Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / The Real Path to Becoming a Great Chef - No Shortcuts

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The Real Path to Becoming a Great Chef - No Shortcuts · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello Chefs, This is Chefs PSA Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Andre Natera. On today's episode, we're going
• 0:05
  to talk about why there are no secrets and no shortcuts to
• 0:09
  becoming a great chef quickly. Stay tuned
• 0:23
  before we get started, Just a brief update.
• 0:26
  I'm a part of a group called El Paso Family Meal with a lot of
• 0:30
  other really good chefs, including my good friends Rico
• 0:32
  Torres, Gabe or Alice Fermi Nunez, Omar Flores, Jake Ross.
• 0:37
  Anyway, there's a group of us chefs that are all from El Paso,
• 0:40
  TX and we come together to cook. One, because it's fun and we
• 0:44
  don't get to see each other often and it's a good time.
• 0:47
  But two, because we want to really bring awareness around
• 0:49
  the culinary food scene from El Paso, TX.
• 0:51
  It always goes to a good cause to support a charity in El Paso,
• 0:55
  TX. Well anyway, on Wednesday, May
• 0:57
  29th, I will be at Bacalar Cooking along with some other
• 1:00
  chefs including Top Chef winner Gabe or Alice, and we will be
• 1:03
  throwing down GOT I think right now one of the seafood courses
• 1:07
  so better remember how to cook quickly.
• 1:09
  So if you're going to be in Austin, TX, that's going to be a
• 1:13
  great dinner. You don't want to miss it.
• 1:14
  Also, if you happen to be in Austin, TX, live fire put on by
• 1:17
  the Texas Food and Wine Alliance is happening on April 11th.
• 1:21
  A lot of great chefs are going to be there.
• 1:22
  If you enjoy going to those food grazers, I might be there.
• 1:25
  You come say hi, come meet all the chefs, eat some good food,
• 1:28
  drink some good beverages, and support the culinary community
• 1:32
  in Texas. If you happen to be in Austin,
• 1:33
  you don't want to miss that event.
• 1:34
  If you want to support the show, if you're listed on Spotify,
• 1:36
  make sure you leave five stars. Stop what you're doing because a
• 1:39
  lot of you have not left five stars yet.
• 1:42
  So stop. Hit the little rating button.
• 1:44
  Five stars. Nothing less than five stars.
• 1:47
  I'm your favorite chef. Your favorite retired chef, I
• 1:50
  should say. Anyway, we digress.
• 1:52
  If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe, share,
• 1:55
  comment, all those things. We appreciate the support.
• 1:59
  I want to make an announcement today.
• 2:00
  I am building a sub stack so the podcast will still be available
• 2:04
  everywhere you listen to the podcast.
• 2:05
  Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon.
• 2:09
  Where do you happen to be listening to the podcast?
• 2:10
  It will remain there. However, I am building a sub
• 2:14
  stack which will house all the podcasts, all the ebooks, all of
• 2:17
  the classes, as well as exclusive to sub stack only
• 2:22
  podcast. It's where I can say the things
• 2:24
  that I can't really say on Spotify and YouTube.
• 2:26
  So if you want exclusive content, you want to make sure
• 2:29
  you subscribe to the sub stack that I'm going to be announcing
• 2:31
  very soon. How you can sign up.
• 2:34
  I just finished working on it today.
• 2:35
  It's all wrapped up with a Pretty Little bow.
• 2:38
  It's going to be great, but it helps me keep the show going as
• 2:40
  the show expands and it continues to grow.
• 2:42
  So if you're looking to be a part of the Chef's PSA
• 2:44
  community, you want to make sure you sign up for that sub stack
• 2:46
  when it comes out. There will be an e-mail.
• 2:48
  If you're not signed up. For my e-mail list, go to
• 2:50
  chefspsa.com, scroll to the bottom, sign up for the
• 2:53
  newsletter. Anyway, we digress.
