From Software To Soup Dumplings… Takes A Chance On Entrepreneurship And Wins Big
Brian Wong of XCJ — Xiao Chi Jie, Bellevue, WA
Nate: Hello and welcome. You’ve found “The Savory Secret” where we talk to and learn lessons from founders on starting and growing a thriving restaurant. We’re your hosts Nate Ver Burg and Tiffany Zhang. Our guest on the show today is Brian of XCJ located in Bellevue, Washington. Welcome Brian it’s great to have you on the show today.
Brian: Thank you. Thanks for having me guys.
Nate: Tell me a little about your upbringing. Where did you grow up?
Brian: Sure. Well, I’m a Bellevue native, born and raised here. Went to high school, Bellevue High School, University of Washington, Seattle afterwards. Then I worked at a Bellevue company that did visual app development as marketing manager there, and then I went to work at Microsoft as a project management consultant. And during that time period I think is where I grew my love for cooking because I would say, originally when I grew up, I was an only child and my mom actually cooked a lot for me, and by cooked a lot, I mean she cooked every meal for me. I didn’t know how to cook. And so, far into college actually I was in a fraternity as well as, so we have a cook there and she also prepared most of our meals. Now, when I finally had to move out on my own, that’s when I figured out that I needed to actually cook for myself and I think there was kind of this…the love was just growing from…
Initially it was just a requirement of having to feed myself, but I found it really interesting, and so I’d always be experimenting, trying things that didn’t make any sense and learning. I love to learn. I would say that the biggest thing that I feel like you can get from an experience like this is that every day is an opportunity to learn, hopefully for your business, but also a lot of personal development. That’s definitely something any entrepreneur has to be willing to do and it can be very challenging. Anyhow, background being, I’m actually from Bellevue, originally, didn’t know how to cook until I was in college, and then found I had a love for cooking. Went to work, cooked all the time for like a spread of events amongst our friends and at home, obviously, and with my girlfriend, now wife at the time.
But then an opportunity came along with some college friends, my now business partners, reached out to me about starting up a restaurant centered around the Jian Bao to the fried soup dumpling that is very popular in Shanghai and lots of people I’m sure know about by now, we’ve, they’ve changed that’s it’s a favorite soup dumpling or dumpling in general. But they kinda had…they approached me with this idea. And I’d never heard of it at the time but, you know, I had been interested in cooking so I think I had also been interested in entrepreneurship without really diving into it. It just hadn’t really been an option for me in the past.
So, when this opportunity arose, the timing was really right especially for me and I remember Jen, my partner’s dad said something that resonates to me to this day, “[inaudible] in your job. So give it a shot right now.” And so that’s kind of how that all began and that lead us up to opening up the restaurant. I went to China. I had never had this inclination before, so I went to China to go taste it and at least figure out how to make it and then brought that back here and then we worked on launching the restaurant and, yeah.
Nate: Did you ever grow up with a family of entrepreneurs? What were your parents like?
Brian: Actually, no. My parents…my family is a family of United States postal workers actually. And my aunts, my uncles, my mom and dad, Mom’s about to retire, Dad just retired a year and a half ago so that’s what they did. Now that sort of entrepreneurial spirit wasn’t something that I’d really considered at the time. But my wife, she has…her family is extremely entrepreneurial, family businesses and apparel manufacturing as well as like food products as well, and just all sorts of different businesses across her family and so I think that spirit is something that inspired me during that time to really go for it. I had a lot of support from them as well. I think in general it was easy for me to do it, because I had the privilege of being able to fall back on all of that stuff. My family’s local, I have the education, I had the job opportunities and network, so pivoting towards doing something like this was I think, relatively safe for me, which is not the case for a lot of entrepreneurs, and not the case for most folks, I think.
