Restaurant Leadership Podcast: Overcome Burnout, Embrace Freedom, and Drive Growth
Welcome to the Restaurant Leadership Podcast, the show that teaches you how to overcome burnout, embrace freedom, and drive growth
Your host, Christin Marvin, of Solutions by Christin.
With over two decades of extensive experience in hospitality leadership, Christin Marvin has successfully managed a diverse range of concepts, encompassing fine dining and high-volume brunch.
She has now established her own coaching and consulting firm, collaborating with organizations to accelerate internal leadership development to increase retention and thrive.
Each week, Christin brings you content and conversation to make you a more effective leader.
This includes tips, tricks and REAL stories from REAL people that have inspired her-discussing their successes, challenges and personal transformation.
This podcast is a community of support to inspire YOU on YOUR unique leadership journey.
This podcast will help you answer the following questions:
1. How do I increase my confidence?
2. How do I accelerate my leadership?
3. How do I lower my stress as a leader?
4. How do I prevent burnout?
5. How do I improve my mental health?
So join the conversation and listen in each week on spotify and apple podcasts and follow Christin on LinkedIn.
Voice Over, Mixing and Mastering Credits:
L. Connor Voice - LConnorvoice@gmail.com
Artwork by Solstice Photography, Tucson, AZ.
https://solsticephotography70.pixieset.com/
Restaurant Leadership Podcast: Overcome Burnout, Embrace Freedom, and Drive Growth
66: How Resilience and Innovation Can Fuel Restaurant Success
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"Say yes and figure it out later." -Christian J Fischer
Meet Christian J Fischer, affectionately known as the Disruptive Chef, as he recounts his extraordinary journey from a medical school hopeful to a culinary entrepreneur managing a diverse empire. Christian's tale isn't just about building businesses; it's about reshaping leadership in the hospitality industry. With insights from MasterChef Karl Fuerdinger, Christian's experience highlights the potent mix of mentorship, creativity, and strategic planning that has fueled his success.
Chapters:
00:00:08 - Building a Restaurant Empire
00:11:36 - Transforming Leadership in the Hospitality Industry
00:15:07 - From Motorcycle Accident to Restaurant Empire
00:27:03 - Building Successful Businesses Through Collaboration
00:37:06 - Building a Business Through Writing Books
00:44:11 - Building Business Through Book Publishing
00:52:52- Journey in Hospitality Industry Creation
Christian's narrative is one of resilience and innovation, showcasing his ability to adapt and thrive under pressure. After a severe motorcycle accident, Christian defied expectations by channeling his energy into the restaurant industry. From setting up a simple yet popular salad bar in Austria to partnering with global giant Nestle, Christian’s strategic acumen shines. His journey underscores the importance of making smart decisions, like hiring finance experts early on and crafting a profit-sharing model that empowered his team during the pandemic.
Beyond the kitchen, Christian is a testament to the power of collaboration and creative business ventures, including plant-based foods and book publishing. His ventures extend to consulting, digital media, and even a talent agency, each contributing to his growing influence. By sharing his story, Christian inspires listeners not just to dream big but to act wisely, leveraging unexpected opportunities and the wisdom of industry mentors. Connect with Christian on social media and his website for more insights into his journey and see how his experiences can inspire your path in the hospitality world.
Resources:
Christian Fischer
Disruptive Chef
Nestle
The Hospitality Leader's Roadmap: Move from Ordinary to Extraordinary
More from Christin:
Curious about one-on-one coaching or leadership workshops? Click this link to schedule a 15 minute strategy session.
Podcast Production: https://www.lconnorvoice.com/
Imagine if you built your restaurant empire using this motto say yes and figure it out. That's the mindset driving today's guest, christian J Fisher, known as the disruptive chef. Christian isn't just a culinary entrepreneur with over 20 years in hospitality. Christian isn't just a culinary entrepreneur with over 20 years in hospitality. He's a true innovator, blending culinary creative with strategic insight to help leaders break boundaries and achieve remarkable growth. In this episode, we dive into Christian's playbook for success, exploring how to build multiple companies from scratch, knowing when to walk away from an investment and turning your unique hospitality story into a thriving business. And if you'd like a step-by-step insight on how to self-publish a book, be sure to check out episode number 60 on the show. Get ready to think big, act boldly and embrace a fresh perspective on what's possible.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I'm your host, kristen Marvin, with Solutions by Kristen. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about leadership lessons you want to learn and any feedback that you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I'll give you a shout out on a future episode.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to connecting Christian. Thank you so much for being here today. We are going to have a blast. I'm going to ask you in just a second to talk about all the companies that you have. You have 14 different companies and we're going to kind of unpack how you've grown and established those over the years and what your process is. But let's have you start with what each company is so 14, so lay it on us. What are all the companies that you own company is?
Speaker 2:So 14,. So lay it on us. What are all the companies that you own? So first, kristen, thanks a lot for having us. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you and kind of maybe bring your audience into a little bit of what we do. So when we say we have 14 companies, so we always said we have 14 LLCs. So one of the things we learned is that each of the new projects we assign an LLC and that supersedes the reports into another company. So our overall arching company is called the Fisher Research Group and under this we have 14 different entities.
Speaker 1:And what are the 14 entities?
Speaker 2:So it's a little bit of everything. So we always make a joke that we make our decision quick and we change our mind slowly. So one of them is and this all we came in by default. So we have our restaurant division, we have a consulting division, we have a plant-based food division, we have a shrimp company out of default. One of my partners came back from vacation and said Christian, you got to be so excited. I just bought 47% of Nordic seafood. I was like, but you don't know anything about shrimps. He says no, but you do, and you are my 15% partner in this. So you know, that's one of those we had at one point.
