November 28, 2025 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Arry Show is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Ah Yes, the euphoria of success, the euphoria of America
being back, the return of common sense and decency and excellence.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Ah Yes, heavy day, heavy day, en.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Waity war quen see the way he loves.
Speaker 6 (01:06):
A happy day or a happy day? Happy or happy day?
Speaker 5 (01:18):
When you those wars a pretty warm wouldn't do those
war see you the way he loved.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
It's a happy day, a happy day.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Or happy day? Happy winter of war? Oh wheny war
winder of war three years away? You need a love
(02:37):
happy day, happy d.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Heavy deal.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
God, happy deal or happy day? Or habitay? When ge
(04:42):
those walls? Oh, waity world, when g those warm seven
the way he needed to up the habit day. One
(05:08):
of the.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Sound bites that.
Speaker 7 (05:13):
I didn't get to this week that I'm going to
make sure I did it comes from Jordan Peterson, and
he's talking about the unbelievable might of the American people,
our willingness and ability to do good things not only
for ourselves, but in so doing, for the world. I'm
(05:39):
America first. It is time we take care of the
American people first. But when we do that, we create
a model to the rest of the world, and we
tell the bad guys we are united behind our own
excellence and strength and results. President Trump called himself in
(06:03):
his inaugural speech a peacemaker and a unifier. Believe it
or not, Peace through strength works. This was what Jordan
Peterson had to say. And I didn't want to get
through the week without playing for a.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
Long time the people who held conservative and then even
classically liberal values of being on the defensive.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And that's not a good strategy.
Speaker 8 (06:30):
And it would be a lovely thing to see.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
And I think we will see it that the.
Speaker 8 (06:36):
Virtues that made America green will be unabashedly promoted and sentered.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
That's a high probability event.
Speaker 8 (06:46):
And I think if that happens, the place of loom
I was here. Tammy was as well in the United
States and the nineties when the internet book first hit
and this place just thrived. And you Americans, you do
that on a fairly consistent basis. And I think we're
on the verge of here something like that again. And
so it'll be very interesting to see what the opening
(07:09):
moves are because Trump has done this before, and he's
more prepared this time, and I'm hoping that the unbelievable
bite of the American people will be unleashed again and
that'll be salutary and useful for the whole world.
Speaker 7 (07:27):
I think President Trump understands how powerful the swamp is
in a way that even he didn't recognize. I think
he understands how the court around him, the palatial politics,
the knives are out, and he has to have loyal
(07:50):
people of great resolve around him. But I had to
tell you he is a different man than he was
eight years ago. He is ready. This is his moment,
and he has risen to it, and he has learned.
I think you have to have I think you have
to get knocked down to rock bottom, which he has
(08:10):
been to be in the position that he has to
lead this nation. And I feel very very optimistic about it.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Live, laugh, learn, doing it big.
Speaker 7 (08:28):
On the Michael Berry Show, I often speak about the
importance in life to having mentors, and I describe it
as a man who was once a boy in that
and I often say that I particularly believe that boys,
(08:48):
as they grow into men, need mentors, and then as
you get older, you still have mentors, but sometimes those
mentors are your peers. They're your same age. They may
be your same station in life. You hang out, you
may play poker, or shoot shotguns or go fishing together.
But in many ways you learn from them, you draw
(09:09):
from them, you seek to emulate them. I had a
Sunday school teacher tell me twenty five years ago that
if you want to know what you're going to be
in five years, look at the people around you. And
my wife heard me say that one day at home.
I don't let her listen to the show because I
wouldn't be able to talk about her. And she said, well,
women need mentors too, we just don't do it as well.
(09:31):
Women don't understand in the workplace in the home. You know,
women need mentors as well. They need people to tell them.
You know, as a mom, how do you deal with
you know, the demands of being a mom. Mentors are important,
and I preach on this frequently. I jokingly use the
(09:52):
term preach for those of you who wonder if I
think I'm a per pastor. I don't, but I talk
about this a lot because I think it's very important
and I have made it business. In fact, there was
an article a woman who wrote for a magazine was
in Houston. Houston has a superior cancer treatment center, and
she was getting cancer treatment in Houston, and she heard
our show, and she heard me talking about the fact
(10:15):
that my friends are not people who live next door
to me, or who I happen to go to school with,
or who I happen.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
To be related to.
Speaker 7 (10:22):
I choose my friends, and I choose my friends on
the basis of people that I admire, that I respect,
and that I want to be like, who I can
learn from. And that's because you only have so much
time in life, and the time you spend, even in recreation,
can be time that makes you better as a person.
(10:43):
And so she wanted to write an article and did
about what I called strategic friendships. And I realized, to
some people that sounds like a person that is a
schemer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It's not.
Speaker 7 (10:56):
There are people you associate with because you sell products
to their company, but that's not your real friend. We
use the term friend, and social media has put that
term into to too often a use. You know, how
many I don't have three hundred and fifty one thousand friends,
which is what my old Facebook account has. You just
have a few real friends, people you trust who trust
(11:17):
you anyway? So I like to share what I learned
from these people i'm around. And I asked Russell Lebarro.
I said, it's been a while since you've been on
the show, but every time I talked to Russell Lebarro
and I have this problem with mattress Mac too. We
tend to talk about things we're doing for the community.
(11:38):
Camp Hope needs money, or here's a great programmer, here's
a great success with Camp Hope, thank you for doing that.
And with Russell, it's every cause we're involved with He's
always he Connie Stagner at Corey Diamonds. There's a few
folks that just jump right in. I don't have to
ask twice. And I said to him recently we were
talking about site selection for restaurants and his business acumen
(12:02):
is amazing, and I said, you know, Russell, I'd like
to do an interview with you on air where we
talk about business, not service to the community, not all
the wonderful things you're doing. I think people would really
enjoy hearing your perspective because he's a very very smart businessman.
