#72 : Building Leadership from the Bottom Up with Christopher McFadden

Um, and it's funny 'cause I've always been the word salesman. 'cause I, I, I feel like it always tags towards the car, the car salesman mentality. And then at 18 I saw my girlfriend was working in restaurants and I'm like, that seems like a, a route to go. Um, so at 18 years old, which was in 1998, I started as a host at East Side Mario's, uh, up here in Canada, in Burlington, Ontario. I got into being a server and then ended up in, uh, lake Louise, uh, at the Chateau Lake.

Louise as Fairmont and Canadian Pacific had just, you know, became one brand. And at 20 years old I fell in love with wine, working at the Waller Stub, Swiss fondue restaurant in Lake Louise. And, uh, at 20 years old I started my SOM studies and knew I was gonna say no to traditional university and traditional college and that I was gonna build wine programs in Canada. And that was my goal. And just before I was 24, I got my som diploma and, uh, had an amazing, um.

Amazing life in the industry, uh, running restaurants. Um, and again, to get a wine program and a restaurant, you need to learn how to run the restaurant first because you can't just be the sommelier. And, um, I had a very, uh, lucky, good fortune of being in Calgary, um, and Banff, and that's where I really started. I grew my life in the business and knowing that running rooms and running restaurants and creating relationships with uh, guests was gonna be what I did.

And having an act for the food and wine world was exactly what, uh, my passion and heart was in. And, uh, I did it for 25 years until, uh, about three years ago, I, um, I went through my own battle with, um, kinda happiness and found myself in, in the depression world and knew that I had to really come out of it for myself. Uh, 'cause through COVID I kept taking care of my team and I. Forgetting to take care of myself first.

Um, and this was after we had decided that guests were gonna come after the team. And, um, so this drive went into a totally different world and I started writing my own, uh, programs and my own courses and, uh, went into the professor world for a couple years and McFadden Group has been, uh, now, uh, out for just almost three years now. And I had gone from leadership positionally to now leadership Actionably, um, to focus on career coaching for everybody in the business.

So I love this industry. I think it's the greatest thing that exists out there. And, uh, my entire drive and passion is making people find happier moments within themselves to really drive them to want to go to work rather than have to go to work and just love what they do. Awesome.

So if you get yourself in the mindset of, Hey, I get to go to work today, that's a huge blessing in the world that we're in. Um, but because you want to go to work for you instead of having to go to work for others, um, I think shifts the perspective when you're leaving your house for the day.

And there's other times to like cruise a little bit and maybe a little bit of cruise control, you know. But I think that for me it's, it's knowing when to go hard and when, when to take, when to recover. Um, and if those things are in alignment, right, from, from communicating with your partner to whatever, right? Making sure the dog gets it, um, those, that's, that's, that's gonna be a, a harmonious thing versus, um, believing that you're ever gonna find the, find it to be balanced.

'cause I don't know, this industry just doesn't really do that. At least that's, that's my, my take on it.

And I would just step back for a moment and watch and everything would go silent except for that song and me watching the magic of what we were creating and the spark that exists within that. Right. Is that balanced? No, that's harmony. That's exactly it. Right? It's a, it's, it's called that the

But some people just don't see it because they've never been in this environment that I would just, I called them the general public and that there was a sincerity that existed with that because this was our chance to glow for people that didn't know how much work went into what we created, but understood how much went into us making it happen.

And I think there's such a genuineness of making, and I remind everybody that I've worked with, I remind students or my clients, is that we like to go out too, right? What do, what do we expect? And not what do we expect because we've done it professionally, but what do we just expect and going out with our family and. And going out with our friends and having a, an experience that we go, that was pretty cool.

And then having a chance to bring it with us, you know, COVID was a huge light with this when we saw, my wife and I had gone out for dinner to one of the corporate companies in Vancouver and trying to see how doing something was gonna happen based upon the fact that none of us knew what we were doing. And I was watching, you know, a corporate beast and I was like, I get, okay, okay. You know, and then how can we make it our own?

And what can we do to, you know, not level them up to compete, but how can we bring, you know, more imagination to this idea of people's safety. And, um, yeah. I'll tell you, when you start putting, when we started putting our people first, it allowed us to become more successful in what we were doing as a brand. Um, because we had more guests, because we had the same team coming back and people were like, they're back.