• 2:55
  Back to today's episode. So for those of you that don't
• 2:58
  know, I do. A weekly cigar Sunday Q&A on
• 3:01
  Instagram gives me opportunity to light up an Escobar cigar and
• 3:05
  interact with everyone and answer the questions.
• 3:07
  Now I will say for those of you that participate in the Q&A, a
• 3:11
  lot of the questions are repetitive.
• 3:13
  I think I've been asked what my favorite knife brand is like 4
• 3:16
  weeks in a row. I've answered it four weeks in a
• 3:18
  row. But if you ask me again, I'm not
• 3:20
  going to say it, but one of the questions that was asked last
• 3:23
  week. I'm not going to lie, it kind of
• 3:25
  upset me a little bit, not with the person, but with the
• 3:28
  question itself, because it's the wrong question to ask.
• 3:32
  And that question was, what's the secret?
• 3:34
  Or can you give me some tips to becoming a good executive chef?
• 3:37
  Now, why is that a bad question and why didn't it piss me off so
• 3:39
  much? Because there is no secret and
• 3:42
  there are no tips. There's nothing I could tell you
• 3:45
  in a sentence that's going to make you a better chef.
• 3:47
  Absolutely nothing. There's no one line sentence
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  that I could tell you. If you do this, if you take
• 3:53
  these magic beans and you plant them, you will be the greatest
• 3:57
  chef that ever lived. If you rub this snake oil on
• 4:00
  you, I will make you a great chef.
• 4:02
  It doesn't work that way. And even if it did work that
• 4:05
  way, if there was a small secret tip, a secret cheat code, then I
• 4:09
  could tell you that would make you a great chef.
• 4:13
  It would only last for about 5 minutes because after that you
• 4:16
  would still have to do the job and you would have to earn it.
• 4:18
  There is no secret. There is no cheat code.
• 4:20
  There's no something for nothing in this world.
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  Everything has to be earned. You either pay now or you pay
• 4:25
  later. And it's better to pay your dues
• 4:27
  up front because it's more difficult when you're in the
• 4:29
  position and you have to pay your dues.
• 4:31
  I'm gonna share a story about something stupid that I did.
• 4:33
  And I was telling someone this story the other day and I I
• 4:35
  thought it was funny because it illustrated how stupid I was at
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  at a certain point in time in my career.
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  My first executive chef job and I had recently won a competition
• 4:46
  that awarded me the Rising Star Chef.
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  This was, I think, in 2003, So I was awarded Rising Star Chef of
• 4:53
  Dallas by the Dallas Warning News.
• 4:55
  And at that same time, I also won some culinary competitions
• 5:00
  that I had competed in, in addition to also being
• 5:02
  recognized as chef of the year for the company that I was
• 5:05
  working for at that time. I'm not gonna lie, I think it
• 5:07
  was only like 25 or 26 years old, but I felt like I was on
• 5:09
  top of the world of like, I'm this hotshot chef.
• 5:13
  My career is moving fast, my food is good.
• 5:17
  I was on the cutting edge. I'm getting all these awards.
• 5:19
  I'm winning the competitions. I'm top of the food chain in my
• 5:22
  city, and I go up to my mentor, chef, and I say, I don't know if
• 5:25
  there's anything else for me to accomplish as a chef.
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  I kind of feel stuck. I've done it all.
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  And I was like 25 years old. And here I'm telling my chef
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  who's like has 100 culinary competition, gold medals, Hotel
• 5:39
  Olympia and the Culinary Olympics and so on.
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  And he looked at me and he was very kind about it because he
• 5:43
  was probably looking at me thinking, here are are you a
• 5:45
  fucking idiot. You think you've accomplished
• 5:47
  everything that you need to accomplish and you're 26 and
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  you've conquered the world. And he said to me, very gently.
