Chef Owner BURNOUT: The Brutal Truth About Restaurant Dreams vs Reality and Work-Life Balance

🔥 BRUTAL REALITY CHECK! Chef Antonio Caruana opens up about the harsh truth of chef owner burnout after 14 years of running restaurants!

What We Cover:
✅ The Beautiful Dream - Why every chef wants their own place
✅ The Harsh Reality - When bills pile up and problems multiply
✅ Identity Crisis - From chef to HR, accountant, plumber, therapist
✅ Mental Health Toll - The scars that money can't heal
✅ Survival Tips - How to manage burnout (because you CAN'T avoid it)

SHOCKING Truths:
🍽️ You stop being a chef and become everything else
💰 First year is glorious, year 2-3 is when reality hits
🧠 Your mental health takes the biggest beating
👥 You're responsible for 100+ people's livelihoods
⏰ It took 8 years to find a real pattern that works

Key Takeaways:
Failure is NOT an option - don't start unless you're all in
Get legal protection with partners (protect your recipes!)
Find investors, not partners who want control
Your "happy place" is ESSENTIAL for survival
Work-life balance is BS - it's just life, choose your priorities

From someone who's lived it for 14 years - this isn't about discouraging dreams, it's about preparing you for the reality!

🎧 SUBSCRIBE to Burnt Hands Perspective!
🍎 Listen on Apple Podcasts too!

Follow us: @theburnthandsperspective on IG and FB

#ChefOwnerBurnout #RestaurantOwner #BurntHandsPerspective #ChefLife #RestaurantIndustry #MentalHealth #ChefAntonio

Welcome to the show! Burnt Hands Perspective

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Listen up here. The restaurant industry is cruelly and unpredictable. Just like this, Joe. From the front of the house to the back of the house and all in between. We will turn up the heat, you turn up the volume. I'm Chef Antonio Carijuana. Welcome to the Tell All Podcast at Burning Hans Protector.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Fun to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

One day I'll open my own place. One day. One day I'm gonna open my own place.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah, so chef owner. Chef owner burnout. You are a chef owner. So let's talk about multiple. Let's put it out there and see what comes of this conversation. Yeah. Um, what you've dealt with, some of the problems you've dealt with, um, the harsh reality of being an owner, shifting from the chef side of it.

The Dream Until Bills Hit

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Yeah, and it all starts, it all starts with a beautiful dream, you know, it all starts so amazing, it all starts in your mind, and then it's and it's all perfectly the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to feel that way. You're supposed to feel excited, invigorated, um, independent, um inspired, powerful, inspired, all the shit. That's the way you're supposed to feel, and that's what you feel. That's the way it is. Um, that's what you're looking looking for.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Well, but when you actually make that shift and make that decision, it's not for everybody. I mean, you had, I mean, some time in the industry before you became an owner, like like decades of time.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah. Yeah, it's it definitely takes time to understand what you're doing. The problem is that the people who don't typically make it as much is the ones who are opening on a very low budget with a little experience to none as far as owning. And it's very hard to get through the first couple of years. If you make it to that five-year mark, it's not because that's the typical thing for a business. That that's just because that's your that's the pace you better keep up at because you you don't have much time to fuck off. You know what I'm saying? It's not that there's five years to get better, it's you only have fucking a year and a half or two to to not get worse. You're up against it.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Well, the more pressure Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Go ahead. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

