Build and Grow Your Personal Chef Business Now - Advice from Chef Jonathan Bardzik

Over the past 27 years, the world of the personal chef has grown in importance to fulfill the dining needs of consumers. While the pandemic certainly upended the restaurant experience, it provided an avenue for personal chefs to close that dining gap. Central to all of that is the United States personal chef Association, representing nearly 1000 chefs around the US and Canada and even Italy. USPCA provides a strategic backbone for those chefs that includes liability insurance, training, communications, certification, and more. It's a reassurance to consumers that the chef coming into their home is prepared to offer them and experience along with their meal. One of the big upcoming events for the USPCA is their annual conference scheduled for July 7 through 10th at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, Florida. Featuring a host of speakers and classes. The conference allows chefs to hone their skills and network with like minded business people and is open to all shifts in the industry. For those who supply the industry, it's a chance to reach decision makers and the actual buyers of products. This will be the first time back following the COVID lockdowns and the chef's are anxious to connect. And right now Chefs Without Restaurants listeners can use promo code CWR50. To save $50 on registration, please contact Angela at aprather@uspca.com For information on becoming a member attending the conference or exhibiting. And as always, all this info will be in the show notes. And now on with the show. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great week. Hey, Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming back.

Thanks, Chris. It's great to be back with you.

I'm looking forward to doing round two, you know, I think our first talk was so great. I took so much personally out of it. It really made me think about how I wanted to run my business, especially when it comes to working with clients maybe who are a little more challenging and just kind of doing the jobs that I you know, really feel excited for but also charging what I'm worth. And I got a lot of feedback from people saying how much they enjoyed that and that they actually wanted to have you back on the show.

Thank you. I'm excited about that. Because I get so much value from the people that you speak to so thrilled to be contributing a little bit back to that. You

and I met up a couple of weeks ago in DC had some coffee, it was really great. We continued our conversations. And I thought it'd be a good idea to have you back on the show to maybe do round two and talk about, you know, what's changed in the years since we last talked and kind of where are you at right now? Why don't you start by giving everyone like a three minute brief bio if they don't know who you are, and haven't listened to the original episode.

I'm a storyteller cook and author is how I describe myself I get started 11 years ago now, doing weekly live cooking demonstrations at DCS historic Eastern Market. And that grew to 10 different markets in the area, some private cheffing more sort of interactive teaching experiences, three cookbooks and ultimately, last year launched an eight episode TV series that will keep you busy. Yeah, the last two years were thing I definitely would love to talk a little bit about that and where that's left me.

Well, where do you want to start? I'll let you just kind of jump in. I don't have a heavy agenda today since we covered so much the first time and again you and I talked so I kind of know where this is going but where do you want to kick this off?

You know, I would love to talk about taking some time and making choices for yourself as you run your business and I am thinking I just saw your email pop up the other day about the interview you did where this cookbook author decided to jump off of social media and I just felt my soul lift. You know that that idea that freedom? That seems so impossible was amazing.

Yeah, you know, I when I was trying to coordinate had this discussion with you today, you know, I sent you a DM or so on Instagram, I think I sent you a text, it took you a couple days, I'm fine with that. But realizing that like, not everyone's going to be on your timetable, this person probably has something going on. And I think these days, we all feel like a DM comes in, we need to respond to it, a text comes in, we need to respond to it. And I personally am trying to be better about shutting off notifications, kind of getting into the zone. I recently read Cal Newports. Deep Work, you and I talked about that. And that's something that I really love, like kind of finding that time to do the big important things instead of just kind of frittering away, you know, two hours scrolling social media, that two hours is going to be better spent, for me, really digging in and doing you know, whether it be the newsletter, a new blog post, developing a recipe, or just reaching out to clients, something that I know is going to really help move the needle for my business.

You know, I feel like our phones and our technology have taken over. Back in February, I decided to do a two week retreat. And I had, you know, the last year has been exhausting. I think for all of us, if we are still in business right now, and figured out how to run businesses through COVID. We're tired, even if it all went really well, we're tired. And so I went away and decided that I needed more than a vacation, I needed some time to think. And so I shut down all of my electronics for two weeks, did a lot of reading a lot of little walking, thinking, journaling. And in the process of not having my phone in my hand for two weeks, I realized just how much time I spent on it. And coming back and talking to people. One of the things that was kind of funny, I you know, when I said to people, yeah, so I would go to the bathroom without my phone. And I would get this reaction from people like what

what are you doing in there? Just go into the bathroom? Come on yet, right?

