Brad Hopkins, Brycen Hopkins, and Ollie Gabriel

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01:07Protect your restaurant business by contacting them today. It's so easy, and when any of those situations happen, what you don't want to do is get and dial an 800 number and be put on hold to talk to somebody you have to explain your business to. That is why you call Matthew Clements, Matthew Clements at Robin's Insurance. When any of those scenarios happen, you pick up the phone, you dial 863-409-9372. Matthew answers, he goes, how can I help you? You tell him your problem, he's your friend, you know him. Why would you not have an agent that you work with every single day? Any of these situations right here, you need guidance, you need support, and Matthew Clements and his team at Robin's Insurance are there to provide it. You should call him today. I'm going to put that number down one more time. That's 863-409-9372. Call Matthew Clements today. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City.

02:13Now 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 going to be a really fun episode. First of all, hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday if you celebrate Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, whatever it might be. Hopefully your holiday was amazing, and you got to spend time with family where you wanted to, and hopefully now you're back into the normal life. I wanted to put this episode out on Christmas Eve, but I didn't have time to because I just ... a lot of family, a lot of things going on. This is an episode today with a family. We have Bryson and Brad Hopkins. Brad was an offensive tackle for the Tennessee Titans, all-pro and a pro-bowl offensive tackle.

03:15It was 13 years. He was actually ... him and Steve McNair were the last two Titans who were Oilers. They were the last ones that held out who were on the original Oilers team. He was one of the guys that helped get the NFL to Nashville. Just an awesome guy. He made it one yard away from winning a Super Bowl. We also have his son, Bryson Hopkins, who played for the Rams. Also, now Bryson won a Super Bowl with the Rams. That dynamic of, oh, so you won the Super Bowl with the team that beat your dad's team that kept him ... I wanted to get into a lot of that. They're here because they're opening a new restaurant. It's called B. Hopps Sports Zone. It's going to be in the Wedgwood Entertainment District. We also are joined with Ollie Gabriel. He is the CEO of Aura Holdings Group, who does the Aura Lounge, and they're doing B. Hopps. This place is going to be super cool. I wish we spent more time talking about the place because I wanted to talk football.

04:18I wanted to ask him what's going on with our team now, what's happening with everything going on. There's a really funny moment at the end of the interview where you'll just have to listen. Listen to the whole thing because I get sentimental because I can't imagine what it would be like having a boy, a kid, and I do have two, who won the Super Bowl, who did something that I did and reached this pinnacle. So it was really cool getting to get into all that stuff with them. I think you're going to enjoy it. Back to the holiday talk, I think I'm done. We got one more party tomorrow, and then I think I'm done with the holidays. Leaving a job the week before Thanksgiving, going through all this stuff. I have had amazing, amazing traction and met with some amazing people, and I can tell the great work we're doing, and it feels good. But there's so much circle back after the holiday stuff, and I'm so hungry, I'm ready to get going and get out there. So if you're somebody who's out there, who's ready to get going, you want to start this new year off the right way, go to naranashville.com.

05:26Click the contact button. I would love to come see you. I want to give a shout out to Hunter. Hunter is out in, what the heck is that? It's Mount Juliet Hermitage. I think it's in Hermitage. I don't know, but Emerald Bakery out there. What a cool place. I had never been out there before. I got some sourdough, went and met with Hunter, his wife Wendy, his dad Johnny was there. This guy, everybody who walked in the door, he knew their name. One of those kind of places. If you're looking for great bread, if you're like want to go pick up bread every day as a consumer, Emerald Bakery was absolutely delicious. So good. Great coffee. I just wanted to give him a shout out at the beginning of the show, but I'm ready to get the damn thing going. I'm ready to get this year started. I'm ready to put all this holiday stuff behind us. It's been a unique holiday season over at the Still Household and I am ready to move forward. I'm not going to lie. Are you with me out there? Are you with me? What are you wanting to tackle in 2026?

06:28Go follow us on Instagram at Nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio and I'm going to put up on my stories a poll and I'm just curious, what are you guys looking for? And that's going to be up all day on Sunday. Place your vote. I'd love to know. I'd love to know where the pulse of people is right now. Feel free to message me. Tell me what your struggles are. The biggest thing you're worried about in 2026 is doesn't mean I need to call you and fix it. I'm just curious what I want to check everybody's pulse. Let me know what you're feeling. It would be super helpful to me and I'm just curious if you'd like to tell me how you're feeling on the podcast. Also DM me. Let me know. I'd love to get you on and hear your story. There's so many amazing people out there that I've never even met that I'm sure they have amazing stories and I want to get like like Matt Ramis. How great was that episode? That guy's sharpest attack. I love meeting him. How fun is that? Okay.

