PM Show Hr 1 | Talking Success with Gringos Tex Mex Owner Russell Ybara

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and load of
Michael Vari's show is on the air.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
On this the eve of D Day, and that will
be woven into the thread of tomorrow's show. It will
not be our sole focus, but it will be mentioned.
It's the eightieth anniversary. No, it's the eighty first. You know,
I still think of us being in twenty twenty four,

(00:58):
eighty first anniversary of DA Remember they had the big
deal last year.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Oh, I wish Trump had been president instead of Biden.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
You remember last.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Year, remember Biden wandering around. It was embarrassing, it was horrible.
That's the day to honor valor and sacrifice and strength,
and instead we've got a narcissistic, demented, selfish, corrupt president

(01:29):
wandering around. This is what happens when people will do
anything to grab and hold power.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
And that's what people did.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
They used Joe Biden to grab the government, hold the power,
and steal as much money as they possibly could for themselves.
There's a story that came out of Houston a few
days ago. It's made big national news. I know this
because I've been contacted by nash Or news outlets. The

(02:02):
local Fox affiliate had the story. I think Fox National
had it as well. Kim Ogg, who was the district
attorney up until January this year. She's a Democrat and
we used to battle all the time. I would refer
to her as boss Ogg. Her name is Clark boss Ogg,
because I felt like she was using too much of

(02:22):
her power in bad ways, mostly cases against cops that
I didn't think the cops had done anything wrong and anyway,
so she she indicted the three top aides to the
county judge in Harris County, which is what the county
Houston's in. She indicted them for a bid rigging scheme.

(02:45):
And when she did that, and so when she did that,
she indicted these three Democrats. The county commissioner who runs
the county like a boss tweet, I mean this guy,
this guy has a grip on her count.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
It's quite impressive.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Actually, the extent to which he calls the shots is
very impressive. It's evil, it's awful, but it's impressive. I admit,
you rarely see this. He bids people to his will. Anyway,
So he called out the dogs. She couldn't win her
own Democrat primary for re election because she had indicted

(03:22):
these three people or this bid rigging scheme and he
didn't want that done. Well, hell hath no fury like
a woman scorned. She is now out of office, and
she is now revealing things that she learned while district
attorney that are very disturbing, including that one of the

(03:44):
Venezuelan illegal aliens who married Joscelyn Nungeri accused in a
sexual assault case down in Costa Rica.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
It's almost as if people.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Who commit sex crimes commit them again and again and again, which,
as you know, it's the highest recidivism rate of any crime.
It's not about the sex, it's about power and control,
and these people have an impulse control. These people have
real issues with it that they almost never overcome.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
So you're saying, this isn't the first time that PEMA
has been accused.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Frae, that's correct.

Speaker 5 (04:26):
To just know that this happened to another woman. It
hurts my heart, really, a piece of be shatters a
little bit.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
June twenty twenty four, twelve year old Jocelyn Nungrea's body
was found in a byo on West Rincolin Road. Two
undocumented Venezuelan nationals, Johann Jose Martinez Ranguel and Franklin jose
Beanna Ramos are charged with capital murder, accused of sexually
assaulting then killing Jocelyn kem Ogg was the Harrison County
District Attorney at the time. Her office gathered the evidence

(04:58):
they needed to seek the penalty in the case, and
now she's revealing a key piece that helps secure that option.

Speaker 6 (05:06):
What we learned during the course of the investigation was
that one of the suspects, Panya, had been involved in
a prior sexual assault.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
She says, a victim from another state was attacked while
on vacation before Jocelyn's killing.

Speaker 6 (05:23):
It happened in Costa Rica. It happened to an American
citizen who came forward with that information after their pictures
were shown on national television.

Speaker 5 (05:33):
I'm very glad that this young woman had the courage
to come forward.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
That evidence specifically helped you make this determination for seeking death.

Speaker 6 (05:46):
I believe it helped the entire committee make the determination.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
Is this information that you had ever known or is
this new to you too?

Speaker 1 (05:55):
This is definitely news to me.

