Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Sydney Grims' Hospitality Journey: From Billionaire Ron Perelman's New York Estate to Family Restaurant Empire

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Sydney Grims' Hospitality Journey: From Billionaire Ron Perelman's New York Estate to Family Restaurant Empire · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:13
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
• 0:16
  and today's guest is Sidney Grims.
• 0:18
  She's the Director of Business Development at Fearless
• 0:21
  Restaurants, an expanding collection of independently
• 0:24
  curated restaurants led by herself and her father, Marty
• 0:28
  Grims. They focus on hospitality,
• 0:31
  sustainability and award-winning food, offering creative menus
• 0:35
  across multiple locations. Their mission is to use fresh,
• 0:39
  high quality ingredients that delight diners and create
• 0:42
  memorable experiences with the assistance of their unique
• 0:46
  decor. Sydney became the first female
• 0:49
  member of her family to carry on his legacy, joining the company
• 0:52
  in 2017. She initiated the Fearless
• 0:55
  Femmes program to empower women in hospitality and was featured
• 1:00
  in the Philadelphia Business Journals 40 Under 40 honorees.
• 1:04
  Her background spans various roles in restaurant management
• 1:07
  where she built a strong foundation in business
• 1:10
  development. Now before we get into all that
• 1:13
  good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 1:55
  today, partner at Fearless Restaurant, Sidney Grims.
• 1:58
  Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
• 2:01
  Thank you so much. OK, so Sydney, you got your
• 2:04
  start in hospitality as I understand it is a management
• 2:07
  intern at The Four Seasons. Was there ever a thought to work
• 2:11
  in the family business right from the start?
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  So I actually started back in I think around 2002, 2003 in
• 2:19
  middle school checking codes at my dad's restaurant.
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  So that was my first ever job. I was 12 years old.
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  And so I, I certainly started, you know, with working with my
• 2:29
  family, but it was always highly encouraged to go outside of the
• 2:33
  family sphere and to learn from other people.
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  And I just known that I'd always wanted to go to Cornell in the,
• 2:40
  the hotel school there. I just felt like learning about
• 2:42
  something that I was really passionate about would be really
• 2:45
  fun. So I was never going to be the
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  A+ student in the room or have the 1600 SAT score.
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  So what was really unique about Cornell is that they, they
• 2:55
  emphasize work experience. And so that's what took me to
• 2:58
  The Four Seasons. OK.
• 3:00
  And pick from some of those. And, and I hear what you're
• 3:03
  saying because I, I've talked to a lot of guests who are in
• 3:05
  family businesses and almost everybody has gone out to work
• 3:10
  somewhere else first. Bring a Yep, bring a lot of
• 3:14
  lessons from those different work experiences back into the
• 3:18
  family business a little bit later in life.
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  As you think about all those stops that you had before kind
• 3:23
  of coming back, you know, in between your coke checking days
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  and junior high, what was the most formidable stop for you?
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  And can you think of a specific story that taught you a really
• 3:32
  powerful lesson? Absolutely.
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  I think working for Hillstone Restaurant Group or also known
• 3:37
  as Houston's, it's kind of like the Goldman Sachs of restaurant
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  training programs. And I made a very conscious
• 3:44
  decision after leaving Cornell to go and work for for Hillstone
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  because I knew that one, I would probably not have the enthusiasm
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  forever to be physically working in restaurants on a daily basis.
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  Obviously, my dad has always said it's a young man's game.
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  It takes a lot of energy, it's a lot of time.
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  You don't get to spend a lot of time with your family.
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  And I witnessed that first hand. So he really encouraged me to
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  get into operations as soon as I graduated.
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  And for me, working with with Hillstone was the single most
• 4:16
  important part of my career because it's set a really strong
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  foundation understanding corporate dynamics, which my
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  family's company did not have. So I would say that was critical
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  to business development and what that means for our company.
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  And was that because you were able to bring back some more
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  formalized corporate structure ideas?
• 4:36
  Absolutely. And I think truthfully I think
• 4:38
  that the CEO of the company or COO was not a very big fan of
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  mine even though I was like one of the the top in like the top
• 4:48
  trainees at the time. I was promoted the fastest
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  promoted AGM like in Hillstone history and took over one of
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  their largest locations which is the the Hillstone in Manhattan.
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  But really the, I think that they struggled with the fact
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  that I was coming from a family business because they knew that
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  at the end of the day, I probably would go back to
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  Philadelphia. And I think that for me, I was
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  always just trying to squirrel away facts and understand things
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  as quickly as I could because I really wanted to work for
• 5:17
  myself. I never saw myself working for
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  other people long term. I think I'm a little bit more of
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  like a go against the grain type.
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  I'm not great in a corporate setting so.
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  So I want to try to connect the dots here on who's Sidney Grims
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  is because I heard you say went to Cornell, but then I heard you
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  say I wasn't the best student, you know, not 1600 on the SAT,
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  but then I and so I'm like, OK, but but then I'm like, I also
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  hear you say that you were the fastest promoted at Houston's.
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  And so underachiever, overachiever.
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  I'm leaning hard towards overachiever here.
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  What am I misunderstanding? I I, you know, I went to a
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  pretty rigorous high school that cut the bottom 10% of the class
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  every year, so. Cut them and did what with them?
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  And they they asked them not to return.
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  Wow, OK. So my high school was pretty
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  like if I was AB plus student and going to Cornell, you can
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  imagine the level of kids that were far smarter than me.
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  I did well academically and I had a four O at Cornell.
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  But really for me, it was, I think a lot of the time I felt
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  very stupid growing up because I was just surrounded by
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  incredibly, incredibly smart kids in a fairly vigorous
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  academic environment and had to really overcome some academic
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  challenges, you know, feeling very inferior at a young age
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  academically. Interesting, but as I'm hearing
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  sort of, you know, what came next, Cornell and you graduated
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  with A4 point O clearly you're not an unbright person, but
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  being around, you know, let's say you're in the top 1%, but
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  you know, there's the the top fraction of that percent is, you
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  know, those are the people that are around you and above you.
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  And so you're comparing yourselves to that and and
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  feeling inferior in in light of them.
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  Yeah, constantly. And I think that truthfully, I
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  think that what I loved about the hotel school was it was all
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  about like practical learning. I'm not learning about chemistry
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  or like organic chemistry or engineering.
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  Like I probably would fail. Everything that I was learning
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  was very much like A + B = C And you can certainly say that for
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  chemistry, but it was like how we were being taught things.
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  I think I was also just so interested in what I was
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  learning because I was learning about restaurants.
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  I was learning about real estate and seeing that the things that
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  I was learning was so applicable to life after college.
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  That's what I loved. And so I think I really thrived
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  in that kind of environment where I really saw like
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  actionable. I, I think I struggled a lot of
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  time in high school because I was like, why am I learning
• 8:00
  this? Like I'm never going to use this
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  again versus when I went to college and I was like, Oh yeah.
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  Like learning about facilities and maintenance and how to like
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  properly work with a work with a air handler like that was
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  critical. Yeah.
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  And I'm dealing with that with my own kids right now.
