Wolfgang Puck

Published Sep 9, 2021, 7:30 AM

On defining success and maintaining ownership of your businesses. 

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I have a project that I'm working on and someone had a staff member that was not vaccinated, who wasn't wearing a mask, working alongside my entire team. So my whole team, they are all vaccinated, was working with this person. Is this wonderful person who's not vaccinated, who wasn't wearing a mask. I'm sort of flashing back and telling you the story as I've found it out. Now. I didn't know any of this. I just know that we're all they're all working together on a project for me. So then I get an email from my business manager and my CEO. As you know, these emails happened, and the whole house shakes that this person was vaccinated, wasn't wearing a mask, didn't feel well, told everyone that they didn't feel well, knowing that they weren't vaccinated, and now has COVID. So of course it's a shutdown my whole staff. My business managers literally here recording this podcast with me because uh, my whole staff is down. So then it became a conversation with myself and my CEO. I said, you have to call them and say it's unacceptable that you have a non vaccinated person without you know, without telling us, and that they're not wearing a mask. And my CEO was like, I don't know that I'm allowed to ask. That they have to know that their employers are vaccinated, and like there are all these rules, and I started looking up hip the laws because you're not allowed to ask somebody about their medical history or what they're doing and it's a private matter and all this, which you know, it's a gray area. And by the way, if you are vaccinated or not vaccinated, that is your opinion. You know. I have a good friend who's not vaccinated. Other people have not spoken to people. My friend told me that she's like a pariah and people are bullying her. Um, I don't. She's in Florida, and I hope that she's she's not really going out or being with other people. She's been at her farmhouse for months, so she's just with her family. So I want to kind of understand what you all think about this, because I was really upset. And then I was upset because then it's like bad for me that I've exposed my team. But I didn't know this because I didn't know. You know, if I have someone come to my house, let's say they're giving me a massage or I'm having a meeting. You know, I say, like I was vaccinated, and they say I was vaccinated, which, by the way, has become less valuable because there are quote unquote what my friend calls breakthrough cases. I was away in Nantucket. I was at a dinner with seven people. One out of the seven said that they got COVID, and then the other two got COVID and the rest of us did not. There were four of us that did not. It's been well over ten days an now, or a week to ten days now. The rest of us did not. Of course, all of us were in a panic, getting tested every other day, and it's three to five days. My one girlfriend said to me, And of course none of us know anything. But my one girl, fun said to me, who at the table had it before? I had COVID so bad. I had a twelve days. It was like a scary monster that kept lifting its hand up to pull me back down. It was a nightmare. The teeth chipping, the sweating, the horrible migraines, dehydration, fevers, brutal. So she said, who had COVID before? And I said, so funny. The four people at the table who did not get COVID from these people were people that had had it before. So everybody was vaccinated, but the three people who had breakthrough cases did not have it before. It doesn't mean it's a full proof plan. But I thought that was very interesting, you know, because I've been I was around someone all the time right before I got it. They didn't get it, So you know, just because someone has it doesn't mean you're getting it. And then my doctor said, because I was worried about my daughter, if your daughter wasn't at that dinner, didn't have contact with that person, she likely won't have it. So that sort of secondary person is obviously not supposed to be as vulnerable. So my other staff something. Most of my staff wasn't around the person who got COVID, but one member was. But I guess the bigger question is, I know some people aren't having people work and be around I guess clients or other employees if they aren't vaccinated. It's their personal choice to not be vaccinated, but maybe they can't work in the same way. Um. I know that there's this boat service that we sometimes take, and if the captains aren't vaccinated, my fiance who has at very high at risk people in his family won't go on that boat. It's a personal choice. The person who owns the company that has an employee who's not vaccinated, are they supposed to tell me just so you know so and so is not vaccinated? Or are they supposed to just make sure so and so is always masked or both? Isn't it my choice? Am I supposed to know that information or not? Is that? Are they not allowed to tell me that information because that's private information. I'm not even sure that I'm concerned about letting necessarily the law because I'm sure it's changing, and no one's suing me for not wanting