21 Hats Podcast, Special Episode, Part 2: We Want to Talk to You About the Bread

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm Lauren Feldman your host today we bring you part two of our special February 13th taping before a live audience at the offices of blank in Seattle in part two we have a real treat for you it's a conversation with Brian Canlis who is co-owner of a renowned family-owned Seattle restaurant called Canlis he has a great story to tell and he tells it very well taking us through what happened when he and his brother took over the third-generation business from his parents how they reinvented the restaurant how their changes scared off a lot of regular customers how they ran smack into the Great Recession along the way we're joined by regular guest Karen Clark Cole Jay Colts Dana White and Laura Zander as well as by the live audience here we go [Music] at this point I'd like to call up our special guest Brian Canlis to join us here when I first told Karen that I had met you and wanted to invite you to do this I started hitting new this was stupid but I did it anyway for some reason do you know this restaurant Canlis and she said to me that Lauren that's like if I said to you have you heard of this building the Empire State Building I'm from New Jersey so that was it's been there a long time thanks for for joining us here today you and your brother took over the family business it's been around for 70 years or not or so now we turned 70 this year you took over more than 10 years ago maybe 13 yeah we came back about 15 years ago and we started my parents stopped coming to work about 12 years ago and what I want to dive right into is you and your brother had a vision you made a bunch of changes it didn't all go exactly the way you hoped it was terribly yeah people hated it your parents retain some ownership they had made a loan to you to do the transactions what was the worst moment with your parents when things were not going well the worst moment we were sitting on table 54 in the bar because my parents did they do this ominous thing where they say can we just sit down for a little bit and my brother and I were both working the floor but it was early 5:30 so it was slow in fact that year it was slow every night and it was 2009 and we sat down parents sat down and they said we won't talk to you about the bread we're like oh awesome great topic we just built a new spent a lot of money building this new oven it was about 20 hours lower oven we hired it are the best Baker we could find in the city we had been buying bread before now we were gonna bake it ourselves and it was one of our steps and D becoming a a great fine dining restaurant you have to make you own bread and they're like we hate the bread and we're like well mom and dad you're wrong bought bread is not as good as as our new fancy bread and they and they said we don't care like we don't care and I don't think your guests care that you bake your own bread if it doesn't taste as good that devolved into a conversation as we think most of the decisions that you're making aren't the ones that the guest wants and we did lose 10,000 guests that year and we lost money for the first time as a company ever that year and we got three negative reviews in the paper and we were averaging about a dozen complaint letters a week about how much they thought mark and I were destroying a family legacy that was a low moment they our ability to be profitable was our ability to pay back the loan to my parents to buy the company which represented their retirement that was their that was their nest egg they didn't have a wad of cash they had the restaurant and they sold it to us and our ability to keep it successful was their ability to grow old and retire so there was a lot on the line so before you tell us how it worked out let's back up for a moment now tell us give us a little bit of the background your grandfather started the restaurant what was the restaurant like then what restaurant did he start he built that restaurant in 1950 in its current location he built it as a home and a restaurant the top level was his home the bottom level was the restaurant it was so far outside of town on the road to Alaska because it was the highway that everyone took for the gold rush he said if it's within a dollar cab ride of downtown people will come the the paper the Seattle PI was like it's like no one's gonna go it's too far away it became you know he was an early social media genius before social media he he claimed on the phones for the first few months that you couldn't get it like they would call for reservations like sorry were full we weren't it was empty but word went around the city that you couldn't get in that's a that's a ballsy risk yeah he would go to all the clubs and have him have him suck the social clubs and have himself paged they're like wow this guy's everyone's trying to get ahold of him um he was he was a character and he he famously kicked out the mayor of Seattle for not wearing a tie which created a story which created press and he famously started this rumor that I still hear about today that if you don't spend enough at Canlis they're gonna slip you a card to ask you to never return is that not true it is it is both true and not true the person who tipped off the press on that rumor was my grandfather he invented the story to get press he loved the idea of being exclusive he loved the idea of people talking about him he offered a reward in the paper of a thousand bars of cash if anyone could produce this card and it was this thing and everyone said you know find the card and he would angrily say no one has ever showed this card to me and this lies field he built the entire thing that was my grandfather and he was about being exclusive and about being the best and about creating one of the world's greatest restaurants and he did that in the 50s and 60s your parents took over and ran it for 30 years yeah my dad was a banker in California and my grandfather showed up at his bank and said hadn't seen my dad in years said I'll be dead in a year I'm leaving the whole company to you you might want to move to Seattle and learn how to run a restaurant and so my dad packed up our family my mom was pregnant with me in our station wagon and drove the Seattle and learned to run a restaurant and my dad my grandfather was dead within six months and I was born two months later so that's how my parents reluctantly took over and what kind of restaurant did they run and what did they do with it I mean they did a great job they they kept it alive for 30 more years and and flourished and gave me a wonderful quality of life as a kid they turned my grandfather recipe a little bit on its head and they wanted to make the restaurant about being inclusive they wanted to make it about being a good family member to the neighborhood and the community and they were super involved in all these on profits and raising money and in throwing events that generated a ton of money they cared about humanity in a