The way Tilman Fritita is the way Jim mcnabelle is
(12:24):
is a very smart businessman. And I said, well, you
do me a favor and we do an interview on that,
and he said anytime. So now is that time. I
also want to say, as something that makes me very happy,
the folks at Oracle knew that we do these business
leader interviews and wanted to sponsor these interviews.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And I'm all up for that.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
So I will tell you because I believe it to
be true that if you got data all over the
place at your company, if you are a decision maker
like a Russell Lebora, and you're trying to decide, hey,
we're gonna look at opening a location. Let's say this
may not be true, but I'm just making it up.
We're looking at open a location north of the Woodlands.
(13:13):
And he calls his team and says, I need data
on what our sales are at our location that's fifteen
miles away, and where the people are coming from, and
what their zip code is and how much they're spending
in all that. If he's got to close, he's got
to get a contract on deal, he's got to make
a decision fast, and if he can't get that information fast,
he can't make a decision. A good decision based on data.
(13:37):
Everything's data driven now that enables his company to be
efficient and effective. That's what NetSuite does. And you can
get the free cfo's Guide to AI and Machine Learning
at NetSuite dot com slash my last name, Barry, netsuitet
(13:58):
dot com, slash Berry. They're going to be sponsoring our
business interview whenever.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
We do them. I love to do them.
Speaker 7 (14:06):
I do them every day if I could, but I
know at some point I got to talk about what's
in the news as well. But they love the fact
that we talk about the secret sauce behind the success
of businesses. And they have a program called Success from
Scratch and they asked if they could sponsor it, and
I said yep. In fact, I got one coming up
with Russell Obara. So if you want, and I hope
(14:27):
you do, the Chief Financial Officer's Guide to AI and
Machine Learning, go to NetSuite dot com, slash Barry my
last name, Russell Obara. It is an honor to have
you back on the show. I want to talk, as
I said, business principles and the success you've had in
(14:48):
business and how you make those decisions regarding most every
aspect of your career. But I have to ask you,
if I had asked you when you were ten years old,
what do you want to do when you are the
age that you are right now, which I think is
sixty three?
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is that right? That's correct?
Speaker 7 (15:09):
If I'd asked you at ten or twelve, would you
have said a drummer in a band, a professional baseball player,
because I know you were good at both of those things?
Or what what would you have said you were going
to do?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
You left out Elvis Presley, I want.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
To be any Yes, yes, good call all the above.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yes.
Speaker 9 (15:26):
But you know, I was fortunate to grow up in
the presence of a dreamer and an entrepreneur and my
father who had started a restaurant chain in the early sixties,
and so just being exposed to his way of thinking
helped start developing my way of thinking. And I would
like to think that I evawved. You know you every
(15:49):
generation should aspire to get better than the previous, and
I think I've done that because I've always kept an
open mind to new idea is wherever they come from.
I don't have to be the one that comes up
with an idea, but my team and I we come
up with some great ideas, because we really do brainstorm
(16:09):
and come out.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
With the best of the outcome whatever we're doing.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
Our conversation with Russell Ibara, the master Enchilada roller at
Gringostexmex dot com, Gringos Tex Mex and Jimmy Changa's and
a whole lot.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
More HIV Spooky VAGINOSI.
Speaker 7 (16:28):
Sinning with your naked bod is evil and atrocious. Yes,
let's follow up on what you were talking about with
regard to I forget how you said it, but I
heard Bill White, who I ran against for mayor back
in two thousand and three. He was the first person
I heard use this phrase. You can get a lot
(16:50):
more done when there's no pride of authorship. When you
don't need to be the one that gets the credit,
your team will be more effective. And I have found
that to be true in so many ways. How did
you say you learned that lesson? Who did you learn
that from?
Speaker 9 (17:08):
Well, just one small example. When I was younger running
El Matador Food, the Frtia factory that my family owns today,
I remember that there was one particular employee working on
the production floor and he was doing something he shouldn't
have been doing and I wanted to catch him, so
I came in one morning, really early, around five o'clock
(17:30):
in the morning, just to catch him during production. And
I caught him, and I presented the problem to my father,
who told me, hey, you can terminate him, but just
be sure and find his replacement. And that was going
to be the hardest part of that entire equation.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
There.
Speaker 9 (17:48):
There's just no way I was going to be able to.
So in business you have to really stand back and
always look at the larger picture and house one decision
is going to impact the entire organization. Of times, it's
not your way, it's really the best way in terms
of you know, what is the best outcome for the company,
and if you can approach approach it that way, you'll
(18:10):
come out a lot better.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You know.
Speaker 9 (18:12):
There was a Instagram post that I just saw recently,
and it's this owner of I want to say, seven
different restaurants in the California area at Los Angeles area,
and he was talking about one of his locations where
he's been in business since two thousand and one, so
he's at the time he posted this, twenty three years
(18:34):
in business, and over the twenty three years he's had
fifteen general managers. Well, that told me a lot, told
me almost everything.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I need to know about this individual.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
Because Gringos, the original Gringos and Pareland, has been in
business thirty two years and we've only had four general managers,
and the three that are no longer general managers have
only moved up to the company, not moved out out.
And that's the kind of things that are red flags
for me when there's high turnover. There was this other
(19:07):
gentleman years ago when we had the Burritos franchise. I
received a letter from a window washer, someone that actually
cleaned his windows there at the restaurant, and he sent
me a letter complaining about this franchise e. And I'm
thinking to myself, how bad of a person do you
(19:30):
have to be to where you can actually stop a
window washer from his daily activities to write a letter
to complain about someone. I mean, you have to really
be a certain type of individual. So at the end
of the day, we are again, we're a people business.
