Is the new normal for restaurant operations?

Getting you confused.

Do you reminisce about how the restaurant business used to be?

What restaurant operation myths do you still clinging to?

If any of this has grabbed your attention, your in for a treat because today our very

special guest is restaurateur coach and.

Mentor Monty Silva.

He'll join us in the studio in just a few mo in just a few moments to debunk

seven false operational beliefs and replace them with seven strategies to

help your restaurant crush the new norm.

Welcome to another episode of Turning the Table.

My name is Adam Lamb and I'm here with my co-host Jim Taylor.

Jim Adam.

We're dedicated to bringing you solutions to the hospitality

industry's most persistent challenges.

We ask that you share the show with someone you care.

Who can find this information useful and please leave a review.

Links to the videos and other things discussed in the show can be found

in the comments and the show notes.

This is episode 132, shift Happens.

And so Jim in preparation for our conversation today you and I were talking

yesterday around some stuff about social media, which I thought was fascinating.

Our good friend Jensen Cummings always preaches that as operators we need to own

the narrative or else someone else will.

And I know that presents a challenge for some folks because I pretty

much stunk up the whole place when I started doing social media.

Did you have the same you don't know what you don't know, right?

Yeah.

You need to you need to be out there.

And I think a lot of people probably are stopping short because they feel either

the imposter syndrome or for sure.

Yeah.

Or that it's not good enough, to represent their brand.

What would your coaching be around that?

A lot of, so many people myself included when I first started going,

it just becomes a bit of a rant, right?

Get on there talking about all the things that you think are broken.

The, I think the simplest way that I could put it for somebody who's just

starting to get involved in generating content or something is do it for them.

Don't do it for you.

What do you mean by, what do you mean by them?

Talk about the things that the people who are gonna read or listen

to what you're talking about.

For them.

Talk about for them.

I think that's what's a lot of fun for us on turning the table every week

cuz we get to talk about the things that everyone else is talking about.

It's not art necessarily origin to us, good for them.

Don't do it

for you.

And while we encourage you to just with your camera and or whatever technology

you have and and get yourself out there that could probably lend itself

to more like gorilla style marketing.

And my advocation always for chefs is stop with the static images of the plates.

That's food porn, I get it.

And you're looking to impress another chef, but as far as your guests

and potential employees it's much more powerful to be able to take a

shot or a video of people laughing, setting up the line, stuff like that.

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And this is a really an amazing company, don't you think, Jim?

Just the conversation we had with Justin over there the other day.

Just, it's true.

It's bringing some of this stuff home and he was talking about the

thing that stuck with me, and I think we're gonna do some webinar and some

different, stuff with them around this.

But yeah, this whole AI thing that's happening, this this tidal wave of

AI that's happened in the last couple of months with chat G P T and a few of

these other platforms, his comment about.

Content is garbage.

Now AI will fix that.

They just create more garbage, I think.

It's so powerful.

Platforms that are that are out there like it vocalized to help

make that process easier for people to generate quality content.

And like you said, the push button easy thing.

It's just it, it removes the legwork from it.

Yeah.

It's so good.

Without a doubt.

At this point I'd like to bring in our guest, Monty Silva Monte.

Welcome, sir.

Hey, how are you?

Thanks.

Thanks for having me, Jim.

This is awesome.

The name of this episode of Carl, of course, is called Shift Happens.

And what happens when you drop the H or the F I'm sorry.

Yes.

And Lord knows over the last three years there has been a

lot of shift that's happened.

Wouldn't you say Monte?

Yeah.

It's funny, I I have about a book coming out called Shift Happens, and

I got the, I was talking to a client and and we were talking about the

shit that was happening in our store.

And I said shift happens.

And that's where I thought of that, but yeah, it's I love it.

I love it.

Yes.

A lot of people think that this shift is shift

And I think that probably speaks to something that Jim, I know is close to

your heart, which is gosh, why can't things be the way they used to be?

They, I don't think they ever will be.

And yeah.

The way they used to be wasn't perfect.

There was a lot of shift happening back then too, I think.

So there's this shift for lack of a no pun intended, is I think is bringing us to

a better place in the industry eventually.

