In this episode Chris and Aaron talk about what it was like behind the scenes in the Vegas challenge for Gordon Ramsays Food Stars. Chris talks about how sick he was leading up to the competition but still continued to perform.
In this episode Chris and Aaron talk about what it was like behind the scenes in the Vegas challenge for Gordon Ramsays Food Stars. Chris talks about how sick he was leading up to the competition but still continued to perform.
Chris, how's your summer going? I'm glad you asked that. Chris, how's your summer going? I'm glad you asked that, Mr. Valentine. I can't wait for my kids to go back to school. Currently, my son is in a closet downstairs. He's set up. He's set up in a chair watching YouTube on an iPad with Owen son who just shot me with a Nerf bullet. Oh. Yeah. Welcome to my world. When you're not in the office every single day, that's usually what happens. You get attacked by a little alone with Nerf guns. Is it because he's on concussion protocol or whatever? But usually that's what happened to be sitting there and then whatever you're doing and then you get a bullet to the fucking head. It's the only time anyone's ever said, Hey, I'm glad that kid is under concussion protocol. You know, you you learn a lot through pain and trial and suffering. Yeah. You know, I just walk by. My son's in the closet. I go, What are you doing? He's like, I'm in my office. Leave me alone. What do you mean? You're my office? Your office? He's learning from you. A this. But this is my building. The hell out of my closet. Give me my donuts back. He jacked my box of donuts so. All right, Well, I'm glad you're having a great summer. I think we're only, like, a week or two out, and it's crazy. The summer has flew by, and I think a lot of it for me with summer flying by, we've been so focused on food stars over the last two, three months, really since it's been airing and everything else that goes on in life now that we're not confined to food stars. I'm excited about what this podcast is going to become. Post food stars, I think. I think it'll be very intriguing and I think there's going to be a lot more. I think it'll be more enjoyable for us if absolutely. I want to talk about stuff like, I don't know, submarines going to see Titanic, I don't know some geopolitical stuff. Cryptocurrency, that S.E.C. ruling you know a lot of this stuff is is interesting going on in the world right now but you know at least until another week. I know we're food stars. Let's see. Episode nine So you guys watched episode nine last night. They're the last four contestants. We've got Chris, Ashley, Caroline and Lynn. They're all trialed with creating a vegan or Vegas dinner show like Cuisine Show. Yeah, you had to incorporate the food with a performance for this new kind of experience for audiences. That's very Vegas. Vegas, Vegas ish, right? If I just maybe own that, I just coin a word, I don't know, Vegas, Vegas ish. And so I will say and I know you're you weren't you got eliminated. Episode eight, right? Challenge eight So you weren't there when we shot it. That was the hardest challenge thus far. How did you do that live? I can front of these guests. What people don't realize and I think even QVC, for example. Yeah, we have 20 minutes to figure out which products we're going to introduce. Create a script, no training, no nothing, and go up in front of, you know, a live audience and go pitch. Right now you're doing it on steroids. You don't have enough time to prepare. People practice four months to do a Vegas show. Adele practiced for months to do her Vegas show. That's Adele. There's hundreds of people that are involved in making this production a reality. And at the last minute, the day of the premiere, she called it off because she wasn't ready. That's Adele. Now think about Chris Organic land, Ho Carolina. Maury and Ashley doing this in 24 hours. It's crazy, man. It's a shit show. I mean, it's like those people that no matter how much you practice, they still have their doubts going into every performance that they have. You guys have 24 hours. You all have to pick a dish for some of you. You don't even have food experience to know how this dish is going to cater towards whatever act you guys have. Yeah. You're in, We're in and then we're out. And when you're doing a production, there's a lot of communication and trial and error to figure out what's going to resonate with the audience to make a successful production. We don't have that. We don't have that benefit, that luxury, really, because it's make a decision, go and execute. So anybody out there that's saying you should have done this or you should have done that, fuck you. It's that's how it is with the whole TV show, though, in reality, because you get put in these situations throughout every single challenge. And I almost would say to my opinion, every week they got increasingly more difficult or more. Yeah, and it could have been because the lack of people as you go on and there's less people to rely on. But now you're doing an act, each of you, you know, this is the week before you go into the finale and you survive. But so you had to do cocktails and a green fairy performance. Oh, don't remind me about the Green Fairy. But as you're stepping on stage, you've got