really beautiful way that my grandfather never did and they ran a darn good restaurant the hard part was in the 2000s Food Network came along and the birth of one of my least favorite words on earth the foodie occurred and so restaurants went through restaurants did a hockey stick of evolution where fine dining didn't change that much back in the day I mean and suddenly chefs became celebrities and dining became something that was social and that you wanted to it wasn't about C and being seen in a dining room as a regular it was about telling your friends where you had been is about proving how cool you are and your taste and who you knew and Instagram yeah and so the the industry started rapidly evolving you had restaurants like El Bulli and Spain just north of Barcelona doing things that people have never seen before in blowing people's minds and my parents were like I don't I don't think we have this in us we've been running a great restaurant for thirty years it was profitable the entire time which is hard in our business and my brother and I were both officers in the Air Force at the time we had gone away to my parents wouldn't pay for college they made us pay for it so we figured out how to do that through Air Force scholarships and they said if you guys were thinking about selling the restaurant because I think we're tired so if you want to crack at it you might want to come home and try it and so that's what we entered into and when you took over the restaurant before that difficult seating at the the table that you told us about what was your vision what was we didn't really have one we we both started as dishwashers and we both worked in the kitchen back then there were six people in the kitchen plus the dishwashers now we have about 25 and we do almost half the covers so it's a very different model now we had been Busboys and it was all we knew about fine dining was this restaurant we knew we loved the history we grew up going to sleep under dining room tables and that place was like a second home to us but it was our version of the best fine dining there was on my Air Force money I didn't do find anything very much so we were pretty sheltered we got nominated for a James Beard Award in 2005 right when we came back for best service in the country and we thought that was pretty hot stuff and we went out to New York and we dined at the four other nominees who were all in New York City and all four of those restaurants were so much better than ours it was a terrible wonderful frightening thing it'd be like discovering wool that was so much better than your wool like what do you do we had no idea how behind we were when it came to what restaurants had become and so that was when we got excited actually because there's like oh we don't have to run our parents restaurant we can run something that we've never seen before in Seattle and so we set out to become a restaurant that could compete with the greatest restaurants in the world and that was the slow decline that led to table 54 of bleeding money and almost losing the entire business so how did you and your brother respond at table 54 when your parents confronted you and told you that this is not working um not as well as we could have we we just we disagreed we it took us a while to realize that they were right it wasn't as good the bread in their minds I mean I remember when we switched from Starbucks coffee in our dining room to this incredible fancy beautiful coffee that was grown just for us and we flew down to Costa note Guatemala Guatemala we flew down to Guatemala to meet our farmers and pick out our lot and make sure that it was sustainable and it was it was it was incredible and we brought this new coffee back in our pastry chef worked with it and we did the roast perfectly to our liking and it was the perfect pairing with most of our desserts versus the very roasty flavor of Starbucks which isn't necessarily great with food and we were like behold it's our new coffee and and everyone hated it and we said what are you doing like this is better and and they're like it just because it's better doesn't mean it's better and so we did those two the bread even though it was better if you've been having the old bread for 20 years you don't want the new bread and so we made that switch too abruptly we didn't Honor we disagree said you're wrong for not liking the coffee or the bread instead of being curious about why or what they were connecting to or telling them the story and so I'll never forget this they're actually dining tonight um this couple who dies on table 26 who and and we brought them the new coffee and they're like this is disgusting and we're like and they said that to you oh yeah absolutely and they you know take it away okay so they dine every week and um except in the middle of there they took a few years off but they the next time we brought them the old coffee and they're like thank goodness you're you're you're bringing the restaurant back to where it should be and we said no problem and then the next time we brought the old coffee to make sure cuz it was a pattern and then the next time we brought the old coffee and then we also brought the new coffee with dessert and said hey just for fun we're thinking about this new coffee what do you think there's no pressure and they're like no that's fun and then the next time we brought both coffees and then the next time they asked for both coffees and then the next time and it's nice to have regular guests they said you know what this this new coffee is super fun we think it tastes better with the dessert we're like oh you do what a wonderful discovery and then the next time they said just bring the new coffee and so we did that with what guess we we learned to take some of the old our ones along for the ride instead of telling them that they were wrong we used to have all the silverware on the table like 10 different is ridiculous why do you need the dessert spoon on the table when you sit down it's so dumb and so what we did is the what fine dining does today is there's no silverware right you only get the thing that you need the moment that you need it and so why give someone a bread knife when there's no butter on the table it makes no sense well some of the guests were like we want our silverware back and instead of telling them that's ridiculous which it is we just set the table the old way so you walk in give a night and there are all these beautiful tables and then three of them was covered in silverware it made no sense but but it was a way to not tell people that they were wrong and so in that moment with my parents with the bread it was a learning moment for us of secular my parents aren't making this up they do like the bad bread better so how are we gonna we were making the restaurant better with the food that we were making with 25 cooks in the kitchen versus six was better it was also more sustainable more beautiful more delicious and more healthy like it's better but when you have a legacy that's at the time 60 years going