← Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore
Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore
1249: Sam Caucci, CEO of 1Huddle and Author of Wasted Talent
01:50:26
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- [00:00]
A
A couple things before we get started today. First, thank you so much for showing up week after week making my vision for Restaurants Unstoppable come true. Your downloads are allowing me to do this show the way I've always wanted to do it. Boots on the ground, word of mouth, leaders, referring leaders giving the industry an uncensored, no BS platform to share their perspectives and truth. That's on you. Thank you so much. And we're just getting started. So if you're enjoying what we're doing here and you want to help us do it even better, please subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice. And if you do that, I promise to do everything in my power to continue to improve the show. I'll deliver the restaurant tours you want to hear from and we'll continue to make everything you love about this show better. Thank you. Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1,000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guest and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is made possible by US Foods Right Running a successful restaurant takes more than just great food. With US Foods, you can expect more high quality products, advanced tools and flexible deliveries to grow your business. Their industry leading moxy platform also does more than just place your US Foods order. It uses AI to help you take control, save time and increase profitability. Visit usfoods.com expectmore to learn how to become a US Foods customer one more time. That is usually usfoods.com expect more this episode is made possible by Sir Bony your All in One bookkeeping and financial solution. We're talking about reliable tax preparation, business incorporation, seamless payroll and compliance reports, Strategic CFO services that drive business growth, detailed custom reporting for complete financial clarity Dedicated support for restaurants in multi location businesses Did I mention bookkeeping late? Sir Boney handled the numbers so you can focus on the vision. Call Sir Bony today at 281-888-2413 to schedule your free 30 minute consultation and discover House Bony can streamline your operations and boost your bottom line. Limited time Offer an exclusive to Restaurant Unstoppable listeners. Mention this Message and get 20 off your first month of services. This episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies, the leader in automated cooking Oil management. Their total oil management solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects and recyc you're cooking oil. Eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Restaurant technologies services over 45,000 customers nationwide. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI Inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started with excitement. Allow me to introduce to you on the show for a second time CEO of one one Huddle and author of Wasted Talent. How greed, exploitation and the promise of the future of work has failed the front line and a plan to fix it. Sam Kaiuchi. My man. Sam, are you feeling unstoppable?
- [03:38]
B
Unstoppable.
- [03:38]
A
Right to roll, dude. Stoked to have you here. You did an amazing job with this book, Wasted Talent. I really enjoyed listening to it and I made some notes in the book and I can't wait to unpackage it today. But before we dive into that book, let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?
- [03:56]
B
You don't have to be s get better.
- [03:58]
A
You don't have to be sick to get better. Why is. I mean, I love that seems pretty clear, but dive into it.
- [04:04]
B
I think companies, you know, sometimes we do a lot of work at one huddle with companies that are always trying to rethink their process or trying to open faster. They're trying to, you know, redo trainings, hire fire, the whole thing. And I, I think that the best brands should always be thinking about how do they get just a little bit better every day. And you don't have to have something broken to rethink a process. And I think today with how fast change is happening around business, the best brands are always thinking about what is the next innovation, what is the next step, where is the market going? And when you operate from that point of view, you're always, you're always on offense. You're always trying to find ways to make your business better so you don't have to wait for something to be broken to attack it. And I think that we say that a lot to brands we work with.
- [04:54]
A
Yeah, you know, it's a unique attribute of just a society and humanity that we just get better. We, we, we are where we are today because of those who've come before us and we stand on their shoulders. Like everything we have today, every new idea we've had today, every piece of technology we've had today is compounded on that that has come before us. Right. And we stand on those shoulders. And our job is to continue to evolve, to continue to get better. To your point, you don't have to be sick to get better. And if you're not getting better, you're regressing because the world around you is moving forward.
- [05:25]
B
So you got to be willing to change. Today, again, you could look at technology, you can look at AI, you could look at market trends, economy, politics. Change is a constant. It's happening faster than ever. And you know, for that reason the best brands are always thinking about, the best leaders are always thinking about, how can I wake up and not just rest on my laurels from the day before, but find a way to enhance or elevate myself for the brand or the people I'm around?
- [05:54]
A
Yeah. So like I mentioned, this is the second time we've had you on the show. The first episode was 966. I want to say that was about three years ago. First had you on to share your story as the founder and CEO of One Huddle. Great tool. I'm sure what that tool does and how that tool supports the workforce is going to come out in today's conversation. But if want to check out Sam's story, do be sure to check out that episode. And if you want to learn more about One Huddle as well, again, it's 966, but today we're here to talk about wasted talent. And you, you opened this book by sharing your story as to why we should listen to your perspective. It's a really great story. So like, real quick, just like what got you here real quick, like one minute, two minutes, summarize the first chapter of this book.
- [06:38]
B
Yeah, so I started, you know, my career wasn't in software, it wasn't in the hospitality industry. I started in the sports industry. I came out of high school, signed to play football at the college level, had a family setback and my mom was a legal secretary, didn't get to go to college so I had to come and start helping out right away. So I got a job, did the whole go to college work full time thing and fast forward all of my experiences at every stop. And I ran high performance training facilities at prepped pro athletes in the off season. So I worked in pro sports in a high performance environment. All of my stops along the way, predominantly in the sports category, had me in environments where organizations were trying to get a little bit better. They were trying to elevate the performance of people around them. And I started One Huddle which is a software company. One Huddle turns workforce training into mobile games. And, you know, for the last decade, as a business, as it's grown, we've grown from working just with sales teams of five or 10 sales reps to brands like Nike and the US Air Force and Tao Hospitality Group and Lowe's Hotels. The book you have there, Eric, was a byproduct of all of those experiences over the last decade. The points of view that ultimately kind of capsuled itself inside of that book was from, you know, being in environments like a one location restaurant concept that was trying to put all their systems into one place. It was from brands like Tao that was growing across the globe. It was environments like right here in Newark with reentry programs that help men and women returning from prison that need to access credentials and training and education to win their next job. All of those experiences to me were overflowing and I needed a place to put them. So, you know, the book was, you know, a three, four year project to write. And I tell people the hardest part of writing it was stopping because of the chaos of work today.
- [08:47]
A
Yeah, man. And you are in a very unique place to write this book with your work through One Huddle to level up employees, to provide companies with this framework, this technology to level up employees. You talk to training departments, you talk to HR people, and you get to see the restaurant industry as well as many other industries through the lens of these people. And what you were seeing wasn't really jiving with you. You're seeing that there is opportunity to do better.
- [09:15]
B
We have a front row seat most definitely to the talent experience at a whole wide array of brands. And we see what happens during the recruiting process. We see how well or ill prepared an organization is to onboard a new hire. So we get to see what goes into onboarding talent. Then we get to see, you know, how how an organization continuously upskills, reskills, cross skills workers and you know, again, all of that front row seat. We saw organizations that buy talent instead of build it. We see organizations, too many organizations where workers, the worker experience takes a backseat to the customer and guest experience, which ultimately eventually negatively impacts the customer and customer experience. We see that through the lens of employee engagement, management practices, leadership techniques that maybe are underdeveloped. But I think the biggest learning, which is obviously on the title of the book is I think too many organizations are wasting talent instead of winning with it. And candidates and employees in the workforce have tremendous capability, tremendous skill. But when organizations don't see it, they don't put technology around it to assess it. They don't put systems around it to continuously develop it, then they lose it.
- [10:51]
A
Yeah. And that's your job as a leader, as a manager, or as you would like to say, a coach, is to find the talent. Not. Not to go out looking for people, but to find the talent that's already in the individual who's there on your team. We all have talent, and it's not going to smack you across the face. You have to pull back the layers on that individual, find out what they're. They're driven by, find out where to put them. You know, and to your point, I think we go and we buy talent, we don't develop it. And what was it for you? Was there like a point in your journey of developing one huddle, growing one huddle, where you just saw this obvious issue in the industry? At what point did you say, like, I need to write this book? Like, what was that breaking point for you?
- [11:36]
B
Yeah. And there's a lot of stories in the book that I pepper throughout. I try to tell the human stories that we saw front and center, and it's going to be hard to pinpoint the exact moment, but there was a moment in the book. I tell. I tell a short story that you'll remember that was around the time I got this thing going, and I had a phone call with a head of people. And I love the role of chief people officer, Eric, because it sounds so good, Chief people officer. But too often that role is. Is just disguising an HR function that is all about control and not about building capabilities. And that's a problem in our workforce today. I talk a lot about human resources. And I had a call in the book. I talk about it, about the woman, the HR person, who is operating work from kitchen is what I called it. And she's working. I'm on a zoom call with her, talking about her training and development platform and strategy for the year ahead. This was an organization that was using our platform. They were using a bunch of other platforms for talent. And here we are on this beautiful zoom call where her background is. You know, it looked like a West Elm, Eric. It was marble countertops, edge to edge. I think it was an open field in the background. I'm in my home. This was like Covid times. And we're having a conversation because we pulled all the data around. Close to 7,000 employees. What are they training on voluntarily, beyond what they have to. So this is a very interesting set of data that one Huddle captures And we're having this conversation around a specific worker that was in a retail environment who was voluntarily exploring training to be a manager. And this HR person laughed at me on the phone. She laughed and said, why would he even do that? He's a retail rep. And that's the problem that pissed me off because that's a person who again, role is to develop again to the employees. They believe that function is to coach them and develop them and make them better and enhance their performance. And here she is laughing at a worker who's in a minimum wage retail job who is going above and beyond to skill themselves up. And that's the reaction. That to me is embarrassing. It's disgusting. And so much of the book I share, these stories that I've personally experienced around, around work. But that type of men, I wrote that book because those types of people are the problem in our workforce. They hold businesses back that are trying to grow. They negatively impact communities. And I think it should change. So that was, stories like that were what got me going.