We deal with our customers are people, and our staff
or people, and so they have to be our priority
(19:53):
and how we approach everything we do in business.
Speaker 7 (19:55):
Everything The problem with talking to you is that halfway
through your answers, it raises fifty more questions that fascinate
me and made me want to answer them. I learned
so much from this dude. This is what it's like
when we hang out. He's not a big drinker. He'll
(20:17):
have one beer. He's the consummate moderation except in moderation person.
But I just asked him questions because I learned so much.
Let's go through your life. Some people I've talked about
your bio, Let's quickly go through your life so people
kind of understand where you are. And I'm not speaking
(20:39):
ill of you. Some people won't understand this. You've had
failures that are terrible failures that most people would hide from,
and instead you embrace them. You talk about them, you
brag about them, because from those failures you have succeeded.
But let's start step by step to and just take
(20:59):
one point the time and I'll speak to get you
to the next one. Kind of where you were born
in real quick answers because I think your story, your
your timeline is fascinating. So where were you born?
Speaker 9 (21:11):
I was born in Pasadena, Texas, grew up in Laporte
family size I have six brothers and one sister.
Speaker 7 (21:19):
Your place in the number three, I'm number three, yeah,
which was a great spot, by the way, and it
was a great spot. The quick story only because I
only have so much time and there's so many things
I want to get to with you on the reason
your father went into the restaurant business, because this is
a great one.
Speaker 9 (21:37):
So my father when he was a young tea, well,
let's go back a little further when his parents his
parents divorced when he was three. He was dropped off
at his grandmother's house by his mother to live there permanently.
So it was very shocking to a little five year old,
as you can imagine. And so he had plenty of
aunts and uncles to help raise him, which thankfully they did.
(22:00):
And when he graduated from high school, he sold batteries,
but he knew that wasn't going to pay the bills,
and so he opened up a restaurant in the port
called Laport Mexican Food, that's all it was called.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
But in junior high he had broke his arm.
Speaker 9 (22:17):
And the reason to open up a business because it
never held back properly and he could never pass a
physical to get a job with the city or the
county or wherever he was applying. So that kind of
forced him into becoming a business person. But he had
to drive like no other and definitely a visionary because
he was doing things back in the seventies, way before
(22:39):
Google that amazed me even today, the fact that he
had a central kitchen set up. He had these huge
sixty gallon pressure cookers, growing pressure cookers to do gravy
inchoada gravy and refried beans and taco beat and what
have you. And he even went to Mexico wants to
buy an avocado farm, only to learn that you couldn't
(23:00):
import avocados at the time, so that killed that. And
I remember pulling up to a halopenial pickling plant there
and outside of Monterey, Mexico, because he was interested in
buying this plant, this halopenial pickling plant, and that would
have been an incredible investment. But I don't know what
happened there, But anyway, he partnered with his brother in
(23:22):
law and them two together grew ill trolled to as
many as eight locations at one time, and then the
sisters could not get.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Along, so they ended up. My father bought his brother.
Speaker 9 (23:35):
In law out and then the two of them individually
could not do well in operations or in business in general.
They were really a team. So that was something that
I recognized early on. But my father was fortunate that
his oldest sons were graduating from high school and they
(23:56):
came on board to start helping him try to not
only run but grow the restaurant chain, the Ultroll chain.
But only my father's last three restaurants that he opened
he ended up closing, and one of them was the Greenos,
the original Gringos in Pentland, which I took over in
nineteen ninety three. But myself, I mean, I was a
(24:16):
C student in school, and I always tell people when
I say I was a C student, I'm bragging because
it was worse than that, and I did not go
to college. I got married very very young, and fortunately
I had a good set of eyeball, as my wife
is as beautiful as the day we were married.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
And I.
Speaker 9 (24:36):
Had a drive in me to succeed, and I tried
a lot of things in my twenties, from selling satellite
dishes to selling sports cars and some other things. I
even ran an ad believer or not on the back
of the Star tabloid magazine. Trying to sell these little
chain alarms sounds funny, but I did. I mustard up
(24:58):
all the money I needed to run one A and
I actually sold quite a few of them.
Speaker 7 (25:02):
But Russell Lebarro of Gringos text Mex is our guest.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
More, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mitch,
Michael Barry, Genius.
Speaker 7 (25:16):
Russell Lebara, the owner of Gringos Tex Mex dot com
and Jimmy Changa's and a lot of other things, is
our guest.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I want to thank Oracle.
Speaker 7 (25:27):
They have a They have a program called NetSuite, and
you can get the Chief Financial Officer the cfo's Guide
to a I N Machine Learning at NetSuite dot com
forward slash Michael. They wanted to sponsor our interviews we
do with business owners, and I thought that was a
(25:49):
great idea. So you can get that at NetSuite dot
com slash Barry. Did I say Michael Barry? My last
name nets nets wheat dot com forward slash Barry Russell Ibara.
We're talking about his business and how he arrived where
(26:10):
he is and how he makes decisions and what we
can all learn from that, whether we own a business
or not. It might be running your household. You were
talking about your father's physical impairment that prevented him from
going to the army and doing a lot of other things,
and that closed a door and another door opened, and
that was entrepreneurship. You had the virtue of growing up
(26:33):
watching your father's success with El Toro and El Mattador,
and he didn't have that. Where did he develop the
savvy to be so successful to build to build this
restaurant empire.
Speaker 9 (26:49):
That's a great question, I mean, other than he partnered with.
So his chef that he hired around nineteen sixty three
was a gentle named Juan Martinez. We called him mister John.
And if he saw him, you could understand why he
was in the restaurant business.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Or he was a chef.
