Empowering Workers Is Key to Restaurant Success

what do I do, what's good, what's bad? And at the end of it, she said, Fred, you bring order to disorder and you go from surviving to thriving, and you are basically a chaos strategist. And the first I'll never forget the first time I hit the button to make that a U title. I felt so strange, but she said, hey, Fred, there's a lot of CEOs out there, but there's only one chaos strategist, and that's how the name came about.

time on employees. And you see someone that's been in a company for twenty twenty five years has no hope, low horizons, and you can help give them a methodology or performance that changes how they approach their job and it works for the benefit of the company and the lines that their needs are the company's goals. That's a great feeling. At the same time, the emerging brands are a lot of fun. They're you know, they're full of

piss and vinegar. Right, nothing's nothing's impossible, and with them you got to sort of give some guardrails for growths. They don't drive off the cliff because everything's possible. Oh yeah, I'm excited, off we go. And so the enthusiasm is wonderful, but sometimes like a puppy dog jumping down on your leg while it's pin on your shoe. So they have different energy and different vibes, you know. So it's a it's a different approach it's been, but they're both. They're

both really really exciting. And what we have found is cyclical. Right you go through the era where all of a sudden sales get you know, stunted people who's relevant. So get it to that downgrade and people say, oh, I need some relevance again, and then you get the ones that you know, the new and emerging brands are a lot of fun in doing it. And there's different generations. You know, the older brands are kind of boomer brands, and the newer brands and millennial brands, so it's a

whole different thing. What I find most interesting, to be honest with you, is that the founders are very willing to ask for help, where the older CEOs aren't. It's like they feel they have to have all the answers, Like they go, hey, I'm the president, so I should know what to do and everything. And I was a president too, you know what, I didn't know everything. And the advantage that we bring is that we bring an outside perspective and we ask the kind of questions that

sometimes they don't want to ask internally. And it's very funny when we come back with conclusions, they're like, my god, where did you get this information? And I go, you, it was there, but no one ever asked. I'd say.

What we bring is the thirty percent we bring to the seventy percent they offer is an outside perspective and said earlier, a new way of looking at it, and maybe an opportunity to sort of not get caught up in the reality look at the whirlwind of everyday life in this business is crazy you know, I blame no one for that, and so it's hard to step out of that and really try and be really clear headed and clear mind and go oh okay, now I see a pad And that's really what we try and do.

And brands are very much that same way. So let's go back to some of those great boomer brands, you know, the Teacher Fridays or Chili's of the World, or that work with Boston Market or Friendlies and Steak and Shake, you know, old old brands. And so the question that I asked was when that brand first started. Who was the audience who came in and supported that brand and resonated with the brand? And let's just say doesn't really matter as an example, it's a thirty something. It might

even be someone a little bit younger that's single. And you say, okay, what was it about the brand at that point in time nineteen eighty two, nineteen seventy six, whatever that really click with that demographic, you know, and what were the aspects of it? And then to say, god, we think we have it. Now, let's ask the question for today, if I target that age consumer, what would click with them now? And it's very, very different, you know.

So you know, a millennial that's in this twenty he or she's in the twenties through thirties versus a boomer in twenties and thirties. Whole different worldview, you know. Just the biggest one is technology, of course, you know, that's been a big thing. And then other social values that have shifted. You know, there's much more concerned about the planet and health and nutrition and stuff like that. I mean boomers, you know, they were still smoking. It was

a different thing. And so that so we come back with a contemporary interpretation of the brand, and you know, and a good example was Boston Market. We did that about ten years ago. You know, you walk into a Boston Market looked like a nineteen eighty school cafeteria. And what we did was take that potcase and turn it into a chef's cook top, you know, so it looked like someone had been preparing this food for hours, which is true, and presented you in a very very attractive way.