to possibly expose my staff, but I and I'll fight that lawsuit. I want to know what you think, like, are you if you own a boat company and I'm taking a boat that day, is it your responsibility to let me know that the captain is not vaccinated? Or do you not know that information because that's private information? And is it or is it my responsibility as the person getting on the boat to ask the captain, which we've now done, so we number one. I think I've learned we are all supposed to just ask everybody around us, because if you're not they're not employed by you, you're allowed to ask them. You can ask a person at a bar how old they are, so I assume you can ask a person if they're vaccinated. Maybe the employer can or or not go on the boat because I don't care about the mask and the I just don't want to do so. As employer, I think it's your responsibility to know what's going on and then give other people that freedom. It made me feel jacked, It made me feel blindsided. It shut my whole operation down. I literally, Biggie and small as we're gonna have to do the podcast today and I don't. They don't have a posable thumb, so I'm not sure how they'd be with these like buttons and stuff. My guest today is Wolfgang Puck, famed chef and restaurateur. I have followed his career for so many years. I can't wait to talk to him and just hear his story because I have my own idea of who he is, and I'm sure I don't even know half of it. He has three companies, twenty fine dining restaurants and fifty casual dining establishments around the world. He's arguably the first modern celebrity chef. His story is truly fascinating. He spent his childhood growing up in rural Austria with little money. He went from cooking on a single wood burning stove with his mother an outhouse. They didn't have her bathroom inside his house meet they could only once a week, to training and working in some of the top restaurants in France, to moving to the United States and changing the culinary landscape of California with his own restaurants. Today, we talk about the importance of knowing the business side of a creative field and staying involved even as your brand grows. I hope you enjoy it. I can't tell you how excited I am to speak to you. You've touched my life personally in so many different ways at different points in my life that you may not even realize. So as a as a child in Austria, what was the the relationship to work ethic in your home? What did hard work mean to you? What were goals for you? What was your family like my family. I grew up in Australia and totally in the countryside, wasn't even a street and it was a dirt road. Nobody had to count early on. Then there were two farmers which run but not that. We had no telephone, we had no television, We had no plumbing in the house. The toilet was two hundred feet outside in the garden. Somebody a little shack, you know, I mean like you will see today's in in the south, in some really rural earlier, you know. So we had only one stove, which was wood burning, and that he did the house and my mother and my grandmother cooked on it. So we grew up therely. We we had meat once a week, maybe on Sunday, be in a snets off with pok or sometimes boiled the beef and the winter. So for us it was really special. But I didn't really miss it because my mother used to make a pad of chicken, you know, these crapes we filled with our homemade Mama lade and then sugar on top and a glass of milk from the farmer, or could be a casas mon or we had dumplings and noodles and things like that. So it was for me the food and everything was still very good. That's really one of the great things I remember as a kid is the occasion for food, my mother baking cookies for three weeks before Christmas and so forth, and the smell in their house. But the rest of my childhood was really the bad because I had a stepfather who was amusing a physically and mentally me and my sister, so that was terrible. Were happy. He was working as like he as a coal miner, and when he used to come home for ten days, he was twenty days working ten days off. I still remember that a for us, it was like a nightmare. He always told me I was good for not saying nothing gonna become of millions of old. So my childhood was really difficult at the beginning. I remember the food really very well. At fourteen, my mother found me a job in the hotel as a cook's apprentice. So I'm there and started my apprenticeship. Now my saved. My mother also was a chef. My mother worked in a resort hotel in my day of Lindy and uh so in the summertime during our school vacation, I used to go there and basically when I was then twelve years old, and always helped the pastry chef and love sweets and you know, he gave my liddle ice cream. He did a lot of things, so it was really, I think good. But then I left, really the home fifty months away. We didn't have telephone or any saying, so I couldn't call my mother. If I needed something, I had to write a letter and I started out. It was really not good there. And I remember when I left the home, my stepfather to me, you're good for nothing. You're gonna be back in uh in a week point of months or whatever, he said, and I said, I'm never coming back, you