And it was like a hundred percent because the difference is that they felt safe. So I think this environment that we create and the, the, the speed bumps in, in walls that we've hit in the last few years of. How to keep afloat and, you know, for those that were able to, um, and those maybe that, you know, weren't, that maybe have been able to make a comeback, um, right. Yeah. Harmony, Harmony's, harmony's an important word. I appreciate that. Yeah. Life.

But, but like, I've been challenging people to not only like, look forward, look out, look, you know, to the guest, but then turn around and like, how, how are you greeting your people in the morning when, when they walk in or when you walk in? How are you? Like, how are the touchpoint of our employees, right? How are we leading those people? Because there's such a disconnect. Even great ones, even great leaders there.

There's the way we treat the public, the way we treat our guests, the way we treat the, the, the money coming in versus the way we treat the people who we pay. And somehow, like I'm I, and I can't even say, oh, I, I do it. No, I have to stop and think about this every day about how did I used to treat people? How can we treat people because. Like, if it's not every day, it's once a week for me that I run into someone and they go four years after COVID has, has subsided.

I still am struggling with staffing and I still can't quite, and I'm like, how do you treat people? How do your people feel when they're in your building? Right. So for me, the hospitality has to be in every single direction because if you don't, if you don't nail it, they're gonna, you're gonna keep the same like level of turnover that you've seen for years. Right. The culture has to get, has to get better. Yeah.

What a cool moment, you know? Hey, team, how are you doing? I actually, I made a, a confident joke when I was 14 years old starting at Athletes' World. And, um, I had applied to this retail shop. It had TVs at a basketball court in the backyard in the back of it. And I was like, this is the place that I wanna work. And for, for a year, I applied to Athletes' World nine times, but they couldn't hire me at 13. Um, at the time it was when I turned 14, I could get a social insurance number.

Um, and um, and I remember my first day of work thinking that I was best friends with the GM who had gotten to know me over the year. And I walked in, I was like, Hey punk, how's it going? He's like, pardon me? He's like, start again. And I was like, he's like, I'm not your friend, I'm your boss. And I'm like, got it. Got it. I almost lost the first job I ever had based upon a comfortableness that I had. And I think in today's world is that it's.

Especially with the old guards that are in the business still, right? Is that there's still an autocratic ness to all of us out there, and that has to exist when we're running the financials.

But when we become more of that servant leadership and that there's leadership all around you in every role that exists in every age group that exists within it, and you're leading from the top as as as the chef or as the director, as the gm, whatever it may be, but you know, everybody else is pertaining to that same leadership style because you're exuding it. Build better leaders from the start.

I'm like, but then it would be irresponsible if I didn't. The next thing. Some of them will be like, well, can I, can I go and rewrite mine? You can do whatever you want. Right? But if that inspired you, fantastic. Right. But I have to care as much about you walking in the door as a guest walking in the door, because if I don't have you, I don't have the guests.

And if I don't have, you know, a team that's not just one, one person cooking, because everybody else was like, I can't do this anymore. Well then we've, we've gotten it, we've gotten it wrong.

So just this morning I was having a conversation with a recruiter and he's based in the middle of the country somewhere. And, uh, I said, so, you know, like, uh, here, here's what I do. I told him about culinary mechanic, and he's like, cool. I said, tell me what you're seeing. And he goes, well, uh, I'm seeing that hotels are running with fewer managers. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I said, what about, what about the restaurant side?

'cause that's really where I, I. That's my comfort zone, right? I like restaurants. Uh, and he goes, okay. And he goes, well, I'm seeing this amazing thing, like more and more people are getting excited about top level, high echelon chefs. And I was like, I bet. And I said, um, what about the, like, what about the group that is the fresh ones that are just becoming chefs or they're sous chefs trying to get the chefs? He goes, you know, funny, I hadn't really thought about it.

I said, what do you mean? He goes, those folks are like almost non-existent. He goes, I'm, I'm either seeing people, I'm either, I'm like seeing really well high developed chefs that are like heading for Michelin stars and James Beard Awards or really, really like way, way down, but there's the middle ground. And I said, what are your thoughts on that?