Are you okay? Do you need some therapy? Can I give you a hug was right. I mean, we're just the idea of not being constantly stimulated. And I read a book while I was there that was was talking about sort of the disconnection of our work. It was it was a woman who wrote a book called built to connect, and it is all about creatives. And the fact that we we very often are put in a position to look at each other as competitors, when we should be looking at each other, as collaborators, as fellow business people who like the work that you do have things to tell us. And that, you know, I don't have to worry that, that every customer you get is a customer that I did. She's telling you about social media and said, Hey, by the way, you should be aware, their job with these people go into the office to do every single day is create an algorithm that gets you to spend more time on the app. And I was just talking with a friend about technology in general and said, you know, Amazon does the same thing like this is this whole world is built to get us to react and invest more of our time. And time is the one asset that we can't replenish. And it's the most valuable one that we have. I and I'm no going on here. But you know, I, I worked for boss prior to cooking in a trade association remembers your small businesses. And you said you need to remember that every single one of our members has made a lifestyle decision, they could go make more money doing something different, which I think all of us probably could, right, we could all get an office job somewhere and probably get a bigger paycheck. We're doing this because we love it. And we got to make sure that we keep loving it. And that we're spending our time doing the things that got us into it in the first place. Not getting trapped. You know, I realized I don't want to be a real or a tick tock video creator. I want to I want to talk to people about food. I want five minutes to share some real technique or some insight about an ingredient I don't want, you know, the three second swipe the asparagus in front of the screen that changed my clothes. So how do you know at some point you got to make that tough decision is the cookbook author your interviewer did to say no.

And, you know, I think everyone can find a platform that works for them and a medium that works for them. And this stuff is cyclical. Like I'll just briefly talk about, you know, film and video. Like everyone had cameras way back in the day and they took photos. And then like in the 80s the video camera came and I remember my dad got one and everything was a home video and we had no photos for a number of years. And then you know, you go back and digital cameras come in and everyone starts taking digital photos and they're not doing videos and now then their phones start taking videos and now it's videos, not Photos. It just like goes back and forth. And I guess the point is like, there's always going to be a platform or an app. And a lot of us started writing and blogging. And then they moved into photos and videos. And now I see a lot of people going back to writing and blogging and going back to having their website where there are a substack newsletter or something like that. So it goes in cycles as well, you know, you don't necessarily always have to catch the hot new thing, right?

I always think about Warren Buffett, who was asked about, you know, investing in technology, investing in NASDAQ, stocks and businesses. And he just said, I don't understand them. And so I'm not, you know, I'm going to be a multimillionaire, I'll be one of the richest men in the world. But I'm going to do what I know. And I'm going to stick to what I know. And, you know, anytime that I talk to my dad about whether I am spending my time doing the right thing with my life, he often quotes Warren Buffett and says, when this guy goes and talks to business schools and talks to the students there, and they say, so what career should I go into to make money, he always tells him, you should do what you love, and the money will come with it. And I know all of us, you've had to face that at some point. And I used to give that advice a lot before I had to take it, it is much easier advice to give to other people than it is to have to really face up to yourself. But it's true. I think at the end, it's true. Even if you look at how you structure your business, podcasting, and blogging, you love and you should do it. I love writing and I love communicating. But if someone hates all of that, they should just go print some business cards and you know, walk into church on Sunday, or walk into their kids Cub Scout group and hand them out and say I want to cook for you. I mean, built built the business that plays to your strengths and that you love at the end of the day, you're a small business, you're not going to go hire five people to make up for things that you don't do as well.