Speaker 2:We had a fire suppression company. We had a brewing company. We have an equipment company where we melt down beer cans, empty beer cans and we make cooking equipment out of it. And one of our partners puts a coating on it which is the same coating which is used by the European NASA when things enter back into the atmosphere, so it kind of deflects heat, so it allows you to cook something on it really quick. And then we have our old digital side. So we have my brand, which is christian shea fisher. We have a publishing company, we have a leadership coaching company, we have a mastermind, we have a media company. We have another company where we bring talent. It's like a talent agency company. So we have really a little bit of everything.
Speaker 1:And then our main business on that side is we own three food service GPOs Love it. So let's go back a little bit here, because the culinary world and the food world and the entrepreneurial world this was not what you originally set out to do, right? You wanted to be a doctor, but then you cut into a 57-year-old and it all went downhill from there. Take us back to that moment.
Speaker 2:So my story is my parents owned the hotel. So my dad is a civil engineer, my mom was the hotelier. So we had a hotel we actually had. There was three portions of the hotel. There was the overnight hotel, there was the spa version of the hotel and then what we had was called a sports hotel, which was the sports side, and we were a seasonal hotel and growing up there I could see how my parents were always struggling. It was great.
Speaker 2:I knew exactly when we end season. We usually open up the last week in Sedanba, because in Austria we have snow beginning Sedanba all the way to the end of May and then we closed the first week in June. And when I wanted something, I knew exactly October, november, december. I can ask my parents for anything, I will get it, but if I ask August 1st, I will get a hard no. And I was seeing how they struggled. So I wanted to do something else. My first thing is I wanted to be actually a pilot and my dad said, but you suck, you don't like heights. I was like never really thought about that. Okay, I want to be a medical doctor. He says, okay, good, and he allowed me actually to go after school.
Speaker 2:I went to medical school and the first few weeks were great and then it came up, you know, by turn you have to go and actually observe an actual operation. I will never forget this. This 57-year-old guy had his appendix burst and had to be removed and my name, christian F. I was the very first from ABC and they were like oh, abc, okay, christian, you come over here, you need to mark him. And they actually used this marker. You know, this is not 35 years ago where the incision had to be and we had to practice, you know, with the knives on pineapples, oranges, you know stuff to cut them. I was like I got this, all I remember I cut him. And then there was this old. I was just I passed out.
Speaker 1:And but you passed out right then. And there, in front of the whole class, in front of the doctors, so I found out.
Speaker 2:second thing I did not good in seeing other people bleed. That was maybe a red flag. But as I came to it and I was saying, okay, christian, you passed out I mean people laughing he says you went face down first and I was like, okay, that's really good. And then this guy comes in and says, hey, we just heard what happened today. You need a real while. Which way you want to go.
Speaker 1:Wow, that quickly. It just takes that one instant. No nonsense.
Speaker 2:And it was hey, do you want to consider being?
Speaker 1:a chiropractor. Is that the natural progression If you can't be a doctor?
Speaker 2:you go chiropractor, is that what happens?
Speaker 1:So all of our chiropractors have passed out in operating rooms.
Speaker 2:That happened to be on a Tuesday. I came home on Wednesday and my dad said what are you going to do with your future? I was like I'm going to take the summer off. I'm going to travel. He says, okay, you have until Friday. And on Friday he says you need to go to this hotel and learn to be a hotelier because you need to take over the hotel.
Speaker 2:Very reluctant, I did that and my dad is a civil engineer by the book. He set me up with a hotel which had, in nine years nobody graduated a four-year program. The owner was super tough, high standards, five-star hotel and I walked in the very first day. I was like, oh, that's got to be a long thing. We had to wake up 5 am and we had to work till 11 pm and because they taught you a trade, you didn't get paid for it. They give you a tip, they give you pocket money, and so the first few days I hated it so much I jumped out the back window, went home. My dad brought me back the next day and it's kind of brain discipline and that's how my culinary career started.
Speaker 1:So what was it about? You said you didn't want to go into hotels because you saw your parents struggling so much.
Speaker 2:What were they struggling with? I loved the service thing but it was, you know, we had almost 280 employees at the time and no money coming in. And you know he still paid them in Austria, everybody's union because the way it's set up. So he had to pay them if they worked or not, because that's just the way the jobs were set up at the time and I could see the strain he put on. He always was stressed out. You know, paying people over the summer when they weren't working, and I also seen that he always felt that he was kind of there was nothing else to do.
Speaker 2:If you own a hotel, you're in the service industry. There was no way to do anything on. You own a hotel, you're in the service industry. There was no way to do anything on the side or doing anything else, and he always felt trapped in the hotel. It made us good money, but it was also a trap for him because there was no way out. And that's for me. I was like that's not a healthy thing. I have five brothers and five sisters, so there's 11 of us and I'm the very last person left in the industry. So everybody else from my siblings, there's nobody left in the food industry. I think because of that, and we were always in a free labor After school, we came back, we did homework and we worked in the hotel and for me I was like, hey, maybe it's time to do something else.
Speaker 1:And for me.
Speaker 2:I think that's what triggered it all, what made you jump out the window. So you know, very first day, 5 am, you know I'm, you know, young at the time. I'm 15 years old. I go 5 am, this guy comes in, was the chef and he said good morning, little effers. And I was like, oh, good morning, chef. He says what is so effing good on this morning. I was like, okay, that's going to be a long day and it was just, he was very tough.