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  They're 9 and 11. And my 9 year old's like, why do
• 8:18
  I have to learn about igneous rocks?
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  And I struggle to come up with a good answer because I went
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  through all of that and I don't really, you know, here it is.
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  I'm 51 years old. I don't really, you know, have a
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  need to identify igneous versus sedimentary rocks out in the
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  real world. The only answer I can come up
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  with is, 'cause that's what your teacher asked you to do.
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  And you need good grades to get to the next level.
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  You. Know there are those.
• 8:44
  Go ahead. Those there, no, there's, it's
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  funny, 'cause I always remember like all the names of clouds
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  that I learned in literally kindergarten and I can still go
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  outside today and tell you what a cumulonimbus versus a stratus
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  cloud. But it's like, doesn't really
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  freaking matter. No, But yeah, I mean, I think
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  being well-rounded is super important.
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  And you know, there, there's parts of me that I really love,
• 9:07
  my education. But my aunt was trying to
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  explain to me the importance of having a liberal arts degree
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  because it makes you think more, is what she told me.
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  OK, so thinking back to your time in high school where you
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  had to deal with some of these feelings of inferiority, how are
• 9:21
  you dealing with that at the time?
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  Oh my gosh. Well, it was the early 2000s, so
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  we didn't really talk about our feelings and get like help like
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  people are now. I would say that truthfully, I
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  was also bullied a lot when I was a freshman in high school,
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  and so I really struggled and I think that probably impacted me
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  academically as well. It was a very challenging,
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  really challenging time, like 14 to 18.
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  But I would say that what did I do at the time, I really
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  surrounded myself with a very tight knit group of friends.
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  I had four friends, 3 girls and a guy and they really, I
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  surrounded myself with people who had really similar family
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  values. And I would say we, I still do
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  the same thing to this day, especially when it comes to
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  hiring managers, even making sure that people really have a
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  very similar value system to me because I think that that is
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  certainly impacted me very, very early on in life.
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  How would you describe your values?
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  I would say that integrity is something that I don't think can
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  be taught. I think you either have it or
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  you don't. I think really like true Brit
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  and hard work is something that again, I, I think it's either
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  like you have it or you don't. I think that that is taught by
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  your parents or people that are raising you.
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  And I think I saw two parents, one of which, you know, worked
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  six days a week, owned his own business, work nights, work
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  weekends. I went to school with him.
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  I mean school, I went to work with him on the weekends because
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  we didn't have childcare on the weekends.
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  My mom worked also in retail for 25 years for Macy's.
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  So I think I saw two individuals who grew up, you know, very blue
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  collar mid middle class, like not even upper middle class like
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  middle class upbringings. My dad also grew up orphaned.
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  So I think that when you have parents who work in fields where
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  they are not home 9:00 to 5:00 that are truly working hard and
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  like on the floor or in the field doing something, I think
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  you you naturally learn hard work and what that truly means.
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  And how do you interview for those qualities?
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  Are there specific questions that you ask that helps to flesh
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  that out? Yeah, that's a great question.
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  I I do ask about people's family and their upbringing.
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  I don't ask obviously if they have children, that's illegal.
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  But I like to ask, you know, are you close with your parents?
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  How were you raised? I think it tells a lot when
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  somebody is close or not close with their parents.
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  And I don't think that that really is a reflection on them.
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  It's a reflection of what they had to go through in their life
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  that brought them to now. And I think a lot of the times a
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  lot of the people actually that I work with are not necessarily
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  close to their family, but I think what they see when they're
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  working with my dad and I is that we are people who want to
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  provide them that like second family.
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  And we really want to provide them an environment where they
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  also can provide for their own family.
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  A lot of people that I I found that I work with, they learn
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  from their families mistakes and they want to be like the better
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  version of their parents. So I think if anything, if I
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  think my dad is just like an incredible human, he was
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  actually trying to poke his head into the office to come and get,
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  we have shared custody of our dogs.
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  So he was like, can I take them home?
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  Do you want me to take them home?
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  Like, I think seeing, seeing a healthy dynamic between a father
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  and a daughter, I think is something that's also important
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  for people to see. You know, it's not like I'm some
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  spoiled rich kid who drives a Range Rover.
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  You know, I had, I had to work my way to get here too.
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  I'm not just here because, and that's something I'm always
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  going to be fighting as the quote UN quote owner's daughter.
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  So what was behind the decision to come back to the family
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  business? Yeah, it's a great question I
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  actually had. So my dad was really at that
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  time, he was, I laugh now because he was probably only 53,
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  but he was quote UN quote coming to the end of his career.
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  I think he thought at the time he had no idea what was left in
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  store, but we had 6 restaurants time and he really felt
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  satisfied with his own life and was like, listen, I put I can
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  only, he always will say to me, I can only eat 11 steak a night
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  and I can only put on one pair of pants at a time.
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  So his his reasoning behind that is like, listen, like I don't
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  need another pair of pants. I don't need to eat another
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  steak. I'm very content in my life.
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  But Penn approached us to open a restaurant.
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  We had a we have a restaurant down the block that's been there
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  for over 40 years called White Dog Cafe.
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  It was the part of Alice Waters Sustainability Forum to Table
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  campaign, which started in 1983 on Penn's campus.
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  And they said, hey, do you want to open another restaurant?
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  And my dad approached me and said, you know, I'm not really
• 14:28
  interested in this. Do you want to do it?
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  And I said, well, I'm not really interested unless you're doing
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  it with me. I need to learn and grow.
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  I haven't opened my own restaurant before.
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  I've built them, but I haven't, I haven't opened one.
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  I've operated as a manager, but I don't know all the insurance
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  and outs of the financials. And so we opened our first
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  restaurant together, which was Louie Louie.
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  So that's what really brought me home.
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  And it was a huge risk at the time.
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  I had a significant other who I was really very much in love
• 14:54
  with and decided to end that relationship, to move back to
• 14:58
  Philadelphia, leave all of my friends at the age of 26.
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  Like, that was a pretty rogue decision in my mid 20s.
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  You know, it was a very, very, very difficult decision to leave
• 15:08
  New York for me, but I would not be as far along in my career if
• 15:15
  I hadn't have left. It felt like one of those
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  opportunities you just couldn't pass up.
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  Exactly. It's just I didn't know if this
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  was going to happen again, so I had to just take it and swing
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  for the stars. And so you feel like you're
• 15:29
  constantly trying to prove yourself.
• 15:31
  Absolutely. Because you're the owner's
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  daughter, right? And you're only there because
• 15:36
  you share a last name. Yep, Yep.
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  And so how do you manage that? What are some of the things
• 15:42
  you've done to try to prove yourself?
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  Or what are some of the things you've tried to do to move away
• 15:49
  from or the need to try to prove yourself?
• 15:53
  Yeah, I think I, I don't feel that way as much as I used to.
• 15:56
  I think when I was younger and I had a lot of people that I was
• 16:00
  working around who were much older than me.
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  I think it was really hard. And the reality is I, I did have
• 16:05
  to prove myself because they didn't, they'd never worked with
• 16:07
  me. So they'd always, they'd always
• 16:10
  heard my name or they knew me as a young kid who had her 16th
• 16:13
  birthday party there or, you know, worked coat check as a
• 16:16
  young kid, bacon, you know, 50 bucks a night.