Speaker 9 (27:06):
He was a large man, and he just had a
unique palette for foods and was an excellent chef. And
I got exposed to that as well, and one of
those being that mister John only used the highest quality
ingredients that craft foods ever served at the time, are
sold at the time, and so being exposed to that
(27:27):
really helped shape a lot of what we do at
Gringos today.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But again, even.
Speaker 9 (27:34):
One of the things that I did in the early
eighties was started a tortia factory because of my father's
equipment that he had there at his commissary. He had
a corn to tea line and he had a flower
tortia line, and so I would go out selling tortillas
to any Mexican restaurant that we wanted to buy them,
and I ran into one problem was that I called
(27:56):
it guilt by association. Anytime that a potential client would
consider buying tortise for me if they found out that
my family had restaurants because I operated under a different name,
it was Il Matador, and so if they found out
that my family also had restaurants, they would stop buying
from me. So that was a little frustrating. But one
of the bigger lessons that I learned running L Matador
(28:19):
was a lot of the equipment my father had. It
was very old equipment and I could not produce a
consistent product out of it. And one of the accounts
that I picked up in the late eighties was castole A.
I was selling costa A all of their flower turtias.
Larry Poorhan was kind enough to give me an opportunity,
but I did something very stupid and it was definitely come.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Back and bite me.
Speaker 9 (28:41):
And that was when I ran samples to his offices.
I hand selected the product. I mean I literally hand
selected the even the best of the best, right, But
that was going to catch up with me sooner or later,
and it did and I ended up losing the account.
So when I opened up Gringos in a building that
my father had owned and had already been of the restaurants,
(29:01):
I was very paranoid about consistency. I borrow some ideas
from Consolay. They pack all their spices and pre portion
to all their spices for batch cooking, so that would
ensure a consistent product from batch to batch locations the location,
and I did everything in my power to make sure
(29:22):
no matter what we served, it was consistent and true.
Kathy with Chick fil A says that you can you
can serve a terrible cup of coffee, just be sure
and serve it that way each and every time. So
that's the kind that's the kind of proach that we've
taken at Grigos that no matter what we serve, let's
make sure it's consistent. And so there are a lot
of systems and procedures that we have to put in place,
(29:43):
and that's all we ever talk about, is how if
we're going to roll out a new menu item, how
are we going to do it to ensure consistency across
all twenty three restaurants.
Speaker 7 (29:53):
I owe you a debt of gratitude for the fact
that I did this exact interview with Larry foehand fifteen
years ago, maybe longer, and you set that up because
of a friendship you' all developed, not as competitors but
of peers in a similar industry. I don't know if
I ever told you, but Caso Olay was in Orange
(30:16):
and Casa Olay was the fast fanciest restaurant in Orange
when I grew up, like it was a special occasion
if you went to casta Ola Casa Ola for an
occasion like that was a big deal. Later in the career,
in the lifespan of that business, it wasn't that. But
at that time, boy, that was that was really fancy,
(30:38):
all right. So tax take us to the next step
in your in your life's journey.
Speaker 9 (30:42):
Well, you know, after when I when I first opened Grengos,
in which we just celebrated thirty two years this past Saturday,
January eleventh, and when we opened in ninety three, knowing
the history of that building, you forced me to have
a paradigm shift in that I was no longer focused
on making money and I'm still not even focused on
(31:02):
making money today. That's not my that's not my primary focus.
It's about delivering a quality product, a good value, a
fair value, and then taken care of everyone that touches
that product, meaning our guest, our staff, the community, everyone
that supports us, because without them, we're We're just a
(31:23):
building at the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
But it's it's the people in the building that makes
it successful.
Speaker 9 (31:28):
So I've always just wanted to focus on what matters
the most and and you know, and and be consistent
with that. I mean, you know a lot of people
they change over time when they become successful. But I
want to I would like to believe that I'm the
same person from the in terms of how I treat others.
You know, from day one, I haven't changed as an
(31:50):
individual of anything. I would like to think that I've
improved in lots of work.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I'm going to say, I think you have changed.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
I've changed in the time I've known you because you've
grown older, you've grown wiser, Your family has expanded, which
I think also changed you for the better in the
way that family changed me for the better. And I
also think you have watching you and I've learned a
lot from this. You have come to understand your responsibility
(32:16):
to the community, to your employees, to your family, and
how much is expected of you. And that is way
more than maybe is the standard or the typical or
what we see from other people, but that your your
standard should be high. So, yeah, you have changed, but
I see that as as continual improvement, which I hope,
I hope I'm able to do that. All right, So
(32:38):
take us to the next phase.
Speaker 9 (32:39):
Oh well, the next was, well, I'm building the team.
I mean, that's been a huge component of our success.
My first team member that I hired was Ugo Vera
Uh nicknamed those cabayos because he did the work of
two men, and uh Ugo Uh is still with me
today two years later. And then John Fernandez was the
(33:03):
second piece of the puzzle that I hired. Coming up
on thirty years is coming June, which is incredible. And
then Jonathan Kim, the president of the company, is this
coming June will be twenty five years, and I'm just
that that obviously makes me more proud than anything that
these individuals have been with me that many years.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I mean, Heather McKinnon, she started eighteen years old.
Speaker 9 (33:27):
She's a nerved a mid forties, and she sees our
COEO and you know, go on and on, Matt Boucher
or Danny Hanks, all these guys, And I guess what
makes me proud about it is that I know that
the company that we had built, our team is built
over the years, can continue way after I'm going from
(33:48):
Miss Earth and with the same same vision and focus.
And it's funny because we talk about all these other
brands that started, let's say in the late.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Eighties, the Wells leb hold right there, hold right there.