No, I was gonna say, is it's more pressure. I mean, you're you're shifting from you have to shift mentality completely. Like, I mean, it's that's a that's like an emotional kind of clusterfuck of going from just being a chef and a cook to being an owner and more that responsibility of shifting from like like the kitchen, like just just cooking, mentoring, like that kind of stuff to shifting to the entire business.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Well, right. It's well, here's the thing when you when you open up a restaurant, you you're basically coming out of one spot. So if you're the executive chef in a restaurant, that's your job, okay? But that consists of cooking, creating, running a team, making a schedule, stuff like that. All that stuff is gone when you become an owner, because now you have to do a whole bunch of other things. Now you're fucking HR, you're an accountant, you're cleaning the toilet, plumber, yeah, exactly. Marketing director, therapist for your staff, whatever it may be. There's a lot, there's a lot of shit that happens. Um repayroll, uh all that stuff. Yeah, everything. Uh an insurance adjuster, whatever it may be. All the things that you thought you were gonna do when you opened it disappear within the first probably the first seven, eight months before you realize that all that shit happens is when you're the chef in the maybe even the first eight to nine to ten months.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Is that what happened for you?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yep, happens every time. The first the first year is the glorious part of it because people are coming to see you, you're cooking, you're getting it out there. It takes about nine months for all your bills to start adding up and your your problems to be solved, and before you realize this needs to go on auto pay because they're gonna shut your power off because you forgot to pay, not that you didn't want to, you just didn't realize it. All those things happen, and now it becomes okay, now you gotta remember that shit, and you're forgetting how to create. So, so that that's that's where it all goes to there.

Surviving The Early Failure Window

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Did you feel that? I mean, when you opened, so fill everybody in, because I don't think, like, just so they kind of get your perspective of timeline of how long you were in the industry till you opened the first place, and then how long it took you, like when how long ago you opened the first restaurant versus the second.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Well, there was a huge time lag between.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

But I mean, like you were in the industry for how long before you opened Luce?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

20 something yeah. Yeah, shit. I don't even know, 25 years, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

And that was almost 14 years ago, because this place has been open.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, I've been in the industry quite a long time. So 30 years, 40, 35 years.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah, and then 40. This location here in Norfolk's been here almost 14 years, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah. So then so it took, you know, it took me about eight years to really get a fucking pattern down. Really? You know what I mean? To really figure it out. The first four the first year was in what I was talking about, it was all exciting, it was all cooking and everybody's like the second year was trying to maintain. Right. Third year was like, holy shit, now you know, now the problems are solved coming on. And then it goes on and on and on until you get to either a really good place where you figure it out quick, or you just get stumbled. You get you get beat down. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

And I mean, it most restaurants, I mean, they're when they are going to fail, they fail in that first like two to three years. Correct. That's where they start to really go downhill. Yep. And you fought through that. I mean, that was not easy though.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

No, no, no, it wasn't easy, but it would, you know, it happened really fast. And luckily, I never really left this place. So I wasn't expecting anything more. I wasn't expecting big money, I wasn't expecting shit. I just wanted to pay the rent and and keep successful so I would fail as a chef, right? Yeah, so that that's what happened there. It it became a business. No matter what, it becomes a business. And you either have to make a choice that you either understand how to be a chef and a business owner, or you you're gonna get consumed by one or the other if you don't know how to play the road, you know?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Okay, no, I mean I like that. So, I mean, looking at it, the reality aspect of it, it is a dream until those bills start coming in. And I guess this is kind of more so for people, maybe aspiring chefs or restaurateurs that want to open something. I guess this conversation's a little bit more for them, unless people can relate to it that are already here.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

When you right, when the ones you're talking about now, they're the ones who want to open up, and and we all had the same fantasy, the same idea in our mind because you didn't know any better. That's total creative control. Everybody wants that, every chef wants their own menu, and if you own your own place, nobody can tell you different. That's perfect. That's an expect that's what's something you expect you want, right? Um, there's no rules, no corporate rules, you build your own, you know, you build your own culture, and you can and and uh you cook and food you believe in that you want. And that's that's the dream is to be able to open up that platform. That's what everybody has.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Then what's the reality? What's the reality?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, the reality is we're gonna need a bigger boat.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

A way bigger one for that. I mean, you're putting up, and again, there's different things. We talked about investors too. There's so many different angles of going into it, so so many different stresses.