Speaker 2:And then it was the old kitchen brigade. You know, he was sitting on this high chair on the serving table and he had the microphone and I will never forget this. He's sitting in there. And there was the gentleman who did the pastry, his name was Manfred. He would go into the microphone.
Speaker 2:Hey boy, make him nice. Two Napoleons, make it nice. You know, I brought up the two Napoleons because I was the helper. And he looks down he says, okay, now you need to get powdered sugar because you have to cover the mess you just created. I was like I didn't do nothing, I just brought it. Then I was like this is not for me. And yeah, he was just pretty tough, very disciplined. Hey, nobody talks until you've spoken. So make sure you follow up. And everything was yes, chef, you know what you see today. I don't think he would get away with what happened back then and I was like I don't want it, it's not good. So I jumped out. I was like I don't want to work from five in the morning to 11 o'clock at night for free, and yeah.
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Speaker 2:It became I think it was on year three there are so many people just left they said that the industry is not for me. And then I was the senior guy and now we have the chef, his name he was MasterChef Karl Fuerdinger, german guy, and I built a relationship with him and he says Christian, so you are now with me, I will teach you what I know. And he really spent a lot of effort and a lot of time in investing in me because I was the guy. And then all of a sudden I felt like, oh, he's treating me differently, he kind of respects. And he says Christian, don't do this, watch that. And he did have some fun where he said Christian, go make mayonnaise, and fun, you know. Where he said Christian, go make mayonnaise. And at the time he made mayonnaise fresh with egg yolks. And then he came by to hit me when I put the oil in it, so my mayonnaise broke and then I had to okay, you need to bring it back. And I was visiting. He says good job, good job, tomorrow I'll show you how to use a blender.
Speaker 2:I was like really, you're making me work for two hours and now there's a better way he was an old school guy and for me what I learned through that is that everything we do is steeped in history and at the time I always thought, you know, I hated that guy so much. I always said when I ever drive, when you come down the road I will run you over and I will back up on you. You know, because I just he was so tough and now we became friends and I always tell the story. Now, I mean he was so tough and now we became friends and I always tell the story. Now, I mean he sends past.
Speaker 2:But everywhere I ever went I said, hey, I work for Kyle Fittinger. Oh, okay, you got a job. I was like, oh, I mean, he was so well-respected and when he made a call on your behalf it was in. And yeah, the last few years I did a six-year apprenticeship. I graduated as a butcher, baker, a server and a cook and yeah, he was very instrumental in that. He put a lot of effort and a lot of time in me.
Speaker 1:Love it. I love that. So at 22, you decide to open your first restaurant, a Wiener Schnitzel concept.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So the story with that? So the funny story is I actually you know, I was really young opened up this restaurant. I opened up this first restaurant. It looks great.
Speaker 1:Did you buy it or take the lease, or how did that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So the story is it looks really good on paper, oh, he had his first restaurant at 20. But the reality was I was on my way back to work and the drunk driver hit me. I was on a motorcycle and I broke my second vertebrae, you know, broke my arms, and so and the hospital for a month. And in Austria, you know, because everybody's union, I was 56% handicapped so nobody would hire me. And so I had this guy come from the government and said, hey, christian, what are you going to do? You have the ability to retire because you're 56% handicapped, because nobody will hire you. And I was like, no, I'm not doing that, I don't want to retire. And I started my first restaurant. And the first restaurant was the lease I had. It wasn't really a lease, it was somebody's empty space. They wanted to build a restaurant in there. They ran out of money. So they said, hey, we're working up on the capital, you can have it for two years and when we're ready to expand it, you're out. I was like, okay, you got it.
Speaker 2:So I didn't know anything on how to run a restaurant because I knew what we did at home. So I got up at three o'clock in the morning I went to the butcher shop. I asked him to cut my meat. I went to the process place. I bought my produce. I was at the restaurant at eight, nine o'clock in the morning. We served lunch and dinner and for me I couldn't find staff at the time. So we had this genius idea we put a salad bar outside, and this is now in the late 80s. We put a salad bar there and then just the entree comes and it became our thing, because people love that, because they got the salads while I made the entree, and the entree and the starch came from the kitchen. It was the simplest, that we had six items on the menu and you could have it baked, air fried or pan fried or you could have it grilled, and that was it.
Speaker 2:And I had a friend come to me and said this is pretty cool, I have a restaurant. You know what? We should do this concept in my restaurant and make a partner. Oh yeah, I do that, you know. So we did that. It was a bad idea. Eventually I had to buy him out and then I became the guy in town when somebody had an empty space. Oh, just ask Christian to do one of his things, you know. And then you know I had five clients.
Speaker 2:And then this guy comes in and says, hey, I have the hotel right down the street. I was thinking you should put one of your concept into my hotel and you pay me rent and you pay me royalties. I was 22 years old, I didn't know. I was like, oh yeah, I do that. I went in there. It was a terrible idea, but we had to do breakfast. We don't do breakfast, you know. So we had to learn the whole breakfast idea. But lunch and dinner was great and during that time I always tell people and that's became our philosophy, I always joke about it that I say yes to everything and figure it out afterwards and I'll be serving lunch.
