Measurable Metrics For Success in the Kitchen, Structuring Your Business, and Finding Your Community with Justin Khanna

Episode Transcript
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Chris Spear (00:00):
What is up everyone? This is Chris and

(00:04):
you're listening to ChefsWithout Restaurants, the show
where I speak with culinaryentrepreneurs and people working
in the food and beverageindustry outside of a
traditional restaurant setting.
I have a little extra life in metoday. This is episode 200. And
while I try not to get caught upin metrics, I think that's
pretty cool. I can't believe Iput out so many episodes.
Obviously, I wouldn't be heretoday without the support of my

(00:25):
listeners, my guests. So thankyou all. Today I have a
returning guest. It's JustinKhanna. We did a double episode
A couple years ago. And thenJustin came back for my what it
means to be a chef episode. I'lltell you off the bat that this
is a longer episode, I thoughtabout breaking it up into two
parts like I've done in thepast. I know conventional

(00:46):
podcast wisdom, and I'm usingair quotes here would say that I
need to either edit the hell outof the show or cut it into two.
But if you know me, nothingabout me has ever been
conventional. We talked about somuch good stuff in this episode,
and I wanted to keep it all herein one place. We'll talk about
Justin's hospitality educationcompany repertoire. Measurable
metrics for success in thekitchen, including working clean

(01:09):
podcasting, including guestreach out workflow and working
with PR agencies. We talkedabout being part of or even
building your own community.
This includes collaboration andbeing part of a scene or
borrowing from Austin Kleonseniors. For the entrepreneurs,
business owners potentialbusiness owners, we discuss the

(01:30):
difference between having alifestyle business or having an
acquirable business and why ifyou have a partner, you need to
make sure you're on the samewavelength here. I'm not gonna
give any more away I want tojust jump right in and episode.
I do want to say I hope that youenjoyed listening to this as
much as I enjoyed talking withJustin. Towards the end, we
talked about some potentialdiscussions for the future, we

(01:51):
could have gone on for anothercouple of hours. So let us know
what you want to hear us talkabout next. Like I said, we
throw out some options towardthe end of the show. The best
way is to reach out to either meor Justin or both of us via our
social media links, which asalways, are in the show notes.
And I'm gonna let you know thatthe Chefs Without Restaurants
podcast is going to take alittle break. It's a much needed
break. I really love doing theshow, but it's been a lot. With

(02:14):
everything else I have going onthis summer. It's just been too
much trying to get out anepisode every week. Rest assured
the show. We'll be back onTuesday, September 5. I've
already recorded a bunch ofepisodes including Bradley oni
formerly of Bon appetit. ScottBlackwell from high wire
distilling. And I have a bunchof other fantastic episodes.
I'll be bringing you thisupcoming season. And I might

(02:34):
even have you on the show. Yes,you. If you think you have a
great story to tell and sometactical advice for our
listeners get in touch with me.
The best way to do that is tosend me an email at chefs
without restaurants@gmail.comOne last thing before I go, if
you're enjoying the show, Iwould love a rating and review
especially on iTunes. Ratingsand reviews are great ways to
help us grow allows me to getmore guests sponsors and

(02:56):
continue making these episodesfor you. And speaking of
sponsors. This week's episode isbrought to you by the United
States personal chef Associationand hire chef.
Are you a personal chef lookingfor support and growth
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(03:19):
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(04:00):
email aprather@uspca.comWell, you know we should just
throw it right in and starttalking because I think that's
probably the best way. You havebeen on the show before. I think
that episode I did was a doubleepisode I was on your show. And
you even did the little guestwhat is a chef thing for me so
I'm sure if anyone's beenlistening to my show for any

(04:20):
amount of time, they probably atleast know of you. So I don't
want to spend a ton of timegoing back and rehashing all
that I'll link all that stuff upin the show notes as I usually
do so people will get to know alittle bit about Justin. So I
guess the best places to start.
What are you doing now careerwise in the food world? Bring me

(04:43):
up to speed because I guess ourofficial last podcast was
probably like two years ago andI know a lot has changed since
then. So if someone were to sayto you Hey Justin, what do you
do you know, like you're at aparty, which we all hate those
questions anyway. Right?

Justin Khanna (04:59):
Yeah. Chris, thanks for having me back. It's
It's really an honor to speak toyour audience because I think
that there's so much Venndiagramming that happens between
the folks that I speak with andyour folks too. I've been out of
restaurants. I was trying to dothe math the other day, it's
been six years, being out ofrestaurants at this point. And
for the time, I think when youand I spoke last I was kind of

(05:20):
in the thick of having an eventproduction company. And so in
2018, I had I was doing pop upsall over Seattle. I was getting
the venue's I was renting thetable where I was talking to the
clients, I was staffing, I wasputting the ticket page live, I
was doing the social mediacontent, I was doing everything.
And I had hired probably three,four, just kind of like

(05:41):
contractors who were just in myorbit, who I would frequently
call on when it was time to do adinner, they had full time jobs.
And it was just this thing wherewhen I had something coming up,
or if I had a client asked me todo something, I would, I would
cook with them. And I had aevent where I met this woman who
had an event production company,but she wasn't a chef. And so
her and I just started talkingand there was so much great

(06:04):
business partner dynamics thatwere happening. And so just to
provide value to the audiencehere, how I navigated that time
was following the advice of, youneed to have your values align.
So this woman, her name wasJade, I'll just call her by her
name for going forward. Her andI really wanted to build like a
positive culture, and not burnour employees out and not

(06:25):
constantly have, you know,underpaid people either. Think
there's a lot of places inprivate cheffing in catering in
events, production, where itjust becomes this like, show up
with a black shirt. And youknow, just take this tray and
pass some canopies around. Anddon't worry about it if the
client treats you like shit. Andwe really wanted to, you know,

(06:47):
kind of get away from them. Andconsequently, we also really, to
the business partner point,aligned on what she did well,
and what I did well, and myweaknesses and her weaknesses.
And so she could sell likenobody's business. And I could
cook and creatively come up withideas like nobody's business.

(07:07):
And I loved operations, and sheloved the kind of like big
picture vision of where thecompany was going. So she was
CEO, like, everything was wasworking COVID happened, I think
like a lot of probably yourlisteners and US businesses as
well. There's a YouTube video onmy there's a huge video on the
channel where we had just movedinto a nine person office, this

(07:28):
is in like, January ish of 2020,we were on track to do our first
seven figure year as a company,we were finally getting to that
place where we were, you know,starting to have some longevity.
And our employees were like Jadeand I weren't the ones who had
to the events all the time. Andso I had this grand vision that

(07:49):
I was going to like, you know,scale up the content a little
bit, but mostly just kind oflike, start to turn this
business into something that,you know, we would see the
fruits of our labor basicallyCOVID happened, we lost probably
85% of our contracts for theyear, which was really
disappointing. And that Jade,she she was engaged in living in

(08:10):
Canada just kind of part time,but she married a Canadian. And
so she was just up and acrossthe border in Vancouver, which
running an in person business isreally hard when you when you
have that long distance, youknow, kind of relationship who
if we're building software manwould have been totally fine.
Because we could have all workedremote, all the tools came out,
we were in zoom life for such along time. And it really would

(08:33):
have worked if we were in anyother industry. But as you know,
it's like hospitality isdifficult to do remote, we did
make it work for a while doingcooking classes that, you know,
is an important pin to, to puton the board here because it
kind of relates to what I'mdoing now. And yeah, it was
really hard just trying to makesure that we were keeping our

(08:54):
staff on payroll, just makingsure that we didn't have to let
anybody go, at least whilethings were in our control. And
the benefit was we actually tooka moment to almost think to go
on the offensive, because a lotof us were like, and this isn't
going to make it through toSeptember. And so we were
actually looking at pieces ofcommercial real estate in like
may ish of 2020. Because we werelike, we have cash reserves, you

(09:17):
know, like all of our othercompetitors are going to kind of
go out of business. And so we'regoing to take advantage of this
and get a you know, physicalbrick and mortar space. That's
going to be our productionkitchen. And we're going to have
our offices in there. And sojust as a snapshot of you know,
where I was at probably four,four ish, five ish years ago.
And no, this was no. This was in2020. This was three years ago.

(09:39):
And so to kind of really putthat all the way back. We
ultimately had to wind it allthe way down because it was like
Jade really wanted to be inCanada. We ultimately and I feel
comfortable talking about thisnow. We started to have some
just overall head butting issuesof where we wanted the company

(10:00):
Need to go? And maybe this is aI'll call it a side tangent, but
I really haven't put out a lotof content on this. So I'm
comfortable talking about ithere to this audience because a
lot of there's there are a lotof business owners, right that
listen to the show. Yeah. So Iwish someone would have told me
this, me and my business partnerthis really getting clear on do
you want this to be a lifestylebusiness? Or do you want us to

(10:21):
be in like acquirable business.
So like, a lifestyle business isalso this almost like this
thing, like, you don't want tolet it go. Because it's
genuinely helping to feel yourlifestyle, whether it's, oh,
this allows me to host reallylavish parties, or this gives me
access to really incredible winebecause like, I'm an importer,
like, I have an in wine importbusiness. And so I can just kind
of like get access to somereally cool bottles, while

(10:43):
simultaneously like providingvalue to my customers and
clients through the wine thatI'm purchasing. Or you have to
come to terms with do I wantthis to be sellable someday. And
they're really at odds, likelike Seth Godin talks about
this, to a really large degreeof just making sure that you can
get your business to a placewhere said differently, nobody's

(11:04):
going to buy a lifestylebusiness, especially if the
founder, the owner, is the thingthat they're the Rainmaker,
everything in the businesshinges on this person being
here, this person beinginvolved, this person being the
one delivering the service, whenyou have, I think we had seven
or eight or nine employees, likethe peak of it. And when that
happens, you start to do likecompany offsites. And you start

(11:26):
to do these big whiteboardingsessions and you start to have
these like, okay, the leadershipteam is going to talk to the
rest of the, to the to the team.
And we would get out of thesemeetings sometimes. And it would
be this very, like, hoo, rah,rah, we're going to sell this
thing. But then it was likebehind the scenes, or when Jade
and I would have one on oneconversations, it would be like,
Wouldn't it be so nice if wecould just, you know, like, do

(11:49):
take care of six clients a yearand make whatever we need to
make, and then just kind oflike, do whatever we want for
the rest of the time. And what Iwant to emphasize for folks
listening is, it's not bad towant one or the other, there is
no right or wrong answer. It isjust, there's a little bit of
you want to incorporate someintegrity into whatever your

(12:10):
statement is. So if you sayyou're going to try to get
acquired someday, if you'regoing to try to exit, if you're
going to try to make sure thatsomeone decides Oh, it really
makes sense for us to merge withthis company. And this happens
all the time with like, Iremember when Amazon was
starting to do like Amazon Freshstuff here in Seattle, they were
really starting to like gobbleup all the commissary kitchens.
And that's like a very realmoment, when it's like, Oh, I've

(12:32):
owned this Commissary Kitchenfor seven years, I built it up
to be this thing. And now all ofa sudden, I have this offer from
Amazon to potentially take allof these assets and you know,
systems off my hands. And thesame thing with a lifestyle
business, there's so many peoplethat are probably even listening
to this now who are like, I lovemy private chef business.
Because I get to travel, I getto cook, however I want, I get

(12:53):
to decide when I work, I get tosay no to people, I don't have
to manage that much overhead.
Like there's so many benefits tobeing lifestyle. But I think the
the problem is, and the lessonthat I'm hoping to convey here
is like, don't talk out of bothsides, your mouth with this
stuff. It's like if you arelifestyle business, just say
that and really lean into that.
And you can look over at theother people on the other side

(13:13):
of the fence who are in theiracquired mode, or they're
thinking about, you know,systematizing, everything
becoming attractive to a buyer.
And you can just wave over atthem, you can see their green
grass, and you can say, That'sawesome for you. You know, I
love that that's what you'redoing. But we really, you know,
struggled with kind of likewriting both sides of the fence.
And so to really kind of bringthis home, after that event
production moment, I really kindof took a step back. And I was

(13:35):
like, Okay, what do I reallylike doing? What are all the
kinds of pieces on the board?
What's the biggest impact that Ican potentially have? And
ultimately, like, what whatdon't I want to be doing? I
think that's a really, reallyvaluable exercise. And now that
we're in the middle of the year,and that there's I'm not a big

(13:55):
believer in like January 1stirs. You know, like, I think
there's any good time to make ahabit, but I was like, I really
took a second to be like, whatare the things that drain my
energy? What are the things thatdon't feel good? If I really
take a snapshot back and look atthe past five years of what I've
worked on, and the projects I'vesaid yes to one of the things
that if you even if you paid medouble, triple what I say yes to
that, and there's a lot ofthings that the answer was no.