Wayne Newton is. Weighing new in. Newton is a Fig Newton. Yeah. California coach like a lot of the people around here, just like a lot of plastic surgery and Botox. Dude, I've got so much to say about that. But behind the scenes stuff, one thing I want to touch on before and this is what I don't think they captured on camera, nobody knew on production I was deaf, early, ill, deathly ill during the entire challenge from before I spent before we actually knew what the challenge was. That night I spent hours on the toilet puking my brains out. I was so dehydrated I lost £14, £14 in like five days. It was crazy when I was done with that performance and we were finally done and we're behind the tent. I laid down. My back was killing me. I was dehydrated. I hadn't eaten anything, I think in like 48 hours. And our Ginny shout out Ginny, she's like, and Desi, our mom, during the whole thing, they're great. They looked at me. They're like, What's wrong with you? Should we get the medics out here? And I was like, No. So I was like, It's just my back. So they came over. They gave me a Gatorade. I said, Just give me a croissant. If there's a croissant somewhere, I need something hard, something that's going to absorb stuff in my stomach. And so I ate a stale half a stale croissant. And Ginny's out there. She'll know. I think it was a chocolate stale chocolate crescent. And I drank a little bit of a Gatorade. And then I went off to go do my interviews and the medic came over and said, What's wrong? I said, Just my back. And they're like, Here, take an ibuprofen on the great. That's exactly what I need for my stomach right now. And I took an ibuprofen. And then I remember I'm sitting laid out on a chair, I'm sick as shit, but I pulled it all together for the challenge, Right, Gordon comes out from behind the tent and he goes, You did. Great. One more time. And I just pop up because that's just my trigger and I pop up and I'm like, ready to go? Let's fucking do it. Gordon, You know? But that's my that's my button, my on and off, right? I was so sick, I really had to pull it together. The other part of that challenge was we're down to our Final four. In previous challenges, you could see people hide and people may not have performed as well, but because their teammates perform very well, they could hide. And so their team wins. But they necessarily might have been the weakest competitor that week. Right. But they're safe. They get their like amnesty immunity, you know. So here the spotlights on all four of us, There's no safety. There's no safety. So that's why even though I was sick, even though I'm puking my brains out, I didn't sleep for two days, literally awake the night before of the actual challenge. I'm trying to memorize my lines, realizing that I picked the wrong performer and the weight of the success of my portion. My segment was going to be based on my performance because she couldn't sing, she couldn't dance. The only thing she does for the show is she takes her top off and she says it. And it was that when she says that to me, I was like, Oh shit, I lost. I was like a deer in headlights. And I had to pull it all together because I like I'm so close, I can't lose right now. There are so many people that are banking on me to go through this. I got to pull it together. I was so sick I picked the wrong performer. Meanwhile, I'm watching lan with the four fucking chicks. Yeah, Caroline, with the, you know, the sword sword swallower I got, you know. But when we walked into the tent to go see the guest judges and I see Wayne Newton's face, I'm like, DocuSign. It's missing Las Vegas. That was a highlight for me there. And I think seen his face as rubbery. It was. It was a Yeah, exactly. V the same material. When I saw his face, it reinvigorated me and I was like, okay, this is legit, let's do this. But going into it, it was the most stressed. You did that snap of adrenaline Probably to an extent. Yeah. There is that. You have to do it. You can't fool the med card and take the sick break this like the challenge because you're going to get. Yeah and you look at you know week three when Sydney was sick and she could just like sit out because she could delegate. Not in this challenge. I can't delegate my performance to anyone else. I couldn't even delegate to the performer that I chose. I chose wrong. And it hurt me because then I had to I had to pull every trick out of my ass to pull this one out. Yeah, I think I think in this week nine challenge you the Billy Mays effect that you have from the QVC worked well in your favor when it came to entertaining the kids. