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You Can't Afford Me
You Can't Afford Me
Brothers in Business: How Luke and Will Phillips Built Their Richmond Empire
From parasailing at Smith Mountain Lake to revolutionizing restaurant staffing with a groundbreaking three-day work week model, brothers Luke and Will Phillips share their remarkable entrepreneurial journey spanning multiple industries and decades.
The Phillips brothers reveal how their complementary skills—Luke's visionary entrepreneurial spirit paired with Will's methodical operational focus—created a powerful business partnership that's led to success across wildly different ventures. Their candid conversation demolishes the glamorous misconceptions about entrepreneurship, as they share stories of working without paychecks for years, teaching themselves electrical and plumbing work via YouTube, and navigating the challenges of balancing growing businesses with family life.
What makes their story particularly compelling is their innovative approach to the restaurant industry. After launching the Cocky Rooster chicken concept, they developed a revolutionary staffing model where employees work longer but fewer days, dramatically improving retention and workplace culture. They've paired this with proprietary management technology like their "Crow Board" system, which translates their operational expertise from other industries into restaurant success.
Perhaps most refreshing is their perspective on entrepreneurial purpose. Rather than chasing arbitrary financial goals, both brothers express that their drive comes from the joy of creation, the challenge of problem-solving, and their faith—with "make Jesus famous" as their primary business objective. Their story proves that entrepreneurship isn't about getting rich quick, but about building meaningful businesses that serve customers, support families, and make work more humane.
Whether you're considering starting your own business, struggling with your current venture, or simply fascinated by how successful entrepreneurs think, this conversation offers both practical wisdom and inspirational insights from two brothers who've mastered the art of building businesses together.
www.themrpreneur.com
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Speaker 1:Welcome to the you Can't Afford Me podcast, where we skip the fluff and dive straight into the ground Real entrepreneurs, real struggles and the unfiltered journey behind success. Let's get into it. Hey guys, thanks for joining us on another episode of the you Can't Afford Me podcast. So this is a first for the podcast. We have two guests on today, super excited to talk to these guys. They have an awesome restaurant here in the Richmond area, so today we got Luke and Will. How you guys doing today.
Speaker 2:Doing good. Doing good. Excited to be here. Awesome Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So give us a quick rundown, 30 seconds each of you kind of describe who you are, your role with the organization, all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm Luke Phillips. We're brothers, been entrepreneurs our whole life, done a bunch of different things. Newest thing is the shirt I'm wearing right now game playing kitchen and bar which we just opened two weeks ago nice.
Speaker 1:Oh man, this is fresh, it's fresh, it's fresh, it's been busy, it's been good.
Speaker 2:So it's uh.
Speaker 1:So far, it started out really well nice really well, so we're excited about it, and what's your role with the organization?
Speaker 2:I'm one of the owners, so just, uh, I'm not doing as much as a day-to-day operation. We have another partner that his lifelong dream has been to own a sports bar, and so he's kind of running most of it there, because we have a bunch of other kind of companies that we run as well. So I'm trying to keep my focus where it needs to be.
Speaker 1:Yep, you sound like me, man. I'm a real entrepreneur and a lot of times it's hard keeping my focus on what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard, I'm ADD.
Speaker 1:So I wouldn't operate any other way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean similar story to Luke. We've just done business together ever since we were out of college pretty much. I mean, we went through Parasail, we did video games for a while that was working for our dad, and then after that we've kind of gone through the gamut. We have the Sky Zone, Trampoline Park in Midlothian.
Speaker 2:Oh, geez man, I didn't know any of this we're franchise partners of that one, so that we didn't start that by any stretch, but we've been running that one for 11 and a half years now.
Speaker 3:Nice, and we've got a great team there that kind of really takes care of pretty much everything. Shout out to Austin and then. So yeah, we've been spending a lot of our time the last couple of years working on the cocky rooster. It was the big one Now game plan, kitchen and bar kind of popped up. But we just we just kind of run together. We always have and, and we kind of tried not doing it for a minute and then it just didn't work out, so we just stick together.
Speaker 1:All right, I have so many questions. This may be a part two.
Speaker 2:We're about to get into it. So the garden of eden number one.
Speaker 1:I'm always intrigued, and I think a brother relationship is a lot different than like a husband and wife going into business. Sure, what's it been like for you guys, as brothers, being in business together?
Speaker 2:I can probably answer that yeah, go for it. We're basically yin and yang. We're the exact opposite, uh, which works out really well. So everything that I don't like and and I'm not good at is what he's really good at and what he does. So we work together well, like even when we talk about trying to do things separate. Yeah, just kind of can't, like I just need he's my right hand man on everything I've done. He's been my best friend. Obviously he's my brother. We do everything together and it just kind of works out well Nice.
Speaker 1:See, this pisses me off, that my parents didn't have another brother. I would have loved to have a brother.
Speaker 2:It worked out well. We got two sisters too, who are both awesome and hustlers themselves. They're both entrepreneurs as well. Nice. It's kind of an entrepreneurial family.
Speaker 1:So what's the give me the yin and yang? What are the things that you enjoy doing on the business side that he doesn't enjoy?
Speaker 3:doing. Yeah well, I've kind of made my bones in. I sort of specialize in doing the things that nobody likes to do.
Speaker 1:You're the numbers guy. Yeah, nobody likes to do the numbers, nobody wants to do the numbers, that's it.
Speaker 3:So I'm the numbers guy I really like. I just try to keep the entrepreneurial life, the small business life, it to keep the you know, the entrepreneurial life, the small business life. It's like everything's always just out of just disorderly, it's disorganized, and so my I've tried to. I pretty much spend all my time trying to tidy everything up. So I try to clean up stuff that's falling off, the fallen by the wayside or you know whatever, before, hopefully before something turns into a big problem. You know, you, it's whatever, it's it's whatever. I spend a ton of time on hold.
Speaker 3:I spend a ton of time filling out paperwork but it's insurances and taxes and you know filings and registrations and just like all that garbage that. It's all the stuff that you get into business not wanting to do. I don't mind that kind of stuff. I kind of like it's a little therapeutic in a way, but but yeah, kind of like just keeping everything together. That's, that's my gig. I I always, uh, I always talk about luke's. Luke's the crazy entrepreneur guy. I'm I'm just like not afraid of it in in most of the ways, but luke's always the one with the new ideas. Let's go, do this new thing, let's start something else. Let's go, let's keep pushing, let's grow, let's move. I'm I'm a lot more conservative in my way that I'm usually like all right, let hold on, let's make sure we have enough money to move forward first and you got to have else.
Speaker 1:But that's like that's kind of how we work, Cause I'm probably more personality wise like you, and then my best business partners have always been people like you. Were like I like to be out in front of the camera. I'm the personality. I'll be the face of the business. I don't want to do the numbers. I don't want to make those stupid calls to customer service. I don't want to deal with the insurances and stuff like that the worst part.
Speaker 1:But it's like when you have, like probably one of my worst business partnerships, I always kind of equate it and people can argue with me if they want. Mj is the goat to me, it'll never be LeBron James or anybody else.
Speaker 3:So I look at that.
Speaker 1:Chicago Bulls team where it's like Scottie Pippen, Rodman and MJ and I had a business partner one time we were both fighting to be MJ and it's like bro, if we're both trying to hold the ball the entire time like nobody's ever going to score, Like I need you rebounding or I need you, you know, hitting me with assists. Let's go back a little bit. So you guys have known each other your whole lives. Yeah, when did this entrepreneurial spirit come from and what age did you guys kind of see that like, hey, I don't think the traditional routes for us Sure.