(14:17):
And so for me, where I reallylanded was was teaching. And so
that was a really big turningpoint moment, because every
single other thing fell intoplace. For me, it was like, Oh,
well, if I had an educationalproduct, then that would mean
that I can could help the mostamount of people in a really
skilled way. I wouldn't be soreliant on sponsors, I can make
content. To your point to whatyou and I do with the with both

(14:40):
of our podcasts is like, havegreat conversations with great
peopleto ultimately provide free value
to potential customers for thisthing that I know provides the
most amount of good for folks.
So I started a hospitalityeducation company called
repertoire and we made coursesthat help just kind of fill in

(15:01):
those gaps and upskill peoplewho are working in the industry,
there's actually not a lot ofrecipes that we cover. It's it's
mostly technical, it's mostlyskill development. It's mostly
these things that I find thatmost people get frustrated that
don't get taught communicationorganization, how to set
yourself up, how to navigatepotentially getting a promotion,
those things. And so theflagship course that I have is

(15:23):
called Total Station nomination.
And most folks have probablyheard me talk about a concept
called the dummy skills course,that was like, the original
thesis of everything that I wasgoing to try to put out there.
And I was like, Oh, well, Dummyis the French word for half for
those who don't know. And I wasgonna say, Oh, well, I'll teach
you the other half of thosethings that they don't teach you
in culinary school. And I didtwo betas. They were cohorts.

(15:44):
And people in the cohort startedto say, Justin, I love all the
content in this course. But Ididn't go to culinary school. So
I don't have this other halfthat you're talking about. So
can you teach me that too. Andso it all really started to kind
of like come together and belike, in part of its imposter
syndrome, right? So to thelistener asking, Well, why don't
you just call it a culinaryschool? Because it's like, I

(16:04):
went to the big culinary school,I went to CIA, and I know what
the campus looks like. And Iknow the number of staff that
they have. And I know the factthat they give you chef whites
in a new new set of knives. AndI wasn't doing any of that I was
just really stripping it all theway down to like, what are the
real practical, tangible thingsthat like, if you did the
backdoor, show up with yourknife roll thing tomorrow?
What's chef gonna ask you to dowhat's required for you to jump

(16:27):
on a station and run iteffectively. And so that's
really what I focus on. The realkind of day to day stuff is
dealing with productdevelopment. So how can we get
more tangible practical productsinto the hands of working
professionals, and then makingthe content to help bring more
people into the ecosystem inthis kind of like, positive

(16:48):
growth minded, you know,hospitality culture that I wish
I had, when I was when I wasstarting, I think that there was
a lot of like, KitchenConfidential, there was a lot of
like, shrouded Behind Mystery Oflike, LBE for Ron Adria, r&d,
you know, stuff. And I think somany other industries do it?
Well, with just being welcoming,if you want to be a graphic
designer, now, there's noshortage of liking go on

(17:09):
Skillshare and take some greatcourses. I think the current
landscape of what does free toremotely consumable content for
the hospitality industry looklike, I think it's a lot of
like, oh, we'll take you throughthe six month culinary program.
But it's like, we're gonna startwith dicing and onion. And it's
like, it's not like that's notvaluable. But I think, to my

(17:31):
point of, if you jumped into akitchen tomorrow, it's like, I
care about much more things. Andit's bringing in a lot of stuff
from from frustrations that Ihad with with hiring employees,
too. So that's what I work on.

There's a lot to unpack there. And a lot of
things I want to touch on. Butyou know, it does, it's like we
are I like to teach techniques,not recipes, right. And the
people that you're teaching,these are skills that work for
them inside a restaurant, ifthey're aligned, cook or
whatever. But I'm assumingthey're also skills that if they
want to leave and do somethinglike we do full time, part time,

(18:09):
because that is the hardestthing. You're aligned, cook in a
restaurant, whatever you want togo be a private chef, personal
chef, you may have never doneany of the managerial stuff, you
haven't done any of that youknow how to line cook, but doing
what we do is so much more thanline cooking. And where do you
learn those skills, if you'renot in a management position in
a kitchen?

Well, that's a huge takeaway that I also
noticed that made me want tostart this as a company, as
opposed to having this just be aone off course. So I would have
people who would join the dummyskills course back when that was
the name of it. And they wouldtake it and I would ask, because
this was, you know, like a verybeta version. I was like
teaching on Zoom, basically. AndI would ask people, you know, in

(18:50):
the chat, where are you working?
And what's your position? And Ihad some people who would say,
Oh, well, I'm a, I'm a sous chefat XYZ place. And I was like,
wait, you know how to runstations, you have kind of
achieved a managerial position,but you're still taking this
course about how to beproductive as like a shutter
party. And they would say, Yeah,because I'm really struggling as
a first time manager. Nobodytaught me how to, you know,

(19:13):
like, give these frameworks tomy life, because I know what
worked for me. But it's like,There's this great quote, and I
heard it the other day, it wasan expert is a person who has a
reliable system that works. Andso it's drawing that distinction
between experience andexpertise. So, Chris, you and I
have experience working indifferent kitchens and different

(19:38):
stations, but it's like, are weexperts at it? There's a lot of
things that I you know, kind oflike worked on and stations that
I ran, where I wouldn'tnecessarily say that I have a
framework that works. It's theit's the you don't want Michael
Phelps to teach you how to swimeffects. Because Michael Phelps
is just like a genetic freak,you know, like, he jumps in the
pool, and he's just like, ofcourse, he's gonna swim faster
than anybody. And that's a TimFerriss them of like when he

(20:01):
wanted to learn how to swim, hesought out someone who like, was
completely terrified of thewater, who didn't know how to
move their body and in any sortof swimming motion, who couldn't
hold their breath. And thatperson learned how to swim.
That's why I want to teach mehow to swim. And so I try to
take some of those samecharacteristics to what I build,
because it's like, if you getinto that management position,

(20:26):
and all you have is yourexperience, it's like, what if
you had a little bit of tools,frameworks, buildable skills and
habits that you can pass alongto the people that you're
mentoring, instead of just this,like, figure it out culture that
I think just is so prolific andtoxic, and it burns people out,
and it makes people frustrated.

(20:48):
And that's where a lot of my, mybuilding comes from, is just
wanting to see more engaged,excited, people in hospitality,
not this, like, you know, pissedoff frustrated, you know, like,
oh, well, there's, there's nogood people, it's like, well,
there might be no good people,because you burnt them out, you
know, even at the

upper level, you know, and so many of these
skills are job specific. I'vetalked before about my last job
that I was at for 10 years, Icame on as an executive chef, I
had been a chef before I knewwhat I was doing. But everything
at that company was different. Iwas coming from a catering
company. And then I was workingat a retirement community. And
we had like four venues, it wasa huge campus. And I still

(21:27):
remember my first day on thejob, my boss brings me over to
my office, which is on the otherside of the campus. So we're not
sharing offices, and says to me,this is Marilyn, she's your
assistant, we would call it likeprobably chef de cuisine. This
is your office, call me if youhave any issues and literally
left, I had never been with thecompany. I didn't know this
woman, this woman doesn't likeme, because now she's got a new

(21:49):
boss, right, who's half her age.
And like, that's not setting meup for success. And I stumbled
for months, if not, maybe eventhe first two years, you know,
it was just expected that atthat level, you're coming on to
be an executive chef, you'regoing to know how to run the
kitchen, which isn't fair, andit didn't set me up for success.
And I made sure that I was goingto not let that happen with

(22:11):
people I brought in. I think itspeaks to a lack of mentorship
and a lot of these places toagain, especially as you're
higher up, you know, like, theyjust expect that you're going to
hit the ground running likenobody has to a GM doesn't have
time to spend time with you. Totrain you, you just have to
start working. And that's tough.
And it burns a lot of peopleout, I could have easily thrown

(22:33):
in the towel. And like this isnot for me.

I mean, take a look at any of these, the dozens
now of restaurant meme pages,you will find some version of
the guy talking about how he didit at his last job meme, because
nobody wants to hear that inprofessional kitchens. And I
think that's so funny. Because alot of us go to these places

(22:57):
because we want, I want theFrench Laundry experience, I
want the Liberty andinexperience I want the
techniques for millennia. Andthen you go to your next
kitchen. And I think what mycourse really tries to teach is
all of the things that are notthe things that you bring to
that next kitchen. So it's like,you go to an environment that
teaches you about movement thatteaches you about upgrading your

(23:19):
output. So like you can do themore covers in the same amount
of time, you can do the sameamount of covers, and in less
time. You can tackle tasksbetter, you can have more than
one project going at the sametime. It's like that's actually
what you want to take to thenext place. Because everything
else, the way that they maketheir holidays, the way that

(23:40):
they wash their herbs, the waythat they season their sauces,
the pots and pans that they use,all of that is going to be
different. So it's like what isthe stuff that genuinely comes
with you from place to place toplace? If I really had to sum it
up, like, that's what I spend mytime focusing on, is really
getting to the heart of like,Oh, cool. There was this kitchen

(24:04):
environment or this hotel orthis catering company that what
I teach didn't work for. Okay,cool. How can I back up and try,
like, tweak the model? You knowwhat I mean? Go go all the way
back to try to figure out whatis it about this that I can make
as universal as I can. And so itreally feels like I'm writing a
book right now, man like it's,it's, I'm working on version

(24:25):
three of the course. So firstone was, you know, some slides
built in Google Google Sheetsand, and me on Zoom, Google
Slides and me on Zoom teaching.
The next upgrade was like we hadwe have a student community.
There's like a workbook full oftemplates and resources. The
slides are all updated andorganized so much better. So

(24:45):
there's actually a flow that youkind of like walk yourself
through. And with this newupgrade. I have I'm kind of
announcing this on your show. Ihaven't you know, gotten to a
place where I really feel makingmy own piece of content on it. I
have something called this Hecan score. And so it's across
nine different variables. Andyou can test yourself on am I
able to meet all of thesevariables with the current

(25:08):
station I'm running. And I findthat what that does is it's
incredibly helpful from a putyourself in relation to
something nests. I do a lot ofstrength training. I do a lot of
I try to go to the gym probablythree, four times a week. And
what's really helpful for me is,if you put 225 pounds on a bar,

(25:30):
it's very objective, can youbenchpress that or not? And I
found for myself reallyfrustratingly, you look at a
line cook? What how do we talkabout line cooks? It's like, are
they a good cook? Can they workclean? You know, like these
very, like, arbitrarydescriptors for how we evaluate

(25:50):
performance. And I was like,what if there was some sort of
objective metric that we coulduse, that's I've created all of
them. And basically, the goalis, if you're on a station, and
your station score is not whereyou want it to be. My goal is to
help you improve that score overtime, over time, over time, and
you get support, you getcoaching, you get all the

(26:12):
frameworks that that that youcan implement, through
basically, habit building, it'snot really like sexy, not going
to tell you, Oh, well, you justneed to, you know, like, hold
your knife differently, or youneed to set up your cutting
board with a little wet towelunderneath it, and then it won't
slide around anymore. It's likeit's none of those tactics. It's
genuine habits. And to me,that's going to provide the most

(26:33):
amount of good. So yeah, that's,that's, that's really kind of
like the crux of what I'm hopingto build. And then from there,
it's like, what other problemsail the industry? And how can I
take a look at them? And reallykind of like apply the same way
of thinking to them? Of Why isit a problem? What is the
current solution that's probablyfailing, and just do the work to

(26:53):
kind of like, put a product outthere, get feedback on it have
industry people tell me, it'sshit. And then it's like, go
back to the drawing board, fixit again, you know, and that's
where I really thrive. And Ithink, again, pulling in a
couple of the other things thatI've like, I got good at content
production. And then I starteddoing product reviews, and I
started looking at features ofproducts, how I can describe

(27:14):
them. And so it's like, it'sweird, man, I was a chef for so
long. And then I thought ofmyself as like, oh,
entrepreneur, you know, like,event producer for a little
while. And you asked us wayearly on. And so I'm kind of
trying to tie a bow on it here,which is like, I think of myself
much more as like a it's almostlike a product designer at this
point where I'm like, I'm reallytrying to get something that

(27:37):
like when people kick the tireson it, when people see it, when
people use it. They really arelike, I want to tell my friends
about this. And it's acompletely new skill set that
like, I I'm not I'm not great atit yet. And so it's like, being
able to slowly hone that what'sbeen helpful for me is just
like, a lot of feedback,searching, a lot of just like

(27:57):
brutally honest, you know,getting good at writing. All of
that has been helpful. But youknow, I get in such a flow state
when I'm making some of thisstuff, because it's like, I know
that it's tracking towards amore positive industry. And
that's always been the goal. Ijust didn't necessarily know how
it was going to manifest. Ithink a lot of us want the
industry to be better. And soI'm just hoping that it can be

(28:22):
something that that has somelegacy and helps helps a lot of
people.

