Kevin Boehm - Restoration of Your Own Soul

hi everyone how are you mrs. camless where are you I got to curse words just to just to earmuffs you're must first of all quit Thank You Bryan Anthony will Ghidorah the whole welcome coverage team for putting on this amazing event and inviting me here today you know will asked me at what point if I had a preference of where I wanted to speak today and I just told him I'd rather not go first and I'd rather not follow Seth Meyers so this is perfect so I have a theory about will Ghidorah that one of the reasons he's so successful at giving great hospitality so consistently is that will is really successful at being happy consistently makes sense right I mean I could be wrong I don't know will that well he could be a miserable jerk in his downtime that kicks dog's had small children when people aren't looking I don't think so though I he seems pretty little gently joyous about his endeavors and I think that joy gets transferred to his guests never have I come to grips so much with the correlation between my own personal happiness and the ability to do my job than a trip I took to New York this past November I ran into will and he's just electric they just reopened Eleven Madison Park and he's beaming with pride and excitement but I'm gonna be completely honest with you I was in such a bad headspace that I found as unbelievable positive energy completely annoying because I was annoyed with everything at that point I was most annoyed that at a time in my life when everything was so good at least from the outside looking in that I was completely upside-down amazing wife three beautiful kids a thriving company good health and a lot of friends I mean boo freakin hoo right even hearing myself say out loud that I was suffering from depression and anxiety maybe want to punch myself in the face but something about 2017 it kicked me into some sort of joyless submission we had our hands up a lot in 2017 and although we say no to hundreds of projects we still said yes to five that's five openings in 16 months which is crazy and because bad luck has no sense of timing one of our existing restaurants burned down and just so I could really screw things up I decided to move at the same time add to that the tragic loss of a couple of friends and I was dizzy as hell but I couldn't get off the ride so we're at Eleven Madison Park and we'll tells me the theme for this year restoration I thought perfect for will and Daniel they just demolished their jewel at the height of its glory and then restored it how cool right but what does it mean to a guy who's in dire need of being restored himself I don't know about you but when I'm in a bad state I listen to everything waiting for that one line or a piece of advice that's gonna turn it all around could be Oprah could be the barista it could be something my four-year-old says it could be something Patrick Swayze says in Roadhouse I don't know it comes in weird places sometimes so I'm in a cab leaving New York and the radios on and Rich Eisen is interviewing Kevin Costner and he's asking the typical movie star questions who's the biggest star he ever worked with Sean Connery who's the best actor he ever worked with and Koster said that's easy gene Hackman and he goes on to tell story about working with Hackman on no way out great movie by the way Costner got into a disagreement with the director about where they were gonna shoot a scene up to that point every single scene with Hackman had been costing her to desk and Hackman across from him and Koster said we're not shooting again right here we're shooting over there and the director said no we're not we're shooting it here at Costco says no we're shooting it over there it explodes into a massive argument and at one point Costner realizes that Hackman is watching them argue but not engaging and the director at one point says hey Kevin do you think we should consult Gene Hackman about this I mean he's in the scene too and cost her very brazenly said Gene's pretty freakin good he'll figure it out so at the end of the day Koster's walking out into the lot and Hackman sitting on the hood of his car and Hackman said you come here and Koster says crap I disrespected this legendary actor and he's gonna let me have it it's not what happened Hackman told him that the last couple of years have been really brutal and that he was getting a divorce and that mentally wasn't on his game which led him to make questionable movie choices and that hadn't allowed him to fight for things he thought were right he told Costner that watching him made him remember why I want to be an actor in the first place he jumped in his car need Rove off so I'm in the cab listening and I actually get a little bit angry because I'm in hackman's same head space and my initial thought actually was I go that's what Hackman made that terrible movie with dan Aykroyd which it was Loose Cannons is that the new at least can I and I thought it myself I don't want to be Loose Cannons Gene Hackman I want to be Royal Tenenbaums Hackman or Hoosiers Hackman or French Connection Hackman so for perspective my loose-cannon head space was somewhat justified we just taken on the most difficult opening we'd ever encountered 200-seat restaurant with breakfast brunch lunch dinner 24-hour room service feed the hotel staff four times a day rooftop bar pool 120 person banquet room three meeting rooms your basic nightmare it's opening coincided with labor shortage problem in Chicago and the management team we put together good people but let's just say it was a chemistry set gone wrong all openings have problems this one just had it coming from all angles because this place had so many damn angles and here we were in the eye of the hurricane of the