I'm up against her break one moment,
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Arry Show is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Ah Yes, the euphoria of success, the euphoria of America
being back, the return of common sense and decency and excellence.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Ah Yes, heavy day, heavy day, en.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Waity war quen see the way he loves.
Speaker 6 (01:06):
A happy day or a happy day? Happy or happy day?
Speaker 5 (01:18):
When you those wars a pretty warm wouldn't do those
war see you the way he loved.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
It's a happy day, a happy day.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Or happy day? Happy winter of war? Oh wheny war
winder of war three years away? You need a love
(02:37):
happy day, happy d.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Heavy deal.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
God, happy deal or happy day? Or habitay? When ge
(04:42):
those walls? Oh, waity world, when g those warm seven
the way he needed to up the habit day. One
(05:08):
of the.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Sound bites that.
Speaker 7 (05:13):
I didn't get to this week that I'm going to
make sure I did it comes from Jordan Peterson, and
he's talking about the unbelievable might of the American people,
our willingness and ability to do good things not only
for ourselves, but in so doing, for the world. I'm
(05:39):
America first. It is time we take care of the
American people first. But when we do that, we create
a model to the rest of the world, and we
tell the bad guys we are united behind our own
excellence and strength and results. President Trump called himself in
(06:03):
his inaugural speech a peacemaker and a unifier. Believe it
or not, Peace through strength works. This was what Jordan
Peterson had to say. And I didn't want to get
through the week without playing for a.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
Long time the people who held conservative and then even
classically liberal values of being on the defensive.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And that's not a good strategy.
Speaker 8 (06:30):
And it would be a lovely thing to see.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
And I think we will see it that the.
Speaker 8 (06:36):
Virtues that made America green will be unabashedly promoted and sentered.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
That's a high probability event.
Speaker 8 (06:46):
And I think if that happens, the place of loom
I was here. Tammy was as well in the United
States and the nineties when the internet book first hit
and this place just thrived. And you Americans, you do
that on a fairly consistent basis. And I think we're
on the verge of here something like that again. And
so it'll be very interesting to see what the opening
(07:09):
moves are because Trump has done this before, and he's
more prepared this time, and I'm hoping that the unbelievable
bite of the American people will be unleashed again and
that'll be salutary and useful for the whole world.
Speaker 7 (07:27):
I think President Trump understands how powerful the swamp is
in a way that even he didn't recognize. I think
he understands how the court around him, the palatial politics,
the knives are out, and he has to have loyal
(07:50):
people of great resolve around him. But I had to
tell you he is a different man than he was
eight years ago. He is ready. This is his moment,
and he has risen to it, and he has learned.
I think you have to have I think you have
to get knocked down to rock bottom, which he has
(08:10):
been to be in the position that he has to
lead this nation. And I feel very very optimistic about it.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Live, laugh, learn, doing it big.
Speaker 7 (08:28):
On the Michael Berry Show, I often speak about the
importance in life to having mentors, and I describe it
as a man who was once a boy in that
and I often say that I particularly believe that boys,
(08:48):
as they grow into men, need mentors, and then as
you get older, you still have mentors, but sometimes those
mentors are your peers. They're your same age. They may
be your same station in life. You hang out, you
may play poker, or shoot shotguns or go fishing together.
But in many ways you learn from them, you draw
(09:09):
from them, you seek to emulate them. I had a
Sunday school teacher tell me twenty five years ago that
if you want to know what you're going to be
in five years, look at the people around you. And
my wife heard me say that one day at home.
I don't let her listen to the show because I
wouldn't be able to talk about her. And she said, well,
women need mentors too, we just don't do it as well.
(09:31):
Women don't understand in the workplace in the home. You know,
women need mentors as well. They need people to tell them.
You know, as a mom, how do you deal with
you know, the demands of being a mom. Mentors are important,
and I preach on this frequently. I jokingly use the
(09:52):
term preach for those of you who wonder if I
think I'm a per pastor. I don't, but I talk
about this a lot because I think it's very important
and I have made it business. In fact, there was
an article a woman who wrote for a magazine was
in Houston. Houston has a superior cancer treatment center, and
she was getting cancer treatment in Houston, and she heard
our show, and she heard me talking about the fact
(10:15):
that my friends are not people who live next door
to me, or who I happen to go to school with,
or who I happen.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
To be related to.
Speaker 7 (10:22):
I choose my friends, and I choose my friends on
the basis of people that I admire, that I respect,
and that I want to be like, who I can
learn from. And that's because you only have so much
time in life, and the time you spend, even in recreation,
can be time that makes you better as a person.
(10:43):
And so she wanted to write an article and did
about what I called strategic friendships. And I realized, to
some people that sounds like a person that is a
schemer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It's not.
Speaker 7 (10:56):
There are people you associate with because you sell products
to their company, but that's not your real friend. We
use the term friend, and social media has put that
term into to too often a use. You know, how
many I don't have three hundred and fifty one thousand friends,
which is what my old Facebook account has. You just
have a few real friends, people you trust who trust
(11:17):
you anyway? So I like to share what I learned
from these people i'm around. And I asked Russell Lebarro.
I said, it's been a while since you've been on
the show, but every time I talked to Russell Lebarro
and I have this problem with mattress Mac too. We
tend to talk about things we're doing for the community.
(11:38):
Camp Hope needs money, or here's a great programmer, here's
a great success with Camp Hope, thank you for doing that.
And with Russell, it's every cause we're involved with He's
always he Connie Stagner at Corey Diamonds. There's a few
folks that just jump right in. I don't have to
ask twice. And I said to him recently we were
talking about site selection for restaurants and his business acumen
(12:02):
is amazing, and I said, you know, Russell, I'd like
to do an interview with you on air where we
talk about business, not service to the community, not all
the wonderful things you're doing. I think people would really
enjoy hearing your perspective because he's a very very smart businessman.