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  Mind you, maybe there is a little bit that you don't know
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  yet. Maybe you don't give up cooking
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  just yet, because maybe there's stuff that you don't know.
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  And I remember I walked away from the conversation thinking
• 6:03
  he doesn't know what he's talking about.
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  Clearly I already know everything.
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  I just conquered the city. Anyway, Long story short,
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  shortly after that I jumped into another executive chef job, and
• 6:12
  this one was much more serious. Bigger operation, higher stakes,
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  quality of food was much higher. Primary market running the ship.
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  It was a hard job and I quickly, as they say, fuck around and
• 6:23
  find out. I quickly found out I thought it
• 6:25
  was hot shit and I quickly realized I wasn't.
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  And it wasn't that I didn't know how to cook.
• 6:30
  It's just that I didn't know how to be a chef.
• 6:31
  I didn't know how to lead. Food cost was out of whack.
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  The employees were upset. I was making a mess of the
• 6:36
  kitchen. And I don't mean literally in
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  the in the sense that it was dirty, I mean making a mess of
• 6:40
  the operation and I had to pull it back and I had to really
• 6:43
  figure out what I was doing wrong because I thought I knew
• 6:45
  everything. Here I was, this 27 year old
• 6:47
  executive chef, Top of the World.
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  I'm gonna take on a bigger job in a primary market and I'm
• 6:52
  gonna show them what's up. They quickly showed me what's
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  up. That old expression?
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  A chef can cook, but a cook can't chef.
• 6:57
  And I was still very much a chef who was a cook.
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  So all my focus was on just making great food by any means
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  necessary, regardless of how it got there.
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  Now it worked in a smaller operation but didn't scale.
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  All of a sudden where I had multiple restaurants to run,
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  There's this lure of being the executive chef or the sous chef
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  or being at the top of the food chain.
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  Everyone wants to be there. You look at it from afar, you
• 7:19
  say that's where I want to be. They get to do whatever they
• 7:22
  want. They get to create the menu,
• 7:24
  they get to hang out in the office, they get to tell the
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  jokes, they get to talk to the guests, They get to make all the
• 7:29
  decisions that affect our lives. And it is true, but there's a
• 7:32
  lot that you don't see that comes with being the executive
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  chef. They also get all the shit their
• 7:36
  Co responsibility with you with every single mistake that goes
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  on. There's a lot of pressure on
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  chefs and there's a lot that they have to know.
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  There's a lot that they have to deal with.
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  And if you are in the culinary industry and you went to
• 7:47
  culinary school and you worked on the line, well, you've
• 7:49
  amassed a certain amount of skills to cook on the line, to
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  saute, to braise, to make stocks and sauces.
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  You have a very rudimentary knowledge of how the kitchen
• 7:58
  organization works. But you've never written a
• 8:00
  schedule. You've never had to break up a
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  fight between 2 cooks and have to fire one of them.
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  You've never had to cost out an entire menu in 24 hours or do a
• 8:09
  month end inventory or to start an inventory because maybe the
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  place that you're going into doesn't have it here starting
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  from zero. So how do you create the
• 8:16
  systems? How do you create the processes?
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  How do you hold people accountable?
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  How do you get them to believe in your mission?
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  I know a lot of chefs in position and myself included
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  that when you'd get there, it's your dream to eventually become
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  the chef. But all you think about is, boy,
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  I wish I was just a line cook. I know a lot of chefs that say
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  they just miss being a line cook because it came with none of the
• 8:33
  pressures. Now you do have pressure as a
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  line cook. The amount of tickets that are
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  coming in, getting your line set, Muse and Plus your prep
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  list, et cetera, But that's it. The pressure that you have is on
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  your own performance and your culinary ability to manipulate
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  food. But when you're the chef, you
• 8:48
  have all that responsibility as well as your response people
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  finances the burden of the restaurant, is it going to
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  close? Did we make enough revenue?