Speaker 2:I can probably start that one out. Go for it. I mean, our dad's been an entrepreneur, his whole life been successful, and so I've always aspired to be just like him and so I wanted to. It wasn't great in school and super ADD all over the place, but I knew you know. He told me from a young age, just like if you work hard and find your niche, then you know you can be successful. And it's just like you know God gives you a gift whether or not it's MJ, he can be a basketball player or you know whoever it is and then find your gift and then work hard and you can succeed, so that was like that was kind of my own mindset.
Speaker 2:I worked for my dad in Dallas for a year and immediately was like no, this is not for me.
Speaker 1:What kind of businesses did he own?
Speaker 2:He was in the video game world. So he was a video game rep and then he had his own publishing company for a while that we'll work for as well too. So we were kind of always in the video game world. That's what we did most nights instead of homework. He was a genius so he didn't need to study. I did, but I didn't do great in school. But that's fine. So that's kind of how it all started. But we started with our parasail company out at Smith Mountain Lake. That's how it all got started. 18 years old, I think, my we talked about it my dad ended up giving us a loan to buy the boat, which was not a very nice parasail boat. But we bought the parasail boat and I think he really wanted to just keep us busy so he didn't get in trouble, um, but so at 18 you guys like immediately out of high school and you're like I gotta get rolling.
Speaker 1:I was in high school.
Speaker 2:So I was a senior in high school. He was in college. What were you? A junior? I think it was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was somewhere around the end of because we were in like high school and college at the same year so he was a senior. I was a senior, but you know he was high school, I was college gotcha, what's the age difference?
Speaker 3:three years, yeah, um. So yeah, I was just wrapping up college, you were just wrapping up high school, yeah, and I my first job was at a was a parasail first mate. So we kind of had some history in parasailing nice and you know, whatever that parasail business it was at the same lake, at smith mountain lake, that that old parasail business, um, you know, we'd become reallyail business. It was at the same lake, at Smith mountain lake, that that old parasail business, um, you know, our we'd become really good, really good close friends with the guys who own that and they they kind of sunsetted that business as that guy got graduated from college and was moving on to go get a real job.
Speaker 2:So we were.
Speaker 3:We saw the opportunity and jumped in there and yeah, like Luke said, our dad, our dad wanted to support that idea. He's like why don't you guys bring parasailing back to the lake? We're like, yeah, I guess we could probably figure it out. We grew up on boats at that lake in the summer times and stuff.
Speaker 1:So first business you guys are roughly 18 and like 21. What were?
Speaker 2:the lessons that you guys took away from that first business.
Speaker 1:Well, we didn't kill anyone.
Speaker 3:That's always a plus, that felt big Four years we didn't kill anyone.
Speaker 2:That was like that. That felt, that felt big. Four years we didn't kill anyone, didn't hurt anybody. You know, being 18, you know, or being that young, you know there's a lot to learn yeah and still I'm 37 now.
Speaker 2:I have a ton to learn. You know, constantly I'm trying to learn. I'm always trying to dissect. You know why people do this or what's going on over here, and that's that's something that I'm like just addicted to. Just that's why I listen to podcasts all day, every day. I just want to learn. I just want to learn how they did it and why they're doing it this way and what's the motivation right? So I think, for the for the most part, for parasailing, just understanding how hard of work it is right when you actually run your own business and you're not making money or you're. You know you need to figure things out, you trying to learn that, and then the motor breaks and you've got to pay $5,000, and you're off. You've started a bunch of businesses. You understand it doesn't start out glamorous, it starts out hard.
Speaker 1:Everybody thinks we're balling. The second we start an LLC, everybody's like oh man, you're paid. Yeah, we can tell you how. That's not the case at all. You've got to file taxes again?
Speaker 3:Yeah, not, that's not the case at all. You got to file taxes again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not even close but yeah, just learn how to work hard, right. And then just I mean, cause it's a grind right, all these businesses that you do are a grind and it's just trying to figure that out. And then you know, we had some friends that we we kind of hired to bring up, so we had some other partners about that we did it with. But just trying to like kind of trying to learn to lead right, trying to learn to, you know, kind of get everybody together.
Speaker 2:You're kind of with friends and how everyone's going to work together and kind of yeah all, that was really what I felt like I learned at parasailing just try to kind of put a team together and all work together.
Speaker 1:What were the obstacles you guys faced? Because, like at that young, so like for me, like I'm a college dropout at the junior level because they weren't teaching entrepreneurship and I'm like I'm going to keep going in debt for this. Yeah, I know what I want to do. So I fell into the mental health field and worked in that field for 10 years.
Speaker 1:And, coming in so young like I was probably 23 when I started in that industry I wore a three-piece suit to work every single day because I'm like I'm way younger than everybody here at this office. They're not going to think I have the knowledge or expertise in order to do what I need to do and scale up in this business, so I'm at least going to look the part. So that was my way of overcoming at a young age, like being in a professional setting At 21 and 18, like, what did you guys do to? You know, get past that obstacle? A lot of people may look at you guys and be like you know, you don't know what you're doing. You guys are just straight out of high school and college. Like, what were some of the feedback that you got on that or obstacles that you had to overcome at a young age. Oh man, that's a good question, I feel.
Speaker 3:I feel like I spent a lot of parasails so scared I didn't even really think about what anyone else was thinking.
Speaker 3:But I mean, I think, um, first year was scary. You know there's a, I think I, I feel like it was. It was at least for some period of time. Um, you know it was, it was for me much less about kind of what other people were seeing and feeling and much more about kind of how I felt about things. And I, I kind of felt like once we sort of got a couple of reps under our belt flying, you know, because we would practice parasailing each other, because we're like you know what can go wrong.
Speaker 2:My dad was smoking a cigar and burning the shoes we found out so that was fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we did some wacky stuff, but you know it was. We had just had so little practice really at the start that it took getting a couple reps under a belt to really for me to feel confident about it. I mean, we grew up driving boats and felt very confident doing that. But just parasail was different. I think for me it was like once my own confidence set in that I can do this, we've got the processes, we kind of have our routine and we know how to do this. We've got the processes, like you know, we kind of have our routine and we know how to do this. Then I think it was just sort of a matter of, I think, in parasail, well, for most people they kind of don't know what's going on anyway.
Speaker 3:So they just see, the captain knows what he's doing whatever you know. So I think for us it was really just kind of projecting the confidence in that way. You know if anything at that stage of things we got confident towards the end.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I you know, I kind of think as well, we've benefited from the, the ignorance of youth, of not really knowing what, what we needed to be afraid of. Yet definitely you know what I mean. It was like, yeah, we, like I didn't even think about ourselves as entrepreneurs or business owners at that point. It was just, we were just parasail guys, you know you were in a three-piece suit. We were in flip-flops and shorts. You know, that was everything.
Speaker 1:That sounds a lot better than what I was in tank tops. It was nice.
Speaker 2:You know it's not the worst place to be at on a boat trip. We had a good support system. I mean our parents are a really good support system for us, just encouraging us of all the good and dumb things we've done.
Speaker 1:What was the revenue like for a business like that? Because that's ultimately a seasonal business, so how many months out of the year could you guys operate that?
Speaker 2:It was just three months, so it was just when we were out of school. We would, you know, out of college or high school we would go for the summer and do it for about a three-month time period. It did pretty well actually. We were very profitable. Um, we got very good tips. Yeah, because we would make it fun once we got confident. We do dumb things that probably aren't legal, like torpedo takeoffs. We just launch people off the platform.
Speaker 2:We dunk them underwater a little bit yeah there's a dam, we try to fly them over the dam. Um all things that you shouldn't do, um probably sounds hard to understand, but got. Great, but got great tips from it. But yeah, I mean it was, mean it was good we could. You know it was mostly cash. I'd walk back to school with a wad of cash in my you know pocket, spend it all in about a month.
Speaker 1:So you were the one at the frat parties in college. You were like man drinks on me. Luke was the president of his frat.
Speaker 2:I had fun. What fraternity.
