Sweat Equity - The Entrepreneur Podcast
Welcome to Sweat Equity, where ambition meets real life. Hosted by a crew of friends, entrepreneurs, and bar owners, this podcast dives into the raw, unfiltered stories behind building businesses, taking risks, and chasing dreams. From late-night brainstorms to lessons learned the hard way, we talk success, failure, and everything in between — all with laughs, honesty, and a little chaos. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or just love a good story, this is where hustle meets heart.
Sweat Equity - The Entrepreneur Podcast
The Bar Owner Playbook
Thinking about opening a bar? Start with the truth no one wants to hear: if you don’t have real service industry experience, you’re lighting money on fire. We walk through the decisions that matter most—from choosing a location that fits your demographic to carving out a niche guests instantly understand—and share the unglamorous stories that make or break a first-time owner.
We break down the neighborhood calculus behind site selection, how to stand out next to thriving competitors, and the brand signals that turn a room into a community. You’ll hear why the best “marketing” can be a row of coat hooks and a bartender who remembers your name, and how a stale taproom became a buzzing pub by choosing hospitality over hype. On the operations side, we get practical about maintenance realities, from commercial-grade fixtures to the constant abuse a busy bar inflicts on plumbing, and why slow afternoons and tiny sales are part of the path if you stay consistent.
Money and contracts get the spotlight too. We outline the lease terms that protect your runway—free rent, tenant improvements, smarter triple nets—and why we refuse percentage rent. Real buildout numbers and cautionary tales show how a 2,200-square-foot space climbs into the high six figures and why under-budgeting sinks good concepts. Most of all, we talk people: hiring a team that mirrors your standards, managing conflict without losing your anchors, and finding mentors who have opened a dozen places and can save you from costly mistakes.
If you’re ready to pair a clear niche with the right neighborhood, build a team of owners at heart, and negotiate a lease that gives you oxygen, this conversation is your playbook. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s dreaming up a concept, and leave a review with the biggest question you want us to tackle next.
So, welcome to the Unnamed Podcast.
SPEAKER_04:I kind of like it. Unnamed.
SPEAKER_01:Unnamed Podcast.
SPEAKER_04:Unnamed and unsolicited.
SPEAKER_01:Unnamed and unsolicited. Anyway, um, so today we're just going to talk a little bit about if you are getting into a spot where you're you're ready to open a bar and you're a first-time bar owner, kind of the things that you need to have lined up in order to make sure that you start successfully as far as negotiating leases, um, finding a location, funding, backing, whatever that looks like, things like that, your niche, these are all major questions and major uh things that you have to figure out before you can even start. So I think that we have been fortunate where we have, you know, had people reach out to us and we have you know found some really good spots and made some really good deals. So uh throughout the years, we've I guess negotiated four different leases here for up to you know 10 years at a time with some really good terms. So that's some stuff that we want to share with you guys to make sure that you guys get set up for success because that's the main point of this is to really give the ins and outs of getting ready to open a bar. Um the one thing that I would start with is if you are looking to open a bar and you have never been in the service industry, don't do it. Yeah, don't I think that that's just what to lead with. Um so if you have never been in the service industry as far as you know, managing a bar, bartending, serving it, or anything like that, you can just cut us off now because um it's it's it would be doomsday unless you had a really good partner uh that had several really long years of experience in it. Um I do not recommend two buddies that like to drink beer open a bar. Um and that is actually, I'll let you tell a little bit about that. That's actually how we require uh acquired Matt I had a Richardson, is because two brothers wanted to open a bar that liked beer.
SPEAKER_00:So remember that story, yeah. Those two brothers who just really want to open a bar together and that they've always wanted to, I think from they were from Chicago, correct? Yeah, school teams. From Chicago. Yeah, school, yeah, they're from Chicago, and then just one was a teacher, one I'm not gonna lie, what his other job was, but two brothers wanted a bar. They decided to have 30 taps and wine only, and it's just like, all right, cool. One, we walked in there when we originally walked in there, I saw a kitchen. I was like, all right, they're not using the kitchen. Why'd they choose this place? Because I feel like location is a big thing as well, too. And it's like if you're gonna choose to own a bar with no service energy background, with no hospitality background, why'd you do that?