• 8:55
  We got to cut labor, we got to lower food cost, We need to
• 8:58
  increase revenue. What's your IBIDAH?
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  Do you even know what ibidah is? Right.
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  So the owner's going to come to you and say what's our IBIDAH
• 9:03
  for this month and you're going to say, I don't even know what
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  that means. What did you say?
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  Everyone wants the title, but not everyone wants the job.
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  Because when you get in there, the title wears off really quick
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  when you're in the shit. When the shit hits the fan and
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  the wheels fall off the bus and someone has to answer for the
• 9:20
  mistakes, it's really easy to point at everyone else.
• 9:23
  But that quickly wears off too. Because if you go to owners or
• 9:26
  your boss and you say it was their fault and then they come
• 9:29
  back to you again, the next time there's mistakes and say it was
• 9:31
  still their fault. And then they do it a third time
• 9:33
  and you haven't fired them, they're gonna say to you, if
• 9:36
  it's their fault, why haven't you done anything about it as
• 9:38
  the leader? So now it's your fault.
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  You have complete ownership and complete responsibility for
• 9:43
  everything good and bad in the kitchen.
• 9:45
  So as alluring as quick success sounds, don't do it.
• 9:48
  Take your time, wait until you're ready.
• 9:50
  And how do you know when you're ready?
• 9:51
  Well, a lot of times someone will tap you on the shoulder and
• 9:53
  say, you know what, I think you're ready for promotion.
• 9:56
  Other times you might feel you're ready and there's just
• 9:59
  not an opportunity. And you may have to go out there
• 10:00
  and create your own luck and seek your own opportunities, but
• 10:05
  you have to be very honest with yourself.
• 10:07
  Are you ready? So let's go through some of
• 10:09
  those things that you need to know before you go in to be in
• 10:13
  the head chef for the first time.
• 10:14
  And you know, quick success is not necessarily something that
• 10:17
  you want. So sometimes you get quick
• 10:19
  success like I had alluded to earlier where you get promoted
• 10:22
  very quickly and now you're in the position.
• 10:24
  And there's other times when quick success happens because
• 10:28
  someone has given you the recognition.
• 10:30
  An example would be, maybe it's your first executive chef job.
• 10:34
  You really don't know what you're doing, but your food is
• 10:36
  really good and all of a sudden someone writes about you, you
• 10:40
  get a stroke of luck and now you are the darling of the food
• 10:44
  scene in your particular market. I've seen this go wrong for a
• 10:48
  lot of chefs because they get the media attention for the
• 10:51
  first time and they're not prepared for it.
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  They're a young chef. It gets to their head.
• 10:55
  They know how to cook, but they don't know how to save the
• 10:58
  restaurant from sinking. They don't know how to generate
• 11:00
  revenue, They don't know how to deal with the problems.
• 11:02
  And it ends up being a curse more so than a blessing.
• 11:05
  I think back to a lot of the chefs that I had come up with,
• 11:07
  and I think to myself, a lot of them had a stroke of luck where
• 11:10
  they became very popular very fast.
• 11:12
  And I'm not, I'm not trying to pick on some of these chefs that
• 11:14
  I came up with. I won't say their names, but a
• 11:17
  lot of them have vanished from the food scene, and I don't know
• 11:19
  where they are because as quickly as your star will rise
• 11:21
  without earning, it is as quickly as it could disappear.
• 11:24
  Now, that doesn't happen all the time, but you got to be careful.
• 11:27
  You got to make sure that if you are getting that success, you're
• 11:30
  doing the work on the back end to make sure you can keep that
• 11:32
  success. So what are those skills that
• 11:33
  you need? Well, first and foremost, the
• 11:36
  price of entry to become a great chef.
• 11:38
  The secret tip is you need to know how to cook.
• 11:41
  And there is no tip that I could tell you that's going to make
• 11:45
  you a good cook overnight. You just have to cook.
• 11:47
  You got to pay attention, you got to read books, you got to
• 11:49
  cook a lot of things. You got to study.
