I recently interviewed celebrity chef Robert Irvine on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today is a celebrity chef and an entrepreneur. Robert Irvine has hosted many cooking television and talk shows over the years, including Dinner Impossible, Worst Cooks in America, Restaurant Impossible, and The Robert Irvine Show. Robert, thank you for joining us.
Robert: Great to be here. And by the way, I hate the word celebrity. I would rather you use A guy who makes eggs?
Adam: You want to know something, Robert? I don’t think you want to know how I make eggs. That might end this conversation right now.
Robert: I use the microwave. I know you do.
Adam: So there you go. Thanks for sharing. Any tips on how to microwave eggs most effectively?
Robert: Number one, you should take whatever bowl you’re using, take a stick of butter, and make sure the bowl is covered in butter. And why do I say that? Because egg sticks to ceramic, egg sticks to anything basically, is a protein. But it will be a lot easier for you to get it off afterwards. Number two adds flavor. When you break your eggs and you whip your eggs, I would, because I’m different, I would whip your yolks separately from your whites and then fold them in together because it becomes a lot fluffier. Add a little cream salt, white pepper, not black pepper, and microwave for about a minute. Bring it out, stir it, leave it for about 30 seconds, stir it again, then put it in the microwave, and do that a minute at a time. Do not put it on blast for three minutes, because you’ll have the terrible eggs, which I know you do.
Adam: I use the liquid egg whites, and I don’t use butter. Robert, you and I are both very into health, very into fitness.
Robert: Butter is not going to hurt you, okay? Your body needs it, and we are, but your body needs fat regardless. So you can do one of two things, either take the stick of butter, melt it till the salt and the milk proteins come out to the top. They call that the scum. Remove that. Then you’ve got clarified butter if you’re worried about health. And by the way, I don’t worry about doing that if I’m going to make eggs because my workouts and my life in general, that’s why I wear this Whoop thing, are stressful enough without worrying about how to make eggs.
Adam: I hear you. Well, we’re going to talk about some topics other than eggs, but maybe we’ll come back to this. I do want to ask you about your early days. You grew up across the pond, and you spent some time in the Navy. Can you take listeners back to those days? What early lessons and experiences shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Robert: Number one, I joined at a very young age because I was not a good kid at school, not a good kid at home. What did those lessons teach me? Teamwork, leadership, discipline, loyalty, and integrity. They’re probably the top five, I would say, joining the military because your number one and it’s very different. I will tell you that the difference in the military here in the US is very different from the UK military. In that most of the protocols for the U.S. military used to come from the British military. Now it’s changed. Now it’s more interactive and more collaborative. For example, the Special Air Service taught SEAL teams certain things. SEAL teams are now teaching them things. But it used to be one-sided because the U.S. didn’t have a special force at that point. So I think the discipline, the loyalty, the leadership skills, listening, being very clear in directing, setting expectations, all those kinds of things that we look at in business, I got from the military.
Adam: How did you go from those early days in the military to, I won’t use the word celebrity chef, but internationally known and at the top of your field?
Robert: A lot of it has got to do with work ethic. Even in the military, when I was a young kid, I would outwork the senior people I worked for. I’ve always had that. My mother and father taught me that a long time ago. And I think that’s the same in the world. I’ve had opportunities. I’ve had failures too. So if anybody says they haven’t failed, they’re full of crap. I’ve failed numerous times and learned lessons from that. But I think the steadfastness and the teachings of the military in me and bringing up with the parents, made me good at taking direction and executing those things really quickly. So I was very fastly advanced in the military, more so for my age. So I’ve always been the youngest executive shepherd, something, somewhere, sometime. And that’s because the military was not a game to me. Growing up was not a game to me. I was plunged into a service where my father was in the army, my brother was in the army, and I joined the Navy, completely opposite to them. But the value is still the same set of values. And I think following those set of values through life, making mistakes. And I say to people all the time, you can make mistakes, as many as you like, but don’t make the same mistake twice. It is okay to fail because it teaches us a lesson. But if you fail at the same thing twice, there’s something wrong.
