's a lot of fear.
So it means I have fear.
So when the catering world rightnow, there's a lot to be fearful
of.
I've never been through this.
(01:11):
No one has been through this.
No caterer I've ever talked tohas been like, Oh yeah, we've
been through a pandemic.
So we got this.
We we've been through three andwe're really good at it.
Like none of this has happened.
So there's a tremendous amountof fear out there.
I have fear.
I'm scared.
I don't know what to do.
(01:32):
And there's multiple differentideas and conflicts.
And what do we do?
And, and employees feeling oneway, employees feeling the other
way, staff that it's crazy.
So this episode is about fearand it's going to turn into my
personal fear and I'm going tobe really deep and very
(01:56):
introspective about mepersonally.
So bear with me.
I need to express this because Ineed to let this out.
And I need to let other peopleknow who are also very fearful
and very scared about what'sgoing on in the future.
My personal fear, as we talkabout some of the things I'm
(02:16):
going to talk about tonight isfailure.
That's my personal fear.
It was because of my childhoodbecause of some of the things
that I went through because ofwhatever it is.
It's my personal fear, right?
I do not want to be a failure.
Number one, personal fear.
I will lay in a bed of snakes.
(02:38):
I will jump off a cliff and Iwill overcome those.
Now I did that.
I've done those things.
I pushed myself to do fearfulthings.
And some people say, Oh, they're, you know, you're a adrenaline
junkie or whatever.
Well, I've jumped off a cliff,but the reason I off that cliff
(03:00):
wasn't because my fear ofHeights, which I do have, I
don't want to jump off somethingthat's super high and I may be
die.
That's that's not what I want todo.
But when I get up there to jumpand I looked down and I'm like,
Holy, this is far.
And I'm scared.
The next thing that kicks in isyou're a failure.
(03:23):
If you don't jump my fear offailure overcomes my fear of
Heights.
So I now know what my personalmotivation is and its failure.
So I jumped off that Clift and Iwas very proud of myself for
doing that because I overcamethe fear of Heights.
(03:46):
No I didn't.
I overcame the fear of failure.
I overcame the fear of settingyour goal to do something and
then following through and doingit.
That's the fear of failure.
It's not the fear of Heights.
And so that's what I'm lookingfor.
And now in this age that we havenow, and this year, it's been
(04:09):
super crazy.
Now we're going into the end ofCOVID or, or what most people
are saying in the end of COVID,right?
So we've had a, super year andcatering and in restaurants and
in hospitality, nothing'savailable, nothing's done.
We're all struggling.
(04:29):
We're all about to fail asbusinesses and everything else.
And that's also a fear offailure.
And now here we are.
And all of a sudden we'relooking super busy.
We're looking slammed.
And now I have a fear of failureof producing.
And that is a huge issue.
(04:52):
So here's the, here's the fears.
COVID, COVID the fear, right?
Everybody's scared of COVID someor most people, some people
aren't, but COVID does scare.
What happens if we're slammedand we're busy and somebody gets
COVID, how do we deal with that?
(05:12):
How do we execute the partiesthat we're executing right now
in April?
We're very busy.
We have five, six, seven partieson a Saturday, four parties on
our Friday, two parties on aSunday.
If we get COVID, how do weexecute those things?
And right now we have verylittle staff.
(05:33):
Everybody has cut staff down.
So we're at the bare minimum ofstaff, right?
So that's, that's fearful.
That's scary as.
How do we do that?
Um, we now are in conversationsabout what happens if somebody
gets COVID, how do we deal withthat?
How do we eat corn team, theteam, if we quarantine the team
and we have very little team,how do we execute that?
(05:55):
All the parties that we have tothat's super scary.
And how do we deal with that?
The level of business coming islike a tsunami.
It's a huge wave.
And we have limited staff andlimited things that we're doing.
So how do we overcome that?
And then how do we hire forthat?
(06:17):
So now we're hiring just likeevery person in the hospitality
industry right now is hiringacross the United States and
across the world.
We're all now hiring.
Cause everybody's now gearingback up.
We went down to a bare minimumand now we're gearing up.
So we went from six employeesand now we need 75 employees.
(06:41):
How the are we supposed to dothat and be successful?
How are we supposed to do that?
That's super scary to me.