I think the idea of the station score is really
cool. I know, you know, you're ametrics guy, right? Like, yes,
you got to be able to measurethings, whether it's your aura
ring to track your sleep andtotally sore or anything, like
if you just arbitrarily saylike, I think, you know, I think
I work clean. Like, yeah, whatyou think we're clean isn't what
I think we're clean are twodifferent things. So if you

(28:52):
don't have some metric of whatthat means, how can you tell if
you're getting better? Or ifyou're sliding?

Well, let's, let's use that one as an
example. Because, again, I wentthrough all of this, and the
listener might play along withme here on you know, kind of
like going through my thoughtpattern and how I came up with
this one. So working clean,actually falls into the setup
metric for total stationnomination. And the objective
measure is, you fail your setupthing, it's a binary yes or no,

(29:24):
if your station is impeded bytools, ingredients, or setups
that don't apply or relate tothe tasks at hand for longer
than five minutes. So if youdrop some beat pills on the
ground, if I was sitting therewith a clipboard, and I was
evaluating your station, mytimer starts. And it just
becomes this thing of does thatbeat peel apply to the task at
hand or not? And if it doesn't,it's like, get it out of the

(29:46):
way. And I think what's sointeresting about this, and you
know, the listener might bethinking about this as like, oh,
well, everything should just bewiped down quickly or
everything. Like if there's alittle mess, you should just
clean it up. If any buddy's evermade pasta, your station, kind
of from like take a step backand look at that. It's a really
messy station, again, flour allover the place, like you're the

(30:11):
with the crank thing that you'reusing your hands have flour all
over them, your apron probablyhas a little bit of flour dusted
on it, it's like, but thatdirectly applies to the task at
hand. It's like the flowerthat's dusted on there. And, you
know, like, obviously don't haveflower everywhere. But it's
like, that is a very clear wayof just kind of like really
defining what does work andclean look like. And the five

(30:35):
minute mark is also somethingthat you want to because I think
a lot of us have probably workedin kitchens, where it's like,
sauce spills on the ground. Orif you ever, like walk into one
of these, like big franchiselocations, and you look in the
back, and there's like frenchfries all over the ground, or,
you know, sauce on the side of awall or something like that.
It's like, go 2545, an hour anda half of looking at that French

(31:01):
fry sitting on the ground. Andso all of that is like how I'm
approaching all of these metricsof like, okay, what do we mean
by working clean? It's like, Canyou do it? Or can you not? And
you fail, if you cannot? And so,yeah, go ahead.

Can I play devil's advocate here, please, please,
because you talk about flow,right. And I feel like sometimes
those things break flow. So youdo have to batch out stuff, I
talked about dishes, my wifehates dishes, and she will wash
if there's a single dish in thesink. And for me, that breaks
flow, like Yeah, I'm going to becooking for an hour, I'm going
to make three or four dishes, Iam not after every dish going to

(31:38):
wash the dish, I want to do allmy cooking, get that out of the
way, then wash the dishes. Thesame with sweep, like you don't
want a dirty environment. Sototally. And nobody wants to
hear about dirty but the idea oflike, I spilled some shit. Does
it make sense to stop what I'mdoing to go to the broom closet?
Get a broom, sweep it up? Or doI just finish the task, which is
going to be 1520 minutes, andthen I'm going to do a good

(32:00):
cleaning. So the opposite ofwhat you know, no, no, but but
for me, like, I feel like onceI'm in something because I have
a little like ADHD and I need tostay on task. And if I break out
of that, then I'm just going tostart puttering around doing
other things if I'm in the zonecooking, doing my thing, don't
make me stop to do somethingelse. Yes, yes, something is

(32:21):
filthy if it's a food hazard,something like that. But
otherwise, I just want to keeprolling.

This is so like fresh in my mind. Because I was
doing the set, I was doing theupdate to the setup module
yesterday. And I made thisgraph, it's a graph of on the y
axis is your output. So how muchyou can do in a given amount of
time. And on the x axis is yourcleanliness. And there's this

(32:47):
every single point. So I go it'sa spectrum. So I go all the way
from disgusting at the, youknow, worse end of cleanliness,
all the way to pristine, andevery single mark along the way
you're losing output. And that'sjust a fact of the process that
is just a given thing. I had achef that I worked for who
basically said like at that pushpoint during service, when all

(33:10):
of the tickets are going to hityour station at the same time,
he's like, you're gonna have tosacrifice certain things.
Because it's like, and ninetimes out of 10. For him, it was
like, Well, normally, we woulddo like three perfect dots on
the plate. But in this instance,we're just going to do one big
dot, because it's like, you gotto get the plates out. He's like
that is coming at the expense ofyour output. And so this is this

(33:33):
is the example or the visualthat I try to lay out for my
students of like, you have tonotice. And the most important
thing is there's a distinctplate, jump off between the top
three so pristine is the is theyou know, like, the photoshoot
worthy. Maybe even like, this ishow we leave the kitchen before
we leave. If you're trying toconstantly reset to that

(33:54):
pristine way of being, food isgoing to come out pretty slow.
Like that's just the fact of thematter. And then it's like right
below that is clean. So thatwould be like you really want to
kind of like as you get a littlebit of a break to your wife's
point of like, let's get thedishes all the way you know,
kind of like put away now it'sclean. The one right below that
is tidy. And that's what I tryto push my students to kind of

(34:15):
like keep in mind. So you'reconstantly having this tug
that's pulling you away fromtidy. And the one right below
tidy is busy, right? So likeeverybody knows that feeling of
like when you're busy. It's likeyou're leaving a little bit of
cleanliness off the table alittle bit. But it's like once
you get that gap and you're notbusy anymore, you kind of pull
it back to tidy. And so I callit this kind of like tug of war
for your setup, where it's likesomething's pulling you back and

(34:37):
it's like you're constantlytrying to return to what I call
the tightest state. If you can,you can define what that tidy
state is for your station. Andyou're just constantly trying to
build back towards that. I'mreally glad you brought that up
man because it was like everysingle one of these points. It's
like I want to I want to refine,refine, refine till I get till I
get to a place where everysingle dev double advocates
devil's advocate response can bekind have, like, defused, or

(35:01):
it's like, it's like, Oh, I'vethought about this or like,
there's a way that we approachthis where, you know, like, it's
like, it's a Gary Vee like, youknow, eliminate excuses kind of
thing. And so it's like, and Ithink it's so common, because
it's like, there's so manypeople who have these frameworks
who you try to you try to put itto work, or you try to you try
to apply it. And it justdoesn't, it doesn't work for me,

(35:22):
you know, or I tried it in thiscontext, and it kind of fell
apart for me. And when you lookat the people who have some of
the best frameworks in theworld, the James clears the Tim
Ferriss of the world, it's like,even in other industries, it's
like this ended up working.
Thank you for doing that.
Because it like really gave alot of validation to what I
spent yesterday doing. Do youthink that that's a good way to

(35:43):
approach it? I'm genuinelyasking for

Absolutely. And this was just on my mind,
because I have this conversationin my house all the time. My
wife is also someone who's likeone of those nervous cleaners.
Like she's not Yeah, so justlike, for her, it's like mental
clutter. And for me, I try toget laser focused on what I'm
doing. So it's like, I hate youknow, I'm sitting down with my
laptop, and I'm working onsomething and she wants me to
stop to go, you know, water thegarden, it's like, no, I need to

(36:06):
finish this thing I'm workingon. And then I'll do that. With
the private chef. I feel likefor me, I usually do like a four
course dinner. The entree is theshit show, because like you talk
about things like not being thesame, you know, let's say this
past weekend. The first coursewas pimento cheese. So I get to
their house an hour and a halfbefore, I've got 90 minutes to

(36:27):
scoop pimento cheese, that'slike pretty much made into a
bowl put out a good secondcourse is a soup, the soup is
done. It's in a pot, all I haveto do is label put two things
on, by the time we get toentrees, we had two special
diets. So it's three entrees.
The special diets have differentaccompaniments, the side dishes
each have three things andyou're just like, in the weeds,
like how do I get this food onthe plate? How is it hot? How is

(36:48):
it garnished and looking nice,and that's a nightmare. And it's
the longest course for them toeat. And then the dessert is a
pannacotta that's already madeand set. And it literally comes
out of the fridge and get someberries, but like that third
course is where the rubber meetsthe road. And unfortunately,
you're sacrificing some of theplating or, or something or it's
easier to miss an ingredientbecause there's more going into

(37:09):
it and it's, you know, what areyour things that you put into
place so that it's as good asyou can have it be

when you get those objective metrics, when
you have that, okay, my stationcan fall a little bit short,
like it can, it can have the,you know, juice from the beef
that rolled off the cuttingboard and it's on the
countertop, it's like, that'sfine, you can have a little bit
of flour on the ground, thathappens, it's fine. It's about
really getting clear on Oh, wellif the time the clock is

(37:38):
ticking, and I have five minutesto figure this out, to get it
back to tidy to not be impededby these ingredients that don't
apply to the task at hand. It'slike that changes your behavior.
And so how do you think about,oh, well, I'm gonna, you know,
rest the beef on a tray with arack, so that all the juices,

(37:58):
you know, kind of like flow ontothis thing that is not going to
impede my station. So that whenI go to slice the beef, it's
it's, it's, you know, not gonnanot gonna dribble as much all
over the place. To the pointthat you were talking about on
when that third course hits, Ithink a lot of us have had that
feeling. You have this momentwhere you have the choice

(38:19):
between do I wipe down? Or do Islice the beef and get it out to
the people who are waiting?
Because it's like, their only 25minutes that you have to play
with. And you're only one humanmost of the time, especially as
a private chef, I know thefeeling. And so it's this funny
thing where I think that peoplewill sometimes over macho fie it
and just say, well just just doboth, you know, like just just

(38:42):
figure it out. There's like theyou see that on chefs meme pages
to where it's the it's thesuperhero, and there's the
button and he has the choicebetween picking one or the
other. And he's tweeting, andhe's sweating. And he he and he
does the the the you know, theShah hands and he puts his
pinkie on one and a stone on theother. And he's like, thumbs up.
I did both. It's like, that'snot always realistic. Like you
genuinely have this moment whereyou have 18 people waiting. And

(39:05):
the beeps hot. It's like, areyou going to take the time to
clean up the sauce that youdribbled? Are you going to slice
the beef and serve the beef andcome back and do it after the
fact? I think it's just aninteresting and that you know,
we can talk about all the otherones if you want I'm happy to go
through as many as you want butI I don't want to hijack the
conversation if there are othertalking points you wanted to go

(39:28):
on but this is literally likeI'm so I'm so in the thick of
this right now. This is like allI'm thinking about?

Well, and you know, every good course worth its
weight has gone through a numberof iterations. I took a
podcasting course that's stillgoing on. And I took it back.
You know, we started November2020. I was one of the first
group has maybe in the firstdozen. And now there's hundreds
of members and that course hascontinued to grow. They've added
more functions. It's a lot moreexpensive now than it was And

(39:58):
thankfully, you know, we're likegrandfather then and we are
allowed a lot of access to thenew features. But you know, it's
expected that, especially if youknow, you're taking something
maybe on the newer end that,yeah, it's going to be a good
course, hopefully. But maybe newfeatures are going to come and
be added on at some point.