Adam: Robert, you shared a lot of great lessons, which I’d love to dive into, focus, determination, dedication, the mindset of service, discipline, which is critical to success in the kitchen as an entrepreneur, and anything you want to pursue personally, professionally. You shared that you’ve made your fair share of mistakes in your life. We all have, every human being has. And it’s not about not making mistakes. It’s about what happens when you make a mistake. First and foremost, do you own your mistakes? Do you acknowledge your mistake? And do you learn from your mistakes?
Robert: So I totally own my mistakes. And I think that’s part of the process. You can fail, then you have to dig in. And why did you fail? Was it the placement? Was it the price? Was it the supply chain? Was it a decision that I made? We have 16 companies now. I failed once because of somebody else’s failure, and that wasn’t my failure, but I own it as a failure, and I’ll tell you why I own that. So many years ago, when I was at Trump Taj Mahal, I used to have a side business. I was the executive chef of Trump Taj Mahal, Trump’s casino in Atlantic City, and I used to tumble meat, so joints of meat in spices, and then sell it to the military. Well, the person that was tumbling my spices with the meat had a £90,000 recall of hamburgers with Listeria, which actually closed down a major company called Tops. You can research that, but it closed down the company immediately because of that recall. So, it was probably more than £90,000. But I lost my sole source of doing that. Therefore, I couldn’t supply my customers because I put all my eggs in one basket. Lesson number one: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Lesson number two from that was backup plans. If something goes wrong, I don’t have a backup plan. I thought TOPS was never going to do anything wrong, and nor do I claim that they did anything wrong. Delisterio, I don’t know where it comes from, where it comes into places, but it didn’t shut him down. So that was my lesson of not putting all eggs in one basket or not having a plan B in case plan A failed. So, they were two big lessons for me because I was making great money as well as being the executive chef of a major casino. So again, the military taught me backups, and I didn’t follow that through. So that was my fault. That’s why I own that.
Adam: As you’re sharing that story, I’m thinking back to an interview that I did with Jim Keyes. Jim was the CEO of 7-Eleven, enjoyed enormous success while he was CEO of 7-Eleven. And then he became the CEO of Blockbuster. And Blockbuster went in the exact opposite direction. And I asked Jim, What do you learn from your experience leading two businesses that went in two totally different directions? And he shared with me a quote from Nelson Mandela, which is a quote that I just absolutely love. I never lose. I win or I learn. And as you’re sharing this catastrophic experience, Many people would look at it and say, Man, that’s terrible, that’s awful. You looked at it and said, This is an incredible learning opportunity, and How am I ever going to get better if I don’t make mistakes? How am I ever going to be my best self if I don’t learn from things that go poorly?
Robert: I feel that life is this, based on experience. Life only puts in front of you what it wants to get out of you. You can keep that, and I’ll explain why. All the mishaps that happen in your life are there to test you, to get you ready for the next level of whatever it is you’re going to do. And it’s how you deal with those, and you said that quite eloquently a second ago, it’s how you deal with those disappointments, those failures, those, I call them L’s. So it only takes one W, a win, to knock out 27 losses. And that’s the way I look at life. Life is a balance. You can make it a bad day because you’re having a bad day, or you can make it a good day and make somebody else’s day with it. No matter what’s happening in your life. And I think that’s what leadership is. Leadership is about smelling roses. The glass is half full, half empty. That’s the mentality you have to have going through entrepreneurship, military, schooling, whatever business you do. because there’s always somebody worse off than you somewhere you just don’t know about. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be crying about something. I’ll give you an example. I’m about to do a march, a 54-mile march, tomorrow. I’ve got two new hips. Well, they’re not new, they’re three or four years old. They’re ceramic hips. Every time I go from 2,000 to 7,000 feet, which is in the first mile, by the way, and then it just gets worse from there on. I have pain in my hips. Why do I keep doing it 11 years later? Because it brings me closer to people. But then, here’s the lesson. A team member of mine, Michael Schlitz, just finished his 100th surgery. He was blown up in Iraq, 90% burned. He does 54 miles. And last year, he didn’t make it. He got to 36 because he has no skin. It’s not his skin. It’s placebo skin or whatever they call it. I don’t even know what they call it. And it cracks when it gets hot. So he’s in extreme pain. Then I complain about my hips. And I’m like, look at poor Mike. And I don’t say that to him, but look at Mike. By the way, he’s got two claws for hands. He’s 90% burnt, doesn’t have ears. And then I looked at myself and I said, stop bitching and get on with it. And that guy inspires me every day to do something different because he puts on a uniform like 1% of the people in the United States. And he went out to protect our freedom. That’s what inspires me. That’s what makes me not bitch and moan because there’s always somebody on the other side of that coin.