And I think client retention is important as well. And we spend a lot of time acquiring the customers, and then you don't close the deal. And you don't follow up, right like because again, a lot of what we do on social media is the promotion of like, Hey, look at this food I'm making, and then like a customer contacts you, and I'm gonna do this. And then you're not even like super responsive on getting back to them via email, because like, you're caught up on the wheel of like promotion, like, I got to do all this and I'm doing another set of photos and videos and reels. It's like it worked, you got the customer, now you got to like respond to them via email and and figure out what you're going to cook for them and cook for them. And then once you do work on retaining them, reach out to them, send them a thank you card, because then they're going to pass that on to their friends. And I think that's where there's some disconnect is like, we're all caught up in this self promotion. Look at me look at what I do. But aren't we doing that for customer acquisition, if you know if you have a business, and I think people don't think, or people don't put that much effort into then working with those people that they've already got?

Well, and that acquisition piece, I think is such an important focus, because it's the Why are you doing this? Right marketing is something that we do because we have to, to get to do what we want to. And I think that what social media has changed so significantly, is the marketing becomes your business in some ways, right? Like you're spending all day feeding the marketing platform, rather than saying this is a necessary evil, so that I can go cook for people. There was a influential Harvard Business School professor back in the 80s and 90s. And he talked about a value chain in terms of business activities and separated what we do into things that bring in money and things that spend money. And and part of the thought process there obviously is if you if you think about things that cost you money, but don't make you money, then how do you minimize those. And unless they're fun, unless you love doing them. You know, if you let's say you love the grocery shopping part of doing a gig then by all means, go to 47 different places and spend as much time as you want and find the perfect ingredient and look through 32 artichokes to find that perfect one if that brings you joy. If not, then you're not making money by going and buying those ingredients.

Switching to Instacart was one of the biggest game changers for me during COVID is just giving up some of that control and saying I don't need to pick through 37 artichokes I'm gonna let the shopper do it. If there's a problem, I can request a refund and I can still pop in the store and get it myself so not having to go spend hours and hours and hours doing that. I'm fine and the margin of error has been super slight like there's been very few times I swear like, I wanted something and they didn't get me a good quality product. And getting all those hours back into my life has been amazing.

You know, one thing that I realized early on, and I know this makes me a bad chef and a bad business person. I absolutely hate managing budgets. And so I decided that I was just going to charge enough and find the clients willing to pay enough that I did not have to sit and crunch numbers on every single dish for every single gig. And I respect people who do that. I mean, I totally get that if you are catering understanding your food costs is critical. If you are running, particularly a corporate restaurant, understanding your food cost is critical. And it's not that I don't understand my food costs. I just said, I'm going to charge enough so that I don't have to wonder whether I should get farm fresh, locally produced butter, or look for sale. 100%.

And I get a lot of shit. Like I'm in a lot of Facebook groups about personal chefs and people talking about food costing and whatnot. You know, it's like I did a dinner for two the other night and they paid me $250 I had that was $500 for dinner for two, you know. So whether the short ribs are 1099 a pound or 1499 a pound. It doesn't really matter to me. It's like a $3 swing. Again, that's the Realm i play in as well. I'm not nickel and diming it now I've worked for corporate foodservice where it came down to a per pet, you know, three cents a plate was would blow your budget annually. That's not the realm I'm in. I know, there are some chefs who run it a little tighter. But like if you manage your proteins, and your high dollar items, everything else falls in place. What's your center of the plate? How much is the salmon? How much is the filet? How much are the short ribs? Oh, I'm getting a cheese that's like $15 a pound. Everything else like, Oh, sugar went up 30 cents a bag, big deal. Like it doesn't matter. Like I don't need to change the costing on this, I'm still going to be charging one to 200 to 250 a

person. I also think it occurs to me that strategically, one of the differences between us and in you know more consistent, whether it is you know, restaurant menu based or commercial restaurant bay or menu based cooking is that they're cooking things consistently enough that in the one two hours that it takes to really figure out that food costs. Make sense, because you're gonna cook that dish 10,000 times. And I know, you know, I am very often changing every single menu for every single client. So investing those hours just doesn't pay off on a client by client basis. Yeah, I've