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Coming down from the top. So, I mean, you perform well, you didn't get kicked off, so. But there was one point there when you were bringing everyone supposed to bring out the drinks. There was like this long, awkward moment of silence. What happened there? Oh, that was so. So when I get there. Q I mean, why did that happen. In any I think this is where my experience in being a performer, being on stage for so long in my life, in my early days, like I pulled every trick out of like high school drama class. And I remember Gordon, you know, Gordon said, you know, you had a great performance. I said this it in air, but this is some back story and I want people who listen to this to understand and I want to make this point. I'm a scientist. I'm a scientist. How many scientists in the world can pull their shit together during an illness to go put a Vegas show together, to get on stage and do a performance? And I. I can't think of many. Right? I don't think Einstein could get on stage with fucking dry ice. And who knew about it? It doesn't work. It doesn't happen. And so I take a step back and I go, okay, I achieved this. Let's stay alive. My family's counting on me. My employees are counting on me. The technology that I've devoted my life to is is counting on me. So let's pull it all together. When those drinks I had so much stacked up against me, when those drinks came in late and I'm standing in front of all those guest judges, I'm going, shit. But you can't flip out and let them know that things are going bad. You just got to go with the flow and eat up time, right? And I'm coming up with lines like, had I known you were going to be here, I would have brought more fairy dust broom, you know, as ridiculous. And in the back of my mind, I was like, the day this airs and people see this, I am going to be so embarrassed. I would be so embarrassed if people are going to fuckin rag on me and troll me so hard. So really good in that. Because of that, I got to say it was comical. Good is like a stretch. Funny is better. Oh man. You know how many times I threw up in that shirt? It was just great, you know? So then from your act, you did yours. Then we had Ashley with the lamb. Cha cha and the jugglers, and we went on the line with the sword swallowers in the state. So Ashley's performance was. I can't remember the exact thing that went wrong with hers, but when we got to Caroline's, it was more involved with you and you missed your cue. Yeah, there's some some controversy. So this. Yeah. The fuck, Chris? Yeah, I know. This all plays into what I just said, right? So even though I had everything stacked against me, you never let anybody, no one in production, nobody on set knew that I was sick because I just go with the flow. I hide it really well. So what is being sick have to do with you? Because. Yeah. Good play. Yeah. I'm trying to make an excuse right now. Yeah. Go fuck yourself. They didn't bring my drinks on time, so I had to eat up time and play it off. So I got to play off that I'm sick. That I'm good. I got to play off that I'm energetic and I'm a performer. I got to play off that my drinks aren't on time and they're fucking my segment up. I could flip out. I didn't flip out with Caroline. We agreed on a cue. She has a difference of opinion, but she wrote it out. She wrote out everything to the tee. It was Caroline's opinion on this. It'll be coming out after this episode. Yeah, we got Caroline coming in. But the only analogy that I have how Caroline wrote out her segment and this is a wrestling reference. Macho Man Randy Savage was known in the industry as just writing up every spot in the match. WrestleMania three, his match against Ricky Steamboat is considered one of the best wrestling matches in all of wrestling history. Widely regarded Ricky Steamboat tells a story he wrote out every thing. There was no Improvization and Improvization allowed with Macho Man. He rode out everything. That's what Caroline did. She wrote out everything. There was a cue. She told me I had the piece of paper in my pocket. What the cue was. I'm standing there waiting for the cue. I know Caroline in business, you got to know the animal that you're dealing with, right? I can't really improvise because I know Caroline can't get startled, and she gets frazzled during improvization, and I got to stick to the script, so I know I'm standing there going, Okay, do I go in? Do I stay here? Do I frazzled Caroline? What do I do? And then when she turned around, she was like, What the fuck? In front of the judges, I'm like, Oh, shit. Okay, here we go. So I should have gone with my instinct, but I didn't. And then afterwards, she gets all pissed off at me behind. Yeah, I dive into that one a little bit because you missed that. You they still got their stake. Nobody was, like, charging over the table, waiting for the stage. She was just frantic in her own mind. It's like when you're in these situations, 30 seconds feels like 30 years. But if you don't show that something's fucked up, the audience doesn't know something messed up. When they cut to her. And you're behind stage and she's going off on you. Which behind stage here in the tent is like, just off to the side. Exactly. There's no stage. Yeah, joke's on you. Like she's done to multiple other contestants. Where's your head at in that moment? Given everything I just told you about how sick I was, how uncomfortable? Yeah, we get that. Yeah. No, I'm not negating anything. I, throughout this entire competition, have avoided conflict with all the contestants. Right. Caroline starts getting in my face. We're getting ready for the final act, Lance. I lose. All I did was look at her, and I said, Not now. We have to focus on Lance segment. We can talk about this afterwards because I was still focused on what it is that we had to do. I still had tasks that I had to do, and you said I missed a cue. I did miss fucking