So having that safety net allowed me to really dive into it which I understand is not the case for everyone and so I feel very fortunate and lucky to have been able to do this this far and really explore this career opportunity but quite frankly the personal opportunity because regardless of whether or not that I continue operating and owning restaurants in the future, I think it will always be something that has helped me learn and explore about myself, as well as apply myself in a way that, finding out what I’m good at, what is useful, what I like to do and hopefully what can make some money in order for my livelihood but also for employing others as well.
Tiffany: Okay. So, Brian you mentioned that you worked at Microsoft. So, what was the hardest part of the transition of working at Microsoft to starting your own restaurant? And do you have any advice to people who are considering such a radical movement?
Brian: Yeah. So on what is challenging about going from Microsoft to a small business is always gonna be, not always gonna be but my perspective is you go from an incredible amount of structure and resources and down to no structure, no resources, at least other than yourself or your partners, whatever you’re relying on in kind of that small business infrastructure. And so you need to have…you go from a lot of direction and a lot of guidance internally and you do have autonomy as well but you’re part of organizational teams. With your own team you have like all sorts of different areas that you can rely on in order to do your job well.
But when you’re in more small business or start up atmosphere you kind of have to wear every hat and oftentimes you have to do that without experience. And so just…I think I likened it to…you’ve been handed the keys to a helicopter, you’ve got to get the destination and you have to figure out how to fly the helicopter as you go. And like, you’re just able to get it off the ground and you’re just trying to like…now that you’ve got it off the ground you’re trying to like to figure out how to actually fly the thing. And now you can fly the thing but you don’t even know what direction you’ve been going in So, you’ve got to look back on your notes, but you don’t have time to look back on your notes because you’re trying to get to that place.
So, usually that institutional structure helps you to figure that out, whether it’s figuring out how to get the helicopter off the ground or someone navigating you to where you need to go or teaching you how to deal with troubleshooting issues. But when you don’t have it, it’s an extreme burden on whoever is the leader in a small structure to figure out all those things or delegate those things or decide what’s important and what’s not important. Because normally you have much more bandwidth in an organization. You have multiple teams you can rely on, who can help you decide and prioritize what’s important and what’s not important and how to delegate that work well. But if it’s only you and a handful of people, it’s really challenging to do that, for anything. It’s not just a restaurant. It’s any type of, any endeavor really, but having a small team always makes it…gives you different challenges.
Now the benefit is though that depending if there’s much politics, if any politics, you know. If everyone’s on the same page as a small team, it’s a powerful thing to happen. You’re limited really by your resources which are more kind of tangible things you can work around versus something like politics that can demoralize you or can, it’s like having the resources available but you might not be able to get something done you wanna do. So I think that’s the balance between coming from a big structural organization and being a cog in that, versus kind of being the entire engine yourself. Yeah. And I forgot what the second part of the question was.
Tiffany: Yeah. It was like any advice you wanna tell people who are in this situation who are considering such a radical movement from like Microsoft to starting their own business.
Brian: Oh, I would say if possible, to work in the industry you want to transition into. Like, I always say the biggest thing for me is I wish I would have had some more work experience, or any work experience, in any part of the restaurant food and beverage industry. Whether that’s back of house or front of house or knowing something about entrepreneurship that is actually dipping your feet into the pool, that is huge and otherwise it’s kind of like a huge unknown and you won’t know what you’re getting yourself into. And to that extent, I knew that that was going to be the case, but there was…that doesn’t mean that you’re prepared for it in any way, really.
And I don’t know how much, how prepared you can really get but, like I said, it’s gonna be a lot of learning and hopefully more of like probation of that learning and being able to utilize that. I think in general you need to be able to have a lot of kind of abstract thinking skills. And I think you have to be somewhat organized because it really pushed me to the edge on kind of like how my workflows work and how I get things done because it’s just so much more… Chaotic might not be the right word because it sounds like, that kind of has a really negative connotation, but it’s so much less maybe structured than working at a 9:00 to 5:00 where like, if you’re gone, things aren’t gonna like collapse, or at least that feeling isn’t there.