recently had a customer, we wanted to do a steak, you know, I SPECT out a menu for him, gave him a price that I wasn't able to get it. And I went to get something else. And he responded to me and said, Oh, well, I imagine there's a pretty big price difference. And I said, actually, you know, there's not I, you know, I didn't know if he was like beating around the bush that he wanted me to adjust the price. I said like, the reality is, is like you're also having a person at the dinner who's a vegetarian, and it's the same. So like, the person who's getting the 10 pay, I'm charging$100, the person who's getting the steak, I'm charging $100. So like, even if we don't go with this cut of steak, and I go to a different cut, it might be $4 a pound less. But again, at an eight ounce portion, you're talking about $2 ahead. So I mean, if you want me to adjust it from 100 to $98 a person, I can do that. But he was he was totally cool with it. And you know, understood. But you know, you do have people who kind of raised that point I have had people say like, well, you know, I'm having rib eyes, and my vegetarians are having 10 pay, what's the price difference and letting them know they're not really paying for the food as much as they are my service, the labor, the experience and all that and like while they are vegetarian and tam pays $4 A pack as opposed to, you know,$26 a pound, the price is going to be the same.

It's very, I grew up in a family garden center landscape business. And the sort of conventional wisdom 30 years ago was from the landscape side was that nobody likes to pay for labor. And so you would charge three times the retail cost of the plant material. And you know, in the hardscape materials and everything else. And so that was how you, you got people comfortable with paying for the job. And we recently had some work done here in the house. And they essentially had us go by with through their suppliers, all of the supplies and pay for them directly and their billing was strictly for their labor. And, you know, in some ways, I think that it takes a little more education with your clients, but it makes sense to say that exactly what you said, which is you're not paying for the food, like you could you could put this meal on the table for, you know, if I'm going crazy $25 ahead. But good luck with that. And have fun with the amount of time it's going to take to go find those ingredients and good luck spending, you know, the next few months or years in learning all these vendors and how to pick out a good steak and what what the right artichoke looks like. So yeah, I think that I think getting clear with our clients that they're paying for our time and valuing our time.

And we're okay with that. In almost every other industry. I think it's because people cook at home almost every day. So they feel like they have a base understanding of costs. And what goes into you know, it's like, what's the cost of an oil change? I could go buy oil at Walmart and do it in my driveway. Why am I paying $75 to do it? You know, but I do it. And I'm okay with it. Because I don't have the knowledge. I think with food, people are like, Oh, well, I cook breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. And like, I know how to cook. And I know what food costs. So like, why is this costing so much? We had a guy come my fridge is broken at home and has the water thing. We had a guy come out, he looked at it. He charged me $150 And then told me he literally can't find the part and can't fix it. And I still had to pay the labor on it. You know, like, it is what it is right? Like, yeah, I wish there was something else. But you know, it's not his fault. The parts not available, the guy came out, it's still an hour out of his day where he's not making money if I don't pay him. So we paid like that's just the way it is. But with food, it's it's so different. And I think it's because people have some basic understanding, and they think they can do it. But it's like, if you can do it, just why don't you do it. But I see a lot of chefs who talk again in these forums, and they're charging, I don't agree with this. They're giving customers the receipts and just getting a reimburse for the food. And then they're charging for labor. Like, I don't necessarily want people to see what I'm spending on food, not that I'm hiding anything. But again, that gives them some wiggle room to say like, wow, you only spent basically $15 A head on food, why is this going to be $3,000? You know, I think that does, like I'm charging for my creativity. It's like, Oh, you think you can make that? Good luck, you know, so I've never been a believer in like, Oh, here's, you know, $200 worth of receipts. And by the way, it's then $45 an hour for me to cook for you. And then you get into the nickel and diming with the time of like, oh, well, the traffic was extra. So here's my commute time, and I was at your house five hours instead of six, like I don't charge per hour, you know, if I'm there for hours, or if I'm there six hours, it's the same.