Yeah.

Monty before we got on you made a real salient point, and you're describing

what you do and how you do it, but I'd like you to speak for a moment on what's

the difference between a coach and a.

Sure.

Yeah.

I think that you and Jim and I all agree on this a cons the

old model, again, shift happens.

The old model of a consultant was it was someone that got paid for a body of work.

They'd come in.

They'd look at your food costs and examine where they you could fix your food cost

or they might write a training manual for you or put together a beverage program.

And so it was a work for hire and once you were done, boom, you're out.

And it's and today that's represented on TV shows like Restaurant Impossible,

where they come in, they do the.

And then they balance.

But as we know that's not a successful model that a lot of the majority

of those re those restaurants that were helped by very competent people.

Robert Irvine I know you know him.

Very talented, but what can you do in a week or however long it was there?

Sure.

The difference between that old model of consulting, which also

by the way, was for a lot of.

Because the consultant was doing all of the work and charging

at a premium rate for that.

So it was very expensive where a coach is more like someone that's going to, instead

of give a man a fish, is gonna teach a man how to fish, or a woman how to fish.

And so what they do is they come alongside very much like a personal trainer.

They don't just hand you the workout and say, okay, go.

They come alongside you and help you develop new muscles and new muscle

memory and things like that and create some some habits that are sustainable.

And that's really why I like being a coach.

I know that's why you and him have decided that's what you guys want to do.

Because it's also I've have, I have relationships

with these people even beyond.

When I've finished working a period of time with them.

Cause I've established a relationship I've invested in them with my time

and focus and watching them grow and being proud of their development.

And there's my very second client, which I had for 90

days back in the fall of 2020.

I still call.

Every few months and just check on her and make sure that she's still doing

the things that we've taught because she hadn't had a day off in six years

and her husband was going crazy.

And so wow.

Helping them develop that space.

But people like you and YouTube and myself, We're focused more on the

long term and actually having sustainable benefits to somebody and helping them.

Do they, they do a lot of the work as a, someone that hires a coach a

personal trainer, doesn't lift for them, but they're right there cheering 'em on

and supporting them and guiding them and I think a lot of restaurateurs

know what to do, but having the habit and the discipline to be able

to do those day in and day out.

You truly only create a great restaurant if you are focused

every time you're in the building.

And that's my long version of the difference.

I guess one thing that I wanted to make mention of, it also takes a

great deal of courage for those folks to step out of the thing that they.

Into a space where they don't know, and at first they might be a little bit of

wobbly, which is where I think we as coaches and mentors come in because

I, I love your model, Monty, of 90 days of contin continuous coaching

where you're actually seeing these changes up close as they're happening

and be able to course correct.

Yeah, sometimes they just need a spotter.

If you're gonna use the weight lifting thing, it's yeah I just need a little

bit it's like you don't really wanna push that bar up one more time

cuz you don't want it to fall on you.

But when you have someone there to help take a little bit of that weight off,

I think it really makes a difference.

And that's what you know, and listen to a lot of what you and

Jim talk about on a regular basis.

Big fan of the productivity model that Jim's come up with.

I think that.

It's those kinds of things that are really gonna change our industry.

Couldn't agree more.

And good friend Andy Jones from the Leadership hospitality Leadership Podcast

is is actually encouraging us to yeah.

How are you guys?

No, how are you guys really?

So this is typically something that we would do.

Typically something we would do at the top of the show, but we are

so excited to have you on that.

We forgot to ask the question.

Monty, how are you really this is the model that chow chaco.org came

up with as, which we have fun with because it's talks about temperatures

and there's certain emotions that are attached to those temperatures.

And somani.

If I wanted to ask you yeah, I know everything's cool,

but how are you really today?

What would you say?

Yeah.

I'm working on building the business and that's as a solopreneur

and wearing a lot of hats.

And so some days are really great.

When I read A great comment that's supportive and something that I've

written on LinkedIn or something.

And I get some feedback.

It's like super encouraging.

And then when it's crickets, it's man, am I wasting my time doing this?

Is anybody really paying attention?

And oh yeah.