Speaker 5 (05:58):
I always felt in my heart that this was never
their first time, especially Peya.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
Why are you sharing this.

Speaker 6 (06:07):
Now because I am very concerned about the decisions that
my successor district's attorney has been making. When she reported
it to the authorities in Costa Rica, they did nothing,
and so imagine the frustration of that individual. I do
not want that to be swept under the carpet. I

(06:29):
think it's important for the public to get to the
final say do they deserve death for the rape and
murder of Joscelyn or should they spend their life in
the penitentiary. What I don't want is some backdoor deal
done in the quiet of the night and a long
time from now, once people have forgotten the horror of

(06:52):
this case.

Speaker 5 (06:53):
I see this as a reoccurring a reoffender scenario, and
because he wasn't held accountable for his actions when he
did this to this other young woman, he should be
held accountable for this young child whose life was taken.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
You know, being a crime victim is in and of
itself very traumatic, and a family of a crime victim
who is murdered, you know, you can understand getting hit
by lightning or getting cancer. You don't like it still
just as dead, but you can understand it. But the

(07:37):
fact that someone would choose to end a life it's
just it's so senseless, it's so it's so counterintuitive, and
in that sense it makes it makes the grieving and
acceptance process so difficult that when you find a bastard

(07:59):
like this who does this, and you don't take it
seriously and you don't throw the.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Book at him. These people should live in fear.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Of these sorts of things, of the punishment for these
sorts of things. But we know they don't. Mercy to
the guilty is cruelty to the victory. Adam Smith and boys,
just as true today terms.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Says, they laugh, learn doing it big on the Michael
Barry Show.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
I often speak about the importance in.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Life to having mentors.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
And I describe it as a man who was once
a boy in that and I often say that I
particularly believe that boys, 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,

(08:59):
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
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.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
And my wife.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
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.
Women don't understand in the workplace.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
In the home.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
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 term preach for those of you who

(09:57):
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 my 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,

(10:18):
and she heard our show and she heard me talking
about the fact that my friends are not people who
live next door to me or who I happened to
go to school with or who I happen to be
related to. 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

(10:40):
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. And so she wanted to write an
article and did about what I called strategic friendships. And
I realized that some people that sounds like a person

(11:02):
that is a schemer or whatever, it's not. 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 too.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Often a use.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
You know, how many You know, 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 you anyway. So I like
to share what I learn 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

(11:39):
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, 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.

(12:02):
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 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

(12:24):
would really enjoy hearing your perspective because he's a very
very smart businessman, the way Tillman Furtita is, the way
Jim mcnbell is 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

(12:47):
very happy, the folks at Oracle knew that we do
these business leader interviews and wanted to sponsor these interviews.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
And I'm all up for that. So I will tell.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
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 Lebara,
and you're trying to decide, hey, we're gonna look at
opening a location.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Let's say this may not be true, but I'm just
making it up.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
We're looking at open a location north of the Woodlands.
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,

(13:42):
he can't make a decision, a good decision based on data.
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 Guide to AI and Machine Learning
at NetSuite dot com. Slash my last name Barry NetSuite

(14:07):
dot com slash Barry. They're going to be sponsoring our
business interview whenever we do them. I love to do them.
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,

(14:29):
and they asked if they could sponsor it, and I said, yep.
In fact, I got one coming up with Russell Ibarra.
So if you want, and I hope you do, the
Chief Financial Officer's Guide to AI and Machine Learning, go
to NetSuite dot com, slash Barry. My last name, Russell Abara.
It is an honor to have you back on the show.

(14:51):
I want to talk, as I said, business principles and
the success you've had in 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

(15:13):
right now, which I think is sixty three?

Speaker 3 (15:16):
Is that right?

Speaker 7 (15:17):
That's correct?

Speaker 2 (15:18):
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 7 (15:29):
You left out Elvis Presley? I want to be a Presley.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yes, yes, good call all the above.