Speaker 2:This guy comes once to speak to the manager. I come out there and he says, hey, can I speak to the owner? I was like, okay, I'm the owner, not of the hotel, but the restaurant. He says, oh, I love what you do. Would you be willing to franchise it? I was like I have no idea what franchising is, but in my thing I was like, oh, yeah, I do it. You know, two and two weeks later he comes back and says, okay, we want you to bring this to the US. Invest just in New York. It's one of our hotels. We want to do it. I was like nobody's saying I need to go to America, you know, kind of thing. So they bought the concept for me and I had to agree to work with them. It was Nestle and I had to agree with them. We were working with them for 20 years. I worked with them eventually for 18. And our restaurant concept became the hotel concept for Stouffer Hotels.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, let's go back. So you're 20 years old, you open this first location. You're open for lunch and dinner, but you didn't have dinner business, right? You didn't have a lot of dinner business. It was mostly lunch, is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was our thing. So lunch was our thing. And for dinner we, you know, we had five, 10 people come in and we were like, hey, how can we scale dinner? And somebody said people love music. And at the time all we had was be in mind, just really simple, straightforward. And we were on the corner. So schnitzel, you know, it's a real cutlet and the corner is egg. So our place was called the schnitzel egg, you know. So it was the real cutlet corner.
Speaker 2:And so we had this guy, günther. I will never forget him. He was one of our guys. He says, oh, I play music and I have a huge following. I was like you have a huge following. So he played traditional Austrian music, which I hated, but he brought in people for dinner. And then eventually it became that lunch crowd was more business and business because people needed to be in and out quick, and for dinner we had this older crowd and it became kind of our day during lunch, business dinner and it kind of worked out. And my third restaurant that opened up I hired a finance person because I didn't know. I knew we made money, I didn't know how much money we made, and so it was one of those things we learned by default and, it's a funny thing, the guy I hired or partnered with at the time is still my finance guy today.
Speaker 1:35 years later. That's amazing. So were you? I mean, you had this training, this culinary training, right. You knew how to serve, you knew how to be a butcher, but you said you didn't know anything about the business. Yeah, I mean how were you running the restaurant?
Speaker 2:So, whatever I've seen from home, I always told my dad I says, hey, what should I do? I, what I've seen from home, I always told my dad I says, hey, what should I do? And his thing was was make sure you, you retain control. That was always his thing. He says make sure you get the right product. If people paid this much, make sure you give them the same value.
Speaker 2:And for us, I went in and said hey at the time, serving sizes six ounces, how about I get away with five? You know, I was like hey to do five, but nobody ever complained about it. So for me, I learned that by default, on the side, because it's not something we were taught at school. It was really asking my dad who is, you know, back then I thought he was crazy. Now I quote him, but he was really my guy. And then he sent me up with one of his guys, which was my first quote, unquote finance guy. And this guy put so many guardrails up. I was like I don't really want to finance guy because he does no fun, but it by default. I. I always were able to find great people, um, which enjoyed, you know, being part of this, and a lot of them have been with me for a very long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what, what, what was the moment where you got the idea that, like, this concept is going to work? I know you said you had a partner. Come and say, do this with me, do this with me. But like when did the juices start flowing for you? Where you were like, I think I'm going to open multiple businesses?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me it was really as we had Place no 4. Because at Place no 4, it was the first time I felt we knew exactly what equipment we needed how much stables, how many staff. It became kind of a system, because one thing for me always was I wanted, hey, how can we make tomorrow better than we did today? And for me I'm a big note taker, and so it was really the fourth one, and the fourth one, by the way, happened to be the best location and that was always the biggest money. Because of the thought for me was, oh, if I can duplicate this and do more, my thought was just do little corners and we do all the corners. Nobody wants. And because our thing at the time, by default, you could have it sit down and eat or you could have it as a takeaway, as a sandwich, and that was, I think, the uniqueness. It wasn't because I was so creative, it was more out of necessity, because I was like I can see my very first restaurant set 38 people and during lunch there was a line and I was like I need to figure out a way to serve more people. Um, and if I don't sit, how about they? I give it to them to go. And at the time I wrapped him because I learned as a butcher. I wrapped him with butcher paper. You know that I learned at school. People said that was awesome because he didn't leak or anything else. So it became kind of our thing.
Speaker 2:And for me, like I said, I always said I got really lucky with a lot of things. I got lucky that I had some really good people which invested a lot of time in me. And four for me was where I knew, hey, we have something as we opened up. Five the mistake I made that we got bigger. I thought, oh, now, how about I make it twice as big was a mistake. There was the first one, which was not on a corner, it was on the bus, it was an old restaurant and we took it away. It was three times the size of what we really needed. That was tough and that was the one I learned the most from, because we had to have more staff, we didn't have enough parking. It was just a few things which I never considered back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, everything is just an experiment, right, I mean your people, your concept. I love the simplicity of what you did. What are the restaurant concepts that you have today?
Speaker 2:So today my partner is Swedish, so it's Swedish, austrian, and it's a fine dining restaurant. We're in Florida and we have the first restaurant. We can't share 100% what we're going to do, but we hired a Michelin star chef and the idea is to have a diner's club. So you come in, you pay one sum, it includes tip, it includes the 10 courses, includes all the wines which goes with it and when you leave you can buy the wines you just had. So that's going to open up in a few months.
Speaker 1:I love it. So you've got the restaurant arm of your company. What happened after that? How was research company formed? What was your next idea?
Speaker 2:We always tell the story. We opened one. It was in March of 2020. We all know what happened in April of 2020. So we opened up in March 2020.
Speaker 2:We opened six weeks and COVID hit and thank God we were in Florida, because Florida never shut down, but for me I couldn't travel. I live in Connecticut, my partner is Swedish and actually he went back home. His dad got sick and Sweden wouldn't allow him to leave the country for a year. So we needed to figure something out and I got one of the last flights down there and the conversation was simple Okay, you are the channel manager, right now you are the CEO. Okay, you own 15%.