And he goes, I think that so many people I. Have decided what they want out of, out of their career, that they're going for that and they're forgetting to, to build and develop around them. And it hurts my feelings. It really does. It's like, wait, wait, you're gonna, it's all about me. I'm gonna go just get my career. What about like, how, like that's actually the hard way, right? Like, think about that. That's the hard way to do business.

Very much for me, like my, my biggest successes in restaurants or when I would take the time to, to like to teach and train and develop and bring people along with me because then I could direct and I could like kind of not stand on their shoulders so much as be at that level to help them learn to, to take my job from me at some point. Right. But that's when I did the, that's when my rest, my operations went the best, the easiest. And people looked at me and like, wow, this is amazing.

Everybody's so calm and cool. And I'm like, it's 'cause they know what they're supposed to do. Yeah. Like they know totally all the pieces. Yeah. But it's as a smoke, we've forgotten as a culture. And I think, and I, I will say that I'm, this may be small minded of me, but I think it's Americans. 'cause I look at a lot of the European chefs and they're, they're developing people. The European restaurant culture is really about leadership and development and, and passing things down.

Right. Um, I think it's

He goes, I'm 22. He goes, I started the restaurant when I was 15 as a dishwasher, and now I just officially got my first CVP title. And the pride that he carried was so obviously beautiful because he loved what he did, because he grew into what he was doing, knowing what he wanted to do, and he went after it. He pushed hard and he's gonna be a chef and corporate chef one day if he wanted to in this company. Right. 'cause his driving tenacity or everything, hospitality.

And we, my friend of mine went in there for dinner one night and he was the one of the first to come out to say hi. And he is like, I just wanna say thanks. What a great course. Like, you know, and I, and it's, it's so nice when you see this younger generation, and I think it existed for us, you know, I'm in my mid to late forties now and you know, there was a certain WOWness to, you know, lining tables up with a string so they were dead straight.

Yeah. And doing things with perfection, tension and grace. And now that I've seen such a visual learning capacity for people, because everybody's just on their phones now, was that I had to start showing people why, rather than just telling them why and the difference and impact that it made when. I realized that I was setting our dining room table when we had guests over at 10 years old flawlessly, because I was obsessed with the idea of it. I guess that's where it all, you know, stemmed from.

But it was always this, you know, let's, let's make ourselves grow as much as understanding the next generations that are trying to get into this business that think a little bit more new age. There's more technology, there's more things that are catching their attention. Let, let's build that spirit at that level for them to know that they're heard. And then a little bit of ingenuity is always a good thing, and especially for some of us more senior, if you will, in the business.

Number one, it it's gonna make your own job easier if everybody around you is well educated in the, in, in the core of what it is you're looking to accomplish, whether that's great food and service, whether that's fast, what, whatever that may be, if everybody really has a, a phenomenal understanding of it, it's gonna go easy. Oh yeah. So it's self-serving. Right? Absolutely. Happens a smaller

It was like being sommelier and trying to people, you know, everybody gets nervous tasting or smelling wine when they're beside a sommelier and I'm like, but your nose and your palate are, are yours. I may know what the rain looked like that year in Sair and that that's great when I'm, you know, but a guest doesn't even care about that. It just makes me understand things at a different level.

However, the translation between you being able to provide the perfect glass of wine for a guest experience, it doesn't have to be about you coming to ask me. It has to be about you learning how to think it out and, and bring up the idea that you smell cinnamon when we're in the open, you know, nose and tasting that we're doing on it, because maybe I didn't see it and maybe now you've sparked my interest to go, yeah, it's there. Maybe we can look at it with this dish.

And then hopefully they go, or this one, and I'm like, great. Now we've got the conversation begun. I used to do this where I would bring in and fall. I brought in a whole bunch of autumn leaves off trees that had just fallen and I brought them in and I would open up sangiovese for the staff for Chiante, and I'm like, smell the leaves. Smell the wine and they're like, oh. And I was like, yeah, now let's put the conversation into loop.

We're not doing anything with leaves in the restaurant, but what dishes in the restaurant have those kind of tones to it that will allow this? And it was a neat moment. Ah, that's a great,

It doesn't have, we, everybody thinks leadership and then they go John Maxwell, or they, you know what I mean? They go, they go billion dollar companies. I'm like, no. Leadership is about how we take care of each other and how, how, that's it. And I, it's, it's really I to people that don't understand. I actually had someone say this to me. They're like, Simon, what the fuck does leadership mean? And I said, well, I'll give it to you the way I think about it. And he, they, he's like, okay.