You know, in retail, there's there's this idea called Value Added pricing. So the traditional way of pricing is to have a markup, right. And very often that's Keystone. So you know, 100% markup, they pay $5 to bring something into the retail store and you pay $10 for it. And there's this value based pricing concept, which is, well what is the thing worth to the customer, so if you go find the coolest thing in the world that you know, I'm really going to want, and it's only three bucks, still charge me 10. Because I think it's really cool. And I think that we should do the same thing. So, you know, if someone says, I want this ingredient that I think is fancier or I want this thing that you're going to have to learn how to do or has a whole lot of memory attached to it or take special pleading, by all means charge more, you know, I think we get so on the cost side, we get so attached to the inputs. And that is not what they're paying for. They're paying for the experience. They're paying for the memories. And again,

I think that's where sometimes when you start talking contracts and all this stuff, it becomes transactional. And that changes the whole vibe of it, like people have told me for years that like I need to have contracts, or I need to take deposits, and I'm gonna get burned. And I haven't, you know, because I think once we get into this, like, here's this contract of what you owe me and here's what I'm gonna do for you. And this is what I need, it just becomes more I mean, I don't wanna say becomes more of a business because I have a business but you lose some of that connectedness, that relationship where it's all about, like, I'm only doing this for you for the money right? And I am I mean I'm going to work for the money but also I enjoy it you know, I have become friends with a number of my customers. It's not uncommon for you know, me to then go out and meet up with them and have a drink or something after the fact like you get to know these people. And I don't think you necessarily get to that level if you're keeping it frankly, transactional of like, here's this contract of how this is gonna go down.

You know, I feel like contracts are there, they're a little bit like legislation, they are the communication form of last resort. You know, when I get into conversations being in DC, about legislation and how it's an effective and it misses this and it misses that, of course it does. The it is the least effective way to accomplish anything. And it's like using a sledgehammer for brain surgery. But you get to it because no other solution seems to have worked. And I feel the same thing with contracts. When I sent the contract for my TV show. The contract between me and my co producer over to my lawyer, it was three pages. And he said, I don't think you understand TV show contracts are hundreds of pages long. This is amazing. And it was amazing, because my co producer and I sat down in the room. And we had a conversation, and we talked about what was meaningful to us. And we talked about which dollars mattered at the end of the day. And then we put that on paper and shook hands. And, you know, I mean, this document was sort of a, if everything goes to hell, we should we should have something on paper, just in case. But I totally agree. You know, I think that the the goal for all of us is to communicate clearly with our clients so that no one is getting inadvertently screwed. And that you're, you know, that everything? I mean, how many, how many times do you get into a gig with a client and realize that you have made assumptions, and they have made different ones. And it's just because we do this for a living, and they don't. And so, I mean, I've never asked anyone to say anything, but I have sort of some basic terms and exclamation explanations when I send over your final menu, and it says things like, you are responsible for you and your guests, dietary restrictions and preferences. And if you would like to, I am happy to give you a full list of ingredients that are involved. But you know, this is please don't make any assumptions that that something is safe for you and your guests, if you haven't asked him about it, and you haven't talked to me about. And that doesn't need to be three paragraphs of legalese. But that's just that's also, you know, you said, retain your clients. To me, that's just good client retention, like I want my clients to be really happy at the end of an experience. And so, you know, the more I talked to him, the fewer gray areas going into it, the more likely I'm going to succeed with that, and that they're going to be thrilled.

And having a contract for a business transaction is different than I think, a personal dinner, like I have contracts for sponsorship for my podcast, because again, I'm dealing with a big company, they're probably going to require it anyway. And just to kind of spell out how that works that like, Yes, this is what I'm going to do for you. This is how much you're going to pay me and here are some of the basics. Like, just because you're a sponsor of my podcast doesn't mean that I have to edit my content for you, I can still say what I want on my show, you can choose to not be a sponsor anymore, but you know, things like that, of that nature. But as far as like with customers, yeah, as long as I know what you want from me, and I tell you what I'm gonna give you you know, I've never had a problem. And I've been doing this for 11 years. Well, I want to kind of go back a little bit to this taking a break that you did. From a business standpoint, I guess I'll start like, Were you scared like that you're taking this time and you're not going to be either actually going out and doing your business or spending tons of time working on it? Was it? Was it tough for you to take that break?