100%. And the real benefit comes to the
students who took a chance on itwhen it was called the dummies
skills course. Because they get,I take the same approach with
all the products that I put outthere. If you enroll in the
course, you get lifetimeupdates, and lifetime access. So
it's not this funny thing whereI joke about this sometimes on
my own content, but it's like, Idon't really have a relationship

(40:37):
with CIA anymore. It's like, Iwent there, I got my degree
there. But it's like, am Icontinuing to get resources?
They're not necessarily, am Icontinuing to get updates to you
know, skills, one skills, twoskills three that I took, I
can't go in and you know, takethat class again, at least not
in a accessible way. You knowwhat I mean? Like if I really
reached out to them, and Ireally said, I want to do this

(40:58):
again, they might say, Oh, well,yeah, you can come sit in on a
three week block or whateverthat whatever it is, the class
schedules are completely changedto just totally fine. I don't
have a problem with updates. Ijust think that education in the
age of the internet should be alittle bit more like a software
product, where you get thatemail that says, hey, awesome
news. Total Station on nationjust updated. And good news,

(41:21):
because you bought, you getfree, you get this update for
absolutely free. And yeah, it'slike all these paradigm
shifting. Why isn't it likethis, you know, questions,

which is an interesting way to look at it,
because it used to be youbought, you know, Photoshop or
Microsoft or whatever. And thenin a year, when they updated it,
you had to buy a new actual, youknow, slice wrong. Yep, yeah, or
it or whatever. And now it's youjust you have Adobe Creative
Suite, and you pay a monthly ora yearly or whatever. And then
it's constantly improving, asopposed to, oh, I still have

(41:54):
Microsoft 97 on my computer,because I'm too cheap to buy the
new CD ROM. Exactly. Exactly.
That's old people talking, mostof the kids don't know what
we're talking about. I want totalk about the podcast a little
bit, you have a podcast, yes.
How big a role currently doesthat play in what you're doing?
Like, how much of your time isspent on that? And how much you

(42:15):
know, personal enjoyment? Areyou getting out of it? Where's
where's the podcast in the grandscheme of things right now,

I would say it's probably like 10%, of of just
like my time, mental energy, Ihave really tried to do the work
to and I'm talking to you aboutthis off camera, Off mic, of
putting systems in place to makesure that the podcast itself can

(42:41):
continue to be something that Ican stick with. And it doesn't
become a burden, where I thinkyou and I know people who have
shows where it is 90% of their,their job. They're researching
all the time, they're flying outin setting up, you know,
bringing camera crews with himto set up interviews, they're,

(43:01):
you know, pimping themselves outto go on other people's
conversations and on otherpeople's shows and do
interviews. For me. Really, thepodcast really serves two
functions. Selfishly, one isnetworking. So if I want to get
in touch with somebody, if Igenuinely just want to, you
know, learn from them, if Ithink that they could provide

(43:22):
value to my audience, insteadof, hey, do you want to do a
YouTube collab? Hey, can we justhop on a call? And I just want
to ask you a couple of questionson something. I still believe
even in 2023, that having apodcast is one of the best just
kind of like foot in the doormechanisms that you can have.

(43:44):
Are you reaching out to everyoneyourself? Yes, I'm still doing
the reach outs. So talking aboutthe system, that sensation part
I use, and I'm super happysharing the tools because I
think your audience might getsome I like when when when
podcast people talk abouttactics and like, Okay, but what
do you actually use, you knowwhat I mean? So Squarespace, the
website, the company that I usedto host my website acquired a

(44:07):
company called acuity, whichbasically is like Calendly, for
scheduling stuff. And so ifyou're going to be on the
repertoire podcast, you get anacuity link, where it basically
allows you to pick a time, I setspecific hours that I'm
available to do podcasts. Italso helps save back and forth

(44:28):
with me in the guest. Because Iasked for their headshot, I
asked for them to tell me thespecific things that we want to
that we want that we want. Theywant to see in the show notes of
the episode. So for me, forexample, I want people to go to
join repertoire.com Or myinstagram or my YouTube channel.

(44:51):
If you know and I'm not sayingyou would do this, Chris, but
I'm saying other people whoproduce podcasts might just do a
quick Google search. And theymight find OH Justin kinda has
this dummy skills course, we'regonna link to that in the show
notes. That's actually wrong. Idon't want you to link to that.
And so I put that onus on theguest, I say, hey, we want to,
we want to make sure yourbusiness or whatever projects

(45:12):
you're working on, get somelove. Can you please share with
us the two to three URLs thatyou want people to set to go to?
To ask your questions to followup to buy your thing, whatever
onus is on them.

It can go the other way, though, because I've been
asked to be a guest on someshows where they're actually
like asking you to tell them thequestions to ask, which is like,
you're the intern not goodetiquette. Yeah, like I like, do
you even know who I like? Why doyou want me on the show? Yeah,
yeah. I want my appearance onyour show to be different than
my appearance on someone else'sshow. Which I want to use that

(45:46):
as a leaving board for somethingelse. Have you ever worked with
a PR agency? Meaning like, Haveyou ever had someone from a PR
firm reach out to you and say,Hey, I've got this guest? Yes.
And is that something you do?
Has it worked out? What's yourexperience been?

No, great question. I have had that
happen. It almost always doesn'twork. Why? From a couple of
perspective, no one's ever askedme this before. This is a good
question, Chris. So the firstplace is that the person it's
like, Why? Why do they have a PRfirm? Typically, they want

(46:20):
publicity, Justin. Yeah. Butit's, but it's for what you
know. So I'll give an example Ihad, and I won't name them by
name, I had a PR person reachout, Hey, this is a chef who has
all this critical acclaim fromXYZ place, and they have this
restaurant. And it's very clearthat the PR person is just

(46:44):
ticking the podcast box for thisperson. And there's almost like
an awareness campaign to thepublic, you know, public
awareness, appearance, whatever,whatever. It doesn't work well
for my show. So if my show waslike a kind of like, Guy Raz,
how I built this, you know, Ijust want to hear your story. I

(47:04):
think that that that PR persondoing that work is really
valuable. The problem that Ihave is that they come on my
show, and I asked them, tell meabout this, you know, your
favorite tactics that you use inXYZ role that you're in. So if
this is a food photographer,this is a knife maker, this is a
winemaker, this is a chef decuisine somewhere. I want to

(47:28):
hear what are the things that Ican that my audience can
selfishly use to add to theirrepertoire. That's like the
whole purpose of the show. And Ithink a lot of these people who
have PR people, not all of themare bad. But my experience so
far has been these people justwant to talk about their
experience, they want to tellstories. And stories certainly

(47:51):
have value. But it's like, thetakeaways that I can get. And
sometimes they aren't even mediatrained or prepared. So we'll
get on the show. It's like, theyramble forever. They don't get
to they don't get to the point.
And so that that that tends tobe frustrating for me. So yes, I
do all my own reach outs. Forthat reason,

I've been working with a few of them recently.
Some of them are good. Some ofthem are not so good. But a
couple of interestingexperiences. And I'd love to get
your take on this. I know whenit feels like it's right or not.
But I recently did two episodes.
And I'll say that the episodeswere great. And it worked out
well. But the PR rep actuallysat in on the meeting, like they

(48:29):
wanted to be in the meat cameramuted, mic muted, but we're
there, which is kind of like, Isthere gonna Is this gonna go
down a road where like, I saysomething and they're gonna come
on and say, We don't want totalk about that. That did not
happen at all. But I do thinkit's interesting. And I guess

(48:50):
maybe that's why some peoplehire the bigger firms now. I
would say I think that would bemore typical with someone who's
potentially problematic like Idid have a couple of chefs in
the past have their PR peoplereach out to me to be on the
show and I know enough to knowthat they're like, they maybe
were let's just say canceled alittle bit and they're trying to
you know, make their way backinto the media and I was just

(49:11):
like no, I'm not doing it. Butwith these others I just think
it was you know, they're on abook tour or whatever right now
and they're trying to get a lotof media attention but it's
really interesting becausethey'll provide a list of like
talking points which is nice ifI don't know who they are, but I
do have you know questions thatI want to ask of my own because

(49:33):
I don't want you to go throughcome on Justin show talk about
this then go on ratio talk aboutthe exact same thing come on my
show go on a manual shit likethat's boring right like why do
you want to come on my show?
Don't you want to come becauseI'm gonna give my own take like
most of us listen to the sameshows like I don't want to then
hear the person on your showJustin and hear you ask them

(49:54):
about their book or their youknow, knife line or whatever. So
He's just kind of interesting,but it's something that I'm
dealing with now that I neverreally had before. But I do
believe that buildingrelationships with some of these
agencies can be a good thinglong term. And I just kind of
want to see where it would go.

No at all great points, that you summed it up
much better than I think I did,which is, I don't want that
effect, either of the, I want totake the same bid, bring it to
this show, say the bid, bring itto this show, say the bid. And I
think that's what that's where Iget frustrated is like, I

(50:33):
respect my audience's time, Ithink a little bit too much of,
if you want to know XYZ chef'sbackground, they probably told
it on splendid table podcast, orwhatever. And that's the show to
tell it on, you know, becausetheir reach is so much bigger. I
want to know, if you have abook, I think that that was I
think that's where we mightactually disagree a little bit

(50:54):
where it's like, I want the chefwho has a book, who has a couple
of frameworks, who has, youknow, like a cuisine that they
ended up developing? Because Iwant to go deeper there on how
did you actually end up teachingthis in the city that you were
in, because the city that you'rein was known for this. But like,
all the cooks that you broughtin, were probably like a little

(51:15):
bit confused as to why you weredoing this technique on all of
your proteins or whatever. Sohow did you navigate that? Like,
that's the questions that I'mgoing to ask. And every
interview is different. Butit's, it's yeah, the frustration
of getting the PR request. Andand knowing that it's going to
be a vanilla piece of content.
Because yeah, and maybe this isjust a testament to the size of

(51:38):
our shows, it's like, we couldbe missing something you and I,
we could the value of a good PRperson is probably like, huge.
And we just aren't big enough tosee it yet. But to get to that
place where the person issitting in on the interview is
weird. I had a productionassistant who would sit on in on
interviews once upon a time,that was really valuable because

(51:59):
she was the one that was incharge of doing a lot of the
clips and making the show notes.
And so as the interview washappening, she was building out
on a page inside of notion.

I would love that like timestamps of like exactly,
well, this is gonna be the keytakeaway, because I want to be
here with you right now. I don'twant to be sitting here making
notes like we've been on 50minutes. And that's what Justin
gave the good stuff. Totally.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and Ilisten, I have done so many
cookbook, guests recently,because I'm on these like lists
with these agencies. And I loveit. I've gotten to talk to

(52:30):
people who I've admired my wholelife, you know, like Marianne
Esposito, who had a cookingshow, it's been like 30 years,
like, I would have never talkedto her had her PR person not
reached out to me. And she wasreally cool. And we got to talk
about a lot of great stuff. ButI do get a lot of pitches from
people where it's not gonna workout. I've also had a lot of them
who I work with, and they'llsend me a list and say, okay,

(52:51):
you know, fall is cookbookseason, here's the 27 books,
we're going to be releasing thisfall, here's advanced copies,
digital proofs, look throughthem, and just tell me, is there
anyone on this list you would beinterested in talking to? And
you know, probably a third ofthem at max are ones I want to
talk to. But there's some greatpeople in there. But how do I
make that an interestingconversation? That's not just

(53:14):
like going, Oh, tell me aboutthe soups. Like, tell me about
this, you know, especiallybecause sometimes they're not
reinventing the wheel. It'slike, oh, another book of
salads. And you look through andyou're like, Okay, I get why
you're doing this, and you havean audience, but like, I'm not
gonna talk to you for an hourabout salads and your whole
cookbook of salads. Like,there's got to be something

(53:36):
interesting here.

