BBC featuring Neil McCormick and Justin Styll from Tall Boy Marketing

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01:13If you prefer to email, you can email dan at southernhealthins.com. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. Today is a special episode. We are talking with Justin Still and Neil McCormick. They are the partners behind Tall Boy Marketing and we are talking about Brandon's Book Club. Thank you all for jumping in there and reading this book with us. We did this interview in, we were gonna do our normal big interview where we bring people in and we all discuss it and we did that and open it up and do it live, but we recorded this a few days after the Covenant school shooting and I just didn't feel like it was the right time to do this big let's talk about marketing and stuff. So Justin and Neil are in town. Justin lives in Denver. They're in town for a very short window and I had to strike while the iron was hot. So this episode is so much fun. Alchemy by Rory Sutherland really teaches you the motivation behind why people really do the things that they do because it's it's not what you think and that's kind of the entire gist of the book and I cannot wait to share this interview with you. It's so much fun. Just candid. I mean I've known Neil and Neil's one of the reasons why I have a podcast and Justin's the reason why I did episode number one. Justin's also my brother so that is exciting. This I think is almost full circle. If I get my dad on the show, this

03:16will be everybody in my family coming on the podcast. So that is this month's episode. That's what you're gonna hear in just a moment but I'm super excited to talk about the book we're gonna do next month and the book is called Hotspot and it is by Dr. Alex Jahangir and this this is one of these things that's amazing. I'm gonna tell you how this book happened or how this whole thing happened. I'm at the Green Hills Grill and and I'm talking to this table. There's these three lovely girls and they're playing battleship and I love that they have like a battleship at the table. They're playing battleship and I'm kind of joking with them and I'm talking to the parents and they're so sweet and so kind and I went and got them some more ketchup or something. I came back and I looked at the guy and I go, are you that doctor? And he looked at me and his wife was like, oh gosh, what is this gonna ensue? And I said, are you Dr. Alex Jahangir? Is that how you say it? And he said, yes. And so I told him, I said, I'm so impressed by what you're doing and I have led so many lineups and so many leadership meetings with based upon what you had done throughout the pandemic. How do you stand in front of a city and lead the charge for an entire city's COVID response? And I go, the leadership is just amazing. I go, and somebody needs to write a book and he goes, well I did. I go, what?

04:51You wrote a book? And he said, I did. And I was really excited about that and I said, well I do a book club. I'd love to have you come on. And so I'm excited to start this show off today with a preview of what we're gonna deal with. In studio right now, we have Dr. Alex Jahangir. Welcome to the studio, Alex. Hey, doctor. Doc, how do I call you? Alex, please call me Alex and thank you so much for having me here. I'm really excited that we're gonna be able to do this. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna open this book club. We're gonna do Hot Spot and you can find it at Parnassus. You can find it really anywhere and it's on Audible. So if you want to listen to it, you can get it. And what we're gonna do is June the 8th, you're gonna come back here in studio and we're gonna have a full conversation about the book. Yeah, it's gonna be really exciting. I think really talking about challenges of leading, challenges of self-confidence when you're in these positions. I try to talk about an experience that all of us went through and experienced in different ways. Yet I think so many common threads that I think has made us all better and maybe even has exposed some of our worst instincts as well. Yeah, I mean I cannot, I haven't read the book yet. I'm in chapter one and already I'm fascinated. Just the idea of the first press conference. Well you outlined, we're trying to figure it out. Like we The mayor has contacted me. I've accepted this position. My wife has accepted. She has told me go for it and then the director for Vanderbilt University Medical Center has said, yes you have my blessing to lead this charge. And in the first press conference, you've got an angry reporter going, how many tests do we have? What do you have? And they're yelling at you and you're like, we're gonna figure it out. Let's talk about that for one second. Just the very intro.

06:52Yeah, you know I think as you pointed out, you know sometimes joke I'm like Forrest Gump. I happen to show up and you know I've never even been to a press conference before, much less spoken at one. And there I am in front of a bank of cameras, reporters, reporters who I knew by reputation. And the first question is an angry question accusing us as the city of not knowing what the heck we're doing. And honestly, if we're being honest, the person was right. And I realized one could either get very defensive real quick or acknowledge, look we're all sharing the same uncertainty. And that kind of started the whole process of how does one respond? You know, how does one try to build trust quickly in moments of crisis? And that I think is what this journey for me has had been and is. And so we talk about that a lot in the book. Yeah, I get goosebumps hearing this because everybody out there lived this moment. And not only that, but you're also cognizant of the fact that we just had one of the top 10 deadliest tornadoes in US history roll through middle Tennessee a week before this.

08:04Yeah, and just think about so the book covers a period of one year from March 7th of 2020 to March 6th of 2021. In that one year, we had the tornado, we had the pandemic, we had the bombing, we had the social unrest that happened because of George Floyd's murder. So much that our city experienced in that one year, not to mention the personal toll and economic toll that all of us faced in this industry specifically. It was a lot. And I think we it's important for us to all really think through that and really reconcile that that that's a really big deal that we all went through that one year. Yeah, I, I am June the eighth, you're gonna be back here in the seat, we're gonna open up, it's gonna be a live episode, where anybody can jump in with comments. Don't be an idiot. But please, we want you to read the book, and then come in with comments. If you have any questions about moments throughout this book, you're welcome to come in and join us. Here's how you're gonna do that.

09:05You're gonna go to Facebook. I know this is an antiquated technology, this Facebook thing, go to Facebook, and there's a group called Brandon's Book Club. And there I am going to host I'm gonna put the link for you to join the stream yard. And then I'm gonna be picking one or two people that will actually join us in studio. So we will have people in studio with us here talking with Alex, Dr. I can't call you Dr. Alex, whatever you want, Dr. Jahangir. Please, Alex. Um, and so if you have questions about it, whatever you whatever you want to do, but I am super excited. June the eighth at nine a.m. is the time we're gonna do this. We've got a date on the books. We're one month away, essentially. So go get your books. Now, here's the thing, if you cannot afford a copy, and you're afraid, I don't know, I don't have the investment, I don't, I'll buy you a book, right? For like 15 people, I will buy the book. I can't buy like 1000 books, but I want to, I want you to go purchase the book. I would do an audible, whatever it is. Um, here's how you do it. You're gonna DM me on instagram at Brandon underscore in RR and tell me you want a book and I'll get you a book and maybe we'll figure out a way if you'd come pick it up or you buy the book and send me a receipt and I'll then know you. However it is, I'm gonna buy 15 books for people out there because I want there to be some really good engagement on this. And if you, that's for people that can't afford it. If you can buy the book, please go buy the book and read it. And, um, I am super excited about June 8th. That is a day circled on my calendar. Um, anything else people need to know about the book going in?

10:44No, I'm just really excited to have this dialogue. I think this is gonna be really fun. Um, and I think people will see that it's sometimes when you, when you perceive, when you're perceived as being a leader, what this book hopefully shows is that, you know, it's sometimes we're all just figuring it out in the real time. And, and, and, and so it's really exciting as somebody grew up in Nashville to be able to share this and I can't wait for the dialogue as well on June 8th. I, you know, leadership is, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I want to roll into it, but that's more courage. The courage to stand up there and to do the work. That is leadership. I mean, so many people just stood back and pointed fingers and you, this whole thing started because you proactively put a plan together. You saw what was coming and you proactively put a plan together and submitted that to the mayor's office. And they are like, well, let's go. And you're the, now what is your exact title is you're a, is it, you work in trauma surgery. Yeah, I'm an orthopedic trauma surgeon. Orthopedic trauma surgeon. I am so not a doctor.