you better it doesn't mean better and so we asked our parents to have faith in us I mean they raised us well we said he raised us like come on have some faith and we had a board at the time and the board was very successful in the restaurant business and they were like listen to your sons I know they're young and kind of stupid but what they're doing will ensure that camless is going to be around for the future did you and your brother always see eye to eye yeah it's been a crazy gift that we are super aligned we fight a lot and we always agree in little things but the big things we've always agreed on you won over your parents apparently are they're big fans now eventually yeah they're not living in a trailer park somewhere their home is so much nicer than mine how about customers did you have to turn over customers did you gradually lose the customers who like the old way and bring in new I would say about I'd say we obviously 90% of our regulars don't lager come back to this day which is a big deal what did you have to go looking for those new ones or did word spread well yeah we also redefined irregular so we now call our regular someone who dines twice a year it's it's it's it's a yeah twice here that's a regular regulars used to be every week that's that's gone loyalty isn't a thing anymore in that way and so if week so yeah I we we threw ourselves a small pity party then we moved on and figured out what does it look like because at the same time the world was changing and dining tourism which is still huge it's one of the first things people do is they make reservations before they make their flights so you you made a lot of changes you've told us about the coffee baking your own bread I think quit drooping the number of people in the kitchen maybe having the number of meals you're serving no we like removes tables we simply we decrease the amount of people that we allow at each table so something else had to change your prices had a change I'm guessing now what was that like how did you introduce it had how did you accomplish that was that difficult well one of the things yes one of the things that we did was we had an experience at Disneyland where you realize you pay one hefty price up front and then there's this beautiful freedom to go on any ride you want and every restaurant you go to there's this tyranny of choice of do I want the salad or the or the lamb or the steak like well once ten dollars more than the other like why should that matter and you you start doing math at the table all the time of what's more important my desire in this moment or my budget and and then the valet was an extra seven dollars to get your car parked and then this was an extra and we realized what a bummer it is to make people do math at the table and so we'd switched to one price for the whole experience only one price you saw it last night on the menu there's one price no matter what you order no matter what you get and that price includes valet parking and coat warming and coat warming and and so when we turned it into an experience instead of someone because before we had to raise our prices we change our salad from $20 to $22 and someone's like salad down the street is $16 like what right do you have charging 22 we're like well the chair you're sitting in cost three thousand dollars which is true but they don't count those things and so once we took the price out and we made the price one and we started at 1:15 it was our opening price for the for a four-course menu it's now 1:35 every price increase we've done in the last seven years I don't think we have a single complaint because it's this one it's like oh the price is the price of Crystal Mountain I went up five dollars it doesn't matter like you get to go wherever you want once you're in this is gonna be odd but the picture framing industry has gone through a similar thing where at the bottom part of the market has been sucked off by the phony sales at the department stores and stuff and the people that are in business today got better and are appealing to the people that want better and nicer and the prices have gone up and more exclusive and that's my wholesale line I sell better stuff in Italy in Spain and you change customer you just you you went after a more stable market which is people that want better and nicer in the mass market people don't do that well they want an experience so they're no longer buying no one comes to camelus cuz they're hungry they they come because tonight matters for some reason and they want to market they want an experience and to put one number two that experience is awesome what I love about Brian's story that's a user experience story that's exactly what it is totally awesome like right from when you pull up in your car that's a user experience the way the guy no tickets I mean you said there's no numbers in your restaurant and it's Wow all you have to do is actually watch when somebody gets up and they're about to leave and that's wow that's amazing that yeah it's one of my huge pet peeves that when you do valet or a coat-check someone gives you a number because all they're saying to you is you don't matter enough to me for me to remember you like if Beyonce came no one would give her a number like you wouldn't Oh Beyonce here's your coat check are you gonna remember you also ever was gonna try out me on say his coat in the courtroom like and so by giving someone a number all you're saying is you don't matter and so by not giving someone a number you are subconsciously telling them I care so much about you that I'm gonna remember you when you come and no we don't remember their face we have systems secretly behind the scenes like what could you tell us one I have exact same system at perrolli boy at perrolli boy we have three hooks here ten hooks here three hooks here and the same above your coat is placed on when you came in and so when we see you in the fourth station or the third station we know which code is yours and if you have somebody with you you're on the second hook of that same group of hooks is that the idea you're almost exactly yeah but actually parked the cars like the dining room is because you're in the bubble when you're dining you don't realize the valet probably walks by your table a dozen times a night did you notice I didn't know probably why your table a dozen times so all he's doing is he's they do laps around the dining room waiting for checks to get dropped so soon as a check strap they know they have to - those evil guests who wait for an hour but and so what they do is they go back to the team and they're like okay they're in this table which is this actually a parking lot and between the three of them they can figure out oh I remember who that was and then they but the duels will stay with the front desk and they'll watch for you to stand up as soon as you stand up they go and get your car cuz they already know where it is and now sometimes you go to the bathroom and your cars waiting you're like wise and we times we screw up but that's