- [14:38]
A
She clearly sees this person as nothing more than a cog in a wheel that can be like, it's like you're, you're here to fill a role.
- [14:44]
B
Yep.
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A
And that's, that's how I see you. Not what are your goals, what are your aspirations or what can you bring to this, this, this company, you know, like, where can you make this company? But we don't. I think, to your point, we don't. Or historically, business leaders don't see their people as that opportunity. Right. You start the book by talking about three lies. Basically, how did we get here? Like, what are the three lies? What's the ecosystem like? That, this, what you're describing, exists. Like, how do we get here?
- [15:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. I think that, you know, when you look at work, there's this belief that workers are unskilled when they're not. I mean, the reality is a lot of businesses just simply do not tap into the skills that their workers have, and that becomes a problem. And, you know, I think that the lies I talk about that really stem out of this problem of organizations looking at labor as replaceable, as expendable, as a cost to constantly reduce. And it's very clear to me, after all the work I've done in the industry, looking at the brands that are growing, are performing, and the ones that aren't, the ones that are consistently approach talent with the same level of care that they approach the guest experience. I said this earlier, and I don't believe that your guest experience, your Customer experience can surpass your workforce experience, your talent experience. And organizations that care about that employee experience at a high level, they create a strong foundation by which they can elevate everything else around the business. So the lies that I talk about in the book, to me, they all stem back to this point of looking at a worker as something that is replaceable, is something that if it doesn't work out, they can find another one. It costs five times more to go to hire a new candidate than it does to develop one. All of the metrics across every industry, not just restaurants and hospitality, point to the fact that organizations that develop talent are healthier, bigger, stronger, grow faster. But that approach is a. Is harder, it requires more effort, it requires seeing your workers. And if you don't want to see your workers, then you call them names. You call them unskilled. You call, you say that you know you can. They complain about wages. You do all this. There are generational gaps. Ah, millennials, Gen Z, then we're going to be what, Gen Alpha. Everybody complains about all this other stuff. So I think it all stems from the fact that organizations that see the full capabilities and skills of their workers are stronger and able to tap into more of it.
- [17:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, more times than not, doing the hard thing is the right thing. There's a reason why it's hard. If it was easy, everybody would do it. But it's just like usually that's what people do is the, the path of least resistance. Because we're by nature lazy, it takes discipline to choose to do the hard thing. And I think we all want freedom, right? We're all, we all want to be able to get away from the work, to go sit on the beach or to do whatever we want, play video games. But the truth is freedom comes in doing hard things. It's in the, the, the autonomy, the choice to do those hard things that matter to you. And when you do hard things, to your point, like when you build people up, we create depth, you know, and it's that depth that, that bench that we're trying to build by, by. As we lift ourselves up, we bring people up with us, and that creates depth. And that's kind of what I was thinking of hearing you. So the, the three lies you talk about in the book are. Lie number one is people are unskilled. Lie number two is workers are lazy. And then lie number three is we can't find workers. So why do you think that that idea of people being unskilled is out there in the first Place.
- [18:41]
B
I think it's easy to just name call. I mean, I think it's as easy as that. And, you know, especially at a time when organizations do not do a great job. And again, this is from small to Fortune 500 that really struggle to consistently assess the skills of their people. If you do not assess the skills you have, it'd be like a chef in the kitchen not knowing what ingredients they have to work with today. So this inability to assess skills and primarily operate in a culture of we train and onboard, and that's all we do. We throw the, the new hire binder at you and give you a menu test and then say, oh, you're trained. This mindset of training being an event and not a continuum creates this gap in seeing your talent. So I really think it operates in this place of we don't constantly assess skill. And remember, I told my story. I started in a world of high performance. We tested everything. Every day we'll talk about high performance athletes from pro tennis to pro golf to pro football. We clocked, measured, and weighed everything we could. And we did it every day, every week, every month, depending on the drill and what we were assessing. So we constantly had a pulse on the skills and capabilities of every person within our four walls so that we can deploy that talent most appropriately to get to our goal. Organizations that shy away from continuously getting a pulse on where their workers are, they turn around and then what they end up doing is they end up slipping. There's this. There's. There's a decay that occurs. Some workers are going to be the rock stars. You can just get out of their way. Some are going to be in the middle and they're going to need. They're going to be kind of up and down and up and down. Some are going to be the laggards on your team. And when you don't assess all that entire continuum of workers, then I think it becomes easy to just say, I don't have the right skills. Let Eric go on. We'll find somebody else. And round and round and round we go. So that's what I think. It's really important that in the book I try to make this point that every person on your team has a skill stack. You should ask yourself, are you activating every person's skills and abilities appropriately to help your business get where it can go? Because sometimes the next best bartender is a server.
- [21:21]
A
Yeah.
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B
Sometimes the next best server is a host. Sometimes the next best server is a dishwasher.
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A
Right.
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B
And that story that we sell ourselves in hospitality that does take place only takes place in the environments where more often than not the manager or the leader on the front line has a pulse on their people to be able to identify and lateral that person.
- [21:42]
A
Yeah. This episode is made possible by US Foods. It takes more than great food to run a kitchen these days. With US Foods, more means consistently high quality products, industry leading tools, inflexible deliveries that let you grow your business on your schedule. Whatever your goals, US Foods helps you turn them into reality. As a US Foods customer, you'll gain access to their industry leading moxi platform which doesn't just make it it easy to place your US Foods order, but it uses AI powered technology to help you take more control of your business and increase profitability. You can also explore the latest issues of Food Fanatics magazine from US Foods. In each issue you'll find real world success stories, bold culinary inspiration and practical profit boosting ideas you can put to work immediately. Visit usfoods.com expectmore to learn how to become a US Foods customer again. That's usfoods.com expect more the little teaser you end the book talking. The last chapter talks about not being a manager, but being we need more coaches and leaders and that's what a coach does. A coach takes you from point A to point B. They help you understand who you are, where you are, what your strengths are. And they put you on a path. And the only way to understand who somebody is and where they are and where they need to be based on what you've learned about them, is by engaging them on a daily, or at least a weekly basis of where are like, like, what is your path like? Like have I taken the time to get to know you, to observe you, to to just fully understand what those talents are just by being around and caring about you?
- [23:19]
B
Yeah, that. That. That to me is like the biggest point we've probably are going to make so far in this discussion. You just brought it up. The difference between a manager and a leader and a coach though they are they. They mean different things. Managers tell you what to do, leaders show you how to do it, but coaches get you to want to do it. That is the difference. And organizations should look internal and identify the people that are in supervisor roles of other humans. Are you building a management culture or are you building a leadership culture or are you building a coaching culture? They are all different. I believe that the organizations that build the strongest talent forces, which by the way, strong talent forces mean high sales performance, low employee turnover, lower recruiting costs, higher transferability meaning you can fill an open role. Bilateraling a worker versus going external. All those things happen under coaching cultures. And in the book I talk about there are different behaviors to each and this is to put out to everybody. Management cultures aren't wrong, leadership cultures aren't wrong. The reality is you got to make sure that don't be oblivious, don't be waking up every day and saying we're a coaching culture. Yet all of your systems prove that you're just command and controlling people like managers.
- [24:50]
A
Yeah, I'm thinking about your second lie, which is your workers are lazy. Are they lazy or are they just not feeling seen, feeling like they are growing? Are they, are they losing interest in the job because you're not giving them a reason to be interested?
- [25:05]
B
A coach by definition, by the way, the origin of the word coach was a Hungarian story. An actual coach that would take you from point A to point B again in a, in a fashion that you needed to get there. That's what a coach does. A coach can take a person and get them where they want to go. So just in the same story, coaching cultures over invest in their people. They're all about understanding, not just where you are positionally, called the three Ps positionally, but personally and professionally.
- [25:42]
A
Yes.
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B
And if you do not give a shit about all three of those, then you are only going to get so much of the talent and skills of the worker. Another way to look at this whole thing is that if you are a manager, you are going to think of it from 0 to 100. Eric is a team member, Eric is an 80 out of 100. You are an 80 out of 100 skill level in your job today. Let's say you're a server, a manager. Let's say you walk into work today and you feel like a 50. Bad day, rents due tomorrow. Things happen. In a home, you feel like a 50, but your, your ceiling is an 80. A manager will take that 50 and make it a 45, maybe make it a 40. A leader will take that 50 and get you to 60, 70, get you closer to that 80. A coach is going to take you from 50 to 80 and then over time, what are they going to do? 181, 82, 83. That is the difference. Now if you want a management culture that just takes the Eric and says Eric's lazy today and not give a shit about what's happening personally and professionally beyond his position, then you know what you're going to do? You're going to get a worker that comes in that you're paying full ticket for. For 100, who's really only an 80 because you didn't really interview them well. And they're giving you a 50.
- [27:09]
A
Yeah. One of the stories you tell in the book is I think you're either witnessing or you're telling the story of a chef. It was a small kitchen. Like, it was like three people in the kitchen. And like, the. The chef would just, like, touch on the shoulder or something, just knowing that that person's there. Get into the intention behind that story you're telling.
- [27:28]
B
Yeah. Beautiful restaurant Casamono in New York City. I think they've won A Michelin star 14 years in a row. Something wild. And we stumbled in there a few years ago, and my daughter Nico, who's just turned nine at five, we would go in and she'd love to sit at the counter and watch the chefs. And it's a very small kitchen, very small space. Maybe only 15, 16 tables in the restaurant, but open kitchen and enough room for, you know, the expo, The. The main chef and maybe a sous chef. And the story I tell is they're working. It's almost like a ballet. It's like a dance. And in such a tight space, clearly a lot of. There's knives, there's fire. It's open to the space to watch how the chef can just touch the elbow of the. Of the chef next to them, or with a glance or a look, they're communicating amidst all that is going on, serving the restaurant. It's awesome to watch. And so I tell that story, and I think that that's an element of the best organizations communicate, and they can do it in a variety of ways. And they have a culture of understanding. And it's just very clear to me, when you see it going right like that, it's. It's beautiful to see what stood out.