And it gives me a tremendousamount of fear.
So I don't know how to do that.
And then when we get them, let'ssay we do get them, which we're
struggling.
Even getting people.
I mean up, especially in SouthCarolina, I've heard it from
(07:03):
Georgia and Atlanta.
They're struggling because mostpeople went into HPAC or they
went back to school oreverything else.
So we're missing a large portionof the hospitality industry.
So how does that work?
How do we train them?
We can't afford to bring them inweeks and weeks ahead of time,
(07:24):
train them and do everythingelse because we have no money.
We're barely surviving.
So now it becomes magic aprontheory, right?
You, you hire people, you givethem a magic apron.
They're immediately supposed toknow exactly what they do and
how they do it.
And it performed to the best oftheir ability that that doesn't
work.
It's proven every time andrestaurants, hotels everywhere.
(07:46):
It doesn't, it doesn't work.
You have to give people theability to train, understand
your system, know what's goingon and all that type of stuff.
And we don't, we don't have themoney to do that.
So that's super scary to me,right?
And I'm looking at theprojections coming up the end of
(08:07):
this month, April, may, June.
And I'm like, this is, this is atsunami.
That's going to kill hundreds ofthousands of people.
Like it's just not good.
And we have to be prepared.
How do we get prepared?
How do we choose to spend ourmoney to get prepared?
How do we hire people?
(08:27):
Who do we get?
And right now it's, it's thebuyer's market because people
are out of jobs and we have topay more than unemployment.
We have to play, pay more thanwhat they're doing and they're
going to go through hell.
So we, if, if you're going to goto hell, then you have to pay
good because you could just sitat home, collect unemployment.
(08:50):
You don't go through hell.
So it's those types of things.
And that's super scary to meright now.
So it's about culture and whatcan we do for culture?
So now I have to change theculture to make this the best
job ever and super cool, superhip, best food, all of the
things that you have to do toinspire people to more want to
(09:13):
do this.
And that's also hard.
And it's also a source ofcontention with me because I
don't want to fail at that.
Again.
Fear of failure team.
I have a small core team.
How do I protect them?
What is my fear for them?
(09:35):
I don't want them.
These people have been with meand my company through the
entire thing.
They need to be rewarded.
They're my superheroes.
So they get precedence overeverything.
So I can't hire people abovewhat they're getting paid
because these have gone to thetrenches with me and they
(09:59):
deserve it.
So that becomes an issue.
And how do you maintain them andhow do you protect them from
COVID and how do you protectthem for these things?
Now, all of a sudden, SouthCarolina is open to do all kinds
of parties.
We're going to do parties to 300people.
And sometimes we're going to doan on the same night, five of
those parties.
(10:19):
I don't know if those people areCOVID safe.
Most of them aren't.
So how do I protect my team?
That's a fear.
I'm fearful of that.
I'm scared as about that.
The other thing is executingabove expectation.
One of my pride things I'vealways done is I want to have a
(10:42):
bride and groom have a corporateclient.
I don't care who it is.
I'm going to talk to you aboutyour party, do your party.
And then the day of your party,my goal is to exceed your
expectations.
How am I going to do that?
Now, when I have nobody workinghere and nobody doing what they
(11:03):
need.
Yeah.
I just don't have the staff.
I don't have the training.
I don't have any of the toolsthat I need to have to build
what I need to build.
How am I going to do that?
Okay.
That's failure for me.
So that's super scary.
And I'm very scared about that.
I don't want to be the personwho's not good enough.
(11:25):
I want to be the person whorises above that.
And I try very hard.
I work my off to do that.
I plan for that and everythingelse, but it's crazy.
I want respect.
I want respect from my team.
I'm respect for my business.
I want respect from my clients,right?
So fear of being not respectedbecomes a huge issue because if
(11:50):
you're not respected, it'sfailure again, fear of failure.
And that's super hard for me todeal with.
Um, I went through a week lastweek.
That was tremendously hard forme because we failed at a party
and I haven't done this in along time.
(12:12):
And it wasn't very busy.
I had my AA team on this I had,it was like the seal team.
There is nothing that can happenat a party that this team can
not overcome and do and exceedexpectations only we didn't.
And so in my anger anddepression and fear of failure
(12:38):
and everything else, I wanted toquit.
