Latest / High Five Hot Mess Podcast / How Do You Keep Going When Everything Is Working Against You? What It Really Takes to Not Quit
Transcript
- High Five Hot Mess Podcast: Okay, welcome back. Really wanted to have a transparent conversation about when things aren't easy and like how you keep, you know, keep showing up every day. So walk me through from the very beginning of when you decided to get into the restaurant business. Yeah. So after we had sold our company, it was got the money quickly versus not doing the proper research was one thing, right? But it was, my neighbor came to me and said, hey, listen, the local watering hole is getting ready to go bankrupt. I know you just sold the company. Maybe we can find a way to save it. Right? So it came from a good spot. were like, okay, cool. Let's save our local watering hole. So we have a restaurant in place to, you know, our kids can go hang out. We can hang out. can have it. So we negotiate, we find a deal that works. Come to find out it comes with three additional restaurants. Right? So. I'm like, holy crap, now I own three restaurants. How did this happen? Right? So immediately we go into, let's do an analysis of all the restaurants. we had one in Philly that was breaking even every month. It was breaking even, no profit. It was just breaking even. were like, okay, Philly is too far from where we live. We're not going to go there to try to fix or save it or do whatever. And it's kind of close out. We're going to close out. Okay, cool. We want to save the one where we are. And then we want to save the other one that's down in DC, Cachet. So it wasn't called that at the time. was called Rebel Taco. The problem was, so by the time we came in, we started getting the GMs, we started curating the menu, we started fixing all the things that were wrong with it. The landlord that was in the Virginia location came to us and said, Hey, listen, this place has such a horrible reputation from before you guys purchased it. We just, we don't want to renew your lease next month. We know you have nine years left. We're just going to let you out of your lease. We don't even want to bother with it. We're like, are you sure? Like we could change it. could do that. No, we just, don't want it to be a restaurant anymore. We're to turn it into a library. So let me ask, like what would happen to your investment if they just, if you, right? It would be gone. That wasn't part of it. So it would, boof, gone. Right? And so we were like, okay, cool. We have this last one here in DC. We're going to make this one work. Right? So we close it down. We start construction. We get all the permits. We get everything going. The construction crew comes in. Well, the town comes in they're like, ⁓ this is historical building. You need to get into historical building approval. Okay. How come the landlord never told us with all the permits we got, every, you know, everything went through fine. Okay. Hold on you guys. Listen. If it's historical and you have to get permission, if you don't know, just take everything times a hundred. That's right. That's how much it's going to cost because I love the idea of like in Charleston, there's all these historical buildings that people pay big money to companies to come in and restore the building or the location to its original state. Right. And I love that. We all love that. That's great. If you have a lot of money. But if you're in a situation like Sharif was, where you had no intentions of redoing a space and now you find out it's an historic space, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. I'm sorry, keep going. No, no, totally fine. So we get in, we're like, construction crews ready, we the designer ready, we have all the stuff picked out, and now we're waiting. We're waiting, we're waiting. How long, Sharif? So we started in September. We didn't open back up until December the following year. Over a year we were shut down. And ⁓ by the way, we still have to pay rent every month of 20 grand. ⁓ Yeah. So every month we had to continue paying rent. Every month we had to continue paying electricity. Every month we had to continue paying all the water bills. Right. And so eventually finally in September the following year, we got the permit approved. So a year later, we finally got the construction improvement. ⁓ approved. We extend the top floor, ⁓ because it was a very small, just kind of bar area. There wasn't enough for seating and everything. And we wanted to turn this into a classy restaurant. We wanted to make it really nice. So we built out the second floor so we can fit some good seating in there. ⁓ The upstairs area we call it bar noir. We got that done and we got it done fairly quickly. We did it in three weeks. Then. The historical board has to come back out and re-approve that you did what you said you were going to do in the initial permit before they bless it to open back up. Well, guess what? That took another month and a half. Right? So we miss the Thanksgiving kind of opening time. We miss that. So we're now, this is beyond October, we're now in November. Well, the holiday season hits up. So all the final touches that we need to get done, like all the wallpapers and the painting and the tiling and all that, the bathrooms, all the construction crew has gone for Christmas time. Right? Yeah. So ⁓ finally, finally, finally, we get everything done by the end of the year. Right? We're finally right before New Year's ready to open up all that stuff. Well, we haven't gotten the final permit to open the door. So guess what? Now we can't throw a happy New Year party. Right? So we missed that. So finally in January, we officially opened, fully open. It's the second week of January, doors open. We're about a year and what, three months, four months in that we've been just paying out of pocket, paying out of pocket. We're open, we're up and running. Great. have a great, you know, soft opening. 400 people show up, celebrities, everything like great opening, right? Phenomenal, phenomenal marketing, all that good stuff. Well, then we get hit with a snowstorm. And during that snowstorm, the pipes frozen bursted. I'm talking about water everywhere. looks like a shower on the inside. We're just like, oh my gosh, this is just cursed. What do we do? And the owner of the property did not have a water shutoff in our unit. The only place we can get the water shutoff is in the restaurant next door. So the waffle shop. So we have to go to the waffle shop. And at this point in time, we're in there at 830 in the morning. It's raining. They don't open until nine for some reason. It's a waffle shop. So we wait 30 minutes while it's just pouring, right? It looks like a pool inside of the place pretty much. sent me a video of that and I'll try to add it either here or I'll put it on Instagram so that you guys can see it. You guys, it was literally like torrential downpour inside of the restaurant. Exactly. Exactly. So. Luckily, we turned the water off at nine o'clock. By 9.45, we had the construction crew in there with the fans, the dehumidifiers. We had to rip up all the tile, all the hardwood, everything we