And, you know, someone can always back for you or there’s lots of other people to bounce that off of, but if you’re kind of the person, whether it’s the person in charge or the person who is the leader of a small team, your absence is gonna be more significant than in a larger organization. And so that weighs on you mentally a lot and trying to divorce…trying to identify what your core function to that is, to the business is, versus what you…the feeling of what your value is and the reality of what your value is, being able to identify that early will help you set boundaries for your personal life so that you can manage to actually be successful. Because otherwise it’s just so high stress and it can be really challenging to like what you’re doing at the end of the day. And that is an important part of it as well. You have to feel like you’re… Maybe not to like what you’re doing, that’s kind of like an aspiration. They don’t like what they’re doing, but feel like you’re doing a good job, I guess. So it feels good, you feel like you’re doing a good job. That’s something that can be achieved in almost anything you do.
Nate: And how about the security aspect? You know, big corporate has a sense of security. Were you married at the time? Like I’m sure family was saying, “What are you doing? You’re throwing your career away to go start a restaurant!”
Brian: Wow. It was…I think that the fear was kind of hidden by the amount of opportunity that was coming up. I mean, to a certain point you’re gonna sell yourself on that you’re gonna make it, and it’s gonna be awesome. It’s gonna be all this and that. And I think once you feel that way, once you’ve accepted the risk, everybody’s situation is gonna be different. Like I said, I had the extreme fortune of having… I wasn’t married at the time, but we’d been together for six or seven years, so it was a very long-term committed relationship that I had with all of my future in-laws, as well as…my parents as well. Even though they weren’t necessarily entrepreneurial from the get-go, I would figure a little untraditional in the sense that there was no expectation that I had to follow a certain career path or there was like a professional career set or a stem career field. I majored in Political Science in school.
So I think they felt that as long as I was being productive ad that I was happy with what I was doing and that obviously I’m gonna make a living for my family and my kids then, you know, I can roll with that. And they had this incredible trust in me. I don’t know where they got that, but so, I was privileged to have that. I know that oftentimes most people are… Not most people, but I know people who have been met with like you said, “Hey, what are you doing? That’s crazy, why are you throwing all of that away?” But another part of it, I think I was kind of over corporate life or even medium-sized business life just because in my personal experience, I don’t feel like I was applying myself in any way that was especially productive to my skill set. I felt like to a certain extent, other people could do my job, which was probably true.
And at the time I didn’t really realize it, but now I see that’s not a feeling that I really enjoyed. And so doing something like this is much riskier but I feel like much more productive and I feel like I’ve learned so much that I now know how to apply myself in anything going forward. So, and I think a lot of it is probably in hindsight as well, but I do have a community that a lot of people are slow doing that type of careers and there doesn’t seem to be a particularly more fulfilling than I think they think it should be and so if they could do something else, I feel like they almost would. But since it’s so comfy and cozy and since it pays well and since it’s what they’ve been doing their whole lives, to get to and they’re achieving that, what are you gonna do? Why would you really leave that security and comfort?
And that further…I think that solidifies further the further you go down that career path because it seems so much…it is much riskier to give that up, especially when you’ve already gone down that path, and you’re doing well at it. You know, for what it’s worth and all these folks are [inaudible 00:14:36] doing really well at those jobs, and I think there is a different… For me, I mean, I don’t think I disliked it that much and that’s a luxury to be able to say that and then be able to pursue something that is much riskier than a traditional career path. And my recommendation is either have a fallback plan, and if you can’t have a fallback plan, just know that it’s going to be probably rough seas if you make it to the other side, but it’s gonna be a really fulfilling journey either way. There’s no way that it can’t be, but I cannot guarantee that it won’t lead to financial ruin and the end of your comfy life per se.