Adam: It’s really all about having perspective, and you bring up something really important, which is that it’s very easy to lose perspective because we get so caught up in our day-to-day. There are so many things that consume us on a daily basis, on an hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute basis. Our calendars are jam-packed, but it’s critical as a leader to take a step back and, whatever it is for you, bring some perspective into your life. That can make all the difference.
Robert: It does, and you’re exactly right. For me, every day is a lesson. It’s a learning perspective. So, for me, leadership is pretty much four things. It’s empathy. So, I know that Adam has an autistic son. Adam comes to work; He’s not quite the Adam that I know. So I asked Adam, What’s up? What’s going on? Oh, my son is having an issue. He’s autistic. I’m like, okay, Adam, go home, take care of your son. When you’re ready to come back, you come back. Don’t worry about payment. I got you. That’s leadership. That person, Adam, is going to be loyal. He’s going to be a hard worker. He’s going to talk about this company like it’s his own with pride because somebody cares about him. Then comes ego. My ego and Adam’s. How do we get rid of that? Because ego has no place in the workforce, period. Trust. I’ve already shown you my trust because I’ve just helped you with your family. And authenticity. Whether it’s me with the President of the United States or I’m with Adam, I don’t change. I’m not a hot and cold weather guy or girl. And the same. They’re the four principles of leadership. that I run my businesses and my life with my kids, my wife, and my 16 companies. The same way. I don’t tell you when to come to work. I don’t tell you when to take off. I don’t tell you how many weeks of vacation you can have. Whatever you need, you take it as long as it’s covered. And by the way, the only rule I do have, and you can ask my team, is they have to work out one hour a day, no matter what workout it is, whether you’re running, whether you’re cycling, whether you’re in a gym, whatever you want. on my time, but it’s really your time, and how you deal with that. Do you want to work three hours and get your work done, or do you want to work 20 hours and not get it done? And I find that the more you give to people and trust in those people, they perform way better. Without me looking over them, it’s trust to do the job, set expectations, hold them accountable, but give them enough rope to go and do their job and not micromanage.
Adam: Robert, you shared some tremendous pillars, integral to effective leadership, and I want to dive into them. Empathy, we talk a lot about that on 30 Minute Mentors. I talk a lot about that in the keynotes I give. You spoke about how important it is for leaders to care about the people they lead to care in general, something that I share in the talks I give. There are plenty of things you can do in life if you don’t love people and are really successful. We can spend the rest of this conversation putting a list together of those things, but you’re never going to be a successful leader unless you deeply love people.
Robert: I think you’re absolutely right, but you have to love yourself first to be able to love people. And that’s a hard thing to do. So for me, it was really easy in the military because it was an adventure for me. I was a young kid with all the guys on a warship going to the Falklands. Yay! Didn’t I know what was going to happen? We’re going to the Falklands War. It’s not just empathy, it’s listening and understanding. That was the piece I missed, the listening piece. I’ve only just recently, in the past, I don’t know, 10, 12, 14 years, started to listen and get more out of that by listening, if that makes sense. I used to do, do, do, do because the expectations were set. Same with restaurants. I go in, I’m like, oh yeah, your food sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, let’s fix it. And not worry about the people I’m talking about. I was more worried that they would lose the house, the business, the kids, and be left penniless. So for me, it was about the mission, and it still is. But I’ve changed in the last 12, 14 years to instead of just going into a railroad and saying, you failed this, let me look at P&L doing this. I go in and I say, okay, what was the initial idea of the restaurant? Why did you do it? What did you want it to look like? And what was the food supposed to be? And that’s a revelation for me, by the way, 12, 14 years ago, mainly because I met my wife, I think, but it was all about business and not people. And now it’s all about people, not business, because the people drive the business, and the people drive success or failure in whatever business you run. And we’re in the people business. We’re not in business. We’re in the people business.