Speaker 2:We did profit sharing. We said, hey, we take 50% of the profits and we shared amongst five people which was the channel manager, the chef, the sous chef, the front of the house manager. And then we had a liaison which came in and helped and again, not because I was so genius, that was the only thing we were able to do. We made consistent money with that and it became a great concept. We were just approached to do some other stuff for our country club, which is being built in a farm where we are. Somebody bought 450 acres and he asked if we can do all five restaurants. We also were approached by the Mandarin concept. In Boca Raton they have the first Mandarin resort and they offered us the nicest spot to put a restaurant in there. So now we finally at a point where people come into us and it's been consistently good. We have a fairly simple menu. We call it Swedish Austrian peasant food. We just do it in a fun way and it became our thing.
Speaker 1:I love it. So you fly down there. You make this decision to start profit sharing with your leadership team. Were they were you like 100%? I mean, obviously you were 100% invested in them, but were they all really strong leaders? Or were you like we're going to have to do some work with these guys?
Speaker 2:So we were really lucky. Again, we were really lucky. We had a good team. We had to replace one person and I was the front of the house person, but everybody else is still with us and for me I was there.
Speaker 2:I said there's two things we can do. We can shut this thing down and go our separate ways, or you guys work with me and we need to find a way to make it work. And the way we make it work, we have a Monday morning check-in call and then we check in every other day hey, how did the day go? What did we do, what we didn't do, and let's improve. And as we progress because everybody says, oh, in two, three months, this is over I said, and then we kind of go back to normal. And then, as things gotten progressively worse and everything got shut down, we were worried, were worried, but again, lucky that we were in florida and florida we were just able to have 60 capacity and in the plaza where we are in florida we had there's multiple restaurants but we were the only one which opened.
Speaker 1:So for us, again, we got really lucky yeah and the way this thing kind of worked out for us did your, when you gave that your leadership team that profit share did? Did it like flip a switch for them? Were they all like immediately more invested in bringing solutions? I mean, how did that change the-.
Speaker 2:We always talk about it. That food cost went down one and a half percent the next week because the chef just looked a little bit different and I think the ownership of what they exhibited and what they did. I think any restaurant should do it and actually we do it with all the other ones now, because if people have skin in a game, there's a different way, the way they look at their position and they also know, hey, if we collectively make a decision but it costs the profit, the end of the day out of the profit line they all get a hit, it's not just me. So decisions were made a lot different and, yeah, we had a good collective group.
Speaker 1:How did that impact the staff? Did it start to feel kind of corporate and like we were tightening the screws and now people are looking out for their money?
Speaker 2:No, for them, it was that they had ownership in this. We were always very transparent. This is very hot. This is what we need to do. Hey, what do you feel we need to do? And we took a lot of their feedback into effect, and what I found through this process is, if you allow people to become the best version of themselves, that people will, uh over, deliver. And that was really, you know, our experience down there, and that isn't. They did amazing and, like I said, we had to replace one person because I think it is holding rent to his head, but everybody else is still there and they're doing an amazing job and for me, I think that's the way to run restaurants today, because we have no labor issue. Um, yeah, people stayed with us forever.
Speaker 1:So what was the next company that came on the line?
Speaker 2:So we also had a GPO. We opened that one up in April of 19. So my partner had the largest GPO in Europe. And for me, as COVID happened, I was still in my corporate job, you know, I was the chief culinary officer for a $4 billion company and I seen COVID as an opportunity for me to do something else, because, as we started shutting down facilities, at the time I had a two-year non-compete. I went to the leadership and said, hey, I think I want out and if you let me out, don't give me any money and I don't owe you any time. And it was a perfect time. I was like hope, it happened for me, not to me. And they said yes. So I walked away a free man, you know, otherwise I would have had a two-year non-compete.
Speaker 1:And we did the GPO, my partner, so you yeah, sorry to interrupt you, but I want to go back to that for a second, because you were with Compass Group. For what? 18 years. And for those that don't know, they have what? Bon Appetit, linkedin, google, right, all these? Did you say, okay, I'm going to leave Compass and I'm going to duplicate this model, but I'm going to do it. Where I'm passionate Is that kind of where you got the structure from?
Speaker 2:So my thing was I always had side hustles. At the time we had a magazine franchise. At one point I had laundromats, we had gas stations. We always had a little bit on the side. And at the time I started my what is now my digital thing. I had a nonprofit which was called the Culinary Leadership Academy. We had some online trainings out there. One of them was our 30 day leadership self-discovery course, and so we all have that out there.
Speaker 2:And for me, I was like I always made a certain amount of money and I thought, hey, if during covet I can build this, um, you know what, I can very easily live on that. It was hard to walk away from a very good job company, car, good benefits, great, uh, bonuses, um but for me that the risk was worth the reward, um, and did it. So we did. Then the gpo, uh. So the gpo specializes in college campuses and multi-unit campuses. We call it a campus dining purchasing society, and we are different than anybody else. We don't do contracts, we don't cost our clients anything, and you could still get into our $50 billion buying power and get great discounts on the products coming in the back door and that does fairly well. So we had the best physical year this year, so we've been growing, so it's been a really good endeavor.