all it is and you know what it's so much more fun okay because it's challenging and it's relational and those valleys it's a magic trick and the guests coming out can't believe it and so you better believe that the valleys want to work at can less it's harder and because it's harder it's so much more fun and more rewarding having someone take a ticket and put a number on it a monkey can do that like it's not that's not difficult but to challenge someone to say you want to deliver the greatest holiday experience in the world that's fun if people want to rise that to that occasion all of us we've got to go there for dinner last night and all of our coats were there waiting by a person holding them by the fire and then they proceeded to put it on us so that actually takes a number of people though to have be able to hold that many coats and same with the valet if you've got everyone the car is exactly lined up on time that you have to hire enough people so I'm curious is that rolled into your price - have you talked about your kitchen staff being triple what it was and obviously you've got coat holders and ballets so for 135 dollars you do get the coat here I'll be honest with you at at 8:30 those cars are on getting heated that's the turn so most of the guests the second turns arriving and the first turns leaving and it's it's chaos and we probably heat one out of ten coats but at the end of the night when you're leaving my entire staff is there and there's five tables left oh my gosh every detail has to be perfect or were over idiots or were just lazy so yeah at the beginning of the night and at the end of the night the the details are what keep you engaged and excited and fun and but in that middle that I know it's it's it's not a rule that every code has to be heated because that would be a disaster it's when you have the margin you do it because it makes people so happy what's your reservation length now how long does it take it's totally booked it's totally booked for how long and I want to know if that's really true yeah that sounds like so no I mean the the first quarters are slowest quarter but weekends are always booked about three months out for a weekday you can get a reservation pretty easily if it's not between the hours at 6 & 8 6 & 8 you need to book a couple weeks out still but like December the whole month will book out a few months early so yeah Brian it was fun for me having dinner with these entrepreneurs watching the performance of your employees they were they were amazed at the the way the whole event was synchronized the performance aspect of it and the way the employees truly seemed to be enjoying themselves and putting their heart into what they appreciated it it wasn't just a mate we appreciate it we knew what it took for you to get that to work like that and we all appreciated the fact that you got it to work nicely and it worked but they also want to know how you found those people and hired them what what's your hiring process like you know it starts with an unusual mission statement it'd be hard to get out of bed every day for just serving dinner for my employees - I think that would get old so our mission statement is it's kind of like yours of changing the world of we're literally trying to change the world and I know that sounds big but why not so our mission statement is to inspire all people to turn towards one another and in a world where everyone seems to be keep turning their backs on each other to have conversations what can happen when you actually turn towards one another is magical and that happens often beautifully at a table but it also happens in the way that we treat our vendors what is turning towards look like or our neighborhood what if we were to inspire people that it's worth it no matter who is across from you no matter class race color whatever they believe like you turn towards and and that's really powerful and we live in we exist in a world fine dining that is notorious for depression suicide alcoholism it's a broken families it's a restaurant sir rough and it's horribly ironic because we're supposed to be in the business of restoration and serving and yet we are some of the most broken people out there and then Food Network didn't help because they celebrated chefs that HAARP abuse on people and you have so much sexual harassment that is glorified and it's hard it's a bad industry and so we decided okay let's exist maybe if we can do this thing and we can inspire the world of how much more fun and more exciting it is to turn towards and then what's our strategy for doing that become the best restaurant America because no one cares if you're the worst restaurant in America what you believe no one listens to the Oscar acceptance speech of the loser so but are the the reason we exist isn't it become the best that's just our strategy to get there and when we interview someone we tell them that story and we said I don't come here if that doesn't like float your boat like if you're if you don't get tingles about trying to change the world through this thing please go home also working here is really hard and most people quit and so we make them work yeah then we make people stas for a night which is do an entire shift before they're hired and in the kitchen they have to do too and most people D self-select out after it because they don't realize how much work it takes you do pay him though right we do but we pay less you can make more money doing less work at most restaurants in the city because I have 115 employees for sometimes 115 guests like there's just it just doesn't work the numbers and and so you have to want to be a can less for way higher reasons than making the most money and so we tell people that you're gonna work harder you gonna make less money you're gonna change the world and we make them work a shift and then we say we never let them accept the job that night even if we want them we say you have to go home and you have to ask the people who love you you have to tell them all the worst things about working here and you have to tell them if I work here this is what I'll make less money and I'll work harder and I might change the world but probably not maybe take a hot butt and do you think it's the best thing for my life to work here and only if the people who love you are totally behind it then send them into battle with with those people cheering you on and so it makes hiring very expensive very long and very difficult but you build a team of people who are totally on board and then once they're on board how long do they stay on average not as long as I wished because the problem is where were most often hiring people where they have much bigger dreams than working in a restaurant the rest of their life I think working restaurant rest your life is awesome I'm doing it the majority of my managers are ten-year people but there that's that's 15 percent of our company the other 85% are hourly workers who want to run their own businesses like their we hired the type of people with big dreams big