Yeah, getting those even smaller episodes, I
think that I, you know, came toterms with that actually being a
viable option. And, you know,like, with, with just some solo
episodes that I did that wereshorter. And, you know, they get
great numbers, you know, becausepeople feel like they're a
little bit more digestible. Andso if I have someone who comes
to my inbox and says, I wrote apasta book, it's like, cool,

(54:02):
there's 1000s of pasta books.
Like, I would love for you to,you know, come on the show, but
it's going to be like a miniepisode. And we're just going to
talk through a couple of like,your favorite recipes from the
book, your process and writingit and where people can go find
it. You know, like, that's ourlittle piece of value, where
you're still gonna get the valuethe audience capture, my
audience is still going to bemade aware that you have a
project and if there are a pastanerd, awesome. This is perfect

(54:23):
for them.

I think sometimes you are drawn to the bigger
guests. Yes, actually. Sotoday's episode that released I
had Nick de Giovanni, right. Sohe has huge YouTube. He has
crossed the 10 millionsubscriber mark 11 million
followers on Tiktok. Great guyto talk to. I found him through
his agent. The chances that heis going to share this episode

(54:48):
with his group are like, lessthan 1%. Right? He has, it would
be huge for me, but he's notgoing to do it. First of all,
he's mostly a video guy. We didnot record Do there's no clips,
I've already tagged him in theartwork on Instagram hasn't
liked, it probably isn't goingto share it. I sent it out to

(55:08):
his PR team I sent them, youknow, the cover art that I did
direct links to Apple Spotifypod page. So what what am I
actually getting out of it? Itbetter have been a good episode,
because he is not going to blastit out probably to his 20
million followers. And I think alot of people like oh, man, this
guy's got 20 million followers,that would be huge for me, he's

(55:29):
probably not going to do I'venever had his email address.
It's gone only through his peer,I have no way to reach out to
this guy and say like, Hey, Ihope you liked it. I just hope
that His people will pass it onto him. I could be wrong when we
get off this call. Maybe heblasted it out to people, but
chances are he's not. And I'veseen this over and over, which
again goes back to like, why doyou want to come on my show?
Because you're probably going onGood Morning America, or going

(55:52):
on someone's show with 8 billionlisteners. So I don't even
always understand in the firstplace like why people want to
come on my show when I have asmaller listenership if you're
not going to share it, just likemy two cents.

Well, the listener might hear Chris. And I
just like lamenting andcomplaining about like running a
podcast. And you heard that Isay it's 10% of my time. Chris
has just talked about all theseheadaches. And I think, to
counter that, to potentiallyprovide a couple of these
benefits in addition to thenetworking and getting to talk

(56:24):
to cool people like like, likeChris is sharing. Do you
remember kind of what happenedto like insert celebrity who
gets a cancellation attempt?

Like Alison Roman?
Yeah, like I could like I couldsee why you would want to have
this body of work a PR person.
Oh, interesting. It was like itwas a very offhanded comment, in
my opinion is like, oh, like whois you know, Chrissy Tegan to
like, put out a cookbook, whatdoes she know about food and
cooking, and all of a sudden, itwas like the world's biggest
thing. And she's built thiscareer. And now people hate her.

(56:59):
And she's terrible. Because shesaid this. If I said that, or if
someone said that on my podcast,and there was a PR person, would
they step in and say, Oh,interesting. Hey, Chris, I love
where we're going. Could we cutthat out? Yeah, got it. I don't
even know hypothetically, whatmy answer would be to that.
Like, if you really were havinga great conversation, and one,

(57:19):
because I would also like tothink that sometimes I run off
at the mouth, and maybe saylike, Yeah, can we like back
that up a bit, you know, like, Idon't want to out anyone, and
have a gotcha moment where it'slike, oh, that's gonna be really
amazing. I don't want to dothat.

I'm going the other way, almost. So I'm saying
if you have that cancellationmoment, and the only thing that
you have out there on theinternet is your YouTube videos,
your short form, tick tockstuff, your tweets from six
years ago, when culture wasdifferent, it's like, so easy to
take a look at to assemble abody of evidence that says,

(57:54):
You're not really that good of aperson, because you don't have
enough counter examples of thething that I think a lot of us
get value from when we'relearning about a person, which
is long form conversations. Andso to me, it's like, as I'm
grappling with all of theseideas, and trying to think about
changing the industry for thebetter. It's like, I want to be
able to have hours and hours andhours of content, to build just

(58:16):
one show how I got to thispoint, but to to at least give a
little bit of context andexplanation as to why it is the
way that I why I think this. Andso that tends to be really,
really helpful, too. It's likejust the, you know, straight up
practicality of being able tomake clips and post a bunch of

(58:37):
them on the internet. So it'slike you make one hour long
piece of content, and you get abunch of additional ones from
it. Three, if you can getsomeone on your podcast, because
it is easier than having themfly to wherever you live and
doing a video collaboration withthem. You can use it to continue
to upgrade the content. So I gotHarold McGee on my show that

(59:00):
hands down led to like five orsix other conversations with
folks that I probably could nothave gotten just on my own, you
know, reach out to quality. Andso it's a it's a it's a medium
that allows for compounding,which I think is you know, like
it's a huge the, the marshmallowtest effect, the delayed

(59:21):
gratification compoundingplaying an infinite game. It's
like, that is the only way thatI think about any of the things
that I'm trying to, like buildor put out into the world. And
to me, like a podcast is is oneof the it's almost like it was
built for that kind of thinking.
And so that's that's why that'swhy I have one that's, that's
that's how I use mine. Andthat's what I that. I just hope

(59:42):
it provides value along the wayfor other folks because it's it
certainly provides me value likejust in the conversations
themselves, but I see otherbenefits outside of, you know,
just just recording theconversations and putting them
out there. Well, it's

a huge social proof right that you're like they got
like whoa, wow, hold me Keep aneye on this guy show. I've never
even heard of this guy back, Ineed to check it out. Yeah, and,
and working with these PRagencies this going back to
Nick, like, they were happy withhow it went. And they
immediately the next day said,Hey, we've got this other person
we would love to get on yourshow. And it's someone who's a
pretty well known person. Andyou know, that just kind of

(01:00:18):
snowballs. Like, I want to bethe guy who some of these
businesses come to and say,we've got a guest, and they're
doing a limited amount ofinterviews, we would love for
your show to be one of thosestops, you know, as long as I
can keep creative control andintegrity of the show and still
make it my show. Yep.

Justin Khanna (01:00:38):
Go ahead. No, I was just going to finish out the
process, because you asked alittle bit about like, what that
behind the scenes is like alittle bit. So I do use
Riverside for for recording mypodcast episodes. It's, it's a
great platform that I don't getany, I don't get anything for
recommending it. But I justgenuinely enjoy using it. And
then I use the script to editwith a editor that that I that I

(01:01:01):
have. So I just have a projectrate for per episode. Video,
audio and clips are all part ofthat package with with this
editor. And they basically getrewarded for going fast. We have
a bunch of templates that we canuse. And then we just project
manage it inside of a platformcalled notion. And so every

(01:01:23):
single new interview gets anotion page, and we write all
the notes, we take all of the,you know, details that they
gave. So this is my website.
This is my book. This is myproject that goes into notion,
every single linkable thing thatthe guest mentions, whether it's
a book or a restaurant, or chef,we put that into notion, and
then I've actually been enjoyingusing AI to kind of generate

(01:01:44):
some of those show notes becauseit's really fast should just
give Google Bard or chat GBTlike here are some how are you
getting that information intothe AI machine? Yeah, so I it's
all about prompt engineeringright now. That's like the big

Chris Spear (01:02:00):
are you like copying and pasting in links to
transcripts? How are you gettingshow notes? Oh, so like the
tactical, like basic? Yeah,like, today's episode came out,
I would love a summary or shownotes or whatever, oh, interest.
There's like a there's like amax character. Like,

I've tried to take a text transcript. But you
can see if the batch at me like,I'm gonna give you five right
chunks. Here's chunk one, here'schunk two, but it still never
adds them up. It gives you asummary after each one. It's
like, I want you to wait for thefive things, and then summarize
the whole so yeah, to gettactical, I want to know about
Yeah, totally that into a chat.
GPT. Yeah, so I we're still inthe age of it's not that an AI
is going to replace your job,it's that a human using AI is

(01:02:38):
going to replace you. And yourjob is kind of the again, the
current state of things. Thisis, you know, June of 2023. And
so the way that I do it is myeditor basically has the
responsibility of every singletime that I will say, it's going
to be linked in the show notes,just, you know, keep going if
the person is talking aboutsomething that's like a trigger
moment where they say, okay,cool, I need to document

(01:03:00):
whatever that person just said.
And then aside from that, it'sanything that someone would
realistically hear, and want toresearch more on. And this is
mostly in relation to kind oflike, people places and things.
If there's a you know, like, ifI mentioned aubergine to Carmel
as a restaurant, and this personworked there, and I got so much

(01:03:22):
great experience at this place.
That's kind of like a triggermoment for my editor to kind of
like put that in notion. Andthey will say over the aubergine
dip, Carmel, colon, and thenthey do another line. And then
we talk about bonding Lee as afood blogger, bhanjyang li
colon. And so now I have thislist of it's almost like a title
where it's like blunderinglycolon Oberstein, to Carmel,

(01:03:43):
colon, French Laundry, colon. Itake all of that. So those are
my kind of like chapter markers.
And then I prompt an AI and Ibasically say you are a
shownotes creating bot for apodcast. I'm gonna give you a
list of people places andthings. I need you to paste to
their website after each onethat I give you so that we can

(01:04:03):
put it into the show notes. Thekicker here is you need to make
sure that the AI that you'reusing has access to the internet
can basically skim websitesbecause for a long time chat GPT
especially wasn't able to skimthe internet that's why I liked
Google barn for a hot secondhere. But instead of that may
very manual process of okay, Ineed an ulterior Epicure copy

(01:04:25):
ulterior Epicure New Tab pastein ulterior Epicure you know
make sure it's the rightwebsite, copy that go back to
notion paste it in, you knowthat four step process just
becomes one prompt, enter. Andit's been 100% accurate for me,
for the most part. There's beena couple of times where like the
person doesn't have a website orI'm trying to get to their

(01:04:47):
Twitter or their Instagram whereI have to manually do it. But I
really try to again because Iget so nerdy on my show man and
I'm really trying to offer theselike, you probably you do this
on your show too. I know you do.
You'll you'll do this throwbackfrom 12 years ago of this book,
or this event, or this chefwho's not cooking anymore, and
all of his restaurants are gone.
And it's like, if I'm a youngculinary school student, and I

(01:05:08):
want to read about the historyof how Le Cirque became the
Cirque, it's like, how do I makesure that I do that, and those
are the type of people I want toattract to my show. So I need to
make sure that I'm followingthrough on giving them the
resources to continue theireducation. And so my show notes,
like, I take a lot of pride inmy show notes, and I try to make
sure that my show notes aregood. And so for me, that's

(01:05:29):
important for my show. For otherfolks, it might not necessarily
be, but that's been a you know,just getting tactical. And then
the last piece just to kind ofreally round this out, once the
episode is done, I have kind oflike a templated message that I
send to people. Hey, so and soour episode is going live
tomorrow, it came out reallygreat. It's like a really

(01:05:51):
important thing that I'velearned of like, guests just
want to know that, like, theiraudio wasn't screwed up, or
there wasn't anything wrong withtheir video or whatever, or, you
know, just like, is it a goodpiece of content, you know,
like, it's just a little thing.
But it's always like, just niceto hear like, Oh, our interview,
I'm really happy with the waythat it turned out. Because they
want to hear that you have pridein it too. Here's the link to
where the episode can be foundacross all platforms, I use a

(01:06:15):
service called simple cast, tobasically distribute my show,
Apple, Spotify, whatever,whatever. It will also be on
YouTube. And here's the link tothat, because that's not on that
page. Here are a couple ofgraphics that we're going to be
using to promote the show.
Please keep an eye out over thenext couple of days for us

(01:06:37):
tagging you in promotionalmaterials. As the episode goes
live, thanks so much for comingon the show. And so the hope is
through the reach outs, it savedthem time, it wasn't a ton of
emails back and forth. I againrespected them and really wanted
to like have this again, to yourpoint not be a gotcha style
show. To the interview itself.
They don't have to manage thefiles because I'm using

(01:06:59):
Riverside. Even the promo I'mgoing to take care of the promo.
We made all these clips, weedited it for you. It should be
like, again, you work in a lotof these restaurants. And it's
so like guest experience, guestexperience guest experience. And
to not take that into theprojects that I do, which are
also very, like, people focused.