The Owner Wears Every Hat

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Well, here's the thing: everybody wants their definition, everybody wants their restaurant to be different. They all think their restaurant is gonna be different. The problem is they're not understanding, is you can't just be different when all restaurants kind of have to run the same. Okay. There's one really good restaurant recipe to work, and we all have to follow it. You all have to have your percentages, you have to have your margins, you have to have your same wording and your vocabularies. All of it's the same, right? So, how can it be so different when they're all run the same? You really have to be specially different, you really have to be unique. Because other than that, you know how to run a restaurant with the confidence of going to open one. How'd you learn that? You learned it from someone else and someone else and someone else. But if you look back at all the shit you've learned, they're all kind of the same, and that's why you know you've collected all that information the same way. So now when you go open up your restaurant, it's gotta be different. Well, how the fuck are you gonna be so different when everything you've done is kind of the same? There's only one really good way to do it. What is that? Well, you gotta well, I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

What's the secret?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

There's a basic formula to running a restaurant. Yeah, it's based off of margins, it's based off your money, it's based off your procedures, your prep time. The fucking health department literally holds every one of us accountable to do it the same way. So you can't tell me that it's so different. All the process of opening a restaurant is the same. Okay. So how are you gonna be so uniquely different outside of that? That's what you have to understand. You know what I mean? How are you gonna be such a better workforce place, a better place to work? How do you know? You don't know yet. You see? So there's a lot of that going on. All that stuff changes when you become a fucking owner. Yeah. You know, your whole perception changes, everything about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Well, and the expectation changes because you are the one who, like you said, when you said, if you're just an executive chef, you have a very clearly defined role. You have hours, you know when you're there. If something happens, it's not your fucking problem, it's not your restaurant. So you don't have to be there, but you have to pull away from family or trips or you know, whatever happens, you have no choice because it's your restaurant.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

When you own the restaurant and you're, you know, it's the executive chef's problem when the staff calls out, they fill the fucking void. What happens when the chef calls out? What now? When the executive chef gets in a car accident, now his fucking leg's broken, he can't, he's he's done for a fucking month or two. Yeah, what what now? What are you gonna do now? So you are no longer the executive chef that just asks the owner what we're gonna do. Now you're the owner saying, All right, my executive chef ain't there no more. What am I gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

I have to explain. See what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 9:25

So it goes to that. You know, the health inspections, yeah. You know what? You you you have to look at it a different way because your name's on it. Taxes. If if your staff aren't climbing right, if they're not claiming the shit right and all that stuff, who does that fall on? You yeah, all these things that you never had to look at. You know, your labor costs are different. The labor cost for uh someone who's hired reflects on their bonus. Okay, you don't make your bonus, whatever. But for you, you can shut the fuck down. There's a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're literally, and I how is that like with you since you've grown? Like you have a lot of employees now. Like, I mean, like a lot, a lot, a lot. The pressure of that when you're sitting there saying, if I fuck this up or I don't pay my taxes, or we don't make revenue, then you're letting down that many more people.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Of course, and and and it works like that for sure. If you're a really good person, if you have a heart in your fucking chest, it it really bothers you if the team isn't winning. Yeah. Bothers me. Yeah, yeah, it does. So one wrong fuck up here, one fire, one COVID, one something could destroy all these people's lives. We're talking close to 100 people. See what I'm saying? And that's it that becomes a lot stressful too. That chips away at you when you're making dinner specials, and it's all you really had to do before 15 years ago is cook. Create a menu real quick and make a beautiful menu, get all your herbs in, cook it, make it that that was your job. And it made sure all your staff was there and your team you you you ran. Now, it's a totally different thing. It's really hard to create and become an invested cooking chef when you own the restaurant as well. It's it's it's a totally different game balance for sure.