SPEAKER_01:It's gonna weigh a lot of much money on fire for what happened. We actually found that bar on Facebook Marketplace.
SPEAKER_04:That's why I actually did not know that. Facebook is not dead.
SPEAKER_01:Facebook is not dead.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, right. And then I guess. Being in the kitchen, just stay away. I was be honest with you, because you can't interact with anybody the proper way, from to me. I mean, I think you can like your parents can raise you to have great manners, but you gotta have great managers and takes Jan for this industry because they will walk you out the door real fast. They will make you cry. I've never cried, don't get me wrong, but I've watched people. I've seen me cry. You've never seen me cry. Um but uh I've seen people like make hostess cry, service cry, bartenders. I've seen grown men cry over spilt milk at some times, but like it's like they're at their at their boiling point. And they're not even ownership. Right. The ownership side, man, is just like you got to be able to come in and to back your employees on those situations like that. You gotta be able to talk that guest down, talk that employee down. If two employees are going after, you gotta be able to keep them separated to help them understand what they're doing wrong to grow from it and not lose them, especially if you have two really good uh employees. If you have that, that's that could be like the you know, if those two employees are the anchor of your business, your business just walked out the door. Yeah. Um I mean it's I guess it's kind of tougher to say, like, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think that the experience you get is just something that you can't go to college for, you can't buy um it exactly like you were saying, it's just the experience. If you if you don't have it and you don't know it, I mean you've learned it the hard way, but she had a great team that had decades of service industry and management experience, and even you with your fine dining experience. Right.
SPEAKER_00:I even want like the don't go to bartending school, whatever you do, because that that is not the that is not the way you're gonna learn to talk to people in this way. Yeah, it's like you're not gonna be able to talk to people that way. Like that, I mean I guess it's it's the proper way, but you've got to find like your own like style of talking to people, like your own spiel, doing what somebody else is to do. One, you turn into a robot, two, you just don't feel real whatsoever. I tried that a little bit, just all right, this isn't working out.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and that's not even mentioning just like the business side of it, like food cost, labor cost, inventory. It's stuff that people tend to forget if that's not what they're used to seeing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think you mentioned in the last episode that without partners, you would have never it was a dream of yours, like a real life dream of hers, but she knew better to do that. I you know, I always relate it to as I wouldn't be so arrogant to sit down in front of KP's computer and think that I could do the marketing side of anything. No. That that's really what it I think stupidity and arrogance is kind of what I think that it comes down to when people want to do this. It's it's not your average business, it's not uh opening a a laundromat or you know, something like that is definitely not your average business. Um, and it is a very shrewd business at times. So um that would be my first one. I think the second one, what do you guys think? What's what what's the next most important thing point you think?
SPEAKER_04:Location. Location, I like it location, finding a really good location, um, and knowing your niche in in a in a sense, and your demographic and what's around you and what other businesses are around you. I mean, you really have to know the location and what you're getting into. And people are everything. If you don't have your following, or even if you don't have your following, can you create your following in that area that you're wanting to strive and thrive in? Are those are those your people, you know? Um and then, you know, along with the location, what previous business was there before? How did they do, you know? Um, and then your realtor is everything too. So you can look for locations all day long, but you have to find a realtor that you're gonna create a relationship with who is going to find a location for you that's might be not even hit the market yet, you know? So um, and we were fortunate enough to do that with Seared. So uh we got a really good location there.
SPEAKER_01:Even before it hit market, even before it hit the market.