opening and I'm speaking at a tech show in New York and sadly happened to be away from it not exactly the person I wanted to be and not exactly the person I needed to be I took my hours in the air as respite from everything and prayed by the time I landed it would get better but as things do before things get better it would get worse I landed back at home and my first phone call off the plane was from one of our executives who's here today and she gave me some hard truth and she didn't sugarcoat it didn't my own self absorption I wasn't even thinking about what the surge of 2017 had done to our own team our team was beat-up burned-out and pissed off it was a good old fashioned lecture and it gave me some new and disturbing perspective see when you start out in this business you know that the restaurant itself is a symphony right and all the parts are equally important but when you're making big decisions macro decisions what restaurant to open and how much to spend and where to put it for Rob and I it had always been Hall and Oates you start conducting and tell everyone to keep up but this past year everyone was playing so fast we were breaking strings so as it turns out not only am i depressed but maybe I'm being a bit of a self consumed jerk - that's the thing when you're moving this fast everything in your periphery is a blur ironically eater posted an article that day about possible headlines for 2018 Boca group swears they opened another restaurant but can't remember where pretty good another said Boca group only opens to restaurants slight slight fatigue it was funny but it wasn't that funny robbed robbed my nobody at my company was laughing it just robbed my business partner and I knew it was imperative we have some difficult conversations that people who need to be talked off the ledge propped up or just listened to having difficult conversations is a huge part of what I've done for almost 27 years I walked headfirst into some nasty environments and I was good at it table dragging 70 minutes let me talk to him we almost killed the guy at table 32 by serving him nuts send me in but right now me talking my team off the ledge while I'm on the ledge this was not going to be me at my rah-rah best I did some active listening I made some profuse apologies for the breakneck pace made clear how much we appreciated them but the final piece the piece they needed the action part wasn't so simple I had to explain we were in the middle of it so just eight weeks into a difficult opening another opening there was just a few weeks away sir only band-aid solutions a few days off here for aaron and jamie motivational chat with ian and Abby some tears some hugs and for me and Rob grinded out another opening the funny thing is restaurant openings had always been the thing that it restored me I mean the last time I was this anxious in the press was when I dropped out of college I mean don't get me wrong college was fun but it had been kind of an empty experience for me I were surrounded myself by roommates at college who in some cases had such a bright light around them that I felt pretty lonely standing in their shadow one of them an aeronautical engineering major told me was going to be an astronaut when I first met him I said yeah good luck with that Mike he by the way was the last American astronaut in space and my writer friend Dave who's the editor of The Daily Illini would later became a finalist for the Pulitzer and wrote a couple Tom Hanks movies these guys were doing or studying for exactly what they wanted to do in life and excelling at it I wasn't emotionally connected to anything I was studying and I wasn't getting closer to what I actually want to do which was open up a restaurant by studying political science in the University of Illinois I was insanely jealous they were moving towards something while I was standing still so I concocted a plan written on a spiral notebook in 1991 which said the following in block letters enough drive to Florida work in two restaurants live off one save everything from the other learn all I can eventually have enough money to open up place the day I left school my friend Mike pleaded with me as I was pulling out the pardon lot not to go he told me this is a bad impulse decision and bound to screw my life up Mike likes to tell the story when he comes in the restaurants and claims that I dramatically lowered my sunglasses and dropped some Shaw Mike the reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to himself therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man on that unreasonable man later Mike he says I then squealed my tires and peeled out I love that story so much because it makes me sound like such a badass that was far from a badass for the record I remember only that it took me about 20 miles due south on the highway to feel like a new person though emotional kept it connectivity and a short-term goal would be the essential recipe for my life the trip though at least initially total disaster end up in Panama City Beach couldn't get hired at a restaurant so I had to work at a terrible amusement park between listening to Margaritaville about 72 times a day and try not to step in puke at kids Kingdom I kept applying at restaurants I moved in with a guy who I caught stealing from me got in a wicked fistfight with him was forced to move out I spent a night sleeping on the beach and then a week living at a boarding house before finding a decent place to live and worst of all a bobcat who somebody was illegally keeping us a pet escaped from their house ran into mine and attacked me it sounds like I made that up I did not I was attacked by a ferocious Bobcat it was it was it was incredibly is incredibly scary I was asking the universe if I could open a