The way Tilman Fritita is the way Jim mcnabelle is
(12:24):
is a very smart businessman. And I said, well, you
do me a favor and we do an interview on that,
and he said anytime. So now is that time. I
also want to say, as something that makes me very happy,
the folks at Oracle knew that we do these business
leader interviews and wanted to sponsor these interviews.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And I'm all up for that.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
So I will tell you because I believe it to
be true that if you got data all over the
place at your company, if you are a decision maker
like a Russell Lebora, and you're trying to decide, hey,
we're gonna look at opening a location. Let's say this
may not be true, but I'm just making it up.
We're looking at open a location north of the Woodlands.
(13:13):
And he calls his team and says, I need data
on what our sales are at our location that's fifteen
miles away, and where the people are coming from, and
what their zip code is and how much they're spending
in all that. If he's got to close, he's got
to get a contract on deal, he's got to make
a decision fast, and if he can't get that information fast,
he can't make a decision. A good decision based on data.
(13:37):
Everything's data driven now that enables his company to be
efficient and effective. That's what NetSuite does. And you can
get the free cfo's Guide to AI and Machine Learning
at NetSuite dot com slash my last name, Barry, netsuitet
(13:58):
dot com, slash Berry. They're going to be sponsoring our
business interview whenever.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
We do them. I love to do them.
Speaker 7 (14:06):
I do them every day if I could, but I
know at some point I got to talk about what's
in the news as well. But they love the fact
that we talk about the secret sauce behind the success
of businesses. And they have a program called Success from
Scratch and they asked if they could sponsor it, and
I said yep. In fact, I got one coming up
with Russell Obara. So if you want, and I hope
(14:27):
you do, the Chief Financial Officer's Guide to AI and
Machine Learning, go to NetSuite dot com, slash Barry my
last name, Russell Obara. It is an honor to have
you back on the show. I want to talk, as
I said, business principles and the success you've had in
(14:48):
business and how you make those decisions regarding most every
aspect of your career. But I have to ask you,
if I had asked you when you were ten years old,
what do you want to do when you are the
age that you are right now, which I think is
sixty three?
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is that right? That's correct?
Speaker 7 (15:09):
If I'd asked you at ten or twelve, would you
have said a drummer in a band, a professional baseball player,
because I know you were good at both of those things?
Or what what would you have said you were going
to do?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
You left out Elvis Presley, I want.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
To be any Yes, yes, good call all the above.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yes.
Speaker 9 (15:26):
But you know, I was fortunate to grow up in
the presence of a dreamer and an entrepreneur and my
father who had started a restaurant chain in the early sixties,
and so just being exposed to his way of thinking
helped start developing my way of thinking. And I would
like to think that I evawved. You know you every
(15:49):
generation should aspire to get better than the previous, and
I think I've done that because I've always kept an
open mind to new idea is wherever they come from.
I don't have to be the one that comes up
with an idea, but my team and I we come
up with some great ideas, because we really do brainstorm
(16:09):
and come out.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
With the best of the outcome whatever we're doing.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
Our conversation with Russell Ibara, the master Enchilada roller at
Gringostexmex dot com, Gringos Tex Mex and Jimmy Changa's and
a whole lot.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
More HIV Spooky VAGINOSI.
Speaker 7 (16:28):
Sinning with your naked bod is evil and atrocious. Yes,
let's follow up on what you were talking about with
regard to I forget how you said it, but I
heard Bill White, who I ran against for mayor back
in two thousand and three. He was the first person
I heard use this phrase. You can get a lot
(16:50):
more done when there's no pride of authorship. When you
don't need to be the one that gets the credit,
your team will be more effective. And I have found
that to be true in so many ways. How did
you say you learned that lesson? Who did you learn
that from?
Speaker 9 (17:08):
Well, just one small example. When I was younger running
El Matador Food, the Frtia factory that my family owns today,
I remember that there was one particular employee working on
the production floor and he was doing something he shouldn't
have been doing and I wanted to catch him, so
I came in one morning, really early, around five o'clock
(17:30):
in the morning, just to catch him during production. And
I caught him, and I presented the problem to my father,
who told me, hey, you can terminate him, but just
be sure and find his replacement. And that was going
to be the hardest part of that entire equation.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
There.
Speaker 9 (17:48):
There's just no way I was going to be able to.
So in business you have to really stand back and
always look at the larger picture and house one decision
is going to impact the entire organization. Of times, it's
not your way, it's really the best way in terms
of you know, what is the best outcome for the company,
and if you can approach approach it that way, you'll
(18:10):
come out a lot better.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You know.
Speaker 9 (18:12):
There was a Instagram post that I just saw recently,
and it's this owner of I want to say, seven
different restaurants in the California area at Los Angeles area,
and he was talking about one of his locations where
he's been in business since two thousand and one, so
he's at the time he posted this, twenty three years
(18:34):
in business, and over the twenty three years he's had
fifteen general managers. Well, that told me a lot, told
me almost everything.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I need to know about this individual.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
Because Gringos, the original Gringos and Pareland, has been in
business thirty two years and we've only had four general managers,
and the three that are no longer general managers have
only moved up to the company, not moved out out.
And that's the kind of things that are red flags
for me when there's high turnover. There was this other
(19:07):
gentleman years ago when we had the Burritos franchise. I
received a letter from a window washer, someone that actually
cleaned his windows there at the restaurant, and he sent
me a letter complaining about this franchise e. And I'm
thinking to myself, how bad of a person do you
(19:30):
have to be to where you can actually stop a
window washer from his daily activities to write a letter
to complain about someone. I mean, you have to really
be a certain type of individual. So at the end
of the day, we are again, we're a people business.