11:45Yeah. So I don't know anything. So you fixed broken bones. I, if you break something really bad from the neck down, that's not your spine. That's my, that's my gig. Wow. I could talk to you for an entire six hours about that. Well, how about an hour on June 8th? I can't wait. Very nice. So you're getting good at this. You know how to do the tease. All right. So Dr. Alex Jahangir, thank you so much for being here today. And we look forward to seeing you on June the 8th. And I am super duper excited about the coming weeks. This Monday, we're going to be talking with Philip Krajicek, who is the executive chef and partner at Rolf and Daughters and Folk in East Nashville. That James Beard nominated chef, um, Philip Krajicek. That is going to be Monday. The following Monday, stay tuned because we have got Montel Jordan and his wife, Kristen can be coming on the show. And if you're like, God, that name sounds so familiar, I'm going to do it for you.

12:49This is how we do it. There it is. That, that is his song. This is how we do it. And he makes me sing it in the interview. It's so much fun. These interviews are already posted somewhere. I'm not going to tell you where until we talk with Philip Krajicek, but you can find them on one of our social medias. You got to look for it. These interviews are out there currently. We did them live. You could have joined either of these interviews if you had followed us on this particular social media platform. So go follow us on all the social media platforms. That's, that's the way to do it. We're going to be, I like to surprise and put things out there like, Hey, look, this is what we did. So follow, uh, Nashville restaurant radio on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube everywhere. We're everywhere. Go find us and subscribe and then you can be part of the show. All right. With that being said, uh, we are really excited about this episode of Brandon's book club. And it's going to start right after these words from Village Real Estate.

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14:56John Ho at 615-483-0315, or you can follow them on Instagram at Housepetality. Amanda Gardner with Foundation Mortgage is 865-230-1031. Find her on Instagram at MortgageAmanda. We are super excited today to welcome in Neil McCormick and Justin Still. They are the partners behind Tallboy Marketing. And this is Brandon's Book Club. So we are talking about the book Alchemy by Rory Sutherland and some history here. Welcome gentlemen. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. So I wouldn't have this podcast if it wasn't for Neil, because when I was still searching how to do podcasts, I talked to you, Justin. Justin's my brother, by the way, welcome to the show for the first time. And Neil, I called you and you said, Hey, yeah, cause you have a pod. Do you still do your podcast? I used to, it's years and years ago.

15:58I think I was doing a podcast almost over 10 years ago. And I just stopped after a couple of years for the exact reason why I told you if you're not going to start one, if you're not prepared to do it for three to five years, don't start one. Here I am. 3.1 years later. It's not easy. You probably got to a point where you're like, man, I don't know what else to talk about. I got to get a plan together. Most people don't think that far ahead. You know, fortunately I've had a shit ton of content because of the pandemic. And there's a lot of people going through a lot of stuff and there's a lot of stuff to talk about. Um, if, and now that I've talked to so many people, there's just more conversations that just keep coming up and I have sponsors. If I didn't have sponsors, there are so many days where I'd be like, fuck this. I don't have, I'm exhausted, but instead I have sponsors. I got to put a show out for and it's 11 o'clock on Sunday night and I'm in here editing to get a show out for Monday morning. That's been a big drive. It's almost like one of those things I like because it makes me come and do it. Yeah. I went, it's like when I was at Yazoo, I would come up with this crazy idea for an event and then I would put it up online for people to register.

17:05And then one person would register like within 24 hours and I'd be like, fuck, I got to do this now. Now I really got to do it because if nobody registered, you're like, I'm out. It wasn't that good of an idea. Cool. I don't have to do it. But after you're like, Hey, do you want to, it's like, apparently someone else wants to race adult big wheels down this street. And they kind of build it. But to your credit, uh, I'm not just saying this cause we're sitting here to your credit. There's just been just as much stuff, even pandemic, not for everybody else that's done a show to find enough content to talk about and to keep going. They chose not to. So for all the ones that it's not that easy, I'm not, I mean, not trying to disc, discredit anybody else, but it's not easy to have something and do it consistently and talk about it. Cause you're probably tired of hearing yourself at times. You know, I still hate hearing myself as we do editing. You go back and like, I sound like such an asshole. I just, I don't, I don't like it. It is, it's very cringy. It's just not good. Um, so thank you guys for being here. Justin lives right outside Denver.

18:05So he's in town and I learned about this book from you, Neil. Would you like to know how we heard about this book? Yes. Uh, so my good buddy, Josh Springer, the inventor and CEO of bottoms up draft dispensers, uh, him, I always, you know, catch up from time to time. And I said, what are you reading? And he said, I'm reading this really good book, the alchemist. I'm like, okay, that's cool. And then I searched it and a alchemy came up and I read it and I was like, Oh, now I know why Josh loved this book so much. It was really good. And I was telling him about it. And he goes, I was going into it. We finished it and I was going into it for about five to 10 minutes. I'm like, yeah, and I love this part. And when they were talking about this, well I did that book really just blew all of our minds on our team. And he goes, I don't think that's not, that's not the same book. I'm like alchemy, right? And he goes, no, alchemist was the one I read. I was like, Oh, you should really read alchemy. It's a really good book. So by accident, you found this book. Yeah. Oh God. I'm, I must be in the wrong room. I thought we were here to talk about the dire straits 1984 album alchemy.

19:08That history is down the hall to be. This is getting hit in the head. I'm here for the argument. Pull yourself a little closer to the microphone. You're there. Okay. So I don't know where to begin because first time I read this book, I was like blown away that I didn't know, like everything that I thought was what it was, was all of a sudden, not what it was. Yeah. Did you guys feel that same way? Same thing. It's like you got a chance to take a tour of, of a movie studio. And they're like, here's what the back of the facade, these were all facades. You're like the Andy Griffith show wasn't a real town. They're like, not at all. Yeah. Truman show. Well, I, I, the story about Red Bull, you know, just opening like in the intro, he talks about why is Red Bull successful and there's no reason for it. I mean, they, they did these gives you energy. I don't think he brings up that part about the tweaker side of Red Bull as much.

20:10Did you know diet Coke and Red Bull have almost the same identical amounts of caffeine in them? But it's the towering and then the fact that it was almost banned and then everybody had to get it because they're going to ban this stuff. So we got to get it. It's like everybody's hoarding, going to tech talk right now. Cause they might lose it. Oh gosh. I don't know how you hoard tech talk. We got to get it. I gotta, I gotta see what everybody's doing right now before we lose it. Yeah. Oh, that's scary. I thought the idea that there's a product like what rivals Coke. And then they took something that in every test people were saying, this is putrid. This tastes like piss, all these things. And then they put it in a smaller can and charge three times as much for it. It's a hit. Yeah. Like who, who would have saw that coming? Somebody did. And that's the magic of what marketing can do. Yeah. The, uh, the exercise at the beginning of the book where he leads you through it, like if you were to design a, if you set out to create a global competitor for Coca-Cola, you wouldn't create something that was more, you know, five to 10 times more expensive per ounce and a smaller container where 65% of people thought it tasted awful. Yeah. It's going to taste better.