restaurant and I was pretty sure it was telling me now want to know the amazing thing none of it depressed me I was living my own choose your own adventure every day some terms were good some terms were bad but none of it was boring and my goal and my focus for singular and clear one short-term goal at a time things got better and one side crafted a fake resume with restaurants it had all mysteriously gone out of business so they couldn't call for a reference I finally got a job the two and a half years in Panama City's a bit of a blur I worked I learned I slept and I saved and one day in 1992 I found a little idyllic town called seaside it was 50 miles west to where I lived and on the first night I drove out there I took my girlfriend to this little restaurant called Josephine's it was small pretty and romantic which was kind of what I was looking for but upon entering the restaurant I noticed that the only open table my table was sitting next to a group that were far from the ideal neighbors drunk loud and massive fans of their own jokes the maitre d a charming fella named Bruce Albert winked at me as he handed me the menu inside the menu there was a tape note welcome mr. Baine the guy on your left is an [Applause] he will be gone soon until then bear with us love Bruce I was instantly charmed and charmed by the entire little town after dinner people gathered on the town square I asked what was going on they explained as soon as the Sun went down the movie would start we sat we drank wine and we watched Breakfast at Tiffany's and I loved everything about it my only fear leaving that night is that somehow I'd entered some other dimension like the Willowby episode of Twilight Zone and if I left I may never find my way back but I did find my way back there had I opened a little sixth table restaurant there which is some 25 years ago it was called the Lazy Daze cafe and I cut my teeth at a tiny little two-person operation where we did everything after the oven blew up in my face on day three and caught my hair on fire things seemed to get easier this is how it all began and one goal would always lead to another and I found myself opening and selling restaurants and moving closer to my ultimate destination from seaside to Springfield to Nashville I loved it but every town I'd been in so far had been missing something some piece of the puzzle and then came Chicago and at everything I wanted an amazing audience of consumers who love food and appreciate a great hospitality serious professionals in front of back of the house and for me a great partner who complement my skill sets fortunately Chicago would say yes to us and Rob and I both said yes to Chicago often and let me tell you don't get to 19 restaurants and 2,000 employees without saying yes a lot it's that quality that openness that adventurous spirit that shown both myself and Rob many great adventures the newest adventure is a restaurant in LA and right in the heels of our tumultuous year we were both there poised to explore a new frontier we had a business dinner and we were walking back to the hotel we found ourselves outside the legendary comedy store late and looked up at that night show the bill get this Jed Apatow Sebastian Maniscalco David tell Whitney Cummings and Jeff Ross the king of the roast stacked we stopped and went in this show was sold out but after some slick maneuvering by my slick business partner Rob we snuck in the main room and within 15 seconds of sitting down Jeff Ross asked for a volunteer allowing Jeff Ross to roast used the comedy equivalent of letting Mike Tyson punch you but still my hand went up you sir come on up I went up to the stage and prepared to be obliterated next thing I know Jeff Ross is telling me that I look like Jon Hamm if jon Hamm's mom drank during her pregnancy and and I'm laughing and it's amazing and I'm so glad I raised my hand and I realize my life is a version of Jim Carrey and yes man I keep raising it because I want to know what's behind door number two sometimes it gets you Bobcat sometimes it gets you nineteen restaurants sometimes it gets you speaking at Lincoln Center sometimes it gets you Jeff Ross asking if you're weary of Al Pacino's haircut from Serpico and sometimes it puts you and your team in a hole you know failure of any sort in this case the failure to figure out how to restore ourselves as you went through this arduous year does leave you the clues behind and how you veered off path you just have to look hard enough with the right set of eyes this whole time for both the company and myself I was just convinced we taken on too much that it couldn't possibly be anything else but I wasn't being good enough detective I've written several speeches over the years but never one that I was writing while I lived it well I was still figuring it out I started writing a speech in November and was still making changes a few nights ago like a good documentary it's filmed over the course of months of years I was hoping to have some singular moment that wrapped it all up neatly like some chance meeting with Barack Obama where he said Kevin I was the present United States for eight years I know the difficulties in which you speak unfortunately I've learned the secret of happiness in the face of hardship sit down let me share with you kind of ballsy to do a Barack Obama freshen when Seth Meyers and Michael che are on the same bill but I did tell it that would have been amazing that it happened but it did not it wasn't some grand statement by a grand statesman at all but a question a very smart person posed it actually led me to the answers I was looking for Kevin do you regret opening any of the restaurants last year valid question and one that I hadn't even thought of but my answer was an emphatic