Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Why Being a Chef is the Exception to the Rule Ep. 73

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Why Being a Chef is the Exception to the Rule Ep. 73 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello Chefs, this is Chefs PSA Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host Andrea Netterra. On today's episode we're going
• 0:05
  to talk about how to become the exception to the rule.
• 0:07
  Stay tuned. This episode of Chefs PSA is
• 0:21
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• 0:23
  I use J&R Smokers and Grills for over 5 years as a chef and I can
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  breakdown. You're going to put all that
• 0:56
  effort into grilling and smoking perfect meat?
• 0:59
  Then you probably need the right cabinet to go with it.
• 1:01
  They build everything in Texas and shipped to all 50 states in
• 1:04
  over 50 countries. J&R, they'll stand with you.
• 1:06
  They've always stood with me. Go to jrmanufacturing.com to
• 1:09
  learn more. Before we get started, here's a
• 1:11
  brief update. I've decided I am going to write
• 1:14
  another book. I know I've talked about it and
• 1:16
  I've hinted at it, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to
• 1:18
  write a sequel to the Bad Sue Good Chef book.
• 1:22
  Right now I'm tentatively calling it bad Chefs and bad
• 1:25
  Cooks, but the idea is basically a new cook going into a kitchen
• 1:30
  and what it's like to be the FNGAKA, the fucking new guy or
• 1:34
  the New Girl, the FNG. If you don't know that slang,
• 1:36
  now you know it. FNG, the fucking new person, guy
• 1:39
  or girl, whatever. I think it'd be fun.
• 1:41
  I haven't written in a while. I've been wanting to write
• 1:43
  another book, and I think now's the time.
• 1:45
  I get a lot of people that really enjoyed the Bad Soup Good
• 1:48
  Chef book. Go get it.
• 1:49
  Go to chefspsa.com, get your copy.
• 1:52
  It's Christmas season. Now's the time to be getting all
• 1:55
  my books, one for every single person in your kitchen.
• 1:59
  But we digress. I think I'm going to write this
• 2:01
  book. I started writing it the other
• 2:02
  day. I designed the cover.
• 2:04
  I wanted to initially do it like a comic book, but I put up a
• 2:08
  poll on my Instagram page the other day with a new cover that
• 2:11
  I liked and it was like 30% liked it.
• 2:14
  A lot of people didn't. It's not a high enough percent
• 2:17
  for me to want to go the comic book direction.
• 2:19
  So I think I'm going to switch it up and just go back to the
• 2:21
  conversational style narrative. And maybe a comic book is not in
• 2:25
  the cards right now, but maybe later on.
• 2:26
  I do want to do a comic book as if you follow Chef's PSA.
• 2:29
  You know, I like comics. If nothing else, that it could
• 2:32
  illustrate the point using obvious examples that are
• 2:35
  sometimes a little. There's sometimes a little bit
• 2:38
  of nuance in there and people don't fully get the chef's PSA.
• 2:41
  But when I put it in the comics, sometimes it clicks.
• 2:43
  Anyway, I hope you all like the comics.
• 2:45
  As I said, if you want to support the show, go get the
• 2:47
  books. I have the free ebooks there as
• 2:48
  well. Go get some merch.
• 2:50
  It's Christmas season coming up and you could get lots of
• 2:53
  chef's, PSA merch like hats, T-shirts, hoodies.
• 2:57
  It is hoodie weather. Get yourself a journal.
• 2:59
  Write shit down. Get yourself a book, get
• 3:02
  smarter, listen to it. If you don't like reading, read
• 3:05
  with your ears. All the books are in audio,
• 3:08
  multiple languages, Spanish, English, Italian, ebook and so
• 3:12
  on. Something else that I'm working
• 3:13
  on, I have to teach myself how to do it.
• 3:16
  But as a lot of you know I am fascinated by a is all those
• 3:20
  comic images that you see I create using AI image
• 3:23
  generation. And I've been helping a lot of
• 3:26
  my chef friends to use AI for their work in particular like
• 3:31
  looking at food cost or writing menus for proofreading,
• 3:34
  spelling, grammar, analyzing menus to make sure they're
• 3:39
  they're priced accordingly. And so anyway I'm thinking of
• 3:41
  making some GPTS myself for chefs.
• 3:44
  So I don't know if I'm going to do that.
• 3:46
  I got to figure it out, but it's something new that I could learn
• 3:48
  how to do. And I as if you follow the
• 3:49
  podcast you understand that I like learning and doing new
• 3:52
  things. So I may create some GPTS myself
• 3:56
  for chefs that would help them run their business better.
