Billionaire Restaurateur Tilman Fertitta talks Tilmanisms, 80s success, and building his companies

what do you mean by shut up and listen you know it's really funny is Harper Collins approached me about 18 months ago and said you know tell me we watch your TV show when we see you on all these business shows and sports shows and we read these articles and we love all these tilman isms and we don't want you to write a life story but we'd love these little one-liners that you use and we love the way you go so directed people to to help them grow their business and and we'd like you to just talk about that not stories not a life story but the basics that's its take the word know out of your damn vocabulary it's there are no spare customers it's it's change change change it's it's things like that you have to know your numbers and and this is a it's an easy reading book in it and it really gets to the basics how did you come up with tilman isms you know i didn't come up with it but people that i do business with and investment bankers we would be in negotiations and thing and and and i would just always throw these out and they just kind of caught on and so when I wrote the book I called everybody of us to jump right down on my Tillman isms because you know y'all always talk about my Tillman isms and I don't want to forget any of them so there's a whole page of just Tillman isms in there why the restaurant business it's kind of interesting is I was in Texas in the eighties and and if you remember the eighties the world fell apart and that's when all the banks failed and and I had invested in one restaurant Larry and you couldn't do anything the building just shut down there was no development and so I bought out all my partners and I said well I'll just go retro restaurants for a few years since there's no development happening and that's what I did and then in the early 90s that's when all the company started going public that was the big stock market boom if you remember when Clinton came in where they even got rid of the national debt because of all the capital gains but that's when like chiles and out back and Cheesecake Factory and Lone Star and Landry's we all went public and all of a sudden you wake up one day you have 12 restaurants but because of your growth rates are worth 100 million dollars and so for the next you know 20 years I was base Republic and then when the crisis happened again and oh eight oh nine I saw an opportunity because my stock was down to go private again owning a hundred percent and that's what I've done since then restaurant business is one of the toughest you don't get a second chance people don't go back if the food ain't good you do not get a second chance it's amazing how even a restaurant can be brand new when people will not give it that second opportunity also people tell me that the restaurant business is the toughest business to run from afar how can you run eighteen restaurants well I'll run six hundred you know it's systems and controls and you've got to have a strong culture and you got to have a good HR department and and it's and I've been successful because not only do I open up a lot of restaurants I've bought a lot of restaurant companies because upstairs the management wasn't doing a good job I mean just in the LA area look at all the restaurant companies that are owned everything from Mastro's to catch to Martens to bubba gump to rainforests you won't catch yes yes on 50% of catch I'm doing bad not doing bad at all either is that Mastro's over there in Beverly Hills a lot of fun too a lot of fun you know it's great down great restaurants and I love being in the gaming business I owned the five Golden Nugget casinos and it's it's been good it's been good did you always want to be a nun today always it's kind of funny and I talked to people about this all the time and and one of the things I talk about in the book Larry is you got to know what you're good at and and God gave us all a gift and I sure wasn't gonna win a Grammy I took guitar lessons for four years and still struggle to play a chord I wasn't gonna win an Emmy I wasn't going to do a lot of things I sure can't draw anything but you know what I knew I knew that I'd had a DNA gene of business and when I was a little kid I carry around my briefcase of business and in junior high I was selling candy to students by high school I was playing the stock market and when I was 21 I had already won my first cat alike selling Shaklee vitamins and I told myself and I'm 35 I'm gonna have my first jet and I'm gonna be on the Forbes 400 less when I'm 50 and thank God they all happen Larry did love partner you always have a little luck but you also set yourself up in a position to to be lucky and you know somebody asked me what about all these tech billionaires that all of a sudden they become millionaires just because they created a little app that never was gonna really be successful but you know what they got lucky cuz a bigger company bought them but they still set themselves up by being in the right place and creating something as lenders the biggest lantry's is is the parent company and there's only like 30 or 40 landries restaurants but like i said i have everything from bubba gump to rainforests of Mastro's to martin's to McCormick and Schmidt's chart house all those are mine they're all company owned Mastro's - yes sir Wow Dennis doesn't know I've owned it for almost ten years almost 10 years and grown it to be a huge group of restaurants you specialize in steak houses and steak house and seafood a lot of seafood Joe's Crab Shack the Bubba Gump's or more seafood I hit and you know what I just bought last week was Dell Frisco's I don't know if you're for me I hate there all the time which one was the one in