When A Chef Loses Kitchen Time

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah. So since you, I mean, you've been doing this, I mean, it's yeah, the 14 years in pretty much of kind of being the chef owner personality type, your identity has shifted drastically in that time, um, from just being like, you know, loud and fun in the kitchen to having to be a forward-facing person and going to city council meetings and doing all these things. So, in your like identity crisis, because we want to talk about this, like, have you ever stopped feeling like a chef?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

No. Okay. No, I feel I feel more like a chef who's lost his way and I get desperate to get back into it. Okay. I've never lost my way as a chef. You do get you get depressed and you get writer's block because you're so focused on everything else, and you're just trying to get back in the kitchen. Okay. And no one understands that about you, especially your people in the kitchen who work with you or worked with you. Now you're not there anymore. Oh, he's a big shot now. He's over here. No, that's the absolute furthest from the truth. I want to be in the kitchen, I want to be cooking. If it was that simple again, please bring me back. You see what I'm saying? Please bring me back to that because it's it's really hard when you're having to go to a city council meeting to talk about the big problem coming on, whatever it may be, you know. If you have to go look for a city approval or planning committees, um, if you're going to uh wine festival um meetings, or if you're going to chef fest things, or all these things you have to go to to keep your restaurant and your brand relevant, a lot of the times is no longer in the kitchen. So it really gets frustrating for us when we just love to cook and create and we no longer have that time to do it.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Do you get pissed off when people say to you, like, oh, it must be easy now. You're the owner, you're not in the kitchen working as hard.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah. They have no idea. They have no idea what the I didn't even know what I was getting into, so you're sure as fuck don't. You know what I'm saying? And it is hard. It's very hard when people say that. They have no idea the battle scars, mental scars we have that we have to carry on it. That the losses and all that shit, the mental capacity of this, because we still have a brand to put out. You know, we still have an image of our food and of our quality and of our consistency. That is our biggest goal. Everything else takes precedence.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Your name's still on it.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah. What we really want and what we really focus on is shadowed by all the shit we have to do that we don't even give a fuck about.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

So it's really hard to do that.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

That part sucks. I mean, and it's and I know how protective you are of your food and quality and recipes and everything else. And if someone comes to a restaurant, we read the reviews online, and they don't like what they were served, it's you. It's not the line cook who made it. They're blaming your ass because your name is on the restaurant. And that's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

The line cook will leave or or be at the next job next year, and the review that comes in after them is still gonna be either good or bad. It doesn't matter. You know what I'm saying? So they can break up the thing.

Pop-Ups Money And Mentorship

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah. So shifting for chefs that like why a lot of very talented chefs out there who may have owned restaurants in the past or may be thinking, okay, well, why they're not doing it anymore. Like, I mean, a lot of them are choosing to do these, like we have it in our area. A lot of really talented chefs that just do a pop-up once a week somewhere. Like they're not even they're not even talking about.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

I think that has to do, I think that they would really want that, but I I think they understand they understand that they may not have what it takes to do this every fucking day. And and they're the s I don't know if they're the smart ones. I don't know. I can't tell you what one way or the other. I I think they're they're doing they're doing a fucking uh who's a smart one, who's not. I don't know. But if they're doing a pop-up, a lot of people are doing that because they just don't yet have the brand enough to get the backing. They don't have the financial numbers. If look, if you if you're gonna open it, if you're gonna have a pop-up and you're trying to do a higher caliber of food, whether you're doing a sashimi or a crudo-style thing, all that stuff costs money to put on a plate and to create that fucking atmosphere costs a lot of money. You need millions of dollars. You can't open up anything anymore for less than a million dollars in expensive. Not a good restaurant, it's not gonna work with the competition out there. Okay, because there are people out there that, you know, unless you're making that style of restaurant, it's a different story. Don't get me wrong. But if you're gonna sit down on a white tablecloth or have a really nice restaurant with high-end ingredients, you gotta look at the competition around you and the money they have behind that.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah, I mean, uh it's you know, there's a lot of different ways that people are going about it now, and that's the beauty of the industry is you can do so many things and still be successful.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