And that just changed the whole relationship they had with the brand. We took the cashiers. They were wearing T shirts that said Boston a BOST. It was an old ticker symbol and they had been a public company for years, and I go, really, you're still wearing a T shirt that has the old ticker symbol and it sort of looked like you couldn't afford the O in the end because it was BOST. And we put them at that time in you know, kind of a you know, white

button down shirts, some nice pan slacks and april. And instead of the guests carrying the tray with their food, like again I got nineteen eighties cafeteria, we brought it to your table, and we use melamine and real silverware to elevate the plan. So you know, so that was the kind of thing we try to do and it really worked very very well. I mean, it was an incredible turnaround, and we've done that repeatedly. The other thing, to be frank with you, and I said this earlier,

it's really the employees to turn around these brands. You know. It's like, I mean, you think about it, we learned something really some hard lessons in COVID. There is no safety that in the restaurant business for employees. That's why we're so struggling with the deficit of employees because I realized I have no real benefits, no four one K, no fallback, and so what do I do. I'm going to go drive for Aneuver, or I'm going to go

do something different. I'll go work for Amazon, and they have those things available in some way, shape or form. Over's got flexibility of schedule, Amazon has benefits, right. Those those are things that occur and we spend a lot of time with employees and asking them what they need to do. Because if you think about it, if you've got kind of a you got a oh, I don't know, survival age because it's not they call it living wage, but it's not living wage, it's survival wage. Eighteen bucks

an hour. Who can raise a family in eighteen bucks an hour? And a lot of people this is a permanent job and live well. They can't live well. They just survive. And then you say, oh, we want you to smile more, we want you to get engaged with the gas, we want you to really care. It's like, are you kidding me? How does that work? And so what we try and also do culturally is to give people hope, give them some dignity, to give them sense of pride, and let them know that they can make

a difference. I ran a Burger King franchise for several years. It was one hundred and ten unit burg kinchain that was just doing terribly, and we implemented an incentive plan for all employees to make an extra fifty bucks a month, which was a day's wage because they're all minimum wage. And it wasn't just that, it was also clean the restaurants up, give resources, things like that, and that business turned around once we implemented all the changes we did.

Within two three month sales had reversed and they had three years of double digit sales growth, but the employees did that. Management sets the conditions and allows them and rewards then, but really get out of the way. Let the employee be the best that they can try and be cole.

not coming in to see you. And they pivoted very rapidly, and during COVID they doubled down on employee engagement and education and they in fact they added labor. And I'll never forget I was that. I think it was the ICR conference. You were probably there as well, where I'm not going to name the brain, and there was a CEO of a company that said, we're eliminating busters and we're liminating hostesses because we'll save labor. And I was like,

oh my god, that is a slippery slope. And for one quarter they save labor and in the second quarter they lost gas. Because it's you just your remove service. Darden didn't do that. They made their station size smaller. They really made sure that people were getting the best kind of service, and it paid off for them. Look at the results. It's been incredible and they've got so many change you can talk about, well, this one's up, this one's not, but on average they really do a

wonderful job. And that's what it's sort of magical about it. This is a people business. But we can't talk out of both sides of their mouth and say people are most important asset and then not treat them well, not give them something that they can allow them to live and support your families or have dignity as well. And I think that's the key the difference that I really see. In fact, i'd say that during COVID, the companies with

the most toxic cultures did not do well. The companies that had a healthy culture have thrived because people knew that they care. They still went through the layoffs, they went through all the furloughs and so for in all, but they might have offered them the ability to come into the restaurant and buy food at cost. They might have given them food. They organized among the employees and

they encourage that ways of supporting each other. I mean, it shows you care when you when everything's taken away materially, what's left is your humanity. And that's the difference that we can try and do with our people. Nobody pays anyone else generally that much more than the guy down the street, But it's what you invest into them that makes a difference.

you walk in. I'll never forget it was one brand that we took i think three executives to a restaurant close to their headquarters and they walked in and know even knew who they were, and they didn't know any employees' names because they just hadn't gone there, you know. And yet there's other brands that you walk in and it's like, you know, bees are on honey going, oh my god, look who's here, and they're all happy in the street. Like norm Breaker was that way. Norm Breaker walked into

the restaurant. Everyone knew who he was and he knew who they were. And so that's the starting part of culture. And my metaphor for culture is pretty straightforward. I'd say it's like we're all standing in a swimming pool and it's everyone's job to keep the water clean. There is no pen section in a swimming pool, and some cultures are pretty damn bad. So it's like flossom and you

got to clean it up. And that's the message you have to deliver to leadership is to help them understand that and look at it's not about nin or nin or niner. Again, I ran restaurant companies, half a dozen of them, and there were things that I didn't know, I wasn't aware of. I was ignorant to them. So it doesn't make me a bad person. Doesn't make these people bad, but it does. They're just ignorant or unaware.