- [28:53]
A
To me or what I felt in that moment listening to that. Part of the book was this idea of presence, of when you are a chef and you and you work shoulder to shoulder with people, obviously, as you're scaling a business, you. If you're the CEO, you can't be on the line of every restaurant you own every day and have that presence. But I am curious, are you familiar with Dunbar's number?
- [29:16]
B
No.
- [29:16]
A
So it's basically Robert Dunbar. I think it was Robert. Mr. Dunbar, he studied apes in the wild and realized that apes basically can be on numbers of 50. They. There's like social unrest. And they. The groups of the tribes of chimpanzees would Split in fraction and, like, become smaller groups because over that number, they didn't know who the leader was. And there was this, like, social unruly, basically. And Dunar's number is basically, all primates have a number where they start to reach that point of social unrule. And for humans, it's 150. We can't handle more than 150 meaningful relationships. And then the idea is, you know, there's a whole bunch of numbers within the set of Dunar's number. But basically it's like, like, three is a number, and that's like you and your immediate family up to five. Fifteen, I think, is another number. I can't remember exactly how it scales, but all these different numbers are like points at which humans are functioning, like, optimally within groups. And I. And I wonder sometimes, because once you get over 150, once you start approaching, like, you know, 300 or 500 or a thousand, like, it gets really hard for humans to work in the same. Under the same group or in a group, there's just like, the culture starts to basically break down. So I wonder sometimes, like, in bigger organizations, like, is the point to try to stay small or to at least fraction an organization into small groups so that we can be seen and feel valued, because as you scale, it's harder and harder to do this, this coaching. That's where I'm going with this. Like, I feel like we dilute whatever made that thing special as we get bigger, because that person that started it can't be there to touch all those people. What's going through your mind as I say this?
- [31:05]
B
I think that it is two things. It's absolutely clear that the organizations that really struggle with building a coaching, highly engaged workforce structure, those are the ones that really don't take feedback well from their talent force. And this is based off of looking at how a lot of organizations operate with talent feedback. You know, disengagement is not something that's often measured, and it's not something that is performance incentivized against. Employee surveying is often done in a transactional format. We spend a lot of time getting reviews and talents, reviews and scores from guests and customers, and a lot less time caring about it from our people. So that inability to look at feedback at a granular level tells you that we should be breaking up systems and processes to create more structure so that the frontline man, you know, that frontline role that is touching the guest experience every day has a coach or a point of contact next to them that is thinking about more than just they have to be able to handle a certain number of, of team members at once. And that's the one thing I think that we're not really good at. Feedback. I think part of that is structural and labor related, that we try to stretch everything, which leads into the second point, which is, you know, if everything is at, if we do everything just for profit, if that's, if that is what it is, we're just trying to create massive efficiencies, then we're creating environments where you're going to get what you're getting right now with talent. People that don't feel seen, they don't feel cared about, they leave at a moment's notice. How many restaurants have you talked to where owners have said it's tough to find people? They come, they leave. There's no loyalty. The owners in the industry set the tone. And we need more infrastructure that ensures that the people that are within your operation are being seen, utilized, heard. Otherwise you shouldn't be hiring that many people.
- [33:30]
A
Right? Yeah. That's the third lie you, you share in the second part of the book is that there are no people. But what reasons, and I know your book reaches a broader audience than the restaurant industry, but what reasons is the restaurant industry giving people to come work for you? Like, like no health insurance? No. Like barely making enough money to pay your bills. Like, you got to be a very special person that loves that kind of work to have any draw into the industry in the first place. So people are out there, they want to work, but they don't want to work for you.
- [34:00]
B
You got to care about workers before they clock in and after they clock out, period. And if you're not willing to do that, then the reality is you better pay a premium to get a certain type of output. Because again, if you, if you're not caring about the worker before and after, then you have a higher likelihood that you're just not going to unlock all of the knowledge, skills and abilities a worker has. And I say this in the book, I think that workers have skills. They just choose every day whether they give them to you or not.
- [34:31]
A
Yeah, you go back pre Covid, pre pandemic, pretty, you know, gig economy. And there was always another person to fill that role. If you didn't want to work here, fine, we'll find somebody else. And we were kind of made, I don't know, maybe a little lazy in that ecosystem. But now the world's changing and people have other options, you know, and it's getting harder and Harder we have to change our ways.
- [34:53]
B
And I think there's macroeconomic elements in play now where workers have more strain off the clock than they did prior.
- [35:03]
A
Yeah.
- [35:04]
B
You talk about rent, you talk about health care, you talk about education, you talk about just the cost of living.
- [35:15]
A
All those costs of the cost of goods. Running a restaurant's going up. It's also the cost of living for everyone's going up.
- [35:20]
B
Yeah. So I think that there's. The reality of it is this is the environment we're in, and for organizations to navigate it, they have a choice. Are people central to the way that you're going to grow your business, or are they just in addition to. And if they're central, then you operate a certain way. If they are expendable to your business, in your opinion, then the playbook has been written on how to operate in that environment. The reality is organizations make a choice. And I say this in the book. Work was built this way and we can choose to change it.
- [35:59]
A
Yeah. Get into what you know about why work was built or how work was built this way.
- [36:06]
B
Yeah. So in the book, I spend a. The first part of the book is called From Zeus to Gen Z. Because I feel that a lot of these systems and structures, I talk about human resources. And at times it feels like I'm picking on hr. And I always say, you know, I'm not trying to criticize hr. I'm trying to challenge the HR function. But it's important to know where HR came from. It's important to know these points in time where. What did the New Deal do? What was the actual impact under FDR for worker protections? So I go through this history of how work was built and where work came from. I think the most important thing is I talk about my guy Fred. I call him Fredo just to poke fun. But Frederick Winslow Taylor, who is considered the creator of management, when was this?
- [36:55]
A
What timeline was he?
- [36:56]
B
19. Teens. Yeah. So the concept of the science of management was a structure that was created for the assembly line for factory workers. How do we manage factory workers to create certain efficiencies? So this concept, this philosophy of management was created. Out of management came the function of human resources. The intention of management and human resources was always extraction. How do we extract the most output out of people? Not necessarily had nothing to do with development. That's why I attacked the HR function because it really needs transformation. Because it was never intended to be a function to upskill, reskill, cross, skill, identify. Talent was always. Here's a worker on the line.
- [37:49]
A
How to get the most out of them?
- [37:50]
B
How do we get the most out of them? And it continues today. If you work in an Amazon warehouse. I talk about stories at Amazon where they misused gamification. They actually created games so that workers compete against each other to pick and pack. So if you're an Amazon prime purchaser, every order you make goes to a few, goes into a prime warehouse where workers are competing against each other to pick and pack as many. As many things as they can. And that was all coming from this place of extraction. So I think the history of work, there's a lot of interesting points in it. It's not to judge, it's just to say this is the way that we've architected work to this point. I also talk a lot about regulations, which I'm a big. We're pretty big advocates. We just had a bill in front of Congress last week that it failed, unfortunately. But for the last six years, been fighting to change labor rules that were built in the 1930s, before the Internet, before search engines, and were written at a time to protect workers. But times have changed and now they're actually holding back workers. They're hurting business owners. And this is not a partisan thing. It's something that on both sides, they have to. There has to be people coming to the table on. But I talk a lot about these. Why are these labor rules there? Why is human resources, for example, become this legal apparatus?
- [39:18]
A
Yeah. It's about compliance. It's about covering your ass.
- [39:21]
B
You got it.
- [39:21]
A
Yeah. You know what's interesting about this time, like the 1920s, when we were industrializing the workforce, basically it was about really trying to get the most out of the people so you can maximize output for as little cost as possible. Right. But also around this time, the, the turn of the 20th century, when we're industrializing the world, it was also around the time consumerism started to bubble up. So I'm curious, are you, what are your thoughts on capitalism before we get into consumerism?
- [39:55]
B
I think capitalism is a. It's the flavor of the month again. Do I think it's good or bad? I think capitalism is heavily. It's a construct that's heavily impacted by the social decisions that utilize it. I'm a pretty big advocate of being a worker centric capitalist, keeping the worker at the center of capitalism. As we grow and build businesses, we do it from a vantage point of not forgetting the worker who plays an integral part in that process. I think today too much capitalism is very. It's focused on either Top down or purely bottom up? You see, there's certain folks on certain sides of the aisle that think about politics from an end consumer view. There's certain that think about it from the business owner view. The one missing piece in the puzzle that rarely gets talked about is the workers experience in that flow. So you know, for that reason, I mean capitalism is something that has, it doesn't take parties, it is a wave.
- [41:06]
A
When you say it doesn't take parties, you mean it's not left or right?
- [41:08]
B
It's not left or right, it's waves. I think that it's something that is a wave that has seeped into global economies to a point where it wouldn't be fair to say that America is the, we are not the only capitalist country anymore. And because of that it is here it is to unwind. Capitalism would be a. We would have a totally separate two or three hour podcast to discuss. But I think that the most important challenge today is around how do we utilize this structure to create more opportunities for, for more people. That is the structure being capitalism, correct?
- [41:52]
A
Yeah, well, I mean again around the time of the industrialization of the, of you know, people of workers, 1920s, you know, also around the time the, the, the, the conversation of consumerism started to bubble up and get more popular, also around the time Milton Friedman was born who's like his outlook of capitalism is about, you know, just maximizing profit and shareholder returns. Right. And then on the flip side of that, up to this point you would say, I think Adam Smith probably had the best known rendition of capitalism which is to maximize really the benefit to society through business. I mean, I don't, yeah, I don't, I can't spit out exactly the thoughts of these individuals. But am I, I know we used.