dreams are awesome and if you fight them then everyone loses but if you embrace them I mean the parties that we throw when people leave are some of our best parties because we are creating if we're gonna change the world and inspire everyone to turn towards one another it means making our restaurant into a university that teaches a school of thought and sends out alumni across the world to change their restaurants and so when we look at it that way like oh you want to leave let's throw a party cuz that's awesome and that that's a hard switch because it's just very expensive I'm gonna open this up for questions in a second one last one Brian from me how do you go about hiring a chef when your goal is to be the best restaurant in the world you find the best chef it's my strategy how do you hire a chef when your strategy is to have the best restaurant in the world well you have to find a chef that agrees with the mission first and who has the values first that's more important than his ability to cook because his belief won't change over time and his ability to cook will get better I have to tell you you're correct those cooking shows are shameful some of them where they're screaming at the top and humiliating people on national television it really it's really nice exchanging some of your most notorious shouty chefs are repenting and learning that you know it if I actually love my employees the food tastes better it's it's there's a movement which is great maybe we were a small part of that and that would be awesome but in this particular case when we found Brady he was a 28 year old child slinging pizzas in Brooklyn how do you know that somebody who's making pizza in Brooklyn is capable of running it was a risk well I mean he so he wasn't cooked for you did you absolutely yeah it was a restaurant called Roberta's but on the backside of Roberta's was a little secret two-star Michelin restaurant which was a 20 course tasting menu that he also um was executive sous-chef at that restaurant he could do both he could do volume which were a big restaurant and he could do tweezer food and so we were inspired by him I had dinner with him in New York because I moved to New York to help open a restaurant it's a different story and I was pretty taken with this guy and he started cooking really late because he was gonna be a professional hockey player and blew out his knee and at the age of 20 he had no career and nothing to do and started cooking so he had only been in the business eight years which is nothing and he kind of blew my mind and so we flew him we had another woman we were about to hire as executive chef we were so excited she's from New York and we had taken it we had her met her husband and but she was the one and then Brady was this dark horse late contender and we flew him to Seattle with his wife and he cooked for us and that meal blew our minds that meal felt like something it was food we'd never had before it was food that was five years into the future and that it was the most like one of the most exciting meals I've ever had was when he he cooked and we hired him we that weekend we're like this if you want it and he had they had plans to open their own restaurant in Brooklyn and so it was a big deal that they chose to come out got a question hi my name is avian thank you for being here I really appreciate your time your stories and all of your wisdom I have a question and it's two-part my question is how do you optimize employee happiness and interpersonal / professional growth and what do you do to groom them for leadership and especially interested in your answer just because you work in a really tough industry with a lot of high turnover and dealing with potentially like really pretentious or hide really demanding clients people always say to me how do you motivate people and I always say well what is there maybe six ways to motivate people how many ways you D motivate people about a hundred and fifty so then what I've seen a lot of bosses and I've been in lots of business groups and I have to tell you treating people with respect and not yelling at them is an example you talk to the typical entre well I yell once a while but that's cuz I'm a passion and I go no you're an and and I used to when I was younger I was out of control I was growing like crazy I find that if you treat people with respect and you give them some room to do their job they feel like it's their own and they are motivated because they're on the mission with you because just just like you we feel like we're changing the world I know it sounds silly but someone brings something in to get framed it's really important to them and we feel great that we've got something nicer and better and we're gonna get it done on time and they're gonna have it for their party or whatever and my all my employees are behind me with they're all on the same page with being mission driven so I think if you treat people properly and respectfully and you hire carefully which is incredibly important you have to hire carefully nine out of ten people that you interview are not right for the job and that was a long lesson I learned over the years if you hire the right people and you give them and they join your mission it's not as hard it's it's not that hard I think you gotta have a lot of fun we I think it's it's a betrayal of our values if we put more energy into the guest experience than we do the employee experience and so we do an inordinate amount of time and effort and into the end of doing things that are fun shutting down the restaurant late at night and throwing a laser tag party we we do costume parties for our staff all the time they they're probably really tired of dressing up but we do something called camp Canlis where we take everyone out into the woods and we camp and we played this crazy gun game in the woods and we drink lots of whiskey and we dream about the feature of the restaurant or who's running the restaurant we get back in time or closed on Sundays and or we do we'll do late-night poker tournaments so 4:00 in the morning what we're always thinking about what is the why is this a place that I want to come to work because serving dinner gets old and so you throw that kind of creativity into their experience and it's so fun I think we do something similar that that you guys do and that's everybody that works for us I mean I talked to them individually and find out where they want to be and 5-10 years like what are your dreams and how can we use this business that has all these different facets you know you can learn about inventory if you want to be a doctor let's do some triage you know you can work as a hostess or you know I'm sure there's some biology we can teach you all about the different strains of wool or whatever it is or if you've got somebody who wants to be an accountant okay let's figure out some accounting things and I try with every person to figure out where they want to be and how we can build their resume and I tell them all the time I'm like I would love it if you