We deal with our customers are people, and our staff
or people, and so they have to be our priority
(19:53):
and how we approach everything we do in business.
Speaker 7 (19:55):
Everything The problem with talking to you is that halfway
through your answers, it raises fifty more questions that fascinate
me and made me want to answer them. I learned
so much from this dude. This is what it's like
when we hang out. He's not a big drinker. He'll
(20:17):
have one beer. He's the consummate moderation except in moderation person.
But I just asked him questions because I learned so much.
Let's go through your life. Some people I've talked about
your bio, Let's quickly go through your life so people
kind of understand where you are. And I'm not speaking
(20:39):
ill of you. Some people won't understand this. You've had
failures that are terrible failures that most people would hide from,
and instead you embrace them. You talk about them, you
brag about them, because from those failures you have succeeded.
But let's start step by step to and just take
(20:59):
one point the time and I'll speak to get you
to the next one. Kind of where you were born
in real quick answers because I think your story, your
your timeline is fascinating. So where were you born?
Speaker 9 (21:11):
I was born in Pasadena, Texas, grew up in Laporte
family size I have six brothers and one sister.
Speaker 7 (21:19):
Your place in the number three, I'm number three, yeah,
which was a great spot, by the way, and it
was a great spot. The quick story only because I
only have so much time and there's so many things
I want to get to with you on the reason
your father went into the restaurant business, because this is
a great one.
Speaker 9 (21:37):
So my father when he was a young tea, well,
let's go back a little further when his parents his
parents divorced when he was three. He was dropped off
at his grandmother's house by his mother to live there permanently.
So it was very shocking to a little five year old,
as you can imagine. And so he had plenty of
aunts and uncles to help raise him, which thankfully they did.
(22:00):
And when he graduated from high school, he sold batteries,
but he knew that wasn't going to pay the bills,
and so he opened up a restaurant in the port
called Laport Mexican Food, that's all it was called.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
But in junior high he had broke his arm.
Speaker 9 (22:17):
And the reason to open up a business because it
never held back properly and he could never pass a
physical to get a job with the city or the
county or wherever he was applying. So that kind of
forced him into becoming a business person. But he had
to drive like no other and definitely a visionary because
he was doing things back in the seventies, way before
(22:39):
Google that amazed me even today, the fact that he
had a central kitchen set up. He had these huge
sixty gallon pressure cookers, growing pressure cookers to do gravy
inchoada gravy and refried beans and taco beat and what
have you. And he even went to Mexico wants to
buy an avocado farm, only to learn that you couldn't
(23:00):
import avocados at the time, so that killed that. And
I remember pulling up to a halopenial pickling plant there
and outside of Monterey, Mexico, because he was interested in
buying this plant, this halopenial pickling plant, and that would
have been an incredible investment. But I don't know what
happened there, But anyway, he partnered with his brother in
(23:22):
law and them two together grew ill trolled to as
many as eight locations at one time, and then the
sisters could not get.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Along, so they ended up. My father bought his brother.
Speaker 9 (23:35):
In law out and then the two of them individually
could not do well in operations or in business in general.
They were really a team. So that was something that
I recognized early on. But my father was fortunate that
his oldest sons were graduating from high school and they
(23:56):
came on board to start helping him try to not
only run but grow the restaurant chain, the Ultroll chain.
But only my father's last three restaurants that he opened
he ended up closing, and one of them was the Greenos,
the original Gringos in Pentland, which I took over in
nineteen ninety three. But myself, I mean, I was a
(24:16):
C student in school, and I always tell people when
I say I was a C student, I'm bragging because
it was worse than that, and I did not go
to college. I got married very very young, and fortunately
I had a good set of eyeball, as my wife
is as beautiful as the day we were married.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
And I.
Speaker 9 (24:36):
Had a drive in me to succeed, and I tried
a lot of things in my twenties, from selling satellite
dishes to selling sports cars and some other things. I
even ran an ad believer or not on the back
of the Star tabloid magazine. Trying to sell these little
chain alarms sounds funny, but I did. I mustard up
(24:58):
all the money I needed to run one A and
I actually sold quite a few of them.
Speaker 7 (25:02):
But Russell Lebarro of Gringos text Mex is our guest.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
More, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mitch,
Michael Barry, Genius.
Speaker 7 (25:16):
Russell Lebara, the owner of Gringos Tex Mex dot com
and Jimmy Changa's and a lot of other things, is
our guest.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I want to thank Oracle.
Speaker 7 (25:27):
They have a They have a program called NetSuite, and
you can get the Chief Financial Officer the cfo's Guide
to a I N Machine Learning at NetSuite dot com
forward slash Michael. They wanted to sponsor our interviews we
do with business owners, and I thought that was a
(25:49):
great idea. So you can get that at NetSuite dot
com slash Barry. Did I say Michael Barry? My last
name nets nets wheat dot com forward slash Barry Russell Ibara.
We're talking about his business and how he arrived where
(26:10):
he is and how he makes decisions and what we
can all learn from that, whether we own a business
or not. It might be running your household. You were
talking about your father's physical impairment that prevented him from
going to the army and doing a lot of other things,
and that closed a door and another door opened, and
that was entrepreneurship. You had the virtue of growing up
(26:33):
watching your father's success with El Toro and El Mattador,
and he didn't have that. Where did he develop the
savvy to be so successful to build to build this
restaurant empire.
Speaker 9 (26:49):
That's a great question, I mean, other than he partnered with.
So his chef that he hired around nineteen sixty three
was a gentle named Juan Martinez. We called him mister John.
And if he saw him, you could understand why he
was in the restaurant business.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Or he was a chef.