And we hold a mirror up and say, look at what this what we see and so and this is a reflection of what you can but you can do something about it. Right with the leadership team. We generally work with a tool from Patrick Lincioni, who wrote that great book to five this Functions of a team, and we use that tool to sort of, you know, quantify culture based on the answers that people give. And we've done it where we can slice and dize different levels

of the organization, different regions, and it's amazing. The cultures that are really strong and powerful, they score very well as red, yellow, or green, and we use it as a benchmark and then take it a year later, take it a year after that, and you see these improvements and this beautiful. The day you see a score that everyone is green. You know, we just did one for another company out in California or recently, and I haven't even shared the results of me as we're not going

to name them. But it was mediums all yellow was good. It was a great starting point. I mean that gives you hope. Now if it's bad, you don't go and yell at them. You just say, Okay, this is reality. This is what you said, and we're not going to try and figure out who answered it what way. It's less addressed what those things are because it talks about you know, accountability, communication and results, orientation, so far and so on, and then we go through the things that

you have to try and do to achieve it. But it can be where we want it to be. An intentional culture. Now. Part of that is recognizing that your people are the ones who take care of your guests, and if you have unhappy people, you're gonna have unhappy guests.

And we work a lot on guest journeys and employee journeys and at the end of the day, and Danny Meyer is the one who really did the best job of defining that in his book, you know, Setting the Table, where he talks about the hospitality being fifty one and the service being forty nine. Services mechanics. Hospitality is the emotion people experience as a result of that service and the engage with the employees. And so we really create a guest journey that's based on the emotional outcome of

the guests. You know, it's not like the quep last questions. You know, would you prefer to return? Well, that's kind of flat. How about a desire to return an emotional reason. You know, I've got I love the team members that take care of me, they know my name, the treating respects, the old Cheers song, and so you can actually define

the emotional outcome and the behaviors attached to it. The best example is Chick fil A. Chick fil A understands the emotional outcome of a guest experience and trains their people to create that. And once you give them that understanding, when you do this guest journey, and what we do

is you going to social media. We take the best comments of all along the path of the guest experience, We take the worst comments of all and say, here's the worst experience that people have actually had in your restaurants, and here's the best, you know, So they're both possible. What's interesting is most is a mixture of both. And once you make people aware that, they're like, oh my god. So we can make a difference. So we say, what are those critical touch points to create for that point

in time. If it's a sit down restaurant, how you're greeted. You know how many times you walk at the front desk and the coasts are talking to each other looking down at their open table screen. They don't even look at you to acknowledge that you're in front of them. You know, things like that, And so what's the feeling you have out of that? I feel ignored? So therefore I feel discussed. Right, I've scorned versus a really warm, friendly green How are you today? It's a beautiful day,

So glad you're here. I hope you hunger Our food's great? Oh my god. The same amount of time transpired, but the outcome is very different. And you go along that line. And once we finish the guest journey, we then look at their training material and we point out to them that in ninety percent of the case is maybe higher. The training material talks about nothing in regards to the emotional outcome of the guest. All it is to the mechanics,

it's just the service. And so then we weave that in and we talk about that emotional outcome, and then we create the employee journey, because employees are people too,

and they have to have an emotional outcome. How are they recruited, how are they treated when they come in for an interview, what's their schedule so for and so on, And we go through the whole process of the employee journey, including the legacy, the ones that I've worked there before no longer work there, the private that they have for haven't been there, And off we go and that becomes transformative, you know, in everyone gets engaged in it. Before you know,

everyone's talking about the same thing. Oh, we're here to make people feel special and have a desire to return, and we're special. Look what they're doing for us. And it's not about money. It costs you less money. It's about intent and care and empathy. It's really the biggest piece of this. And that's where I think Danny Meyer Chick fil A great examples and fine dining and casual or not casual you qsr that deliver that consistently time

and time again. It's no mystery why Chick fil A is probably the most valuable private company on the planet, you know, because we don't know what they really do. We know they're average eight million dollars in six days a week, but god knows what the profitability is and you probably know better than I would. But it's got to be amazing with that number of restaurants.

Taco does a very good job. Scott. I spoke to him recently at a panel that I interviewed him, and you know what he did during COVID was to reimagine his entire service approach because he recognized I can't get all the people I need, so he's got to He created a setup now using technology where everyone makes fifty

five thousand dollars an hour every a year. Everyone fifty five thousand dollars a year, dishwashers with benefits, with benefits, and the only one who makes more is bartenders because they get to keep the tips of the bar, but everybody else makes the same amount to do tip pulling. They use the technology to have they basically empower the guests to place their own order, which everyone's totally qualified

to do. But they're out there with service captains really making sure that the guests experience is smooth and it's going well, the food's out on time. It's it's a wonderful use of technology and at the same time having high touch and high tech side by side.