know. I was like, huh, And sure enough they I started to build the potatoes in this restaurant in the hotel, and uh uh. I got a month into that. We on a Sunday lunch, me ran out of potatoes or mashed potatoes and every thing, and there was this little fourteen or guying. It was all my father, And then the chef caught me over at the end he said, okay, you can go home to your mother. You're fine. We don't know anymore. You're too little. You have to grow up a little better. So and that was probably my worst day. And I said in my life, because I said, now I have to go home again. I said, I would never go home. By score, I will not go home. And I improved my stepfather right. So that was a night in the evening, I went on a bridge over the river and I said, I'm gonna jump in the river. I much trying to kill myself. Then going back home and I was standing and looking down, and then I decided, Okay, I gotta go back tomorrow and see what happened. Maybe he changed his mind, and so I went back in the next morning, and the apprentice, ho was ahead of me, was all excited because he didn't have to do the onion peeling on your and some potatoes a daughter rock. So he hit me down in the vegetable sella and so I was sitting there like for two weeks, feeling and sitting on a create potato create or whatever. And then the chef comes down one day and sees me sitting downsas what are you doing here, screamed at me and grabbed me for the children and tried to take me out and everything. I'm going to hear your fired bomb and everything, and I said, I put my hands and who don't do the banks of potatoes as that I'm not leaving, I'm not living and started screaming as loud as he did. And then he didn't know what to do. He called the manager, the owner, and he came down and said, well, if he doesn't want to go home, maybe we send him to our other hotel and steam maybe over there has spell to be better. And there they had a woman who was the chefs, and she had kids a little bit like my age, and she was a little more understanding. And I started there and she just said, you know, shut up, do your book and don't bother anybody, and everything would be okay. But they did not stop. That's good for me. Well, first of all, that's we coddle our kids now in the modern day, it's a totally different world. We watch them everything they do. We don't let them just run outside. You were effectively working and supporting yourself at fourteen years old, which would be you know, some ninth grade. So how and you have four sons that correct? How do you raise sons now with the influence of what you've been through but not letting that get in the way because you're now privileged? I mean, how do you bounce that? You know, it's very difficult because I want the kids to have what I never had, you know. Now they buy these fancy UH sneakers, you know, and there's a hundred eighty dollars and eighty dollars sneakers. It's crazy, how can you do that? And you know it goes. But the kids today, all their peers in the schools, you know, they go to private school. Now they're in in the boarding school in Switzerland. So it is so different than the way I grew up. And in a way, I was really happy to do the uh Busney plus movie you know about my life, the streaming one, and I think, so kids actually can see then it wasn't always like that. And then my children will see that it wasn't always like that, you know, because they come to the world, when they go to the restaurants, move to the best hotels in the world. Then they think it's normal. You know. I get all the time. I get it you're explaining, but they can never feel it. And I do a lot of relief work and my daughter hasn't yet really seen it. So it'll be our responsibility to show them in ways. You know, it's an effort that I have to make more. Although I have a very lovely, sweet daughter and I'm sure your kids are wonderful. It's just something we think about. Do you think of yourself more by and large as a creative person or a business person, because many people are not both. Yeah. I think first if I would see is creating. I'm an entrepreneur. I love taking risk and creating new things. That's really my passion my life. Every day I talk here in my office and says, what can we do with new and what can we do different? Can we start a new restaurant, what we're gonna do? We get so many options and so many possibilities, which is really amazing, and you know sometimes you have to say, Okay, this sounds good to me, This sounds the right thing to me. So but definitely I'm not in the business because of the money. Definitely not, because if not, I would own twenty McDonald's and I could see it at home and play tennis, on golf or whatever. I love the creative process, even now, like after this podcast, are gonna do a cooking class for somebody online. I'm not doing it because of the money, because I love to be in contact with people and showing people how to do things well. But particularly in the world of chefs. I've heard horror stories of chefs being amazing chefs, but then they lose their name in something. I've heard of certain chefs that have a name of a restaurant, they go into business with a partner and they then lose control. Then they don't even