So, that’s why I think the real nitty gritty entrepreneurs are, that’s what they’re risking, and I have so much admiration for that, that they’re willing to put it all on the line when they have no fallback. And that’s, a lot of times great success really comes from that because they have to fight for every little bit and it’s do or die. And so I do, I think that’s part of the… I haven’t really thought about looking at it like this before but that’s kind of what I see in my wife’s father and like their family. And like even my family immigrating here, like that was do or die, like there was no fallback on that. And so I get to ride off of that privilege and now do something that is my choice really, rather than a forced decision and I can still fall back on maybe doing something else as well. But I think that’s why some people have that pure instinct where it is do or die, to make things work. I hope that answered some of your questions.
Nate: Yeah. It does.
Tiffany: A lot.
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We’ll get back to how you picked a cuisine. You said you had friends that kind of mentioned that. But, you know, how did you decide that, “Okay, I’m willing to take a risk on this business. I don’t understand the food. And I’m willing to go all in on this.” Whereas, I could just do something that might have been more predictable that you maybe were more comfortable with. How did you land on that and yeah, weigh the risks?
Brian: The initial catalyst I think was mostly just, any opportunity with food in mind, would be what inspired me to take the risk, because at that point in time I really…I think maybe three or four years prior I was looking at like going to culinary school and stuff like that but I really did want to like explore that just because I really did like cooking so much, I still do. Even when I was in the thick of it like six to eight months ago, my wife was like, “I know it’s your passion because even after like whatever long-ass day you might have had, you still wanna come home and cook.”
And so I think that feeling was really what was sort of the core of why I wanted… You know, it could’ve been any cuisine. It could have been Latin cuisine and it could have been South American cuisine. It could’ve been anything else. But you know what? I love cooking that much, I don’t care what it is cooking. I think my personal interest is from the technical aspect of French cooking. But that applies to any cooking quite frankly. That doesn’t go, appreciation for the act of cooking whether it’s because it’s something technically interesting or because you’re providing nourishment for people, I think that doesn’t go away no matter what cuisine you’re cooking. Because I don’t think any cook only likes to cook a certain cuisine, actually now that I think about it. So having cook any sort of cuisine [inaudible] learn and really dive into this opportunity, do a deep dive on it, that’s what made me want to do it. And so the fact that it was Chinese cuisine wasn’t…it’s not I was less interested in it, but it did seem like a world that would be worth exploring.
And when I went to China and when I realized I think, my kind of epiphany was that just like in America, how American food is, that sort of like verbiage is very limiting in it. It’s provincial and so there’s so much different type of cuisine in America, whether American cuisine can even be referred to, but it’s very regional. Whether you’re in New England or in Baha, or in Sonora or Pacific North-West, every region has its own cuisine. And growing up in Seattle, Bellevue area, you are exposed to what feels like a lot of Chinese food and Chinese culture. But really it’s also a very small slice of that pie and I didn’t understand that until after I went to China.
And so my desire to cook was further fueled by that understanding or that realization that I know nothing about this. Mostly what I have here is something that is either very Cantonese or some kind of attempt over the last 150 years to make Cantonese cuisine out of American ingredients. And that’s tasty and I like that special type of thing, but there’s so much more to learn about it And I think once you’re on this road to a self-awareness and a realization of how much more there is out there, it could be for anything. It could be about books or it could be about food or it could be about art. It could be about…you know, whatever it might be, it makes you…it’s a snowball effect that you wanna further explore that and go down that rabbit hole.
So, once I got back from there I was like, “Oh, my god, like, I don’t know anything about China.” And so I had such a positive experience while I was there for many different reasons and that fueled my…that further reinforced my decision or…reinforced in my mind that this was the right decision to make, because it has changed my worldview so much and my personal view so much and that invigorated me to continue going for it. There was no like, “Oh crap, this might have been the wrong decision.” And I think as I put into the restaurant once it’s built out, as you start having to run and operate it, having to hire people or firing people or having to deal with all the different like things that operating a business comes to, then it starts pulling back about food and it starts…you introduce the kind of human management aspect of it and the relational aspect of it. Because working at Microsoft was a completely different experience than it was working at a restaurant.