• 11:51
  You got to immerse yourself. You got to watch the Food
• 11:53
  Network. If you watch the Food Network,
• 11:55
  you got to watch culinary programs, whether it's YouTube,
• 11:57
  Food Network, Netflix, whatever. You need to immerse yourself on
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  social media and see all these things as they're coming up
• 12:03
  really quick, so you can stay relevant with the trends, all of
• 12:06
  that practice. And then you're taking those
• 12:08
  ideas that you see and then you're putting them in practice.
• 12:10
  Your culinary skills need to be at executive chef level.
• 12:13
  And what does that mean? Well, that means that you should
• 12:15
  be able to deliver excellent quality of food or the type of
• 12:19
  restaurant that you desire to run.
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  If you can't do that, then you're not executive chef ready.
• 12:24
  So that's the gatekeeper. Can you deliver food at an
• 12:27
  excellent quality level for the type of restaurant you desire to
• 12:30
  run? OK, Boo you, you could do that.
• 12:32
  Great. One box is checked.
• 12:34
  The next thing that you're going to need is you're going to need
• 12:36
  to know how to implement systems, structures, processes.
• 12:40
  Do you know how to build a team? Do you know how to manage it?
• 12:42
  Do you know how to make sure you have the right hierarchy, the
• 12:44
  right brigade, the right schedule, the right hours of
• 12:47
  operation, the right equipment in place for the menu that
• 12:50
  you're trying to execute? Do you know how to design the
• 12:53
  line and the stations on the line, and to design A menu so
• 12:56
  that you're not killing one station while leaving another
• 12:59
  station on cruise control? Get up the line.
• 13:03
  You need to know how to do that. You need to know how to
• 13:05
  implement systems structure and standard.
• 13:08
  Then you need to know how to build a culture.
• 13:09
  You need to know how to build a team.
• 13:11
  You know how to build up your team.
• 13:12
  You need to know how to make sure that you have the right
• 13:13
  people in the right places. There's a lot of psychology that
• 13:16
  goes into being a chef and a lot of the problems that you're
• 13:19
  gonna have to deal with when it comes to the feelings and the
• 13:21
  emotions and the fights and the arguments and the UPS and the
• 13:24
  downs. You're dealing with people.
• 13:26
  And if you don't know how to deal with people, you're in for
• 13:29
  a rude awakening. Because the majority of your job
• 13:31
  as a chef is dealing with people, whether they're your
• 13:33
  employees or they're your customers or they're your owners
• 13:36
  or they're your managers. It's a people business unless
• 13:39
  you're working by yourself, feeding yourself.
• 13:41
  It's a people business and the most important thing that you
• 13:44
  need to understand is how do you work with people.
• 13:46
  Then it's understanding and having a good grasp of financial
• 13:49
  acumen. Knowing how to cost things out.
• 13:53
  Knowing how to manage your labor cost your food cost your
• 13:55
  inventory. Knowing all those things like
• 13:58
  how to create a theoretical food cost, days on hand inventory,
• 14:01
  What's your EBITDA, How to view food as money.
• 14:04
  Go back and listen to the three-part series on food cost.
• 14:07
  Understanding what is money and how money works and how to view
• 14:09
  your food as money is going to be critical for your success.
• 14:11
  You know how to build Excel spreadsheets if you don't have a
• 14:13
  computer program that's doing it for you.
• 14:15
  By the way, food cost Oracle on ChatGPT is a GPT that I created.
• 14:20
  It's free if you have the premium account for ChatGPT Open
• 14:23
  AI Search Food Cost Oracle. There's a link in the
• 14:26
  description. You could go get it.
• 14:28
  It'll create spreadsheets for you to help you manage your food
• 14:31
  cost anyway. If you have nowhere to begin,
• 14:33
  that's a good place to start. Then you have to understand the
• 14:35
  marketing. You have to be a good marketer.