worked here forever but I'm the only one who has to you know Doug and I really are so the rest of you guys are free so tell me how I can help you get to where you want to go and where do you want to go and let's work on getting you there and a lot of them get kind of surprised it's sad how surprised they are because they're not used to their employer actually wanting what's best for them ya know but it's fun it's really so much better Jay you got something to say or they're perfectly happy just coming to work and having a nice environment and security and getting paid right the reality is lots of people are perfectly happy going to work every day and doing the same thing for 30 years getting a paycheck being treated respectfully having health insurance having holidays getting paid overtime having a boss and if there's a problem their life their supportive and you know give them some time on that there are plenty of people this world who don't have grant they wanted no but I think it's common like I just had an employee one of my best come to me and say I have this artistic itch that lasts ten years I'm not scratching and my dream is to open my own theater company one day and I'm thinking of maybe quitting my job and doing this internship for a year at this theater to learn the skill of running a theater company what do you think and at that moment I have two options I can say that is the stupidest idea you make no money and that career is terrible and we really need you and you're really good at your job and fight for her to stay or I can say I don't want you open on Sunday and do a theater event without it you can what does it look like one tenth row that the support of this entire restaurant behind you to make that dream happen because it's just worth it it's worth having people that are flourishing but to your point I think the where it gets expensive if you will if you're thinking about it that way is the time to figure out okay what's important to you is flexibility what's important to you is money because you want to buy your first house what's important to you is you just want a place that's less stressful than your home you know and we have a lot of people that are like that what's important to you is you know blah blah blah and to kind of tailor our approach to every single person that works there and yes there are some people who just want to show up and that's great that's awesome let's make sure we you have the best you've got what you need yes exactly but the rest of them you know I mean everybody has different motivate we're all different we have different DNA do we have another question so thank you very much for being here very appreciative my question is particularly for Karen um I have I'm starting an IT consulting business and I'm stuck in doing proposals and marketing do you recommend a mentor to do something like that or do you wanna be creative enough where you do it yourself you mean bring someone in to help you write those purple all right yeah I'm honestly if you're getting going in my opinion it's it's par for the course I mean you so I've done every job in this company and you know that I remember when we first started I spent day and night you know weekend's evenings you name it writing proposals formatting the footer what kind of font are you gonna use you know creating templates for this for that and and if I didn't do that I wouldn't I wouldn't really understand it and so I think particularly when you're starting a business you need to do every job there is so that you really understand your business so that as you grow and you scale you know you know what it looks like when you bring in somebody to help you you know what you need them to do you know what it takes and you know then ideally that you know the main thing you want to start doing is hiring people who are smarter than you that's the best thing you can ever do and then have them do really specific things that not the best use of your time anymore but this thing is the best use of your time so I'm always looking at you know what what am i doing and is not the best use of my time and if not could somebody else do it and probably do it better because that's their you know specialty and so that's the way to start carving things off but you really need to do it yourself to understand how to do that I believe can I just be really clear about the hire somebody who's smarter than you so I took that everybody will tell you that I took that really literally right so I hired a bunch of people who had much higher IQs they sucked because they didn't you know for various reasons and it took me about five years and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to realize it's not that you need to hire somebody who has a higher IQ I mean cuz who does really know I'm just kidding but it's hire somebody who has done something that you don't know how to do yet or who has been somewhere that you haven't been so that they can teach you or somebody who's just really good at like I don't love details so I hire people who are really good at detail they love it they're way better at it they need somebody who's better at a certain skill but I was really caught up cuz I'm kind of I mean I was just really caught up on okay well this person take IQ tests well no but you can tell I mean it's not oh my god you're so smart no I've done this job I've taken as far I have found Brian that the people who run my salons the hair traffic controllers are former hair traffic they're former restaurant high-volume managers right and so those people I've worked in a restaurant but the people who run the floor the best the best hair traffic controllers have ran the high-volume restaurants I think you hire people that are better than you in areas whether it's they're better at sales they're better at running production they used to hear that all that oh and I never understood what that meant that I realized the entrepreneur has to wear 21 hats that's where the name came from in the at Renier is probably better it does 21 together than anyone else but there are certainly people I would say most of the people who work for me are better at their job than I would be if not all of them that's kind of the point but none of them could run my company so that's the point the entrepreneur does is is the best generalist but you should hire people that are better at the job than you are next Brian you specifically called this out but I'm sure all of you have mission or vision core values things that help you make decisions in your company you specifically said our mission is not to be the best restaurant but to inspire people to turn toward each other or toward one another and then your the way you accomplish that is your sort of your strategy you're doing that by being the best restaurant in the world and as someone who's thought a little bit about mission and vision and core values and those kinds of things it seemed it's a it seems counterintuitive but it's almost harder to refine than you would think it would be