I said, expansion of influence. He's like, cool, what else? I'm like, no, right there. Expansion of influence. Oh, full stop.

And it was last summer that, and I was doing, you know, good with one-to-one coaching. And then last summer I had a lot of students come up to me and just said, we're stuck. I've got my, I've got my degree from back home. I'm doing my postgraduate degree here. You're my professor here. But there's this gap that I can't seem to understand on where I need to get to next. So I started working with students that became clients, but I started pivoting what I was doing and how I was developing them.

And, um, all, I had nine students that became. Just kinda pseudo clients as I was teaching them, but outside of class time. And um, the moments that happened was that, you know, this is the gig that I want, this is what I'm going after. I was like, great, let's see if it makes any sense to you. Let's just pull more out of you to see if it aligns with who you actually are, who you think you are. But let's see if we can pull more out.

And by the end of it, all nine students either got the gig that they were going after because it made sense, understood where their direction was going, or knew what they had to go to instead. And as I had said this out loud to my buddy Edwin Kumar, um, from Ultra Team Development, and we did Restaurant Leadership 1 0 1, I had a friend of mine here goes, so it's it, so what is exactly you do? And I said, it's executive coaching for restaurants.

And as I had told this to Edwin and Edwin's an incredible coach, he goes, hold on a second. And he goes, do you realize that you're doing career coaching? I. He goes, you've been studying leadership and gotten certifications and coaching, certifications and licenses and emotional intelligence and leadership. He goes, but you're doing it for, for everybody, for everybody else too. And I said, oh. I said, well, yeah. I said, yeah, like, it just very confidently out, out loud.

I said in a conversation, I said, I get more excited. And I said this a couple times lately in, in just conversations, is taking somebody from here and building the steps to get here, rather than convincing somebody to go from here to here. And I said, leadership is an action. As much as we hold it accountable in a position, leadership's actionable.

So if the 17-year-old hostess that I had at PVA can run my door at 17 because I trust her fully because she's leading it, what's, what's, there's nothing wrong with that because she's next to start growing herself because I paid attention to her leadership capabilities. At a junior role in the restaurant that became a senior role in the restaurant at 17 years old. So I believe leadership is actionable, right?

It has to be positional a hundred percent, but I, I believe it's an actionable thing in that if the person at the top isn't leading and all of a sudden you've got an entire team that's leading and the leader at the top isn't really understanding why they're all happy, well, because we've helped them figure out more about what makes 'em great at what they do and love what they do.

And, and, and then if it can build up as much as it can go from top down and we can go from bottom up, how much better and stronger we're gonna be.

'cause once you do that, you can then go, I'm doing these 10 things and they're really low value to me. Right. And you can, you can put 'em on any matrix you want. Uh, I happen to use urgent and important. And if you start to, you start to realize that you're doing all this work that isn't very urgent and it's kind of important, but not really. Hmm. You just need to teach somebody how to do that.

You know, like, so I started him with time management and I get the, and then, and they're like, why am I doing, one guy says, why am I doing this? And I was like, 'cause until you understand how to lead yourself, I don't expect you to be able to lead anybody else for a, for shit. And he's like, that's huge. He, he's like. Oh, okay. And he dug in and I'm like, ah, gotcha. Okay, cool. Here we go. But it's, it's true.

It's like, until people under can like understand where their time is going, you know, I got this one guy and he's, I said, I want you to map out a day and then maybe your whole week and tell me, and he's like, this weird thing is happening. I said, what's that? He goes, I think that there's all this free time, but I never, I never seem to get anything done in that. I'm like, so then pay attention to what's happening in that free time.

He's like, I'm getting sucked in here and getting sucked in there. I'm like, okay, you want a solution for that? I said, he says, yeah. I said, great. Uh, do you have pockets in your shirts? He goes every day like, okay, cool. I want you to fold a piece of paper and I want you to, I. Put it in your pocket and on the front, I want you to, as you're going through the day, list what you're doing. And if you're able, if you have the capacity, write down how much time you spend on that.