Adam: And every business is in the people’s business. You might think you’re in the business of making food or making widgets, but every business is in the people business.
Robert: Totally. It’s interesting because some people understand that. I think more major companies are starting to come around to that. But even the military is coming around to it, because it never was that way. I couldn’t run up to a four-star admiral or general and say, Hey, sir, how are you doing today? That was like a taboo. It’s like going up to the President of the United States, running up and saying, Hey, how was your day today? You just didn’t do that. Nowadays, you can. Because the world has changed its view on empathy leadership, empathetic leadership, more so now than ever before. And I’m not talking about administrations, and I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about as people, we started to realize that if we take care of people like we talked about a second ago, they’re going to produce better, they’re going to have more pride, they’re going to have more things in the company, and they’re the ones that go out to their little gatherings at night and dinners and talk about what they did at work today that just gives a whole different approach to marketing than you think, believe it or not.
Adam: I’ve actually done quite a few interviews with four-star generals, specifically on this topic. And I did an interview with General Mike Garrett, a four-star Army General. And something that he shared with me was that one day he was riding up the elevator to his office. And he realized that that was the highlight of the day for so many people on the team, sharing the elevator with him, making small talk with him.
Robert: I know Mike very well. I was in Normandy with him last year. He’s probably one of the best leaders our military has ever seen. Force commander. I mean, this guy is hard as nails but soft as nails. Amazing human being. So I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Adam: He’s the real deal, and he doesn’t need to ride the elevator like you, like me. He’d rather take the stairs. He’d rather get the steps in. But he recognized that riding the elevator was an opportunity for him to be there, be present, spend time with the people on his team, people who might not see him every day, might not interact with him on a regular basis, and that’s what leadership is. It’s about showing up, it’s about being present, it’s about being your authentic self every day, all the time, no matter who you’re with. That’s what leadership is.
Robert: Totally, and Mike is an example of that, and he’s one of the guys I look up to because I’ve worked with Mike on numerous things, and now he’s running the monuments around the world. So obviously, where we have Americans on soil and ground, he runs those monuments, and I couldn’t think of a better human being to do it. We retired, and then he’s still doing those same things, but out of uniform with uniform people and other people, obviously. So yeah, when you have great mentors or great teachers. There’s an old Japanese saying, When the student is ready, the teacher appears. You can have that one for free, too. I will just give you two now. I really believe that I see things in people, their worst moments and then as a country, our best moments. I just wish we could combine all those moments together so we had the best of the best all the time. Never happened in my lifetime or yours or the next generation, but we’re, by nature, caring people. By nature, we have these jobs that say, OK, we have to reach this sales target. We have to reach this. We have to reach this. And I’ve gone into major Fortune 500 companies and said, No, don’t do that. Let’s talk about this, which will give you this. Exactly what we’re talking about, leadership and the empathy and the authenticity, that’s what makes you successful. I know what the other side likes. I told you I failed. I have no problem admitting those failures. I just think it’s a world where we learn every day about new people that join the team, people that we engage with in contracts. We don’t know if somebody’s had a bad day. We just deal with them at that moment. And I have a lot of people who say, Oh, you’re very mean. And I’m like, no, I’m just intense. I’m not mean. I’m just very intense because I’m focused on getting things done. That’s my nature. I’m not going to be mean to you. I just say, hey, give me the information I need to move on quickly because I’ve got 48 hours. I’ve got three months to get this modernization and military feeding. There’s always a timeline. So I’ve always been told, Oh, you’re mean. And then I ask people in my live shows and things that I do, I’m like, you think I’m mean? No, you’re intense. I will own the intensity. Mean, I won’t own.