Who are your guests? You got all this energy around your concept, a lot of press and that's the problem. You get a lot of press you think, oh my god, I walk on water. And but then we start talking to employees and find out that, you know, even the smaller corpus that they may have, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. They don't have structured meetings and communication, they don't have KPIs. They can't define success, you know, they if you ask them, you know, what

they stand for. They can't tell you that, and that's really important, you know, don't going back to Danny Meyers, you go back to a Chick fil A. They know why they're there. Okay, they understand why they're there and what direction north is true north is you know, they're

not guessing. So we put them through the process of beginning to develop that and then we start talking about their roles and through a combination of like talent development and performance management, begin to define the results they're held accountable for as an individual and then collectively as a team. We do some strategic planning and we take an entrepreneur to me, is like a flood plane. There's water everywhere,

and it's not it can be destructive. Discipline and and and proper management and structure is like a river bank. It takes that water and channels it with energy. So you can have recreation, you can you know, feed, you can water crops, you can have the energy you know, and we talk. We're teaching that this self discipline allows you to get more things done. People who are disciplined can be spontaneous. People who are undisciplined, they can do

whatever they want. But the spontaneities. Really it's just an excuse for being disorganized and lack of focus. And once you do that, it makes a difference in the organization. I'll never forget. One of my favorite people is to make Enry from Cooperstock Winery. You know, I met him when he hadn't know three four restaurants and we did that with him, and boy did he follow it to a t. And my god, you know what, nine million

dollars AUVs. He's very very well. He's got a new brand, is brought on forward and he's and he's naturally great people person. So he had that quality because he's really humble and authentic. But then he brought in that self discipline and brought in the correct kind of people to do that, and it's just been fantastic to see that change develop.

I think that's meaningful for a lot of people. So for that reason, i'd imagine emerging brands tend to have very strong culture. Is that is that always the case? Do you still find adjustments need to be made? And are there obstacles and improving and already culture that's pretty solid?

to telling what they shooters shouldn't do. But see, you know what once you find out if we will assume that the founder is successful and has money, okay, we'll find out that the next circle of people beneath them is also wealthy. Okay. If the answer is no, don't go there because that means that founder doesn't share. If the answer is yes, then go because you will also benefit from that as well. Again, Norm Brinker, uh, you know, look at the women brands without back Stakhouse. How many

millionaires came out of that a lot, you know. And so and the funny thing is that if all your managers and directors and vps become millionaires, it means there's tens of millions at the top. And that's great. You know, it's even more because the more success is there push they push everyone up. And so that's part of it and the other aspect of it. And this is where I worked for Richard Melman, you know, who's one of

the great restaurant tours out there. And it was fascinating to me because he also generated a lot of millionaires out of things, and he was like a university for creativity. He was fantastic that way. And what I saw with him, and I was very young at the time and I worked with him, is that initially they were all his ideas, right, So that was the genius of an entrepreneur. They can

see what other people can't see. The thing that I found interesting in working with a lot of entrepreneurs in my career is there's a transition from the entrepreneur that can go from just being an entrepreneur and is held back by that because their management skills are weak. They don't have the organizational understanding things like that, and they don't that they fail, but they just don't go to

the level that they can. The ones that make this profound shift is that they no longer are the originator of all ideas. They're the cultivator of ideas and they recognize the ide That's what Melman was. He saw and I did that someone else presented to him, and he goes, wow, that's great, we can do something with it. We not me, we can do something with it. Let's do that. And

he helped, you know, bring that along. And that's the difference, you know, that's the difference with an entrepreneur that matures first, not for sure that has to be in control of every decision that's going on, or no, no, if it doesn't come for me, that is not a good idea. And you know, you could go look through the back pages of Nation's Restaurant and you will figure out which

ones those were. You just know which ones those were versus the ones that made the thing where you know Danny Meyer, you know, he's not the one that comes up with all the ideas. He's built a huge organization that has exceptional because he's a lot of other people to come forward and then take credit. He'll still get credit for it at some point, which is fine, but he's not the sole originator, as the cultivator of ideas and therefore other people.

he doesn't do it out of like, oh let's be cute. No, no, this is humility in practice. He sets the example and he's achieved tremendous success because of that, and his volumes are very high. It's a mono concept like Chick fil A and in and out Burger. But lookout, world, he's he's on the rise. It's gonna you know, like now everyone talks about Chick fil A for them, they started when McDonald's was the king. Look at Ben now and I think raising Kings and Todd specifically are going to

show people that culture makes a big difference. It's the secret sauce for great brands.