So I think some days I'm doing great and some days it's the heck am I.

But today in this moment what would you gather?

Medium.

I'm doing great today.

I I'm excited.

I'm not in the restaurant today.

I get to hang out with two people I respect and have a conversation

right back at ya.

Monty?

Yes, Jim.

You're in Whistler for crying out loud.

How could you be anything other than

rare?

Are you skiing?

I, we had a great day on the mountain yesterday.

Yeah.

Today we're I'm not sure what we're gonna do today.

Later on.

I've got like you said, Monty, a really good opportunity to

have a chance to spend, have some good discussion with you guys.

And I'm lucky we're on the west coast, right?

It's only nine o'clock in the morning here, so day ahead of us.

Yeah.

But there's lots of words that in the rare medium there's

lots of good stuff here, but I'm.

We'll say, we'll call it medium rare for now, but doing really well.

Had a fantastic week here.

And the restaurant scene it's actually I wanted to make sure I shared this with

people because sometimes we get so focused on some of the shift that's happening

in the industry or the changes that are happening or the challenges, but.

Watching a place like Whistler, the restaurant scene here is going crazy.

We could not find a table to save our lives.

The first night we were here lined up out the door.

Everywhere is just packed.

The vibe and the service was amazing at dinner last night.

It's just been a really good hospitality experience, so very refreshing.

Thank you for that, Jim.

And makes me feel like I'm almost there with you.

No, I, I

know.

I just wanna make sure that people realize that it's there is a lot of good

happening in, in the industry still.

I, to totally get that and I'm gonna come back to you, Monty.

I'm gonna say I'm between medium and medium rare.

Calm, present.

And I love a medium where you can be glad, Immy patient

concerned and grumpy as well.

Monty several months ago you wrote a post on LinkedIn that, that caught my

eye because I think you started off the post in, I'm just paraphrasing here.

That seems like a lot of the conversation is about.

How short people are as far as staff members.

But your experience going out that particular day or afternoon, I think

you were in a busy restaurant and you got a chance to start talking

like we sometimes do and as we go in and suss out a place talk to the

associates, but your perception of that is Like they had plenty of staff.

They were well-balanced, that they weren't asking people

to do too much or too little.

And it seemed what I got out of it.

It seems like Tampa Bay is in a real good spot as far as staffing is concerned.

Do you wanna dive into that for a little bit?

Yeah I think overall there's a lot of different takes on what

do you do, how do you handle covid?

And I know that our governor got some pushback for it.

He tried to keep businesses open as much as possible.

And and I think that helped us rebound a little quicker down here

than even the rest of the US and certainly I think more than Canada.

And but really there are, there were restaurants.

I don't know if this was the post you're referring to, but one of the

things I talked about is if you want to be always busy, you have

to become the employer of choice.

So even if you're in a market, It is super, super busy and successful

and all the restaurants are full like Whistler, which by the way, Jim, I

think if you dropped your name, you'd probably get in the front of the line.

I'm Jim Taylor.

Yeah but even if busy restaurant like Whistler isn't necessarily just

because of the surrounding market.

It's a lot of times it's by becoming the employer of choice and really creating.

A great workspace for people, which I know Jim talks a lot

about the productivity and stuff.

Yeah,

sure.

So shift happens Seven myths that you wanna bust up.

You wanna tell us a little bit about that?

Sure.

Or you wanna just list them all out and then we'll bust each one right.

In the chats.

Whatever's best.

Let's list them.

Yeah.

That way you guys have a little bit of a headstart so that you

can join in the conversation.

Cause one of the things I love about situations like we're doing right now

is you know those moments when you go.

You get off work, it's late at night, you need a drink, you got a buddy that

understands cuz he is in the industry.

Need for a drink and just wanna shoot the shit and, either

vent or share ideas or something.

And it's a, and if I can say these really quick, that'll be Sure.

Please.

Yeah.

Let's still think about how you respond to each one.

So the first false belief that I determined and o and obviously there's

more than seven, but I think our industry 50 years ago really started

determining the standard right of.

What does work mean?

Work-life balance was there work-life balance like that?

How do you treat your employees?