have their own name. They have to start over again. It happens a lot and food, right and um. Sometimes when you're a company as big as yours, some of the locations are places you just manage. It is a brand Wolfgang Puck. So how do you balance all of that? Have you been smart enough to keep most of it? Like? How have you dealt with all those business decisions? We expanded all over the world, you know, not in every country, but we have a restaurant cut in London, we have Spargo in Istanbula, Spargo in Budapest. We have a Cunting but Rain and Cut Inta. We have cut in Spargo in Singapore. So in a lot of places like that, would I invest my money in Hungary now? Because who knows the critical situation? What they work in the same thing in the Middle East? Maybe. So whenever we are doing things outside of the United States, we sign management contracts just like the four season or tells us it's like a licensing agreement. No management contract is different because we manage a d So if we even't took you or in Budapest, is our chefs, our manager. Our responsibility is exactly the same. If I put the money out, I don't read spargo Istanbul or spargo Budapest any different spargo and so we manage it and it's our responsibility to make the restaurant successful both you know, as a brand and also make money. So to me, there's no difference. The only difference, but that is that we don't have to take any risk. You know. There's all the reason when you start a business that it goes sound, you know. But this way we don't have financial risks. But we get into partnership with hotels for example, like leading hotels of the world the fourth season, sand reaches your name him. They're all about the same plane field as us. You know, they're like our customers day in this so the synergy is good. And you know, do we have restaurants we managed to we have restaurants to be owned. To me, it's no difference. Well, that's unbelievable because I can't I find managing people, finding good people and having control and quality of different areas is very challenging. How do you even do that? I mean, this podcast is for people at home who want to scale, who have their own business, who want to sort of understand the machinations of how it happens. So how can you best describe being able to keep all those balls in the air and then maybe after and have a life without it just sucking you down the drain. Well, the first of all, I think you have to be passionate about what you do without ans, and you don't want be successful because if you're passionate, you'ren't gonna count count the hours. You're not gonna count how many holidays or Sundays or Saturdays or how many nights you work. So that's the first thing, if you're really passionate about something, and then you have to learn as a business. You know, it's simple. My mother told me when I was young, when I left my home at four inches, said, you know, all you have to do is make a little more money than you spend than you will be fined and you had don't have to come home and ask for money. Because I told my stepfather I never want to ask you for money. So that's so simple, and it's the same in the restaurant business. You know what, you have to be sure that you don't spend more than what you make, and I think that's the first point. Then if you want to expand, you have to learn how to delegate, you know. I remember when I started spark or in uh Nino Uh, the Japanese people came to me and says, how we gonna open Sparking talk too? I said, how are we gonna open spark go and talk American managed on restaurant. You know, Spargo was such a huge success after a few months, and then finally they came back three months later and had all the plants right in said we canna open Spargo with or without you? Or then I said, okay, open it together. So I went there and we became partners with the Japanese and they became successful. But it was very strayingful to go there because we didn't have a really group to manage, you know, I didn't have a corporate structure anything like that. So we went there, and then after that, I said, you know, I'm tired of opening Spargo when somebody offered me an out of location and Santa Monica. I said, no, I want to do Chinese food. What happened is I never cooked Chinese food, and in my life I never used to walk in my life, really, you know, I was into French Italians and all that stuff. And then I ended up opening on me and Asian food the way I sawt to do it. You know, I didn't want to lose traditional Chinese food. But we have a Chinatown, they have a lot of Chinese restaurants. So I said, I got out with my way the way I would think about it. Then after a year or so, it became really a good concept. And that lobster that had like almost like a curry in it, I think that it was over that spinach. I mean, I I've been I'm a food is like a memory. I mean you understand that fifty years old. That was thirty years ago. I mean I remember like it was yesterday. That's spinach. And then you, oh my god, and you opened other locations of I think I think there was one where was in New York. No, not in New York, but we opened you know in Washington. Is that we called them different names. We have one in Brain. We had