- [42:37]
B
That, we used to have a more. Again, if you go back, you know, you're talking about turn of the century, we used to have a point of view around it was more of a producerism model where you created a widget, you were paid for that widget. Labor had more control over output, they were paid a larger percentage. Go back to the Renaissance, people hanging out in the square, you know, they were paid for their product. One of the things that again, capitalism was a part of. I don't think you can just purely blame capitalism because there's a lot of other parties that play underneath that construct. It was to pull that control away from the worker, centralize it in the wealthy or most powerful and pass on more savings and scale to the consumer in that process. What that has Done is create an environment where people trade their life, their time for wages. And what has gone on over time is productivity has gone up and to the right over the last 40, 50 years. Wage growth has stayed flat. Now, I'm not advocating for changing minimum wage or having it impacting wages, but I do believe that that is a problem when workers are creating more and more and more scale and not participating in that output.
- [44:09]
A
Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
- [44:13]
B
The numbers are very ugly. I mean, the numbers are very ugly when you look at the extreme wealthy and you look at the wage growth of chief executive officers relative to the people that make it happen.
- [44:30]
A
I got it queued up for you.
- [44:32]
B
Oh, we could rant this. Everybody get a drink or pause here until Happy Hour. In 2014, the top 10% of income earners made up 46% of America's income. The best one, the wealthiest 160,000 families in the US have as much wealth as the poorest, 145 million. The average income of the top 1% of income earners has gone up by more than 250% to $1.2 million a year. For the top 100th of 1%, the average income is now 27 million a year. And the typical CEO who used to earn 30 times more than workers now earns 110 times more. While over the last decade, incomes of the most Americans have fallen by 6%. These are the numbers. And I say it. This is capitalism. This is what it has created. If you're looking at, if you were just looking at the post game recap.
- [45:26]
A
Yeah, you know, it's, it's, we're in a weird time where the rich are getting richer, businesses are getting bigger. Have you, are you familiar, I might have mentioned this when I last saw you. Are you familiar with zip's law? So Zip's law basically states that in a marketplace, the resources are always unevenly distributed, usually by like exponential amounts. So whoever is number one, say the number one burger place in a market will do about twice as much business as number two and three times as business as number three. And you can say that about all verticals within a market, right? Hairdresser, shoe shiner, like whatever the, the niche is, number one is always twice as good as number two, three times as good as number three. Again, around this time, the turn of the, the 20th century is when we, when like the, the world really started to change and the world really started to shrink. So now markets went from thousands of markets across the country, isolated Markets where there's lots of room for number ones. And now we're in a national or global market where that rule still applies. And there can be only one number one burger chain. And that burger chain probably does twice as much. And by the time you get to the fragmented markets, there's pennies left, if anything. So there's a lot of compounding things here. Like, I guess where I'm going with this is in the world of restaurants, restaurant companies are getting bigger. The goal for a lot of restaurateurs is to build something, get to 10 locations and sell the private equity. Like, that's the goal. That's the name of the game. It's like, why the do we want these people? And I know some of these people, if I'm offending, I'm sorry, but, like, why is that the goal to get out? Like, is. When was it ever like that?
- [47:06]
B
Right.
- [47:07]
A
What's going through your mind as I say that?
- [47:09]
B
The amount of conversations I've had over the last year with private equity executives who have either acquired or taken an interest in a brand we work with get on a call with me and cut everything, every line item that has to do with labor.
- [47:23]
A
They don't care about the people that help build this. They're just. They're looking at, to your point, line. It's everything's a line item. So, like, I really do think that the industry is losing its way. And when the goal is about becoming to build something, to sell it to something bigger, to scale, so that I don't really know that game that well because I don't talk to a lot of those people, I should probably try to understand it a little bit more. But, you know, we're just in this world where the rich are getting richer, it's getting harder and harder to be a small mom. And pop and I, in defense of a lot of these restaurant owners, I do think that small mom and pops, I talk to them all the time. They want to provide a livable wage for their staff. They want to support local economy by buying local goods. They want to make sure that their people feel secure with health insurance. The reality is they're. They're barely making money as owners independence. So, like, there's no meat left on the bone to do this good stuff that we're supposed to do. So I wonder sometimes, is the issue with capitalism or is it a consumeristic capitalistic like that, that consumer consumerism combined with capitalism, is that the issue?
- [48:34]
B
And I don't think it's one answer for everybody. The mom and pops out there, you do a great job raising the profile of the mom and pop restaurant that's out there, that's working really hard. And I would say for that audience, it's unfortunate because yes, their margins are razor thin and they're trying to get, they're trying to again, make it all work. However, at that corner of our economy, they are so heavily impacted by the macro, what happens in the voting booth impacts them most. Because you're dealing with wage issues, you're dealing with different. The things that government, this infrastructure that government traditionally would create to support workers that may be more likely to be their profile of worker are not working anymore, or they're being peeled back by the actions, behaviors and intents of much larger businesses. And that trickle down effect is really heavy on the mom and pop. But within every environment, organizations have the ability to make choices. This is what I'll say if I was trying to make a blanket statement. And it's hard at every level. If you are going to hire a worker, you either see it as you have a responsibility or not to the person you hired, period. You either look at this as you're responsible for the workers, not just their output and performance, but their progression. And we need more operators at from the mom and pop all the way to the large scale organizations giving a shit about the person before they clock in, after they clock out. If you do it, it's good for business. They will give you more when they're clocked in. And I see it in the mom and pops, and I see it in big brands that know how to do it right in different pockets. But this concept that things happen in silos where it's just within your four walls in this economy today, whether you're talking about macroeconomic trends with food costs, you're talking about local politics, you're talking about government regulations, all of these things play a part. I was just talking to a client that's in Minnesota. There's riots outside their restaurant right now. All of these things affect the workplace that you have, that you have. And I think that no longer can you just say, come to work and put your blinders on. That doesn't work anymore. And I actually think mom and pops have a better opportunity here because they're closer to that experience.
- [51:24]
A
I'm picturing that chef that we're talking about sitting shoulder to shoulder with their.
- [51:27]
B
Team, the big ones, the brands that want to, that are scaling and have a totally different set of challenges and struggles architecturally and infrastructure wise, to try to make this work. But it's like gravity. This is the rule. You have to give a shit about your people. They have to know you give a shit about them. You have to do it every day, just like you do it to earn the trust, respect and loyalty of your guest. If we just came to work every day and thought about our people with the same passion, intention, curiosity that we do, our guests, the restaurant industry across the board would be better off.
- [52:09]
A
Yeah, I mean, whether you intended to or not, what you're advocating for in this book is conscious capitalism or socialist, like socialistic capitalism, where you're prioritizing people over profit, where you have purpose behind your organization that isn't maximized profit, whatever that purpose is. Make the environment better. Make. Make something better. Besides the size of my pockets or the depth of my pockets, you know, that's conscious capitalism. That's what you're lobbying for in this book. And the reason I bring up this idea of. Is consumerism the issue, because consumerism is defined as the preoccupation of society with the acquisition of consumer goods or the protection of, promotion of the interests of consumers. But you think of what the interest of the consumer is, is, I want more for less. That's what the interest of the consumer is. I want more stuff for less, and I want it to be more convenient. I want it now. And a lot of what's driving that interest is marketing, which the biggest companies in the world spend upwards of 50% of their total revenue on marketing, on controlling the interests of consumers. The consumer doesn't know what the consumer wants. The consumer is hitting with ads continuously, everywhere they look. You want this, you are. You want a status, you want to look cool, you want to be respected, you want convenience. All that is unconscious capitalism. But we live in an ecosystem that pours fuel on exploiting and manipulating human vulnerabilities. Ego, you know, fear, all this stuff. We have to ask ourselves what really matters. Your book clearly spells out what matters. People. It's the only thing that matters. You talk about a few other things I want to make sure come out in terms of what, you know, we could be doing. You talk about the incarcerated people, the amount of people who are incarcerated. You talk about the school system. We haven't really brought that to the surface of the conversation. And we talk about just basically what we're. How we're failing employees by not training them. That was another big thing that came up. I don't know. Of those three things, where do you want to start?
- [54:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, the central part of the book is that we talk a lot about the future of work today. You can't go to a restaurant show or an industry trade show right now and not hear the term future of work. And I make the argument that we should stop talking about the future of work and we should talk about the reality of work today, the present moment. And the reality of work today is there's a lot of challenges today that face workers. You mentioned education. Because education is failing. The product that's being sold into K12, into two year and four year universities, into credential and certification programs, more often than not, is not proprietary. Preparing people for the job today. And that's a problem. I mean, at the end of the day, across the board, the content that's being deployed is not actually aligned with the jobs that are going to be here. And by the way, the reality is, you look at all these, all the perspectives, whether it's Brookings Institute, the Aspen Institute, the UN's job council, 50% of the jobs that are going to exist in 20 years don't exist right now. So we need to fundamentally attack education from a point of are we creating humans that have the capacity to continue to reskill and relearn? Because the reality is a worker born today will have as much as 44 jobs in their lifetime. You go back to the boomers had three.
- [56:05]
A
I know. I was just thinking that my girlfriend's dad was with Raytheon for like, it was like military Raytheon. That was an entire career and the amount of pride. That guy, I never met him, but I've seen the photos of. And I've been in his, his old workshop where like, he just had so much pride for his job and the organization he was a part of. You know, times have changed so much. I mean, the. The school systems can't keep up. The curriculum can't keep up with how fast the world is changing.