SPEAKER_03:And I think Seared is the perfect example of location, and it, you know, we as a team have always all of our businesses are like that neighborhood field type business. And I'm sure there's some people that would look at where Seared is going to be and think that's kind of a little off the beaten path or not your normal place for a restaurant, but it goes right back to the heart of everything we do, which is having that neighborhood field, and it's right in smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and two really big up-and-coming developing areas like the river district and then the next or white settlement road there. So yeah, location's definitely everything. Um, and I think you mentioned it for a second that when I opened Mad Hatter, I had one never been asked this question, never asked this question to anyone else, but I got asked probably a hundred times the first month that I let people know that I was opening a bar. What's your niche? What's your niche? What's your niche gonna be? You know, um that was just for whatever reason the the number one question. It wasn't what what are you gonna name it? It was what what are you gonna be? Who are you gonna be out there? You know, um, and that was a tough question for me because at first we were so excited about just finding the bar that we really didn't know what it was gonna be, you know, um, which I think is kind of cool and and but kind of scary at the same time. Um but like you were talking about with demographic and location um and finding that location, you can't open, you know, a a a sports bar right next to you know uh up, you know, one that's doing two, three million dollars. It just doesn't make sense. It's like opening a coffee shop a block away from Starbucks. That blows my mind. Kudos for the the courage that people have to open a Starbucks, but I mean, like the location we looked at down on Carroll Street, that was a coffee shop. You have four Starbucks within a half a mile of it. And they wondered why they couldn't figure it out. So, again, speaking to what Bailey was talking about, location and demographic is everything. You need to find what's coming up and and uh what's around you that is so important. Um, you don't want to open something in a saturated market and try to be that same thing, right? Yeah, you're not you you you don't want to, you know, mirror and copy everybody because you're asking people to leave them to come to you, and that just it's a big ass.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so there's pros and cons to having other bars around you. Oh, you know, big pros, big pros. Yeah, big pros. So it's not necessarily always if there's other bars, don't do it because that's a pro.
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah, you just don't want to match them. Yeah, you know, you don't want to, you know, we don't want to open some. We didn't want to make uh everybody so originally if you remember Matt Hatter was an Irish bar because it was Matt Tyrder's pub. He just never opened it. So you got to keep in mind what's right next door to it Pokemon's Pokemon's and the Abbey pub. Yeah, why on earth would I leave it another Irish pub? One, well, at that time I didn't know that I was 27% Irish. I really didn't. I did my 23b and found out. So, but even at that, I I that's not what I wanted to be. You know, it was immediately um a neighborhood pub, and actually it wasn't even that, it was just Matt Hatter. And Matt drove by and said, Chris, I love the name, absolutely love it. But what the hell are you? Are you a hat shop? Yeah, do you fix hats? Do you sell hats? What what are you?
SPEAKER_03:Love that.
SPEAKER_01:And I was like, man, again, it is just the learning things that you you that you you know, and and your um what do you call it? Uh brand and and how you put it out there. Just being a mad hatter was but Matt said, why don't you be the Mad Hatter neighborhood pub? Done, sold, beautiful, love it. And look at it now. People did call by hats before. I remember that. People did call by hats before. And so well, we had a lot of people call about hats.
SPEAKER_04:Still people call it hatters.
SPEAKER_00:There's mad hatter, but there are multiple mad hatters. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I think um niche is a big, a big one, and I think that also f falls into the a little bit of the marking. And is that fair to say?
SPEAKER_03:A hundred percent. I mean that's your brand, that's your positioning statement, it's your it's everything.
SPEAKER_01:And I think it is one again. That was the number one question I got. So I think if that doesn't tell you, that's probably one of the most important things is to find out what you're gonna be. Um, and touching back on what Juwan said about where Matt had a Richardson. If you remember when we walked in, um, guys, there was really nothing on the walls. There was nothing to it, it was just 30 beer taps and some wine glasses here and there, you know, and and a counter that looked like you were at like a burger joint. It was very stale, very, very stale. And so um us coming in and and labeling ourselves a neighborhood pub, we've now really built that little uh, you know, I mean, midnight's like our busiest sales right now because when people get off work and get done with their shifts, that's where they want to go. And that's a pretty cool feeling, right? Especially for us, because we all had that little, you know, especially Woody's for us. We always had that bar that we went to, you know, it's like that was our spot. To own a bar and be somebody's spot, it's pretty cool, right? So um, yeah, your your niche and what you're gonna be is a massive part of what you want to do um or have ready whenever you open a bar. Um obviously your name is a big statement piece, you know, like I just touched on with just being a Matt Hatter.