• 3:59
  Everything from menu analytics to food cost management and some
• 4:05
  more ideas. I don't know, who knows?
• 4:06
  We will see. But we digress.
• 4:08
  Take a shot. Let's talk about being the
• 4:10
  exception to the rule. Now, this is something I talk
• 4:12
  about often. There are rules, and there are
• 4:15
  exceptions to the rule. An exception doesn't disprove
• 4:18
  the rule. For example, you could say all
• 4:21
  birds fly. The exception to the rule may be
• 4:23
  an ostrich. Ostriches don't fly, so that's
• 4:25
  an exception to the rule. You could say all mammals give
• 4:28
  birth to live young, with the exception of platypuses.
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  They lay eggs. That's an exception to the rule.
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  But the exception doesn't disprove the rule in most cases.
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  The reason there's a rule is because 99% of the time, that's
• 4:41
  going to be what it is now, being the exception to the rule,
• 4:44
  which all of you already are. You listen to Chef's PSA
• 4:47
  podcast, making you the exception to the rule, meaning
• 4:51
  you're getting the knowledge that a lot of other people are
• 4:53
  not. You're thinking differently if
• 4:56
  you have an open mind, you're taking in new ideas.
• 4:58
  Some of them you agree with, some of them you don't, but
• 5:00
  nonetheless, you can't unhear them.
• 5:02
  And maybe there's a subtle shift in your perception.
• 5:04
  Being at the right place at the right time for the right
• 5:06
  experience, like listening to this podcast, makes you the
• 5:09
  exception to the rule. I choose to live my life as the
• 5:12
  exception to the rule because that's where the fun is.
• 5:15
  Being the exception to the rule is what makes someone great, and
• 5:17
  that's what I want to talk about today.
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  It's an interesting thing, becoming a chef.
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  A ton of people go to culinary school.
• 5:25
  And if the amount of people that go to culinary school, many of
• 5:27
  them drop out. And of those that drop out, many
• 5:30
  go into the industry and leave after the first year because
• 5:32
  they find out it's not what they wanted.
• 5:34
  And of those that stick it through, even fewer become sous
• 5:37
  chefs. Let's just say a kitchen has
• 5:39
  four or five sous chefs in it, a big kitchen, and 100 cooks.
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  Of those four or five sous chefs, maybe only one or two
• 5:46
  will become the executive sous chef.
• 5:47
  And of those two that become the executive sous chef, only one
• 5:51
  may become an executive chef. So if we were using that as an
• 5:54
  example, that is the exception to the rule.
• 5:56
  The executive chef is the exception to the rule for the
• 5:59
  executive sous chefs, and the sous chefs are the exception to
• 6:03
  the rule for the cooks and so on and so forth.
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  The cook that remained in the industry is the exception to the
• 6:07
  rule, and the cook that made it all the way and beat the game is
• 6:10
  truly the exception to the rule. It's something to think about.
• 6:13
  So how are you going to become the exception to the rule?
• 6:16
  Not everyone's going to do it. And that's the sad reality of
• 6:19
  this business. A lot of people are going to get
• 6:20
  in and they realize immediately it's not for them and they want
• 6:24
  to find a way out. Cooking really high end food is
• 6:27
  the exception to the rule. Not every restaurant is like
• 6:29
  that. The majority of restaurants are
• 6:31
  busy, casual restaurants and that's not bad.
• 6:34
  That's just what it is. There's nothing wrong with that.
• 6:37
  Those restaurants need to make money, they need to feed people
• 6:39
  and they all serve a purpose. So when people look at really
• 6:41
  high end restaurants and think that all food is that way.
• 6:44
  So you go to culinary school because you saw someone on TV or
• 6:47
  you saw an episode of Chef's Table and you think that's what
• 6:50
  you're going to be cooking in a restaurant when you graduate or
• 6:52
  that's the way all chefs cook. It's not.
• 6:54
  It is the exception to the rule. I saw a meme today.
• 6:57
  It was like the cook that shows up on time, doesn't complain,
• 7:01
  knows how to cook, never calls off.
• 7:03
  It was like that Matthew McConaughey, It's a wuzzy, it's
• 7:06
  a wuzzy, it's a fairy dust. It doesn't exist.
• 7:08
  It's like, yeah, that's true, those cooks are so hard to come
• 7:11
  by, but when you are that person, all the doors open for
• 7:14
  you. But acting as the exception to
• 7:16
  the rules sometimes is a double edged sword.