So that’s why I say it’s important to try and work at a place that’s the type of business that you might want to open, because that’s gonna give you the greatest understanding about how that works. And I’ve learned so much from my staff and from my team and that’s another whole epiphany about it. I’m like, “Gosh, there’s so much more out there about that kind of thing.” And I might just be personally being naive in a certain way. But I think that’s the kind of learning aspect that I was talking about at the start of the podcast, about how you’re gonna end up learning a lot, whether or not you want to. Whether, how you embrace that, how you utilize that is gonna affect both your business and yourselves. And so that’s why I think that no matter what, if you end up doing something that kind of…an unconventional career path or an unconventional profession, you’re gonna end up learning a lot. And if you like learning you might end up, “I can do that, even if it isn’t quite as profitable as a traditional career path.” If you feel like you’re that type of person, maybe that’s the right choice for you I guess.
Tiffany: Yeah. So Brian can you tell me a little…like some of the emotions around starting your own restaurant and what were maybe some of the dominating emotions and how did you override those?
Brian: Well, I think there’s a sense of fear of being confronted with the unknown because you don’t have the experience and you’re presented with all these challenges, it feels like you don’t know what’s working and what’s not working. Everyday feels like, “Oh my God. There’s something new.” It’s always something. And that feeling for me, at least, didn’t go away for a long time or didn’t [inaudible] “I can’t come from the mindset of like every little thing is something because there’s always gonna be something.” And so but at the same time you have to manage your own expectations about that because if you…your baseline of what’s an acceptable level of, I guess, stress internally is gonna keep rising if you do that. But you also you have to back that down and know when to be like, “Hey, okay, this isn’t working.” Or whether it’s for the business or for yourself, “I need to figure out how to address that conflict, like what’s an acceptable amount of what I can handle and what I’m gonna be effective at.”
And when allowing too much of that to happen can tend to be negative for myself and the business. And so it might not be everyone’s experience but I would say that if you are the experience and you’re facing a challenge like operating a business, you’re gonna end up like running into that path where you’re like, when is it too much to throw yourself at it and when are you becoming ineffective because…it’s gonna feel like you’re being effective. Even if you are being effective and making it work, you could be doing it may be smarter, in a more efficient way and maybe that’s gonna be more respectful of your personal life and that’s gonna actually give you more bandwidth and more runway to grow the business kind of in a more functional manner. Because I’m sure some people can make it work just scrambling every day for the entire duration of their business ownership and I would not wish that upon anyone. It would be nice to be perfectly prepared and have a plan that works and goes exactly as you want, but in reality that’s never the case because you just…especially if you don’t, if you’re not working with… already in the restaurant industry, you’re not gonna have the experience and knowhow and knowledge.
So, that’s what this…I would recommend getting a mentor or having someone that you can rely on to field those types of questions about that it might not be worth the time to try and figure out yourself. There are just so many things and so many hats you have to wear. Not everything is something you figured out. Although having a figure-it-out mentality is important for any startup, so balancing that is the challenge that I think now, after a year, is something I can do much more effectively. And same with the partners as well. It’s like, “Hey, okay, realistically, we can’t bootstrap every little thing, it’s just not possible.” I’m bootstrapping a lot of stuff but there’s such a heavy mindset in the environment and why you can generally, figure it out, like bootstrap it. And in reality, a lot of that is impossible, or you can lean and rely on someone else who has already attempted it or who has successfully done it, and being able to identify that and reach out to the appropriate resource who is gonna be helpful in any journey. I guess that goes for anything. But that’s why I feel like…so those emotions that you were asking about, I’m able to deal with those better now, looking back and saying like, “Okay. How do I manage those emotions of whether it’s a fear of the unknown?”
And that might, the response to that might be like try and identify what parts are unknown and try and make a plan about how to make those more known. And if it turns out that your plan did not work, what are you giving yourself to be able to address why that didn’t work? And a lot of times you’ll find that if you’ve done steps systemically, things will start working and you’ll have the bandwidth and then when they don’t work, you’ll have the bandwidth, that extra bandwidth to assess that rather than constantly to be on a high stress level all the time and then just being in that sense of fear that we were talking about earlier. And after a year it’s easier to deal with I think. Fear of the unknown or for more unknowns, just like right now.