I think pop-ups are really happening too because people don't want to be taken advantage of. I know some good guys around that don't want to work in a restaurant because they don't want to get taken advantage of or they're not getting paid enough. Yeah, yeah. That's the wrong mentality. Because as we evolve as restaurateurs, we will pay and we do want that type of person in our restaurant. And you may not be able to do it now, but if you came work with somebody like me for a year or two, you would learn enough about what you need to do to open up your own, and it would benefit everybody. Okay, but that at least that attitude needs to come back into the culinary world. We need to help each other, you know. There's people that think, well, my food will help you, sure it will, but my money will help you. You see what I'm saying? My stage, my my format will help you, and you will help me, and we help each other, and then I'll be at your ribbon cutting, preying you on next time. Period. Yeah, and that's just the way it works. But people don't have that mentality. A lot of people are envious or jealous or protective or mad or you know, a lot of people burn bridges too in their early years, yeah. Not realizing that when they get up later on, you're still gonna be coming across them people. You know what I'm saying? So a lot don't burn your fucking bridges.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Well, don't burn your bridges, but also know your role. Yeah, like stay in stay in your fucking lane, like know your role where you need to be in that situation. Like, if it is, you're gonna come to somebody and say, you know, I do want to do this, I think this is a good avenue to help me. Like, say you had someone come to you who was a pretty accomplished chef at this point and wanted to come into your kitchen. Like, what would you set their expectations as? Like, you're gonna be here for you know a year, you're not implementing I I don't know the right way to say that, but just like bringing them like advice to someone who does want to possibly open something in the future, what they would do to come to someone who's already established.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

To get like a like to get some in to get some Yeah, like to work for you or to be an executive chef. Like, what what if their goal is to come and work for me so they can learn to go open their own restaurant? I'm probably gonna pass because that's an expensive education on my app. Gotcha. So if they're just coming in to get free education, knowing that that's exactly what they're doing, it doesn't really benefit me to pay them for a whole year to have to just pay someone else to retrain. To really afterwards, and if they're really good at it and their restaurant's gonna be successful, that means um replacing them is gonna cost a lot of money too.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Okay.

Risk Costs And Mental Health

SPEAKER_00 17:33

So it's a double-edged sword. I want to help people, but people who use people like that and just roll off and open it, pretty much you're you're you're at that point stealing concepts at that point. If that's really your goal is to go somewhere for a year just to see what you can do, you're probably going there a year with a notebook taking down notes of what it is you're gonna do that you just learned from them. Okay, it's not you're not really learning that type of education. So I'm not really interested in it. If I don't really have that type of funding to educate somebody for free on my end.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

I mean, let's be honest in the industry, like with the percentage of people who can actually go on and open their own place is pretty small.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

It is.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

It's really I mean it's it's small. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

So so I circle my I'm in the circle of people who are there because that's who we talk to. So if there's 10, if there's 10 restaurants in town, I know all 10 owners, so we run in that circle. But it's very hard to open a restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Percentage-wise, like when you look at yeah, how many people out there go up to it? It's very hard.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yeah, flipping a bill to open a restaurant is very risky, it's very grueling, it's very uh it's it costs a lot of money. Risk is the biggest word, it's very risky. You're you're gonna put a lot in what you cannot get back out of all this is your time. Okay, or your mental. You can't get your mental health, yeah. Your mental health just does not come back. So if you lose it in the process, it's very hard to get that back. Yeah, and sometimes money comes, but your mental never does. So money retrain your brain. You gotta retrain your brain, retrain your brain. That's when you lose the cooking and now you become a businessman because at least you're comfortable in the money. So you lose, you know. So it's so it's you gotta just be careful.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

What looking back at the past, like, you know, decade and a half, if someone was thinking of trying to open, what are some of the things, like words of wisdom that you would impart on them being someone who wants to be a chef owner?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

If you're gonna open up, you have to open up with the understanding that failure is not an option. Don't say, ah, if it doesn't work, I'll just do this. Don't start, don't waste anybody's time. Okay. Especially your own. Number two, if you're gonna go in with a partner, make sure you are legally bounded, binded, and you're legally fucking protected.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Because you will lose everything, including your intellectual property, meaning your recipes, your procedures, your technique, um, all that stuff. So if you're gonna go in with a partner, make sure you are really a partner mentally and you're on the same page. Yeah, because that will, in time, be a problem.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