How do you run a successful p and l?

Things like that.

And so these are the seven that I came up with and will be in

the book that I've coming out.

The first one is false belief.

Number one is underpaying your people equals profits.

I think that when we devalue people let me just, I'll, I

won't say anything on that.

We'll come back to that.

Yeah.

Too is marketing is too expensive.

And the only thing I'll say to you is I heard you guys while I was backstage,

is I had a hard time shifting from writing a blog to doing video content.

I have a Facebook radio, so I I felt very much like an imposter in

those early days, I'm still been there sharing stuff, but marketing

is too expensive as a false belief.

And the evolution of marketing kind of shows how that's changed.

False belief.

Number three you have to work 70 hours to be successful.

Then false belief.

Four, good people are hard to.

I've just touched on that a little bit.

False belief number five, you're in the food and beverage business.

Good one.

False belief number six.

Restaurants are bad investments.

Ah, and false belief number seven.

A penny saved.

Is a penny earned.

Great.

I can't

wait to get into this.

Yeah there's some juicy ones there.

Yeah.

I think Jim and I have had a few conversations about some of these

on a, on the phone call.

Oh yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm trying to think of which one we should dive into first here.

Good people are hard to find.

Let's talk about that please.

I kinda shared already becoming the employer of choice just like

I mentioned a second ago if we lived in the same city, we might be

having this conversation over scotch or bourbon or a glass of wine or something.

Our staff goes.

To have drinks after work to the local watering hole, and they're sharing

their frustrations, crappy night.

My manager's a jerk, or man, I made so much money I really love where I work.

And this, these watering holes are really great.

Grounds for for developing potential future employees by how

your employees speak about you.

So if you become the employer of choice and your team is happy with

you and the restaurant and things that are going on and they're out

sharing that information those people are like, man, you know what I.

Want to go work for that guy or that restaurant.

So becoming the employer of choice is super important.

And then I think that once you bring people in and Jim, I'd love to

hear what you and Adam have to say about the productivity side of this, but

training, development, if we treat our employees like an asset on a balance.

Instead of a liability on the p and l where the labor line is that we

show them the value that they are, we're gonna get the best work out

of them and ultimately we're going to want to train and develop them.

When you have an asset you want to appreciate, right?

Sure.

And you, if you look at people that way, then you begin to want

to develop them as an asset.

So they're even better rather than, Cut their hours or shorten their

training just to save a few bucks.

That's a big, those are two big things that I've done in the past and that

I work with clients on to make sure that I've, and I've honestly,

as a, as an operator, I've never had an issue finding people.

So quick, just follow up question maybe on that, the employer of choice thing.

It's tough to accomplish.

So what's training, I'm hearing you say the training is one thing that

you encourage people to do to make sure that they're getting to that.

Is there anything else, like just a quick hit nugget kind of thing that

you can give that has helped you become employer of choice in the past?

I think just showing people that you respect them.

You one of the things that I do in my own restaurant here in Tampa, And

I've done this throughout my career is when I walk into the building, I

physically walk up to every employee that's on staff and say hello to them.

It's it shows that they're not just a number to me, that they're and if

something's going on I had a line cook that was my saute guy and his father

passed away, and so when he came back I gave him a big hug and told him that.

Whatever he needs, we're here to support him.

We've we've sent flowers to funerals, things like that, just to show the

human side and the empathetic that we have empathy for our people,

I think is super important.

And showing them that they matter and they make a difference.

And then just there's a great book.

I'm sure you guys have probably read it, one minute Manager.

One minute Praises in that book.

You just gotta, you gotta pull people aside every now and then and just tell

'em they're doing a great job so that the that's not the only conversation

that you have is when they're in trouble or the principal office syndrome.

Yeah.

I think speaking of my own experience, one of the most powerful

things is having a really robust day one orientation to show that

it's showing real concrete terms.

The care and value of the associate as opposed to throwing 'em an apron

and saying, okay, you get to work.

And I think that's probably an easy thing to fix, Jim.

Yeah which is more about enrolling them in the narrative of why

they're there, why the restaurant exists, how their work is actually

part of this entire story moving.