21:19It's going to look better. It's going to be in a better looking can, and it's going to cost less. Yeah. Those are all the things that is basic. Basically the whole book is explaining that logic is the destructor of creativity. Logical and rational thoughts will get you exactly where your competition is. That was his quote. Yeah. Logical and rational thoughts will get you exactly where your competition is. So what are we going to do to bring more people into our bar? Let's reduce the amount that we charge people for a time, maybe between like four and six, and then we'll call it happy hour and we'll discount our food. And then that of people will just come in. Well, that's whatever that you're going to get exactly where everybody else has to do that. Yeah. Well, that was the worst part, uh, about being in the beer business was going to every place. And it was like the, the, the Trinity of everybody that did, you know, Oh, we're doing trivia. We're doing that. It was the same five things. Like, have you ever came across? I mean, when's the last time you came across a recipe on Facebook that didn't involve cheese, bacon, ranch dip.

22:26It's like five things everybody has to keep recycling, which is the same thing that, you know, your Chili's Applebeads of the world do. And you get to a certain point where you're like, okay, uh, I just, again, I just wanted to race big wheels out in your parking lot. Do you want to do that? And they're like, can we do that? I'm like, it's not trivia on Tuesdays, but yes, you could do that. You got a parking lot. I think one of my least favorite things is going to a restaurant and then him, all of a sudden you hear this was German. Welcome to trivia night. And I'm like, I just want to eat fucking dinner. I don't want to deal with this shit. And also is that my favorite, I'm glad we've got away from this because the price of wings have gone up. I enjoyed all you could eat wings and 25 cent wings, but now as an adult, I realized that's probably not a good thing. You know, it's like, it's like discount LASIK or cheap tattoos. I tell everybody, I'm never going to die on a helicopter ride in Myrtle beach because I'm, I'm not going to be the guy that's just spending $20 on it. They're like, cause if you hear someone dies on it, you're going to like, he had it coming. He took the $20 helicopter ride. It should be more expensive than that.

23:27You know? So logical, you were saying Justin, we jumped, I gave you that quote that logical people get exactly where logical and rational gets you exactly where competition is. Do you want to expand on that? Or are you saying something about that? No, I think that it's, you know, it's a good point, but it is, it's that magic that people can't understand and it's human nature and it's how to make people, you know, as he talks about on the aircraft, people feel safer on an airplane based on the quality of the peanuts they're served. It's not, they have no freaking idea how the engine works, but if you're on there and they have nice peanuts and silverware, you feel a lot more comfortable. This is a good point. Yeah. It's like, you just, the way that we do things and human nature and logic tells us these things. It's like, um, I don't know, my favorite kind of alchemy thing is the, you know, the chicken place here in town where folks will sit three hours outside. They come in town to see Clemson play Vanderbilt and then they go over and stand outside for three hours to wait to get in the rain and 45 degree half frozen drizzle. Well, only an idiot would do that for fried chicken.

24:35So by the time you get in there and get your chicken, it's the best chicken in the world because only an idiot would wait two hours outside in the drizzle to eat fried chicken. And so it's like, then you're so, and also I don't want to be an idiot because I just spent two hours for this. This is the best chicken I've ever had. Then you have to tell everybody why you're not an idiot too. So it's like, okay, well I'm going to leave this review on Google. It's like, well, although the line was long, it was very much worth it. And it's like, you know, you could just drive down the street and get up for this, but it's all about just checking those other things. But it, but it's fascinating. But because of that line, I would say that that's a huge part of success for that brand. I mean, they have great products too. Well, I think that the whole concept is what are people's real motivations? What, what, why do people really do the thing? Why do they make buying decisions? Why do they make decisions they make? And there's this idea that they're going to make the decision because of the logical reason. And it's never that, you know, why do you brush your teeth? I think it was a great example. And people go, why do you brush your teeth?

25:37Well, because it's healthy and that's what you do. And you go, then why don't you brush your teeth after you eat breakfast? Why do you brush teeth before you, why do you brush teeth before you go into a meeting or why do you brush teeth before you go on a date? You're not brushing as you want your teeth to be healthy. You want your teeth to look good. That's the reason why you, the real reason why you do it. Yeah. And why 98% of toothpaste is meant to flavor or meant to freshen your breath. You know, the same thing with like soap, like hand soap and these other things, like it smells good. So you, I didn't, your brain thinks it works. Do you know that soap does not need to have bubbles? They add an agent to make it bubble up because it seems healthier in your hands because it has got to be working better. Yeah. Cause if you take old school, like I'm sorry, I'm speaking in my Arkansas roots here. You take old school lye soap and use it to wash your hands. It will get your hands extremely clean, but there's not a bubble bubble to be found. And it's just, it's the same exact, you know, chemicals for everything, but it's just a psychological side of it. You know, that's the magic though. That's the crazy side of things. Like why, I love the example of aqua fresh, you know, like all of a sudden somebody decided to put the same ingredients they were mixing in toothpaste, but separate them and figure out a way to squeeze it in a toothbrush and you can see it. People all of a sudden saw the ingredients. Like, well, this one works better. Yeah. Cause it's a different color. It's better.

26:58It's a different color, but like who marketing wise thought to do that. What's it, was it you and I that was talking about the other day? Yeah. It was yesterday, uh, eating at the world famous toots in Murfreesboro for, uh, we got on the subject of world famous. I like that proximity, how proximity makes this different products taste better to you. Like if you get, get the same oysters within sight of water, they are, you automatically get more nostalgic of it. And it's a, you can smell the, there's like, as opposed to oysters in Murfreesboro, something different about that. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Cause one of the quotes he says in the book is that the reason people eat at restaurants has little to do with the food and more to do with social connection and status. Absolutely. Like I want to be out, you know, I went to this dinner the other night and it was a, it was a big dinner and these amazing chefs were there and the food was good, but it was the, it was a social event. I mean, everybody was there talking and shaking hands and doing the whole thing.

27:59The food was, was good. It was supposed to be about the food, but really it was a, it was a social event. Yeah. There's a, uh, it, I live in, in Lebanon and outside Lebanon, there's a, uh, a flea market. It's mostly Hispanic folks that come out there and so on, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, you got to plan ahead. There's an Elote stand in the back of it. It is the most social place you'll ever be on a Sunday. It's five generations. It's kids, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, everybody out there. It's just packed music's blaring and it's, that is the social scene for it. Food's delicious. Don't get me wrong, but you can tell that is what these families do on Sundays is for that social aspect of it. So if you have a restaurant and you're thinking I got to make the food as good as I possibly can, but you're so, if you're, if you're, if it's not a good place for people to be seen and want to go and be, probably not going to be as successful. I also liked this point about, um, the food where it has to either people either have to feel like they're getting a really good value on the food or that they're buying something very expensive and very good where people will pay a lot of money thinking that they're getting something, but medium priced food is something that nobody really goes after.

29:07We're going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. When you hear that sound, it's probably too late. You need a guy. I want to be your guy. I'm Kevin with Corson fire and security, and I'm a restaurant territory account manager. Do you know who's doing your inspections at your restaurant? Please reach out to me at six one five nine seven four two nine three two. And I'll be glad to come out and take a quick look and look at all your fire safety inspection needs. If you're building a new restaurant, we can help with that too. As far as kitchen suppression, fire extinguishers, emergency lights, we do it all. One stop, one shop. Call Kevin at six one five nine seven four two nine three two. Let me be your guy. Nashville. We are joined with Jason Ellis from super source Nashville. They have been a sponsor for this podcast for almost three years. We are so honored to work with them. This is a great company and a great man. Jason, what can people expect if they give you a call?