Speaker 1:So, when you have a new idea, are you and you're building these businesses? Are you getting the idea and then going? I'm going to go find a partner for this and then we're going to build it. Or I'm assuming people are now coming and then going. I'm going to go find a partner for this and then we're going to build it. Or I'm assuming people are now coming to you, going Christian, I've got this idea, be my partner, because you've got all the resources to help me be successful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with the shrimps we did what we call shrimp kings. So what we do is we harvest baby shrimps on the coast of Scotland, we cryogenically freeze it. Within 10 minutes of getting them harvested, we ship them to Indonesia. In Indonesia, we hand peel them, put them in brine and ship them back and we call us shrimp kings. It's a hand-peeled shrimp. So we did that. And then after that, people started coming to me. One of them is where somebody came to me and said hey, christian, you have experience in the ice cream industry. Do you know anybody who can make CBD ice cream cookies? Yeah, you know me. I said oh, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:Have you ever said, yes, I do, and you have no idea, but you know you're going to figure it?
Speaker 2:out. I think in 85% of them I was like I had no idea. We make it work, we figure it out, yeah. And it became one of the things. And then I became at a point where I got approached by international companies and so international companies it's now our consulting division, which we call Fisher Hospitality, and the farce is we had a company out of Spain. We've been with them now three years. They make an encapsulated oil molecule Absolutely amazing. And the way we work with them we've been with them now three years. They make an encapsulated oil molecule absolutely amazing. And the way we work with them. We work with them as a consultant but rather than being as commission and other stuff, we want equity. So that became our thing. So we're going now and partnering with companies saying, hey, okay, you offer us this much money, how about you give us half? And then you give me a buyout on the tail end. And that became our business philosophy on our business model.
Speaker 1:Christian, when you are signing on to these companies, creating these companies, becoming a partner, whatever it is, how are you designing your role and your relationship and everybody else's roles in the company? Your role and your relationship and everybody else's roles in the company?
Speaker 2:So for me, the first thing I always do is I'm the guy, let me do and learn everything. And then for me, I come back and say, hey, how can I stream like this, or who can I bring on as my partner to manage this for me? And that became our thing. So for me, I want to learn everything. I don't want to be proficient in everything, but I understand how it works. Because for me, what I know I'm really good at is kind of, you know, commandalize it and bring in the people which can be supportive. And over the years we have now our staff, I think, is 178. And we have, you know, some really good people which help me doing this. You know, it sounds great that we have all of these businesses, but very few I'm involved with on a daily basis. We have more on the OSAP because we have the teams managed within it.
Speaker 2:And for me, for me, it's three things. It's really simple. We always and hopefully we can say this because everything we do is no bullshit, no ego, no lie. And so for us, when we get together as a group, if I know I'm not being BS'd, I don't need to push my ego on somebody or somebody on mine and if we come from 100% vulnerability because we don't lying is, we get stuff done, and that became our business model. And our business model is we don't. We don't want to maintain a business, we want to make it grow and then eventually sell it off. And that's became our model and for us, how we structure them, I always look at myself as a key player, not the guy, because the moment I'm the guy, I can't do anything else. So for me, I always try to find the right person to manage it for us, and there's some amazing human beings out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how are you balancing learning and developing a new concept with being able to just stay connected with all the other?
Speaker 2:companies. So if you ask my team, so it's a lot of hours and a long time. So for me, usually I'm here in the office between seven, seven, 30. I do my calls for the Middle Eastern market in the morning, I do my European calls. After that Then we do the calls here in the US.
Speaker 2:In the afternoon I do the West Coast calls and then I have some time between 2 and 6, which is for me, I work on my stuff and everything we need to get done, and then I go home, usually have dinner with my family or I come here to my office and then from 8 pm to midnight I work on some strategy stuff, what we need to do to grow, and then, usually between 9 and 10, I have calls with the Asian market. We have a client out of China, one out of Indonesia, so we do those calls and by 11 o'clock midnight I go home. So a lot of people saying Christian, how do you do what you do? I know I work 15, 16 hours a day, five, six days a week yeah, have you walked away from a business yet?
Speaker 2:so we have and um and and some of them. I probably should have done it earlier. I think the hardest thing is the letting go of control, and sometimes you are so invested in a business and you have so much equity and time, money and stuff invested in that it's hard to walk away from what I got really lucky. One of my business mentors is the former CEO of Cadbury Swaps Worldwide and when I meet with him he always tells me hey, bring me your numbers. And then he's the guy hey, this is time, you need to flip this, you need to let that go. And for me I trust him. And when we have those meetings, the next day we make the change. And we currently just shut down one of our other divisions. But there's an opportunity to do something else.
Speaker 2:So for us, as we shut that division down, we're looking at it hey, how can we take, you know, the money we spent on that division and the labor we had? How can we bring it into something else and provide value to the organization? And we give everything an 18-month lifespan. Every 18 months we need to reevaluate or get rid of it. So for us, that particular business, we went in longer than we needed to, because I felt some loyalty with the person who started it with me. We should have probably shut it down six months ago.
Speaker 2:But yes, and for me also, and to the audience, sometimes it's really hard to let go because there's some emotional involvement in that. And for me now, where I know we shut it down, in my mind I was like, oh my God, we have all this free time now how can we structure and make sure we get some productive stuff onto the marketplace? So for me, the biggest thing I learned from my coach was hey, everything has a birthday. We call it a birthday because we celebrate or we say goodbye, and that's how we manage them.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love that. So one of the amazing resources that you have is this publishing company, where you're helping people like me in the hospitality industry wanting to build businesses and provide resources and make an impact. Write a book, you've got your process. It's streamlined, right, incredible and then you're helping people build businesses off of this. Would you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so again that became out of default. So I was really lucky. I wrote a lot of books for Nestle. I wrote the Toll House cookie cookbooks for them.