And give them an opportunity to go around and each area of the building I

know some places are tiny and you go, okay, there's the bathroom, there's

the line, and there's the front.

But there's, all of us are natural storytellers being in this business.

And I think leveraging that narrative is a very powerful way to have

someone really buy into not only the mission and vision, but also

the values of which the operation.

Yeah, I've, I was working on a project with a restaurant not long

ago where they've got a new opening coming up and they said, Hey, do you

mind taking a look at our pre-open training schedule for our team?

And it's about over 90% of the employees in this new restaurant

are gonna be people who've never worked for the company before.

So they send it over and it's one six hour day to cover everything

from company culture to food and beverage, to food tasting.

Drink recipes, the whole thing, six hours.

And I just my one piece of feedback to them was that I think

that if there's lots of ways that you could go about doing that.

And every single one of them's gonna get its own result.

But if it was me, I would at least quadruple that, if not more.

And there's obviously the discussion about cost and about time, and then all

the investment that goes along with that.

And there's a fine line and each operator has to decide where they're at.

But the discussion of what happens if you train them and they.

What happens if you don't and they stay came up.

Great.

What was your reply?

I just I always said you can never con, you can never control

whether people are gonna stay and work for you forever or not.

That should always be the intention.

Unless you make a decide to move them on yourself.

But I think at the end of the day the more you can put into people.

Education, competency, confidence, whatever it might be in the

business, the longer they'll probably

gonna stand work for you.

Couldn't re Yeah.

The thing about that too is I think if you're gonna be the employer of choice and

you're developing people, to your point, Jim you're going to lose good people.

Because unless you've got a restaurant group that has

a ton of expansion, opportu.

There's gonna be people that outgrow a mom and pop single restaurant.

They wanna grow.

And one of the, one of the things I think I'm most proud of in my 25 years

of restaurant management career I was in Nashville from 2005 to about 2020.

And I counted at the end of my time in Nashville before I moved

to Tampa 37 chefs sous chef.

Bar managers, beverage directors, and GMs and service managers

that had all been busers servers, bartenders, line cooks, food runners

from the over those 15 years.

And it's very rewarding even before my son was born.

It's very rewarding to have kids that grow up in the industry and

you can be you could be excited that you helped develop them.

And I think.

If you're always hiring too mu I think too many times we think we're so

busy that somebody walks in and it's it's not the op opportune time walking in the

middle of lunch or the middle of dinner, and you're like what's this idiot doing?

Sean know this is not a good time.

Your response.

But it's I use this model or this ideal lot when I talk to clients.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers have always had a quarterback, right?

They had a quarterback before they called Tom Brady, but they wanted Tom Brady.

And so I think that if we have the attitude that we're always hiring,

we're always looking for rock stars.

Then as your people grow and potentially leave you, there's

a recession, what's it called?

Succession plan to bring the next group of people up and do that.

Yeah.

That that's a big part of of that being the employer of choice.

Couldn't agree more.

Monty, and I don't wanna belabor the point, but this whole idea of like

actually baking in the life cycle of an associate into your budget.

For training, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And just instead of begrudging the people that they're gonna build a

set of skills and then leave you, it could actually take the long view.

And I know in my own experience that there were three or four

mentors that actually gave me more than I ever thought possible.

And they're still alive in my heart because I wouldn't be here without them.

Let's talk about number seven, cuz I love that one.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

You guys have probably heard this, but if you take a penny and you double

it every day and then you double it again, you double it again for 31 days,

you have over 10 million and it's an astronomical exponential growth a thing.

If you save that penny and you don.

Expand it.

It's always a penny, right?

And so I think that our industry was so focused on percentages

and hitting certain numbers that we actually stifled our growth.

Tried to save a penny, but it cost us quality of product or a cost us

a great guest experience because we were understaffed or it cost us.

Sales because they, the employee was so stretched, they didn't have time

to upsell or and so when we got so focused on penny saving that we actually,

restaurants began to lose scalability and the opportunity for single unit

growth because they were not setting themselves up for future growth.

And I think a penny invest.

Is a far better model than a penny saved.

I like it.