Speaker 1:Beta. What school did you guys go to?
Speaker 2:I went to Hampton-Sydney. I went to Elon Longwood man. There you go, there you go, the only time I stepped foot on it.
Speaker 1:First off, we hated you guys because you always wanted to come to Longwood and steal our girls. I never came but, yeah, I kind of hung around the only time I stepped foot on a Hampton-Sydney campus, Vanilla Ice was performing Wow.
Speaker 3:It was Vanilla Ice or was this like throwback Vanilla Ice? No, it was throwback Vanilla Ice. Okay, oh good.
Speaker 1:So it was five bucks for a ticket and you got a free beer.
Speaker 3:I was like no, I can't pass that. They had some fun there.
Speaker 2:Five dollars.
Speaker 1:I will say this he had this drummer. His name was Clint Eastwood, the sickest drummer I've ever seen in my entire life. He's a big drummer, clint Eastwood.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, vanilla Ice. Clint Eastwood drummer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, Not that Clint Eastwood Like dude sick drummer, no kidding. That's cool, that's great All right, so four years you guys have that business. I'm assuming at this point, like when you guys retire, you guys are ultimately coming out of college.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was coming out of college.
Speaker 3:Yeah he was running after my first year because I went to go work for my dad after that, and so our good friend Michael took over my spot and became the new driver. But so the only I had gone to work for my dad in the you know the super serious, you know black tie corporate job of a video game company so was that the only like corporate job you guys ever had was working for your dad?
Speaker 1:yep yeah, so describe what was that that you were doing day to day at that job.
Speaker 3:So I was, you know he was I think he was kind of introing me into a bunch of different areas to try to get me to learn the business, to see how much I could, you know, help as it grew and as we got older and stuff. But so I started out I mean I started out as basically a paid intern updating our Wikipedia pages and funny things like that.
Speaker 1:I love that that your dad's at the top of the company. He didn't immediately put you up and say no, you're starting at the basement level too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was basement level stuff for sure, and it was a pretty short stint there. And then I worked in the finance department for a while. I was in charge of making our royalty reports because we would publish, know, because we would publish other people's games and you know, calculate out what was owed and sort of things like that. So, which was actually very interesting because you get, I got a pretty early and pretty early on I got a pretty good sense of the sort of financial structure of all the games. You know sort of what the advanced payments looked like and how the marketing and manufacturing broke down.
Speaker 1:So you know how much people are making off Guitar Hero and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, yeah, we had much smaller games than Guitar Hero, but yeah, I did that for a couple of years. I eventually worked my way into doing. I always had sort of meaningless job titles, but I was business coordinator for a while, so I would actually travel. I I grew up, got into a role where I would travel around to to trade shows around the world and try to meet up with developers that were pitching games, and so I was one of the guys that would pitch games too, which sounds like a kid's dream job, which was always, which was really fun. It was a good. It was a good time but you're learning sales.
Speaker 1:I tell people all the time if you learn how to sell, you will never go hungry another day in your life yeah, oh, for, sure there's always something to push to that so what did?
Speaker 2:you do with the company I was on the sales rep side um of this company called philip sales so we had like konami and namco and some of those and we were mainly selling to like game stop and companies called D3P back in the day and Hastings.
Speaker 1:Did you buy any GameStop the stock? No, I wish I wish.
Speaker 2:Now, I don't even know what GameStop is these days.
Speaker 3:I know that was a funny meme to track, knowing that GameStop is. Yeah, I don't even know what it is. We know it.
Speaker 2:That was a fun kind of wave.
Speaker 3:But yeah, but yeah, I mean same thing.
Speaker 2:I was just a guy. I mean I was, you know, I worked with another lady and just was the guy that just ran around and got coffee and did whatever I was told to do, just a little gopher for a while, pretty much, yeah did it for a year and wanted to get out real quick.
Speaker 1:All right. So after you guys leave the gaming industry, what's the next business?
Speaker 2:So the next one was, while we were in that, my dad started doing like a movie and distribution kind of gig. He got going so he needed a warehouse. So he just wanted to do one. So I said, well, I could do a warehouse, we could do it, will, and I could do it. And he was like, well, you're not ready, you're not ready. He didn't want us to leave the companies yet. Um. So he's like, well, not not yet. You got to at least save up fifteen thousand dollars and you got to find a lease for a spot.
Speaker 1:So I called I love your dad. I want to meet your dad. He's honestly well this backfired on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, his head's in the right spot and I'll tell you yeah so I called a realtor.
Speaker 2:We found a lease that day and I called my buddy, michael, who we pair sell with, and I said I need $15,000. I'm starting a business. And Michael's as crazy as I am and he said sure, what do I wire it? So I told my dad, I said I have a lease and I have $15,000.
Speaker 3:I'm quitting and that was a 12 hours later.
Speaker 2:I've seen him a little frustrated but then he said, then he was like you know, you did what, exactly what I told you, so you can leave so we left out of there and then we were just in a warehouse for what was it two or three years, called Hatch Solutions and we were a lot of distribution. So we were taking inventory in counting through it, sorting it. Not very glamorous in Dallas, it was 110 in the warehouse we were just sweating.
Speaker 2:Will was in Richmond in nice AC doing the accounting, but I was out there so we did that. And then we kind of started doing another side of Hatch, where we were trying to bring new products to fruition. So we were trying to help new guys get into Walmart and GameStop and different things like that.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of all part of that. Where did you guys grow?
Speaker 1:up. Did you grow up in?
Speaker 3:Virginia, yeah, over in Midlow Gotcha.
Speaker 1:So when was the transition to Dallas? Just when you were working full-time for your dad.
Speaker 2:He didn't move to Dallas. I moved to Dallas.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did two months in Dallas. So our dad's always had or for a very long time he's had his main office, has been here in Richmond and pretty shortly after we moved to Richmond in the early 90s he opened an office in Dallas as well, Because GameStop's based there and there's just a lot of. There was a lot of video game stuff there throughout the years. So he's always sort of had like the two main offices. He said he had one in England for a while and he's had them all over the place with the sales company. But but yeah, so that was and that was uh the Dallas office for for his companies in that stage of time was more of the main hub. Yeah, so Richmond is finance and HR and so you know the kind of boring me stuff the fun, development and production and all that stuff and marketing was all in Texas.
Speaker 3:And so Luke was there and that's we. So I was Richmond, he was, luke was Dallas when we, when we jumped ship to go start our own company. So the warehouse that we ran was in Dallas and that was during that stint. And then I'd I'd you know, I'd I can't remember if I'd I wasn't married at that point, but um, my now wife and I think we're dating. I wasn't interested in moving. So we kind of like we're trying to figure out how to work it out and you know it worked. It worked well enough for me to kind of keep contact because my dad, our dad, was here in Richmond. So I was like the, I was sort of the the uh, satellite office of hatch. Yeah, yeah, the main office was the warehouse in texas.
Speaker 2:But it worked. It worked out. It was a nice warehouse, so it got broken into a bunch of times it was like yeah, it was, it was fun, it was fun, to say the least.
Speaker 1:I had to clarify the dallas thing, because you're sitting here with the washington hat on.
Speaker 2:I'm like this guy. Yeah'm a big, big Commanders fan.
Speaker 1:This is the first. I don't want to go on a football tangent, but I will say this I don't hate Washington, I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's fine. Don't hate Washington, we have no problem with you.
Speaker 1:It's just the fan base man.
Speaker 2:You guys get a water boy and it's like man, we're going to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1:This a long time we give us something okay. Last year I will give you your props right here on the podcast. Last year, jayden daniels this is the best in my lifetime since I've been a football fan.
Speaker 1:That washington was like okay, this is the real deal I know washington's got something now and I don't want to jinx it because you know, yeah, break his leg or something, yeah, you know so I told, I told my friends most of my friends are washington fans I was like, as soon as y'all started calling RG3, rg3, and giving them these initials, I was like now you're calling this guy JD5. I know Y'all better stop.