- [56:32]
B
Right?
- [56:32]
A
It's changing in a breakneck neck. What am I trying to say now, Breck? Break neck. Speed.
- [56:37]
B
Breakneck speed. There you go.
- [56:38]
A
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- [58:49]
B
So let's, let's let's say them and let's also say what we can do as a business owner. Participate in the local education programs. How many out there are an adjunct professor at a local university. You're volunteering time at a technical school, you're volunteering time at a K12 program or in a youth community sports program. We need more business owners from mom and pop all the way up sharing their industry knowledge with academia. That's an actual tangible action. That's an action step we can all take to help higher learning help education move faster. The other one we talked about, you mentioned mass incarceration. This plays a role because in America we incarcerate 1% of our population and there are a lot of workers that leave that leave from behind the wall that that the fastest way to real correction and rehabilitation is a job. And unfortunately today there are a lot of blockers to individuals that were convicted of being able to win work or acquire career and technical training when they're behind the wall. So I talk about we advocate a lot for job training programs for individuals that are experiencing that are that are behind the wall. Also faster Ways to connect that talent to jobs once they are released. So again, what can we do there? Folks can interview, purposely interview the candidate who maybe does have a record. Because you're convicted of something doesn't mean you did it. And in our society, we should believe in creating second chance opportunities. So that's another area. We talk about mass incarceration, we talk about homelessness, where you aren't homeless. People are just experiencing homelessness. In America today, the percentage of homeless of individuals that are experiencing homelessness that are youth is crazy and very sad. We do a lot of work with programs that are creating reconnection opportunities for those experiencing homelessness. And how many brands out there have workers that at some point or another have experienced a night on the street? The other thing we talk about is you mentioned training. The human resource function is largely a. Largely a function that has been built to protect the organization from class from suit. The function of human resources as it sits today is one of protection, not performance. A lot of the systems wrapped around it. If you were to look at the National Restaurant association, who makes a killing on serve certifications and then takes that money and turns around and uses it to lobby against food workers go into that. So we talk a lot about that and we talk about these. And this is a human resource function because if you were to. A lot of the times I talk to brands and the HR team's first question is, ooh, do you offer food safety certification? My answer is always, yes, you can do that on one huddle. But that isn't performance building. That's just, you know, that's blocking and tackling. We want to make sure that you don't get.
- [62:29]
A
We got to show that we train these people so when somebody gets sick, it doesn't fall back on us.
- [62:32]
B
And again, whether that actually is education or not is a totally separate conversation. Because just because you survived a serv safe cert doesn't mean you're any more knowledgeable or it's going to stick with you afterwards. So let's not call it education. It's not okay. It's, you know, it's a cover your ass function. It's compliance. But then you have organizations like the National Restaurant association that advocates that they are about the industry and about education. And this is very public knowledge. There's a great expose by the New York Times talking about specifically the inner workings of the National Restaurant Association's actions around the ServSafe program, which they acquired and then took the revenues coming from the ServSafe program and clearly use it to donate to PACS, to influence elected officials and advocate against a lot of issues that affect workers, whether that's wages or it's worker protections. And again, the sick part about it is they're taking $15 from a worker and then taking those dollars and, and using it back against the workers. So what are the things that we can do here? I'm not saying don't do food safety training. That's not the advice here. The advice is human resource teams can be more intentional about where they invest dollars around talent. They should probably be more balanced. There's some training that's safety and compliance related that we have to do. No doubt. But then I would ask a brand, when you look at your training mix, what just like a recipe card, they should know the answer to this question. In a year, pluck a team member off the floor. What percent of their training from you was safety and cert related? What percent was position specific? What percent was professional development? If you don't know the answer to that question, you don't know what's in your recipe when it comes to talent development, then you are flying completely blind. Because I'll tell you this, the best organizations in the world that develop talent know the answer to that question down to how much time goes into training per day, per week, per month, per quarter, per year. And they tie incentives to it so that the HR function, to me, the challenge is to transform it from a compliance function to a capability function because it can be a very powerful.
- [65:08]
A
Seat.
- [65:09]
B
At the table when it comes to not just elevating talent, but elevating the business and the experience all around. So there's a lot of other, the other realities of work that are talked about in the book. They touch on AI and automation. We talk about that impact today, which is real.
- [65:26]
A
Hey man, we get time. Do you have a hard stop? It's almost 11 o'. Clock. Because I'll go.
- [65:30]
B
I'm good.
- [65:31]
A
Very last minute.
- [65:32]
B
I'm good. No, I think the AI automation one is really, really interesting because the, the way that organizations are employing AI and automation today comes back to what I said earlier. If you're using it primarily to focus on generating more revenue, if you're focusing just on, you know, how do you buy, you know, Flippy to make the hamburgers for you faster? Or Chipotle invested in a product called autocado which can, you know, cut, slice, scoop and make, I don't know, a thousand orders of guacamole a second. If your focus on AI and automation is purely on guest experience and not more balanced on employee experience. There's a problem. The one area organizations are investing, maybe not realizing it, but they're investing in recruiting products or applicant tracking systems that are largely and very well known. Using AI to discriminate against talent because they're going to ingest whether you're indeed or zip recruiter or Workday. Workday just got a huge class action lawsuit against them. If you look up Workday, which is really bad for any brands out there using Workday because the Supreme Court or the I think it's in the federal district court came to a ruling that if businesses are using Workday and they know they should know that Workday is using discriminatory practices inside of their product to sort candidates, they're liable for this class action lawsuit that's working its way through the courts. So that's a big point for me. AI and automation can be used in a very powerful way to retool reconnect talent. Today it's largely being underutilized for talent, overutilized on consumers. Where it is being utilized on talent is largely to sort them and stack rank them in ways that are again, these AI products are only as good as the data being fed into it. And they're still very early and the.
- [67:33]
A
Data'S not the purest.
- [67:36]
B
Yeah. And again the way that they're sorting and filtering candidates is almost unfortunate. Back to brands. Your responsibility should be to be really good at identifying talent. If you open a business business to me, part of what comes with it is you have to be able to find talent, you have to be able to onboard it and you have to be able to develop it. That's part of the deal. Yeah. And that function in and of itself. There's a lot of AI coming around it that can do good, but there's brands that are purely using it just for the easy way out. And that's hurting. That's hurting workers more than helping them.
- [68:15]
A
I mean it's systemic. Like it's the way the system was built was to develop workers and to maximize profits for the people at the top. I mean, when was like the. Do you know who the. I can't remember. I think it was during the 18th century or sorry, the 19th century where we really started to fine tune and develop the education system. To literally be depressed, pump out employees. Like that was always the goal. It wasn't to get people to think freely, it was get them to do a job. We've been trying to create workers for as long as the modern Day school system has existed. You know, it's all about creating workers.
- [68:52]
B
The school bell was only created to mirror the factory.
- [68:56]
A
Right.
- [68:57]
B
The bell to call factory workers to work. So yeah, I mean education was the concept of education. The concept of. By the way, most economies, when they think about labor and education, it's about creating talent that can positively impact the economy. There's nothing wrong with that flow. However, like I said, when we continue to extract and not invest, that's a problem. And extraction has become more and more rampant today and just we'll throw it out there.
- [69:35]
A
Can I use the word exploit interchangeably with extract?
- [69:38]
B
Yeah, I think again I would say that extraction is what is happening. Some are definitely being, they are exploiting and how they approach their talent. The reality of it is 8, 10, $12 an hour. Can't live in America on that today. You just can't.
- [69:54]
A
Yeah. Have you ever caught the book Sapiens by Noah? Sorry, I always the big one. You've all know Harari. Yeah.
- [70:01]
B
Did you read it or you audible it?
- [70:03]
A
I'm a listener, man. I'm dyslexic. I just process audibly. It's so much easier. But he talks about what it was. The Cognitive Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and then lastly wraps up the Industrial Revolution. And one thing that has always stuck with me so during the Industrial Revolution we. A big shift happened where society went from being centered around family, community, in religion. And we were no longer dependent on those things. But for all of our existence we were dependent on family, community and religion. That's how things worked people right. And in turn of the industrial age it was about government, marketplace. And I think it's like a. The consumeristic capitalistic society or something like that where it became like the three pillars. Don't quote me on that last one. But we. Another way to say that is we literally don't need each other anymore. We went from needing people that are starting with those who are closest to us to survive to not literally not needing people to survive. We can, we can survive on the government, we can survive on the market. And we don't need each other anymore. We don't need our family, we don't need our community. We literally don't ask people today if they know the names of all their neighbors. Neighbors who live within two doors from them. Most people can't do that. That's terrifying that we can't recall the people who live on our street or next door to us. That's scary. And that's the reality. We don't need our Neighbors, we don't need each other anymore. And I think that this is an underlying issue where we literally see people as cogs and wheels because we've been conditioned all the world we know. If you're alive today is a world where we're dependent on government in marketplace. And it's wrong, it's not human. We've never lived like this ever before. You know, as I say that what goes through your mind.
- [71:56]
B
Yeah. And then you're asking a team member who is disconnected, that you're disconnected from to, you know, walk up to a table and engage a guest.
- [72:06]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [72:07]
B
So have to have a conversation. So have to have a human conversation. And so that's where there's misalignment. I agree with the sentiment of it that we're trying to.
- [72:19]
A
We don't prioritize people. It's just, that's what it comes down to. Because people are despendable because we literally do not need them.
- [72:26]
B
It's the first thing that gets cut. I've seen it for a decade. It's the first thing that gets cut inside of businesses. The first thing they attack isn't even the marketing budget. It's the people budget. It's. It's specific labor, then it's the tools that support labor. They unwind it all and then a few months or years later, when maybe they've got their footing again, then they're in a position where they don't have any infrastructure around talent. They don't have any infrastructure to bring people back in to develop it, to engage it. And then they're left going to conferences and standing on stages and saying, workers are lazy, workers are unskilled. I can't find workers. They don't show up. You know, this is. There's a right way and there's a wrong way.