And that back ins backs up to this idea of investing in your

assets visa, meaning your associates.

Yeah,

absolutely.

I'm sure.

Hey Jim, I'm sure you have something to say about Productivity

of trying to pinch pennies and

Actually the part that you said that sort of jumped out to me the

most there, besides the I agree with you about the penny invested thing.

It's actually just reminds me of our, a lot of the discussion we have around

workload rather than productivity, right?

It's like you spread the team so thin thinking that it's gonna be a more

profitable day or a more profitable week, or a more profitable business.

People the spreading thin of people affects their levels of stress and

anxiety and affects mental health.

It increases levels of burnout and it increases turnover.

There's direct connection there, right?

So the workload side of things is the, is a really interesting part of that, right?

Around what's the threshold that people can actually responsib.

And when I say people operate a restaurant, operators can responsibly

expect from their people in order to run a good business that provides

good service and is profitable.

Yeah.

That ties into you have to work 70 hours to be successful,

which is falsely three.

Because your point, you're overworking these people, they're

not as productive as they can be.

And they, you're right.

You're over if the workload is too high.

Like I said, there's the stress and anxiety side of it, which is a, a.

Issue, but there's also, like you mentioned, people can't get to the

customer to sell them something.

So it affects sales, it affects revenue, it affects profitability, it affect

there's so many compounding effects that workload side of things has.

So yeah, I would agree with you

on all of those.

Monty As far as the 70 hours to be successful the thing that jumped out

at me first after I chuckled about it is how much of a disservice that

becomes in regards to our associates.

If I think that I need to work 70 hours to be successful and I'm there all

the time, even when I'm ineffective because I've been there 70 hours.

Doesn't that set up like a feedback loop with my associates?

They start doubting themselves whether they're shit, I gotta work that hard.

It just perpetuates the myth is what I'm.

Yeah,

obviously as a leader, people are watching you and if they feel like why

would any hourly employee wanted to get into restaurant management, take a cut,

pay and work twice the hours, so true.

That certainly has affected I'm glad you brought that up, Adam, cause I didn't

really look at it from that perspective.

But they're watching you work 70 hours.

Who's gonna who wants to sign up for that besides you?

Us idiots on this.

We didn't sign up for it.

Someone just gave us the keys one night and said

yeah, here you go.

You're an asset.

Exactly.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

That I and Jim mentioned a second ago, just the productivity level.

I don't think anyone is going to be productive at their

max 10 to 14 hours a day.

And This doesn't necessarily apply as much to servers and people like

that, that typically don't work this many hours, but the line cooks and

I remember growing up in the kitchen side and we'd work 15 hours and some,

unfortunately, some of those times we didn't get paid because we're Right.

We wanted to starge Frederick chef or something like that.

We'd get the crap beat out of us all day long and pot pans, if I didn't saute

that fish the pan would be thrown at my head and I was creating those hostile.

Work environments and just being stressed out all the time.

And that's where they invented walk-in therapy where we'd walk

inside and yell and scream in the walk-in and the cold temperatures

would bring our blood pressure down,

There's no more crying in the walk-in, goddammit.

Yeah, exactly.

I love the ones that have a picture of Christopher Walkin.

Exactly.

I think that.

Why is our industry, and there's obviously there's other industries that attorneys

and maybe doctors and other industries that people work those kinds of hours.

But why is it necessary for restaurant managers to work 10 to 20 more hours

than someone of equal responsibility within a nine to five kind of a job?

Who determin?

That you've gotta work this many hours to make that restaurant successful.

I think that's something that I think it, it really took everyone

complains about the newer generations, but they were like, Hey, no, I'm not

gonna work 50 hours a weekend more.

And maybe you.

Some people say it's a work ethic thing.

I find a lot of people in those generations that have really great

work ethics, but they've just decided I'm not gonna do a 70 hour work week.

That's just not healthy.

It's not, yeah.

It's not, I don't, I, I'd rather have the European model

where we're working to live.

We're not living to work.

Oh

Yeah.

And you know what?

I think my, based on a lot of the work that, that we.

At Benchmark 60 with productivity and workload and a lot of this stuff.