(01:07:20):
It's like, that's how I tried tolook at all of this is like, how
would you do a three Michelinstar podcast process? As a solo
person? You know what I mean?
Like that's a little bit of anunrealistic standard. But you
know, anybody who wants to reada little bit more about that can
find the 11 star experienceexercise. I think it's from
Brian Chesky of Airbnb. Maybeit's, I can't I can't quite
remember who Reed Hoffman. ReidHoffman in the show notes. Yeah,

(01:07:43):
Reed Hoffman, I think maybe I'mjust throwing out founder names
at this point.

I love that AI hack. And, you know, Tim Ferriss
does an amazing job with that. Alot of people do a great job
with that. Do you have any idea?
There's no way. I mean, I guessif you host on your website, but
you don't really know if peopleare using it, right? Like,
that's my frustration is, you doall the show notes. But if it's
on, you know, I host onBuzzsprout. I have no idea the

(01:08:09):
click rate like is anyoneclicking on this, that I do all
this for nothing. And nobodyever went to this website of
this chef who is cooking inPortugal or something like I
don't know. And that's the hardthing is not knowing what works.
When you have something on yourwebsite, you can see what people
click on and go out to but youcan't when you're using these
third party apps, which getsfrustrated. So you just have to

(01:08:32):
either do it because you want todo it and hope that it works or,
you know, it's

almost like the how Steve Jobs talked about,
like how his laptops, no one, noone will see how the chips are
laid out underneath this, thiscomputer. But they need to be
beautiful. Because whenever Ithink that there's a little bit
of that, where it's just like,if I want the show to be like
high quality and be respectedand whatever, like you should

(01:08:57):
kind of put in a little bit ofthat legwork to make it to make
it nice in the shownotes. I alsoput a disclaimer in my show
notes, which is if you ended uphaving to google anything from
the show, or you couldn't findwhat you were looking for. And
then I put an email, pleaseemail us here. I think only one
or two people have ever utilizedthat. Which obviously helps you
know that it's working. But alsomaybe just coming to grips with

(01:09:18):
the fact that like, the shownotes are for like 10% of
people. I know for my own Ialways also try to take these
conversations with like, what ismy user behavior. So for my user
behavior, if I'm listening to ahuman podcast, I'm probably only
clicking on like, one link everyfour episodes, because I'm
really not going on a deep diveinto all the papers that he's

(01:09:39):
linking and the scientists thathe's talking about. But for the
one time that I do need it, Ikind of want it to be there. And
maybe additionally it just likeany time that you have the
opportunity to increase yoursurface area of luck. It's
beneficial. So I'll give a quickexample on this. When I did my
this place called French Laundryvideo this place called distance

(01:09:59):
you worries that I have onYouTube where I go out to eat, I
shoot the video I give avoiceover on the menu. I linked
Masimo, deca, Stan Zoes wine. Inthe description of the video. I
didn't know that video was goingto blow up, I just wanted people
to be able to find the wine thatI mentioned in the video because

(01:10:20):
it was something that I couldlink up. Come to find out. He
was a longtime customer of thebutcher shop that I used to work
at, I completely forgot that hewas. And he reached out and he
said, Hey, we're getting allthis traffic from our website
from YouTube. Thank you so muchfor sending us all of this
traffic. I you know, anythingthat you can do anytime you're

(01:10:43):
in Napa, we'd love to, you know,like, Come show you the winery.
And I'd actually love to come onyour podcast, there's a there's
an episode that him and I didwhere we just kind of connected.
And so it's like, you don't knowwhen those moments are going to
happen. But every single timeyou take the especially now with
AI, you take a 45 seconds topaste in all of the little
checkpoints that you made. Itcan it's increasing your surface

(01:11:06):
area of lock, which is like aSahil bloom quote that I think
that he talks about. And anytimethat you can do that it's
really, really beneficial. Andso that's why I do shownotes
it's like, You're right, 95% ofyour listeners are never going
to click on anything. But it'sfor the 5% of nerds, who will.

I used to have similar experiences when I was
doing more blogging back in theday, and not to get weeded into
those stories. But yeah, that'swhat I love doing too is making
sure I got hyperlink out as manythings as possible there. I also
think it's interesting that youand I both run, you know,
somewhat similar shows, and weuse almost none of the same
things like I scheduled throughCalendly. I do so much in word I

(01:11:45):
record on a platform calledremotely. I edit in Audacity and
off onic. And I host onBuzzsprout. Right, like we can
put out two shows of similartopics and quality. And the
workflows. I don't use thescript. I don't use note, like
any of that. I don't use asingle tool you use.

Yeah, even our headphones and mics for the
people that might be watching onvideo. It's totally different

rose gold ones that says stole from my wife because
they have better audio quality.
So good.

But yeah, I think that that's a testament to that
it's not about the gear, youknow,

yeah. And you can always and you can always learn,
like, I'm always interested inseeing what other people do. I
love the idea of what AustinKleon calls scenesse, which I
think Brian Eno actually coined,but the idea that like lone
genius is pretty rare. And thegreat ideas often come out of
like a group of individuals,right. And that good work isn't

(01:12:40):
created in a vacuum. And thatcreativity, you know, always is
some sort of collaboration,whether you know it or not, you
know, because you're readingconsuming talking. So for you
how important is it to whetherit be collaboration or be part
of a scene, but just to surroundyourself with people in your
same ecosystem, or also not justthe same but like looking into

(01:13:02):
like maybe you're reallyinterested in woodworking and
there's a lot of things fromthese, you know, woodworking
woodworking YouTube videos thatyou've brought over, can you
talk a little bit about likecollabs partnerships and that
kind of stuff.

If this ends up resonating with someone that's
listening, great. But what I'mabout to say is a piece of
advice that I wish someone wouldhave told young Justin. So
that's that's kind of who thisis for. And it's in relation to
this thing that I think is semiuniquely American, also, you
know, like a little bit of postindustrial America, the kind of

(01:13:39):
place where capitalist societieskind of take us and I'm not even
trying to get political on this,I'm just trying to get set the
stage a little bit. And it'sthis idea of being self made.
And what I wish someone wouldhave told young Justin is, it is
not a final destination, that'sworth pursuing. Not to say that

(01:14:02):
it doesn't exist, I thinkthere's certainly people who
they have a laptop, and a goodidea and just the right amount
of timing, and they just made aproduct and they're completely
self made. millionaires. I thinkthere's also some really
surprising stats on the amountof millionaires that exist,
especially in the US, who didnot make it through inheritance.
And so I think that's whatpeople are almost always kind of

(01:14:24):
like nudging towards. But thisidea that like, you got to where
you are, without help, orwithout assistance or support or
even money, like your customersare the ones that made you you
know, if you have an investor,that person made you if you have

(01:14:45):
a business partner, if you haveemployees, it's like all these
people come together toinfluence your success. And I
think for me growing up readinglike, oh, well, Marco Pierre
White got three Michelin starsat XYZ age, and he did it all by
himself. really influenced andfucked with me on like thinking
about how I approach projectsand my own personal skill set,

(01:15:08):
and the environments that Itried to try to put myself in.
Because I wanted to be able tosay that I wanted to be able to,
like, get the plaque up on stageand be like, these are my three
Michelin stars. And I work forenough people who also share
that mentality. The fact thatthey weren't really great
mentors, the fact that theirwork environment was really

(01:15:30):
toxic, the fact that people werereally quick to like, undermine
them, or backstab them orwhatever. It's almost like you
get to that place and you can,like, you're gonna get the
award, and you're gonna say, I'mself made, and it's like, Who
are you going to share thatwith? You know, and I think
about that a lot. In reallybreaking that, like, that's how

(01:15:50):
I spent almost all my 20s waslike, it's gonna be the self
made thing. First time I got abusiness partner was like,
Really, when it started tountangle for me. And now I'm
completely in the other camp.
It's like, I want to ask forhelp as often as I can. I'm
even, you know, like, I there'sa reason it's not called Justin
connahs course, there's a reasonit's, there's a company named

(01:16:11):
behind it. There's a reason Iwent through all this stuff,
because I'm wanting to make itbigger than just me. And so
it's, it's, it's really breakingthe frame of digging deep a
little bit and asking, like, whydo you feel like collaboration
is a waste of time to the personlistening? who's like, Well, I
never collaborate or like, oh,well, it's all on my shoulders.

(01:16:33):
And I think the counterpoint tothis statement is like personal
responsibility, right? I thinkthat there's people who, you
know, they swing too far theother way. And it's like,
everything is other people'sfault. The reason I can't make
it is because of XYZ, you know,like, you become a little bit of
a victim a little bit too much.

(01:16:53):
And so you kind of want to findthis happy medium, where you are
sovereign and resilient. And youhave this agency and sense of
responsibility with things. Butyou really come to terms with
the fact that like, insertperson that is successful, they
are beholden to, or they arefacility there, they are made

(01:17:15):
more successful because of otherpeople. And I just, when when
you when you play that thoughtexercise out, it's like you
really start to get to thisplace of it's the wrong goal.
Like being self made, and, andbeing the person where it all
that shoulders everything is isreally bad. It's a negative. And

(01:17:36):
I think that is a macro frameto, to your question is is
really where I think about it.
But again, where it comes from,with collaboration and asking
for other people to becomeinvolved and doing interview
shows, especially I thinkthere's a lot of people who do
great solo podcasts, and theyhave a lot of success there. The
example I share is I had thisguest on Akshay birdwatch, He's

(01:17:59):
a chef out in New York. And he,his family is basically the one
that kind of like, started therestaurant. He's executive chef
now. If someone asks me aboutfamily dynamics and restaurants,
I'm just one guy, I have myexperience. And I can share, I

(01:18:21):
could do go down the rabbit holeof, you know, like figuring out
the dynamics that happen. Andwhy does this happen? And
psychoanalyze this and read abunch of papers on that. And,
you know, or I could just go toAkshay and ask him, Hey, how are
you navigating this? Obviously,it's one guy's perspective,
maybe he's not a quote unquote,expert, because he doesn't have
a framework that works, youknow, like he just says

(01:18:42):
experience. But I think itultimately helps scale what the
company in the show can do,because I asked other people for
their expertise. And he hasanother thing that I'm certainly
learning as I'm getting olderof, like, if you can buy down
your ignorance debt almost. It'slike, well, I don't know about

(01:19:02):
this. That's why I thinkeducation is so powerful,
because it's like, you canactually take someone's years of
learning and failures and trialsand tribulations since like,
this is what I know works. Youcan just extract that and just
plant it into your brain,obviously, doesn't mean that
you're an expert. But now youcan get the experience knowing a
little bit of this informationthat this person was so generous

(01:19:25):
to share,

and humbling yourself a little bit because
some people are a bit of a No atall, and almost don't want to
admit that they don't knoweverything. I think you also
have to be open to saying, jeez,I don't know anything about
there's so

much I don't know. And there's so much that I
could just like I could waste mytime in going off and saying
okay, now I want to learn abouthow to run a family business or
now I want to learn how to doCPG food or now I want to learn
how to do you know, like, insertthing that I don't know about?
And it's like, if I'm truly allabout giving people the most

(01:19:59):
durable Versatile, adaptablerepertoire that they can use to
go launch their thing. It'slike, it's going to have to come
from a bigger focus group thanjust myself. And so I almost
look at myself as like, I reallylike rules. Like, I really like
following the rules to yourpoint on like my fascination
with metrics. Sometimes it'slike, I know that I can be

(01:20:22):
really good at just identifyinglike, where's the truth in this?
Like, what? What is it that'sactually happening here? You
know, somebody might talk about,you know, like, running a
running a fish, and burning agrill station is all about just
like timing and nailing yourtemperature and whatever. And I
it's like a weird ability, Ihave to, like, just look into

(01:20:42):
it. It's like, oh, well, it'sit. Maybe it's actually about
just like managing the fire.
It's like, if you can get thatpart, right. It's like, all
these other things becomeeasier. And so it's like, if
that I noticed is a skill in me.
It's like, can I leverage thatto help the most amount of
people possible by bringing inpeople asking them questions,
and then potentially distillingit into something that is useful

(01:21:02):
for people? So you know, I hopeI answered your question. Yeah,
that's how I got

it. And I think there's a difference between
collaboration and, and seeing,and maybe a better word for seen
as like community. But yes, Idon't think these always have to
be in the public eye. You know,one of the things I found that
was the most beneficial for methese past couple of years, or
some or something that I alsoreally enjoyed was, you put
together this group, you know,we're doing positive some days,

(01:21:28):
and it was a meeting, every, youknow, once a month, where you
got, you know, anywhere fromsometimes it was three of us,
sometimes it was seven of us,but people who worked in kind of
the food content creation space,to just get together on a zoom
call and talk and it wasn'trecorded. It wasn't publicized.
It wasn't something for us tocreate content, it was for us to

(01:21:49):
network, to ask questions, toshare knowledge. And I think
there needs to be more of that.
And I think more people shouldbe doing that is like seek out
the people in your space. Andpeople who are at different
levels, people were doingdifferent things, people are
maybe two rungs above two rungsbelow, and just kind of help
each other grow. And nobody onthe outside knows about this

(01:22:10):
thing that we did, right? Likeit was just for us and to help
us grow and, and to just havepeople to talk to because again,
like with the personal chef, Italked about loneliness. And
that, you know, if we've comefrom restaurant backgrounds, or
kitchen backgrounds, where youhave anywhere from a dozen to
100 people working with you, andthen you're overnight working by
yourself, you want people totalk to to bounce ideas off of,

(01:22:31):
and I think more people shouldfind a community to be a part
of.