Speaker 1:Still my favorite cookie recipe of all time. Thank you, grew up with it, love it.
Speaker 2:Yep, and so I wrote some books on my own. My very first one, how to Make a Turkey in a Garbage Can Not a great title, don't Google it. We sold a whole 10 copies and then I thought, oh, you know what it was. I didn't have a video, so we made a VHS mistake. Okay, don't Google it, but we had this thing. And then our second book was our first ebook and it was called the Chef's Secrets, the 99 Chef's Secrets Nobody Wants you to Know About, and it was the 99 burger recipes. It was the 99 things. So that was our thing. And so we wrote some of those. They did okay.
Speaker 2:And then, as COVID happened, I said I always wanted to write a book called For the Love of Austria it's my home country and I had it in the works for seven years. Covid happened. My wife said you got to get that book done. And I was like getting the book done. And then at the time a friend of mine came to me. Hey, my mother-in-law has this restaurant. She doesn't write down a single recipe. The restaurant is amazing. Can you teach me how to write a book? Because I want to write a book to leave a legacy for her. Can you teach me how to write a book, because I want to write a book to leave a legacy for her. And then somebody else comes to me and said hey, I own this online training platform and I have six gyms and I want to teach people to be healthier. Do you think you could help me write a book? I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, say yes, we'll figure it out. And then during the process, we kind of developed this eight-step process and now we can help you get a book on the marketplace in eight weeks.
Speaker 2:And how we evolved. We started out that we were on a call every Tuesday evening from 8 to 10 pm, east Coast time, and people called in. So when you signed up to our program, you had access to it forever, because if you want to write another book, do this. And then we said, oh, okay, this is not really scalable. How about we do three levels? We do a DIY where you watch the readers do your own book, then we do done with you and we do done for you, and we found that the biggest success we have, we've done for you books. So now we help our clients, you give us all your crap and 100 days later we give you back a finished book. So also what we found with the clients, what we worked is, when they're really passionate about a project and they have a great book, they want to do more and by default, as people asking for the book, they need to provide back to the clients which buy the book. And then we teach them to build a platform, to build a business around it.
Speaker 2:And we had one of my very good friends was our very first client. I said, hey, can you do test drive this with me and I figure it out. So we're doing this thing. He has a book. You know he makes $400,000 on the new platform the first 10 months.
Speaker 2:I was like, I think we all know something. I know you wrote a book two years ago. Can we help you with this platform? I think I have an idea. He didn't have the successes the first guy did.
Speaker 2:I was like, okay, we're onto something and now. So what we offer are done for your clients, so we help you to get the book done. So all you need to give is your manuscript, because the only thing we do not do is write and we don't edit for two reasons. I you know, with the 400 plus clients we had. Now I had one of our guys his name is henry and henry was our editor. Every time I read the book all the books I was like they sound like henry, you know, because you know henry has one style and I was like more, henry, you can't edit any books anymore, because what I think makes a book unique is when somebody picks it up and they have a relationship with you and I pick up your book and I read your book, I can say, oh, my God, I can hear Seda she uses that word all the time. I can hear her teaching me this, and so I think that's the power of the book.
Speaker 2:And so what we learned is that the book is great, a lot of okay. You have the book on the marketplace. You know that 95% of all authors sell less than 500 copies in a lifetime. So we realized it's not about the sale of the book, it's what the book allows you to do. So we built, helping them build a speaking platform on an online training platform around it. So if you bought a file done for your program, you get a full year marketing support. We built you an e-commerce website. So we are in this, and then we offer two versions of that. You could pay it and do it, or you allow us some invest our stuff into it, but we take equity of your company.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love what you said about the editing process, because I reached out to six different editors and I had some help of like what to look for and what questions to ask and things like that. But for me, I was looking for the relationship. I was looking for how quickly they were to respond. I was looking for if they were excited to take on the project. But I specifically asked for somebody that at one point in their life, had worked in the hospitality industry, because I wanted them to understand my verbiage and not and not cut out my slang and you know or say, like, what does this mean? I wanted them to know who the audience was. So I love the platform aspect of speaking engagements. Training when you're talking about training, are you talking about online courses?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. So what we found was there's a way of selling a book. And there's a way of selling a book Because if you're a speaker, be teaching them and you are there to speak on your book, allow them, if you're allowed, to make an offer off the stage or if you can sell it in the back of the room, because when you make an offer off the stage, it could be not the book but the program you have off the stage. It could be not the book but the program you have. And what I also learned if your book is really good, I know that people want to know more about you. And as we do the book, when we start up, we call it a launch team. The launch team eventually becomes your cheerleader. They eventually become your private Facebook group and as people come into their private Facebook group, they're saying Christian, you taught me this thing, I absolutely love it. What else you got? Because now you need to start building that relationship.
Speaker 2:So what we teach in our program is that when you have that reader, don't let him hang out there. Give him more of you, because they bought your book for a reason. Let them into your world, let them experience you from wherever they are, and the easiest thing to do this is with a private Facebook group. And if you go live every once or twice a week and it says hey, I just did this with my book, if you also read my book, I should have rewritten this. Or I want to add a new chapter. Hey, I look for 10 people which want to be part of this thing. So you create your tribe, you create your people, and then, as you do this, there is somebody who's going to say hey, kristen, I love your book. Can you help me with my business? Because my business needs you and I can do it myself reading the book, but I want to cut my learning curve. Can you please become my coach, consultant or business partner?