And then every time you're going, man, I'm doing this again, I want you to turn the piece of paper around to the back and I want you to write the word teach. And then I want you to write what it is that you, you just keep having to go back to. And he's like, why? I said, because if you're going back to that shit and it's not really great work for you, if it's not high value, it's not moving the business forward, then I want you to teach somebody else how to do it.

And he went, nobody's ever said that kind of thing to me before. And I said, well, that's, I said, maybe that's why I have a job.

Um, for me, I, I kind of go with ideal week 'cause like, it's aspirational, you know, like it's there, it's, it's, it's not, it's not gonna happen every time. Right. But you gotta, you gotta, for me is the difference between driving from point A to point B as fast as possible. It's on the map, right? I'm going on the map versus I don't have a plan and I don't have a lot of direction and I'm in the desert and I'm just doing donuts. Right. Going fast. I'm going fast, but I'm not going anywhere.

Yeah. So I always check my off, you know, my list, but I always make it modestly put together so that I don't overextend myself to exhaustion. Or all of a sudden I wake up on Thursday, I'm like, my entire week's done. What am I gonna do for the next two days? And then so I try to very much portion it out to make it responsibly, confident and just methodical for myself and for everything that I'm doing better for my business and for others and with others most importantly.

So it got to a point where I would get down to looking at it quickly at the end of the day and I'm like, oh. I forgot to email so and so and I'll change it. So to go in from going in the anxiety moment of I gotta get up and do it, I just quickly reword it to remind yourself on, let's say it's Tuesday, remind yourself on Tuesday to email so-and-so on Wednesday instead of emailing so and so when I was in Tuesday.

And just that shift of mindset allowed me to put my phone away, check mark it off, and have a complete list of completion for the day. Yeah. And then I'll throw in like middle of the day things like last week I had crushed eight significant things, went and mowed my grass, came back in, changed what I was doing to another thing that I had to do. And then the middle of that to break between. The next thing is I went to power wash my deck just to shift my mindset in a day to have some flow.

But I love watching, you know, accomplishments in a day and feeling proud of what's been accomplished. Um. Yeah, and, and what's been a challenge and maybe what I could do better the next time, but working myself and coaching myself through it for, you know, my own, my own growth, um, which is the most important growth that exists for myself. And same for you. Right. Well, anybody else

I had a couple months with seven restaurants. Those were bad months, but the four months mm-hmm. The four, four restaurant unit months were, were pretty good. But it was like, they was still dictated. Right. Like I would, I would find myself getting through lunch and going, all right, I'm gonna hop in the car and I'm gonna get over here. I'm gonna talk to this chef. And then he's gonna have an hour before we, we get open.

So all the cue, the, the daily cues were built in and then learning to be in a free floating space that is advisory consultant work, working from home. I'm like, oh god. And so I had to really like, personally focus myself and it's a work in progress for sure. But I definitely like. You know, but it's, it's, it's helping me to understand, it's like, okay, how did I succeed as a, as a chef that was in one restaurant. Like, wow.

It was because I used to map my time was really well mapped and I knew exactly when I had an hour. And so, um, like if I, if I know I have an hour to, to work on something, I, or if I know that a chef has an hour to work on something, I tell 'em, like, guard that. Like it is fucking gold, man. Like, communicate to your team. You're out.

Like you're, you're, you're gonna, you have one hour to get a project done, put, I don't know, put a note on your door that says taping in progress or Do not disturb, or whatever you need to do on your office door, or, you know, or Here's my favorite one. You got a project to do. I. I tell everybody that you're out of the building for one hour. Grab your laptop, grab your pen and paper, whatever it is, and walk down the street to Starbucks or a coffee shop and work there.

And someone said, but I, I, I'm supposed to be in the restaurant. I'm like, nobody's gonna miss your presence. If you do, if you do your due diligence, right. Set your team up, you, hopefully you have a sous chef or the manager can watch your team for an hour while they're, while you're in the middle of the day, get out and like, make no excuses. Go do the thing and then come back and you'll go, oh, I got my thing project done. Right.

Because as chefs, we chefs and restaurant managers, we are so focused on all the team and all the other things, but we still gotta take care of our own deliverables, right?