Speaker 9 (27:06):
He was a large man, and he just had a
unique palette for foods and was an excellent chef. And
I got exposed to that as well, and one of
those being that mister John only used the highest quality
ingredients that craft foods ever served at the time, are
sold at the time, and so being exposed to that
(27:27):
really helped shape a lot of what we do at
Gringos today.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But again, even.
Speaker 9 (27:34):
One of the things that I did in the early
eighties was started a tortia factory because of my father's
equipment that he had there at his commissary. He had
a corn to tea line and he had a flower
tortia line, and so I would go out selling tortillas
to any Mexican restaurant that we wanted to buy them,
and I ran into one problem was that I called
(27:56):
it guilt by association. Anytime that a potential client would
consider buying tortise for me if they found out that
my family had restaurants because I operated under a different name,
it was Il Matador, and so if they found out
that my family also had restaurants, they would stop buying
from me. So that was a little frustrating. But one
of the bigger lessons that I learned running L Matador
(28:19):
was a lot of the equipment my father had. It
was very old equipment and I could not produce a
consistent product out of it. And one of the accounts
that I picked up in the late eighties was castole A.
I was selling costa A all of their flower turtias.
Larry Poorhan was kind enough to give me an opportunity,
but I did something very stupid and it was definitely come.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Back and bite me.
Speaker 9 (28:41):
And that was when I ran samples to his offices.
I hand selected the product. I mean I literally hand
selected the even the best of the best, right, But
that was going to catch up with me sooner or later,
and it did and I ended up losing the account.
So when I opened up Gringos in a building that
my father had owned and had already been of the restaurants,
(29:01):
I was very paranoid about consistency. I borrow some ideas
from Consolay. They pack all their spices and pre portion
to all their spices for batch cooking, so that would
ensure a consistent product from batch to batch locations the location,
and I did everything in my power to make sure
(29:22):
no matter what we served, it was consistent and true.
Kathy with Chick fil A says that you can you
can serve a terrible cup of coffee, just be sure
and serve it that way each and every time. So
that's the kind that's the kind of proach that we've
taken at Grigos that no matter what we serve, let's
make sure it's consistent. And so there are a lot
of systems and procedures that we have to put in place,
(29:43):
and that's all we ever talk about, is how if
we're going to roll out a new menu item, how
are we going to do it to ensure consistency across
all twenty three restaurants.
Speaker 7 (29:53):
I owe you a debt of gratitude for the fact
that I did this exact interview with Larry foehand fifteen
years ago, maybe longer, and you set that up because
of a friendship you' all developed, not as competitors but
of peers in a similar industry. I don't know if
I ever told you, but Caso Olay was in Orange
(30:16):
and Casa Olay was the fast fanciest restaurant in Orange
when I grew up, like it was a special occasion
if you went to casta Ola Casa Ola for an
occasion like that was a big deal. Later in the career,
in the lifespan of that business, it wasn't that. But
at that time, boy, that was that was really fancy,
(30:38):
all right. So tax take us to the next step
in your in your life's journey.
Speaker 9 (30:42):
Well, you know, after when I when I first opened Grengos,
in which we just celebrated thirty two years this past Saturday,
January eleventh, and when we opened in ninety three, knowing
the history of that building, you forced me to have
a paradigm shift in that I was no longer focused
on making money and I'm still not even focused on
(31:02):
making money today. That's not my that's not my primary focus.
It's about delivering a quality product, a good value, a
fair value, and then taken care of everyone that touches
that product, meaning our guest, our staff, the community, everyone
that supports us, because without them, we're We're just a
(31:23):
building at the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
But it's it's the people in the building that makes
it successful.
Speaker 9 (31:28):
So I've always just wanted to focus on what matters
the most and and you know, and and be consistent
with that. I mean, you know a lot of people
they change over time when they become successful. But I
want to I would like to believe that I'm the
same person from the in terms of how I treat others.
You know, from day one, I haven't changed as an
(31:50):
individual of anything. I would like to think that I've
improved in lots of work.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I'm going to say, I think you have changed.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
I've changed in the time I've known you because you've
grown older, you've grown wiser, Your family has expanded, which
I think also changed you for the better in the
way that family changed me for the better. And I
also think you have watching you and I've learned a
lot from this. You have come to understand your responsibility
(32:16):
to the community, to your employees, to your family, and
how much is expected of you. And that is way
more than maybe is the standard or the typical or
what we see from other people, but that your your
standard should be high. So, yeah, you have changed, but
I see that as as continual improvement, which I hope,
I hope I'm able to do that. All right, So
(32:38):
take us to the next phase.
Speaker 9 (32:39):
Oh well, the next was, well, I'm building the team.
I mean, that's been a huge component of our success.
My first team member that I hired was Ugo Vera
Uh nicknamed those cabayos because he did the work of
two men, and uh Ugo Uh is still with me
today two years later. And then John Fernandez was the
(33:03):
second piece of the puzzle that I hired. Coming up
on thirty years is coming June, which is incredible. And
then Jonathan Kim, the president of the company, is this
coming June will be twenty five years, and I'm just
that that obviously makes me more proud than anything that
these individuals have been with me that many years.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I mean, Heather McKinnon, she started eighteen years old.
Speaker 9 (33:27):
She's a nerved a mid forties, and she sees our
COEO and you know, go on and on, Matt Boucher
or Danny Hanks, all these guys, And I guess what
makes me proud about it is that I know that
the company that we had built, our team is built
over the years, can continue way after I'm going from
(33:48):
Miss Earth and with the same same vision and focus.
And it's funny because we talk about all these other
brands that started, let's say in the late.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Eighties, the Wells leb hold right there, hold right there.
I'm up against her break one moment,
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