07:29Last week of the year, New Year's resolutions, January 1st, I'm going to have Stephanie Still. She is my sister. She owns Killjoy. She's going to be our talking about she gave a TED talk about how alcohol steals your joy. We get in some science behind it and what dry January could mean and what Killjoy is up to and there's lots of fun sober hangs happening. Alcohol free hangs happening. I wouldn't say they're completely sober because there's THC beverages and a lot of adaptogens and all these other things. So you can go hang out with a bunch of people who are also not drinking and that's a lot of fun. I'm telling you it really is. So Stephanie Still is going to be joining us next on New Year's Day. That episode is going to come out on New Year's Day. Hopefully you guys are being safe. Hopefully you finished the year out strong. Go follow us on Instagram and vote in our polls. I'll have a bunch of these out this month, this week and if you would like me to come by and talk to you about whatever it is you're doing, please go to NaraNashville.com and pull out the little contact me tab.

08:29Also January 13th, we are doing the Nara Connect Winter Social. If you own a restaurant and you want to go, go to NaraNashville.com and just register. We'd love to have you. There's going to be food, there's going to be booze, there's going to be non-alcoholic stuff and there's going to be a bunch of restaurant owners just hanging out. There's no sales pitch, there's no program. We're going to be giving away our Fantasy Football Trophy this year. That'll be a quick little thing, but that'll be a lot of fun. So we'd love to see you at Perrin Bakery on Sidco Drive in Berry Hill, Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7. Come and go as you please. You have to stay. It's not like you have to come at 4 o'clock and stay till 7. If you want to see everybody, I would recommend doing that. Feel free to come, spend 30 minutes, spend an hour, whatever, hang and then go do whatever you got to do. I would love to see as many people there as possible and you just got to go register or if you don't register, we'll figure it out. But enjoy this episode. Enjoy your last week of 2025. Make it a good one. You're listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio.

09:30Super excited today to welcome you to Nashville Restaurant Radio. This is a very exciting show for you today. Most of the time I'm talking to restaurants that you know about, that you've been to, but today we're talking with three guests in studio. We're going to be talking about a brand new concept coming over to, is it technically Wedgwood Houston? Is that the Wedgwood area? It's in Wedgwood Houston, the area, but the district is called the Wedgwood Entertainment District. The Wedgwood Entertainment District. I'm almost afraid to tell people where this is because it's like my own personal spot. I have Nashville SC season tickets and I park there and it's like my favorite little spot to park. I guess everybody's going to know that now. Welcome into the studio. We have Bryson and Brad Hopkins, it's you guys. I love you. Oh, okay. And Ollie, and they are going to be opening Bee Hops and we have Ollie, what's your last name?

10:32Gabriel. Ollie Gabriel and he is with Aura. Holdings Group. Holdings. I was going to say Aura Entertainment. Why am I drawing blank right now? It's all good. Having three people in studio is a lot. It's early. Grace Peek is also here and she doesn't want to be on the show, but she's going to be hanging out making sure that we don't say anything terrible, right? She's a buzzer. Nope, can't say that. We all know Brad Hopkins as the all-pro offensive tackle for the Tennessee Titans and Houston Oilers and his son Bryson Hopkins, Super Bowl champion son Bryson Hopkins from the Los Angeles Rams. Welcome in, guys. How are we doing today? Doing great. How are you, Bryson? I'm doing fantastic. Ollie? Fantastic. All right, we're all fantastic. This is great. I want to start off with, I want to talk about football. Is that okay? Come on. What the hell is going on with the Titans? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I'm going to let you take care of this one.

11:33Well, I mean, I'm a Titans fan and I have my, as a layman fan who only gets to hear- I want to hear your first, what are your thoughts first? What's going on with the Titans? I don't know. It's got to be leadership to me. It seems like a leadership issue because I feel like at the NFL, the level of talent is there. It's how do you motivate those people? How do you get them? It's systems, it's processes. Something in leadership is broken because we can't get this elite talent to work on the same page. Yeah, you're 100% right. I was spoiled when I came into the league in 1993 because we had a leadership council full of dudes that had been on the team for dozens of years. That just doesn't happen nowadays because of free agency, because of the competitive market that we see in sports. Players have the ability and the desire to go to other places. Very rarely do you see a person that had the career that I did where I played all 13 seasons with the only franchise I ever played for.