30:10We'll come out, do a complete audit of their facility, see in which ways we could help them approve if any, and see what we can do as far as helping them save some money. So the first thing they got to do is just give us a call. Seven seven zero three three seven one one four three, or they can email me directly at J Ellis at super source. I N C dot com. We'll come out, take a look at your operations, see in which ways we can help. That's amazing. So if you're out there right now, listening to this call Jason Ellis or email him today. Medium priced food is something that nobody really goes after. It's a commodity. Yeah. Yeah. Then it's just portion game. Then it's just, you know, you can get full. It's, there's no, there's no other side to it, which, which kind of he talks about being on a train and this is goes back to your idea of the, or just you're talking about being on an airplane and the peanuts taste good, but there was a stupid questions. He says, there are no stupid questions and whatever your take on that is, but he liked stupid questions cause he wanted to break down those stupid questions because stupid questions. The, what is it? The, the, there's two, there's, there's a bad idea. Then there's a, or is it a good idea?

31:22And a bad idea. The adverse of a bad idea is also or adverse of a good idea is also a great idea or something of a good idea can also be a good idea or a great idea. Like because somebody said they've got these tube trains there in Europe and they go around and they have on the sides, they have these booths that people sit in and they have all these people that stand in the middle and they said, nobody wants to stand in the middle and they're paying the same amount. You had this resentment towards the people that got seats and then you get there early and they said, what if, you know, somebody said, what if we make it all standing or what if we put the booths in the middle? And that was part of the deal. Uh, and they said, well, that's a dumb question. It's like, well, no, let's actually look at it. Why do people perceive the value on a train? And we just welcoming in, come on in, Stephen, grab a headphones, jump in here. Steven smithing, who's, uh, it was an avid member of brain book club. Go on in, Steve, it's a, I'm trying to do my job. Well, we talk about this stuff a lot in the restaurant because this is all stuff that is on this same note, uh, with Stephen just walking in, it's not that I waited to you to get here, but I have to ask this question because we just ate there and this, the psychological aspect of this book that really, I don't know, I think it's just something, especially with restaurant tours, you have to dig into a good bit because just the physical space, because we've all walked in physical spaces where you're like, this is not going to be a good experience. Like you can tell that five, five feet in the door. So, uh, we just had lunch at Green Hills grill that five feet inside the door.

32:54How important is that table with the arrangement on it? I think it's, well, I think it's important. In fact, we added that whole airlock when I purchased that restaurant, that the whole entryway space was not there at all. Uh, I had joked that it's the most expensive vestibule on the planet. And if there's a tornado, you want to be inside of there. Cause you added that onto the, we added that to the restaurant. Well, before when it was, uh, Alegria it just was a, you'd open the door and the host stands right there and all the cold air comes in. I mean, there's a reason airlocks are there. So I knew we needed one. We just decided to make it nicer than not nice, I guess. Yeah. But no, it's important. I had that table custom built actually. Uh, I bought part of it, uh, at an auction. And then I took it to a guy, I bought all the tile from a different place and he came and put all that together. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why you didn't go with a perfectly square room. Uh, no, probably just owing to the, how it was going to come in the side of the, the, the side of the other part of the vestibule there and the spacing. I just think, I mean, like I said, it's just those small things like that.

33:55It's just fascinating to me the way that the psychological part of when people walk into there to know that that someone put thought into that. Sure. Then it's somebody put thought into that first five feet that what else did they put a lot more thought into that I'm never going to notice or never going to pay attention to, but it's going to have a huge impact on my experience. I do think sometimes that I've told lots of people that if I worked for another company, they would have fired me for making that vestibule because clearly it costs more than it should have. But I also intend to be there for at least 20 years, which is how long of a lease we have. And by then it'll work its way out and be just fine. Yeah. Well it's funny because every single thing that we do systematically is intentional. Yeah. And I think that's one of the funnest things about kind of those behind the scene shows is that when everything is frictionless, when you walk through the door and you get greeted and you get sat and you have a wonderful meal and you leave and somebody says, thank you. And you're like, that was a really great experience. Like every part of that is curated and incredibly intentional and coached and trained.

34:55I think that's like the fun side of what we do. I think that's like this behind the scenes glimpse of like, what is intentional about it and why is that intentional? Yeah. And how do you make it seem like it's just what you do? Yeah. I mean, it sounds that easy, but it's something that we talk about a lot at tall boy is like, you know, we can give everybody a roadmap of what they should be doing, but then you got to do it tomorrow and the next day and next week and six months from now that the, the, the steps are very easy. It's very easy. You can hand y'alls handbook to a thousand other restaurants, but it's that psychological part of people understanding why you're doing all those things consistently. We have to believe that you're doing the right thing and it does, it does cost money. I mean, if you start out wanting to engineer this to not spend a nickel, you can't ever get to, I mean, all you do is copy other people, right? Cause there's a whole lot of people out there spending nothing to try to, you know, create a great business and sometimes it works, but not very often. You know, you have to spend your money wisely and put it in the right spot. And then we were in a strip mall there at, you know, essentially at green Hills grill. So coming into that different room is not, is very unstripped mall-esque.

36:00Yeah. You'd, but you didn't want people to feel like they're in a strip mall. Yeah. Yeah. You can, you kind of wanted to enter into a different space other than a strip mall. It doesn't feel like an office building. It's the bottom floor of an office building, which is fine. It's been a great location for us. In fact, I feel kind of fortunate to, to be there. Yeah. It's a wonderful location. It is. Okay. So, um, back to mine. We're talking about alchemy here with Stephen smithing, the owner of the green house gorilla Mary bowl just walked in. We've got Neil McCormick and Justin still from tall boy marketing. Um, Neil introduced us to this book kind of by accident and, uh, more kind of just literally it was, it was by accident. Um, I thought it was a really, I want to talk about something about volatile people because he talks about Donald Trump in the book and this isn't a political thing. I'm not, isn't it funny how we got to say that now? Yeah. Well, I'm just, I'm like, this, this is driving by a red truck and no, I was just saying, it's not political. It was like, look both ways when you say it, like there's this guy, the country split 50 50.

37:09So you're on both sides with the last election. You can look at historical figures and you know, use them as examples, which is apparently what you're going to do. But yeah. Well, I think the comment that he said is irrational people are so much more powerful than rational people because their threats are more convincing. Yes. So yeah, because it's the difference in the reality of what is in front of you versus the reality of what could be in front of you. They can't compete with each other. If you're highly predictable, people will learn how to hack you. Yeah. Is that common? He goes, take building a wall on the Southern border. He goes, if Donald Trump gets up there and says, we're building a wall, he might, even if he has no intention of doing it, you kind of believe because he's fucking crazy that he could, that guy could possibly do it. But if Hillary Clinton gets up there and says, I want to build a wall, you know that she has to go through 50 cause she's going to go through all the six years of bureaucratic nonsense. Cause she's going to do it the way that you're supposed to do it.

38:11But Donald Trump, that's an irrational dude that just might do it. So his threat is way more convincing and he can build donors and do all this stuff. And I just thought that was a very interesting way to look at that. And you're like, Oh, so people probably follow the or they, they that guy could get stuff done because he's so irrational and crazy. He could just get it done. Cause drain the swamp, right? Yeah. Again, not political, but what do you guys think about that? That statement you elaborate on it. I just think everybody every day is weighing risks. I think we're all gamblers to a certain extent and you, you weigh risks, ups and ups and downs, your decisions through life by what the risk is. And there are some people that had been stacking up their money and decided to, Hey, I'm going to throw it all on this very irrational thing. Hey, it could, it's a long shot, but it could pay off for me. And I think that's just just different people have different thought processes. Um, when it comes to risk in that situation and they can, it makes a lot more sense of them. Like, Hey, we're all taking this risk together.