• 7:17
  Because being the exception to the rule doesn't mean having a
• 7:20
  holier than thou attitude or you're above the work.
• 7:23
  You have to be willing to work harder, do more because the
• 7:27
  exception to the rule could also be used as a negative.
• 7:30
  Everyone cleans the exception to the rule doesn't because they're
• 7:33
  lazy, right? So it's a double edged sword.
• 7:35
  So the exception to the rule doesn't always mean a good or
• 7:38
  bad thing, it's just providing A-frame of reference versus
• 7:41
  something else. So while I was preparing for
• 7:43
  this podcast, I started reading some stats that were kind of
• 7:46
  shocking, just to illustrate the point of how difficult it is to
• 7:49
  move up in this business. In the United States alone,
• 7:52
  there are approximately 400,000 plenary students enrolled in
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  culinary school or some sort of culinary training, 400,000
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  culinary students right now. And the average graduation rate
• 8:02
  for culinary students is about 63%.
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  And that's the average of all the different culinary schools
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  and colleges in the US at about a 6364% graduation rate across
• 8:14
  the United States. Think about how many of those
• 8:16
  leave the industry within the first year.
• 8:18
  The other fascinating stat is there's about 170,000 executive
• 8:23
  chef jobs in the United States. Roughly, it's It's kind of hard
• 8:27
  to track because an executive chef is not the same everywhere.
• 8:30
  But for the sake of context, there's 170,000 executive chef
• 8:34
  jobs in the United States. That means that this year there
• 8:38
  are currently more students enrolled in culinary school than
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  there are chef positions, head chef positions available for
• 8:45
  them. And then you think about, you
• 8:46
  know, the the the top and exclusive restaurants, whether
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  this is a James Beard award-winning chef or food and
• 8:52
  wine, Best New Chef or a Michelin starred place and how
• 8:56
  few of those exist in a market. Let's use Michelin as an
• 8:59
  example. There's approximately 200, give
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  or take, Michelin starred restaurants in the United
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  States. That means let's say there's
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  170,000 executive chef jobs and only two hundred of those are in
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  Michelin starred restaurants. So the chances of becoming the
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  chef at a Michelin starred place is it's not even 1%.
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  It's less than a percent, it's point 1%.
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  That's the odds of becoming that.
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  And you think about the amount of people that are enrolled in
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  culinary school and how that filters out now.
• 9:29
  I'm not saying this to make anyone feel disenfranchised with
• 9:33
  the industry, but I think it's important to understand that
• 9:36
  now, if you look at Chef's PSA podcast, one of the things that
• 9:39
  I always talk about is be the best cook.
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  Go work in great kitchens, get a mentor.
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  It's better to be the worst cook in the best kitchen than the
• 9:47
  best cook in the worst kitchen. And the reason I say all that is
• 9:50
  because it does start to create your mindset of becoming the
• 9:53
  exception to the rule because people aren't taking on the
• 9:55
  difficult work. Like I'll do post.
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  Don't be afraid of the hard work.
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  Be the person that shows up early.
• 10:00
  Be the person that's responsible.
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  Don't think you're fooling people with bullshit lies on the
• 10:04
  line. Take opportunities when other
• 10:07
  people are saying no. Be willing to take the risk.
• 10:10
  Be willing to put yourself out there.
• 10:11
  Go out and network. Meet people.
• 10:13
  Make friends. Be nice.
• 10:15
  Don't burn bridges. Because even if you do 50% of
• 10:18
  those things, you're already putting yourself in a category
• 10:22
  where most likely you'll become a chef.
• 10:24
  And if you do all those things, you're putting yourself in a
• 10:26
  category where you're going to become a world class chef
• 10:29
  becoming the exception to the rule.
• 10:31
  I've said many times, I think it's really important to get a
• 10:33
  mentor, plan out your career path.
• 10:36
  Don't waste time working in kitchens that you don't aspire
• 10:39
  to run. If you don't want to work as the
• 10:41
  executive chef in the kitchen that you're in now and and you
• 10:44
  aspire to work in something different than why are you
• 10:46
  there? Because the only thing you're
• 10:47
  learning is how to run that type of kitchen.
• 10:49
  And the longer you're in that kitchen hoping someone's going
• 10:52
  to rescue you, the more difficult it will be every
• 10:54
  single day to leave that kitchen and go work in the type of
• 10:57
  kitchen you want to be in. I've said it before, no one's
• 11:00
  coming to save you. You have to save yourself,
• 11:01
  create your own path and be the exception.