Adam: Robert, as I’m thinking about the pillars of leadership that you shared, we talked about empathy, we talked about authenticity. You spoke about ego and how, as a leader, you need to get rid of whatever ego you have and get rid of whatever ego the people who you’re leading have. How?
Robert: It’s tough. When you make it to a certain level in life, in any business or any military or whatever, you feel that you’ve achieved the gold standard. Maybe I will become a CEO or a COO or a first sergeant or a master gunnery sergeant, whatever that rank is. And you see all around the world today, you feel that you’ve made sacrifices to get there, but then you feel that you’re owed something because you’ve gotten there. If that makes sense. And I see it all around me all the time. And I was one of those people, right? Got a nice car, got a TV show, and a successful business. I should be the motivator for you to go and do it. I was so wrong because that doesn’t motivate people. It’s almost like shallowness. So, success is a weird thing because 50% of the country wants you to be successful. Then 50% of the country doesn’t want you to be successful. Because when you’re successful, people start to not like you, wish ill upon you. Why? I don’t know, but that’s just the nature of people, I suppose. So for me, it’s like, if you’re going to be successful, you don’t flaunt success, number one. Whether you have big houses, big cars, planes, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. You’ll never see me post about any of that stuff because it’s really irrelevant. I wear the same t-shirts, the same jeans, the same shoes. I have 80 black shirts, 80 blue shirts. I don’t have anything expensive. I don’t want anything expensive. Most of my money goes towards our foundation and to help other people. And I’m good with that. Success to me is not the amount of cash you have in the bank. It’s not the number of companies you have. It’s not the number of people who work with you. It’s how many lives you change in a day. That really affects you. I go to bed at night and I sleep like a baby knowing, I tell you a story, years and years ago, many years ago in the middle of a war, I was dropped in a Ford operating base by a two-star general at that point who became a four-star later, very famous man, General Abrams. His dad was a four-star, he was a four-star, his brother was a chairman. So, really great lineage. He said to me, Where do you want to go? And I said, I want to go to all the forward operating bases. Well, we dropped into a base on the border of Pakistan called Frontenac. They got hit immediately. They all dispersed to do what they do. me and my assistant, Ryan, who was 21 at the time, he’s now 36, laid on the ground next to a stack of water. There was nowhere to hide, no sandbags, no concrete, because we blew the base up two weeks before. The only thing standing there was a wooden lookout post. Some tents and a refrigerated cargo thing. It was basically a refrigerator. Went in there because I thought it would be a good place to hide. Not really good because an RPG could have hit it. Anyway, the long story is I found steaks and lobster in that refrigerated container. We started to cook. Why did I cook? Because there was nowhere to hide, a stack of water, and we’re in the open. I said to him, if we’re going to do it, we’ve got to do something good when these guys come back. So, we cooked steaks and lobster. Fast forward 10 years, I did an event on a military base, three people came up to me like, Hey, do you remember this picture? I said, yeah, I remember it like it was yesterday. We did this steak, and he said, Yeah, that was the best thing that ever happened to us on our nine-month deployment there. And that’s what the excitement I get from being around the military, doing the things I do, doing the things that I do with people that I help, and Restaurant Impossible or our foundation. We’re taking 80 people tomorrow to Scotland to do a 54-mile march. Why are we doing that? To get people out of square walls so they don’t think about suicide and post-traumatic stress and all these things, to be with teams like they used to be teams before. Because it helps. And last year, I will tell you, a young man named Simon, Air Force veteran, 23 years old, thinking about committing suicide, the day before Yom, became on Yom, changed his life. And we took 25 people last year, by the way, to meet 1,200 coalition wounded to march 54 miles, and just talk every mile. It’s not a race. It’s like Germany, da-da-da-da-da, and you talk every two miles, and you stop, and somebody drives a leg off or whatever. That one person, Simon, who didn’t commit suicide, was worth every penny that we raised to go and do that. Now we’re taking 80 this year, and that’s what drives me. How do we make real change in the world? Money, you always make money. If you’re good at your job, you make money. But what are you going to do with it? You can’t take it all to the grave. You come into this world with nothing; you leave it with nothing. What you leave in between is a legacy, but it’s how you leave that legacy.