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  And I thought that was the best thing since sliced bread.
• 16:20
  But I think that I, I really, the, the reality of they did
• 16:24
  have something to prove. And I, I also think that I had
• 16:28
  AI have a pretty strong pulse on dining out and what that looks
• 16:32
  like. And aesthetics and design has
• 16:36
  always been something very important to my family and has
• 16:39
  been like AAI would say, a love language for my family.
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  So I think when I came back and really brought something to the
• 16:44
  table, which was actually a nightlife concept on top of
• 16:49
  Mishulu, which did about $1,000,000 in my first month of
• 16:52
  business, that I think was a strong indicator to them.
• 16:57
  Like, OK, she knows her shit. And this is not just like some
• 17:01
  dumb kid who's, you know, when I worked it, I, I worked, I worked
• 17:07
  the club and it was really fun, but it was also a disaster.
• 17:11
  I think my first night I had 1200 people come to my first
• 17:13
  party. I was throwing and I had like 2
• 17:15
  security guards on. So I learned very quickly.
• 17:19
  And to be that big of a success right out of the gate, what were
• 17:22
  you doing right? Truthfully, I always say that
• 17:26
  everything goes around the world wants and comes back to
• 17:28
  Philadelphia. What does that mean?
• 17:32
  It means that Philly, you know, it's like how Paris is so ahead
• 17:37
  of the fashion trends. They're like 10 years ahead of
• 17:39
  New York. The things that people were
• 17:42
  wearing in Paris when I was in college is what people in New
• 17:45
  York are wearing now. And this, I would say the same
• 17:49
  thing goes for like the New York dining scene and then
• 17:51
  Philadelphia. So I felt like I was coming from
• 17:53
  the New York dining scene, was really involved in the New York
• 17:55
  dining scene. And then I came back to Philly,
• 17:57
  brought a lot of the ideas that I had learned there.
• 18:00
  There was a, there is a place out in Montauk called Surf Lodge
• 18:03
  and I was like, I want to make surf lodge on top of Meshulu.
• 18:06
  Like that would be freaking sick.
• 18:07
  And there was a schooner. I used to go on my days off by
• 18:10
  myself and I would go sleep on the schooner and drink rose
• 18:13
  called Grand Banks down the West side highway.
• 18:16
  And I, I was like, this needs to be a combo of like, I'm going to
• 18:20
  hang out on this massive 400 foot ship, which is our
• 18:24
  restaurant called Meshulu, the only four massive tall ship in
• 18:28
  the world that's a restaurant. And I just thought it was really
• 18:33
  unique opportunity to create this trendy, cool atmosphere
• 18:38
  that I I did not see in Philadelphia at the time.
• 18:41
  So you came back to open up this concept with your father,
• 18:45
  learned a lot in the process. And since you've been there, how
• 18:49
  many other concepts have you guys opened?
• 18:51
  Oh. My gosh, we have 15 restaurants
• 18:56
  now. We started at six, so 9.
• 18:58
  Plus on top of the boat. So I've opened 10 restaurants.
• 19:00
  OK. And are you slowing down?
• 19:03
  Are you going to keep? Going we have one restaurant
• 19:06
  opening, which will be our 15th restaurant, which will open in
• 19:09
  2026. It's called Testarossa after not
• 19:13
  after the Ferrari gives a nod to the Ferrari obviously meaning
• 19:16
  redhead. So our, our logo is a redhead,
• 19:19
  but an Italian concept. It's, it'll be our second of
• 19:23
  that concept. And so that's, that's, that's
• 19:27
  our next project. And then from there, I'm going
• 19:29
  to take, take a break for a little bit.
• 19:31
  We've been going pretty hard one restaurant a year since I've
• 19:35
  been here. So I think we're going to take a
• 19:36
  break for a little bit and hopefully I want to take over
• 19:40
  and do a hotel project after this.
• 19:43
  Like a restaurant in a hotel or like the full hotel?
• 19:47
  Yeah, I can't speak too much to it 'cause I have something in
• 19:49
  particular in mind, but it's it would be synonymous and very
• 19:54
  close to home. So that that would be like my
• 19:56
  long term goal is to is to operate a hotel.
• 19:59
  We have one boutique hotel, but I would like to do something
• 20:01
  more more extensive. OK.
• 20:05
  And how many you've got multiple locations, 15 total with the the
• 20:09
  opening coming next year. Some of them are the same
• 20:13
  concept. So how many total different
• 20:16
  concepts do you have? Oh yeah, yeah.
• 20:19
  So we have Autograph. Autograph Meshulu, Tucker's
• 20:23
  Daddio Louie Louie Rosalie. White Dog Testarossa with eight
• 20:30
  concepts. 8 concepts. OK, it strikes me that it would
• 20:36
  be a lot easier to pick one concept and replicate it over
• 20:40
  and over again. Yeah, but.
• 20:42
  You choose not to because. Because of my dad, quite
• 20:47
  literally. So he he's of the mindset much
• 20:50
  more of like the Danny Meyer mindset of likes to have things
• 20:55
  close to home, just like he does with Union Square Hospitality.
• 20:58
  He can walk to each one of his restaurants.
• 21:00
  My dad is very similar. He likes to, you know, he is at
• 21:03
  the point of his life where he wants to be able to drive to
• 21:05
  each one of his restaurant to hit them in a day.
• 21:08
  I totally understand that that thought process.
• 21:10
  And I'm in my, you know, mid 30s and I have no kids and I'm not
• 21:14
  married, so I'm OK spending time on an airplane, you know, so
• 21:17
  it's just we're in different phases of life.
• 21:20
  I worked, you know, I come from corporate restaurants.
• 21:22
  He doesn't he started this company by himself when he was
• 21:25
  25. S for him, the artistry of new
• 21:30
  menus, new design, something different.
• 21:33
  That's where his passion lies. My passion lies in systems.
• 21:36
  So we just have different passions.
• 21:38
  And do I think that fearless is we'll continue to open new
• 21:41
  concepts, I do. But I also think we'll continue
• 21:44
  to replicate white dog and, and Testarossa.
• 21:48
  I think that those are two great concepts that I want to continue
• 21:53
  to replicate. I I really believe in the white
• 21:55
  dog concept. It's proven time and time again.
• 21:57
  We have 5 of them. They've all done well and
• 22:01
  they're all very easily understood.
• 22:03
  It's been a business for 40 years.
• 22:05
  It works, you know, but each one of our white dogs are, are
• 22:09
  different. So White Dog is a farm to table
• 22:11
  concept. Judy Wicks was the founder of
• 22:14
  White Dog, started in 1983. She was friends with Alice
• 22:16
  Waters, lived up in Alaska like farming whale blubber with the
• 22:21
  Inuits. And no, quite literally, she's a
• 22:23
  pretty incredible woman and was teaching really how to grow
• 22:30
  local economy is back in the 80s when everybody was, you know,
• 22:34
  buying all their food from Cisco.