can some of you speak to the process that you went through for defining your mission and and identifying your mission or vision and your core values and then possibly how has that changed have you had to change your mission over time and what's that process like thank you we so I was in the Air Force and it it totally des defined how we think about mission statements because we would get called in real the night and they would say come to base and you'd come to base and you asked why did you wake me up why am I here like what's the mission and the mission answers the question why am I here like why did I wake up why am I getting out of bed why am I going to the office today that's the mission and it's really hard to write and we're it rewritten ours about six times and we keep refining it to accurately reflect reflect our hearts and our growth and I'm not afraid to change our mission statement but what I think what's so powerful is people stop at the mission statement and they don't think about a vision statement the way that the military does and so if the mission is let's say when you get called the middle the night to go to the base is to rescue the hostages from the bad country super easy like that's the mission rescue the hostages well then whoever's in charge the general or whatever he is can say great here's my vision we're gonna go in we're gonna strap speakers on the outside of the airplane we're gonna blast Kid Rock we're gonna drop down we're gonna light fireworks we're gonna kill everyone we see we're gonna spray-paint American flags everywhere we're gonna put the fear of God in these but in this bad country and we're gonna rescue the hostages and bring them home that's one vision the mission was accomplished have you tried that it can listen we've not the vision number two is we're gonna go super stealth we're gonna use blow darts well they'll never know we were there night vision we're gonna drop in we're gonna rescue the hostages we're gonna get out the bad guys are gonna wake up the next morning and all the jail cells are empty they're gonna say where the hostages go who took them both scenarios the mission is accomplished so just defining a mission statement is not enough you the it's the it's the joy of the entrepreneur or the leader of the company to also define what is my strategy to accomplish this mission that is unique to me and so if we opened a hotdog stand it could be to inspire all people to turn towards one another it just so happens that we're doing it through a fine dining restaurant so I love we tell that story a lot to our employees about understanding the difference Brian did such a good job with that that I don't need I don't I'm gonna just take off if I'm gonna have that mission to I think at the end of the day in my case I grew up from when I was six years old working my father's dime-store which is a variety store anyone know what a dime store is Google and when you get home I took your customers my whole life the reason why my business took off is because the people in the art business have artitude x' and they think that the world revolves around them the customer will say one will this to be done I don't know I'll call you up three four weeks and they didn't care about the customers I think at the end of the day our mission statements very simple make it make the customers happy do the right thing and treat employees properly and and sometimes it's tricky with employees because sometimes the ethical thing is not the right thing and vice versa I mean you have someone whose needs to be fired they're not doing a good job they can't they're unwilling they're unable or the unexplainable and they got and some of their family dies that night now is it unethical to fire them anyway it's not an ethical but it's not necessarily the right thing to do so I think you have to navigate what's the right thing to do and in our case and mine every one of my employees knows this we do what we need to do to make the customers happy and as much as it sounds simple most companies don't do that they talk about it they got the mission statement salt they don't do it they really don't do it I pick it back that and say when it comes to core values you should have them in order ranked because like at Disneyland I think they famously asked are our two core values our fun and safety and their equal and the consultant was like great so if those little girl crying cuz she's not having fun and there's someone falling off a roller coaster about to die which way do you want the employee to run like oh I guess safety is our number-one value and so if you have to rank your values you have to have few of them and I'll steal from Patrick Lencioni who said your values are not your values unless they cost you something so they shouldn't be easy they should they should they should be hard and you should wrestle and fight that with them and you should be able to remember them I got an advice once that you should have one value and it's the mother of all so it's the highest priority one and then everything that way it's easy to remember it's your compass you run every decision through them and it's such a gift once you do the work to define them I think we have another question my name is David thanks Bryan and everyone for sharing your all the great thoughts it's been a lot of fun to hear story and one question I had is just that you talked about the importance of letting your customers co-create or be a part of your reinvention and taking them along for the ride and I love the whole story of that but y'all's talked about how there's no loyalty and how so my question is and how do you how did you find your most valuable customers or seek out those most valuable customers and you know how do you involve them in your co-creation or remind them to come back today and and it also sort of begs a bigger question which is there's a lot of businesses that are it gets so focused on new customer acquisition that they start making compromises and working with customers that are spread across maybe folks that aren't their most valuable customers or target customers and so it strikes me that making no compromises you know really focusing on your your most valuable customers or target customers is really key as part of your strategy so I think first our most valuable customer is not nothing to do it's nothing financial it's relational we are craving relationship customers are craving relationship and when we have a really good date we but we both want a second date and a third and we is funny you guys thought last night we have these wineglasses that my grandfather started in the 50s giving out wine glasses with people's name on them that are beautifully etched so then when you come to the restaurant and you set your table it's set with glassware with your name on it it's kind of cool we've been doing it forever we give away about five or six a year that's it people have been buried with their wine glasses people have it's like a thing not at the restaurant oh no not that sure