- [73:08]
A
Yeah.
- [73:08]
B
And the right way to build a business is foundationally understanding that your people are the point. It's your people first that come to the business to grow it. And if you don't believe that's true, which I do think there are a lot of companies that don't believe that's true, then you are going to continue to get this vicious cycle that takes place. But the highest performing brands cannot. Again, you cannot outperform your people. You just can't. You can automate as much as you want and outsource as much as you want, but it's, you know, it's. I think that's why you have a lot of people that are questioning.
- [73:46]
A
Right. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's all tied to people. The first one is your physiological needs. Food and shelter. Well, you need people to. You need to be part of a tribe to be able to get access to that food, shelter and warmth. You need that. Next, you need a strong community, a strong tribe to provide security from other tribes. Right. And then beyond that, it's being seen being valued, being loved, growing our. Our needs center around each other and people. And it's funny because I just said today's age, you literally don't need people to be successful fiscally. But you. But the thing is, we're always gonna need people. And we're just now starting to understand the psychology of it, of why no matter what world we live in, it's always gonna come back to people. Because we need people to be happy.
- [74:33]
B
There's a book floating around here somewhere, the Hundred year project from Harvard. You hear about that one? No, I haven't. But 100 year project, a lot of driving. Five or five or six. I mean, obviously 100 year, 100 year project. They've had multiple folks that have led the project. It was a Harvard study that is one of the longest running studies around. And they basically have. They created an audience and they mail them a packet with questions every year for the rest of their life. And they track every year their response to questions about how many relationships they have, are they happy? And they're based, trying to understand what, you know, I think it's called the happiness project is what it is, what makes what makes you happy. And the clear, absolute number one driver of happiness is friends. And what's clear in the study is that the number of friends that people have in their sphere that they can call on is just going straight down.
- [75:37]
A
Yeah.
- [75:38]
B
And not just as you get older, but new generation coming into the study have less and less people they consider a true friend that they have a conversation with. And it's a public health crisis.
- [75:50]
A
Yeah. And guess which industry is perfectly set up to serve that crisis. The restaurant industry. Where do we go to see our friends? You know, we get together, we like, we. It's. There's nothing more human than coming together with those we love to break bread, to eat. That's literally how it worked for hundreds of thousands of years. We went out, we hunted, we gathered, we brought it back. We sat around the fire and we talked and we had camaraderie. We shared stories like that's how we're meant to exist. And we don't do that today. And it has to be Physically, in person. There are things happening that we are just beginning to understand of the literal energy that we put off when we're around the pheromones, all these things, the body language, all that feeds us. And we're not. We're on a very strict diet of shit right now with how we're getting engaging with people digitally. It's not good. It's like eating a hyper industrialized, processed diet. It's not meant to be that way. We have. I mean, there's still stuff I want to touch on. I just had this, this whole narrative in my head of how I was going to tie it together and I lost it on that last rant. I. I apologize. Oh, man. There's so much we can continue to talk about. I know before we wrap up, and I'm sure that the thing that came into my mind will come in. I want to just cover the acronym you shared before we say goodbye, which is raise. But I really don't want to lose that train of thought I had before I went on that rant.
- [77:27]
B
Well, I'll hit raise real quick and then you can think on it again in the spirit of sharing some best practices. And this is, you know, core of the book. When you journey through the whole exercise, like I did, of writing and capturing the points of view around work, you can't do it without giving a guide and a direction. And these five anchors are true for what I believe we should do if we are going to create a community for some out there, maybe your business, your community, where you're unlocking the full potential of your people. So it's called raise. So give every work. You know, it's time to raise your workforce up. And to raise your workforce up.
- [78:15]
A
You give us the acronym and we're going to come back, we're going to treat this as a teaser because I just remembered the thing.
- [78:20]
B
Yeah. So raise every worker. And it stands for raise. R stands for removing blockers. So we talk about how we remove blockers to access for workers. A stands for adopting a continuous approach that should be rooted on the science of learning. Training should not be one and done. Development should not be one and done. Like we talked about, it's got to be continuous. So we talk about, you know, what does it take to create a continuous approach to skill development. I stands for investing in technology as infrastructure. Today more than ever, there's so many ways that we can utilize technology to create infrastructure, to assess onboard upskill, develop, engage, connect with our people. We should be doing it and using technology, not Pen and paper and binders and flashcards. S stands for supporting our community programs. We mentioned earlier around how you can stand up and participate in a local education program in your community. You could guest lecture at a class, you could hire an intern, you could go to a career fair. But supporting community programs, a lot of talent that goes wasted. That's on the edges of our communities. Whether it's workforce programs, nonprofits, homeless youth programs, reentry programs that we can activate, and then finally E. So it's raise. And E stands for elevating managers into coaches and how we should be creating a strategy for those that are responsible for developing our people that centers on coaching, not focuses on management.
- [79:54]
A
Yeah, actually, let's just unpackages now because I wrote down my thought and I'll remember it. So diving deeper, raise. The first one is remove barriers. What are the most common barriers?
- [80:04]
B
So that would be not allowing certain workers to only access training related to their job and not the next job.
- [80:10]
A
So not safeguarding.
- [80:12]
B
Bartenders can only do bartender training. Hostess can only do hostess training. Servers only do server training. Backhouse only does back a house. So the quick fix right away is open the whole thing up.
- [80:21]
A
Yeah.
- [80:22]
B
Allow every worker to access everything at any time. And when you do that, you'll find that internal talent will voluntarily lateral itself to maybe the next job. Out of curiosity.
- [80:32]
A
Yeah. And I think that that idea of removing barriers can ripple beyond just what's happening in the four walls of a restaurant. But like making information assess if we know it as human beings, I think that should be universal information. I don't think we should pay gain knowledge.
- [80:47]
B
When you lose a manager, it's like burning a library down is what I tell people. So when you have an organization that's trying to grow fast, you're opening up location 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And you don't have all of your best practices and knowledge centralized somewhere. That is a problem. But once you have it centralized, all too often organizations safeguard it and they don't allow everybody to access.
- [81:11]
A
Right.
- [81:12]
B
The other, the other thing here is in removing, in removing the barrier, it's. In some cases it may mean paying workers for continuous education. It's not just we do a one day onboarding and then good luck, you know, you shadow somebody and good luck. It may mean that you have to set aside specific points in time in your calendar, just like, you know, your marketing calendar. Maybe that's every Friday, maybe that's every two weeks. How many days a month do you invest in ongoing coaching and development for every Worker. And like I said, every worker, if a certain worker within your four walls gets more training than the next, you know, today, I think that's a missed opportunity because again, unless you're really a rock star at assessing talent, you shouldn't be in a position where you're discriminating against certain, certain roles over others.
- [82:06]
A
Not only decentralizing and democratizing this knowledge and making it available to everybody, but also you point this out in the book to create a certificate system so that they can take that knowledge and show other. They can create a career or like a resume of like, this is, these are my skills, these are my talents. We don't really have that in the restaurant industry. And there's no way to show what you got to bring to the table.
- [82:27]
B
One in three Americans have a college degree. That means two and three don't. It's overwhelmingly workers in retail, manufacturing, warehousing, and hospitality. When you work at a brand and then you go to work at the next brand, your credential more often than not is just your work experience. And there is tremendous. By the way, this is done by some of the biggest brands in the world. Walmart does it. Amazon does it. These big brands go out and they invest in college programs to come in to credential things within their organization. But there's really nothing stopping a mom and pop shop of saying, you got through training. Here's a physical certificate for working it xy, you know, XYZ brand. Take this with you wherever you go.
- [83:10]
A
Why isn't there a univit, universal credentialing or a universal credential? Wow. Why can't I say these words today? A universal credential system that we can all adopt, that's generalized, you know, that we can all recognize as, as being valuable. Where you go through the training, you take a test and you pass it. You know, why can't that be done?
- [83:31]
B
Well, I think there's a lot of programs that fight for those dollars and National Restaurant association, other ones have their version of a formal credential. What I'm speaking to more so is the informal credentials, which more often than not, when you hire a hospitality worker, you're hiring them off the informal stuff more than the formal stuff, because the formal stuff is there aren't as many formal credentials around hospitality. For certain roles there are, and they're more meaningful. But the informal credentials also have currency for a worker. But because they're informal workers don't do a good job at signaling the skills they have in a resume. Some may be not really good at interviewing. There's a lot of stuff going on. So like I said, for that reason, part of removing barriers should be for organizations just to automatically call yourself a university because you are an employee that comes through your program, comes through your training. They are certified by you if they invest in other training tracks. Again, we do this at one huddle. Some of the brands we work with, we set up, we call them games, but different game series where if you win them, you unlock an achievement, that achievement stacks into your digital wallet. That worker can take it with them wherever they go. But you don't need one huddle to do that internally. It's more important that if you know what people need to know, your own curriculum for jobs, you can take the added step of just making sure you're providing a certificate to workers.
- [84:55]
A
I love that analogy of treating your business like a university. And that's exactly how you have to look at it is like you, you're hiring freshmen and you're creating graduates.
- [85:04]
B
Yep.
- [85:04]
A
You know, and maybe that graduate goes on to be a partner in your business. You know, and you know what the.