one in Las Vegas for a while, but it was amazing. Yeah, and that was not a good time at that time in Vegas when we opened. But I think we didn't really expanded too much because it was how to find chefs to do that type of food. You know, they alldered French nouga cuisine on this time, hopeful but not that you know, and you could not many Americas to use the ball, you know, yes, but that was a passion project for you. And we've had very serious entrepreneurs on here and they have all pretty much said, and I believe them. They've meant that. I could tell that they did not do any of this for money, and that many of the business decisions they made, like you describing your wanting to do Chinese, but was just that's what I wanted to do. But it was interesting when you said they said we're going to do Spago without you. That sounds like that was maybe your first intellectual property lesson You probably didn't own Spago internationally. So for business people at home, you learn as you go. It's like case law. Each time something comes to you, you say, oh, wait, they could do that there, Well, why don't I own that, and then you realize you need to own Spago probably around the world, which you eventually did. I assume you own Wolfgang Puck, you own Spago, you own all of those names. Yeah, you have. You have to have a trademark. You have to look up a lot of things, especially when you become successful. Then anybody could do it. But I didn't trademark Spargo. I barely could manage. From the restaurant. I was overweed. You know. We had all the movie stars and everybody used to come to Spargo. People like the center of Los Angeles for that, for the Hollywood entertainment world, you know. For me, that was like it was Billy Water coming and John Collins and Sydney in that class and storiers to come to the restaurant. So I was feeding them. That was my occupation. How we're gonna stay busy because I was so scared and I had always these dreams, these nightmares. We are one day, nobody's gonna show up anymore. It's gonna be over, like you know, like a flame, and then they over. And I was so nervous about that, and a lot of people in the restaurant business going on you're so new. Everybody comes because it's new. But our concept even a spar but was totally new at the time. We had an open kitchen, no white table clothes. Restaurant had an open kitchen at that time. You know, it was like something totally different. And you walked in and you saw the kits and everybody cooking in front of you. And I went to the Chino farm get the best vegetables and berries and stuff like that. The white corn in the summer, it was amazing. So I went to the fish market, to the Japanese fish market was the best fish. I kept the cooking simple, but of the highest quality. What do you think about being in school Coulnary school versus just the experience of coming up through working in restaurants. What do you think about that education versus just experience? Today education is many import not just killing school. But if you live like a New York and California, you almost have to go to law school to learn all about the lords. Because if not every desta and I have today a lawyer. You know the other it is the lawyers are in Spanish and English on television and god knows where. So if you don't away, and if you don't do your business by the rules, you get in trouble really easily, and it will cost you a lot of money. Here also, it's really difficult, so you really have to learn that. I think that's really cooking for me. Is the easiest part, is the most fun part. But running the business you have to watch every listle step to do you do. But even me at my age, you know about four years ago, five years ago, Divorced journal with an article on me, and then they asked me at the end, so what is your dream? What you're still gonna do? I said, I want to go to Haward Business School. And you know what, the dean of Howard Business called called me a few days later and said when you want to come? And I started my way along and I said, you know, I never went to college. And the guy said okay, and then uh, he said, it doesn't matter, you run your business. And I said, but I never went to high school. Oh my god. I tried to talk my way out of it. So then uh, finally they figured out they have a program called Owner President's Management o PM, and I signed up for that. I didn't know it was that expensive. I just said I want to try it once. I always can leave and lose some money. With the PAD, I stuck it out. It's a program three times a month and it's really interesting. And even I did a lot of different things, made a lot of mistakes, but I learned a lot on how to communicate better, on how to be more direct when the communicate, and how to look at the business differently. Even if you go to Harvard, you know they are generally not entrepreneurs who do that. Who go there is more or less, uh, people who run companies or traditional business Yeah, your traditional things. But I think it was one of the most interesting things to do all this case that is about different businesses. So what I mean you have to keep your interest up. You have to be ready to learn all the time. And I say, for me, that's