• 22:36
  And she took like, her grandmother's recipes and was
• 22:41
  cooking out of her house. And so white dog has remained
• 22:44
  sustainable. We'll say farm to table,
• 22:48
  although I hate that word. Why do you hate that?
• 22:50
  Phrase. I think it's just overused.
• 22:53
  I think it was a trend and that's not what we are.
• 22:56
  You know, we are much more than a trend.
• 22:58
  This has been a business that has quite quite literally helped
• 23:03
  businesses like Dogfish Head Beer, Metropolitan Bakery,
• 23:09
  Yingling, like some of the like brands that you would know
• 23:13
  today. That started very small in the
• 23:15
  greater Philadelphia area and and were the owners were really
• 23:20
  helped by Judy Wicks to become, you know, national brands.
• 23:24
  So pretty cool and white dog. I think that I think it's just
• 23:32
  very I think it's special. I think the people that work
• 23:35
  there really work there because they feel a sense of pride and
• 23:38
  purpose in like the work that we do and have done for the past 40
• 23:42
  years. Think a lot of the things that
• 23:44
  we do with white dog we don't talk about because it's more
• 23:47
  like a way of just like how how we've done business.
• 23:50
  So if it's collecting shells for oyster farms, it's like we're
• 23:53
  not doing it to green wash like some other concepts that are out
• 23:56
  there that are like larger chains like a true food kitchen
• 24:00
  or a founding farmers like to me that's very green washed.
• 24:03
  It's not real in my opinion. What is?
• 24:07
  What do you mean you're collecting shells?
• 24:10
  Like quite literally oyster shells, like after people eat
• 24:13
  them, eat out of them, we'll put them in, you know, bus tubs and
• 24:18
  then we'll ship them down to the Chesapeake Bay to relay the,
• 24:20
  the, the seabed in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.
• 24:26
  You know, we, we recycle all of our oil.
• 24:28
  So all of our fryer oil is recycled.
• 24:32
  We do all that in house. There's like a huge machine that
• 24:34
  we install. It's like a pretty hefty machine
• 24:36
  that recycles all of our fryer oil, composting, free trade
• 24:42
  coffee, you know, all this stuff that you know, it's just, it's
• 24:45
  real. It was started so long ago.
• 24:47
  We we use only biodynamic wines, you know.
• 24:51
  What is a biodynamic wine? What does that mean, Sydney?
• 24:55
  You know, you'll have to ask my beverage director.
• 24:57
  He can give you a better a better answer.
• 24:59
  It sounds really cool. Something else that sounds
• 25:03
  really cool is the Fearless Fems program that you created to
• 25:07
  empower women in hospitality. Why?
• 25:10
  What inspired this and what meaningful changes have you seen
• 25:14
  come from it? Yeah, I so, so it's actually,
• 25:16
  it's to inspire just women in women in entrepreneurship.
• 25:22
  So it's not just women in hospitality.
• 25:24
  I actually find that there's some really wonderful women in
• 25:27
  hospitality groups that are local to Philadelphia that
• 25:29
  actually Judy Wicks is one of the founding members of called
• 25:33
  Ladame Escoffier. And I think that they do a
• 25:35
  wonderful job. But really my goal was to
• 25:38
  connect with other women. I found that when I was living
• 25:41
  and working in New York, people only wanted to connect with me
• 25:44
  because I was Ron Perlman's like right hand.
• 25:47
  They, you know, and they liked knowing that I was like working
• 25:50
  with a billionaire and felt like they could get something out of
• 25:52
  me. But if I did not have something
• 25:55
  to give them, people really didn't want to network, you
• 25:58
  know, and I find that in Philadelphia, networking is a
• 26:01
  really large staple to this community.
• 26:03
  People, women especially, love to network here.
• 26:07
  They love to get out. They love to do stuff Tuesday,
• 26:09
  Wednesday, Thursday night. People here are very receptive
• 26:12
  to meeting other people may not be like, you know, if you grew
• 26:16
  up here, you know, I think friendship wise, like it's a
• 26:19
  pretty tight knit community, but I think when it comes to
• 26:22
  business networking, people are really open to networking.
• 26:25
  And I found that when I moved here, people I'd never met so
• 26:28
  many people who were just so open to like wanting to further
• 26:31
  themselves, specifically young women who own their own
• 26:33
  businesses. So that's really why we founded
• 26:36
  Fearless Femmes was an extension of, you know, Fearless
• 26:38
  restaurants, our restaurant group.
• 26:40
  I just wanted I had met some really awesome women in business
• 26:45
  and I wanted to create a community where people could
• 26:47
  come together and really have enriched programming.
• 26:50
  And how can people find out about fearless fems?
• 26:53
  More info. Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:54
  So we have we have an Instagram handle which is just at Fearless
• 26:58
  Fems, FEMMES Fems. So you can take a look at us
• 27:02
  there. We do programming pretty much
• 27:04
  like once 1/4. So we find that we like to put
• 27:06
  together very meaningful events that have a lot of thought
• 27:12
  behind them in terms of programming and where you can
• 27:15
  really be surrounded by thought leaders, corporate executives,
• 27:21
  that kind of thing. And so you kind of glossed over
• 27:25
  this, but for our listeners, first of all, tell them who Ron
• 27:28
  Perlman is and what was the work that you were doing with him.
• 27:33
  Yeah. So I was recruited off of
• 27:35
  LinkedIn, believe it or not, because I had worked for
• 27:38
  Hillstone. And like I said earlier, like
• 27:39
  Hillstone is kind of like the staple.
• 27:41
  If you, if you know what Hillstone is, it's very much
• 27:46
  known for their like regimented militaristic style of service.
• 27:52
  And there was a woman there at who was working for Ron Perlman
• 27:57
  in his HR department and recruited me through LinkedIn to
• 28:01
  be his Butler. So I received a message on
• 28:04
  LinkedIn saying, Hey, do you want to interview for a Butler
• 28:06
  position with, with a principal? I had no idea what a principal
• 28:10
  was. And I was like, OK, like this
• 28:11
  sounds interesting. Like, why not?
• 28:14
  Like I'm living in New York City.
• 28:15
  I'm 24 years old, 25 years old. I've nothing to lose.
• 28:19
  And at the time, I was really, but yeah, I've been with
• 28:23
  Hillstone for about 3 1/2, almost four years.
• 28:26
  And I was, I was ready to to make a move.
• 28:28
  And I ended up taking an interview with, with Ron
• 28:35
  Perlman's assistance and then his wife.
• 28:38
  And they said, you know, we think you'd be great, but we
• 28:42
  just don't think that like this is really what you want to do is
• 28:44
  being a Butler. And I was like, yeah, to be
• 28:46
  honest, like I don't necessarily see myself like doing this long
• 28:49
  term. I want to be honest with you
• 28:50
  guys, but you know, if, if this is something that, you know, you
• 28:56
  think that we would be a good fit, like we can move forward.
• 29:00
  And they ended up calling me three months later and said, you
• 29:03
  know, we, we, we have a different position for you,
• 29:06
  which is the director of hospitality and we want you to
• 29:08
  own all service and food for our entire life.