Terrifying? Yeah, absolutely. It is, then, you know, to to not bury the lede here. I just came back from taking a second one. So that's two weeks off in February and two and a half more weeks off here in in late April. And I've, I've learned a lot in the process. You know, I over the last two years, when COVID hit, I jumped hard into social media. I was doing live video six times a week including two full hour long cooking demonstrations I built an entirely virtual business starting with doing virtual cook alongs for private and corporate clients. So I would develop menus send them list of ingredients and recipes two weeks ahead of time we would cook together over two to three hours. It was a three person operation and then started doing custom video work for clients so had to learn how to write scripts and shot lists and all that kind of good stuff, buy equipment. And but you know, August of 2020 I was really worn out and decided to take a two week break and a major client walked in. And I, you know, I started joking by the middle of 2021, welcome to my TED talk on how to build your business by scheduling vacations that you never get to take. So I got to the middle of last summer home visiting my folks, my dad just says, You keep talking about needing a break, and you keep not taking one. So give me a date. Like, let's, you know, let's put a schedule to this. So I decided, Alright, I'm gonna take November to February, which is usually a quiet time in my business, quieter time. And I'm going to keep the trains running, but not, you know, not aggressively pursue a lot of business, I'd had a major client, so I had a little bit of money in the bank and could add a little breathing room, and I come home for Christmas. And, again, November, December had been as busy as anytime in the last two years. And so he says to me, you need to go somewhere where you literally cannot be bothered or respond to another human being. So I scheduled this time at the beach and turned off all of my electronics, which was scary. But I had a few clients that were short of, you know, in range people, I just done work for people who had been talked to me about work. And I reached out to all them and said, I'm not going to be available for two weeks, and was shocked when they all said this is great. So I did, I came back from that time, realizing that I was deeply tired from launching a TV show rewriting a cookbook, reinventing my business. And also that I was giving so much energy into constantly being available. And I decided to be less available that I literally now don't plug my phone in next to my bed at night I plug it into another room. And but my husband's alarm wake me up in the morning, I go to friends houses and leave my phone here at the house, which is rough the first time. And I was talking to someone they said, Well, you know, what about writing a letter that you can send to some key clients and some key friends that just as you're doing this, so you don't have to explain it all the time. And I was really uncomfortable with that. And I was talking to my dad, and he said, Oh, you know, I love that you're doing this, but he really talked about it with people. And I recognized that if I had just gotten a cancer diagnosis, and I sent that letter out, saying, Hey, I'm gonna take some time for me, I'm gonna focus on the other parts of my life. Besides my business for a little while, there would be lines of people waiting to say that is fantastic. There would be friends saying, hey, no, I'm still going to text you every once in a while to let you know that I love you and that I'm there. Don't worry about ever responding to me unless it feels good to you. And so what I recognize from that is we culturally don't have language around taking care of ourselves unless there is a crisis. And that's problematic. You know, we, I think that we should value ourselves and value words and value the fullness of our lives. And I do love that the work that you and I do and that the people who you interview do is passion work. And so I don't think we need as much finger quotes traditional balance as you might need if you're a CPA, and that is not your passion in life, but you are showing up for the paycheck every day. Right? I mean, I had to go buy ingredients. And after I finish up with you, I'm gonna be preparing three dishes to photograph today. That's fun for me, I don't I don't need to balance that I don't have to go buy the new iPhone to make it okay that I've worked those hours. But there are parts of my life that aren't my art, this passion in this career. And I want to give more time to those. And ultimately, at the end of the day. That is the one asset that is not renewable. I know being in small business, it often feels like money is the big asset that's not renewable. But I find when I truly stop and take a few deep breaths, money usually shows up when it needs to. Right. I mean, how often have you been looking at the ledger and you feel screwed and all of a sudden incomes that call for that $3,000 reception and they're the bills paid?

And the other slider of that is spending right?