So a little bit more context there. Thank you
for the kind words on that. Ithink it's stemmed from two
places. One, there's a kind oflegendary Mr. Beast interview,
where he talks about when he wasreally starting to think about
going pro, like the StevenPressfield going pro on YouTube.
He had this moment where he hadI think, four or five, six guys

(01:22:58):
that were all doing YouTubestuff at the same time. And they
would talk like almost every dayon, here's what I'm thinking
about thumbnail creation, here'show I'm transitioning, here's
how I'm thinking about audio,here's what camera I'm using.
And they all grew together. Andit was this like, huge growth
moment for Mr. Beast where hewas just like, I didn't have
just one brain trying to solvethis problem. I had five. And I

(01:23:21):
could take their learnings and Icould use it on my videos. And I
thought this guy screwed this upor had this really big success
moment. And so I use a littlebit of that. And everybody was
there supporting, which is verycounter to I think what a lot of
us experience as creators orentrepreneurs where you do it in
isolation, nobody can reallyunderstand what your what it is
that you're up to, or what it isthat you're trying to build. So

(01:23:42):
that was part of it. And thenthe second one is positive some
days is when I called it suMDAYS. Because there's a lot of
people who talk about this ideaof like positive sum games,
which is if Chris gets asponsorship for the podcast,
it's not coming out of mypocket. It's not something that
I'm losing. If you subscribe tothe repertoire, podcast, and

(01:24:05):
then you subscribe to the linecook thoughts podcast, and then
you subscribe to The ChefsWithout Restaurants podcast.
It's not like I'm losing. It'sall positive some. And so really
getting that culture kind oflike talked about in a more
positive way because I think,Chris, you you probably have
people you can think of who makecontent and they get a
sponsorship with a brand andthey don't want to talk about it

(01:24:26):
because like maybe maybe thatbrand won't start working with
them anymore. I don't want totalk I don't want to talk about
I just I just got a chance tointerview this person because no
that's that's not how I operate.
That's not how I like to learn.
That's not ultimately like thefriends that I want to have. And
so how can I you know, almostcultivate this. And you can do
this for whatever you're workingon for working on CPG brands,

(01:24:47):
who else is you know, doing,trying to develop products for

stores real life like yes talking about this,
like Bobby Hicks retro recipeskitchen. He's been a guest on my
show. I've never heard of himbefore we started this group
Yeah, there's just so manypeople out there. And he's
someone who, besides ourmeetings, like I actually had a
brand approached me aboutsomething. He's really good with
brand deals. I reached out tohim and said, like, Hey, can we

(01:25:11):
talk? Absolutely give me a call.
I'm free hop on the phone likethat day. And we just talked
about and he wants to know, youknow, what they were offering
kind of what I was thinking, wetalked numbers, he actually
said, I've talked to this brand.
Here's what you should be askedlike someone to help me out
navigate. He was very openabout, you know what, what he
thought about with that, and,like to another step today, he

(01:25:34):
texted me and said, listen tothe show, I thought it was
great. Like, this is someonewho's become a friend, like my
best friend, like my best man atmy wedding. I don't think he's
listening the show at all. Heand he shares how then text me
this morning to say, hey, greatshow, I really liked it, you
know, so we're building realrelationships. In this circle.
It's so much more than just abunch of people doing food

(01:25:55):
media, who don't really careabout each other. I've built
some great relationships with somany people in this space. And
I'm really appreciative forthose connections I've made.

Yeah, thank you, man. It's been great to see that
group grow and blossom andbecome so so helpful. I mean,
the bad news is, man, you're notself made anymore. Sorry, Chris.
Then did you look at that inyou're like, Fuck off, I don't
care. Like this was superhelpful that I would way rather
have this reality. Then yousaying, Okay, well, I'm

(01:26:24):
struggling with the sponsorthing. So I'm gonna, you know,
go down the rabbit hole, and I'mgonna hire a consultant. And I'm
gonna, like, do all thesethings. Like, play life on a
little bit more of an easy mode.
You know, like, take the helpwhen you can get it. You know,
there are people who are betterat things than you are.

And it's interesting, because you're
talking about Mr. Beast, likelooking at YouTube, you see way
more actual collaboration? Yes.
Again, going back to Nick, whowas just on my show, like, if
you watch his videos, he's donevideos with Mr. Beast, you know,
he just did a video with GordonRamsay where they broke the
Guinness Book World Record forthe largest Beef Wellington. But
I think the guys on YouTubewho've been successful you see

(01:26:59):
the crossover, which I think isinteresting. Like I always loved
crossovers, whether it be moviesor TV shows when I was a kid,
isn't it cool to be watching? ANick de Giovanni YouTube and you
see Mr. Beast, right? You'relike, I know him, like my kids
are like I know him. And I don'tthink there's enough
collaboration in the non YouTubespace like, yes, podcast, you
and I, this is a collaboration.

(01:27:22):
But I think people thinkcollaboration, and it has to be
like, you know, pop upstogether, it doesn't have to be
something so extreme, I thinkthere's ways to collaborate and
help grow each other'saudiences, in smart ways. And I
I'm going to continue to kind offind ways to do that,

I want to just touch up on a couple points that
the listener can now use if ifthis sounds attractive. So you
have your signifiers that makethis person a good fit for this
group that you're going to startconversations that you're gonna
have WhatsApp thing, you'regonna make a Slack channel,
Discord, whatever, whatever itis. Mine is just on Zoom. And I

(01:27:59):
just, you know, invite the sameguys every almost every single
time. And the first signifierfor me was that it was not
recorded. So I think there's alot of folks who, when the mic
is on, they feel like they haveto be on. And I think that's
totally fine. But I asked myselfwould would the fact that this

(01:28:21):
is recorded, prevent someonefrom being vulnerable? Asking
the question, they really wantto ask, sharing a struggle that
they're probably going throughthat I think probably applies to
the whole group? The answer was,yes. So the rule was, this is
not recorded, I'm not going totry to like, you know, try to
thumbnail your reaction forcontent leader. This is like
this is a place where you cancome, you can talk about

(01:28:42):
whatever ails you. So that wasthing, number one. Number two,
being really clear on kind oflike, what it is that we're
talking about in this group. Andso I often come with a lot of
notes. So if you're going tostart a private chef group in
Houston, it's like you as theorganizer, you have this

(01:29:04):
responsibility, because you'rehosting the party to come with.
And it doesn't have to be thislong list of topics. Hey, guys,
today we're going to talk aboutpricing. I just kind of want to
talk about like how I price mystuff. I want to share some
examples of clients that I'vegone through in the past. And
then I kind of just want to openit up to you know, like, what
everybody else is eitherstruggling with or taxes that
you've seen, be successful. Andthen you can just let the

(01:29:26):
conversation go from there. Ithink I moderate like a little
bit of the start to theseconversations. I don't really do
much from there. I just kind oflike bounce it around the room.
And then the third thing, andthis kind of just, I mean, like
it's valuable I think werealize, Chris You and I, I
think a couple of the other guysin this group. It was like it
turned into like it is right nowjust a bunch of us guys, because

(01:29:50):
I think that's another funnycall it a societal tweak,
problem issue that for whateverreason, wherever we're at
masculinity is This weird state,where it's like, guys don't come
together to talk about stuff inthe same way that I think they
did, maybe when our parents aregrowing up, maybe even then they
didn't really do it that much.
And so to have a place that,again, is not recorded, you're

(01:30:12):
surrounded by people whounderstand your problems. And
that's another reallyinteresting piece here, where
it's like, not one person inpositive some days, doesn't know
what it's like to upload a videothat doesn't have any audio on
it, or have to, you know, lose afile recording, or have to, you
know, like, have a sponsor bugthem about the due date, all of
us kind of understand eachother's problems. So being clear
about what that invite listlooks like, where it's like,

(01:30:35):
okay, maybe, maybe you like thisperson as a human. But it's
like, if they don't understandthe problems, it's like, it's
maybe, you know, maybe not agood fit for them. And so, all
of that has been really helpfulfor us so far. I've had, you
know, a couple, you know, tweakbumps in my schedule come up
where I haven't scheduled one ina while, so I'm overdue on
getting one on the calendar. Butum, yeah, it's like, how can you

(01:30:56):
make it easy for people to signup? How can you not record it to
make people feel comfortable?
And how can you moderate it in away where it leads to just like
great connections, greatresults? Yeah, that's what's,
that's what I've enjoyed abouthosting these.

Everything changes so quickly, in our space, and
every space with technology andeverything, too. And I think
that's one of the big things is,you and I have mentioned AI a
couple times as conversation,when we when you started that
group, like a year and a halfago, that wasn't even on the
table? Like nobody would havesaid, Oh, how do you best use AI
for your podcast, right. Sohaving people who also are doing

(01:31:37):
a whole bunch of differentthings and staying on top of it,
like not everyone's may bestaying on top of AI. But if one
or two people are and you canprovide some info, that's great.
And that's what I think, is sobeneficial, because whether
you're talking algorithms, orAI, or some other new tech,
hopefully, someone's gotsomething beneficial to share.
And that, you know, you can helpus navigate that, or we can help

(01:31:59):
each other navigate that, youknow, pretty, I don't wanna say
seamlessly, because we're allgoing through learning curves on
that stuff. But that's great. Soone of the questions I really
want to ask is, What are youreading these days, because I
know you're a voracious reader,whether it's books, blogs, any
of that, what are you into,

so I just got this book. It's called Scaling
people. It's from the cofoundersof stripe, I think. I mean, I
know it's, it's, it's fromstripe, I don't know if it's
from the co founders directly,but it's from, you know, one of
their HR people. And so thistalks about like huge company
scaling stuff. But it talksabout essential operating

(01:32:37):
principles, goals and resources,a comprehensive hiring approach,
like intentional teamdevelopment, feedback, and
performance mechanisms. So it'svery, like head in the clouds a
little bit with like, this mightnot apply to your private chef
business or your cateringcompany. But I think a lot of us
who like work with people,again, to the point of like,
this doesn't get really taughtanywhere, especially in like a

(01:32:57):
culinary school. Like if youwent there, you probably learned
a lot about great techniques andstuff, maybe a little bit about
business. But when it comes tolike, even looking at your p&l,
your labor is probably yourhighest expense. And so it's
like if your your knowledge setto how to manage those people is
not, you know, meeting that whatyou're spending on labor every
single month, like there'sprobably a little bit of a
disconnect there. So so there'sthat I've really been enjoying