- [85:10]
B
Other thing is about it, Eric? Is that when they see it as a university, you take out all these unknowns. I mean, how many workers are in one role? And they're saying, huh, I would really like to do that, but I'm intimidated by my manager. I don't know how to have that conversation. Do I apply online? When you create more transparency in the back, maybe in the back of house, you have a big board put up on the big board. Specifically what it takes to do every job there and then open it up. There should be open tryouts every day for every role. And if you're not doing that, come back to the title of the book. You are wasting talent. You are weaker for it. And you know, again, we find that most workers, the best. The best insights we unlock is when somebody does something voluntarily.
- [86:00]
A
Yeah. I think we're getting into the next acronym or the next letter in our acronym of raise, which is a. Adopt a continuous approach to develop helping people.
- [86:08]
B
Which would be like a university 365 days a year.
- [86:12]
A
Yeah. And I have to point out Nick Cirillo of Nick's University. Do you know Nick Cizza? I think it's Nick's Pizza. I know he has Nick's University, but he was on the show episode 760 and we got into how he has developed tangible framing for his employees and that's he. And he uses that idea of a university where like when Somebody gets hired, they're here, and there's an employee journey to be able to literally master everything that every job that needs to be done, that restaurant. And you can set your own path. And as you go through the curriculum, you're. You start with, like, a yellow shirt. You get the red shirt, you get the blue shirt, and it shows and it communicates that, like, you're climbing the ranks. But anybody who gets hired can go in any direction they want, and they can go through the curriculum and, hey, I want to raise. Okay, here's the path to take to get their raise. Get these credentials, do this testing, pass this. You know, I guess that would be like a practicum to prove your. Your competence. And that raise is right there. You can get it next week, you can get it next year. It's up to you. Yep, go do the work. And I love that. People having control, autonomy over their growth. That's so important.
- [87:26]
B
ABCs of high performance workers need to have autonomy, meaning they get to choose left, right, up, down, which way do they go? How do they attack a job? Belonging, meaning they feel like they are a part of your. You know, they're a part of the commute of the community, and then c, they need to feel capable.
- [87:41]
A
Yeah.
- [87:42]
B
And the best talent teams, when we do our coaching for the organizations we work with, with their talent folks, we come back to those three all the time. Talk about, in your design of your talent development program, are you giving people the space to make choices? That's autonomy. Are you ensuring that you're not just saying it, but they do feel the red shirt, green shirt, blue shirt is a sense of belonging. It also is a double whammy because it affects capability, too, because it's signaling that you now have certain abilities that you didn't before. Now that you're at that level and nobody wants to do a job or go to a job and perform and not do well at it. I mean, that's crazy. And people want to go to work, and they want to feel like they're capable. It has a direct impact on every part of their character and their psyche. So those three got to be centered to it and back to adopt a continuous approach. Really simple, 52 weeks a year. Is there a talent development curriculum in place for your people? Is it something that. Are you also doing it not just for your frontline, but for that management tier that we talked about?
- [88:46]
A
Is it a part of your daily and weekly SOP of like, are we blocking time to do this stuff where we do it continuously?
- [88:54]
B
Yep.
- [88:55]
A
Yeah, it's. You mentioned like we mentioned autonomy or agency and community and something being a part of something bigger and people, it has to be a balance. You know, like you have to figure out where's the, the Venn diagram of where this individual and what our organization needs. Like where do we, where does that, that individual fit into this community and how do we give them an opportunity, opportunity to grow while also benefiting the community. It's finding that sweet spot of giving people autonomy within their area of expertise or their personal genius and giving them that as they grow, your company will benefit. It's a win win. But you have to look at it not left or right, but like a triangle. Like where do these two things meet in the middle and peak.
- [89:39]
B
Yep.
- [89:40]
A
So we covered r remove barriers. Recruitment just covered adopting continuous approach to developing people invest in technology. This is a great time to talk about one huddle and how that's an option for people if they want to leverage technology to empower their people.
- [89:56]
B
Yeah. When it comes to talent, you need tech. This is where technology can be an accelerator. And there's a few different types of technology you need to probably have in order to invest in tech as infrastructure. The first is you need a product that is recruiting focused. How can you find, assess, interview, score and then hire? So that's the world of applicant tracking systems and recruiting products. You need something like that in place. You need something to be able to accelerate onboarding. So from the moment you're offered to the moment you go from being hired to contributing in a role, you need a technology to do that. There's again one huddle. We do that, you know, every day of the week. We focus on getting somebody from 0 to 60 quickly, getting all the right information, assessing and making sure that they know what they're supposed to be doing. That's your onboarding zone. And then the third piece, which is really not common practice today in the hospitality sector is the it comes back to continuous is a product for continuous upskilling, reskilling and cross skilling. Because onboarding is a moment in time, then you need to continuously keep people up to speed. You have a new lto, a new menu item. How do you roll that out? If the way you roll that out is by having everybody get in a huddle pre shift and somebody stands in front of the room and talks while everybody else is texting on their phones. You're probably not communicating super well and super clean. So in many ways training is just great communication. I can get it from my head into your Head and then into your heart to perform as quickly as possible. And this is an area where technology can play a role. I also advocate pretty often that this is not a single technology. I don't know about you, but I never believed in that like four in one shampoo, body wash, conditioner, mouthwash thing. I don't think it does any of those well or at all. You need a different point solution more often than not. Will that cost more money? Yes, it will. But if you want to create a high performance environment, you need a great recruiting product, you need a great onboarding product, you need a great continuous development product and you need all of those in your stack. You need to treat them with the same intensity that you treat your POS system. So for all those out there that the POS comes first, I would argue that you're a little bit out of whack.
- [92:26]
A
Yeah, people always come first. I mean there's a lot of options out there for pos. But I think back to this idea of Zip's law where in a national marketplace everyone wants the number one because they think that that POS is going to make or break their business when at the end of the day, like there are at least five POS systems on the market right now that will do just great if you have a.
- [92:47]
B
Fantastic team and POS is important. Yeah. But the point is if you're spending all your time, money and energy from a technology perspective on the guest experience and not town experience, then you're missing the mark.
- [92:58]
A
We covered r remove barriers. We covered adopt a continuous approach to developing people. That was a and we just covered invest in technology now s support community workforce programs and education or educational partners. I think I might have butchered that a little bit.
- [93:15]
B
Yeah. There's any number of non profits in everybody's community that they can impact. Every, every community has a workforce development board that helps out of work workers create their resume, get connected to job opportunities, get it connected to apprenticeships. Everybody here can reach out to their local workforce program and at least make sure they know who you are so that you build a pipeline, a talent pipeline from a candidate that maybe is looking for work into your environment quickly. And guess what? You don't need to pay ZipRecruiter or Indeed or any of these other.
- [93:46]
A
Just get involved.
- [93:47]
B
Yeah, get involved. The other one is donate time. Again. Knock on the door. You know I'm here in New Jersey. We have any number of Essex Community College, Rutgers University, Montclair State University, any number of two year or four year programs that Our team does volunteer time and we speak in classes or we attend job fairs and career fairs. So, you know, roll your sleeves up and get involved in the education programs in your community. Not only is that positive because you're spilling over knowledge to professors and academicians, you're also connecting with candidates. And then the third one I've mentioned, re entry programs. I've mentioned, you know, here in New Jersey there's a program called Covenant House. They help homeless youth. There's a program called the All Star Project. They help high school kids get access to training and mentoring and networking training and then connect them to job opportunities. So there's a number of nonprofit local programs that have candidates that are thirsty for work experience that you can engage yourself with. And again, I think this is all in spirit to creating a strong talent pipeline into your into your business.
- [95:01]
A
I just want to highlight some folks in my own community. It was episode 1210. Evan Mallett and Jennifer Guptill what they're doing with Great Bay Community College creating a culinary program. They're locally in their own community and but not just that, but like also like it's a business culinary. They're partnering with the hospitality program at Great Bay and it's being run by all the like the leading chefs. Like Evan Mallet is like the grandfather of like slow food in New England. Matt Lewis, Brendan Vesey, all these top leading chefs getting involved to start to groom and, and nurture and develop their, their these kids like right out of high school at a community college like rates, you know, and then it's a pipeline straight into the workforce community like, like locally. It's why every restaurant group or restaurant tours out there aren't doing this in their local community. I think we need to take back a little bit of like the, the apprentice mindset. I think that's how we've always done it until the past 200 years. But maybe a hybrid where there's a curriculum that's combined with mentors that you can work into an apprentice like where you can vet and get people into more apprentice roles. But what they're doing is beautiful. I just want to bring that I was episode 1210. If you want to check out what they're doing to get some inspiration. All right, I think we've reached E E. Elevate managers to coaches.
- [96:25]
B
Elevate managers and the coaches organizations spend there's. It's all about balance. If you're going to have programs and development programs focused on frontline entry level candidates, you should also have one on on transforming those roles into leadership roles and transforming those leadership roles into maybe again lateraling them into other executive type functions. But no matter what, moving from a management culture, one where you tell people to do it because you said so, into a culture which is a coaching culture where you have individuals within your workforce who get people to perform at a high level, oftentimes at a level higher than their current abilities because they get people to want to perform. The art of coaching is one that if you search online, Gallup has a great book called it's from. I think it was originally called From Manager to Coach is what I forget.
- [97:26]
A
The I'm looking it up from Manager to Coach. Gallup G A L A P. Gallup.
- [97:33]
B
G A L L U P. They have a. They have a. They. Gallup does. They've probably done 50 research studies since we've started talking today, but one of their big studies that they released was focused on a ton of research. I cite it in the book that talks about employee engagement data and employment engagement data are all time lows. Something like one in four workers today say that they have a manager that cares about them personally. Global engagement numbers are sitting around. 15% of workers wake up every day and say they're excited to go to work. They isolated and identified the number one way to lift employee engagement was not healthcare benefits, it wasn't pay, it wasn't better hours. All those are in the top five though. But the number one way was employees saying that they have a direct manager they report to that cares about them personally and they spin that as treating them that approaches their job as a coach.