Speaker 2:You better call him Jaden Daniels. I worry about it every day. I pray about it. I was going to say Jaden Daniels has done a podcast. I'm trying to say that Sorry.
Speaker 3:Are you a Washington fan too, by proxy? You know I never really stuck to watching football growing up, but I've only really gotten into it the last like four or five years, getting into fantasy football. But I've always been a Commanders fan on Luke's behalf, but I'll cheer for anybody.
Speaker 1:Nice. So you talked about your wife. So you're married, single, married, married, all right, where, along this journey, did you guys meet your significant other?
Speaker 2:Because, luckily, this worked out for me At the bottom, that's what. I was looking for.
Speaker 1:Because my biggest fear, like when I knew one day I was going to be an entrepreneur, my biggest fear was, like you know, you get the accolades, you start to build this large company and then the women come along then and you don't know if the woman's really with you for who you are. It's because of the swag that you got at this point. So like, I met me and my wife started dating right when I decided to be an entrepreneur. So like and she'll say to this day, like she used to have to pay for a couple of dates. And you know, there were a couple of times that things moved a little quick because I was going to have to. I think I was about to get evicted from my apartment and I was just like you know, hey, can I just stay?
Speaker 3:here for a week or something like that Not telling her.
Speaker 1:So how did you guys deal with dating?
Speaker 3:Sure Go for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. So when we moved, when we closed down Hatch, which was our warehousing company, and we were moving to Richmond for the parasailing company, I mean sorry, no, this was for SkyZone.
Speaker 3:For SkyZone. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:One of our partners in SkyZone, matt Tomasino. He was getting married out in Cancun. I went out there to his wedding, obviously, and then that's where I met my wife in Cancun.
Speaker 1:Nice man you started the bar, all the way up here Hanging out in Cancun.
Speaker 2:It's a good spot to be yeah, she lived in New York and so when I met her I had this whole mindset when we started the businesses I'm not going to date anybody and I don't want to get married yet. I want to focus on this. And then I met her and she's awesome, fell in love with her and she moved down here and then we got married.
Speaker 3:I don't know 2018.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you gotta tell me I don't remember. Yeah, trying to think of it, um, but yeah, she's, uh, she's awesome. But yeah, it started when we were just starting sky zone. Um, going through a lot, she's dealt with a lot. She's been through a lot of me just trying to push through and work and I still do. She's my biggest supporter and she's she's really what keeps me grounded at the end of the day. She's smarter than me and she kind of coaches me through a lot of things, you know, to say the least. So she likes to say she's my neck, but yeah, she's awesome, she's a spitfire.
Speaker 1:I'm the biggest proponent of. The biggest decision you will make as an entrepreneur is who you decide to spend the rest of your life with.
Speaker 2:Sure Like you can wreck your world as an entrepreneur if you marry the wrong woman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you got to have a supporter, right, you got to have someone that supports you in this Because, like you said, I mean, entrepreneurship is not some glamorous thing. All the time it's you're getting called in to go work or you're going to do this, or something blows up and whatever it may be, and she's very supportive of my crazy ideas and keep pushing forward. So without her, I don't think I would be doing as much as I'm doing right now. Without a support system like that, Nice, what about you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're making me think it's like you need somebody that's ready for some adventure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it is like it's a roller coaster.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like the. I don't equate an entrepreneurship with glamour at all. You know it's like I'm in it too deep to feel that way. It's a dog fight For my wife. It's like you know. It's like it means that sometimes I'm just I have to stay at work all morning and all night when, like we didn't expect it and like you know, whatever, and sometimes we don't have any money or any time and sometimes it means, you know whatever, you can go out of town for a week when, like, whatever there's school and no one else is everyone's at work and whatever.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of freedom to it, but it's. It definitely comes with a lot of work. But, um, so I met my wife. Uh, we met at church, we were at redemption Hill, we met there together.
Speaker 1:So, so Cancun church? Yeah, all right All right, I know.
Speaker 3:I, you do, yeah, um, but uh, let's see, yeah, we met, um, we met in like 2011 or 12. We were, we were running. I can't remember if we had started hatch yet or if I was still at south peak or the video game company, yeah, we had.
Speaker 3:when I, when I met, when I met marla though I know we were, it was either way it was somewhere around that era where we were pretty, you know know, I was either like grunt work at my dad's company, because I think once we started dating I stopped traveling. That's when I was done with South Peaks. I think it was mostly Hatch.
Speaker 3:You were probably broke too, so you couldn't travel, yeah, I mean we were yeah, I didn't have a salary anymore because we had just left. Yeah, we, I think. I mean I remember we would like get a. You know, we'd have some sort of invoice that we would receive with Hatch. It would be like $2,000.
Speaker 2:And we were like yes, we're going to be rich this month.
Speaker 3:And you know there was a lot of like. I know for Marla and I her name's Marla it was like it was a lot of like sort of like what do you do? It was like it was a lot of like sort of like what do you do? Like, what are your, what is your job actually like? So you just do finance, like I don't know what that means, but great, that's great, it's got a nice ring to it. Yeah, sure, um, and you know, yeah, it was just sort of like there was a lot of there's a lot of kind of just things just weren't normal. I think, as you think of things to be normal, that this is your day job, you go, do, do that.
Speaker 3:It's sort of like, you know, we kind of like live this thing. You kind of have to do it all the time. And then, right, pretty shortly after we got married is when we opened Sky Zone down here, and then that was a big shakeup because we had been doing nine to five work with a little bit of travel, and then sort of suddenly we were in the family entertainment and we're know we're working basically nights and weekends, because that's, you know, they're that's when the trampoline park business was open is evenings on a school day and then all day on the weekends. So we, we lost our weekends for a long time and it was sort of that that time was a big thing for for us of of like sort of what's your normal day like, when is normal coming back, and it just sort of became like this is normal and that kind of grew in that way.
Speaker 3:But but you know, yeah, I mean my wife's always been, she's been incredibly supportive of all this stuff too, and you know she's always she's. She's really good at sort of at, you know, for me she's really good at like challenging my, my, my assumptions and sort of what I'm doing and what I think it's like. Is that a smart idea? Could you do this more efficiently? How can we be wiser and more productive about this?
Speaker 3:That's a really good idea, because my go-to is just to kind of dive in and grind and not really think about how I can make things more efficient until I'm sort, yeah, which you know, I've gotten better at that over time, but that's you know, I don't know. Yeah, so the, the it's really just the support system from her is like always been the biggest thing of just like you know she doesn't get to see, or, like you know, it's like you don't, it's like she sees the non glamour all the time and it's, like you know, especially, I think now, sort of as our business portfolio grows, it's like we suddenly, you know, I feel like we suddenly step back and it's like, oh, we kind of sound impressive all of a sudden. And you know we're doing cool things and we're enjoying it and enjoying it a lot. But it's like I've got to shower before I go to work and when I come home because I'm covered in icy or dust or just whatever.
Speaker 3:I've been in a crawl space all day or I'm in an attic doing Lord knows what.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get you guys some extra brownie points.
Speaker 3:with your wife, I'm going to make sure, I clip this up Just for you guys, my wife's awesome.
Speaker 1:We'll blast that all on IG. Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? Our one-on-one coaching tailor strategies to your unique business goals. Dive into interactive workshops fostering skills essential for success. Looking for an inspirational speaker for your next event? Book Mr Prenuer to elevate your gathering. Visit wwwthemistaprenuercom to learn more and embark on your path to entrepreneurial success. Mistapreneur empowering your entrepreneurial spirit. All right, so let's go from where we passed the warehouse. Yeah, so Skyzone's the next thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah so how do you guys go from? Because people ask me this all the time. It seems like the businesses I've started, like there's no connection to all of them and it's like completely left field going from one to the other. What got you guys into the family entertainment space, Like what made you look at that model and say, hey, I think we need this here in Richmond?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, that's probably revolved a lot around my scatterbrainedness and nothing does connect, you know, it's just like what's new, right, what's next? So we were working in the warehouse it was 190 degrees in that thing and just sweating all day and just being like this is fun.