shit. Aaron stopped saying, I missed the cue. I missed shit. All right. I had specific instructions that we discussed prior, all right. And she didn't hit her, Mark. She didn't hit her Mark. She missed her cue that she created. The cue she created. She missed. So in my mind, I did my job. And knowing the animal that I was working with, I didn't want to improvise and jump the gun because I didn't want her to get pissed. So I'm damned either way. I'm damned if I do, I'm damned if I don't. That is the way I looked at it. But in any performance I've been on stage, if you let the audience know something fucked up happened, then they know something was messed up. But in my performance, in my segment, when the drinks were late, I just ate up time. I did something. They didn't know that something was messed up. They just know that the drinks should have come in faster. That's it. Because I didn't make a big deal out of it. I could have turned around and yelled at Ashley and Lynn and been like, What the fuck were my drinks? You fucked my segment. No, because I get off stage, I brush it off. I'm focused on Ashley and getting the next segment of the production going. That's it. Yeah. So you threw her. I mean, because you see her come back and then it, it quickly gets cut. Like there's not a huge interaction. So I assume you either she just went out with it. She has a. No. Doesn't or that or most at most other people or. Throughout the entire competition I've avoided conflict. I haven't gotten into any arguments with anybody. You know, you were with me that I ever get into an argument with anyone? No. I just looked at her. I saw her go off like she has with other people. And I just put my hand up and I just said, Not now. That's right. Shit. Why you up my Kool-Aid? You don't know my flavor. That's so stick. Focus on what it is on the task at hand. We're not done yet. We can argue after the fact and not to the side where the judges can obviously hear us. Right. So then we I mean, we get past that, does her dish. She has desserts and these fancy like not pole dancers, but they like a modified pole dancer because they're still dancing on some sort of pole. They're just swinging back and forth and all these it was. Fascinating to watch, though. It was mesmerizing. Good, intense. Yeah. No, it was great. Land did a great job. I mean, those desserts were really messy with all the glitter and the oh, everything else they were putting in there. But yeah, it was a great end to the show. I was just glad that it was over with. And then, you know, obviously I thought I thought I was the weakest link. I thought I was going home. But obviously mentally I was exhausted. Physically I was beaten up and then the whole miscue with Caroline, regardless of who you want to blame it on, whether it was me or Caroline, there were miscues in everybody's production. Yeah. Everybody had a miscue. I think when you're talking about a Vegas show and you got to be larger than life, I think I accomplished that on my own. I didn't have a performer to. Know that you were the performer because the lady didn't really do much. It was like you were the spectacle at the beginning. Yeah, everyone else had someone That was obviously the spectacle. Yeah. I mean, you put it well. Caroline is dramatic and she's a good performer, so, you know, she did a lot of the talk. Yeah. Oh. Oh, you know, I love you, Caroline, but you know, you compare me talking on stage to Ashley, me talking on stage and presenting compared to land and even Caroline, there's there's no comparison. Yeah. I'm so. Okay, so Ashley goes home. You're in the grilling show with Gordon. Walk me through that. Like, what was the grilling looking like? Since this is the first time that every single contestant has gone into grilling, there's no safety. No, there's no safety net. But I want to say one thing about what you just said. How does the Vegas performance tie into business? Right. If you're a CEO of a company, you have to be able to present. You have to be able to sell people on your product. You're the face of your company. You can't speak on stage. You're not really that strong of a CEO. You got to be engaging, you got to get the audience involved. You got to you got to own the room. And I think time in and time out, I show people throughout this competition that I can own a room. Absolutely. Like, I can control the room. I could have the room eating out of the palm of my hands. That's a skill set. You look at every CEO, they have that ability. Well, I see this. A lot of the people like my people back home, and they see me doing this type of stuff. And literally my number one thing is just if you have good people skills, you have good communication skills. It goes back to like you owning the room. You're able to do a lot of things that most people can't. That's right. When you can captivate attention and you can control a room usage, you're going to get whatever you want out of that. That's right. And I don't consider myself a salesperson. But if you. Are but if I was, I'd be a great salesperson. No, I'm very passionate about smart cups, and I represent smart cups and I represent this technology. I represent my staff that support me and share in the passion. And I represent my family. I make them proud. And so