• 11:04
  And so we start to think about, you know, I give out some #63%
• 11:08
  of the students graduate. Fewer become sous chefs, many of
• 11:11
  them leave. Even fewer sous chefs become
• 11:13
  executive chefs. So why is that?
• 11:15
  Why do people leave? What causes that?
• 11:17
  Well, COVID was basically a great shake up for the industry
• 11:22
  because it allowed people to go discover if they were good at
• 11:25
  something else. It's like a conical sieve in
• 11:28
  positions. There's a lot of people at the
• 11:30
  beginning and the further and further and further you get down
• 11:33
  to the bottom, the more difficult to it is to get
• 11:35
  through. So competition is there.
• 11:38
  You can't be the person that's not out hustling the other cooks
• 11:41
  or the person that's not out hustling the other sous chefs or
• 11:44
  so on. You have to be the one that
• 11:46
  leaves no doubt in anyone's mind that you are the person for the
• 11:49
  job. The other difficulty is there's
• 11:51
  the skill development that comes with becoming a chef.
• 11:54
  You have to go from zero not knowing anything, being a
• 11:56
  completely green cook, to all of a sudden being the type of chef
• 12:00
  and cook that can execute on a multitude of different skills.
• 12:04
  Butchering, sauteing, braising, cooking methods, sauce, work,
• 12:07
  product, ID, knowing what things are on top of that, knowing how
• 12:11
  to lead people deal with mental stress and all the other things
• 12:14
  that go with working in a kitchen, having the physical
• 12:18
  stamina to be on your feet all day with the turning and bending
• 12:22
  and the crouching and the moving and oh don't forget the heat,
• 12:25
  how could you, how could you forget about the heat?
• 12:27
  Then there's the limiting. Then there's the limited
• 12:30
  opportunities for advancement. And sometimes you have to leave
• 12:32
  a job to get promoted because you might be ready, but there's
• 12:35
  just no positions for you. So what are you going to do?
• 12:38
  Wait two or three years for the person above you to leave?
• 12:41
  Maybe they don't leave and you're still there waiting when
• 12:43
  you can get the job. Now it's a tough decision,
• 12:46
  something that you have to make. There's no same answer for
• 12:49
  everybody. I don't know your personal life
• 12:51
  situation. Maybe you do need to stay there
• 12:53
  for medical reasons, benefits. It's close proximity to home.
• 12:57
  I don't know, but maybe you have the means to leave and travel
• 13:00
  and go out and take the opportunity because you are
• 13:02
  ready and you just don't have the opportunity there where
• 13:05
  you're at. Think about that.
• 13:06
  A lot of people are ready and will never get promoted just
• 13:09
  because they're afraid to leave. It's a sad reality of our
• 13:11
  industry. On top of that, there's
• 13:12
  financial constraints. You know, it's very rare that
• 13:15
  you find someone saying that they're going to go become a
• 13:17
  chef because they could make really great money, right?
• 13:20
  Or a cook, whatever the case might be.
• 13:22
  We're not necessarily known for being one of the highest paying
• 13:25
  industries out there. As a matter of fact, I heard the
• 13:28
  other day that being a plumber and electrician right now is
• 13:31
  getting you close to 200,000 a year in Austin where I live,
• 13:34
  because of the amount of development that's there.
• 13:36
  And not a lot of people have those skills anymore.
• 13:38
  So go figure. Maybe being a cook will one day
• 13:40
  start paying that when no one remembers how to cook anymore.
• 13:43
  You're dealing with the work life balance.
• 13:45
  A lot of people don't like that long hours.
• 13:47
  I don't get to see people. I end up missing a lot of family
• 13:50
  events or social events with friends.
• 13:53
  I don't have a social life. Girlfriend, boyfriend is always
• 13:56
  breaking up with me, Whatever, whatever, right?
• 13:58
  We've all gone through it. It makes it tough to show up, to
• 14:00
  want to be the exception to the rule when you're dealing with
• 14:03
  all this difficulty outside of work.
• 14:05
  Then there's the people that have 0 presence and zero
• 14:07
  network. They're phenomenal chefs,
• 14:09
  phenomenal cooks, totally ready, but no one knows who they are.
• 14:11
  They don't have a network. And as they say, it's not what
• 14:14
  you know. Sometimes it's who you know.