Speaker 7 (15:35):
Yes. 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 evolved. You know

(15:57):
you every generation should to get better than the previous,
and I think I've done that because I've always kept
an open mind two new ideas 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

(16:18):
and come out with the best of the outcome. Say right,
whatever we're doing.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Our conversation with Russell Ibara, the master Enchilada roller at
gringostexmex dot com, Gringos text Mechs and Jimmy Changa's and
a whole lot.

Speaker 8 (16:32):
Of money, HIV spooky VAGINOSI Michael Ferry Sinning with your
naked bod is evil and atrocious.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Rustle Lebara is our guest.

Speaker 9 (16:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
He was the first person I heard use this phrase.
You can get a lot 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 7 (17:18):
Well, just one small example. When I was younger running
El Matador Food, the frtiaf 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

(17:40):
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. There,
there's just no way I was going to be able to.

(18:00):
So in business you have to really stand back and
always looked at the larger picture and house one decision
is going to impact the entire organization, and a lot
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 come out a lot better. You know.

(18:22):
There was a Instagram post that I just saw recently.
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 in

(18:44):
business and over the twenty three years he's had fifteen
general managers. Well, that told me a lot, told me
almost everything I need to know about this individual. Because Gringos,
the original Gringos, has been in business thirty two years
and We've only had four general managers, and the three

(19:05):
that are no longer general managers have only moved up
to the company, not moved out. And that's the kind
of things that are red flags for me when there's
high turnover. There was this other gentleman years ago and
we had the Burritos franchise. I received a letter from

(19:26):
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 have to be where
you can actually stop a window washer from his daily
activities to write a letter to complain about someone. I mean,

(19:47):
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 for people, and so they have to
be our priority and how we approach everything we do
in business. Everything.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
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 have
one beer. He's the consummate moderation except in moderation.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Person.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
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
ill of you. Some people won't understand this. You've had
failures that are terrible failures that most people would hide from,

(20:56):
and instead you embrace them. You talk about it, you
brag about him because from those failures you have succeeded.
But let's start step by step to and just take
one point at 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 7 (21:21):
I was born in Pasadena, Texas, grew up in Laporte.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Family size.

Speaker 7 (21:27):
I have six brothers and one sister.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Your place in the number three, I'm number three, Yeah,
which was a great spot, by the way, and 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 7 (21:47):
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.

(22:09):
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 Laporte Mexican Food, that's all it was called. But
in junior high he had broke his arm. And the
reason they opened up a business because it had never
held back properly and he could never pass a physical

(22:32):
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 Google.
That amazed me even today, the fact that he had

(22:52):
a central kitchen set up. He had these huge sixty
gallon pressure cookers growing pressure cookers to do gravy in
and refried beans and taco beet and what have you.
And he even went to Mexico wants to buy an
avocado farm, only to learn that you couldn't import avocados
at the time, so that killed that. And I remember

(23:13):
pulling up to a halopanio pickling plant there and outside
of Monterey, Mexico, because he was interested in buying this plant,
this halopanio 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 law and them two
together grew altrolled to as many as eight locations at

(23:35):
one time, and then the sisters could not get along,
so they ended up. My father bought his brother 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

(23:56):
I recognized early on. But my father was fortunate that
his oldest sons were graduating from high school and they
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

(24:16):
and he ended up closing, and one of them was
the Greenos, the original Gringoes in Pentland, which I took
over in nineteen ninety three. But myself, I mean, I
was a 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,

(24:38):
and fortunately I had a good set of eyeball as
my wife is as beautiful as the day we were married.
And I 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, believe or not, on the
back of the Star tabloid magazine, trying to sell these

(25:02):
these little chain alarm it something sounds funny, but I did.
I muster to follow the money I needed to run
one ad, and I actually sold quite a few of them,
but one up.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
Russell Lebara of Gringos Texts is our guest.

Speaker 8 (25:15):
More complete, allow me to introduce myself.

