Getting Fired, Dealing with Anxiety, and Silver Linings

Welcome to Chefs Without Restaurants. I'm your host, Chris. And this is the show where I usually speak to culinary entrepreneurs and people in the food and beverage industry who've taken a different route. If you listen to the show before, which I am pretty sure some of you have, you'll know that I usually have guests on the show. And we talked about, you know, their backstory, and what they're doing in the food world. But I've also done some mini episodes and some solo episodes, I've had some really great feedback from that. And also on Instagram, I've been posting some kind of conversation starter questions. And those are done really well. So I'm gonna be doing more of these solo episodes. But I still have so many people that I want to talk to. I've already recorded a bunch of shows that will be coming out. But this is going to be another little thing that I want to be doing on the show here. The show is made possible by some of our great sponsors. 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And right now you can use discount code vosteed15 to get 15% off your order. And as always, the links are in the word from this week's sponsors. show notes. And now on with the show. Thanks so much and have a great week. All right. So this is something I have wanted to talk about for a little while. I did a blog post about it a few years ago. And it's just something that I you know, carry with me, and I'm sure some of you have some things like this that maybe you carry with you. I think I had a pretty good work ethic growing up, my dad definitely had one and he instilled in me, you know, work hard, keep your head down. And you'll do well, right. And there's so much to unpack there. And I don't even really want to get into that. But you know, I never thought of myself as someone who would ever get fired. But it happened. And it's something that I haven't really talked about, and I hid for so long. And I'm not really going to get into the circumstances of what happened. But I will say that I was working at a company that, you know, I really liked and I've said it was a good job. But you know, there's some problems there, right? As a lot of places have just because a company is good doesn't mean your direct manager is good. But I ended up getting fired from there. And I guess we're I'll start is like I felt like I couldn't tell anyone like my friends. My family. I think I might have told my parents after a couple of weeks but you know, something that I was really ashamed of. I had to start looking for jobs and I felt like I needed to leave it off my resume, right? Like so many of you have been hiring me managers and you know, those resumes come through and someone has a short time there. And you ask them what happened. And they say, I was fired, you know, but like, let me explain, and I think a part of you is taught to almost instantly disregard that person. You know, I was like that, you know, when I was taught how to be a manager, if you will, you know, you were supposed to look for gaps in employment, or, you know, ask the question when someone was only at a job for six months. And as a manager, you know, you heard lots of excuses as to why it happened. But I know there are people who came through the door looking for a job. And when I found out that they had been fired, you know, they maybe go to the bottom of the pile or the middle of the pile, but they're not at the top of the pile. So it's interesting when I found that I was one of those people. And, you know, I had to get a little creative with my resume writing. And, you know, I didn't feel like I could tell my next employer that I had been fired, you know, how would that look? But I just wanted to say to those people out there who've been fired, it's okay, right? Like, maybe you don't need the validation for me to say it's okay. But if you're feeling some kind of way, like, we all make mistakes, we all grow. We all, you know, maybe it was your fault. Maybe it wasn't your fault. But like, it's, it's not that big a deal. It's not. And for people who are in a position to hire people, I don't know, like, be more open. Like if if someone comes in, and you find out that they had been fired from a job. Yeah, like, maybe there was a valid reason. Or maybe it was so long ago, that doesn't even matter. But one of the things that came out of this was it really triggered some anxiety in me. I felt like, I don't know, I guess I didn't see it coming. When it happened to me, even though all the signs were there. So then in my next job, even though things were going great, you know, my boss would call me on the phone and say, Hey, come on over to the office, I want to talk to you for a minute. I'd hang up that phone and get this burning anxiety in my chest like shit, it's going to happen again. And it never did. But it's still something that happened over and over and over again was just like, I felt like I I was gonna have the rug pulled out from under me, right? Like, as good a job as I was doing at this new job. That whenever you know, my boss would say like, Hey, we gotta go catch up about something. I felt this dread inside me. That was that was telling me like, even though you have no write ups in your file, like, maybe you're gonna get fired today. I don't know. And yeah, I've I've struggled with anxiety on and off since then. I guess that's probably when like it really started. But sometimes they're also silver linings, right. I've always kind of hated that expression like, oh, things happen for a reason. But when I did get fired, my wife was working at a catering company. Big shout out to mizuna catering in Westchester, Pennsylvania. She was working there and was able to get me a job. And I went and worked with Mark and Sean who were phenomenal. But that is where the spark for perfect little bites my personal chef business started. They were a big catering company, they only wanted to do corporate events or big events. And people would call wanting a dinner for like four people, or I think the first time I had done it was two people. And they always kind of turned these gigs down because you know, it's not worth it if you're a big catering company. And then they asked me would you want to go do this make some money, you know, you can use our kitchen, we'll bring in the food, you can keep all the profit just kind of represent our business. And I did it a couple times. Not a lot. But that was the spark. You know, that's part of my origin story. When I tell people, that's how I became a personal chef. And I didn't do it a lot with them. And it was gonna be another, you know, seven or eight years before I started my own personal chef business, but it was that's where the seed was planted. And if I hadn't been fired from that job, that kind of sucked. I maybe would still be there. You know, like at a job that was just like, okay, like at the time you don't know how those things are gonna work out. So and I always love engaging the community. If you've got a story like this that you want to share, let me know. If you feel like it's the time to get something off your chest. Hit me up. Shoot me a DM at Chefs Without Restaurants on Instagram. Send me an email at chefs without restaurants@gmail.com Because again, I think we need to be talking about this stuff. You know, it's like mental health we need to be normalizing getting help. We need to normalize talking about getting sober. We need to talk about those jobs that sock you know, like, it's not always your fault. or maybe to come out and say like, it was my fault. And I learned a lot and I've grown. I hope you do like these solo shows, I've got kind of a docket of things that I want to go over in the next couple months and, you know, continue on with them. So I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet for you. And I hope you have an amazing week or weekend wherever you're listening to this. Go back and check out old episodes if you haven't caught them. We're almost at episode 150. So I'm sure there's probably some you haven't listened to it. Thanks for tuning in. I really appreciate it. Go to chefs without restaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and check database. The community's free to join. You'll get good opportunities, advice on building and growing your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast. Have a great week.