Adam: Robert, I really love it. And as you were sharing that great story and great advice, you shared a line, you said that there’s nowhere to hide. And as a leader, there’s nowhere to hide. And when we talk about the topic of ego and how to eliminate ego, how to help the people you lead eliminate ego, that’s something to think about. As a leader, everyone sees you. You’re front and center. And if you’re leading with ego, everyone’s going to know it. But if you are able to get rid of whatever ego you have, and to your point, focus on what matters. Focus on helping people. Focus on putting yourself in a place where you can help the people you’re leading become their best selves for the right reasons. You’re going to be a very successful leader.
Robert: Yeah, and you just said something there that makes sense, right? Our job as leaders is to bring on the next generation of leaders, somebody to take my job. So I want to invest my time in people, and I’m doing it right now with a young CEO of a clothing company who was a soldier, lost his leg in Afghanistan, and I’ve been training for 10 years. Finally, in the last four years, we started a clothing company, and he’s now the CEO of that, learning many lessons, by the way, along the way. I’ve given him the expectation. I’ve given him the tools. I’ve set the roadmap. Now I let him run it. And I don’t go and stop him when he makes a mistake. I want him to make the mistake. Not too catastrophic where he’s going to have a sleepless night and we lose money, but I let him ponder. His actions have consequences for other people. And he has to really think them through. And that’s the hardest thing about leadership, and the military teaches this, look, you got to go, you got to do this because we may be in that Afghanistan place, or maybe a war is going on. They have to think second. That’s why military folks and first responders are the best, I would say 99.9% of leadership that we have out there, because they make instant decisions that save lives. Or they don’t. And I think that’s what the military did with me. It taught me a lot of steps. And the rest, I’ve had to learn by failure, by mistakes, by all those things that we’ve talked about so far to get to this point. And I feel I’m in the best place I’ve ever been as a human being, as a leader, as a husband, as a father. And that also goes to having somebody who can share that journey with you, right? I’ve got a great wife. Some people are single CEOs. They don’t have a support system behind them. I bounce my ideas off my wife. I have a team to do that, but she has a different perspective than being in that business. So I think that’s also a big part of success is finding somebody to take that journey that believes in you and you believe in them, and you’re side by side in the journey. It’s like marriage. You get married for a reason.
Adam: The last piece, which I love, is paying it forward, and a core aspect of mentorship, providing your mentee with the tools, with the training, with the guidance, and then giving them the rope to make their own decisions.
Robert: It’s interesting. The Robert Irvine Foundation has a food truck program, an entrepreneur program that puts people who come out who want to be in the food service business into a truck. Last year, we did 55,000 hours of schooling. To put these folks in their concept, their business, we wrap the food truck, we don’t charge them, they get it, four, five, six months, then they have the opportunity to go and brick and mortar. We also do that with DAV, Disabled American Veterans. So, three weeks ago, I was at a boot camp, they call it Entrepreneur Boot Camp, with 120 people, where I lectured. That sounds like a very strong word, but I was telling them Look, don’t worry about a business plan. Let’s worry about a product first. Scribble down on a napkin, da, da, da. So a young lady brought me a product, and it was, how do you bake cakes, all in a package, and she asked my opinion. And I said, well, do you really want my opinion or do you want me to tell you something you want to hear? These are all military veterans. And I said, OK, the packaging I hate. The product I like, the idea is conceptualized well, but you’re not going to go and sell this in the mass market, Walmart, Costco, all those kinds of things, and supermarkets, because it’s dull. It doesn’t tell your story, and it doesn’t sell the product. Anyway, I said the next day, bring me some empty packages. just with nothing in them, because she already had the mixes. I said, with nothing in, I’m going to come home, I’m going to have my team work on them, I’m going to send them back. I did it in a day, literally, two separate ideas for her. The response I got from caring for this woman I’d met the day before, who was a veteran Navy veteran, was unbelievable. Number one, I didn’t do it, I picked the colors, but my guys designed it, sent it back to her, and she’s like, oh my God. Nobody was going to touch that package. I got a text yesterday, oh, three supermarkets and a major chain are looking at that product right now. If that doesn’t make you feel good, I did a good thing for her because I believed in her, and I believed that she could do well. She’s going to do the same thing. for four other people. She’s going to go back to that class next year and say, Look, this is what I’ve done since then. This is why it matters to mentor kids or veterans, because you put something in their mind, you teach them the right way, and you follow them; your possibilities are endless. There’s no such thing as, oh, I can’t do that. That’s why I made a brand out of impossible. Nothing’s impossible. You just have to want to do it and have a great attitude while you’re doing it.