And I think valuing putting a cash value on your time also changes that equation. So when I started saying, You know what I? What I want more than anything is to have a little more free time to rest to shed some of those COVID pounds and get some of that energy back to cook some good meals hanging out with friends and family, that when free time was the priority, suddenly a whole bunch of expenditures seemed less important. And I realized I could fit, you know, I think we get so fixed on this idea that we we should maximize our earnings. And maximizing our earning means working as many hours as we can. And when I stopped and said that, how much can I make? But how much do I need and not need just to pay the mortgage and put dollar Robin on the table? But here's the life that I want? How much funding does it take to support that life? The whole equation of work really changed in my mind. I mean, I really started thinking about, yeah, you know what, I want to have Memorial Day weekend off. So if I have enough money in the bank, I'm not gonna take gig that weekend. I, you know, I want to spend more Friday nights during COVID. Because, you know, I couldn't work on the weekends, we shouldn't be hanging out with my husband. And some of our friends are, you know, we had two couples in our COVID pod. And I realized they were sharing all of the stories from the last 10 years while I was building my business that I wasn't a part of. So I want some of that back. And and now I can sit down and calculate how many dollars need to come in. So I can have some of that back. You know, one of the tough realities about money is that it is scary, and it feels it feels like a scarcity. And looking at it closely, especially in small business feels scarier. I was just talking to a friend recently, and I said, I think one of the major skills necessary to building a small business is both the ability to look at cold hard reality very closely. And then to forget about it. I mean, there are there are definitely days, particularly while you're building your business, but they're gonna pop up five years in and 10 years in, where you need to ignore the fact that none of the dollars make sense. And none of the time makes sense. And you don't know where your next clients are coming from. And you just have to kind of get up in the morning go. You know, I'm not seeing any this and go about your life. And rather than a percent of the time, it's going to work out. And so I think learning that skill set has made it harder to come back and say, you know, I'm just going to look at a budget. At the end of the day, if I have a good budget in front of me. I know, Hey, I can't afford to go out to dinner. But if I want to take tonight off, I just take tonight off by cooking a really good meal at home, you know, my is it steak or am I going to be cooking up some really good lentils. And that's fine. And I find in some ways, you know, my my dad on his dresser has a sheet of paper that says manage your health, your health will manage you manage your finances, your finances will manage you manage your time or your table manage you. The reality is that the things that we don't put a little time into managing are still going to be there in our lives and in our businesses. And and they will manage us. And so if you want to be in control, if you want to make the decision about how many dollars you spend, or how many hours you're going to put into a process or how much time you're going to spend communicating with a difficult customer, but that the 47 menu changes that they want to make in the last 24 hours. If you get on the phone, you're in control of that if you wait for them to call you. They're in control of that either way, you're going to put some hours into that time. If we don't get enough sleep, if we don't eat well, because we're working all the time. We're going to end up sticking in bed and not working. So we can you know, I think as hard as it is sometimes because it's it's either scary to look at or it just feels like one damn thing more that we don't have time to deal with. But when we stop and manage things, we actually ended up in a lot more control.

Absolutely. And I think it was roommate said he he has a book called I Will Teach You To Be Rich. And this isn't necessarily about rich, but it's well. It's about having what he calls a rich life. And he when he speaks about rich, it's not just money. It's about like doing the things you want. But he says, show me your calendar, show me your bank and credit card statements. And I'll tell you what your priorities are meaning someone says they want to lose weight, but they don't put on their calendar that they're going to the gym or their you know, whatever. They're not spending money on workout equipment or what you know, like, people are a lot of talk sometimes and it's like really what it comes down to is like what are you spending your time on and how are you spending your money and that's a You know, quite a reflection of who people really are and what their priorities actually are.