You know, they're there. They had an iPad in their hand at two years old, and they're they're The way they see technology and is applications to the restaurant industry is amazing. So it's a must have. Now there's different. There's a tremendous amount of technology. We could spend three

hours talking about technology. But if you break it down to say, there's customer facing technology in the front of the house, the back door's operational technology, which includes the economy and the scheduling and the KDS and so for so on, the POS and all that stuff. There is also what i'll call sort of that off premise revenue generating technology apps, smartphones, all the responsive websites, that technology.

And the last quadrant that I talk about is where the data is, okay, because ultimately that's where the money is.

All these other technologies generate a lot of data, okay, and we're drowning the data over star for knowledge, and so the data miningeds where it really gets critical, because not only will I be able to understand, you know, how to be more fficient with my labor and productivity and things like that and my food costs, and then I can monitor my refrigerators and freezers and all, but I also understand my guests and I understand what their

preferences are, and I'm able to do it. Now. There's a lot of the nonymization that takes place, but you can still get some great data out of certain companies that pull together. But the key part of it, it all has to be integrated. And a lot of people during the pandemic just grab whatever they could because all that realized, oh my god, if I don't do this, I'm gone, right because also had no you know, there's five channels right premise, on premise stigning, then take out delivery, catering,

and drive through if you're a QSR. Well, when I'm you know, on premise dning was the bigger earl that was gone. All those other channels became important and they stayed. You know, the people might have been doing thirty forty percent off premise sales during the COVID, but when it all came back, they're still doing fifteen percent. That's significant and you don't hear so much and that you appreciate this before I was you know, what's your what's your

your guest count? How many you know, what's your football if you're in the UK, now it's what's my square footage? You know, what are my sales for square feet? Because you realize that it's the sales they generated by square foot that is the ultimate measure, which includes that off premise delivery and catering so far and so on. They can add to your bottom line. And so it's important to have everything talk to have good integration. We're also

going through a lot of disruption with POS. You're going from the client server model to a cloud based system. And the cloud based systems are better, but they're not perfect, and you got to be careful and you also tak your concept. You know what am I trying to accomplish with it? Because I sit down a restaurant versus QSR past casual drive through different needs from a technology standpoint, and we're seeing more and more you know, changes there.

If you look at you know, PARS, you know probably one of the better cloud based systems. You know, they've bought loyalty companies, they bought other organizations that come in and do that to try and really you know, not to be once stop shopping, but it really show what the integration can try and do Others like Rebel have always been a little bit on the forefront with the iPad, but it keeps on shifting, and the big boys, you know, the micros and ncrs have had to adapt very very quickly.

They've lost a lot of market share to these young upstarts.

to another. So there will continue to be consolidation. And frankly, some of the tech companies they're not a company their feature. You know, we saw that in the days of Microsoft, companies would start just to be bought by Microsoft. Then it became start something be bought by Apple, and you know, like a flashlight app. You know, remember those are a flashlight app. Oh wow, that's cool that Then Apple said, hey, we're going to turn the flashlight on or off if

we want to. Stuff like that. And so so your your POS system is critical because while in the old days, the POS was the sort of the solar system, he was the sun of everything rolled around it. There's been a lot of disintermediation of POS because now it's on your app. You know, I don't go into a Starbucks and stand in line. I go into a Starbucks, order my coffee off the app and just go pick it up because I get a priority. You know a lot of people just don't know that. They still, oh I

gotta go stand in nine million. Don't just place the order. It's going to show up in that in that ticket immediately, you know. And those are the things that are going to continue to change, is how we leverage technology to our benefit. And of course that same smartphone lets your order. It's the same smartphone that other technologies follow you to know where you came from where we're going to to have a betteriness how to communicate with you. So it's

true one to one marketing. That's another part that's really changed with the use of technology. Besides all the efficiencies to get in the back end with robots, that's really big. I mean right now, to pay a cash here in California, twenty two bucks an hour not kiosk. Easy decision, you know, because the guess once you control their experience anyway, they don't complain about that. In line, you just get up to the kisk and order what they want and order more.