39:17It's just not me, you know, at risk, risk reward. He does go and he goes into that with restaurants as well, talking about the, you know, like nobody goes home for, nobody goes to McDonald's and comes home and gets the shits, but the finest Michelin award winning restaurant in New York had the worst case of norovirus or whatever, of any place in recorded history. You know, it's like, you never know. That is one of my favorite stats. I think it was from that book. Why we buy was that 65% of people read the McDonald's menu after they've ordered that you got, they already have an idea of what they're going to order when they walk in, but while they're waiting on their food, they're standing there reading the rest of the menu like, Oh yeah, wow. I didn't realize they had that. Oh, they added this to the menu. They don't read the menu when they're most of them, when they're going in, cause I already know what they're going to, I would imagine at least 65% of the people get the same thing every time. Oh, of course. Or generally the same item. Yeah. Yeah. Like four items. We have that greenhouse grill. People come to greenhouse grill for this item.

40:17And I'm like, well, you got 32 other items on the menu. You should be like me and try all of them. Then you hear twice a day. It's really good. I tried something new today. I was very, very happy with that. Would you have those people? I have restaurants in Nashville. I only go to chicken, grilled chicken, fried chicken, chicken salad. I only have those places for that. Today was the, uh, the root vegetable and quinoa. I always wanted to try that. That's a good one. I like the way it's laid out because then I can portion out the amount of beans that I want in each bite versus whatever else is on that particular body. Yeah. So what'd you have, Justin? Just curiously, I had the red bar chicken and it was fantastic and as good as I remember it. We also had the trio and some tuna. Yeah. It's really good. Queso is fantastic too. It's my favorite. My favorite now is the Queso. People do love it. I have a question just sidebar here and you cut this out if you want, but, uh, have you all ever explored through your staff coming up with new menu items for people that have worked there, uh, after they work a certain amount of time because we've all worked at a place and I don't care how corporate it was, how limited the items were that you worked there long enough, you're tired of things on the menu and you're like, Oh, you've got to try it this way with this at this on it. That's the way I get it.

41:32Well, you're allowed to do that at Green Hills Grill anyway, cause there's a really, you know, not to steal the outback thing, but no rules just right. I mean, if you're going to eat there, I tell people we have a cooler full food and very talented people tell me what you want to eat. I mean, one of the big ones that I didn't know really the kitchen didn't like to make was a tortilla club sub hot chicken, which is pretty darn good. You just take the hot chicken, cut it up and put it in there just like everything else is the same. Uh, apparently it's a little trickier than the regular tortilla club, but yeah, you're encouraged to do that. And we let, we let staff members, we are allowed to subtract and not add. You can't say, I would need three pieces of chicken on that because you've got to pay for that, but you can take something off, but you can't go and take a whole bunch. Yeah. Like chicken and chicken are the same. Does that ever become a menu? I never were like, it was a special for the month where it was like this week it's Renee's chicken fancies. Yeah. Well, you know, the Pignoli pasta actually was developed by Scott Johnson, who was one of our servers a long time ago. He had 25 years ago at the old green Hills grill and the Pignoli pasta has been on the menu ever since. Yes. I mean, that's what I just think of when I go to the subway, right? You know, like they pay all this money for R and D. I'm like, you have all these subway restaurants.

42:39Think of all the untapped talent of what they come up with. It's got to be as good or better than what anybody else could come up with. Like, do you order at Jared's way? Uh, no, too soon. No, I think I love what In-N-Out does with their secret menu, the not so secret menu. I think everybody knows about it, but they put it out there that, Oh, if you're in the know, you can order it animal style and you can get all these things. It's not on the menu, but if you know, you can order it that way. And that's how everybody orders it because I know. I think that's something I would love to be able to do one day. Once everything is just completely smooth working, like create a secret menu and tell 10 people about these four menu items that are secret. And that only that are like, this is John's way. He does it. And this is a, cause we have Haley's way for the chop chop. We do. Yeah. And we have, um, yeah, I mean, we have, and I tricked my brother Christopher because when you add a new menu item, which we do specials every month, we develop a lot of new menu items.

43:40And some of them sell really well. And I'm like, let's put that on the menu. And he says, well, what do you want to take off? And I'm like, no, I don't want to take anything off. I just want to add that. Cause I think we can sell it. Let's see. But obviously there's only so much physical space on the menu. And I did tell him they had a font button. You know, you can just make the font smaller, squeeze them in there. Not a big deal. But he said, no, no, you got to pick one. So I picked the Santa Fe chicken, which is a super popular item because I knew if we took it off the menu, people would still ask for it. And we never took it off the computer. You know, it's still, there's still a key there for Santa Fe chicken. So we sell, I mean, not as many as we used to, but probably half as many as we used to, but people still order all the time. I think we call them ghost items, you know, things that have a key, but don't have a, don't have a placement on the menu. Thanks for indulging my, my two questions for today. So I went to in and out and I ordered reptile style and they looked at me like I was crazy. You don't know yet. You have to actually know what's on the menu before you say it. Reptile style. Yeah. You didn't know about this. Last time we were in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, we were going to be the, I think it was the first time I ever had the opportunity to do a true burger challenge because near Justin's house, it was a, uh, in and out was, there's like six different, well-known burger. We have everything. Yeah.

44:51There's an in and out, what a burger, smash burger, Freddy's, Culver's, um, like all within 10 minutes of each other. So places shake shack. What was the best? Well, we, we didn't do it. That's why I'm saying we had to line it up to where you get people to order it at the same time and bring it back. Yeah. Same location. And then, you know, chop them into quarters and go from there. So it was a thought process. What's your favorite hamburger in Nashville? Uh, are we talking about just beef, uh, bison? Uh, all right. Uh, as far as meat and bun with stuff in the middle ingredients. I got two. One is the bison burger, mushroom and Swiss at, uh, Ted's Montana grill. Okay. Um, and with their onion rings. And then the other one is, uh, just Gabby's, a cheeseburger, everything on it, uh, with their sweet potato fries. I really just go there for the sweet potato fries, but the burgers is pretty stellar too. So push to get Doug. Yeah. His, his Q and a makes it, his attitude makes me so happy. My favorite sign in there is diners drive ins and dives. Did call twice. And did call twice people out there. He, he makes me happy every time I go in.

45:59He does. He's great. He used to work with us at Green Hills. Oh, really? Oh yeah. He was a manager a long time ago. I don't know. I just like the people that pick a path. Like this is what we're going to do. It's going to either work the way I want it or fail the way I want it. So it is what it is. So one more break to hear a word from our sponsors. We got about 20 minutes left to this interview. Hope you're enjoying Brandon's book club. Hey guys, we are supported by sharpies bakery and we've been supported by sharpies bakery for the last year. And I tell you, I couldn't be more proud of this partnership. Guys, they're a locally owned and operated bakery right here in Nashville for the last 36 years. Yes, they deliver fresh baked bread daily to your restaurant's back door. And man, is it good. You want to know what kind of bread they make? Go check them out at sharpiesbakery.com that's C H A R P I E R S bakery.com. So they have over 200 types of bread. And if you're wondering, well, hey, look, it's a special recipe that I like to use that, you know, we bake it in our house and it's just, it's a kind of a pain, but we, we like to do it.