• 14:36
  Do you exist on social media? I was talking to someone today
• 14:39
  and we were talking about a social media plan for them as a
• 14:41
  chef and a mentoring one-on-one that I did.
• 14:44
  And I said curate your Instagram with food, pictures that are
• 14:48
  relevant to start getting people interested.
• 14:51
  And what I do, and what I recommend is if you have a group
• 14:53
  of chefs and everyone's taking photos, you create a group chat
• 14:56
  where everyone's dumping the photos in the group chat that
• 14:59
  everyone agrees that we all can post these photos wherever we
• 15:01
  want. And so that way you're telling
• 15:03
  the story not just through yourself as the chef, but
• 15:05
  through all your team. Because when people see food
• 15:07
  photos, they say, I want to work there or I want to eat that
• 15:10
  food. And if you're the only one
• 15:11
  posting it, it's not as powerful as if everyone on your team is
• 15:15
  posting it. It becomes a force multiplier.
• 15:17
  And what I told this person is for every new photo that you put
• 15:20
  up, go out and delete an old one, because you probably have
• 15:23
  some food that you did years ago that you probably don't want
• 15:25
  people to see anymore. So go put that in the archive.
• 15:27
  Make that disappear. Understand how to market
• 15:29
  yourself. What is your brand?
• 15:30
  Who are you? What do you do?
• 15:32
  What do you stand for? Level up your video game
• 15:34
  character. When I think about myself as
• 15:36
  Chef's PSA, what do I like? Well, I like jokes.
• 15:40
  I like talking shit. I like smoking cigars.
• 15:43
  I like hip hop. I like philosophy.
• 15:44
  So you're going to see all of that in the Chef's PSA brand.
• 15:47
  You're going to see Eastern philosophy with books that I've
• 15:49
  written like Kitchen, Art of War or Bad Sue, Good Chef.
• 15:53
  You're gonna see hip Hop 'cause I'm gonna be putting music in
• 15:56
  the posts. You're gonna see cigars when I
• 15:59
  do my cigar Sunday Q&A. So when you see that, you know
• 16:02
  that's Chef's PSA. You're gonna see the branding,
• 16:04
  colors, what is your brand? Outline those two or three
• 16:07
  things and make them stand out so that when people know, they
• 16:10
  say, oh, that's chef. So and so, So again,
• 16:13
  understanding how to market yourself.
• 16:15
  Also understanding strategies to grow your revenue, right.
• 16:20
  Customers in, making sure they're having a great time,
• 16:22
  making sure that they're coming back, how to build relationships
• 16:24
  with them. Are you building an e-mail list?
• 16:26
  All these things matter. You also need resilience and
• 16:29
  patience because times are going to get tough.
• 16:31
  You're not always going to be the hammer.
• 16:33
  Sometimes you're going to be the nail.
• 16:34
  Everyone loves being the hammer. No one likes being the nail.
• 16:37
  Times get tough. And when times do get tough, are
• 16:39
  you going to crumble? Are you going to be able to
• 16:40
  stick through it? When your team quits on you and
• 16:42
  you're down a lot of cooks, are you going to sit there and
• 16:44
  complain and run away the rest of the team that remained
• 16:47
  because they don't like being around you because you're so
• 16:49
  negative? Or are you going to say, hey,
• 16:51
  let's stick through it, let's rebuild it and let's get it
• 16:54
  back? We're moving forward?
• 16:55
  Or are you going to say the ship is sinking and all the rats need
• 16:59
  to jump off? What kind of chef are you going
• 17:01
  to be when you're facing adversity?
• 17:04
  Are you able to get through it? What's the best way to know if
• 17:07
  you could deal with adversity is to go through it?
• 17:09
  And if you're a chef that has had success after success after
• 17:13
  success, if you've never faced adversity, you have no idea how
• 17:17
  you're going to react during adversity because it's coming.