• 29:11
  So he has, you know, 2 jets and he had a, a mega yacht and he
• 29:16
  had, we had to feed everybody kosher breakfast, lunch and
• 29:19
  dinner. Who worked in his own office,
• 29:21
  his own Home Office office alone was about 1000 people.
• 29:25
  So we were, I know it's wild, right?
• 29:27
  So his his family office was about 1000 people.
• 29:31
  Ron Perlman is a billionaire who owns Revlon was huge in the 80s
• 29:38
  and 90s, tons of diversified investments.
• 29:42
  And they invested all of his money at this, at this family
• 29:45
  office. And so on top of just like
• 29:47
  feeding these thousand people, we had to do it kosher and he
• 29:50
  wanted it done only by Michelin chefs.
• 29:51
  So we had the the chef de cuisine from Mariah and Gramercy
• 29:56
  Tavern left and were hired there.
• 29:59
  And so I would literally just go around the, the city speaking
• 30:03
  with like the most incredible chefs.
• 30:07
  I remember I, I interviewed Laurent Gross, who is just
• 30:10
  opened Baba with Stephen Starr. We interviewed him to see if he
• 30:14
  wanted to just cook for Ron Perlman for, you know, be his
• 30:18
  home chef, which is just so wild, you know, So I was exposed
• 30:22
  to like my friend Nick, who was a sous chef at 11 Madison Park
• 30:27
  or chef to cuisine. You know, they interviewed him
• 30:30
  and it was just this very wild world, so.
• 30:33
  Any funny, quirky stories from that time that you can share
• 30:37
  with us? I did not sign an NDA upon
• 30:40
  leaving because the stories are just too good.
• 30:42
  But I, I won't get in trouble. The only thing that one of the
• 30:46
  things I can share with you is it was Passover.
• 30:49
  And during Passover, obviously there's a lot of rules you have
• 30:53
  to be kosher for Passover. So there's there's certain
• 30:56
  regimented labels that you have to find like you have kosher for
• 31:00
  Passover, ketchup things, certain things they have to be
• 31:03
  kosher for Passover, not just kosher.
• 31:05
  So it's like. Oh I didn't realize there was
• 31:07
  like a a a sub designation there.
• 31:11
  Oh, yeah. So kosher for Passover is its
• 31:13
  own thing. And so you throw everything out
• 31:16
  in the house. We had to, like, have this huge
• 31:19
  cleaning ritual. And then we had kosher for
• 31:22
  Passover items. And that night we had Bono was
• 31:25
  coming in and he wanted to celebrate somebody at the
• 31:28
  party's birthday and he needed a birthday cake.
• 31:33
  Well, we had had a meat meal. Obviously a lot of icing is made
• 31:37
  with dairy. So we had to come up with a
• 31:39
  vegan birthday cake within 20 minutes that Bono wanted to
• 31:44
  present to Mr. Pearlman in this room.
• 31:47
  And while we brought it up, his Mr. Pearlman's child knocked
• 31:52
  into Bono, which then spilled a glass of wine on his.
• 31:56
  We called it the $100 million room because the carpet was
• 31:59
  worth about $40 million and spilled red wine all over the
• 32:01
  carpet. And mind you, I had to also that
• 32:06
  night, I remember I had to ship blueberries from Maine.
• 32:12
  This is obviously April. It's Passover from Lorne
• 32:15
  Michaels, like the creator of SNL, Lorne Michaels, Lauren was
• 32:19
  one of his good friends and we, I had to get blueberries from
• 32:23
  his farm up farm up in Maine because Mr. Pearlman only like
• 32:27
  the blueberries from Lauren's house.
• 32:30
  So they were tiny blueberries, not the big oversized
• 32:33
  blueberries that you get in Whole Foods.
• 32:35
  So I had to get blueberries flown in for Passover from
• 32:38
  Lauren Michael's house. And I had to drive about two
• 32:40
  hours in an Uber because I didn't have a car to a port
• 32:44
  where I had them flown into in New Jersey.
• 32:46
  And then I brought them back and they had been frozen because
• 32:49
  obviously blueberries don't come into season until the
• 32:51
  summertime. So they were frozen.
• 32:53
  And I had to thaw them out by hand so that they wouldn't
• 32:56
  shrivel up so he would eat them. How do you thaw blueberries by
• 32:59
  hand? Oh, I was literally taking them
• 33:02
  and quite literally, like warming them up over in a
• 33:06
  strainer with lukewarm water so that they didn't shrivel up.
• 33:10
  And that's when Donna walked in and saw me.
• 33:12
  Yeah. That's funny.
• 33:14
  Do you have other good, I don't know, celebrity type stories to
• 33:18
  share from your time there in New York?
• 33:20
  The Roots was our half bands. They were always like a trip.
• 33:23
  They were really fun to to hang out with.
• 33:27
  But I would say I did all the riders for all of the
• 33:30
  celebrities. And it's always funny because
• 33:32
  the celebrities actually aren't necessarily the Divas, it's
• 33:35
  their assistants who are making these really crazy riders.
• 33:39
  And one of them was Pharrell Williams really liked Carl
• 33:43
  Sagan. And he wanted a picture of Carl
• 33:46
  Sagan in a frame on his like the astronomer on his on his bedside
• 33:53
  table. So I was going into his house
• 33:56
  because Mr. Pullman had 18 homes on his property out in the
• 33:59
  Hamptons. And so I was putting a picture
• 34:02
  of Carl Sagan on the countertop and not realizing that somebody
• 34:07
  was asleep on the couch. And it turns out it was Pharrell
• 34:09
  who had just come in on a red eye.
• 34:11
  And he woke up and asked me for a cheeseburger.
• 34:14
  And he was a absolute doll. And I will always remember how
• 34:17
  nice he was to me. And where did you get the
• 34:20
  cheeseburger from? Well, we had we had kitchens
• 34:24
  that were built on site with multiple chefs.
• 34:26
  OK, right there. Yeah.
• 34:27
  OK. Wow.
• 34:29
  I don't even know what to say to all that.
• 34:31
  Obviously a world unfamiliar to me.
• 34:32
  And you got a a peek behind the curtain of how the the rich and
• 34:36
  famous live. It is exposure.
• 34:39
  I always say exposure is everything.
• 34:41
  I was speaking with a friend of mine who plays for the Eagles
• 34:44
  the other day, Moro Ojiomo. We we're actually hanging out on
• 34:48
  the Shulu Monday just having coffee and we were talking about
• 34:51
  the importance of exposure, exposure for for children of all
• 34:55
  socioeconomic backgrounds, the importance of that.
• 35:00
  And I think exposure is everything.
• 35:02
  Once you see what's available out there in life, you, you see
• 35:06
  the possibilities, you know, you think so much bigger, so much
• 35:11
  bigger. And I think once I had a taste
• 35:14
  of that, I remember my first day at work, it was Friday.
• 35:18
  I, my first day of work was a Friday.
• 35:20
  It was really odd and that this is working for Ron.
• 35:23
  And I said to one of my Co workers, oh, it's such a shame.
• 35:25
  It's 4:00. They're going to hit a lot of
• 35:27
  traffic heading out to the Hamptons.
• 35:28
  And he said, honey, they're choppering.