I believe in this and that's why I'm able it becomes easy for me to own a room because I believe in what I what I stand on. You have a stack of evidence that backs. That's right. But if someone said, Hey, Chris, go sell us, go sell a vacuum, I wouldn't really be able to I wouldn't be passionate. As hard as I can. Exactly. But if you look at the whole. Did you really just say they're all right? Yeah. But if you look at the entire competition in each and every challenge, I stand out in my ability to present and sell what it is that we've got, whether it be burgers in a beach, you know, a beach shack or fundraising episode to as a CEO, one of your primary duties, if not the most important one, is to fundraise the ability to raise capital. No one is going to give a dime to someone who's not engaging. You have to have that ability. Episode three We're selling a wine box. I'm up on stage. I didn't even create the brand. That was the opportunity for Jake to really sell himself and his ability to be a CEO and be engaging. He didn't do it. I took that on and I killed it. Episode four really wasn't an opportunity for that. But in every episode and every challenge, I stand out as a CEO in the primary role of a CEO. Yeah, I think what you're saying has very strong validity because when you but at the same time, throughout these episodes, I've heard people say you're almost like a background character, but it's like they gloss over the fact of all the things that you actually have done. And I think a lot of times too, it gets edited into a way that doesn't truly highlight just that. Like episode two is a great example. Your speech, it doesn't even quite grasp the magnitude of what your speech actually was because it just kind of gets edited out and thrown to the side. They just air the jokes. The jokes got everybody's attention, a little self-deprecating, a little joke on Gordon. And then you move on to the meat of the substance and the meat of the message is, give me your money. This is a good cause and this is why this is a good cause. Now that I have your attention, let me give you some substance. Right. And that's what I do. Time in and time out. Once you once you get people's attention, what do you do with it? And that's that's what I'm able to do. And so and I think that gets glossed over one thing on the editing portion of it, and not that I'm upset with it any other way, but if you're not fucking up, there's nothing that they could put in there to make you look like shit. So yeah, I might be a background character. Good. I mean, I didn't really massively fuck up anything. I didn't make any massive bad decisions. Good. You know, because of my experience, because I look at things, I avoided conflict. I didn't engage in trivial matters or stupid discussions. Good. Do you feel that Ashley was the most deserving to get kicked off in this week's episode? I think Ashley was a strong competitor. She's got a great skillset. Yeah, she avoided conflict for the most part. I mean, she had her little moment, which I think would be a liability in business to use a public forum as a place to air your dirty laundry. But I think she was a strong competitor. People are going to have different opinions. You know, Caroline should have gone home, Ashley. But I think in that challenge she had some miscues. I think, you know, QVC, she was able to really show her presenting skills. And she's good. She's good for that. She's a mom. She resonates with the QVC audience. I think for Vegas, she's a wrong fit. And I think she took for granted her performers and they didn't really incorporated more creatively in there. So this was really a challenge. And can you present and how creative can you be in a short window? And that's what we had to all do. And then when you talk about now we're getting the grilling and it's all four of us, it's the first time that all four of us, every contestant is being grilled. No one's safe. No. Why do you deserve to be in this challenge? Who deserves to go home? This the most nerve wracking grilling you've been a part of as far as you go into the grilling and you come out and you're waiting for the results, knowing that it was like anybody in the room could go home. And not only that, it was to go to the finale. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of on the line. There's a lot at stake. And I'm the one guy there. Yeah. I'm the one guy. By your own fault. But yeah. Yeah. Azaria The Royal Rumble rules every man for themselves. I'd like to say that QVC. Let's just talk about that for a sec. Hey, Tony. Tony says you should go home. You say Tony should go home. And I just walk by and do the old Hulk Hogan flip through and just flip flop. You know, you were used to throwing somebody under the bus, someone to blame. So you've got to do it here, too. It's interesting just to see, you know, the ratio of who blames who to go home and then who actually goes home when everybody's at stake. Yeah, So Ashley goes home we're looking at now. Which was shocking. Yeah. None of us thought that Ashley was going home. None of us. We thought Ashley was a shoo in to go to the final. Well, she goes home, and it's shocking. But now the table says Chris, Caroline Lynn Gordon's at the other side. How do you feel going into the finale