Speaker 3:The temperature gets higher every time you say it. Yeah, it was 150 degrees. Yeah, it'll be like 225 by the time we're done, but it was hot, it was hot done but it was hot.
Speaker 2:It was hot you can ask the other guys, I've been there with me. But um, we drove by a place in texas, in dallas, called urban air and we walked into it and it was a trampoline park never seen it before.
Speaker 2:This was back in 2000 and probably 12 or 11, um, and it was like this is mind-blowing, this is cool and I've always wanted to do. I want to do cool things, you know, that's why we do this. And the cocky rooster and game plan and parasailing it's like going to cool things. You know that's why we do this. And the cocky rooster and game plan and parasailing it's just like going to cool things. Like warehousing wasn't cool, it was just my step to get out of what I was working at at Philips sales.
Speaker 2:So we walked in there and then my dad actually brought it up at one point about a trampoline park, before I even saw urban air and he's always thinking of new ideas and stuff too. So we saw that and then we kind of looked up a bunch of information about it and then we're like, okay, sky zone was the founders, but let's knock them off, let's just get stuff from china and figure this out. We ended up talking to jeff platt, the ceo, who'd actually partnered with us at cocky rooster too. Um, and he's the coolest guy. He's just like such a cool guy and it was like we can't knock this off. We got to go with this guy so we started working on it.
Speaker 2:You know, will did a bunch of the getting an sba loan and doing all that at 23. You know we were nobodies and had to get our dad to partner with us, which I think he's happy with now, but he was probably scared scared to death when he did it, um, but yeah. So then, you know, took a lot, a lot of work, but got that one going and opened. I think we're the 51st park, 52nd, if my memory, 52nd park uh, opened that one in 2013 so do you guys have kids.
Speaker 2:We do Both have three. Oh, whew, yeah, how old are your kids? Six, four and two.
Speaker 1:Eight, five and one. So you guys are the coolest dads then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, for a long time, my son, dominic, my oldest, my six-year-old, because every time he came to work I would go play with him, and because every time he came to work I would go play with him, and he was like so does Uncle Will own.
Speaker 1:Sky Zone.
Speaker 3:Because, he's always working and you're always playing. I'm like okay.
Speaker 2:I think he finally understands that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it took him years to figure out that we both own it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we both own Sky Zone. Yeah, they enjoy it obviously.
Speaker 1:So then, from Sky Zone to the restaurant industry.
Speaker 2:Not quite. Then we built another Sky zone in Virginia Beach. Okay, we ended up closing that one during COVID, so I closed that one down. It was just hard to be out there. We had one of our partners, michael, out there as well too. That one didn't do as well as the Richmond one. So we got a good out during COVID and so we just took it.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, so I closed that one down. All right. People have heard me say over and over again on this podcast I've owned laundry business, bubble soccer businesses, media companies, educational businesses. The one business I will never own is a restaurant.
Speaker 2:So talk to me about six years ago.
Speaker 1:So talk to me about, because obviously this is a much different industry from the other businesses that you guys have had. What is the most difficult thing about running a restaurant?
Speaker 2:I mean, how long do we have?
Speaker 1:In my head I think it's the employees.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that's you know every business. I think really To people it's always the hardest part. You know it can make or break you for sure, but you start. I want to hear, break you for sure, but you start. I want to hear what you think first. The hardest thing, hardest thing about running a restaurant.
Speaker 2:Well, shifting from entertainment or parasailing or whatever else we did, to a restaurant Restaurant is like work. It's like hard work. You're going to burn yourself all up and you're lifting heavy stuff and you're going to convince people to work. I mean, it's like that's real work, in my opinion. Um, that was the first thing that I kind of noticed, going into it Like wow, like why do people do this? Like you know, this is dumb. And we got into it a little differently, and I'll start there. It was, you know, kind of when COVID was happening. I ended up calling my buddies one day, brett, um, he's like, what are you doing? And he's like, I am out looking for a lease for a new concept. I have, and him and his father-in-law owned Burger Batch. I don't know if you've ever heard of Burger Batch. Love that place, dude, yeah. And now it's gone. Now.
Speaker 1:Wait, is it Burger Batch or Burger Box? It's Batch.
Speaker 2:Like a bachelor pad. A bachelor pad, it's a New.
Speaker 3:Zealand phrase that you'd use for a bachelor pad. So it's like the burger batch.
Speaker 1:I've gotten in many a fight with people over burger box or burger batch.
Speaker 3:A lot of people that worked there or did a lot of business with there. Still, I hear them call it burger box burger back burger. Anything else, it is burger batch. But if you say Bach, we'll answer.
Speaker 1:Wait, so Burger Batch is closed.
Speaker 2:Well, they have one left in Carytown, but they have four others that they happen to close down.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, because I used to go to one in Shore Pump all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Best truffle fries in Richmond. It was my favorite restaurant.
Speaker 3:I really loved it.
Speaker 2:Which is how I became friends with, with brett and db um, and brett told me he had a new concept he wanted to work on but he's looking for a thousand square feet spot and he lost it in in um, down by vcu, and I was like what is it called? He said the cocky rooster and I said, well, that's the coolest name ever.
Speaker 2:I want to be a part of it and I was like, well, we happen to own um with our, with our one of our groups, we happen to own a building in the fan which is where we ended up putting the first cocky rooster. So he came to check it out and then we started the first cocky rooster there and so, but but still, yeah, the hardest thing is definitely the grunt work of of a restaurant and then employees. But we've we worked really hard to get the concept of the cocky rooster is different. We work really hard to get all the terrible parts of a restaurant out of the restaurant. That's a longer story but that's something that we really focus on at the Cocky Rooster.
Speaker 1:So what are the terrible parts of a restaurant that you guys have been able to eliminate?
Speaker 2:So we started a three-and-a-half-day work week for our employees, and so that's changed our game. That's changed everything. That's really important. We're pulling intention.
Speaker 1:That's very European of you guys. No, it, that's really.
Speaker 2:We're pulling intention that's very european of you guys. No, it was that the dire need of, just like you couldn't hire anyone during covid yeah, right because everyone's getting a check to not work and you can't hire it.
Speaker 2:no one wanted to work, and so it's like we got to bring quality of life back to the team because, first of all, working a restaurant is terrible, um, and second of all, you know, it's like what can we do for the staff to make them want to be here? Because anybody can work anywhere to some extent. But why the cocky rooster, why are you going to come here? So we ended up. Actually, one of my business partner's wives, I think, sent an article about a four-day work week that Chick-fil-A was doing down in Florida, so I ran with it and made it. So we made it into basically a two-pod system where the store was split up into two groups. So it had a manager and a team under each group. So when group one worked Sunday through Wednesday, when they were done, they were off and they couldn't get called in. But they worked their 40-hour week during that time, same with the manager. He didn't get called in either. And then the other group came in. Other group came in.
Speaker 2:but what we found out is both those groups, because they work together, the same every day and they work longer days, like 12 hour days, yeah, um, but they become like a little family, right, they become friends, they become a family, they count on each other. So they weren't coming in late anymore. Right, they weren't not showing up for work, and if they weren't, it was because of a dire need, but the other guys were willing to cover it for him and take over for him dude, that is genius.
Speaker 2:So we yeah, that was a lot. That was literally out of desperation, though, because we were like we got to figure this out and we started franchising the concept and we were ready to franchise in 2021. But you know, we we came in and said we can't franchise this concept until this is perfect like we can't let an owner come in to franchise with us and then have to work in the store every day.