• 14:15
  Someone's picking up the phone and making phone calls and
• 14:17
  saying, hey, I got a chef job for you and every single
• 14:20
  opportunity is open because people know you where there's
• 14:24
  people out there that are more qualified than you and their
• 14:26
  phones and their phones don't ring because no one knows them.
• 14:28
  Sad reality. I was talking to someone the
• 14:30
  other day we were discussing social media and I I personally
• 14:33
  am obviously, I'm a believer in social media and putting
• 14:36
  yourself out there and I think it gives you an advantage as a
• 14:39
  chef and I'll tell you why. I'm just going to touch on this.
• 14:41
  I know this is not fully on the subject, but if you're on a
• 14:43
  cooking interview and maybe it's not your best day, but people
• 14:46
  like, I know they can make good food.
• 14:48
  I've seen their social media or I've had their food before at a
• 14:52
  certain event, or I know them. They're a good friend, trust me.
• 14:54
  You got my word. Maybe they had an off day.
• 14:56
  If people know who you are and you have a social network and a
• 14:59
  presence on social media, people start looking for you.
• 15:03
  I know I've looked at people's social profiles before.
• 15:05
  I hire them just to see the type of food that they're making so I
• 15:08
  could kind of get an understanding of who they are.
• 15:10
  It's important to have a profile out there.
• 15:12
  It's your online resume. It tells an employer everything
• 15:15
  about you as opposed to the person who's a complete ghost.
• 15:18
  They might have fewer opportunities available to them.
• 15:21
  Well anyway, point being today is act as the exception to the
• 15:24
  rule and all the opportunities are going to open up for you.
• 15:27
  If you act as the rule, fewer opportunities are going to open.
• 15:30
  Actually, I want to point out a couple of last things.
• 15:32
  If you look at the most successful chefs out there right
• 15:35
  now and, you know, name them household names, the Thomas
• 15:38
  Kellers. The Ferran Audreys.
• 15:40
  The Renee Rezepi. The Grant Dacquetts of the
• 15:42
  world, the Dominic Kren, you'll notice that they are the
• 15:45
  exception to the rule. They're not copying anyone.
• 15:47
  They're marching to the beat of their own drum.
• 15:49
  They're thinking different. They do things differently.
• 15:52
  They're the trendsetter, not necessarily the trend follower.
• 15:55
  That's what makes them great. Every successful chef, the tippy
• 15:59
  top of the industry is usually not always, but for the most
• 16:02
  part. Gordon Ramsay was the first
• 16:04
  person to do that Hell's Kitchen style show.
• 16:06
  Everyone copied that. You know, it's the innovators.
• 16:08
  When you think like everyone else and you act like everyone
• 16:11
  else, you end up just like everyone else.
• 16:13
  And that's not a good place to be all the time.
• 16:15
  And I'll share this with you. Just I believe that thinking
• 16:18
  abstractly and looking at things from different perspectives is
• 16:21
  my superpower. I play these brain games every
• 16:24
  morning, and I've been playing them since I think, 2010.
• 16:27
  So for 13 years I play games on Lumosity.
• 16:31
  They're not a sponsor, But anyway, if you're interested in
• 16:33
  that lumosity.com, I play these puzzles every single morning
• 16:38
  with my morning coffee. It's been my routine for years
• 16:41
  and one day it spit out data for me.
• 16:43
  After analyzing thousands of games that I played and how I
• 16:48
  score and the results, it said I think and make decisions.
• 16:52
  Most like people who work in scientific engineering jobs.
• 16:56
  It said I was most aligned to that and I I found that very
• 16:59
  interesting. Now as a complete 180.
• 17:02
  Opposite it said I think least like people who work in culinary
• 17:07
  arts. Now what's interesting about
• 17:09
  that is it had no idea what I did for a living, but it was
• 17:13
  saying that the thing that I do professionally, day in and day
• 17:16
  out was how I process information least like that
• 17:20
  group, and I think like this group over here of engineers and
• 17:23
  mathematicians. I found that fascinating because
• 17:27
  of all the things that could have said that I'm least like it
• 17:29
  said culinary arts. And if anything I took that to
• 17:32
  be an indicator of why I've been successful in the culinary arts
• 17:36
  is because I always thought differently from everyone else.
• 17:41
  That's why it's a five star podcast anyway, we digress.
• 17:44
  If you want to support the show, make sure you leave five stars.
• 17:47
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• 17:51
  else you listen to podcasts, it's on all those platforms.
• 17:53
  I just don't always call them out.
• 17:55
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• 18:08
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