I wanted to be like, this is.
I'm done.
But I didn't.
It reminded me of a story when Iwas in 1989.
So now you guys know how longI've been doing this when I was
just at carbos in a restaurantin Atlanta.
(12:59):
And I did a huge, huge dinnerwho was up, but at the time was
150 people.
It was a shin dinner.
It had tons, half the group waschefs, right?
So you want to perform for thesepeople that was back in the day
when I was young and pissy.
And like, I really like, I'mgoing to make a name for myself.
(13:21):
I'm going to recreate what theculinary world is.
I'm going to do all this great.
Right?
And I spent hours and days doingthis, like literally three hours
of sleep, back and forth to workthree days in a row, doing all
the things that you need to dohave my best team on it.
Put labor dollars against it andeverything else.
And we did.
(13:42):
We want, I want us to do like aPusan with a stuffing in it and
doing all this crazy French.
Cause that's what I thoughtwould be cool back then.
And back then, you have toremember in 1989, everything was
put in a hotbox with caps on it,right?
You, you guys know that, youknow, all older chefs, they know
this is plated put on a plate,put a metal cap on it, put it in
(14:07):
a hot box, right?
That's the way food used to bedone.
It's crap.
We all know it's crap.
So I refuse to do that for thisparty.
I unplugged all the hot boxes.
I would like, we're nevercapping anything.
We're going to do it to order ablah, blah, blah.
I set it up.
I hired the staff, I goteverything done.
It was super planned out to theminute to the person, everything
(14:30):
and the person pulling the poosongs out of that, which Tucsons
are like small chickens.
They pulled them out of the ovenand we had it coordinated that
we rotate in the oven.
What's done first and what'sdone last.
What?
Like what, what PanIN went infirst, what Pam went in last.
And unfortunately the personthat was doing that somehow mix
(14:53):
that up.
So the pan that went in firstwas still in there.
And the pan that went in lastwas the first one polled.
So as you can imagine, the firsthalf of the party got raw
chicken.
The last thing you want to dowith a group with chefs and
everybody else in a fine diningdinner, that's five courses.
And you're trying to make a namefor you.
(15:14):
Yourself is send out rawchicken, right?
I don't care.
You send out raw fish.
Yeah.
It's still, you know,questionable.
If it's tuna, it's fine.
If it's beef and it's rare andit's not medium, then okay.
You can cook it back.
Like the, all those are justlike, ah, this kind of like a
gray area, raw chickens, not agray area, dude.
(15:37):
It's raw chicken.
No one wants chicken tar.
That's why we don't do it.
I was mortified.
Servers were coming back,chickens, raw.
I'm like, what the is going on?
Then I realized they pulled itfrom the wrong oven at the time.
Now we're pulling the rightthing.
So we're still sending platesout.
(16:00):
But now I have to read it, cookchicken.
I don't have the chicken toreally cook.
So I have to re cook eachperson's plate that didn't go
well.
And that turned into a giantcluster.
of.
And my reaction to that was doesquit.
Just quit, go away, leave rightnow and never come back to the
(16:21):
food industry because my name'snever going to have this.
I'm done.
You know, I'm never going to bethe great.
And back then there was noAnthony Bordain or Gordon Ramsey
or food network.
It was what I was trying to do.
And it was a total.
(16:41):
Then I had actual chefs comeback from the table while they
were eating and come back andsay your chicken's raw.
And this is what you should havedone.
They're all trying to help me.
They're trying to inspire me.
And at that time I looked like adead man there.
I'm not listening to any ofthat.
(17:01):
Um, I, I look like I jumped intoa pool filled with ice.
I'm just no blood, no anythingstanding there frozen walking
around like a zombie because atthis point, my life's over.
And so I did that somehow madeit through that day and was
(17:24):
mortified.
And then the next day had to goback to work, listen to the
owners of the restaurant, say,what the happened?
What are you doing?
I knew we shouldn't have hiredyou as the chef.
I knew you were not good enough.
I knew that eventually this wasgoing to happen, blah, blah,
(17:44):
blah, all that crap that theygive you.
And I took it.
And I'm, you're right.
Except for the fact that theysaid, we knew you.
Weren't going to be good enoughif you knew I wasn't going to be
good enough.