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49:26Visit Robbins website at robbinsins.com. That's robinsins.com to request your insurance consultation. Once again, that's robbinsins.com. Marketing advice, gentlemen, what are you guys seeing out there? What are the trends? What are people doing? This is, this is what you guys do every day. I don't have a lot of marketing people on the show. I need to have more marketing people on the show, but like what are you guys seeing out there? If I'm a restaurateur out here, if I'm a small business owner and I'm doing things the logical way, like what everybody else does, what are some things that you might, what are some tips, tricks, anything that you've got out there? We could do a whole hour on social media. I have a, I have a, like a list if you're ever, because I always hear a lot of people go, well, you know, when you travel, you go to a place, you're always looking for a place to eat. Everybody's like, wow, where would we go? I mean, in even your town, you're looking for a place to eat. I've found a pretty full, it's not a hundred percent, but it's in the 90 percentile of checks to see whether restaurants worth eating at before you ever even go in there. And the checklist is one, uh, do they, one, have they uploaded pictures in the last two weeks to their Google business page?

50:42Uh, one, that is a big one. Have they claimed it, but have they uploaded pictures too? Do they respond to all the reviews on there? Good or bad, because you'll get more business off lower ones that you will, you know, more than five stars. Uh, have they updated, updated their social media in the last week or two? If you go through and check all those, those boxes to see if someone has done that as a restaurant, I know it sounds overly simplistic, but you can have really good success at that and, and just check out, do they have, you know, you have access to their menu and stuff on their, on their website, it's very simplistic house cleaning things. It's very, very rare you ever find restaurants that actually check off all those boxes consistently, even in this day and age, unless they get to a certain, a certain scale or a revenue model and it's free to do all of those things. But most people just don't do it. Somebody has to do it. So yeah, it does. And it's just the review, the responding to reviews shows you that if you're in business long enough, anybody knows this things are going to go wrong. It's just, listen, that salad didn't have anything to do with your staff.

51:44She was having a bad day after three times the, you know, the, the red light didn't change and blah, blah, blah. I finally got there. And then the salad didn't have dressing on it. Like that didn't have anything to do with the salad. It was the red light. Okay. She was having a bad day. But if people see that you have humility to respond to those, I just, I always give anybody the benefit of the doubt, but it's like things are going to go wrong or is this type of place? If it does go wrong, they're going to be attentive, attentive enough to fix it. So that means there are 10 of enough on a regular basis to fix things that are not right. So therefore that's the type of place you want to go to instead of like, Oh, we just opened and we really don't care anymore. So there's one of those things is you get a one star review and my salad didn't have dressing and they're the angry person. There's two responses. You can do there, right? One is we're so sorry about your experience. The other one is great. Don't come back. Yeah. And we've seen all of them. What do you, what do you, I got fired for a, after a one star review, I finally got fired from responding to reviews when I went through her history and I said, well, judging from your history of reviews, there's not much you do like cause they're all one stars. Can you, can you fill me in on something you liked? And maybe I can copy that.

52:52And I got fired. I love using, so I love using data like that too, cause it'll be like, you know, Hey ma'am, we're glad that you signed into Yelp and left us a review, but judging that 19 of your 21 reviews are all one stars, I feel like we had, this was stacked against us to begin with. Yeah. You're just on here to slam, just to, to, to, to, to what Neil was saying about what gets you in restaurants. We were out taking, we took the team around all over Colorado last time. And you know, you go through and you start looking at places and it's like, okay, I've heard about this place. Let's go look. And you know, so maybe you go on Facebook or you go on Google, you go somewhere and you look at something. Then when you go on Facebook and it's like mid March and you're like, well, what's their St. Patrick's day thing going on? And it's like, open for Thanksgiving from 11 to one. And we're doing Turkey. And you're like, well, they haven't been on here in seven months. We're out. Like you just, it's automatically like, I'm not, that's not an option anymore. Yeah. That in making, this is the best advice I can give to anybody regardless of business, especially restaurants is when someone goes to a restaurant's website, they are there for one of four things.

54:00I don't care what restaurant it is and I don't care where it's at. There's one of four things that 95% of people are there for. It's your hours. It's your menu. Uh, you're where you're located at and maybe a little bit about your story, but the store is even stories, even optional specials. Yeah. Yeah. Even those things, even special and happy hour directions, maybe address, or they want to order. Yeah. Yeah. We know if you click on most of the people coming to our website, want to order something. Yeah. That's what they want to use analytics and don't hide those things, make them as easy to get to as possible. Where are you at? When are you open? What's your menu look like? And can I order it online or what's hours to come and get it? People just hide those things into more about us. This is all I want to know about you and where are you located at? What are your hours and what's on your menu? That's where 99% of people want to go. I don't, I don't, where did your chef go to culinary school? My mom loves me, but she's not really going through any of our photos. I'm just being honest with you. She's not. So, but yeah, I'm making all those things easy to get to. I mean, it's, that's, that's the one thing I think if people just overly complicated, you know, you get an artist instead of a designer doing your stuff, you know.

55:11All right. Justin, what about you? What are the main, anything out there like right now that you're seeing as far as marketing that it's just interesting that you, that you've seen or trends or anything that's just, it changes so much every single day. I mean, I, I think in my honesty, God opinion, the best marketing any restaurant can do is put out a good or put out a great product, a consistent product and do it day in, day out. That's the best thing that anybody can do because the best marketing anybody can get is when somebody goes, what'd you have? Cause when people get a great meal, it's like the waiting in line. Like you're, you're not in it. You, people love to share and let people in on things. So that's the other thing you make something that's really, really good and blows people's minds and they'll take, people will do marketing for you. Great products market themselves. So if you have the best sandwich somebody's ever had, they're going to get on and take a picture of the sandwich and talk about it or it comes out and it looks like the presentation is unbelievable.

56:12Now they've become an ambassador for your restaurant. You're not paying for it. You're getting whatever audience they have. You don't have to fool with these stupid influencers and stuff like that. Sorry, not all you influencers are stupid, but it's exhausting. Most are not all. Yeah, we'll get, we'll get people will leave like a two star review and it'll, the review will start off with, I don't know how this place has so many five star reviews. There was a beer can in the parking lot and that's unacceptable. And it's like, well we have all these star reviews because we, we do a consistent job and we try really hard to do these things. Where they'll say, I don't like the paint color. And I'm like, well, clearly it's not impeding the business that we have because there are people here. Food and service was great, but the, the, the lighting in the bar was a different, I like a warm light. And it was like, I tell people, you know, if you want to design a restaurant, buy one, then you get to design it. You get to make it look, well however you want to make it look. Yeah. My personal favorite was always the one that's like my family and I have been coming here for 21 years, but last night and it's like, well James, obviously you and your family are not morons.

57:24So only a moron would come to a one star ranked restaurant for 21 consecutive years as your gathering point, you know, but we're glad that last night, you know, Tina fucked it up for everybody. Tina's mom died before the shift and she was having a bad day, but we're, you know, have y'all ever read a review that's so bad for a place you had to go visit it? Yeah. My own restaurant. Sometimes I think people believe that they're entertaining the world by writing these one star reviews. Mostly Yelp. It's like, it's like they tried to do a writing class or something. I'm like, this is my life's work. If it was bad, just say, Hey, can you come fix it? And I can, I can, you know, I guess it was the last time you went to the airport. What happened there when they screwed up? Nothing. Yeah. I can fix everything in 20 minutes. I was in a, did you speak, did you ask to speak to a manager? No. We just sat there. Did you say anything to the person at the front door? No. Yes. Your server. No, I was in a Coos Bay, Oregon, about 10, 12 years ago when we were looking around for a place to eat and got on Yelp and the review for this place, I think it's since closed or changed ownership called the blue Heron Heron.