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:And that's where we want the book to go, and our program is called the Book Builder Blueprint. We try to rebrand it but we come back to that because I know when you write one book you will have more and we help you to write a book, not the book, and also we promote self-publishing, so you have all the rights to the book. Then you can have your own content out there. It's so much easier to work than working with a publishing company. Not saying that there's not a space for that, but the way we do it is because now it becomes easy. So, for an example, one of our clients wrote a book about barbecue and there's a very famous equipment company came to him and said hey, we would like to buy the rights for your book for five years. You know, we give you multiple six figures. If you can change the front cover to our cover, you can leave all the stuff and we take your book and promote it as our book for the next five years.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's an option If somebody go ahead Christian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and that's what we teach and that's what we want people to do, because there's more things you can do with your book than just being the book and the book needs to become an extension of you. So if you have somebody else edited and it doesn't sound like you when people read it and they meet you, you don't have that relationship with that audience. And have the book become an extension for people just to get to peek behind the scenes or behind the curtain to see who you are and what makes you tick, and then build on that.
Speaker 1:If somebody like me has already written the book, can I still come to you and say, hey, help me build the business out of this?
Speaker 2:written the book. Can I still come to you and say, hey, help me build the business out of this? Absolutely so for us, because the book is the platform. And then also for us, we have that intake process which takes about two, two and a half hours. Hey, what is the goal with the book? Is it an extension of you? Do you want to market the service? Do you want to market the idea, the technique, or you want to teach? And then we jointly come up with a platform and we ask people to start small and test the waters, and what we got really good at is defining where is there space to do this? And also what we gotten good at by default.
Speaker 2:I always use my book for an example, always travel with a book, that's my, you know, to any writer. And hey, if you have five in your bag, it's even better. I'm sitting on a flight from Atlanta to Charlotte and you know the plane two seats, one seats. I was on the one seat and the guy next to me. We strike up a conversation hey, what do you do? I'm in the food industry? Okay, good, good, me too. Hey, what do you do? I do this. Hey, this is really cool. What are you passionate about? I was like, oh, I love writing books. He says, oh, you wrote a book. I said, yeah, I have two that I gave him too. Three days later I get an email from him and said, hey, I happen to work for Lufthansa. Lufthansa at the time just bought Austrian Airlines. They said, hey, would you mind if we buy 25, for every first-class customer coming in, we give them a free book. Because at the time there were so many people upset that Lufthansa bought Ocean Airlines, so they wanted to get some people back. And now I was like you know me, what did I say? I said, oh, yeah, we do that. I figured it out and it was one of those. And then I was like I had no idea what actually goes into it, but it was my first thing. And then I was like I had no idea what actually goes into it, but it was my first thing. And now I laugh because I get emails and texts from people, because I was also not smart enough to not be giving my personal information. So I get texts and stuff all the time. Hey, what do you think of this dish? I was like who the heck is that I need to block him and then I get oh no, no, we are the Austrian cooking club of Waco Texas. We got your book. And what do you think? I was like there's an Austrian cooking club in Waco Texas, you know, and I was like it's.
Speaker 2:I always said everybody needs a book, because a book does, in my opinion, three things.
Speaker 2:It exposes who you are, and actually you will learn a lot about yourself, and you probably did too, writing your book oh, my goodness, painful. The second thing is a book that it allows you access to people you normally don't have access to. And the third thing, it allows you to be on a platform you normally wouldn't be. And what I mean by that is there was a study done I forgot if it was MIT or Harvard. They looked at authors and in the US market currently an author is considered at the same level as a PhD. So can you imagine you can write a book in eight weeks and be on the same level as a PhD which spent hundreds of thousands to go to school, because in the eyes of the consumer, it elevates your status. So now, if you have a message which resonates with that, and if you could speak and provide solution in that message, it opens up a whole new world and that's what we explore with our authors which have a book on the marketplace.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Christian, I am so inspired by your lack of fear and I love this concept and theme that you say yes, and then you figure it out. I have been leaning more and more into that in my business and I love it because the opportunities and the doors that it opens for you and the way that it stretches you to be creative and I is incredible. And I love that you've got the word create behind you for those that are listening and can't see.
Speaker 2:But it's incredible If you have this word create and people always say what does it mean? I said we're creating conversation, so you need to talk to people. And it's really hard, especially now we're so over-related yet under-connected. But the chair I'm sitting in there was somebody talking to somebody says I have this idea of this chair. It. Talking to somebody says I have this idea of this chair, it can be half comfy, you can adjust the height. And somebody said this is an amazing idea. Who's going to build it? And somebody said oh yes, I build it. You know, and they figured it out. And for me, because what we do is we create every day, we create in relationship, we create an impact, we create a knowledge, we create in how we serve. And it became kind of my work. So if somebody asks what we do, it's just we create and we have fun doing it.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, thank you for the amazing impact that you're making in the industry. It's just incredible. So you're an awesome human and I love connecting with you, and thank you for sharing. I know you were sharing some fun stories before we got on, but, yeah, I can't wait to follow your journey and see how else you're going to create in the industry. So thanks for being with us Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me and to your listeners, if I can be of service, please reach out to us. Really easy for us to get a hold of you go to christianshayfishercom, which is our website. There's all our stuff in there. You can follow us on all of our social media sites. We're finally on TikTok and I think we just hit 10 or 12,000 followers on TikTok. It's a whole new thing we learned, so I absolutely agree. So for everybody listening, go out there and create.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right, everybody that's going to do it for us today. Thank you so much for your time and please forward this episode on to anyone in the industry that you think could benefit. We'll talk to you soon.