And I think part of that, because I've been, you know, I've been looking at that recently, with free time with business with health, people won't be able to see me during this conversation, but I carry some weight. And I'm, I am also just a big guy. And, you know, I was when I was on this first retreat back in February, I was out walking the first day, which I do, I block, you know, five to seven miles, three to five days a week, I was thinking, I'm carrying some COVID weight, I want to get rid of it. And then I thought, I'm really good at losing weight, like I've lost 5060 pounds three or four times in my life, and having just rebounded like, that sticks for 234 years when when I do it. And then I said, so should why does it ultimately go away, and I realized, I let my plate get to full. And I have, you know, 47 projects that are not sleeping, and guess what slips paying attention to my health. And the hard reality I had to come to and this is both I think hard personally, and it's also show counter to American culture is I can't do everything. You know, I think our we have this American cultural value that if you're not getting something done, it's because you're not being disciplined enough. The timing, just you know, you're in fun to happen half an hour to watch TV night, you can find a half an hour to go balance your checkbook. Well, those two things are first and foremost, fundamentally different, right? They take totally different amounts of mental bandwidth. And we can't do it all. So I worked for a boss in a trade association years ago, who when we were in board meetings, and a board member would say, well, here's this brand new thing, and we just absolutely have to be doing this. He would say your staff is complete is working every single hour of every single day that they are in the office. So what are we not going to do so we can do this new thing? And it was such a brilliant way of bringing into hard focus? No, we can't just add one more thing. And so if there's a business, you're back to the social media conversation we had earlier, if you hear the report that you know that Instagram is going to be prioritizing reels, and you better be doing reels. If you want to grow your numbers, then what are you not going to be doing? Are you not going to be balancing the checkbook or you're not going to be having dinner with your spouse and your kids at night? Are you not going to go work out eat OLED every inch of your house except your kitchen become a complete disaster.

Again, there's only a set amount of hours in the day. Having a business the amount of emails and messages I get from people all the time, and everyone just wants to hop on a call, right? Well, what do you want to leave our listeners with? Before we get out of here? Are there any other tidbits I know we could kind of go all over this whole food world thing and kind of pick it all the challenges and the issues that are out there, but anything else that you really feel like you want to drop before we get out of here?

Yeah, I want to go back to this idea of time being limited. We have ultimately, one resource in our lives that is not renewable, we can go find more money, we can find more ingredients, we can find more clients. And I don't this is not morbid, I say this realistically, that time is going to run out to at some point. And so I think we need to steward that resource carefully. I think that most of your listeners have started doing that by spending their time everyday doing work that they love. And in terms of work, I would just say constantly think about what do you really want to be doing? And are there activities or their clients that you can cut out because they're not making you happy? I think I said in the first time that we spoke, I truly believe that you can measure return on investment in joy. And it doesn't just have to be financial. So is your work bringing you joy, if not cut some of it out. And I know the realities, right, we all still have to balance a checkbook, we still have to get the taxes taken care of but minimize that. And at the point where there's a little bit of extra money around, have somebody else take care of the taxes for you because probably in the time that they're doing that you can earn far more money than you're paying them to do a few more gigs which you love and which you're exceptional at. I would also say in terms of time, make sure that and I am saying this because this says this is the place that I am in my thinking in my life right now, this is not, you know, free advice. And I think everyone else should do it. Make sure that we're focusing on the parts of our life that aren't just our career. And if career is all that matters to you, right now, focus on the parts of your life that aren't your career. So that you can show up better on daily basis to cook to bring exceptional experiences, whether that is great joy, or great food, or both of those to your clients. If if you can't show up to do that work, they're not going to have that experience. So I'm gonna say this. And I mean this because I hope that the rest of the world gives it to me, I want to give everyone permission to stop and say it is okay, and you are worth it. And you deserve to take care of yourself. And we don't have to keep working, because we don't think that we've earned it. The The last thing I guess I want to say on that is in terms of growing a great business. I saw a post a while ago that said, we in American culture are in this pattern of working to retired that we take a vacation until we're energized enough to go back to work. And in that process, we never have a point where we're both re energized and not working on our businesses. And how many hours have you spent thinking strategically about your business? But how many hours that we spent thinking strategically about our lives? Where do I want to spend my money this year? Who do I want to spend my time with? What do I want to accomplish? That isn't my business and so I think giving time to that and energy to that should be part of all of our lives. And I am saying that from struggling to do that myself right now. But I, I wish that for other people because I I love the work that we do. And I think we we bring great things to people. And I really hope that all of your listeners and all of us who do this work, get to experience that same joy in our own lives.

I hope so too. It's something I've been working on. I'm still not fully balanced there. But you know, it's a work in progress. Well, it's always a pleasure having you on the show. Maybe we'll get you back on again. Next year. Do every year, at least minimum once a year with Jonathan.

Love it. Be pleasure, Chris. And to

all of our listeners. This has been Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. Thanks so much. Go to chefs without restaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and check database. The community is free to join. You'll get gig opportunities, advice on building and growing your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast. Have a great week.