Why the did you hire me?
Because you don't know either.
And your fear is fear offailure.
(18:07):
Your fear is, do I hire thisguy?
And if I hired this guy, are wegoing to be a failure, but we're
going to hire him anyway.
And then the minute the shipturns it's me.
And it was me and I totally getit.
It's my fault.
I owned it.
I understood it.
But at that point, I said tomyself, get your up off the
(18:31):
ground.
Reach out to those chefs thatcame and talked to you.
Talk to them about whathappened.
Learn from their experience,learn from my experience and get
your up off the ground and dobetter.
And here's the deal never, ever,ever let that happen again.
Swore to myself that will neverhappen again.
Well, guess what happened again?
(18:53):
It's happened five times and thelast time it happened was 14
days ago.
So it's still happens, right?
These are mistakes.
People make mistakes.
And I'm not saying that that'sthe answer I'm saying, it's what
happens, right?
We're human.
We make mistakes, but it stillkills you to the core.
(19:17):
And then it drives for mepersonally, it drives the fear
spear and to my heart.
And what that says is you're notgood enough.
You failed again.
You did not do the things thatyou need to do and you can't go
back and fix them.
So now you have an option.
What do you do?
(19:38):
Do you run away?
Do you quit?
Do you do all this?
I don't know.
That's what I wanted to do.
I mean, I met it head on when Iwas there, but now I'm like, I
don't know if I, should I bedoing this?
I have no idea.
So, you know, what I do is Iconfront fear and I try and deal
(19:59):
with this whole thing.
So I look up quotes and do somethings like that.
And I have two quotes.
I want to give you tonight.
And they're both quotes that are, um, pretty well-known and
they're, you know, fear quotes.
So the first one is fear, forgeteverything and run.
(20:21):
And I love that because that'swhat I want to do.
I wanted to forget everythingand run.
That's what fear means.
Forget everything and run, that.
Get away, Don finished, whateverit is.
And so you look at that andyou're like, ah, is that what
I'm doing on my career?
Is that what I'm going to do?
This job, all those kinds ofthings, or is it forget
everything and rise, rise to thechallenge, rise above the
(20:44):
mistake.
Learn from the stake, be abetter person, be a better chef,
be a better father, be a betterfamily member.
That's what it is.
So that's from Zig Ziglar and itwas used in the movie, the
joker, one of my favorites, theother one is the only thing you
have to fear is fear itself,right?
(21:07):
So everybody knows that quittoo.
So right.
It's all about fear.
And what's going on.
If you're in a war, it's fearabout dying.
If you're in a business, it'sfear about you're gonna fail at
a business, whether that'sfinancially, whether that's from
an area of respect from achef-driven area where it's like
(21:30):
your food's not good.
It's old and old school.
And I deal with that now too,with not only me, but where I'm
working.
Um, there there's challenges too, to fear of not doing that.
So it's crazy.
So, so I am scared.
Um, so now it comes down to howdo I deal with this?
(21:50):
How do you deal with fear,especially when your fear is
failure?
Right?
So the first thing I do, this isme personally.
The first thing I do ischallenge.
Fear.
You challenge, fear.
That's the way to get rid offear.
Yes.
I'm scared of this.
Yes.
This could be bad.
Yes.
This is possibly the wrong moveto in my life.
(22:14):
I know it's the wrong move and Ido a anyway.
So it's challenging fear andyou're going to be okay.
And that's what I say.
You're going to be okay now youmay not be better off.
You may have a different job.
This why I left Atlanta.
That's why I moved toCharleston.
You know, I, I left and youknow, I, I left a frying pan and
(22:36):
jumped into the fire here.
So it's fear.
That's what it is, but it'sokay.
That's what it, that's how itworks.
Um, what you have to do tocombat that prepare for it,
prepare for fear, keep yourselfstable, understand that you have
a job to do understand thatyou're good at other things,
(22:59):
prepare for the busy season.
Prepare for COVID.
Even though we all couldn't, butwe pivoted and that's preparing,
this is the situation.
This is what's coming up.
How are we going to survive?
Here's how we're going tosurvive.
Let's try these things.
Let's do these things.
I know we didn't do them in thepast.
I know they're different.