You can have leinky lights and pictures and so on and so on. So it will continue to change and involved. And that's why I enjoy the Food of the Man conference because the early all that change is happening with those people that show up for that conference.

on though, the world's coming to an end. So what we managed to do was they asked me to take over the company, and I agreed to it, you know, because my consulting practice basically we were working for free. We've helped a lot of companies to help them with all this, taking their text deck and stuff like that, but it's to get into the manufacturing side. Was a great experience for me because it takes a two million dollars machine to make a thirty cent bun. And then

we we understood how how can we grow sales? And you know, I'm happy with the results that we've more than you know, double sales from the original amount that we had when we bought it. We've got very high profit ability when the process of buying more bakeries and all the restaurants stuff still applies. And I always joke with people. I said, in my salespeople like servers. Okay, my bakers are like cooks. My delivery drivers are like

food runners, you know. And I and I use that as an analogy because it sort of sees you can see the levers of the business in terms of how it goes. So I've learned a tremendous amount and a lot more respect for what manufacturers have to go through during COVID trying to get product. Oh my god, supply chain was an issue. My you know, my flower price is up by sixty percent. My Laver's gone up by forty percent. You know, it's a it's a real thing, and you gotta and you gotta, you know, you got

to manage the business profitably. So and also helping restaurants as best as we can. That's our ultimate customers, giving them a product that they serve to their guests, that they put into their body, and to make sure that they feel good about that.

of you know companies. They're charities where they help people come out of prison and get brought back into normal life or out of addiction. We've got quite quite a few people who are former drug addicts who are not trying to get their feedback on the ground. And let

me tell you something. When you can take a woman in her thirties who has three kids and they've been taken away by chold protective services because they're a methatic and they're there to get back on their feetback on the ground, and we hire them as tempts initially because they got to show us that they can come to work and be a good worker, and then to offer them a permanent job with enough money where they can afford an apartment. They get their kids back, and they

burst into tears when you offer them that job. There is something about that that you just can't put into words, how rewarding it is and the sense of achievement for them. We just had another one that we did it for and she had an apartment, but she doesn't have a lot of money, and so we all pitched in and we got her a bedroom set and sheets and linens for her two kids so that they could have a

bit to sleep in at night. You know. That's really fulfilling, you know, And so that's part of that stakeholder mentalent I'm talking about. In fact, our purpose had our purpose of the bakery is we nourish lives, which had if you think about it from a stakeholder standpoint, it addresses the food aspect of it as well as the fact that we're taking care of our guests we're taking care of I'm not. I guess our customers are any taking care of our employees.

to see that. So that's also very warrant to see that change. And in fact, I was honored this past year at the Conscious Captain's CEO Summit. I was selected as the High Impact Conscious Capitalist business Person of the Year. It was like it was named after a gentleman who passed away during COVID from Columbia who was a great restaurant tour got who I got to know and that was a surprise and a very very big honors. I didn't anticipate that. It was just to be recognized.

didn't want to talk about it. I'm a private person. But it was a gift that I did because I showed people that I cared. That'll ment tomorrow, you know, remember you'll die. And it was it was, you know, because one of the things I realized, because we have your you know, someone says you have cancer, it's like, oh shit, you know, your humanity is right in your face. And what it taught me was that I may not know how I'm going to die, specifically, none of us do,

but I can choose how to live. And and that's really what you know, I picked up in the Bay the foundation of the Stoic philosophy is not what happens to is what you do about what happens and your approach to it. And I just said, I'm not going to be a victim of this. I'm going to live my life to its fullest. I took the job at Engelman's, you know, three months after my surgery. My wife and I talked about it. I mean, I could have retired, and you know, we talked about she goes, look at

you love doing what you do. Go do it. You know you'll sit around here. What are you gonna do? You know, count the days. And it's been three years and I'm blessed to have an amazing wife who has supported me, and it makes a big difference. And every day's a gift. Every day's a gift, and that momentumry.

I travel with that Maury coin and I've given a few away to people that I meet that I move by their story when they share it with me, because I have not that I have a collection at home, but I just go buy another one and carry it. But I got to talk to Lauren about the tattoo thing. I've never had a tattoo, but that's an interesting idea.