important. That's why for example, I read a lot, but I read the most is biographists because I want to know how people are thinking, how they became successful. And they can be about Napoleon or Steve Jobs or any anybody else. You know, do you own the majority of your business, do you have control over and do you have partners? Like what's the dynamic? I have botned us but I run in a hund percent so wow, the intellectual property is yours. I I always tell everybody I only have one boss bitches my wife. Wow. So you that's but that's shocking that you own the greatest percentage and you have control like that. You know you can do whatever you want and not do what you want. I don't have to ask anybody if I want tobago, if I want to close one, I don't have to talk to anybody about doing so. I console, Wow, Okay, that's fascinating, And I don't think many successful chefs can say that. And most people, even myself, have been across roads thinking about do I sell part of it? Do I take money, etcetera. So how have you handled those moments? Because you've probably had many more of those opportunities than myself. People have probably offered to buy your brand by a piece of it. What were those decisions making? Times like I run my business now for forty years successfully. If not, that wouldn't be here. I don't want to work for anybody because I love what I do, and you know, I don't want somebody to tell me tomorrow you have to lower your food because you have to buy faults and strengths, or you have to find meat which is less maybe not as good as what we mind now, or don't go to the farmer's market there any of concourse, twice as much as in the supermarket. I want run my business the way I feel like, and hopefully I can do it for many more years. You know, money, What would I do with money? If somebody gives me a hundred million dollars? What would I do? Find out a house somewhere. I only think that at the time, right, I stay in the nicest I go on vacation, I stay at the nicest hotels. We have a great service, and then I come back and do what I love to do. For me selling the business to somebody, you know, I think it would be difficult, would be very difficult. I feel like giving your child away and then have somebody raise it and you you're just there maybe to send the money. So that's not what I like to do. And I think I have so many people who are with meeting for so many years, and you know, they probably will get fired because they are making good money too. You know. Yeah, that's amazing, It really is. It's a testament because it's hard not only to be a chef and to keep innovating, but it's hard to run a business and you're doing both and you haven't wanted to get off the ride at all. That is admirable. That says so much. Yeah. So if you were on a desert island and you could bring five chefs with you for the whole time you're gonna live there for six months or a year, who would be the five chefs that you would bring? Wow? I would bring chefs from different areas, you know. I would bring a guy. I would bring a guy like Escort with me for example. I would bring maybe importable so don't have different paper, And maybe a guy like a you know who started something new and and I have friends like Daniel Bulu, who I knew it would be really serious and make great food all the time. So I think they would be a lot of different they find uh pounds of the world, you know, from different parts of the world, and with different styles too, you know. So I think obviously, like I like Japanese food, I will playing fully noble with me too. So do you um know the best dish you've ever eritten? And what's your favorite? What is your favorite food? You know, I love food and I love simple things like I remember we did this pig parbleecue every year at the Pallet Hotel, you know, and then invite Francis Melman, I Eric down from Toulon, who has outward into loom and different chips, Nancy silver tunnels so forth from here. How do uh at a very playing and they all do publaque. And two years ago I invited uh Taco x or whatever it was called, and they made the best taco. So next to them was Francis Malman making this amazing bee for his big coupola. He haskind of open fire and I use the taco, a little piece of meat and their saltza, and I said that was perfect, And they make such good tacos. So the taco for me, it was more important than the meat. So amazing. It's really the quality about the ingredients, you know, and the quality the way it deserves yourself to be food is an experience. It doesn't have to be expensive, you know, it can be really down to earth, you know, it can be a simple plur cheese sent which but if you have a really good bread and good cheese is really simple amazing. So what has been your most successful venture? Well, I think really is the upscale restaurants when I look at it, you know, we do a lot of things, but then uh, you know, spargo cats, you know, and so far. But when I look how much time I spent if I would count the hours I spent there, and our airport restaurants are more successful because I don't have to go down. My brother runs them and make money with it. So I think what is really fun is what is my passion other restaurants, you know, And