I know that's not what wenormally do, but we have to do
(23:21):
it.
We have to challenge herself andit could, we fail at it.
You God right.
We could.
But we didn't.
And that's the, when we didn't,we challenged ourselves.
We did things.
We did the things that we neededto do.
And we succeeded.
That is not failure, but that'schallenging fear.
And that's preparing for fearafter preparing for it.
(23:46):
Here's the other thing you needto watch and listen, fear is
based on not knowing what'sgoing on, right?
It's the unknown.
That's where it was.
That fear is the unknown, allthat.
But here's the thing.
If you watch and you listen andreally watch and really listen,
listen to your team, watch whatyour team does.
(24:07):
Watch the sales team, watch thecommunity, watch that atmosphere
, uh, the surroundings aroundyou.
And if you pay attention, ifit's like being in nature, if
you go kayaking and just sit inyour kayak and you listen to
nature, it's watching andlistening.
If you do that, you will beprepared to overcome fear.
(24:29):
It's super importantcommunication.
That's another one, alwayscommunicate.
I'm fearful of this.
This scares me.
I need help with this.
I'm scared that we may not beable to accomplish this.
How do we move forward?
That's communication do not bethe person that thinks you're
the.
(24:50):
And you never tell anybody, telleverybody all the time.
I'm scared that this may notwork.
I'm scared that we can notaccomplish the goals that we
have set.
I'm scared that we're not goingto be able to execute the seven
parties coming up.
I'm scared of that.
I'm letting everybody know Ineed help.
(25:11):
We need help.
How do we do this?
That's huge.
You have to fight the battles.
Now, if you say those things andcommunicate those things, then
everybody can be on your team.
We can fight the battles now sothat when we get to that bad
time, we have a plan.
We know what's going on.
(25:32):
Everybody knows that it's allin.
Like that's part of it.
So you got to fight thosebattles.
You got to do those things.
And that's where it gets crazy.
The last thing is you have toaccept failure, okay?
We all fail.
And honestly, failure is a greatthing.
(25:53):
And being afraid of having themost thing you're scared are
scared of is failure is probablythe most motivating thing.
That's why I say you got to hugyour failure sometimes because
that's how you learn.
That's the pain.
That's the anxiety.
That's the depression.
That's all of that.
All of that is pain from failureor how you feel.
(26:16):
You look at yourself, but it'snot always like that to other
people.
So get the up and make sure thatyou're doing the things that you
need to do and move past the,hugged, the failure and move on.
And that's the way it works.
And I'm gonna tell you the laststory about failure.
That really changed my life.
(26:36):
And there's, there's been a lotof instances, but this one is
very specific to me when I wasvery young.
My first culinary, probably mythird Conor job, my first one as
an executive chef, when you'reyoung and you're 24, 25, and you
(26:57):
think you are the and you'relistening, you're reading art
culinary.
And you're you're.
This is even before TV andeverybody's on food network and
all the different things thatare doing you.
You are striving to be the bestculinary person you can be.
And in your head, you're like,I'm going to be the.
(27:19):
And so when that happens, yourego takes over and you treat
people like crap sometimesbecause that's the kitchen
mentality.
And it definitely was way backwhen now it's not so much that
way.
But back then, if you couldn'thang, you couldn't do what you
were doing.
Then you got pounded, right?
Everybody jumped on you.
They jumped on you like hyenasto a dead animal.
(27:43):
It was, it was crazy.
And that's, but that's just thenorm.
So I had my first executive chefjob.
I've been doing pretty good.
I had some studs online.
You know, guys and girls aredoing great.
Pastry chef.
She was wicked good.
Like it was all this.
And I hired an older guy.
(28:03):
Uh, we needed a position filled.
He did.
Okay.
He was okay.
He was slow.
He had years of experience, buthe was slow.
It was different, differentstyle from what I was doing, we
were fine dining.
He didn't come from that field.
And he got murdered.
He literally got killed by myguys.
I had 20 year olds and 24 yearolds.
(28:26):
It was right around that age.
And they ran circles aroundthis.
Right.
They totally did.
He wasn't great.
And this is the, this is thething in most restaurants, like
if you're slow and you can'tcatch on and you're not really
good at what you're doing, theyattack you.
And then they fire you.
Right?