SPEAKER_04:So I have a question for you. So your niche, you you kind of said you didn't really know what that was gonna be. So it just developed. Did you did it not organically develop? How did because uh whenever I've talked to you, you're like Matt Hatter, I haven't really been so interested. Uh you know, it wasn't anything that just struck you fancy at all. No so did it just organically develop into our own niche, or how did that happen? Because I hopped in and I was just ready to go.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and Matt Hatter had really no relevance to me in my life at the point, anyway. Um, the Matt Hatter movie had just come out, the Tim Burton one. Okay. It was a big popular one. Y'all remember my ex was a big pop, a big Matt uh Tim Burton fan, had the big tattoo and everything. So we were running through names and we were like, Matt Hatter, love it, let's do it. That was the cool story for that. That was nothing exciting. Um that was literally it. Um Bearded Lady was one of them, but I didn't know there was a bearded lady on Magnolia. Okay. Um so that but Bearded Lady was for Fernando, actually. Yeah, we wanted to do that for Fernando. Um uh and because uh whatever shift it was, it was a Monday night. Um Fernando, I was working with Fernando and uh at that time, and and I was we were trying to think of it, and I'm looking I'd call him a bearded lady sometimes. So um anyway, uh RIP my friend. Um yeah, so going back to how it kind of became what it was, if there's an article that got published the first week of me being open, um and that actually speaks a lot to it. I coming from the service industry, I wanted to be that bar like I just described. I wanted to be that bar for everybody to come to and have a good time. So um I uh I um basically thought of it as a small New York style pub, is how I envision it during the winter. If you remember, I put coat racks in there. I put a coat rack in there because I wanted people to come in and I wanted that throw it up, belly up to the bar because we were if I could put a fireplace in that in that place, I mean that would just set it off the rest of the way to really hone into that what I what I envisioned. Um I envisioned um this sounds silly, but like a cold winter night, you come in, you're all bundled up, you throw your jacket on. And as y'all know, Man Hatter is only 800 square uh or 980 square foot, so it's very small. Um so you you know throw your throw your jacket up on the rack and belly up, the bartender already knows you, and there you are, you're with that little group of people. Um that was always my vision.
SPEAKER_04:Well, without the fireplace, we did it.
SPEAKER_01:Dude, we did it. We have definitely did it. I always tell people that bar is if you say square foot per square foot, um, like you say pound for pound, definitely probably one of the busiest bars in Fort Worth. That's something we're very proud of.
SPEAKER_03:It's it's definitely special because it's a lot of times I think that some people get intimidated going into bars where it's a bunch of regulars because you kind of, you know, you may feel like you're not invited or wanted to be there. But like Mad Hatter has this weird thing where even the first day you go, even if you know nobody, within like five minutes, you know everybody and you're back the next day. Yep, yeah. This is true.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that just kind of comes back to um are is your is it a passion for you? I was obviously very passionate about it, and we all were. I mean, Jawan opened it with me, and KP was a very big part of it as well. So um we were all passionate, we all believed in it, and it was what we put our lives into at that point. And so I think again, going back to if you don't have that, if you don't know that passion, it's probably not a good idea. Um and your why.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, like you know, are you passionate just because you want to be able to drink for free? Which you know, you nobody drinks for free, you're still paying for it on the back end. But what's your actual why?
SPEAKER_01:You know, absolutely, and you've had people say, Oh man, I want to open a bar because I can have free pool and free alcohol.