No, and will always be tested. I mean, you know, you're you're gonna have issues with everything in every business. So legally to protect yourself. I mean, I think they're in creative industries, people don't tend to do that. They don't protect themselves legally, they don't, um, which is sad to see. I don't know if they undervalue what they're doing or they just don't think that they're they're worth also the money.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

I tell people this get a legal investor, not a partner.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

People want to invest with you and then become your partner. Just take their money. Don't take their partnership. Okay. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 20:23

No, that's a that actually is a pretty good way to put it. I mean, I I yeah, I don't know. I just think it is hard in the creative spaces for people to treat it like a business. Yeah, you have to treat every step of it like a business. Even when you're, I mean, if you're just working for someone, I mean, you have contracts, you know, again, you just said like intellectual property. If that person creates something under you, that's yours as an owner. Like they can't take that and make that, you know, somewhere else, depending on the contract. So make sure you spend money on an attorney. Just get a good attorney.

Protect Yourself With Legal Structure

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah, that's you have to protect yourself. That's the biggest thing I would say to somebody coming into the world. You know, if if if I was to sell somebody, if they want to, I hear it all the time. One day I'm gonna open my own place. No, you're not. No, you're not. I'll tell you that because I hope that gives you enough for me to be that guy that says, fuck him, I'm gonna do it because he said no. Because I can't sit here and tell you, yes, you are, you'll do great. It doesn't work that way. I'd rather tell you no, you're not, and be your ambition to say, fuck you, I'm gonna show you and prove you wrong. And I'd rather go, cool. I said that on purpose. Because if you really were gonna open it and I told you no, you're not, you are gonna open it. You know, but if I told you, yeah, all right, good for you, great job, I could say that to everybody who says that and and no, they're not. Okay. See what I'm saying? Yeah, no, so I would rather motivate you on that type of motivation. Now, when I see someone, if if if you're gonna open up your own restaurant, you need a lot of fucking money and you need a lot of support. If you don't have that, stop trying to convince yourself you can do it. Period. It's a lot of risk, a lot of money, and a lot of money is gonna be gone. Just to get your licensing, you're not even gonna get your fucking dinner on the plate yet before you can even understand how much money you just lost.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

It's just spending on just getting to that point.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Correct, correct.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Yeah, so do you think I mean are people chasing the wrong levels of success by doing that? Like, it's not the ultimate definition to be an owner. I mean, I think it is successful. So so you yeah, it depends on the person.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Okay. I I think I think for most people, uh, the the ultimate level of success. Is to own your own restaurant with your name. Okay. I think that's that's it. I think even the most executive chefs in the world, um, deep down inside would want their own restaurant want their name on it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

But the the problem is to become as an executive chef, you have to it you have to invest so much time into that alone that you're not investing your time into making the money it would take to get your own restaurant. So you're kind of stuck in a sense, you know, like in any profession, I think.

A Costly Overexpansion Lesson

SPEAKER_01 22:50

But no, I think every profession, I mean, again, you say you're people want to say they're an entrepreneur, they're not. Like just because you have one one thing you're doing does not make you an entrepreneur. Correct. Like it's a mindset, it's not a it's not just a you know, hey, I'm here, I can do this.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

I think an entrepreneur is somebody who can overcome and keep moving and keep coming up, is very uh very slick and very quick and cunning and ready to make moves.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

And doesn't give up.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yeah, and doesn't give up and doesn't take no for an answer and takes failure the way it's supposed to be taken and move on with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Um, and and that's that's part of being an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

What were what were one of your biggest lessons, like most costly lesson? What was something that you could tell people that you know you really honestly should have either invested money in sooner or cost you the most money in your business?