There's no training.
There's no like, Hey, what areyou good at?
(28:48):
Let me find, let me find whatyou're good at.
And, uh, accentuate the good anddecelerate, the bad that didn't
happen.
I didn't even know that backthen.
So we're in the middle of aSaturday night.
It's crazy as.
He's way behind.
Now.
(29:08):
I got to move people because I'mthe exec chef.
I'm moving people to help him onthe line.
I'm like, stop what you'redoing.
Go help this get out of theweeds because that's what
happens.
And halfway through that, hetook off his apron and said,
you, I'm outta here.
And he walked out, walked out ofthe line and the middle of the.
(29:34):
All right, everybody's in therestaurant.
Business has experienced thateverybody in the catering world
has experienced that.
Right?
And the first thing you do islike that.
Guy's a piece of.
Terrible.
Shouldn't have been bad hire.
I did a bad job.
Hiring should have had a linecook should have had this,
whatever it is, he sucks.
(29:54):
Nobody walks out on their shift.
That's you know, if you do that,you're a lame, take all the
abuse and deal with it, all thatcrap.
And so we managed to get throughthe night we're at the night,
we're at the end of the night,cleaning up, we have a beer and
everybody's talking about this.
Guy's a piece of, terrible,blah, blah, blah, all this crap.
(30:15):
Then we leave.
I go out to my car on my car.
Windshield is a letter from him.
And the letter reads, I havenever worked in a place that's
this abusive.
I have never worked in a placethat doesn't give somebody a
chance.
I have never worked in a placethat has been so badly managed.
(30:40):
I have never worked in a placethat has treated people like
this.
You will never ever make it as achef.
You will never ever make it inthis industry.
You will never ever be somebody.
And I have that letter to thisday from 19 89.
(31:02):
And I read it all the timebecause he's absolutely right.
He said the things that I neededto hear, I did not help him.
I did not coach him.
I did not train him.
I did not do the things I needto do to make sure that he was
successful and our team.
(31:26):
And to this day, it haunts me.
And to this day is why Ichallenge every single employee
that I have to be the best thatthey can be.
And I work around their faultsand I work around their anger
and I work around theirattitudes and I work around all
that to put them in the bestposition they can be to be the
(31:46):
best person they can be for theteam.
And some people say, you shouldjust fire them or you should get
rid of them.
And that's not the answer.
And I learned it from thisletter on my car, underneath my
windshield wiper.
That's the difference.
That's failure.
(32:07):
That's what true failure is.
And that's what I learned thatday.
My fear of failure is realbecause of that.
I never ever want that to happenagain.
I don't want to serve rawchicken.
I don't wanna serve raw fish.
I don't want to serve rawanything.
I want to make your experiencethe best it could possibly be
every single time that I do myjob, but that's not reality.
(32:31):
happens.
People make mistakes.
The difference is how do youdeal with them?
How do you make those changes?
How do you make somebody betterthan who they are?
How do you make me better thanwho I am?
That's how you do it.
You listen, you read, you keepthose letters.
(32:52):
You understand the dinners thatyou serve, raw chicken.
And you say, I'm going to learnfrom this.
I'm going to get my back up offthe floor.
I'm going to make somebody inmyself and I'm never going to
let this happen again.
And that's how I choose to doit.
So that's my story and how I getthrough these things.
And it's hard.
I don't want to read that letterand I haven't read it in a
(33:14):
couple of years, but because ofthe incident this week and in my
failure this week, I read thatletter again.
I will never amount to anything.
I will never be a good chef.
These are the words that weresaid to me, and that is failure.
And so I decide to rise againstthat and say, because of your
(33:35):
letter, I am going to besomebody good.
I am going to be a good chef.
I am going to be a good businessowner.
I am going to make it throughCOVID.
I'm going to make it in thiscatering world.
When April comes and we have 14parties on a Saturday and we
have no employees, we're goingto make it happen.
You know why?
Because that's who I am.
And that's what I do.
So the answer to this is not thequotes, right?
(34:02):
They're not the quotes.
The only thing you had to fearis fear itself.
What the does that mean?
It doesn't mean.
It just means that your fear ofsomething fearful when I'm
fearful of is I don't want toknow the letter on my
windshield.
That's real.