• 17:20
  It's coming for every chef. There will be difficult days.
• 17:23
  Restaurants will close, sales will drop.
• 17:26
  If you went through COVID, it was a big wake up call,
• 17:29
  especially if you went through COVID as a leader and you had to
• 17:32
  lay people off and you had to think about how you're going to
• 17:34
  save your business. You faced some sort of
• 17:36
  adversity, either as a cook or as an owner.
• 17:39
  Chef, operator. And how did you react and what
• 17:43
  did you learn? Now hopefully you have a plan
• 17:44
  for the future and you know how you're going to deal with
• 17:46
  difficult situations. The other thing you're going to
• 17:48
  need is passion and dedication and discipline.
• 17:51
  If you have discipline, you don't need motivation.
• 17:53
  Motivation is like a little bit of chocolate.
• 17:55
  It's a sugar high, but once that motivation is gone, discipline
• 17:59
  is going to carry you through. Motivation opens the door.
• 18:01
  Discipline walks through that door every single day.
• 18:04
  And if I had one or the other, I'd rather have discipline over
• 18:06
  motivation. People always ask me about
• 18:09
  motivation. How do I get motivated?
• 18:10
  How do I motivate my staff? It's like not everything
• 18:12
  requires motivation. Sometimes you just got to do
• 18:14
  shit because you have to do it. It's difficult and it sucks.
• 18:17
  But guess what? If you're not going to do it,
• 18:19
  who's going to do it? And you're paid to be the
• 18:21
  leader, So who's going to do it? Whose job is it?
• 18:23
  You don't need an inspiration to do every single thing in the
• 18:25
  kitchen. Do I need to inspire someone to
• 18:28
  cut an onion? No, you just have to cut the
• 18:29
  onion. Do you need to inspire someone
• 18:31
  to do the right thing? No.
• 18:32
  Sometimes you have to do the right thing because that's your
• 18:34
  job and you're the leader, and doing the right thing is what it
• 18:37
  is, and you got to want it. You got to want to push
• 18:39
  yourself. I can't give you a magic bean
• 18:43
  that you're gonna plant and it's automatically gonna make you
• 18:45
  want to push yourself every single day.
• 18:47
  No, No one is gonna get you out of bed.
• 18:50
  When times are tough, no one's gonna come knock on the door and
• 18:52
  say, hey, you got this. I know you're down in the dumps,
• 18:55
  but you got it. No one's gonna do that for you.
• 18:57
  That's when you have to overcome the adversity.
• 18:59
  This is what being a chef is all about.
• 19:01
  There's UPS and there's down. And the sad reality is when
• 19:04
  you're up, everyone wants to be around you.
• 19:06
  They all want to be your friends.
• 19:07
  I want to get a photo with you, tag you on the gram, but when
• 19:10
  you're down, it's like you got the the itis.
• 19:12
  No one wants to be around you. You got the ick, and then how do
• 19:15
  you come back from that? Everyone is so much in a hurry
• 19:18
  to go from line cook to executive chef, but take your
• 19:21
  time as a line cook. Learn the fundamentals, learn
• 19:23
  from your chefs. You can get direct mentorship
• 19:27
  from chefs, or you get indirect mentorship.
• 19:29
  Sometimes that indirect is seeing how they operate, seeing
• 19:32
  what not to do. You can learn just as much from
• 19:35
  a bad chef as you can from a good chef.
• 19:37
  A good chef teaches you what to do.
• 19:39
  Bad chef teaches you what not to do.
• 19:41
  You learn from the mistakes of others, and if you are a chef
• 19:44
  right now and you're in a position where you can mentor
• 19:45
  others, that's what your most important job is.
• 19:48
  You need to be developing your team to be the next generation
• 19:51
  of chefs. A chef's legacy is truly told
• 19:54
  through the people that they mentor and the people that they
• 19:56
  help. Become great chefs.