Speaker 7 (25:21):
My name is Mitter, Michael Berry, Genius.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Russell Lebara, the owner of Gringos texmex dot com and
Jimmy Changa's and a lot of other things.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Is our guests.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
I want to thank Oracle.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
They have a They have a.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Program called NetSuite and you can get the Chief Financial
Officer the cfo's Guide to AI 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 great idea, so you can get that

(26:01):
at NetSuite dot com slash Barry. Did I say Michael
Barry my last name? NetSuite dot com forward slash Barry,
Russell Ebara. We're talking about his business and how he
arrived where he is and how he makes decisions and

(26:21):
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 watching your father's success with El Toro

(26:46):
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 7 (26:58):
That's a great question, I mean, other than he partnered
with so his chef that he hired around nineteen sixty
three was a gentleman named Juan Martinez. We called him
mister John. And if he saw him, you could understand
why he was in the restaurant business or he was
a chef. He was a large man, and he just

(27:18):
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 are served at the time
or sold at the time, and so being exposed to
that really helped shape a lot of what we do
at Gringos today. But again, even one of the things

(27:43):
that I did in the early eighties was started a
tortilla factory because of my father's equipment that he had
there at his commissary. He had a corned to tea line,
and he had a flower tortia line, and so I
would go out selling tortillas to any Mexican restaurant that
we to buy them, and I ran into one problem

(28:04):
was that I called 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

(28:26):
learned running L Matador 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 Cassole. I was selling costa A all
of their flower tortillas. Larry Poorhan was kind enough to
give me an opportunity, but I did something very stupid

(28:48):
and there was definitely come back and bite me, and
that was when I ran samples to his offices. I
hand selected the product. I mean I literally hand selected
to be even the best of the best, right, But
that was I want to catch up with me sooner
or later, and it did now I ended up losing
the account. So when I opened up Gringos in a
building that my father had owned and had already been

(29:08):
four other restaurants, I was very paranoid about consistency. I
borrow some ideas from Consolay. They pack all of their
spices and UH and and pre portioned all their spices
for batch cooking, so that would ensure a consistent product
from batch to batch, location to location, and and I

(29:29):
did everything in my power to make sure no matter
what we served it was consistent and truet 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 of that's the kind of approach that we've taken
at Gringos, 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

(29:52):
and uh 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 2 (30:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
I don't know if I ever told you, but.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Casso Olay was in Orange and Casa Olay was the
fast fanciest restaurant in Orange when I grew up, like
it was a special occasion if you went to Casa 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

(30:45):
that was really fancy, all right. So take us to
the next step in your life's journey.

Speaker 7 (30:51):
Well, you know, after when I first opened Grengos in
which we just celebrated thirty two years this past Saturday, January,
the life and when we open in ninety three, knowing
the history of that building, it forced me to have
a paradigm shift and that I was no longer focused
on making money, and I'm still not even focused on
making money today. That's my that's not my primary focus.

(31:15):
It's about delivering a quality product, a good value, a
fair value, and then taking care of everyone that touches
that product, meaning our guest, our staff, the community, everyone
that supports us, because without them, we're just the building
at the end of the day. But it's the people
in the building that makes it successful. So I've always

(31:38):
just wanted to focus on what matters the most, and
you know, and be consistent with that. I mean, you
know a lot of people they change over time when
they become successful. But 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

(31:58):
changed as an individual. If anything, I would I can
think I've improved in lots of works.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
I was going to say, I think you have changed.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
You'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

(32:25):
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

(32:46):
take us to the next phase.

Speaker 7 (32:48):
Oh, well, the net 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 Ugold Vera,
nicknamed those cab Ayeles because he did the work of
two men. And Ugo is still with me today thirty

(33:08):
two years later. And then John Fernandez was the 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,
it makes me more proud than anything that these individuals

(33:31):
have been with me that many years. I mean, Heather McKinnon,
she started eighteen years old. She's centrve a mid forties
and she sees our COEO. And you know, I can
go on and on, Matt Bousha, Danny Hanks, all these guys,
and I guess what makes me proud about it is
that I know that the company that we have built,

(33:52):
our team is built over the years, can continue way
after I'm going from misso Earth and with the same
same vision and focus. And it's funny because we talk
about all of these other brands that started, let's say
in the late eighties.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
U these wells Lebrons hold right there, these hold right there.
I'm up against a break, my momm