You have a choice, you know, that, and I, and uh, because when I, when we first got together, I was like, the phone would ring and I like, I jump over the couch and like go to get the phone and she's like, just 'cause it rings doesn't mean you have to answer it. That's what call screening is. And I went. I like that

I was at home and if you can't get me any of those places, call my wife's cell phone and you'll maybe get ahold, you'll probably get ahold of me. But the shift that's happened with all of this, so I think the intensity of the phone ringing. So I put on, um, I had an app that required, um, to have a passcode. So I was like, okay, whatever. I'm gonna keep the app for a bit. So I put the face on. I sound like such an old man.

With this I can build your POS systems in your inventory programs in restaurants flawlessly telling you how my iPhone works. Not a clue. So I put this on and. Didn't know. And the, the other day I was like, why are messages showing that I have a message but it doesn't say anything with it? And I realized it's not showing it because it's got a passcode to protect that from just showing in general scope that has shifted, that has shifted how I pick up my phone, I've shut, vibrate off. Right.

I can see my phone go and I can peek at who it is, but I don't have to read what it is. 'cause it'll just say, oh, you know, my wife's nickname is Spud because she's from Prince Edward Island and they're the potato country of our country. Of our, yeah, the potato country of our country. Um, so I nickname is Spud when we met 20 years ago. So, but I just see Spud McFadden messages. I'm like, great, great. I know it's probably not an emergency 'cause she would've called right. Whatever it may be.

But it changes how I look at my phone now because I don't know what it is I'm about to read. And it's interesting, it's changed how much I pick it up based on the fact I turned

And if it works, great, right? But just if you need me, just send me a text. Right? Yeah. If you really fire off a call. Right. But it's weird to sit tight on an email. I used to actually do this as a professor where a lot of professors on Friday at five, they shut their emails off and I said to my students, I'm like, if I'm not replying to you on a weekend when I've given you a 14,000 word assignment. Jokingly speaking here. Right?

But then I haven't done my part as your professor to not be accessible. So you're gonna work on this over Saturday and Sunday, and if you have questions about what the paper is about or what the assignment's about, and I'm not replying back to you, then it's not, it's not fair of me to be trying to teach you and try to guide you into, into greater scope of what you're learning in our industry.

So I was always accessible and I've always ran my life like the restaurant life where it's like Sunday at two. Yeah. You can send me a message, you'll hear back, right? Just the world is ticking and hospitality is alive and always ticking. Right. And if we're not actively a part of it or getting our team activated part of it based upon what we've taught them to do and grown them right, then it, these essence of just being the only one in the room that's trying to lead it,

And I would immediately answer my, and my wife was like, do you always have to answer this on your days off? I'm like, yeah, 'cause we can't lose, we can't lose the, we can't lose things. They don't know how we operate. But I've got nine perfectly done guest responses that we're just a drop in paste, drop in paste, and then a quick personalized to the first name of the company name. And Joe was like, that's quick. And I was like, yeah. And it took me 14

Like we've been together 20 years and that's my biggest win today was that I know there's a, there's an end to what's been very much the necessity of what has been needed. But she's done so much work to get her mom feeling good and getting back on track and the nurses and doctors and so on. But my win was knowing when she's coming home and that that was everything. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And the lose for the day. I haven't had a, I haven't had a loss today.

And I was so proud of how focused I was on achieving this over the last two weeks that on Saturday morning when I picked up our friend, uh, um, I said, you know what's funny? I said, I feel really proud right now of how, how much things have worked. Like I've been focused and aligned and just priorities have been exactly where they need to be. And I said out loud, I said, 'cause I haven't said this out loud yet.

I said, but you know, I wait for a speed bump to show up that I see how I grab it and, and, and what it does for me. And very simply, as I dropped her off at one farmer's market, I went to another one, I opened up our count sheets and our float sheets, and I had accidentally put them in opposite bins. And I had this whole moment where I was like, did I miscount our cookie counts going to the markets like I. What did I do?

And then I realized that I had just accidentally put them in each other's bins. And I sent her this text that I was like, well, if anxiety could ever kick in from the conversation we just had in the car, this was what happened. And then I realized it wasn't anything big of a deal, any means, and that it couldn't be something that would rattle my day. 'cause it really wasn't a big deal. But for a moment I was like, the world's the world's ending. Yep. And the sky is falling.