SPEAKER_00 23:35

I think that I think that I jumped outside of my realm. So at one point in time I was gonna take my um you know the decatering situation. I bought, I had a custom truck made, big 40-foot truck, and it's my literally my kitchen, gourmet kitchen on wheels, not a food truck. This was a gourmet kitchen on wheels, and I was gonna go and do uh wine tastings in the woods, events, uh, events at you know, beautiful higher class, you know, five course dinners that I could bring to a venue somewhere. And you know, hiring people can pay a lot of money. They get that didn't work out. So I lost a lot of money there because manning that and staffing that, I just didn't pay attention to the plan properly.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

You know, I got overzealous, I spent a lot of money not looking at the whole ingredients. I you know, I looked at the ingredients, but not the recipe. Um, so the process of the recipe I didn't pay attention to. So I definitely would anytime from now on, I open up the book and read all of it before I jump in, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

All right. Well, loss is out there, loss prevention is a big thing I've learned from it.

Managing Burnout Without Fairy Tales

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Okay. Okay. So, I mean, in closing, let's just kind of sum it up with this for chef owner burnout. Like, avoiding it, I'm trying to think of the best way. Do we give them advice on how not to avoid it or what they should do to make it better? Like it's kind of like, okay, should we what should we do? You're not gonna avoid it.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

There's always gonna be a time where you get burnt out. If you're doing it right and you're doing it hard and you're going suck fucking all in, there's a there's a you're gonna get it. What you have to learn is how to manage it.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

You have to learn when to step back, you have to learn when to take a break, you have to learn what writer's block is. Look that up, you know what I mean? It happens to artists, it happens to singers, songwriters, um, chefs, artists, everybody, you know, our um poets, whatever you may be. So writer's block is a big thing. Um, mental fatigue, these are things that are it's gonna happen. You cannot avoid chef burnout, okay, but you can learn how to maintain it. So you need to find your happy place and fucking go there, baby. Go to your place.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Like in Happy Gilmar, go to your happy place. Where's your happy place?

SPEAKER_00 25:45

You have to do it. You gotta get your goddamn happy place and you gotta be cool with it. Because if not, you're gonna burn out all the way. All the way. You're always gonna burn out eventually a little bit, but you need to step back then and recharge.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

What is that? Like, we're work-life balance is bullshit. I mean, it's just bullshit. Like someone who says, I wake up and I do two hours of journaling, and then I do this, and then I do that, and on Wednesdays I only do this, and Thursdays I only I it's such bullshit. I mean, I've never had work-life balance in my life. It's just whatever makes you happy and what you can tolerate.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

It's it's not work-life balance, it's just life.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

It's life. It just depends how much you want to put into each restaurant. Where do you want to be?

SPEAKER_00 26:19

If you want to own a restaurant, your life work balance is work.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah, your work. You better love what you do.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Otherwise, you're gonna be fucking miserable.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah, and I can't speak for any other industry. I'm sure they're out there that's the same. It's probably applicable all across the board. But when it comes to restaurants, I know for a fact a restaurant grind is disgustingly gruesome. It is, and if you want to open two of them, like me, I suggest you open up a third one like me too, and really drive yourself insane.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Just drive yourself insane. Yeah. I mean, like, everyone around you. I mean, if you're gonna go, go hard.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Go hard in the paint.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

In the paint.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

So, anyway, that's yeah, that's it.

Final Warning And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_01 26:51

All right, well, that was a good one. All right. Well, if anybody out there does have any other uh words of wisdom on this topic, we'd love to hear about it. Just to see what you've been through and what the biggest struggles were.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

And if you really think you're gonna open a restaurant, my advice to you is run. Run. Run fast.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Run, Forrest, run, run. Run.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Get the fuck out of there.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

All right. Well, I like it. All right.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

No, good luck to you. If you do open it, good luck, man. You just gotta learn how to maintain your mental peace because that's the thing that's gonna get chipped away at the most. So once that goes, there goes your attitude, there goes your uh adrenaline, everything just goes with it.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Well, and if you do open it, invite us for the opening and then invite us two or three years later, and we'll see how it's going.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Peace.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Cheers. Ciao.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Ciao for now. Thank you.