Adam: Robert, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?
Robert: I think the whole conversation, if people listen to you and me, Adam, today, and the questions you’ve asked and the statements you’ve made, the same as me, I think they should be successful, period. Empathetic leadership, trust, all those things that we mentioned, don’t make you successful. Hard work makes you successful when nobody’s going to do the extra thing. It’s like being a SEAL team member. There’s only a certain number of SEAL teams in Delta Force and whatnot because they’re the small percentage that go past what they think they can give. And I think that’s what makes you successful, is going past what you feel is enough. I remember when we started Fit Crunch, which is a protein bar. We had a silver wrapper. I would do a TV show, and I would walk the silver wrapper into a buyer in Chicago and say, Hey, try the bar. If you like it, we’ll sell it to you. That’s how I started. And I still do that today. I’m the one who goes on calls with shirts and all the rest of the stuff we have. The other stuff is just noise. It’s there, and we sell it, and it’s great stuff because it’s transformational. It’s uniforms, it’s food, it’s nutrition, it’s humanoids, it’s self-ordering platforms. You name it, we’ve got it. But none of that makes any difference if I cannot pick up the phone and call Adam and say, hey, what was today? What was going on? Tell me about it. That’s the lesson here is leadership is about people. It’s about caring about people. It’s about listening to them. And if you think about it, it could be $15 an hour, it could be $45, it could be $100 an hour. It doesn’t matter. There are still people who have to pay bills. We have to know as CEOs and owners of companies what these people are going through with economic times, with whatever. Because if they can’t pay the bills, they’re not going to be good for you at work. They’re not going to have a good life. They can’t take care of the family. So everything else goes by the wayside because we’re trying to do the right things. But I’ve got a family of four and we’re eating Big Macs every meal because it’s all I can afford. I have to know about that. And I think that’s what people should get from this. Know your associates, employees, whatever you call them. I call them friends. And they’re all my friends. I work for them. They don’t work for me. I have to go out every day to make sure that I can give them what they need to have a good life. They need to grow in the succession of these companies. And I try my best at that. And that’s all you can do. But the attitude you have, and there’s one thing I’ve learned over many, many, many, many, many years. Be careful who you meet and be careful what you say in the beginning, because they’re the people you’re going to meet up with here. And they’re also the people you’re gonna meet when you’re on your way down and they’re on their way up. That was a lesson for me, oh my God, 20 years ago. Be nice to everybody because you don’t know who they are, and you don’t know their story, and you never will until you walk a mile in their shoes, as they say. That’s the biggest thing I can say to people is, hey, you may have a great product, it may be selling, but what can you do better? What can you, as the boss, do better for your people, your friends, your associates, whatever you call them? And I’ve done it. I’ve proven it. I wrote a book called Overcoming Impossible. On the back of them, you’ll see the companies that I’ve worked with. And you see the culture change in people. People first, before profits. Because profits will always follow people.
Adam: Robert, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Robert: I appreciate you.