And she was like, you're good, you're good, you're good. Calm down. You're good. You know you're good. Right? Like good. And I was like, but if that was the worst thing that happened to me today, it's okay. Right. I prepare, I was oddly prepared for anything else that could come my way. Awesome. So I look at, um, anything that might show up as a loss in my day as the opportunity for it to be a win tomorrow. Um, and I think one big thing that I'd always learned in my life.

This was after I, I had, you know, originally quit drinking eight years ago. I had slept with wine again because I thought I had control over it. Um, but it's been over, just over eight years since I've had a sip of hard alcohol or beer. And it'll be three years in September since I've had a sip of wine.

And I, I over confidently started asking every question that came to my thought when I was working with clients or when I, and when I was working with, you know, my, my role as a restaurant with my partners or, you know, so on was always ask a question because there's a 50 50 shot, you're gonna get the answer that you want.

And if you don't get the answer that you want, and there's still a 50% chance to reframe that question or redevelop that question to potentially get the answer that you were hoping for, and that it allowed me to start pausing and stepping back and going, I actually think this really makes sense for what we're doing. Let me position it a different way.

And it changed the way I thought things out was that I. I think there's more vulnerability out there for us ourselves is that when we become more transparent for ourselves to think things out and that it, it empowers our teams. When we put that transparency out in the world that, you know, a loss that shows up can turn into a win.

If you rethink what that loss looked like based upon how it came at you, by just taking a pause and resetting and, and, you know, kind of rinse, reset, re reset, repeat, and just allowing, you know, not the anxiety to win, but more of the cognitive ability to think it out win. Um, and that every loss has a chance to be a win. And if it is gonna maintain as a loss and just park it, put it aside, right? Move along. There's other ones out there for you to grab.

I think it's, it's easy to, to lay blame on things and it's like, ah, if we're not making mistakes, how are we gonna learn anyway? Perfect. Pouring. Well, that's exactly it,

Like, we'll do better things by getting ourselves out of the thinking of it when we can manage situations rather than having to resolve situations that can maybe be done later on if they need to be. But I think it changes the tone when, when you can manage these opportunities, um, and yeah. You know, a team that's in the grind, my goodness, I've seen, I. Oh, the world of chefs and having, and my wife, my wife was a chef.

She did her culinary and pastry diplomas at the Culinary Institute to Canada. That was her education. So she's trained in both aspects of it. And it's neat to have worked with her in a restaurant. Um, but her being a business owner and running our cookie business out of our, our, our fully licensed home kitchen, um, when the punk music goes on, she's in work mode. And I'm like, got it. And I'm trying to do client meetings with punk music going on upstairs.

And I'm like, but I know where she's in work mode and I know she's in chef mode. And that, and the mentality is just the grind. 'cause I don't know how to put things together. You know, I can cook, but, but I'm not a chef. Right. And so when I watch it in, in, in the, the intensity of the chef life and every chef's gonna go, how hard was your day? I'm like, I get it. I get it. Right. You know, I dealt with some madness in the dining room, however, right. I, I get that.

You overcooked 12 steaks because your mindset wasn't there, and you went into a spiral down and couldn't find you. Um, and it took the next day to kind of have a kick in. Um, yeah, I applaud, I applaud the chef world incredibly.

Because you're gonna, you're gonna hurt. And so I've taken that to being like, huh, do. Does, does any cook Cook, does anybody apply their craft better when they're like angry and stressed? No. I mean, I, I don't know. Maybe, but maybe I feel, I feel like a carpenter's gonna bang harder and, and like bend the nail. I feel like the, you know, the, the chef or the, the sassier is gonna make something just a little bit too bitter when he is pissed off, you know?

Um, so I question, I try to find people, find people ways to like, come back to center. Like, how, how do we put that, how, how do we put all the bullshit aside? Like, do you need to go outside and, or go on the walk in and scream and get rid of that? Uh, do you need to make the phone call that resolves the, the argument with your girlfriend now? Like, do you need to do that? 'cause I can handle your station.

Go and figure your shit out for a minute and then come back because we got work to find harm. Find your harmony. Gotta find the harmony, man. Gotta gotta find the resonate notes. Question.

As a bald man head just starts to get a little warm.

Uh, I will make sure that people can find you in the show notes. Um, fabulous. The McFadden group, I assume you're on LinkedIn on a fairly regular basis. Um, we'll make sure they can find you and um, we'll catch you on the flip side.