we did have one guy died in Table two that was in 1957 um but what did you have we have people all the time food poisoning no I don't know we have people all the time ask how do I get a wineglass because they want it because it's status if I buy a ten thousand a bottle of wine can I have a wine glass if I come every month kind of a wine glass can I buy my way into a relationship and that is a surefire way to put them on than never get a wine glass list if I if I can make a regular twice your guests out of a 25 year old brand-new couple who are out like last night on table three with their first night away from their brand-new baby right we got one chance to get that night right it's such a big deal to go with me baby with the first time they didn't spend any money that they could even afford a bottle of wine right there my most valuable customer because I could turn them into a twice dear guest for the next 60 years think that that's how we define it I do think there's loyalty and I think if you make a customer happy and you give them what they paid for they come back I fit customers for 42 years at this point I will tell you though the opposite of this is you can't be naive enough to think that you can make everyone happy in the fact is as we've evolved and gotten into better framing and better stuff for my home store there's some people don't want to pay for it and in it you have to grow up one day and realize that that you just can't be everything to everybody and the same person that used to come to dinner at your place for $40 is not gonna want to spend 130 and that's okay you know but it's about it's about being loyal to your core base of people who work your business model I think that we get this question a lot because we're in and out you know walking only some how do you have a relationship with somebody who's there for an hour and 15 minutes and so you know the relationship for your hair slamming you're there all day is there you're there you're to talk to your hairstylist and they know you like your therapist and so that element can be removed when you're in a walk-in only seven day a week salon so what we do is we build that relationship on the outside so the hair traffic controllers are also trained and listening right so she's standing with her iPod going through the flow of the day where to put you know who to put where but she's also listening to what you're saying on the phone she's also listening to what you're saying to your stylist right and so if she just overheard that your father is in ICU then you will probably get a call from our manager or assistant manager in a couple of days asking you how is your father right and they'll address it at the front desk we've had guests come in who are on their way to an interview they're so excited we will call you in a couple of days and say hey how did that interview go so we have the relationship but we also as a part of our mission is to respect your time and your dollar and give you the freedom of all of that back oh I love that do you thank you yes sadly we're going to have to wrap this up but before we do Brian I just wanted to ask you I asked everybody else about their attitude toward growth their aspirations for their businesses how do you think about that do you do you want to open that hotdog stand do you want to open another restaurant know what's growth for you I don't want to over another restaurant growth to us is we want to grow our impact I think we can do that by remaining one restaurant we do silly things in our parking lot we throw crazy parties we as party a lot we do well I think I think the yeah I won't go into why it's my question about parties though about your party parties in the parking lot I'm so excited about those and and I am so intrigued on course I'm a fan I'm a I've been a customer and I live in the neighborhood and I'm so intrigued because I'm so excited about that they're not too loud no we love them we love them we love to see the cars parked up that people lined up we were so excited but I want to know how you see converting those to regular customers it's it's working I'm sure it is but the price point and everything I just wanted a leg those price point just really briefly where that we've never been in more expensive restaurant than we are today and the average income of our guests has never been lower so I don't believe that price has how do you know that well the credit card companies tell you because they give you information on your guests and you just know I mean when I first came back to the restaurant the restaurant was full of people will silver hair with lots of money and now it's not it's full of young people who have saved up for that one perfect night out and so it doesn't yes for the most expensive restaurant on the city maybe but we're the same price as two times going to a bad restaurant so don't go two times the bad restaurant go wants to mine and so a highest price doesn't have to mean we're saying no two people can't afford it our dining room was filled with people who can't afford it but they choose to save and make it worth it the parties are two things it's cross-training for my staff it's it's like in Rocky you know where he's he does so much that's not boxing that makes him a good boxer everything comes back to Rocky it just want to tell you doesn't matter what you know that my staff learns serving a thousand people white claw in a swimming pool in bikinis that was a party we did the summer it makes them a better server and a fine dining room and so we look at that as and just the creative muscles on how do we throw a Hawaiian luau with yeah and so and it the the the the message it says which is camless as a brand that is accessible and available to all people not just if you have white hair and lots of money all right you've pickin on me now twice because I was I was there last night I got the white hair you responded to the lots of money part J I've got a Planum card it's a win on every level it's so fun it turned out to be profitable our plan was to lose money with that party like profit is not our not something we ever focus on and it shows often but gosh I'm glad you like them we're gonna do it again this summer it's gonna be better Karen Clark Cole Laura Zander Dana White Jay Gould and Brian Canlis thank you so much Karen thank you for having us in your wonderful space thank you thanks for listening everyone I hope you enjoyed both parts of our special live taping of the 21 Hatt's podcast at blinks Seattle headquarters my thanks to our regulars Karen Clark call Jay Gould's Dana White and Laura Zander and of course our special guest Brian Canlis as always this episode was produced by Jess suberin founder of blank word productions and remember if you liked what you heard here tell your friends subscribe rate us review us you can follow us on twitter at 21:00 underscore hats and visit us at 21 hats comm if you have a question for our panel of fearless business owners you can tweet it with the hashtag ask 21 hats see you next time