SPEAKER_03:Like, that's no, you still pay for it. Yeah, so one way or another.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So I think um, you know, that's a good segue into talking about how important the people you put around you are um when opening that bar because like I said, we had three successful bars around me, literally sharing a wall with one that does over a hundred thousand dollars uh a month. So me opening up that small spot there and trying to have happy hour, I'm battling, you know, just trying to get one person in there. And I mean, I can't tell you how many day after day after day after day I would open up, you know, open up at two, go sweep, go clean, um, and then you know, just throw the light on at three like everybody else did. And I wouldn't see anybody till seven, eight o'clock sometimes. And that somebody might just open the door, see nobody in there, and just close the door. I mean, that happened. I mean, we had one or two hundred dollar sales nights several times, you know. Um, but it was one of those things like just had to stay consistent, had to believe, and it it it's the grind that you have to put in. Um, and then so you know, everything just kind of obviously slowly got better and better and better and better, but um it it was also the people that I put around me, you know, uh D, Juwan, um Alyssa was one of our opening people. Um, so we had a lot of good people around us, and luckily we had a a service industry following that would get some faces in the door from time to time. So um it's it's not even it's not easy, even though I had such a strong social presence in in the industry, man. And you know, Matt McIntyre told me this one before I opened it. He said, Chris, hear this when I say this, because it is true. I'm telling you guys, it's true. He said, Chris, when you open your bar, the people you think are gonna be at your bar top are the ones that will not be there. Your best friends that you drink with at a bar all the time, they will not leave their spots and come to yours. And he was dead right on that. Not saying you guys didn't come in during the weekends, but the every nighters and stuff like that, where we spent my I spent my night at Woody's and Poorhouse and stuff like that. He spent his nights at Abbey a lot, not to say he didn't come support. He actually obviously worked there for a little bit. But man, I would see his car in the parking lot and he was at Abbey all the time. You know what I mean? And again, not to say he didn't come in support, but he didn't leave his spot, and that was the truth. So is that's a hard truth, and that comes to sometimes you have people that want to see you do good, just not better than them, you know. And being a bar owner comes, and you guys will vouch for this with a lot of jealousy for whatever reason. Yeah, a lot of jealousy. People start showing their true colors. Um, I don't know if that's in every other industry, but I think we've all really, really felt and experienced that. Um, so it's again, it's it's not only a financial deal that you need. Um, you have to be ready mentally and physically for a lot of long, hard, dry, heartbreaking hours ahead of you. You know what I mean? Um it's not it's not a pretty thing at first. Um, of course, there are the ones that people but again, these are people that have already owned bars. I was gonna say that open a bar and it's just wildly successful. Um, and I think we can attest to rabbit hole. I mean, doing the numbers that they do right out of the gate is if old John from down the street owned that, it definitely would not have done what it did. You know, it was because of the decade of work that you guys had put in socializing and building up y'all's business and and people really bought into y'all.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so I think uh if you guys want to speak on the team that you put around you and how important that is, I think that that's really something that drives home for y'all because y'all were the team.
SPEAKER_00:You know, which is kind of like a I wouldn't say a hard one, but you just want to make sure that you have the same people who believe in the same standard and the same thing that you believe in, like, you know, seeing that regular walk-in door, having their shot and drink ready, seeing that regular walk-in door, knowing what they do for work is making sure you're just checking on, hey, how was your day and stuff like that, you know? I mean, uh make sure the team is somewhat a mold of you is absolutely is actually I I I feel like is the the biggest thing because if they don't believe in the business, then you're just dragging somebody along who just wants to make some money, you know.
SPEAKER_04:Like and they are a reflection of us too.
SPEAKER_00:They are a massive reflection of you. I learned that the hard way in Richard. It's like, man, they uh they get they wear your shirt and you go hang out at another bar, like, hey man, your bartender is up here doing this. I love that too because they instead of like bashing the business online, they were cool enough to call the the bar and like, hey, look, I know you're the owner. I know you this isn't you. Your bartenders over here hammered and he's walking, he's fighting, but he's walking his tap. So I had to drive from Richardson to walk rock wall and check on that.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but yeah, that that's that's just one of the bad things. Most most people are great, you know, like rabbit hole people. I mean, I feel like they follow a lot of our like how we were, my Bailey and I were um over at Mad Hatter, so that's why people still come in there. It's between 7 a.m. and 2 a.m.