Nate: Yeah. So tell us some things that maybe were unexpected. So you have this picture, you’re working at Microsoft, of what owning a restaurant is going to be like. Maybe give us a story of something that you learned the hard way or that turned out a lot differently than you thought it might, that happened along the way.
Brian: Sure. Well, one thing that, I think, coming from a place like Microsoft, which is a very luxurious job and I was not aware of my own privilege in that because, you know if your paycheck comes in a day later or something like that, for, even if it’s wrong, it’s not a big deal. But it is life and death for a lot of people in this industry and being respectful about it is extremely important and also understanding the sensitivities surrounding that and I think that’s a big part of my learning experience about myself and about just people in general, that I had it really easy and this was really hard for me for like a year, but this is like most peoples’ baseline and they don’t even necessarily get to have the same fruits of the process that I might get out of it.
And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing of those different work environments that I’m learning and it’s like essentially developing my management style around that in a way that is respectful of that and also effective, I guess. It’s not a charity but at the time it’s like a completely different perspective from working at a company like Microsoft. And I think reconciling those two different worlds has been a large part of my personal intuitive development here and that’s one aspect of it.
Another is how you…in a professional environment like Microsoft versus in the professional environment of a restaurant kitchen, you’re gonna have different personalities from different walks of life and not everyone is going to have the aptitude to have a conversation about what’s not working for them or bringing up challenges and having a conversation and communicating with you. And so like managing employee conflict in this situation is way different. I don’t think there even was employee conflict at Microsoft. I mean not in the sense that it was noticeable in the sense where someone’s like blowing up almost. And so some people might have anger management issues. They might just not get along and so how do you deal with that? There’s no section on the restaurant management handbook about you know if someone’s doing that kind of thing where they’re coming to blows almost.
And that’s not something I ever expected. And that’s not…I don’t think that’s super common. Like it hasn’t happened…I did have an employee in the past. I just didn’t know that people were like that almost. I think that’s naive of me. If I had to see that I’d be like, “Oh, that’s actually a lot more normal than you might feel like it is.” And so being respectful of that and understanding that and learning how to deal with those situations well is really challenging. Like what do you believe or what’s your point of view of managing that? Like you don’t want…you want… Like it really could have started from nothing but it definitely affected someone one way or another personality wise and you can’t diminish that but how do you actually like, what’s it called, analyze that in some manner that’s useful for that situation but going forward? And that’s another thing that I think added to the chaos of talking about it. Like you never expect that kind of thing to happen where you’re at risk of having to close down the restaurant because two employees are coming to blows with it. And then you think you’ve resolved that and then it isn’t resolved.
But at the end of the day I think it was an important part of understanding the industry and understanding what it’s like to manage your employees I guess, manage your team and understanding how to deal with different personalities that are clashing. And how people deal with that and how you approach that I think can better define your brand management and ownership style. Because I think everyone is gonna run into some form of that in some way at the end of the day. There’s no HR department, you are HR. And so those are things you don’t really prepare for. You don’t go into saying, “All right, in my personal handbook I’m gonna have a section on how to deal with this or that.” You know, anything like that. And so those are just things that are gonna crop up and take them one day at a time and it might increase your baseline stress levels but it’ll eventually go down, because that’s not something that happens all the time, it’s extraordinary. But it’s not impossible and there’s a risk that different types of experiences like that are gonna crop up in industry, I think.