that's interesting. Like even now, I still do work with the agents and for twenty or three years we are selling kitchen appliances and stuff like that, and a little food. Also I like to do it too because it is successful and I'm in contact with the guests and always saying so to me, I don't think it's uh, just wanting, it's really the variety. I like to be interested in a lot of different things, you know. And we also talk with somebody like I'm talking with the people from beyond Meat now and see what maybe we can do with that stuff, because I think it's a future in that group, you know. So for me, it's always I'm always curious, and that's the curring lossity what keeps me going. That's why I still like to go to the fish market or the refaumers market to see what's going on. Yeah, where you're talking about a return and r o I you return on your investment, which doesn't have to be financial. It could be the joy or But what you said is you have a greater r o I on the airports because it's it's the car that sells itself. And then as far as um just your rose and your thorn. I always ask like what the high point of your whole business, not your family, your career has been and then the low point? You know, I was lucky because I started really low trying to jump in the rig when I was bought in and killed myself, and then it started to get a better. One of my biggest amazing things what happened to me. Don't make me feel more secure, to make me feel yes, I can't be good at that was when I looked at Boumania and the Amantia was the chef and owner there, and he was the first on took liking on me. I was working next to him making their sauces, and I still remember even there were cretady employees in the kitchen. One day he went away on vacation and I was in Australian vacation and he asked the chef where it's working, and he said, well, he is on vacasion. He said, I'm living in two days. He has to be here and make the sauces. I trust him, and I was nineteen years old. He was seventy years old at that time. And they called me an answer. But then we had the telephone and they called me and said you have to come back immediately. And when they said immediately, I said, what happened? They said Mr Julia wants you to be there because he's living. So I said, wow, he really appreciates what I do. And I think that made me feel really good and made me feel more comfortable. My said, you know, maybe I'm not as bad as what my stepfather said or the first chef said. And then from there on I went to much names and you know, at the twenties, me I became the night Jeff at Maccines. The guy who left was maybe before you two for four years old, so it was really uh step up every way I went, and I think you know. To me, it's an interesting thing that I see my life like it's climbing a mountain but not really seeing the top is still in the park. I don't know where it's gonna end up, and I don't want to know. But I said, for me, the journey is what it's important, right, And you're talking about the high point of your whole career was feeling valued, which is interesting for people who have employees or um work. For other people that seems to be more important than money in many cases. This was absolutely fascinating. I mean, to know so much about somebody but then really know nothing about them, you know what I mean. Just that's what I love about doing the show, just to learn so much about a person that I've had an idea about but really didn't know of this if you have the time, if you get an hour and a huh. You know, David Gelho did Chef's Table. He did my documentary and it's on Disney Plus, and you see really how he filmed it from the beginning to when we became successful. Exper not really about the expansion, but how to get really to the first base come in a way, you know, that's the hardest part. Yeah, totally, totally, and how how did it happen? And from the load too high where every actor said they were my friends, they wanted to be my friend because I had the restaurant, I knew that they're already you know, right, But that's what this whole podcast is about. Started from the bottom. Now we're here, so I'll definitely watch that, and I hope the listeners will too. Thank you, Wolfgang. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. I have a wonderful day. Thank you better, thank you. That was nothing short of spectacular to just have an understanding and an idea about someone to have eaten their food and airports, have been to pretty much all of their restaurants in the United States, and have actually hired him to work for me at different events years ago, and I have no idea really about any of his journey. I mean, honestly, that was unbelievable. Just to think about what it takes to become successful as a person from another country, from an abusive background, It's just really inspirational. That was superb. I'm thrilled, so thank you all so much for listening. I'm absolutely so excited. That was unbelievable. Remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you,

Just B with Bethenny Frankel

If you can’t handle the truth you can’t handle this podcast. Just B with Bethenny Frankel is the bes 
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