SPEAKER_03:So we have a lot of day one or something, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We have a lot of those, and it's just like and and those are people like Chris say like like your friends and stuff that you don't see a lot. You do see them, but not as much as they go through other bars. But those are the ones that end up becoming your closer friends than your actual friends, yeah. Because I've actually seen more people drive from rabbit hole that I met at rabbit hole, drive to Richardson, and I met people, I've known people for 10 plus years, go to Richardson. Yeah, and then it'll be like, oh, come to Dallas, watch this Maverick game. Like, when you just drive 10 minutes north and come to Richardson, oh 12 minutes north. Yeah. It was like, oh well, that's that's a little far. I was like, cool, bro.
SPEAKER_01:That was a big pill for Juwan to swallow.
SPEAKER_00:I remember that because that was like one of the hardest and annoying things I've got.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people left you with empty promises of of uh, you know, yeah, though that's what I said. I mean, you think that those are gonna be your ride or dies that you hang out with every day and and that you support as well heavily um are gonna be the ones that will do that for you.
SPEAKER_00:The moment the moment you stop showing their place, hey man, where you've been, you know where I've been.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um I think uh a little bit too, I think we could touch on as well, um a little bit on y'all's personal lives, how that has also, as a bar owner, because our phones are on 24 hours a day. And I think that's as an entrepreneur for most people. Obviously, you do have some business that are online maybe that are just done at that time and you don't deal with that. But for us, our phones are on 24-7. And it's not just um, you know, they don't call us at three o'clock in the morning to give us good news.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know what I mean? So um you're married, you're engaged, um, you're navigating, uh, as am I like as amongst the um I would say, and obviously, me coming out of uh an eight and a half year relationship uh throughout the last eight years of entrepreneurship, I can speak on that a little bit too, but I would like to hear, you know, it's not just opening a bar. This is your life, it is your baby, it is a constant. And so I think another important point to just touch on for a second is your personal life and how that react, you know, how that is. And I mean, you know, you were just mentioned about you know that people will show you their true colors, you know. Um, and then all of a sudden you own a bar and you're rich and too good for someone. Yeah, right? Right, but those are the ones that all of a sudden did this whenever you became successful or tried started that path.
SPEAKER_00:It's never your first name anymore. It's like, hey, this isn't Juan, this isn't KP, this isn't Bay, this isn't Chris, this is this is them. They own this. Why I used to tell them. It's no longer your name anymore. Oh, yeah, this is my buddy Joan, he owns this. Like, yep. Why'd you tell him that?
SPEAKER_02:We don't want people to know.
SPEAKER_00:I used to mind people knowing, but just like, I'm I'm still just Joan, bro.
SPEAKER_03:I need the world to know that I own this place like today, especially when I'm not working.
SPEAKER_00:Like an event where like there are multiple owners dumb talking with and stuff like that. If it's like network, it's like network work. Cool, I understand that, but yeah, bro, don't tell somebody like hey, this is Jordan that he owns a bar because I went to the cowboy team.
SPEAKER_02:Like, bro, I watched the cowboy team. I love this.
SPEAKER_01:I love this because I live this and I was it it drove me nuts. You remember I used to tell you this you used to do the same thing. Yeah. You know, I was never any more. I was never Chris, I was always Chris Jordan. And it's, hey, this is Chris Jordan, he owns Matt Hatter. I'm like, uh did he ask? You know, like just Chris like that.
SPEAKER_02:So that teacher was again.
SPEAKER_00:What do you do? You know, like now you're stuck in the work conversation. I was like, and you don't know me. If I'm out, I'm like, I don't want to talk more.
SPEAKER_01:Obviously, it's humbling that they want to talk to say that. Again, I'm not sure why it needs to be said. I don't say, hey, this is Kristen, she's a marketing expert. Hey, this is this is Oscar, he he's our camera guy. You know, I don't do hey, this is Oscar. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00:Like Alright, bro, or the pizza.