in next week's episode with Caroline and Lynn? Do you feel that there are competitors? Would you have gone against someone like Ashley over land being in the finale, or do you not give a shit? And you're like, Where's your head? I don't give a shit who my competition is. At the end of the day, whether it's pancakes, coffee or pizza sauce. That's how I see it, You know, in terms of being a CEO, I have more experience than all three of them combined in business. I have more experience than all three of them combined. And I'm hoping that Gordon sees that and he's seen the professional. Yeah, there have been people who say, Hey, you're a clown. You come off as goofy shit, you got to be entertaining, and you can't take life completely serious all the time. But throughout the entire challenge, I feel that my business skills outmatch everybody else's, and my thought process and my strategy mind outperform everybody else's. And so I'm really not too concerned about who my competition is, whether it be Caroline Lann Ashley. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, I look at their products and I know what my product is and I know my product trumps everybody else's, you know, pancakes. Great. I love the fact that you're passionate about what you do. I'm passionate. I love the fact that you're passionate about Vietnamese coffee. I love the fact that you're passionate about your family business and you're extending that with your pizza sauce. But I sit on a technology that nobody else on the planet can can do. I can execute on. So what's the value? My biggest concern is if Gordon picks one of the other two, will that invalidate smart cups? That's my biggest concern right now for Gordon to sit there and say, you know what, I'm going to pick coffee or I'm going to pick sauce. That's the status quo. How does that devalue the innovative aspect of smart cups where we're trying to push through and disrupt the status quo? And in this moment, he picks the status quo over us. So you're going into the finale now thinking not only is it, you know, make it or break it for 250 investment, you're really your credibility you feel is on the line. Absolutely. Added stress to what you doing? Yes. With one decision, Gordon can wipe away nearly 11 years of my work. That's the way I see it. You took a bold task coming on this show and stepping away from the business for the extended period. We were there in this. That's a risk. No going into it, though. I mean, you had to have thought about this beforehand. I Were you confident enough to win the show going into it, knowing that it would validate your technology if you lost. Going into it? I had those ideas. I had to I made those considerations going into it. I always just thought at some point I would get kicked off or under cooking something, blah, blah, blah, which doesn't have a direct impact on smart cups. Right? Right. And so I said, okay, so let's now there's no hiding. This is this is choosing time. Do I go with something that's innovative and breaking the mold or do I go with something that status quo Now this is make it or break it. And this is the most stressful time for me in this entire competition. And which is crazy because I'm just getting off of being sick and having to carry my own performance. But now I carry the weight of representing smart cups and this technology. And in one decision, Gordon can shit on everything. And that's the way. So more than the 250, I'm looking for validation and I'm more afraid of getting validated here. All right, so we're going into the finale next week. Guys. I hope you enjoyed episode nine. I know I enjoyed watching it from home. It was a who's entertaining you. You were there. It was Vegas, right? No, as the first one, I wasn't there to not be there, but to watch it on TV. I definitely had my questions knowing living through it and then seeing how things get. Yeah, on the TV show that was raw and you see that didn't get put in like, Well. Here you want some juicy behind the scenes stuff. So you know, before you go into your grilling, they have us in a holding period, a holding pattern. Right? And we're supposed to not talk to each other and whatever. Caroline already did her grilling and Caroline, God bless her. But she wasn't very good at staying quiet. I like to follow the rules as much as possible. Right. And she looks at me and I'm standing to get fresh air in the holding area. And she looks at me and she goes, What did you tell Gordon to go? And I looked at her and I said, You And she looks at me. She's what the fuck? So there was a second fight and I just look at Carolina. I'm like, Caroline, you yelled at me. It was unprofessional. Who do you want me to pick? You're the obvious person. Come on. That's it. And then she goes, I guess you're right. All right, guys, we thank you for tuning in and make sure you watch the finale next week. See if our boy Chris goes all the way we can. Partners with Gordon. Ramsay. And this is going to be a stressful one, so I'm excited and. Tuned into our Caroline interview up in a little bit, you know. So all the way. In the place with style and grace. Allow me to. Put a collar. In your pussy rock grooves and make moves with all the mommy at the back of the club from the back of the club makin holes.