• 35:31
  And I said, huh, chopper, like a helicopter.
• 35:34
  Yeah, they're choppering. I was like, oh, I didn't know
• 35:37
  concept of that. You know, this is also like the
• 35:39
  start of Instagram days. It wasn't like what we see now
• 35:43
  where you think everybody has access to these things, you
• 35:46
  know? Yeah.
• 35:47
  That's funny. Pretty, pretty crazy.
• 35:50
  You know, and you hit on something here, I've been a
• 35:54
  member of different masterminds in the past and one of the big
• 35:57
  values that I find from them is not only sort of the peer
• 36:01
  support, right, 'cause when you're at the top in your
• 36:04
  business, it could be a bit lonely.
• 36:06
  Like, you know, everybody's looking to you for, for guidance
• 36:08
  for decisions. You're making stuff up as you go
• 36:11
  along, shooting from the hip and little do people know, but the
• 36:14
  others. And so you get to sort of, you
• 36:16
  know, that camaraderie and that support.
• 36:19
  Sorry, somebody just came into my office.
• 36:21
  Is it your dad? No, it's not my dad, OK?
• 36:24
  It's marketing. And so, but the other big thing
• 36:28
  is what you just hit on, like being around people who were
• 36:33
  creating at a different level and having that perspective of
• 36:39
  wow, I've been trying to grow incrementally.
• 36:42
  I've been trying to figure out how do I, you know, an extra
• 36:45
  percent, an extra 10%. And it's like they, I, I've been
• 36:50
  looking at my city, they've been looking at the universe and it's
• 36:53
  like, OK, now I've got to recalibrate my vision.
• 36:57
  That's what I think you're talking about.
• 36:59
  Yeah, leveling up is is hard. We don't know what is possible.
• 37:03
  I would say I'm, I'm kind of actually getting to that place
• 37:06
  now. I feel like in my life where
• 37:09
  I've taken a lot of the low hanging fruit with the company
• 37:12
  and standardized it. And now the question is how do
• 37:14
  we level up now that we have moved from like a small company
• 37:17
  to a mid sized company? And you know, at some point you
• 37:23
  kind of outstrip your coverage a little bit where you're like,
• 37:26
  OK, and you're flying the plane as or you're building the plane
• 37:29
  as you're flying it a lot of the times.
• 37:32
  And it's really fun. But I think you also get to a
• 37:34
  point now too where I'm like, I have to surround myself with
• 37:37
  with different types of people. Yeah, a lot of the people that I
• 37:40
  worked with have come from this like more entrepreneur,
• 37:43
  entrepreneurial, free flowing kind of environment that my dad
• 37:48
  created, which is really beautiful.
• 37:50
  But the reality of now we have 1500 employees, soon to be
• 37:54
  probably 1700 employees. And it's a much different
• 37:57
  company than when I started a couple years ago.
• 37:59
  You know, and you need to surround yourself with people
• 38:01
  that can help get you there because sometimes you don't have
• 38:03
  all the answers as the founder. Yeah.
• 38:06
  And so you've seen, I'm guessing over the years that you're
• 38:10
  trying to bring in some people that have sort of that high
• 38:13
  level, higher level corporate experience.
• 38:16
  Is that what you're saying here? Absolutely.
• 38:19
  I think a lot of the time I, I took chances on people who were,
• 38:23
  who would see the value in being, in being in an
• 38:27
  entrepreneurial environment. I've always hired for
• 38:30
  personality, not necessarily for experience, because the reality
• 38:33
  is we're working 60708090 hours a week.
• 38:36
  I have to really like you, You know, that's the, that's the
• 38:39
  basic, the basis is like, I have to like you.
• 38:42
  We don't have to be friends. I don't really want to be your
• 38:44
  friend outside of work. I don't think that that's like
• 38:46
  from a professionalism standpoint, that's something
• 38:48
  that Hilstone always taught me and I think was a really strong
• 38:51
  foundation is like professionalism is everything.
• 38:53
  Like I think that's something that my dad has always done
• 38:56
  really well is like we don't go up to the restaurant and take
• 39:00
  vegetables out of the walk in or meat out of the walk in.
• 39:04
  We don't sit down and have drinks after work.
• 39:07
  Like that's not how we operate. It is has to be professional,
• 39:11
  but every any time that I was working in a department, I
• 39:15
  always hired myself out of the department with somebody far
• 39:18
  more qualified than I am. Because the reality is I'm not
• 39:20
  the most qualified person in the room.
• 39:22
  I know how to put the right people in the right places.
• 39:25
  And I think that that matchmaking part of my job is
• 39:28
  like is really crucial. And I've also realized that I'm
• 39:32
  not the best at that either. And I hired somebody who's much
• 39:36
  better at that than I am. So my dad always said to be the
• 39:39
  dumbest person in the room, you want to be the dumbest person in
• 39:42
  the room. That kind of brings us full
• 39:44
  circle to how we started the conversation.
• 39:47
  A a slightly nicer way to put it is that if you find you're the
• 39:50
  smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.
• 39:56
  I like that better. Yeah, so I want to pivot just a
• 40:00
  little bit, Sydney, and I want you to pick a big, hard, hairy,
• 40:04
  serious challenge that you've overcome in your life, personal
• 40:07
  or professional. What was that?
• 40:10
  How did you get through it? How are you a better person on
• 40:13
  the other side? Yeah, my, I would say the
• 40:16
  hardest thing that I've had to deal with professionally was the
• 40:22
  first restaurant I opened after Meshulu.
• 40:24
  That which was like the nightlife concept.
• 40:26
  That restaurant was already open.
• 40:27
  We were just adding to that concept that Louie Louie is my
• 40:29
  first restaurant and it received horrible reviews.
• 40:32
  Horrible and received horrible reviews not from the the guests
• 40:37
  that were there, but it was from a reviewer who really did not
• 40:39
  like my chef. And so it was a very biased
• 40:41
  thing. And this is something I've seen
• 40:43
  a lot in in media in general is there's tons of biases and it's
• 40:48
  all pay to play and it's kind of a racket.
• 40:50
  But you know, I would also say that there are some journalists
• 40:56
  out there who do a really fantastic job.
• 40:59
  I think Michael Klein at the Philadelphia Inquirer does a
• 41:01
  fantastic job and I really appreciate him, think he's very
• 41:04
  honest. But I would say there were,
• 41:08
  there were some people that, that there was one person in
• 41:12
  particular who was incredibly, incredibly prejudice against our
• 41:16
  chef and then against my dad. And it happened on 2 separate
• 41:22
  occasions, two different restaurants.
• 41:23
  And it's a really hard pill to swallow when people do are
• 41:28
  writing about things and they don't understand how much heart
• 41:34
  and effort and risk and how hard it is to be entrepreneurial, you
• 41:42
  know, and it's very easy to tear people down.
• 41:46
  But the reality is we're just trying to help the local economy
• 41:49
  too. So I think that I had to really
• 41:52
  step, step back after that review came through.