SPEAKER_01:And what you know, this may not be true for everything, but one time I read this deal and it said people will ask you what you do to figure out how much respect they're gonna give you. You know, and that was a tough one. And like you said, I heard you just say a second ago, we don't want I never Hey I'm Chris Jordan, I own the man header. You know what I mean? Like, never. And the same thing, like I don't want people to know that, especially me. I've tried to remove myself so much. I mean, you guys, it's still important that they know you. Um, but I used to tell them all the time, you will no longer be Bailey Bats, you will be Bailey Bat that owns Rabbit Hole, you will no longer be KP, you will be KP that owns rabbit hole. That is your name now.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's also so awkward when you're there and people say, What do you do here? And I really just want to say I clean and I fix the toilets and I'm guilty of that. So we go right to the city. I'm like, do we say I'm the owner? Because that kind of makes me cringe a little bit. Because I am the owner. I love being the owner. I love what we do, but it's like bragging. Yeah, I don't want to be able to do that. And then I feel like I'm bragging and then ooh.
SPEAKER_01:I'm saying head custodian. All the time, that's what it's head custodian. You're gonna be the head custodian, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So I still stumble over the I'm a bartender.
SPEAKER_01:When Jason Newman um came one of the times at Rabbit Hole, it was last year for the golf tournament. I've known Jason Newman almost my entire life. And he walks and I walk in. Hey, what are you doing here?
SPEAKER_04:Uh and you know he was just jacking with you, right?
SPEAKER_01:No, he had no idea.
SPEAKER_04:He was serious, yeah. He didn't know he was one of the ownership. That was like a couple of you like I was kind of shocked. You were like, come on, man.
SPEAKER_01:I was kind of shocked, but then whenever they said no, he he's one of the owners. Oh, wow. Like, wow, you know what I mean? So um, yeah, but I when when I heard that one time, and I hate to think that people that's really what people do, um, because I think you know, really what shows people's true characters is how they treat the janitor and how they treat the president, you know. And I remember one day in my high school, and this is a little off subject, but I saw the the the the principal mopping up throw up in the middle of the hallway. That said something to me, and nine years later, I'm seeing No, this many years later, I remember that. Yeah, I I remember that as plain as day. He literally this sounds cliche, had his sleeves rolled up, the mop bucket, and mopping.
SPEAKER_03:And we've all done it. Absolutely, absolutely we've had our hands you know down the toilet like it's because we're trying to deliver a big cow.
SPEAKER_01:You know, deliver a baby cow.
SPEAKER_00:Dude, no, there's so far.
SPEAKER_01:And so that is that's people that owning a bar is just a beautiful luxurious thing all the time, and it is a lot, a lot of work.
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah, it's yeah, it's homeownership, it's um therapy. You're a therapist, you um you're an electrician, you um you break up five. It's the weirdest thing. You get a really huge problem.
SPEAKER_00:Literally, everybody, like kind of what we explained about like going out their way to help one another, to do the things that nobody else would do, were sitting at the table last night.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They were sitting at the table last night. Like we I've seen Clayton clean up, throw up, I've seen Keith on the floor scrubbing. Everybody that was willing to do that, they were sitting at the table last night. Yeah, that's a good point. I understand. I didn't think about it until just now. That's why they're all in the position that they're in now.
SPEAKER_01:And that's the reason you guys are in the position y'all are in, for sure. I mean, it wasn't I didn't look at any other employees and go, man, I have to take them along. You know what I mean? That's true. And that's what I've always said is I and you know, the way I like to think about with with Cody, with um, you know, Shay out in Richardson, it's like if we open another spot, you should give me no doubt you're coming with. You're you're some sort of person in this in this role because you were you did me so good over here. I need to promote you over here because that you bought in to what we're doing, and we're able to be successful because of those type people. So I think that again hones right back into the people that you put around you and the experience they have.