no I love those restaurants the curious I also asked us to my team and to a person the answer was no and then I asked my team another question if we got to redo 2017 could we do it without destroying ourselves and the entire team said definitely yes so where did it go wrong we sat a we brainstormed we were able to trace back months of pain stress in countless hours of unnecessary work to connect a group of three bad decisions three bad decisions we perceived to be a short cut not a short cut a quality product or quality design or education but a short cut and decision making the right answer for us had always been a distillation process where many opinions are boiled down to find the right answer we always as company understood the power of collective intelligence but in 2017 just getting the team in one room to make a decision seemed too burdensome we had three leadership positions at one restaurant there were not anonymous choices by the exact team normally such a divided vote would always result in keep looking but in this year and that chaos and that thin labor market we chose to hire man cross without the list it was a shortcut and that one decision was truly the straw that broke the camel's back when we eventually found the right leadership and improved all our lives as it turns out this brainstorming session brought to light how inefficient we were in so many areas we were dribbling with our heads down and running into each other and everything we try to shortcut it be in the long way around shortcuts don't lead to restoration it's a gateway drug that'll lead you to the other harder shortcuts heroin like shortcuts it's these type of shortcuts that cost you time but efficiency is what gives you time back and this is the key to restoration buying time back it's a study every person in every and he needs to do with their own lives how many hours did I spend last year reading and then deleting emails that I was unnecessarily cc'd on safe estimate for me is 40 40 hours how many meetings did I sit through where I ultimately learned nothing from or provided any impact and only went because I was invited or felt some pull of duty to attend safe estimate is 60 that's a hundred combined hours that should have been used to restore my soul our ambition was not the problem that was part of what made us who we were who we are part of how we lit our fire on a daily basis it was about the way we were mentally reacting to the cast when it occurs the way we were inefficiently game-planning that overburden certain people and the way we were measuring decisions in 2017 based on how fast we made them not how much we were vetting them we had a company retreat in January we broke bread maneuvered our way through an escape game ate caviar and drank champagne listen to Rick Bayless wax poetic about balance and motivation but most importantly we just talked we talked about where we've been where we are most importantly where we want to be we looked at each other's workloads and reassigned tasks or fresh eyes we talked about mental health about staying in the moment we emphasized the importance of balancing the meetings that can lean towards the negative with positive meetings meetings that focus on the rewarding of people that are killing it we made a pact to have fun again I mean the greatest times in my life have happened in this business if we haven't learned enough by now to enjoy the process then we need to go drive back to the drawing board because we're doing it wrong I'm happy to say these shifts have changed the atmosphere and the Boca group forecast is mostly sunny and even though the weather and the restaurant business is bound to change at any moment much like Chicago it's our newly found internal sunshine that will keep us dry as for me personally my path to enlightenment was a little more winding coming to the realization no matter how fortunate you are and I'm incredibly grateful for what I have depression doesn't discriminate then once you're okay with telling people that you're struggling it's the first step in starting to feel better I often found myself in a precarious mental state in 2017 I was either haunted by something that already happened it was worrying about something in yet to occur I lost out on thousands of great moments because I was never in the moment this year's all about present moment experiencing and when can you see you can step outside yourself holding out at a time how you experience each moment changes immensely and thanks to some changes recently I have more moments to spend wisely I bought back 10 hours this year in a car that I used to spend driving back and forth when I move closer to the restaurants I found a lot of good things to replace it with I spent an hour a week with the great therapist found myself on a yoga mat more on my phone less meditations a must in the morning and I'm getting better at doing before I go to bed I plan my days more strategically and weaved into my schedule or restorative things that I know will fuel some of the more arduous pursuits we're still raising our hands because we love it but raising this stuff then we know a fill our soul and hopefully fills the soul the people that we work with the fact is 25 years after my first restaurant I'm still growing up I feel like I've learned more at 47 than I did at 17 maybe this year was the universe's way of forcing us to evolve as a company in forcing me to evolve as a human being all I know for me is the fog has began to lift and I'm no longer annoyed by wills energy I'm inspired by it I recommend to everyone here to take the Proust questionnaire proofs believe by filling us out you'd reveal your true nature it's filled with deep questions like what is your idea of perfect happiness what living