• 19:57
  Give them critiques. Give them feedback.
• 19:59
  If you're someone that's receiving critiques and
• 20:01
  feedback, be open to it. Keep an open mind that you
• 20:03
  don't. Know everything.
• 20:05
  Don't be like me. Like I said at the beginning of
• 20:07
  the podcast that I thought I conquered the world and I didn't
• 20:10
  need any more mentorship. Be open minded, Be willing to
• 20:13
  receive feedback. Do a lot of introspection.
• 20:15
  The thing about introspection is it's easy to look at other
• 20:18
  people and see where they need help, but it's very difficult to
• 20:22
  look at yourself and see where you need to improve because
• 20:25
  we're constantly watching the movie that's going out that way.
• 20:28
  It's very difficult to flip it and see the movie that's coming
• 20:31
  this way. It's really easy to give someone
• 20:33
  advice in a situation that you've been through and tell
• 20:35
  them the right thing to do and completely ignore the fact that
• 20:38
  you've been through that situation and did the wrong
• 20:40
  thing and you wouldn't have taken your own advice.
• 20:42
  I promise you, when you get to the chef position, you're gonna
• 20:45
  look back on the journey and it's gonna be fulfilling and
• 20:48
  it's gonna be rewarding and you're gonna be glad you did it.
• 20:50
  You're gonna be glad that it wasn't handed to you, because if
• 20:54
  it's handed to you and you don't know what to do and you don't
• 20:57
  know who to call, there's rough lessons in store for you.
• 20:59
  A lot of the respect and recognition that you get from
• 21:02
  your peers comes from earning it.
• 21:03
  Being the chef that not only is a good cook, but a good leader
• 21:06
  and a good mentor and a good steward of the business, as well
• 21:09
  as being a good person in the community, opening yourself up
• 21:12
  to the other chefs in the community and networking,
• 21:14
  helping your community grow and being able to tell your story
• 21:17
  and grow your legacy. So Long story short, if you want
• 21:21
  to be a great chef, there's no tips, there's no magic tricks.
• 21:25
  You have to earn it. You have to learn how to cook.
• 21:27
  You have to learn how to lead. You have to learn how to
• 21:29
  organize. You have to learn how to scale.
• 21:31
  You have to learn how to market yourself, You have to learn cost
• 21:34
  management. And there's no secret to
• 21:36
  learning all of that. There's only one way to do it,
• 21:38
  and that's to do it, to put in the work and to become a great
• 21:41
  chef. Don't ask that question again.
• 21:42
  So instead of asking the question of what's the shortcut
• 21:46
  to becoming a great chef, ask yourself this question.
• 21:50
  What can I do today that will make me a better chef tomorrow?
• 21:54
  1% better everyday compounding returns over the course of time?
• 21:58
  They're going to be much greater than looking for a magic trick.
• 22:02
  If you want to support the show, make sure you go to chefspsa.com
• 22:06
  where you get all the books Culinary Leadership,
• 22:09
  Fundamentals, Kitchen, Art of War, Bad Soup, Good Chef Line
• 22:12
  Cook Survival Manual, and How Not To Be The Biggest Idiot in
• 22:15
  the Kitchen, as well as several free ebooks including A Critical
• 22:18
  Path on How to Open Up a Restaurant, 100 Basic Recipes,
• 22:22
  Food Cost Mastery Guide, and The 50 Most Important Chef's PSAS,
• 22:26
  which is also a free ebook. And there's an audio book to it
• 22:29
  as well. Keep your eye out for Sub Stack
• 22:31
  Chef's PSA that's coming very soon with exclusive content and
• 22:34
  behind the scenes. Get yourself some Chef's PSA
• 22:36
  Mert and make sure you leave five stars.
• 22:39
  Nothing less than five stars. Let me know you all think about
• 22:41
  this episode. Leave a comment and we'll see
• 22:43
  you next week. Hit the porno music.