Maybe that’s just me but in my experience, that’s been the case. And like I said, even right now, during a pandemic, that’s just one other thing that’s gonna potentially crop up. There’s nothing you can do to avoid that. Identifying what aspects of that you can control, or you’re prepared in some sense, maybe not. Discreetly for an event like this, but because of the nature of your clients and of your business, you have been given some headroom and some resources to address the problems that come up. But when you’re early on, you’re not gonna have any of that. And that’s what’s challenging about the first year or the first whatever that might be to get the helicopter off the ground at levels like and then once you’re there you can address like, oh, bad weather or something like that. But if you see that whether as you’re getting off the ground, you’re like, “Oh crap we’re gonna crash and die.” So you know, building a partner experience and the key elements of that learning is the desire to learn because without the desire to learn you’re definitely not gonna be able to keep the helicopter up.
Nate: Yes. And finally, tell us a little bit about your secret sauce. Like what is it about you and not so much maybe about your restaurant, but what is it about you that you believe has contributed a lot to the success of the restaurant?
Brian: I guess, I think you have to be kind of curious, naturally curious. And I think that speaks to my desire to learn. But you’ve got to wanna…yeah, you’ve gotta be able to learn from all the stuff that’s going on. Like you…if the goal is to become a successful entrepreneur the only way, and this brings back the helicopter analogy or metaphor again, is you’ve gotta wanna figure out how to fly a helicopter. And you might have thought it’s gonna be a certain way but then you realize like, “Oh, that has nothing to do with what I thought it was gonna be like. This is what it’s actually like.” And so then I say,”Oh, I thought it was gonna be like…even if it’s pretty easy to control.” But actually it’s like a constant…it feels like it’s almost gonna fall apart but you figure out how to handle that and you end up becoming good at that.
Or you don’t and you do something else. But you have to analyze it and you have to figure it out and you have to be willing to constantly take on those challenges and hopefully you have the aptitude to overcome those challenges. That might not always be the case and that would be the hard, I guess, truth about coming to land the helicopter and hopefully not crash the helicopter. But I guess you might not have that but at the end of the day I think, I like figuring things that and that’s why I say, whether it is in the restaurant biz, or something else entrepreneurial. Or if I have another moment of, “Oh my god, this is something I can really apply myself to, I think that’s kind of the secret sauce for me is that I want to learn about it, I’m curious about it.
And the secondary part or maybe even the more important part of that is to a certain extent being a people person. And my management style is that I would like to very seriously respect my employees and hope I receive that respect back. And sometimes I can be taken advantage of but from my point of view, most people in the restaurant really do wanna work and do a good job. And I think that’s the outlook I have on how I hire people and how I wanna manage people.
And other people have different management techniques of how they want to operate a team, whether it’s more top down or whether it’s…you know, everyone has their different point of view on that but I think I’ve had the blessing of learning a lot about that in the past year and a half and there’s…if you’re not interested in that. Because I know folks that just wanna be an individual contributor. And I think that’s fantastic, I’d love to have you on my team, but I wouldn’t want to bring you on to manage a brand new operation and challenge because that might not be your cup of tea, even if you’re good at it almost.
But you’ve got to have that mindset of, “Oh, I’m gonna figure this out and make it work from the people perspective as well.” And so, both of those things. Getting your foot in the door, try working in a restaurant or interning or working for free or whatever it might be, and see if that fits with you from a…are you still curious about it? Do you wanna learn more about the business? And also do you…what do you like or dislike about how the business and the team operates. How does management and owners operate? Stuff like that, so I think those two things are what make the secret sauce for me and that’s the secret sauce I’d bring to any other type of endeavor in the future.
Nate: Well, it’s been great having you on today.
Brian: Thanks for having me.
Nate: Yeah, and certainly for those of you who are in the Seattle area, I encourage you to go to Xiao Chi Jie in Bellevue on 106th and North East 2nd St. Also, check out our sponsor, TryTableTop.com where you can activate your 60-day trial of an easy-to-use mobile ordering platform for your restaurant.
Thank you again for joining us today on “The Savory Secret.” I’m your host, Nate Ver Burg. We invite you to click subscribe to receive all of the latest interviews from founders as we discuss lessons they’ve learned from starting and growing a thriving restaurant. Until next time, enjoy some delicious food and we’ll talk to you again real soon.