person to you most despised in my for me he's orange-tinted who was the greatest love of your life [Applause] and what is your most treasured possession I fill one out every few years and the answers often change one answer that doesn't what living person do you most admire my answer the general manager of the Windies in Carlinville Illinois in 1997 I was driving I tell the story at every opening we do I was driving for Springfield Illinois to st. Louis to look at a restaurant in the winter of 1997 a chef friend and I peeled off to grab a quick burger at Wendy's in Carlinville Illinois so we walk in and a woman's perched at the front of the restaurants just to greet guests gentlemen welcome to Wendy's I'd never seen a maitre d at a fast food restaurant before so naturally I was surprised I said hello and then entered the line and then the cashier proceeded to tell me in great compelling detail about their new spicy chicken sandwich like he was working at a four-star restaurant I ordered that spicy chicken sandwich and a water my friend got the super bar wendy's used to have a bar with pasta and salad the woman who was the greeter was also making sure that the pasta bar stayed immaculate and at one point came by and she refilled our waters of the pitcher he was at this point I turned to my friend Scott and said what the hell's going on my chef friend then asked if we were dining at a michelin-starred Wendy's I told him I did not think that existed it inspired a discussion of how amazing this GM of this restaurant must be in so we asked for the manager he came out and a perfect Windsor knot and it's Wendy's tie and he said gentlemen how can I help you and I said yeah I just want to tell you this you have an amazingly well-run place is the best fast food restaurant ever dined at and he said well as you can see were very proud of it on the wall was a plaque they were the number one rated Wendy's in the United States this guy was given the same Wendy's menu the same Wendy's design and was able to mine greatness out of it and even something unique out of it there's so many lessons that I'm trying to convey when I tell that story greatness can be found in unusual places incredible leadership can move mountains it goes on and on but really I'm just trying to light everyone's fire and light my own - and I've never had a better understanding than right now of how important my fire being lit translates to my own authenticity which is so important because I'm from the Midwest and Midwestern have a really good detector and for most of our guests more important than perfection our guests want us to be real and I can only be authentic and inspirational and restorative if I take the time and buy back the time to restore myself I think we all know the basic recipe for our own happiness and if the universe is constructed a way that every day was a perfect day eight hours sleep by myself Challenge meetings with people that inspire me one hour to sweat and test myself physically immersed in laughter and love able to avoid all conflict some pocket where I have 20 minutes as myself alone and thought make love with my wife and a hammock I don't know if that day was my every day this pursuit would be easy but we all know the world doesn't work that way that we can't control everything and we all have to find a way to navigate the inevitable landmines that stand the way these perfect days but what I figured out this new 2018 version of me is this is not a passive pursuit it's an active one man and I have a happiness agenda and it takes priority so the things I can control mindfulness diet exercise attitude and who I choose to spend my with its these things that take priority over all others so when I do raise my hand I'm armed with the mental fortitude to make sure that my ambition doesn't undermine the clarity that got me all these killer opportunities in the first place I was conversing with the gentleman recently his family's owned a restaurant since 1948 at one point we were interrupted by another man who walked up and knew him hand extended and said oh man Wally man that night that we hung out after the Super Bowl that might have been the best night of my life Wally embraced him tightly told him how great it was to see him kissed him on both cheeks told him he loved him and the man moved on while he turned to me two things he said one I have no idea who that man is two if the best night of my life is the night I can't even remember then my life must be pretty good it's true right we get a ringside seat to first dates first love bucket-list dinners that she said yes and people having the greatest nights of their lives our seats the best seat in the house and if you're living in the moment you can just catch some of that restorative energy it's just floating in the air waiting for you to grab it this crowd today is composed of some of the best brightest and most ambitious people in the restaurant industry there are literally hundreds of unopened restaurants that right now only exist in all your minds many of these projects these ambitions will eventually lead us to moments where we paint ourselves in a corner that's gonna happen in fact some of you sitting at her today might be in the eye of the hurricane right now or just in dire need of having your fire real it remember that nothing is more important than the health of your own mind and your own soul and when you find yourself truly restored your own lightning man will be more powerful than anything you might face be happy be well thank you you

Channel: The Welcome Conference

Views: 3,380

Keywords: leadership, restaurants, hospitality, welcome conference, WC18 Complete

Id: e0M4_IGjyjA

Length: 29min 11sec (1751 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2018