New York yeah absolutely sure they just opened yeah I bought it three times absolutely they do a great job but but once again the restaurants were very successful but they had problems at the corporate level and you know you got to protect your balance sheet and you got to protect your liquidity and what I believe in and I talked about it in the book Larry you got to be an opportunist and you know what happens when people are weak I like to eat them how did that urge to be successful work for you you had to have some fingers I've had lots of failures Larry but I never had that one to bring me down and what I you know it's kind of funny it's kind of like borrowing money and this is where so many people make mistakes in business and they drink their own kool-aid is anytime I ever gave a banker performer of borrowing money always did another performance for myself that said worst case scenario okay because that's usually what happens 90% of the time but people start drinking their own kool-aid in thinking that they're smarter and better than they are and I always ran the numbers on if it is this bad am I gonna still be able to make it through tough times and I think that's one of the reasons I've been successful and you know I talked about in this the book there's a paddle for everybody's ass I have no fear but I'll worry about everything and and the day that you don't think that paddle can get you you know it will get you were you ever broke I was never broke because I was always conservative then I have tough times in the 80s and even in the 90s absolutely but but I was never broke I don't ever want to be broke that's a scary word Larry what made you buy to use thin rockets you know what's funny Larry is the they were the San Diego Rockets and I don't even know if you remember that long time long time I was in junior high school and I remember them coming to town and Elvin Hayes was there big Center and and I'm a big U of H person I'm still chairman of the board of regents there and they played in the game of the century remember Elvin and Lew Alcindor and Euston technically that was the first big basketball so it can yeah the biggest national talk ever there never been anything like that before in the Houston Astrodome and so I was a big since I grew up in there I was a big Elvin Hayes fan and the Houston Rockets were getting moved to Houston Texas and so I started listening to the radio because you didn't have the NBA on TV then if you remember and and they moved to Houston and I was a fan ever since and even today I'm like the thirtieth longest tenured season ticket holder is that not unbelievable that's how long I've been at Houston rocket fan and then I was a partner between 82 and 92 and I was very young because the team only sold for 10 million dollars in 1982 you know how sports franchises have appreciate it ten years later the team sells for 85 million I have a bid in with somebody else to buy it for 80 we lose I next to Les Alexander for the next 25 years center court front row he's the owner and then I'll buy it 25 years later for two people two billion dollars why did you spend that much because there's never been a sports team sell for less than it did before and it's the one thing you can count on is a sports change because of the content and you know our important content is today was gonna always appreciate so the employees all over the country that you pay the most to buy your basketball players I've got two forty million dollar basketball players in James Harden and Russell Westbrook and I'm happy to have them Larry is it easy to sign those checks you know the numbers have to work on any business and and and it's all part of the business of that business and with sponsorship money and ticket revenue the numbers work okay because they have to work or you couldn't do that and it doesn't really matter remember your only cost to sales your big cost of sales there is the players and and it's a collective bargaining agreement and you're gonna have to give I think it's 50 and a half something like that to your players and then you decide how you want to spend it's a degree of socialism to it you can control the air on your team might take a cut to get you to sign the other guy that doesn't happen very often it doesn't happen very often so so it's also kind of set up in the NBA where there's no crazy bidding because if you are this tenured of a player and you've won an MVP or you're an all-star this is the most you can make that's why like LeBron and James Harden and Russell Westbrook and all these guys and Chris Paul make a certain amount of money but not more than anybody else there's a bunch of them in that top category right there are they gonna do this year I think it's gonna be a great you know shootout in the West I mean it's open I don't think this has ever happened before but with what the Clippers did with what Utah did as good as Denver is Golden State with us having Russell and James and Clint and PJ and Eric I think it's gonna be a lot of fun this year Larry I think it's gonna be a whole lot of fun how many games you go I go to 40 probably out of 41 home games you always had that one game a year that you just have a conflict that you can't get out of and Road games probably 25% but I love to come here in LA and watch the Clippers and the Lakers never miss a beat subscribe to Larry King now and watch new episodes every day

Channel: Larry King

Views: 12,999

Keywords: Larry King, entertainment, news, trending, celebrity, tilman fertitta, tilman fertitta billionaire, larry king now, landrys, forbes, houston rockets, billion dollar buyer, larry king, shut up and listen book, shut up and listen tilman fertitta

Id: D4qe1cQ0O4s

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019