• 41:55
  And I just had to say, you know what, like we just have to put
• 41:58
  our head down and just like, make this work because like, we
• 42:00
  can't have it fail. Like we invested way too much
• 42:03
  money. And if this fails, it's going to
• 42:05
  be a massive, massive issue for our family financially.
• 42:08
  And we worked, we kept working through it and it's become one
• 42:12
  of our most successful restaurants.
• 42:15
  It was funny in the review he said something to the effect of,
• 42:18
  well, my review doesn't probably is not even going to really
• 42:20
  matter that much because people are probably just going to
• 42:22
  continue to go there. And that was the truth.
• 42:24
  Became the most Instagrammed restaurant in Philadelphia won
• 42:27
  tons of awards, one from Eater for like the most beautiful
• 42:30
  restaurant. One from Architectural Digest is
• 42:32
  the most beautiful bar in Pennsylvania.
• 42:33
  And it's it's become a a great success and a great feather in
• 42:39
  my cap. Like going from taking this
• 42:41
  restaurant that received like scathing reviews in a magazine
• 42:45
  to being one of our most most financially successful
• 42:49
  restaurants. Following the scathing reviews,
• 42:54
  did business dip? Did people stop coming?
• 42:57
  Did it hurt revenue? Listen, at the end of the day,
• 43:01
  it's like restaurants are like children, like quite literally,
• 43:06
  it's like if you don't feed them, they die, you know?
• 43:08
  And it's, it's, it's not something that you can take your
• 43:11
  foot off the gas. So as soon as you take your foot
• 43:16
  off the gas, whether that's with social media marketing effort,
• 43:22
  with touching tables at night, doing secret shopper reports,
• 43:29
  each one of these little tiny minuscule things is critical to
• 43:34
  the longevity and the success of the restaurant.
• 43:37
  I can't remember at the time, it was close to 9 years ago now
• 43:40
  when this happened. I'm sure business probably was
• 43:44
  off a little bit, but we kept plugging and chugging through
• 43:46
  it. And I think the biggest thing
• 43:49
  was it was social media. I just, I saw the power of
• 43:53
  social media as it was just starting.
• 43:56
  And I, I, I've really leveraged social media at the beginning of
• 44:01
  its time with Instagram. And you know, that was when the
• 44:05
  algorithm was so fun and he would get like 300 followers a
• 44:08
  day. It was the best and real
• 44:11
  followers. And I think that I have seen and
• 44:15
  have single handedly convinced a, a boomer that the importance
• 44:19
  of social media. And I think social media is
• 44:23
  really what saved that restaurant.
• 44:25
  You know, something that I've learned over the years is that
• 44:28
  it is so much easier to hate than to create.
• 44:34
  The people who sit there and they point fingers and they, you
• 44:38
  know, pick on these tiny little minuscule things or make stuff
• 44:42
  up or, you know, just spin things in a really negative
• 44:47
  light. They have no idea, zero idea,
• 44:51
  what it takes to put something productive, successful,
• 44:56
  beautiful together. You know, there's many concepts
• 45:00
  that I go to that I don't necessarily like, but I'm not
• 45:03
  going to write a review. I'm just not going to choose to
• 45:06
  spend my money there. And that's it.
• 45:09
  You know, I think that I've learned that the importance of
• 45:14
  cheerleading and championing. Championing.
• 45:20
  Yeah, I'm with you. It's a hard word to say.
• 45:23
  It's like, I need, I, gosh, I need some coffee.
• 45:26
  I think that it's really important that the reality is
• 45:29
  nobody's going to go to your restaurant seven days a week.
• 45:32
  They might, but those people are always weird.
• 45:35
  The I had a guy in New York, he would come to the restaurant
• 45:38
  every day for lunch and dinner and he would regurgitate his
• 45:41
  food on his plate. That was really fun.
• 45:43
  And because it was a, it was a, a health condition, we could not
• 45:47
  tell him not to do that. So he could express his food
• 45:51
  wherever he wanted to, which was really lovely.
• 45:53
  So, so we want to certainly have regulars, but I don't expect
• 45:59
  everybody to eat at our restaurant every meal, right?
• 46:02
  So it's OK to say, you know, I have a restaurant.
• 46:05
  I have a friend who has a restaurant down the street.
• 46:07
  And when I see something on Google ask or on Facebook and
• 46:10
  Facebook groups asking for Asian restaurants, I say, hey, Pearl
• 46:14
  has awesome restaurants down the street.
• 46:15
  Why don't you check out her restaurants?
• 46:17
  Because I can't be everybody's favorite restaurant.
• 46:19
  You know, it's not how it works, you know?
• 46:22
  But I think that it's important that you build partnerships and
• 46:26
  loyalty with other people in the market where you can champion,
• 46:29
  champion each other. Yeah.
• 46:32
  I want to go back to this review thing because I think this is
• 46:35
  important for people to hear. So I've never been in the
• 46:38
  restaurant space, but for a number of years I was big into
• 46:41
  e-commerce, sold a lot of products very successfully on
• 46:45
  Amazon. And we would get reviews from
• 46:48
  people that would give us four stars and say it was awesome, it
• 46:52
  was great. It was so terrific.
• 46:54
  But you know it, it just did what it did it you know, it
• 46:58
  didn't, didn't go the extra mile.
• 47:00
  Yeah, it didn't exceed expectations.
• 47:02
  Right. And what those people didn't
• 47:04
  understand is that for almost every product out there, a
• 47:07
  four-star review actually hurts because because products, you
• 47:12
  know, you want to be at a 4.24 point 5 or higher.
• 47:15
  If you're not, you're not getting on the first page.
• 47:18
  And so, you know, kind of more to your point, though, that if
• 47:22
  you go to some place and you don't like it, you know, unless
• 47:26
  they didn't, you know, take a dump on your plate, you're not
• 47:28
  going to leave a negative review, right?
• 47:30
  Because you know that that hurts their livelihood.
• 47:32
  They're, they're, they're trying.
• 47:33
  They don't have it all figured out.
• 47:35
  And I think there's a lot to be said for that because I think
• 47:38
  most people who take the time to write a review are people who
• 47:42
  are upset. So you don't get the perspective
• 47:46
  of all those people who went and had a nice time and enjoyed
• 47:49
  their food. And so I guess the point I want
• 47:51
  to make to everybody listening is sort of think twice before
• 47:54
  you take your bad mood out on somebody else's livelihood.
• 47:58
  The reality is I could not, I could not agree more with you.
• 48:02
  I think the biggest thing is to give, give small businesses in
• 48:05
  particular a chance. And what I mean by that is call
• 48:10
  them, ask to speak to a manager and then you really see the true
• 48:15
  colors of that the business owner because of the business
• 48:18
  owner, like more times than likely you're not going to get
• 48:21
  the owner on the phone. You might get the manager, but
• 48:23
  whatever that owner has impressed upon that manager is
• 48:27
  really what the owner's opinion is, right?
• 48:29
  So if I do not tell my staff every time some nobody should
• 48:34
  leave our restaurant upset, they're not going to know to
• 48:36
  chase them down the parking lot and make sure that they get a
• 48:38
  gift card before they leave. You know, So I think it's very
• 48:43
  important to give give businesses of all types a shot.