SPEAKER_04:Experience is a lot, and I didn't feel like I had enough experience prior to Richardson. So I made a hard choice during that time two and a half years ago, and you know, I did it out of respect to everybody in this room, you know. I made the choice to not go with him to Richardson. I didn't have the confidence in myself to do that at this at that time. Now, could y'all have led me and taught me? Absolutely. There should have been no if, ands, or buts about it. But that's the choice that I made. And I was still, yeah. You were still there was a lot of factors.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you were still nocturnal. We'll just say that. I still um she lived a nocturnal life. But she ran the bar at night. So that's you know, that was another part of it. It's not you know, it's a lot of it all. So um, yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03:Speaking of us like having to do everything, this will kind of take it back to the original subject, is it the maintenance of the building. So when you're pick picking your location, but I think that was my biggest shock coming into this. You don't realize how much maintenance there is to keep a building running, especially one that has hundreds of drunk people. And they're not drunk, but drinking people, right? And they don't treat your stuff like it's their own. They'll flush airplane bottles down the toilet, they'll flush high noon candy down the toilet, they'll under garments, under the toilet, everything. And so that was my biggest surprise. So, like when you're looking at your location, location, finding something that maybe is new or is sometimes nice, you know. Are they commercial grade toilets? How long has this three compartment sink been here? How are these pipes old ones? Are they new ones? You know, stuff like that. New just because it's being used and abused. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that if you guys have any questions, I think at some point, if y'all want us to talk about like the ins and outs of the actual negotiating leases and and everything that goes into that, because there's a lot into that. I think that could be its own little stint now that I'm thinking about it. So if y'all want to know how we've negotiated incredible leases, just drop a comment and we'll we'll definitely touch on it in another episode or help you and answer any questions on the side that we can because that is one big deal. Like Bailey mentioned earlier, is the location, but the location and how much you're paying for that. Yeah, and how long is it gonna take you to get open?
SPEAKER_02:What's the yeah?
SPEAKER_01:The things that you have to know to negotiate. You can negotiate free rent for months, you can negotiate your triple nets, you can negotiate your percentage rent. Like we don't pay percentage rent on any of our locations because I negotiated that out of it. I will I just I won't don't want to do that. Yeah, you gotta know to be um ask for TI because they're not gonna offer these things to you, they want your money. So I think that could be a really good follow-up to this. And if you guys have any questions on that, that's something I think we're all very knowledgeable on that we could um life lessons have taught us. So um, but I think that that's a pretty good start to you know, a couple list things that you need, your location, your niche. Don't do it if you never had the experience. And and um, you know, what was the other thing we like to do? Put the good people around you, put the good people around you. Um, I think that's really the beginning recipe. I think you know, we can go into our next episode what it actually cost, because where I budgeted for$125,000 at Rabbit Hole, I spent over a half a million dollars. Where we budgeted for very little at Richardson, we spent almost$300,000. So funding and and capital is a very big thing to make sure that you have because if you don't, you can sink your ship very quickly. Um, y'all remember when we were looking at the other location up White Settlement Road, it's 5,300 square foot. And I called Emil and I said, Hey man, I've got about a quarter million to$300,000 cash right now. And he said, Well, how big is it? I said,$5,300 square foot. He said, Chris, you're gonna run out of money. No, I want a meal. Chris, I'm telling you right now, unless you have a million dollars to spend in that building, you will run out of money. Rabbit hole is two 2,200 square foot width the patio, and I spent half a million. He was dead right. But how many bars and restaurants has he opened? 10, 12? He's experienced, and that's another thing. The people around you lean on them. You know, an apprenti not an apprentice, a uh mentor is a very big thing to have in your pocket. Luckily, I had John Hinkle, I had Matt McIntyre, and I had a meal. Those were the people, the three people I called when I had big questions. When I was getting hit with T ABC things or lost, you know, these type things. Lean on the people that know what they're doing. And again, that goes right back into if you've never done it, you can find yourself in a world of hurt. Hundreds of thousands of dollars world of hurt. So um, I think that's another another episode, but um I think it's an extremely important one, especially with what we went through in Richardson rabbit hole and what we are currently living right now. So, yeah. Do you guys have anything to add to the end?
SPEAKER_04:No, I was gonna say, and even like you said, even if you have all the funding in the world and you have all the money in the world, you're just gonna light it on fire if you have no experience.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:So be cautious.
SPEAKER_01:Perfect. Well, guys, uh next episode.