Speaker 2:It doesn't make sense, it can't grow. Yeah, like do I want them in the store, here and there, of course, but we need a system that they can grow with. So we built three and a half day work week. You know, when you go into a restaurant never been in one before they use like a either a chalkboard or they're using a dry erase board and writing down the prep list and I'm like well, how do you know how much we need to prep a day? They're like well, the prep guy knows it's. Like well, how does guy now? Well, he just knows well that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so then I don't like that.
Speaker 2:I called my brother and I'm like we need to make this something out, like this has to be online, this has to be something. So he built us a whole system called the crow board cockrooster operation workstation and it's a whole. Um, it's a whole. Uh, basically it's a mainframe. Mainframe that you put in all your numbers in the beginning of the day and it spits you, you out your whole day. So your prep list, your order guide, your daily checklist, your everything like that.
Speaker 1:So we've tried to make you know, is that something you guys own the IP on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much. Are you selling that to other restaurants? Not, currently, no. Is that in the works? Yeah, we're thinking about it.
Speaker 3:Everything's in the works.
Speaker 2:I kind of cocky rooster right I want it for my franchisees because I like, what do we have? We have a really cool brand, we have great food, you know, but what else can I give to my franchisees that makes us separated out, you know to to pick us for somebody else. So these little things I like to hold on to a little bit um, but it's a great tool that's worked really well for us because now anybody can come in the morning put the numbers in and then here's your whole day.
Speaker 1:Dude, that is genius. Like I'm honestly floored by that. Like the three-day work week Dude, that is genius. So have you guys started franchising now?
Speaker 3:Yep, we have. We just opened our first. We had our first franchisee open in Columbia, South Carolina last month, yep.
Speaker 1:So what was? Why do you see going the franchise route versus like owner operator, like in popping up in different States? Why did you guys choose to go the franchise route? Sure.
Speaker 2:So Dan Branningham, one of our partners. He's opened 87 restaurants altogether. He's scaled a concept called bullets in the nineties to 70 locations before he exited. And then when I I in the beginning of the cocky rooster, when I was trying to figure out restaurants and just life and we were talking about if we can get this big enough, we can scale it and franchise it, I called Jeff Platt, who was the CEO and founder of SkyZone, because I was friends with him and I said the same thing.
Speaker 2:I said Cocky Rooster, and he goes. I want to invest and I was like, well, I know if you're a part of it and it's called the Cocky Rooster. I want to be a part of it. So we've had Dan and Jeff that have both been in the franchising world. You know, jeff scaled Sky Zone to 330 locations. I think it was Sounds about right, it was a ton, and so he did really well with that.
Speaker 2:So we got these two guys that know how to franchise you know, have been franchisors and then we've been franchisees, which I think is cool because I know all the stuff that I hated that they did, or at least what. Jeff did no offense Jeff. Oh, you don't listen to this, so we kind of took all that into account and said you know, we can franchise this, we have guys that can do it with us and we can really, you know, grow this model correctly.
Speaker 1:Nice. So I will admittedly say I have yet to be at the Cocky Rooster, but now, meeting you guys, I will definitely go this week. We should have brought some. I will tell you if you send a black man to eat chicken. I'm going to give you the real, real.
Speaker 3:You give it to us, you give it to us, we'll take it, yeah, so give me what's the standard dish on the menu there at the Cocky Rooster.
Speaker 1:What can people expect when they come there?
Speaker 3:You run through it.
Speaker 2:Sure. So our main thing is wings, wings, all of our sauces are made from scratch.
Speaker 3:So we try to differentiate with that. We don't bottle anything. We looked into bottling and we called sauce gate. It was a whole pain but you know, putting all the preservatives and everything in it.
Speaker 2:Try to keep it. Keep it good on the shelves doesn't work out. So we try to be authentic. Everything's, you know, all of our chicken is fresh, never frozen. We have our own cocky rooster breading that we use, so and everything's cooked to order. So we're not hot-holding anything. We're not Wendy's or Chick-fil-A even though I love Chick-fil-A, nothing against it.
Speaker 1:That's God's chicken, man, it's God's chicken.
Speaker 2:We actually have a sandwich called the Sunday's Best, and that's because Monday through Saturday. Chick-fil-a wins, but on Sunday we got the best sandwich in town. That's right. No-transcript. Some people say we have the best fries in Richmond. You can decide yourself.
Speaker 1:I say we do All right. All right, I'm going to tell you guys right now, I'm going to come. I'm going to bring one of my videographers with me.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do a live food review. I'm ready. Tell me when let's do it.
Speaker 3:Because I mean, it's breakfast time and y'all got me hungry. Yeah, yeah, cauliflower is really good. It's actually very good. It's like a breaded fried cauliflower and that's it, Our first concept has no seats, so it's takeout and delivery only.
Speaker 2:Our second one out in West Broad Street that one does have seating, and then our Columbia store does have seating as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool. So we got that and you guys mentioned I think you kind of skimmed over it more or less a real estate portfolio. So are you guys in the commercial real estate game, residential? What are you doing in that space?
Speaker 3:We were kind of dabbling at some point. That was kind of was it right before COVID that we bought that building?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We had yeah, we were just we were in this sort of scale like period when the both sky zone locations were running and they were relatively smooth. And then we had we had yeah, back to our dad again, he's always kind of he's always been running his own business and he's always had five or six side households that are just running. Yeah, and it's oftentimes with buying land and you know, splitting, splitting lots and developing and selling and dude, I think your dad's my future best friend man.
Speaker 1:He's a cool guy. He's a cool guy, he's a hero man.
Speaker 3:He really is a superhero on this stuff.
Speaker 2:And he's 65 and ripped.
Speaker 3:Luke and I always talk about it. It's like we both are like our dad's split in half. So Luke's got the crazy entrepreneurship side and I've got the figure it out button things up side. I don't know how he does both of us.
Speaker 2:He's right in the middle. It's really incredible to watch him.
Speaker 3:But but so he, he had always kind of been, you know, he's always had that mentality of like, okay, I'm going to do the business, but I'm going to, but I'm going to look at the land I'm going to buy the had talked about. We had sort of you know, you might say we had our first foray into food with Sky Zone just having the kind of snack bar right. And we started cooking our own pizzas there and we sort of felt you know which is the best pizza.
Speaker 1:It is the best pizza. It's so good. I started getting fancy doing a little salt bae on the pizza. We started getting a little fancy Like we could run a restaurant. I think I can figure this out Put a basil on top of that cheese pizza.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we had started looking around for an opportunity to buy a pizza place, which is how we land, or to start a pizza place, which is how we landed on this building. We were looking at that stage to knock off and pizza basically yeah, which I, and pizza basically yeah, which I don't know really where they're at these days, but we were. That was kind of the whole gig. And so we found this store on Main Street. That was a salon on the bottom and an apartment on top, and that's how we just we started looking around and we were going to open a restaurant and bought the building first and then tried to figure out the restaurant business and kind of never could get ourselves off the ground. We couldn't really come to any. You know, we we didn't have like the right vision, none of it.
Speaker 3:We, we sort of all, were trying to be in the driver's seat, it was that was. That was sort of like our one of our bigger, not that it was like strife or anything, but that was one of our bigger like clashes of like what are we trying to accomplish here? Yeah, um, other than that it's been, it's been smooth, speaking of luke and I, but but that's that, that's how we. We had gotten into that in that stage of things. But I mean, we're sort of always I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if there's an opportunity like, yeah, let's talk about it another house flips and things like that with the family and yeah, nothing's off the table.