I'm biased for sure, but my stance and my opinion on who decided well,

everyone working in restaurants decided that, I don't think it was necessarily

owners that decided, I think it was the p and l decided, I think it was.

We don't, it's a penny business and you gotta hit a percentage target

for your management labor and there's no more money to hire someone else.

So either work the hours or work somewhere else and you might

not find a job somewhere else.

And Jim, to your point, I was just reflecting and listening, Monty and

you, I go let, what really landed for me is I can remember, and I can actually

feel it in my body right now, of how much of those 70 hours were spent out

of fear that someone was going to.

Say that I wasn't working hard enough or I wasn't producing the results that that

I should, or that I was working, I wasn't working my team hard enough, but it just,

it like, yeah, sure, fear and anger are great motive motivators for a very short

time but the body, because it perceives it's under duress now starts amping

up different proteins and chemicals.

And you are in a perpetual eye for a while in my career was in a perpetual state of

fear, and I think I've been let go twice in my career, but god dammit, if those

things aren't still alive in me right now for fear that're like, oh, I'm not gonna.

And I think that's probably why I pushed myself so much as opposed to being.

Led on, right?

Yeah.

So instead of pushing a noodle up a hill, actually finding some space where I can

motivate myself or become so grounded in my why that I don't ever doubt whether

I'm working eight hours or 12 hours.

And Monty, to your point, as a solopreneur as someone who's built

trying to build their business, and Jim, I know you, you would say this as

well, some folks aren't necessarily.

For that.

Some folks do really well in a structured environment where there's a

team and others do well by themselves and with a loosely structured team.

But I find that currently in my days, this is about, probably about five

hours or six hours, is probably the max that I can actually be effective

whether working with a client or working on my business or whatever.

And the rest of it is just spinning my wheels.

And who gets to make that call if not me?

And so I know that there were times when I was working in the kitchen or

the restaurant, and I was not being effective yet, that fear still drove me.

Yeah.

And Jim, I know that we were talking about Michelle Moreno coming up

pretty soon as one of our guests.

Yeah.

And she's just a, she she wants to bring love back into the industry.

Yeah.

Which for me would be great cuz I think that would probably slow

down sales of an acid tablets.

Yeah.

To your point, and I, Adam, I know you spent way more time

in the kitchen than I did.

But it's interesting to me that I remember as a working in prep if

that knife wasn't they didn't hear the knife just slicing really quickly.

You weren't working fast enough.

And I think our industry, whether you're in the kitchen or the front of

the house, is so performance driven.

Cause it's immediate feedback.

If you create a dish and you put it out, you have immediate feedback.

If it comes back and it's not hot or it doesn't taste good,

you instantly are criticized.

If you are a server and you're taking care of a guest you

have immediate feedback.

You're happy with your service and so I think that creates a

lot of people pleaser mentality.

That as I think it was to Jim's point earlier when he, when we talked about who

created this we did because we, we became these people pleasers that thought that

70 hour work week was a badge of courage.

And you know what I've man fit in some very.

Borderline heated discussions and opinionated discussions actually

quite recently about Monty.

Your comment about the new generation and how they just said, they're

saying, no, we're not doing that.

You know what?

Personally, I love it because me too, I believe there's a better

way forward in our industry.

I believe that innovation is utterly important, and I think that the

way that the next generation of restaurateur is looking at it.

Okay.

I understand that it's a thin margin business.

I understand that there's only a certain amount of money to go around,

but I want you to understand that this is what I'm prepared to do and if you

want me to work there, figure it out.

And I think that's gonna really put our industry in a position where we

have to look at things differently in order to make it work because

people, like you said, they're not gonna do what we did 20 years ago.

Yeah.

As always, this conversation could keep going.

And it will but not necessarily within this timeframe.

Thank you.

This is a great list.

Yes.

And chat.

G p t could not do any better.

I wanted to thank Andy Jones, Troy Hooper, our our guests for Always,

for adding to the chat, Monty Silva.

And Jim, thank you very much, man.

I'm really grateful that you took time out of your holiday to be with us here.

Of course, wouldn't miss it.

And thanks as always to our sponsor, e vocalize, and we