(01:33:20):
out live by Peter, Tia. So Iprobably have like two more
chapters, I'm listening to,yeah, I'm listening to an
audiobook, and I wouldn't havelike, three or four hours left.
And so I'm kind of on the tailend. The reason that's important
to me is because my mom sufferedwith cancer, my dad suffers with
Parkinson's and cardiovasculardisease. I don't have any

(01:33:43):
metabolic disease. But Petercalls those four The Four
Horsemen of what kills mostpeople. And so if I know that I
have these problems that are,you know, genetically, there's,
there's some correlation,sometimes not always, there are
lifestyle, things that I can doto, you know, just like take
care of my health. And I'vegotten a ton of value from
Peters content over the past fewyears, and so been really

(01:34:05):
enjoying that. I'll touch onjust a couple more just in
relation to just this biggermental model that I've been
thinking about, which is, Ithink you have your many
episodes that you did on it,we're talking about what is a
chef? And so the way I defineit, if people haven't listened
to that is someone who workswith food, who holds a sense of
responsibility about the workwith the food that they do. And

(01:34:28):
so people have talked aboutlike, oh, well, you go from cook
to Chef. And I've beenfascinated with this idea of
like, there's a level beyond it,which is entrepreneur. That's
when you start the company,that's when you start hiring.
That's when like all of theselike E Myth revisited, which is
a book problems start to comeinto it. And it's funny because
the author of that book talksabout a pie shop owner as like

(01:34:48):
the subject for the whole entirebook that they write about. And
so it's not necessarily that I'mreading these books, but I'm
almost like, trying to thinkabout okay once total station on
donation as a course is at aplace where like, the product is
there, I really want to start topivot to start to think about a
little bit of that's basicallymy project on the horizon is

(01:35:09):
kind of like going from Chef toentrepreneur, and what are the
kind of like, can't missframeworks, skills, tactics,
that a lot of these books talkabout if you're trying to build
the next Snapchat, right,because that's when a lot of
them were written. But that canapply to Chef's thinking about
product market fit, and allthese buzzwords that I think,

(01:35:30):
work for people making, youknow, like E commerce companies,
they still certainly apply tochefs. But it's like, how can I,
again, be a little bit of theshepherd of that knowledge? And
really, you know, proliferatethat and construct it in a way
where I'm sharing what the rulesare. And then chess can apply
them to be more successful andultimately launch healthier,

(01:35:53):
more sustainable organizationsin the future.

Yeah, I don't I don't think it has to be and
probably even shouldn't benecessarily related to your
industry, you know, like tolearn how to grow in a personal
chef business. Like I have amasterclass subscription. And
one of the things I've beengoing and listening are courses
on from writer like DavidSedaris, like he's a writer and
a humorist. But like, how doesthat because it's really
storytelling, and I have apodcast, I'm also trying to

(01:36:19):
convey my word, whether it bewritten on my website, or via
email, it's like, how do youbecome a better writer, but also
storyteller, like he talks aboutjust like observation, and
making notes of things in theworld. So you wouldn't think
about how listening to a DavidSedaris masterclass on you know,
humor writing is relatable, butso much of it was? And that's

(01:36:40):
where I like to draw fromsources outside of the food and
beverage world. What are youloving right now, that was the
other one, like what's reallyexciting you, again, not
necessarily food and beverage,

I am really enjoying playing tennis a lot. I
think that there's a there's alocal tennis club here in
Seattle, that does, it's calleda ladder. So basically,
everybody gets ranked. And thenyou can play anybody within a
couple of rungs in the ladderfrom you, if anybody can
visualize that. And it's reallybeen helpful to really lean into

(01:37:15):
it as like another type of skilldevelopment that's also
competitive. I think that I'msuch a competitive person, man,
like I love just like, storiesabout athletes. Like I watched a
lot of Dragonball Z growing up,like, there's a lot of, you
know, just inherent competition,there's a bone there that I that

(01:37:35):
I just love, kind of likepulling on and using. But the
problem is, as you just heard metalk about this positive
Sunday's thing that I that I,that I do, it's like, it's not
always the best place to use thecompetitive thing. In, you know,
the work that I do on the day today, because it's like, I don't
want to constantly be like,going to my students and be

(01:37:57):
like, I'm so much fucking betterthan you. You know, like, That's
stupid, you know, and I don'tfeel that, you know, I don't, I
don't bring that energy toteaching, I don't bring that
energy to this podcast, I don'tbring that energy to YouTube
videos, or tiktoks, or evenpositive Sundays that I host.
And so to have that as like, anoutlet for my competitive energy
is really, really awesome. Andthat's why I'm loving it right

(01:38:18):
now. Additionally, there's justlike, I don't, do I have
plateaued on a lot of my like,cooking technical proficiency
things, you know, like,whisking, basting a steak in a
pan, knife cuts, like, I have awhole series on knife cuts on my
YouTube channel, because I thinkthat I have genuinely developed

(01:38:38):
it to a place where like, I feelgood about it. And so to have
something where it's like, youknow, I don't really follow
through that well, on mybackhand, or like, I need to
have more rotation on my serve.
And I can work on that to threetimes a week, there's something
about that, that is just very,like, just sharpen the saw and
go out and just continuechopping up the tree. And, I
mean, the fun example that I'llthat I'll share is like, I have

(01:39:02):
this one guy that I play. And hewould beat me every single time
when we first started playingtwo years ago. And we're at a
place now where we play at leastonce a week now. And I think I'm
on a four match win streakagainst him right now. Because I
have just been consistentlythinking about like, stroke

(01:39:22):
improvement, you know what Imean? And doing the boring work,
you know? And so that's why I'm,that's what I'm loving and why
I'm loving it. And I can foranybody listening, who is like,
Oh, well, I, I am a competitiveperson or I am a, you know,
like, artistic person, maybe andI'm bringing too much of that
into my work and it's causingproblems. It's like, is there

(01:39:43):
another outlet that you can, youknow, kind of like, bring into
your life to still scratch thatitch. But have it be in the
context of something else thatis maybe even completely
unrelated, but it helps you

especially nice to have things that are on related.
I'm talking about my show now.
And I think, you know, like, Istarted doing karate a year and
a half ago. Which is crazy,because I think most listeners
have some idea of me, but I'mgoing to be 47 in, like, next
month, I'm six, four. And at thetime when I started was like,
almost two at like, really big.

(01:40:18):
And I started as a white beltwith my son, who is like, was at
the time, like 60 pounds, youknow, 10 years old, I think it
was nine actually, it's scaryfor so many reasons, like 1am, I
just gonna jack myself up andget hurt doing this. But I'm,
you know, at the time, the, likeone of three adults out there.
So all these parents are sittingon the sidelines watching. While

(01:40:41):
you're out there, humblingyourself, like doing this thing.
I have no basis never donemartial arts in my life at all.
And I just have to go back tolike, what was when was the last
time you did anything that youhad no base understanding for,
like, there's a lot in theculinary world, like I've never,
let's just say butchered a fish.
But I've worked with knives.
I've seen it like this was likeI've you know, besides watching

(01:41:03):
like the Karate Kid, orBloodsport, like, I have no base
knowledge of anything. And it'shumbling, but you know, then
there's that sense ofachievement, like as I move up
and get proficient and start toget my belts, and it has nothing
to do with cooking, you know,but the physical aspect, like I
needed something to help keep mephysically fit and active. And

(01:41:23):
it's been really great. And justwanting to push myself to
achieve that. And that hasnothing to do with any kind of
business. I'm doing.

So good. I'm gonna publicly give you two
congratulations. One is on thehealth changes that you made,
because like, huge kudos, man.
Like, we haven't, I've said itto you Off mic, but just you
know, for the, the listener, Itry to do this with everybody
who is in my life that I'm youknow, close with who is, you
know, doing taking steps andbuilding habits that it's like,

(01:41:51):
it's fucking hard, you know, andit seems like this far off
distant thing that's never goingto be achievable. I have people
in my life who don't have thebest health in the world. And it
matters, right for not justyourself, but for the people
around you. So I wanted to saythat. And then I also wanted to
say kudos for 200 episodes, man,like, huge. It's dude, what

(01:42:12):
Yeah, yeah. And to

have you know, like, I don't have a huge
listenership. But when I look atthe numbers, like for me, like
I'm over 100, you know, I'mlike, over 125 that, like, when
you think about how many timessomeone has listened to that, to
me, that seems unreal to somepeople, they have huge audiences
and followings. And they hitthat early on. But for me, it's
still like, wow, that's a lot ofpeople listening to my stuff.

And most people will never be able to say that
they did 200 of anything, youknow, so for you to be able to
just like continue to take thoselearnings and growth mindset,
you know, feelings andstrategies into what you're
building is, it's, it's, it'sawesome. Let me tease a couple
of dot points that were on mylist that we didn't get to get
to, then what you can do is youcan let us know on Twitter, or

(01:43:01):
Instagram, if this would beinteresting for a follow up
episode. So I have a couple offriends who I coach their
private chefs and their pop upposts. And we've had some really
interesting, the most viral clipthat you and I had from our
conversation on my YouTubechannel was around pricing. And
so I have a couple of newframeworks that I've been
thinking around pricing forchefs to get paid earlier, get

(01:43:25):
paid faster, make it a moreattractive offer for clients.
And so if that would besomething that you want to see
Chris and I jam on, please justlet us know. We'd love to hear
from that. I think Chris and Iboth as podcast hosts sometimes
lament over the fact that like,we can't always see where you're
listening from, we can't alwayssee what you're thinking we
can't always see or, you know,like, what opinions you might

(01:43:45):
have on things. And so you gotto kind of follow up with us on
some of these other platforms.
The other one was on using AI todraft up contract language for
clients, because I think a lotof us as chefs don't often go to
law school. And we often takethings like contracts or, you
know, like agreements or evenjob descriptions for things that
we're trying to hire forcontractor wise, and we just
kind of like, well, I just won'tdo it, or, you know, I'll just,

(01:44:08):
I'll just skip this step. And itends up biting us in the butt.
And so I have some, you know,productive frameworks there that
I think could be helpful. Andthe last piece is on menu
writing, and just organizingyour ideas. It's been a couple
of success stories that I havewith people that I've worked
with, where you want to avoidthe blinking cursor syndrome,
when you go to write a new menu,and I have some ideas that are

(01:44:31):
that I'd love to share with youraudience. And so if any of those
sounds attractive, just pleaselet Chris know, and we will do
another episode together.

I already want to do that. Anyway. I'm sure that
people will be Don't spoil it,Chris. But let me know I want
salad. I want to we want

to hear from you on which one which ones you want
specifically covered and why whyyou think it might apply to you
or even just like in yourcontext. So pick one, tell us in
the context and we'll we'llwe'll be sure to make it for
you,

Justin, there will be obviously shownotes. If you
want to send people to oneplace, or just like two places
where the best places to sendthem.

Yeah, so go to my newsletter it is join
repertoire.com/newsletter. Andthat's going to be the place
where you're going to hear abouteverything that's launching with
total station domination versionthree, I'm doing a full
breakdown of the bears seasontwo, which is dropping tomorrow,
which I'm very excited on. Andyou'll basically get heads up on
all my new podcast episodes thatgo live. And so that's where you

(01:45:30):
can hear about it.

Fantastic. It will all be in the show notes.

I love it.
Thanks, Chris. Andcongratulations. Thanks.

I really appreciate it. That means a lot. And to all
of our listeners. This has beenChris with the Chefs Without
Restaurants podcast. Thanks somuch and have a great day.
You're still here, the podcastis over. If you are indeed still
here, thanks for taking the timeto listen to the show. I'd love
to direct you to one place andthat's chefs without
restaurants.org. From there,you'll be able to join our email

(01:45:59):
newsletter. Get connected in ourfree Facebook group, and join
our personal chef catering andfood truck database so I can
help get you more job leads. Andyou'll also find a link to our
sponsor page where you'll findproducts and services I love.
You pay nothing additional touse these links, but I may get a
small commission which helpskeep the Chefs Without
Restaurants podcast andorganization running. You might

(01:46:20):
even get a discount for usingsome of these links. As always,
you can reach out to me onInstagram at Chefs Without
Restaurants or send me an emailat chefs without
restaurants@gmail.com Thanks somuch

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