58:35And the bird started out with anybody with a rudimentary knowledge of how World War II ended would be completely appalled by the decor at this restaurant. Well, there's a lot going on here. I know. Then you're on their website looking for the pictures. I got it. I got to look at this. This is way before Instagram and everything too. We're like, Oh, we got to go check this place out. So on my TikTok page for Nashville restaurant radio, uh, you read a one-star review for me. I want to play this for you guys. You're ready? Yeah. This is, this is pretty good. This is the time where it doesn't show up on my Bluetooth on here and it's not working. Come on. I finally got a car with Bluetooth and it's been the worst bang in my existence of when it connects and then it doesn't. All right, here we go. This is from Jen. I'm just going to play it into the mic and we'll just do it that way. Ready? Yep. This is a one-star review from Jennifer and she posted this review on Christmas Eve. Horrible service. No menu, just a buffet on Christmas Eve.

59:37Didn't tell us when we made the reservation, we'll never be back. We'd give it a half star if I could. You know, Jennifer, every year, my mother asked me why I work on Christmas Eve and it's half star reviews like this that really bring it home and make it special to me and my family. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jen. Well, at least Jennifer was one of the most creative there because all the other ones were, if I could give it zero stars, I would. That's one of the other famous lines. And here's the thing, people make mistakes. I mean, when you have a small business like a restaurant and you know, I think we have a hundred people employed at Green Hills Grill, guess what our number one problem is? Human error. I mean, that is the number one problem every single day. So you just have to try to find the human error and you know, come and fix it before you go home and write a half star review. Yeah. Yeah. On Christmas Eve. But sometimes if you clue us in and help, you know, that would help. And on Christmas Eve, I understand people are spending their really good money. It's our responsibility to do it right. We tried something different. We tried a buffet and it was on a Sunday. It was good. Eve was on a Sunday, which is when we do a birthday on Sunday. We just did it all day.

01:00:43Y'all are missing. You're burying the lead on this whole story. The lead on this whole story is, is what traffic is in and around Green Hills during Christmas time. Well, this was, this was at mayor bowl. Have anything to do with y'all if it was in Green Hills, man, come on. Most of the time, one star reviews don't have that much to do with us. Very small thing that we that went wrong. And yeah, something some, and again, people, everybody has a bad moment. We call them bad moments, not bad days. You know, save your bad days for chemotherapy. But you say we, we, we did have all perfect people, but we realized we had to let some go so we could have the perfect customers. Like you come in, especially, well, that's a challenge, especially with like mayor bowl and you have people that have been going there for 30 years. Yeah. That's a lot. Well, it's been there for a long time. 1985. Yeah. Like our friend, uh, Jesse Goldstein, when he worked at Loveless, they had a family that's been eating out there for Easter for like 30 or 40 years. Every year the family comes. It's a big deal. Family keeps growing. And they book out every year for Easter at the same exact time. And I'm like, man, no pressure.

01:01:45There does come a point where we can't, you can't, you just can't grow. I remember at mayor bowl when that happened in this, you know, they wanted like four tables to get. And finally, I'm like, why am I doing this? I should just say, no, I could book lots of people want to come here. I don't have to feed 16 people at one table. You're a family. Yeah. I've been staying for two hours, you know, and it's like the whole thing, you know? Yeah. Sorry. We're out of coffee. Yeah. We're done. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we've swayed off of, uh, alchemy for a little while, but that's, that's okay. You're good. The part of the book, did y'all see the one where he, what was the one about the, uh, the banana, uh, vodka or what? Oh, no. Well, just talking about that was in the perspective of what it is, where he's like, you know, you go in and Rose wine tastes better by the sea or whatever than, you know, so don't go by a case of Rose wine. When you get back from vacation, expect it to be great. And talks about how Guinness, you know, tastes so much better in Ireland. And it's, it's, as somebody who's consumed a considerable amount of Guinness in Ireland and in the United States, I can guarantee you they taste exactly the same.

01:02:50It is exactly the same product, but I have never met another human being that has been to the Guinness brewery in Ireland that shares that same sentiment with me. They all swear it's that much better in Ireland. Same damn thing. You're just drinking it there, but yeah, he talks about his buddy buying, you know, uh, enjoyed a, in the Caribbean enjoyed a banana liqueur so much that he bought into the company while he was there and then came back home and tasted terrible. His friends couldn't even drink the vomit inducing banana liqueur or whatever it is they call it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, so, so next time you do that, be careful about that. That cachaça tasted good in Brazil when you get home. It's like, this doesn't taste like it did there. Did you get this out of the gas tank? What is this crap? You know, we were in Thailand and the guy was dumping this out of that really awful looking gallon jug. It tasted so much better than what it does here. I had said, it's a thing. Circumstances make things better.

01:03:53Yeah. I do like that about the just logic and different things. And I love Rory's a take on everything. And he does it with comedy and some sarcasm, which makes it even more fun. I like this thing he was talking about. What was it? GPS systems. Basically all they know is what they know and they don't know anything else. All they know is logic. He was, they're kind of like communists. Well, that was an interesting point. He said in the book that that GPS, like, can I do this every time I go to the airport or if I would go to when I was at fresh point, you could, you can go a different way to the airport. It's going to take you 10 minutes longer. I do this every day when I go to the Green Hills where I lived in Bellevue, I would drive 40 and I would get off on highway 70 and I would take highway 70 into like West Mead. And then I would take the back road to Estes. And I would every day it took me 21 minutes to get to work every single day from, from that, where I lived in Bellevue. But the GPS told me to go 40 all the way to 440 and get off on Hillsborough road, which we all know is like, that could be a 45 minute ride.

01:04:54That could be a 12. I see that it's 14 minutes actual drive time. If there's no traffic, the GPS figures out that logical way. But I know if I want to be there today and I have 30 minutes to get there, if I leave every day, I'm never, I'm never going to be late. Yeah. And it's longer. Yeah. It doesn't take into part human nature as well, where it's like, he's like, some people would rather not stop and drive 15 miles an hour all the way there, even if they had to go three miles farther than do the other way, because people don't like stop and go traffic. They would rather just go, but the GPS has no idea. Yeah. So I thought the most, I thought the thing about the book that was most, that I took the most out of is that people don't make decisions for the things we think people make decisions for. And I'm going to say this because it doesn't, I don't think I wrote this down right, but I tried four times to dictate this into my phone while I was driving. Hey Siri, do this. And now Siri is actually doing it.

01:05:55This is David Ogilvie's quote. Yes. People don't do it, know what they like or do. Yeah. It said people don't say what they feel, feel what they say or say what they think. Yep. Like they unconsciously do things and they have no idea why, but there is a reason why it's just not the reason you think it's why. Ogilvie on advertising is a great follow up from this. It's from the fifties. We did that one in our tall boy book club too. That one was really good. Yeah, it's a lot. And there's no audio version of it at all. It was, what did you say it was printed in the fifties or something? It's old. And it's lots of pictures. I don't know how to read. Yeah. What is that? That one's really good. You did going back to people, not saying what they mean and if you've ever been married or in a relationship for more than six months, you know that because you've asked someone, Hey, where do you want to go eat? And they go, I don't care. I'm like, Hey, what about this place? I don't really like that. Hey, what about, so you do care. I mean, you just pick, you just pick. If you pick correctly, then you're a good job. I did pick.

01:06:58Until you've been in a relationship, you never realized that it's possible to pick a wrong parking space. All right. Nevermind. How am I supposed to know what shoes you're wearing? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that hits way too home. Yeah. And I love you, honey. I bit my tongue. We figured out over the years. I think once you get past 15, then you can, you can kind of get past, but there's a, there's a period of time there where you're like, what the f**k? Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I'm wondering if we're looking for the parking spot where we could catch the shuttle bus to the grocery store. Why are we parking back here? There was a space up there, but then again, why would somebody sit? I, I all the time, park in the back of the parking. I just parked the car and I like walking. So I'm like, Ooh, I'll get some extra steps in today. But I have, like, I think 99% of the time there's somebody sitting in the middle of the aisle waiting for somebody to leave. I park wherever the closest spot is, wherever I get a spot. And I don't really care. I always walk by that person. Oh yeah.