That's a real quote.
(34:23):
The answer to fear is giving thebest at, at the time that you
have letting it stand for whoyou are while accepting fault,
you have to accept fault and youhave to understand them and you
have to work with them and youhave to grow from them, right?
That's the whole thing grow fromthose things.
Use that experience so that youcan take on the next failure
(34:48):
because you're going to havethem all the time.
Every day is a failure and everyday is a success.
So that's how you deal with fearof failure.
Jump off the cliff, get to yourcar and not have a letter on it.
Understand that there's peopleat work that may not be the
best, but they're still avaluable part of the community.
(35:11):
I have somebody right now thatworks for me, that people at all
the time, he's a valuable partof our community.
And they don't understand.
And they're going to, they'rethe letter writers.
They're the people who are goingto do that.
And I'm going to write a letterand put it on their car.
So they understand where theystand compared to the other
person.
You may be better than them atcooking.
(35:32):
You may be better than atworking, but that's not.
What makes you the best?
What makes you the best is notfailing at that and helping that
other person.
That's the difference.
I work with John Zucker, who hasfailed a lot of things all his
life.
And he overcomes them everytime.
(35:55):
He has a 25 year business.
He owns two restaurants and a,super successful catering
company.
I know Ryan Whitten.
I know.
Well, Adam, I have a guy namedhot sauce.
That's the.
And he has failed at a ton ofcrap, but he's, he gets the up
and does what he needs to do.
And he's successful.
(36:16):
I have Andrea, I have ChrisReinhardt.
I have me, I have pretty mucheverything.
I have Steve Boyer who isleaving us as executive chef to
pursue something else.
And let me tell you that scaredas.
Cause he's making a huge changeand taking a huge gamble to do
(36:36):
what he wants to do to make himhappy.
And I support it a hundredpercent.
And that's what we're doing.
That makes the difference.
That's the letter on thewindshield, do what you need to
do.
How can I help you?
Don't be angry.
Don't be upset.
Don't be better.
Don't talk bad about otherpeople make them successful.
(37:00):
That's the difference.
And that's what beat fearbeating fear is confidence,
communication, all the things Ijust talked about.
So am I scared about what'scoming up?
You're right.
I am.
COVID killed our staffs.
And this is for every catereracross the country.
Everybody's limited staff.
(37:22):
Now, all of a sudden the gonnahit the fan and nobody has
anybody and they're not trained.
And we have to perform aboveexpectation and that's scary and
it scares me, but that's what wehave to do.
And we will overcome that withplanning and all the things that
we've talked about, but it'shard.
(37:43):
It's hard.
So this episode is not about arant.
It's not about the cateringindustry.
It's really not about anythingother than my personal fear and
how I've overcome that and howI'm still scared and fearful and
how I failed.
Like literally 14 days ago I hadan Epic failure and that does
(38:04):
not who I am.
And it's shaking me to my core.
And I have to go back and dothese things and look at these
things.
And I have to do this podcasttonight because that's how I
know I have to be successful indoing this and I'm not going to
give up and I'm gonna learn fromthis and it won't happen there
again.
So that's how it's gonna work.
(38:26):
And it is what it is.
So again, you can forget aboutit and run away or you can about
it and rise up.
It's really up to you.
And I want you to rise.
I want everybody that I know torise and do the best they can be
(38:46):
because we only have one lifeand what we have to do.
Don't, don't be scared offailure.
Don't be scared of anything.
So that's my story for tonight.
Very impactful to me, it haschanged who I am and what I do
and how I interact with otherpeople and how I try to do the
best job I can.
(39:06):
I just try to do the best I canand that's what you have to do.
And I want you guys to staysafe.
I want you to be understanding,I also want, I want you guys to
listen to this and if you knowanybody who actually wants to
work in Charleston and wouldlike to pick up some shifts, I
would love to have them.
So this is a plug on staffing.
(39:28):
So please, please anyone, anyonewho wants to come out and I'll
I'll schedule you.
Um, so I want to do that too,but at the same time, always
keep your passion high.
Always keep your head abovewater, understand that you're
going to fail, but understandalso with failure comes success
(39:48):
and always, always
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Keep your boots on the ground.
(40:13):
That's what I keep good track.
(40:54):
[inaudible].
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