Speaker 3:But it's not our. It's not our wife and I. We own an Airbnb property off in the northern neck. We're not big into real estate, but we're always.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things keeping in your back pocket Always, that one my older sister is you can talk to her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's a real estate mogul. She'd have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1:I'm not talking about rich. Every wealthy person I've ever met has real estate. Yeah, and I think it's like 80% of multimillionaires in this country are all entrepreneurs, so it's like number one if you want to be a multimillionaire you need to start with entrepreneurship, and I think probably about 98% of them all own real estate to some capacity. So that's land, commercial, residential, whatever, it is All right. So you guys got cocky rooster off the ground. What brought this new brand? How did we get here?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, started as a joke to be honest um, but yeah, we're doing the cocky rooster and we're really trying to get it going. You know we haven't taken here's the, the non-glamour of a of a business. You know we haven't taken paychecks out of the cocky rooster. We've been doing it for five years.
Speaker 1:We're just really trying to man hold up say that again for the people in the back see, everybody thinks we're balling and all this money's just falling out your butt like dude, so many. I tell entrepreneurs all the time if you're not willing to work without a paycheck for at least two to three years? Yeah, don't even bother getting started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, luckily it's Kaizen as well, and some of our other ventures do well enough to pay us as well too.
Speaker 2:But you know, cocky rooster wise, we're just trying to grow that. You know. We got our new franchisees, we've sold three more, you know units, and so we're really just trying to grow that. You know, at the end of the day, yeah, it's not all glamour all the time, no, no, no, but it's fun. So, anyways, we you know one of our partners, michael Yates. His lifelong dream was to own a sports bar. He was the COO at Burger Batch and made a lot of the recipes and I think their food was fantastic and he can kind of do a lot. So we kind of Burger Batch was closing and that building. We went into the building that Burger Batch was in in Midlothian and so we just saw an opportunity.
Speaker 2:There was already a bunch of stuff in there and Will and I are pretty handy. Will does all of our electrical plumbing and data and internet.
Speaker 3:And I kind of do a lot of the building and the flooring and the other things like that.
Speaker 2:You learn when you have no money, especially at SkyShark.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, how to do stuff you just like start youtubing stuff now.
Speaker 2:It's so easy to learn anything on youtube and whatever.
Speaker 1:But but we probably have a future electrician business coming from.
Speaker 3:Well, you know it's definitely my fallback plan if things go poorly.
Speaker 3:Well, I always say to myself it's like you know and it is like you figure it out. When you have no money, it's like you know we need. The first one I always remember is when we got the. We got our pizza oven at sky zone and we needed somebody to run an outlet for the pizza oven. You know, the big 240 volt outlet and it was like a thousand dollars and it was like a 10 foot like stretch. It was very small, yeah, and it's like right at that. It was like I don't think, yeah, it costs that much, yeah, and so now it's like I just, I'll get it's, it's, it's fresh.
Speaker 3:it's almost frustrating to know how to do this stuff now, because you get like you talk to a contractor and you're like well, I need this fixed and that done, and they're like okay, it'll be $2,500. I'm like all right so that means I have a $1,500 budget in tools and supplies that I can just own now. And then I save myself $1,000 if I do some work.
Speaker 1:A little dangerous. But you know, when we moved into this space these lights that are overhead right here I talked to a contractor. I was like yo, I need these professional lights, I need them going this way. Boom, boom, boom. There was not a contractor that came in here that quoted me less than $1,800. I'm like dog, I'm just talking about hanging a light from, and then I went on. B&h, one of the big photography and videography sites, found those poles for $30 a pop.
Speaker 3:I was like dog.
Speaker 1:You get it, I gotta come on man yeah if you're an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3:I was born at night.
Speaker 1:I wasn't born last night.
Speaker 3:Respect the electricians, you know, respect, oh man, respect, yeah, they came in and did some outlet stuff here that I couldn't do, but I'm like come on, dog, but once you got, once you know it, it's like it's so hard yeah, I know, but two to that point I want to get back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we found that opportunity that we thought we could open, because I already had the equipment and I already had chairs and tables and everything. So we demoed out a lot of it, which we did, and then kind of rebuilt some cool stuff. I don't know if you saw, but we put stadium seating in there in front of this mainframe of whatever, which is again kind of a joke.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome. 14.1 foot TV. Yeah, 14.1 foot TV I need somebody to check me on it. It might be the biggest TV in a restaurant in Richmond.
Speaker 2:Maybe I like that. We'll stick with it.
Speaker 1:Somebody put that in chat, gbt.
Speaker 3:Somebody double check me, tell someone to correct me.
Speaker 2:I saw a good opportunity and thought it would be fun. One of our partners, Brett. He does a lot of our branding and so he kind of came up with the cool brand of the game plan and the colors and whatever they put me in charge ofs, which is why there's way too many tvs in there and they're everywhere um and just every other tv has washington on it pretty much, pretty much and then, uh, michael yates did our whole, our whole menu.
Speaker 2:And then we have dan um as well, who you know helps guide us and keeps us grounded too, and he's just been the restaurant industry so long, he's a you know wealth of knowledge in that as well. So we kind of was like, hey, we got a little bit of a gap between well, we thought we had a gap between opening our first franchise, so we got some time. They ended up opening on like the same week. Basically, they ended up, which was a headache and a half, and so we kind of had like a little bit of a lull period and cocky rooster. We're like we can get this done in, like in in between these openings. Yeah. So we just went for it and it's uh, it started out really strong, it's, it's doing well, it's a, it's a cool spot, it's fun, um are you guys doing the same thing that you've done with cocky rooster in terms of staff, like the three-day work week?
Speaker 2:yeah, we haven't had this. I'm gonna talk to y'all offline.
Speaker 1:I gotta figure out how to implement something like that.
Speaker 2:We added a skyzone too for our managers. It's working out really well. It's like there's a there's definitely it needs to be tweaked per business. You know I've kind of learned to. You know we implement it into our Columbia store, down in, you know, down in Columbia for Cocky Rooster and it's, it's all working really well.
Speaker 1:So do y'all in terms of like? It seems like every time I see a new restaurant popping up, like are all the restauranteurs like pouncing on. Like that chef that, like a great restaurant, ended up closing and now this guy doesn't have a job. Or like all the restaurateurs like trying to pounce on the talent in the restaurant industry.
Speaker 2:Like all at once when things like that happen um well, the cocky rooster doesn't really like require chefs, right? Because we just kind of have a system.
Speaker 2:We have a very buttoned up system of operation for how we make our food and how it works yeah um, you know, we, when we originally opened, I think we made 150 sauces and we broke it down to like 16 and and dan has so many connections in this world of just people and michelin, star chefs and different things, so he was a big driving force and, like I said, michael's really good at making food and so and I actually have a sauce on the menu that I'm proud of man you saucing it up now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got one sauce in the venue.
Speaker 2:That's still hanging in there. But then you know when opening, you know game plan, you know Michael is very good at the menu and kind of did it. So you know we're not from the restaurant industry. I guess we can consider ourselves restauranteurs.
Speaker 3:Now I know I always tell everybody I'm not the kitchen guy, I'm here to enjoy the food like you guys are Just run the books and keep the operations running.
Speaker 2:I still don't consider ourselves restauranteurs. So how it all works on the back end, I mean, I'm big in operations, it's what I do and what I like to do, but where chefs are going I don't know.
Speaker 3:I don't know how that really works. They do you have to ask the other guys.
Speaker 2:I know Michael and Molly, two of our partners at Game Plan. They know everything that's kind of going on in the world but I just kind of sit in my lane.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you guys this as we wrap up what is next and or when is it enough? I get the sense that you guys are a lot like me in terms of when I hear people saying they're going to retire one day and just sit on the front porch. To me, that's a death sentence. I never want to live a lifestyle like that. I always need to have my hands in something. At the end of the day, for me, if I still have my portfolio of businesses and I'm mainly focused on public speaking and coaching and things like that, I'll be at my happiest. For you guys. A lot of people may be listening to this and hearing geez, these guys only got this. They got that. Like, when is it enough? Like, what's the goal? What are you guys trying to accomplish? You want to go first? That's a loaded question. Yeah, no, it's a big one.