- [98:30]
A
Isn't it like the number one reason why people leave a job too is.
- [98:32]
B
Because they don't like their they don't quit the job, they quit the manager.
- [98:35]
A
You don't work for businesses, you work for people. Yep. The name of that book is it's the Manager.
- [98:40]
B
It's the manager Moving from Boss to Coach. There you go. Love it.
- [98:43]
A
Yeah, this has been a lot of fun, man. I've really enjoyed reconnecting with you, going deep into the work you've done here, the work you continue to do with one huddle and your thoughts that we shared today from a Wasted talent. Again, the full title is Wasted Talent. How Greed Exploitation in the Promise of the Future of Work has Failed the Front Line in a Plan to Fix It. And what I want to wrap up on, I always like to wrap up every episode by kind of talking about where are we going? We and I feel like this has been one big conversation about what's wrong with the industry and what we can do to fix it. With your acronym that we shared raise. But on a more macro level, what came to my mind earlier, and this is what I wrote down, is that, you know, it seems like the, the school system, the employee system, the workplace is a system. It's a broken system. You know, it's a. There's a systematic problem going on. And I think what we've done today is we've created awareness of why it's broken. We've given people an acronym to use to start at home, to start writing that, that broken system. But on a bigger picture to this point that we. You address in the book that CEO, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poor. I think there's a bigger issue right now where. And you also kind of highlighted it when you're talking about the National Restaurant association, where like, there are people, the leaders, the people with the most money in this country are lobbying and actively working to keep people down. And I'm seeing it right now. The, even all the technology solutions that are out there, they aren't. They aren't optimized for, you know, five to 10 unit operators. They're all trying to serve the 20, the 30 or 100 unit operator, because that's where the money is. They don't want to create something for pennies. They want to create something for the top 1% of the industry, because that's how they can get rich. So from technology to the systematic, like, laws that are being passed, like, it just feels like it's all happening at the top 1%. Everything's being engineered for the top 1%, from 10 technology to laws, how do we change that?
- [100:55]
B
I think it comes down to everybody rolling up. You got to get. You got to get more involved in your community than we are today. There's this point of view that all politics is local. And it means that as business owners, as leaders in our community, as parents, as citizens, we have a responsibility to care for the person to our left and to our right. That's my fundamental belief. And I think if you're going to open a business in a community, you cannot just operate within your four walls. You have to find ways to spill out and affect others. And not doing that isn't just wrong. I think it creates more vulnerability for your business. So you're asking a very big, meaty, macro question. And I think it comes down to, we got it. We got to care more than we are today. And that's not to say that not every. There's people out there that, you know, not everybody is not caring. It's to say that given the moment, it means we need to do a little bit more. It means when you know somebody, you got a dishwasher at the end of the night who's staying a little bit over to get some stuff done, you got to acknowledge them. It means that you need to have that two or three minute conversation, that pat on the back. It means that you need to do a little bit more. And for everybody, a little bit more might mean something else, but especially for the mom and pops and the smaller businesses that are trying to grow really fast or trying to just operate a great business because they love what they're doing today. The environment we're in, we can't operate in silos. And we need more people being vocal. And I believe that when and why I wrote the book is because I believe when people see people, we're better off for it.
- [102:45]
A
Yeah. Well, the mission statement is to inspire, empower, and transform the industry. And that transformation that you just discussed is the transformation we're after. And I think. Where does transformation start? From the inside out. That means from anyone listening to this who owns a restaurant, the transformation starts with you. You elevate yourself, you elevate your team, you elevate your community, your. Your. Your. Your customers, you know, and it ripples out from there. And if we can get people thinking like this, it won't take one person in one restaurant. It will take everyone across the country acting like this simultaneously. And that's how we change it, by creating awareness, by talking about this stuff, by lifting people up, by making people conscious of what's happening around them. This has been a lot of fun. A couple questions I ask all my guests before we say goodbye. What's one thing about your business? A value, a process, a system that makes you truly unstoppable? When we're talking about one huddle here, I guess.
- [103:39]
B
We give a shit. I think that what we say, you know, we're identified as a software, as a service, but we're very much more service than software. And it means that when our team approaches every brand we work with, every worker on our platform, we approach them by trying to put ourselves in their shoes and understand where they want to go. So that's. That's at the center of what we do, is we care.
- [104:05]
A
Again, the mission statement is to inspire, empower, and transform the industry by transforming one person at a time. So how have you personally transformed? How are you a better man? Today than many were when you got started in this.
- [104:16]
B
The progression of one huddle for me took me from being a business owner, maybe sitting up on the brand, looking down at everything, to one that has, over time, brought me down to the ground floor. And I learn a hell of a lot more today because it's not just I roll my sleeves up and I get into the nitty gritty like a lot of other business owners do, but because I constantly challenge myself to put myself in the shoes of the people that are on our platform, of our employees, and see it from their vantage point. I think that, again, writing this book was a spilling out of that.
- [105:00]
A
If you got the news, you'd be leaving this world tomorrow. All the memories of you, your work, and your restaurants would be lost with your departure. With the exception of three pieces of wisdom that you could leave behind for the good of humanity and your legacy. What would those three pieces of wisdom be.
- [105:16]
B
That you need to. All the pain happens in the past and in the future. The present is where it's all at, and that's where you should be. That.
- [105:28]
A
Was that one or two?
- [105:29]
B
I think that's one. I'd put that all in one. Yeah. The past, Leave the past and the past, the future and the future. Be where you are and be in the present is probably number one. Number two is embrace the hard stuff. That's where you get. That's where you learn a lot. And then number three, tell people what you feel about them. And that for a lot of people, it takes a long time to get there. But I've learned a lot over time of being vulnerable. And when you're vulnerable, you learn a lot more. And you never know. Who needs your vulnerability when you're willing to share it?
- [106:12]
A
Yeah, this has been fun. I like to find all my guests by having my current guests refer me to future guests. And that way I try to be as journalistic as possible. So who do you respect and admire? Who's doing it right? All these restaurateurs that you get to engage and you're asking the questions like, what is your training? And they're saying, here's my training. This is what we're teaching. This is how often we do it. Like, who are those people that are doing it right that I can make an example of?
- [106:35]
B
Love it. Do you know Scott Taylor? Maybe Scott Taylor. Scott Taylor, RR Brands. He's doing some great work across a bunch of different concepts right now. That's R and R, R and R. Scott Taylor.
- [106:50]
A
Anybody else?
- [106:51]
B
Jeff Carcara. Have you talked to Jeff. Jeff is CEO with FB Society of 60 Vines and Mexican Sugar, based out of Dallas. Jeff Carr is a rock star.
- [107:02]
A
That sounds super familiar. I think I've had front burner.
- [107:06]
B
You talked to Jack Gibbons.
- [107:07]
A
That's right. That's why it sounds familiar. All right, Jeff, I'm coming. I'm going to Texas so we can make this happen. And I think you also off air mentioned Seth Salzman.
- [107:16]
B
Seth Salzman is based out of Atlanta again, restaurant tour from, you know, mom and pop all the way up and now leads a brand called Smart Mouth Foods, which is a really cool concept. They create pizza oven like a pizza delivery System for Schools, K12. That's cool, but really healthy. Really. And they do a lot of training for folks. And he's based out of Atlanta, growing really fast.
- [107:43]
A
Seth Scott. Jeff, look out. I'm coming after you. And how can we connect with you if we really enjoyed today's conversation? We want to learn more about you, the work you're doing, the books you're writing and the company you're running.
- [107:53]
B
Sure, you can pick up the book wherever books are sold. Wasted Talent. You could connect with one huddle at the number one huddle. Like a football huddle. Co and yeah, happy to engage with the audience in any way, shape or form to help and extend the conversation.
- [108:11]
A
Yeah, man. Well, I can't do what I do without people like you making time for me. I know I ask a lot. Two hour long conversations in the middle of your busy workday. I appreciate you. I can't do it without you. This is where I say there is no question you are unstoppable.
- [108:26]
B
Appreciate Eric.
- [108:26]
A
Cheers. There's another conversation wrapped up here at Restaurant Unstoppable. Special thanks to our guest today, Sam Kiuchi. And go out and get his book Wasted Talent because in about a month from when this episode goes live, on March 9th at 11am Eastern, Sam Kiuchi is gonna be live in Restaurant Unstoppable Network to discuss this book. So you get plenty of time to go, chew through it, listen to it, however you want to consume it. You got time. Because he's going to be live again on 3/9 at 11am and we'd love to have you join the conversation for coffee with Eric. And we're trying to get every guest we get on the show to join us live in Restaurant Unstoppable podcast. The mission is to inspire, empower and transform the industry. We inspire with stories, we empower with knowledge, and we transform with community. So you are the average of those you surround yourself with. And I'm doing my best to get you access to the best in the industry. Head over to Restaurant Unstoppable.com live to join us for these live events. And thank you, because when you do, you support this mission again to inspire, empower, and transform the industry. Today, as I'm recording this, I'm in Austin, Texas, and I'm going to be in Austin this week. Next week, I'm gonna be in Dallas, and then I might make a little stop back in Houston. Who knows, to wrap up some loose ends before I start making my way back east along the Gulf Coast. I don't know exactly where I'm gonna end up yet. I do have to go to Tampa, and then I want to go to Atlanta and Asheville to follow up on some stuff. But I'm just saying this because I'm looking for people to make an example of. If you're in the Southeast and you have a place for me to park my camper, and if there's a badass operator out there who's making money and making impact, making a difference while they do it, I want to learn about them. I want to share their story. So reach out to me, Eric, at restaurantunstoppable. Com. All right, guys. Thanks for sticking around this long. Until next time. Peace out.