01:08:00And I'm like, what are you a Kroger or whatever? Yeah. You're sitting there and you see the car like circling around. Then they're waiting for the front spot. You park in the back and then you walk by and it's like, Oh, they're still loading their groceries. And this guy's just sitting there. Yeah. I'll wait for you. Like, well, thanks for making that guy feel really awkward and hurried. That's awesome. Cause you want that first spot. Yeah. Gentlemen, I know you guys have to go. It is three 30 and nobody listening to this cares what time it is. Cause it's not that time where they are. You just make it up that it's four 25 now. I like his description of the book about time and how you time just goes and happens no matter what one hour is an hour, whether you're being waterboarded or drinking the finest champagne in the world, still an hour, still an hour. It may seem like it takes forever, but we didn't quite do a full hour day, but I know you guys have a full day. Thank you for coming in and joining us. I would obviously one day love to do. You live here, Neil, just to come in and do like a full episode on like marketing. So much fun to just jump into some of that. I want to, I think that everything that you said earlier about social media, about claiming your Google page, about posting pictures on Google, about responding to reviews, we could do an hour on those four things that would help.

01:09:19And I do the same thing cause I'm Justin's brother when I look at it, cause I do a lot of research, I have people in the show and I look up their stuff and I'm like, you haven't claimed your Yelp page. Like how have you not claimed your Yelp page? You haven't claimed your Google page. Like these are tied to Apple and Siri and Apple maps. And if people ask Siri for something, it's going to pull up that picture from Yelp of the yellow plate with a bloody meatball on it. It looks like something got massacred on there cause it's a customer picture and not one of yours. Yeah. You can be very intentional with that stuff. And I think it's something that's relatively easy for people to do super easy, but I think nobody, not nobody, there's a lot of companies that come out and help people do that. But restaurant tours don't typically they're, they're chefs, the chef partners that are in kitchens dealing with why this person has another flat tire for the fourth day in a row and they can't make it to work. You just touched on my number. What's the number one issue with restaurants and hospitality these days? Time or what? I mean, what's the number one issue that they run in with the most of the time, with getting properly staffed. Okay.

01:10:19So when y'all are going to hire somebody, uh, do a good bit of the time do you ever go and check their socials and stuff to see, you know, but we, we do that as business owners, when we hire somebody, we do that. Yeah. But let's turn this to the other side, even just kind of going off the book. Why do business owners not put more stock in curating their stuff to look good, to be a place that people would want to work at because every employee that any bar restaurant would ever need is in the phone of every employee that they do have. So at this day and age, especially with, uh, people, you know, below a certain age, I'd say 30 or below, every job falls in two categories. Either it's a great place to work. I could make more money, but I work with good people. Our owners, managers are good folks. I work with a good team of people. They make it fun. Or I make really, really good money, but everything else about it sucks. I don't like going there. The managers or bosses are really jerks, but I make too good a money. I, you know, and that's those are the two places where every job falls. So, I mean, I just see it all the time of the amount of people I'm like, do you look like a place people would want to work? You know, because they're looking at your stuff too. You know, they want to tell people they work there. They want to share your specials.

01:11:34They want to share the good news of what's going on in your, you know, your place of business. And it's not just hospitality, it's anybody. And the amount of people that don't post, but four times a year on their Facebook or those things, it's like, you don't have to be everywhere all the time, but what you are doing, make it look like a place that like our parents or grandparents were very proud to work at where they work. It's not that difficult to be that place. Other people are very, very proud to work at too. And I just think it's overlooked. I mean, on a regular basis, people don't look at it. They look at it from one direction, but you have to look like it's a fun place where people would actually want to show up and work there. You know, all stuff that is really easy to do. Yeah. You have to be intentional and you have to put a plan together and you say, this is what we're going to do. And then let's do it. Uh, like I said, love to do a full episode with you, Neil, patch Justin. If you want to do it to Justin, he's here. He can come in here. Thank you guys for coming in and talking about alchemy. Thank you for introducing me to alchemy. Thank you for all that you, uh, you guys have done. And, um, Stephen, thank you for joining us.

01:12:36You're welcome. It's a great book. What's your next book? Uh, the next book is, I don't know what it's called. Are you writing this book or reading it? It's a novel I'm writing. Uh, no, it is, um, Dr. Alex Jehunger. Okay. No, he is a Nashville guy. I know Stephen Younger is also another off COVID dude here in Nashville, right? Yeah. Dr. Alex, uh, hold on. I'm going to look up the name of his book. Dr. Alex Jehunger. Uh, he is the, was the leader of, uh, the COVID response in Nashville, through our entire thing. Uh, got to talk to him a few weeks ago and the nicest guy in the world. And he was, he was eating one of the restaurants. And, uh, I had said, you, you look like the doctor that's been on TV and he, and he kind of put his head down. His wife goes, please don't spit on our food. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the situation. I said, I'm baffled.

01:13:37Like I'm so impressed by what you were tasked to do. I mean, leader leading a city through something that's never happened before and having to go on TV every day and give an update in the decision making process. I go, the leadership that you've had to, I go, you could write a book and he goes, I actually did write a book. I just wrote one. I went, no kidding. And he goes, yeah. And I said, well, I'd love to read it. And I go, I do a book club. I love, he goes, well, I'd love to do the book, do the book and I'll come in and we'll do all, I'll talk about it. We'll have people on and we'll talk about the show. So I was like, hell yeah. So the next book we're going to do is by Dr. Alex Jahunger. It is a doctor's diary. It's called a doctor's diary from the pandemic hotspot, a doctor's diary from the pandemic. You can find on Amazon, uh, or he has it at a Parnassus books right there in green hills. So go get it at Parnassus books. And if you want to join us to hear Dr. Alex Jahunger, he'll be in studio. So this will not be like a book club. Like we're talking now, this will be live on Facebook and you can interact throughout this book club and talk to him, ask him questions. And we're going to go through, uh, his journey of leadership through the pandemic. Awesome.

01:14:51It's going to be a fun book to do. That's exciting. I'll definitely read that one. Yeah, I'm excited. I haven't read it. It's the first book I haven't read previously, so I'll be doing this. I'm excited to start reading the books with you as we've kind of built an audience for this thing. I wanted to read books. I knew I could talk about a little bit, uh, but I really appreciate everybody coming in and talking with me. These guys have a safe trip back to Colorado and thanks for coming in today. Yeah, for sure. Thanks guys. There it is Brandon's book club for the month of March and April. So now May's book club is live. You heard at the beginning of the show, Dr. Alex Jahangir has been in studio. He's going to be in studio. Go follow us at Brandon's book club on Facebook and then follow us at Nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio on Instagram. We'll be posting updates and I'll be talking about it here. Lots of fun things to come. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for reading. If you'd like to discuss this book further with me, if you didn't get a chance to be a part of this, I'm happy to have that conversation with you. Look me up.

01:15:55DME at Brandon underscore NRR on Instagram. I'd love to talk to you. That is all we have for today. Hope that you are being safe out there. Have a great weekend with Taylor Swift and Trevor Noah and to all of our graduates out there. Congratulations. Big, big weekend in Nashville. You guys please be safe. Love you guys. Bye.