Speaker 2:I got my answer but Well I think there's okay.
Speaker 3:so what's next and when's it enough? That's kind of where we're going, and what are you?
Speaker 1:ultimately fighting for.
Speaker 3:Is. Is there a number that you're trying to hit? Is it just like, like you said, I just like let's do more? Yeah, I think it's like. I've sort of like disconnected myself in a way from like, from, from, I guess my, I don't know. Um, from like what do I? What? What like my, I think my accomplishments need to be, or anything like that like I don't have a number.
Speaker 3:I don't have like a number of businesses. I don't have a number. I don't have like a number of businesses. I don't have a number of dollars. That's like I just need to get to here and then I'm out. You know that's changed over the years and, lord knows, it may change down the road too.
Speaker 1:Like our wife changes. Your wife was different before. You had a wife and kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, like yeah, somebody said some famous wise person said my wife's been married to five men, you know, and they've all been me. But you know, I've just really taken to this whole entrepreneurship thing. Like I said earlier, I've always said that Luke's the real entrepreneur of the two of us. People come to me and ask me about entrepreneurship and you know how do I like it, how do I do it? I'm like I don't know, I just follow Luke along and I just make sure it doesn't blow anything up too bad.
Speaker 3:But you know, I've really taken to it in the way that it's. It's just fun, it's like it just feels like doing cool stuff. Now and even if it's not cool stuff, I think you know I could talk, I could talk for a long time about just the value of work and, and you know, just grinding things out and doing things and just accomplishing things and how good it feels to do it. You know, some of my most rewarding days are the days that I like just freaking, figured out how to get that pipe to stop leaking and it's like it took me eight hours and it's fixed now.
Speaker 3:You know, and whatever it is. It's like I've just taken to like, you know, each of our businesses, as silly or, as you know, non-serious as they are I mean parasailing, video games, trampoline parks, these are all things that no one needs, nobody needs any of these things, but they're all the things that make life, life, right. It's like it's kind of its own art in a way. It's just like it's beautiful, it's great and I think, as long as there's like things to do and things to make and people to help, you know it's like you're just helping people. You know nobody would be able to. I mean, somebody else would fill these, would fill these gaps and things, but no one would be able to have cocky rooster chicken in richmond. If we don't, if we didn't grind away every day, you know no one would be able to jump on trampolines. And you know, and do your first backflip of your whole life, you know, whatever, whatever it might be, it's like we sort of like we pave the way for people to have meaning in small things and big things. And you know, and it's like everybody gets to do, that that works at all, you know, and everybody works at all.
Speaker 3:You can't live without working. Yeah, but you know, in the jobs that we get to do, in our entrepreneurial jobs, it's like you know there's no rule books. There's entrepreneurial jobs, it's like you know there's there's no rule books, there's no answer answer guide, there's no. You know there's no one telling us kind of like what we need to do and what we should do, and we get to. We get to, kind of like, you know, create the world every day. We get to invent, to invent the ideas and the things and do whatever. So for me, I think, yeah, as long as I can, as long as I can keep breathing and thinking, I'll just keep working.
Speaker 1:It's like I like it. Man, that was such an awesome answer. He set the bar really high, so you better bring it in now. He told me to go first. That's fine.
Speaker 2:I think about this all the time actually. We're opposites, I really dissect into why people do this for so long or quit right. Either way is something I think about a lot. So something I always think about is, like, as long as I still have that spark, like I wake up in the morning and this is what I love to do, I have the spark. First of all, I work with friends and my brother like how blessed am I to do that every day.
Speaker 2:I mean there's grinds and you know, being an entrepreneur, it can be terrible sometimes but I mean, we have a lot of things that are lined up for and, you know, as long as my family's staying happy and happy with me, that would be like the biggest thing, right. If I'm not around or if I get too deep, and then that that could, that could retire me, right, because my family's important and I love my family. And then keeping god at the forefront, right, you know, am I keeping god at the forefront? We have a thing in the cocky rooster our number one goal is make jesus famous.
Speaker 1:So like how are we doing that? Yeah, man put that on a t-shirt right, we have it.
Speaker 2:We have it on a neon in our I need, I need that t-shirt it's a good one, but but that's really what the things that I think about like family, god, you know, friends, having fun, working hard, you know do I have the spark? Like if I have all those things, I'm gonna go until the day I die, yeah, um, but if those things start slacking and a lot of it is is faith in faith in God and making sure my family is on the right path and they're happy and everything's working. That's what fuels me. At the end of the day, I can do this forever, until the day I die.
Speaker 2:I don't think I'll ever run out of energy or run out of that spark, and it's like God's gift. You're born with it right, and it's just like you and other people born with athletic talents and other people born musicians. Like I can't dance. I just I'll never be able to dance.
Speaker 3:It's just like musicians, not magicians magicians too, I love. You're a magician, I'm a magician.
Speaker 1:You know, people are born with these talents though, man, we'll get you right, yeah, yeah, now you can do that you're my wife. I don't know. I don't think you could ever teach me that.
Speaker 2:But you know, people have these talents and it's like I want to use them, you know, because I want to use my god-given gift on what he gave me and get one life right. So as long as I'm keeping everything at a good place, I'm gonna keep going as long as I can love it, man love it. That's a great answer after mine, yeah I do think about it a lot. It's kind of weird and we have a lot more stuff coming, so I love it, man.
Speaker 1:I'm pumped first off. I'm I'm excited to meet you guys today. Like formulate this connection. I'm like man got to hang out with these guys.
Speaker 2:It goes both ways. You guys are cool.
Speaker 1:I like the way your brain thinks and the things that you guys have upcoming. If people want to find out about your businesses, follow you guys like where can they reach out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got a great Cocky Rooster Instagram. That's really cool that Brett runs Same with Game Plan, my wife runs it.
Speaker 3:So same with a game plan. My wife runs it, so if you love it, let her know.
Speaker 2:If you don't like it, don't tell her. Um, she just started that one. She's very excited about um, but uh. But yeah, franchising with the cocky rooster if you're interested in that. We're doing really well, numbers are good and we got cool things as we talked about today. So that's kind of the biggest uh business we're focused on right now to really grow you may have me as a franchisee. I said I'd.
Speaker 1:I said I'd never be in the restaurant world. You kind of swayed me, yeah we're ready for non-restaurant people.
Speaker 3:We're not restaurant people. We're like we've got to make this, so everyone gets it. We're both not really on social media. Follow the businesses if you want to. Yeah, Hockey Rooster and Game Plan and all that.
Speaker 2:And Sky Zone.
Speaker 3:And Sky Zone zone. You know. If you want to come meet us, you know, be it journey on a sunday morning or redemption hill on a sunday morning, nice, let's be the best, easiest place to find us, otherwise lord knows where in town we are yeah, right, any minute.
Speaker 2:Those are the two places we're always at.
Speaker 1:We are gonna be filling up like for the next week. I gotta take the kids and the wife over to sky zone you gotta I gotta go to cocky rooster. I gotta, once sports start, back. Man, I could have been at y'all's spot for the Masters.
Speaker 2:We had the Masters right. That was wild. That would have been a good spot. Rory missed that putt Everyone freaked out.
Speaker 3:I know NBA playoffs are coming up. There's always something is the fun part.
Speaker 1:Yep, no, that Rory, I was like. Is Rory going to win?
Speaker 2:this thing man.
Speaker 1:But like he let it get away.
Speaker 2:But I do like Rory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, rory's a good guy. It was awesome to see. Well, dude, this was awesome. Appreciate you guys. Yeah, thanks for inviting us, and we will see you guys on the next episode.