• 48:47
  Call, speak to the manager before just writing a review,
• 48:51
  even when you're very emotional about it.
• 48:52
  And there are going to be times when those managers have really
• 48:56
  terrible responses and don't handle it appropriately.
• 48:59
  And at that point then you go on and you can be all bitter and
• 49:01
  write your terrible review online, but allow people the
• 49:05
  chance to resolve the issue. I like that that that seems like
• 49:08
  a fair approach. Cindy, what is your superpower?
• 49:13
  ADHD. All right, let's hear it.
• 49:16
  Why? Yeah, it's actually ADHD
• 49:18
  Awareness Month, believe it or not.
• 49:19
  And I think that ADHD in general is something that I always
• 49:24
  struggled with growing up because I always felt like I was
• 49:29
  not paying attention enough for. I was getting called out in
• 49:32
  class or I wasn't sitting still. But I find that I can multitask
• 49:37
  and get way more done than other people.
• 49:40
  I certainly have trouble prioritizing.
• 49:41
  That's why I have to have my like handy dandy notebook with
• 49:44
  me. I have to set quite literally, I
• 49:47
  live by my calendar and my alerts on my calendar, creating
• 49:50
  shortcuts in my iPhone, using AI to like make my life more
• 49:54
  streamlined and organized. Because if not like I am, I'm
• 50:01
  highly, my brain is highly disorganized, but the superpower
• 50:06
  is that I can accomplish all these things in one week, right?
• 50:12
  So I can juggle a lot, a lot more, I would say than the
• 50:16
  average person. And I think that that's what why
• 50:17
  ADHD is so cool. What's something you really
• 50:20
  enjoy doing outside of work? I have a horse and he is like
• 50:25
  the best thing ever. I have found that it's really
• 50:33
  important that you have something outside of work that
• 50:37
  really fills your tank other than people.
• 50:39
  And like, I know when I lived in New York, it's like pretty much
• 50:43
  what filled my tank was like eating, drinking with friends,
• 50:49
  you know, going out partying at the time, 'cause I was in my
• 50:51
  20s. And yeah, hang out with friends,
• 50:54
  going to workout classes, but I had no hobbies.
• 50:58
  And I think finding something that you're super passionate
• 51:00
  about, whether it's building model airplanes or learning
• 51:05
  about wine making or coffee or photography, for me, that's
• 51:11
  horses. And I rediscovered this passion.
• 51:15
  I rode horses from the time I was 3 until I was 12.
• 51:18
  And then I stopped riding because my family couldn't
• 51:20
  afford afford it. And I rediscovered it when I
• 51:25
  moved back to Philadelphia and it was COVID.
• 51:27
  And I was like, I always used to like riding horses.
• 51:29
  I should try that again. And lo and behold, for my 33rd
• 51:32
  birthday, I bought myself a horse.
• 51:35
  And every night after work, I go to the barn.
• 51:38
  And that's my way of like decompressing after the day.
• 51:41
  So I think having some sort of routine after work to help you
• 51:44
  decompress might not be horses that might be taking a walk,
• 51:49
  might be taking a cold shower, taking a bath, reading, doing
• 51:54
  something without of screen, you know, after a long day work.
• 51:57
  I think it has has been a really, really key to my mental
• 52:02
  health, especially in a in a workspace that can be
• 52:06
  incredibly, incredibly challenging.
• 52:08
  What's the name of your horse? Oscar Wilde.
• 52:11
  Why? I always appreciated he's a, a
• 52:20
  gay poet from the UK and I always loved his, his poetry.
• 52:23
  So he came with the, the name Oscar.
• 52:27
  So I just added Wilde because I wanted him to come off very
• 52:30
  fancy when he went to show. But the reality is he was bred
• 52:33
  by the Amish. So he's not fancy at all.
• 52:35
  But I, I bought him because he looked like there's a, a
• 52:38
  specific type of breed of horse that I like and I it's called an
• 52:42
  Irish draft horse and I couldn't afford one of those.
• 52:44
  So and I found the next best thing, which was I call him and
• 52:48
  an Amish warm blood, which is which is a a spoof on the fact
• 52:53
  that he's a backyard bred, a big fat horse, but he looks fancy so
• 52:59
  I gave him a fancy name. All right, I like it.
• 53:02
  Sydney, I've just got one more question for you today.
• 53:05
  But before I ask it, I want to do a few things.
• 53:07
  First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Sydney, you
• 53:10
  can find her on its Instagram at Sydney Grims and Sydney is
• 53:14
  SYDMEYGRIMS. Also, you can find their brand
• 53:20
  at Fearless Restaurants on Instagram and there's a new one
• 53:23
  coming. Tell us the the new handle.
• 53:26
  Yeah, so we, we just opened our a restaurant called Triple
• 53:30
  Crown. Triple Crown, obviously it's
• 53:32
  based on the equestrian lifestyle and equestrian,
• 53:36
  obviously the Triple Crown winner is a is a horse that wins
• 53:39
  the Preakness Belmont Stakes and the Kentucky Derby.
• 53:41
  So it's it's really an ode to my equestrian lifestyle.
• 53:45
  And it's been super fun because I've been able to source all of
• 53:48
  these crazy vintage polo mallets and riding jackets from Virginia
• 53:54
  and it's Triple Crown at Triple Crown Radner.
• 53:59
  It's also a event space that can accommodate up to 1200 Ardner
• 54:03
  Hotel, great wedding destination, Sperry Sailcloth
• 54:07
  tent, which was definitely my most ambitious project to date.
• 54:12
  So it's a restaurant, an indoor event space, an outdoor event
• 54:15
  space, and there's 200200H rooms above us as well.
• 54:18
  Nice. Also, as a reminder for
• 54:20
  listeners, if you want to get more employees access to
• 54:23
  benefits that won't hurt them financially and carries a
• 54:26
  financial upside for the company, reach out to us at Add
• 54:29
  Back benefits.com. Finally, if you'll take just a
• 54:32
  moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast
• 54:35
  app, you will hold a special place in my heart forever.
• 54:38
  So Sydney, last question for you.
• 54:41
  You and I reconnect one year from today and you are
• 54:44
  celebrating something big. What's that big thing you hope
• 54:48
  to be celebrating one year from now?
• 54:49
  It's. Going to be that I added add
• 54:51
  back benefits obviously. I appreciate that plug.
• 54:55
  How? What else?
• 54:59
  A year from today, I would say that we are we've successfully
• 55:07
  booked 40 weddings. I would be really, really pumped
• 55:11
  to have have done 40 weddings at this wedding venue.
• 55:15
  Again, it's been my most financially ambitious project,
• 55:19
  has put a lot of pressure on my dad and my family.
• 55:22
  So I would really love to to see this this project come to come
• 55:27
  to fruition. And this is the new Triple Crown
• 55:32
  Radner that we were just talking about.
• 55:33
  So find find them on Instagram, folks.
• 55:37
  Well, Sydney Grimms from Fearless Restaurants, I want to
• 55:39
  be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your
• 55:42
  story with us today. I really appreciate it.
• 55:44
  Thank you. It's a pleasure.
• 55:45
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 55:48
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 55:50
  today.