had just gotten done and approved, we had to redo. So luckily, the crews worked very, very fast because it was the same crews that did the build-ups. They had extra material, they had everything. So we able to get it done in three weeks. Right? So three weeks, all back up and running, we were good to go. Permits approved, everything ready to go. And, you know, we kind of hit the ground running and then all the snow storms, the cold, the rain, the weather didn't get better. So everyone thought we were still closed. So it took another two or three weeks before people realized we're open again. Right? So again, another missed opportunity for money. But the end of the day, The restaurant's been done properly. We've done so much adversity that now it's our mission. have to succeed. Right? We've been through so much adversity that success is the only option now. Right? And it's been good ever since. So listen, what you did not tell everyone, which I'm going to make you go back, is the local watering hole situation. So remember what started in... folks was that a neighbor came and said, hey, come save our local watering hole with you and your money that you just got from this your heart, blood, sweat and tears situation. you did that. so as you're, as you're doing your restaurant assessments, you decide to close Philly, you start focusing on rebel taco in downtown DC, but what's going on with the local watering hole? I'm grinning because I already know, but Let everybody go down. The GM they had in there was pretending to be one of the owners and pretending to do things that they knew these athletes, they knew these people, and they never really knew anyone or anything. And they were just kind of like this dog and pony show. So come to find out, they took from one of the property owners son an Eagles jersey that said they were going to go get it signed by one of these famous players that they didn't know. They didn't know this person at all. were just lying. Never brought the Jersey back, never did anything. And I think that was probably what soured the property owners on that restaurant as well. And then every time I would go in there, the food didn't taste the same. Like it was just, it was poorly, poorly managed and run. And it was just throw money at it, throw money at it, throw money. We were like, all right. Thank gosh, they don't want to renew the lease. We can shut it down because it was just, it was bad. I mean, it was a bad experience. The employees, so we also, live in a community that is, they're blessed. They're well off, right? Where they have more. So to get kids to come in and say, Hey, we're paying you. Can you please go clean the restroom? They would literally just quit on the job. They're like, no, we're not cleaning the restroom. So we quit. I'd rather not do this. I'm not cleaning the bathroom. Nope. I'm not cleaning the bar. Nope. And then you the sound issue, right? With the neighborhood. Correct. Walk us through that. And so we were allowed to stay open until 2 a.m. That was just what our lease allowed. But we were in a neighborhood where they built these homes and there was a lot of older people. They wanted us closed by nine o'clock. And it's a restaurant. Okay. You make your money at nighttime. And they kept complaining. They kept putting in complaints, kept putting in complaints. And they just, did not want us there until 2 a.m. And we were, we were not blasting. We would have comedy nights where we would have comedians come in and shows and things. So it's not like loud music. It's just sound. We had sound. And they, they did not want it. They didn't want people on the patio cackling and laughing and having a good time because it disrupted their sleep at 9 30. And so. Although it was a great watering hole location and convenient for us, it was not the right community for the vibe and fun environment we were trying to build. like, we just look at all of this at one time, and I promise I'm going to get to a point. I'm not just ⁓ making you relive traumatic incidents, but so listen, so let's think about this. So what they don't know is all of this was happening at the same time. Yeah. So they were on top of each other. So we had the closure in Philadelphia and then he had the situation happening at the local watering hole. We were having a personal conflicts. We're having staffing issues. We're having noise issues. The community that he lives in is kind of turning against him, right? As the owner, as the guy who came in to save it because they all wanted to save it. Then on top of that. The downtown DC situation is not good. It's getting worse and worse by the moment and you're just hemorrhaging money. Right? So all of these things, you guys would ground most people, but not Sharif. And that's one of the things I just want to make sure that I highlight here is that you never saw Sharif angry, upset, like never took it out on his people. used these situations to give his friends kids jobs when they didn't have jobs anywhere else. Like he really, he was continuing to be on the business board, his mentoring, helping kids, you supporting kids, like all of these things, regardless of the situations that he was encountering every day. And I think that that is why I called you a resiliency titan, right? Because you really... are always like, it's going to get better. Like you have this resolute faith that it's gonna go up, right? And I think sometimes it's really easy to only talk about the negative. I admire your resilience. I admire your positivity. I think that you are bound for successful things. And I think that you are an icon for that kind of. lifestyle and that kind of profile and the way that you position yourself to help others, to lift others up, to motivate and to sponsor kids and all the different things that you do, not only for yourself, but for your community, for your families, for your extended families. I mean, you really do inspire us all. And I think that if you guys don't get that from the restaurant stories, I don't know what you get that from. Like when he sent me the flood. I said it to everyone because we all knew that he was really like he had been through it with the restaurant. He'd been through it. And so when this happened, we're all like, you're not going to believe what happened to Shree. But the next day, like Shree's at work and he's like, you're doing great. Hey, you're doing great. Hey, this is great news. Hey, guys, here's some positive stuff we're all going to put like, you would never know it. And I think that that is That is very hard to pull off my friend. And I think that it is very motivational for all of us to not take out what's going on extraneously on what's in front of us at that moment. And I think that we could all take that lesson from you. So thank you for doing that, for constantly being positive and not giving up. And I think that that is the message that we should all take from, from Cherie. Just don't give up. Know someone that needs a high five today. go ahead and send them this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to the High Five Hot Mess Podcast so you don't miss the next one.