12:33That's incredible. It's very rare. And that does, it says a lot about what you're talking about, leadership. Because those guys that are already in the building and have supplanted themselves as the foundation for a decade, you don't need to understand how this thing works. You just need to get in where you fit in. So we have guys like Bruce Matthews and Mike Munchack who are wearing gold jackets to this day. Warren Moon, who spent 90% of his career as an oiler. The leadership was already established. We heard Jeffrey Simmons mention that a couple of weeks ago, that he hopes that the new coach that they hire is a leader innately because that's what they need. They need someone that sets the standard, that sets the tone, creates the culture, and that's one of the things that has been missing. I think that the most consistent version of that would have been when Mike Frable was here. But unfortunately, this is a results-based industry. And if you don't win ball games, if you don't compete, if you don't win the division, then people start calling for your head. And that's what happens. Remember, there's a Dr. Pepper commercial out there.

13:33It's a joke. You see all these people get on this coach's lawn, right? And they're basically calling for him to be fired because he didn't win by enough. He won, but he didn't win by enough, right? They had the hot seat. They rolled that out there. They had a billboard that was made. It was like Fire Coach Johnson or whatever his name was. And of course, he pops the garage door and shows all these cases to Dr. Pepper, and they retract all of their feelings. But it's a joke to say that when the public, when the fans don't necessarily see what they want to happen in a franchise, they'll call for your job in a minute. And that's the reason why we see so much volatility when it comes to coaches being in one area. You're only going to be in one spot for at least two years. That's the average, until something happens. It doesn't matter. If you don't have to head coach, then you're probably going to get blown out like everybody else does when that situation happens. So that seems like that's the biggest problem to me. Because you look at what variable is doing right now in New England, and he's up for Coach of the Year this year. He won Coach of the Year in Tennessee. And now, I mean, two years later, and he's on the chopping block.

14:33To me, that's the leadership problem is that when you see the player, you see the coach executing and doing a great job, you're going to have off seasons. Things are going to happen. You have to build. And if you don't give him time to do that, if you start listening to what the fans say versus what you know and you see in the locker room, how do you ever create continuity as a team? Yeah, I'm going to bring Bryson in on this, because Bryson was in Los Angeles when they transitioned from Jared Goff, who was a draft pick of the Rams. Yeah, first round. He traded him to Detroit and brought in Matthew Stafford. Now, ironically, and he'll tell you a little bit about that journey, Matthew was a leader, wasn't he? He was, wholeheartedly. Matthew came in. Now, I will say we had Sean McVay. Sean McVay was a great coach there already. He knew what the game plan was. He just needed the players. He needed the pieces. Matthew Stafford was new. How to win on a losing team, if that makes sense. I took the best of each lesson that he could learn. And he made the most of it.

15:33Obviously, when you come to a new team and you win a Super Bowl within the first two years of you being there after you've played 13 years and lost, you know, not majority. I think he lost majority of his games at Detroit, 70 and 90, something like that. But I want to say something optimistic as well. Call this a prophecy if you want. But so that same that same situation where I got to L.A. and they were building SoFi, they were building the new stadium. And I'll give a lot of credit to what y'all said. I agree with that mostly. But I'm going to say something like I said, optimistic in this stadium that is coming into Nashville is going to create an aura and and I like the way you did that. That was nice. Shameless plug. That was nice. Play it off. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Grace like that one, too. It is going to bring an aura about the city and the aura is already growing.

16:37But I want to say that what that did for the players in terms of hearing just the intensity of the crowd, like because they were excited for the season, you know, this is a new season, new team, you know, as tangible as that is, it creates an intangible asset. And that is the aura, like I said, of the fans and of the city. And when you play behind that, it's a different feeling. So I can imagine. Yeah. And if we're going to get a good draft pick again this year, we were going to get a more top talent, which would be amazing in a new coach and a new stadium. I can see it coming. You know, the unfortunate part is if we were to have hosted the Super Bowl in twenty twenty seven when the new stadium opens, they did it in Tampa. Tampa hosted the Super Bowl that year and the Bucs went. They did it in Los Angeles. Los Angeles hosted the Super Bowl and the Rams went. If Tennessee were hosting the Super Bowl when they opened that stadium with all that energy you talk about, think about that. The last time we went to the Super Bowl was what? When we opened the Delphia Coliseum.

17:38Really? Was that the year? Yes. That was the very first year we played in the Delphia Coliseum was the year we went to the Super Bowl. So that just plays right along with what Bryson was saying about the energy of the fans supporting the team coming out almost ravenously to just really want to see something happen. We won. We won the division. We actually didn't win the division. We actually came in second. We had to be Jacksonville three times to go to the Super Bowl. They won the division at 14 and two and we were second at 13 and three. But we won 13 games after going eight and eight for three straight years as we transitioned from Houston. So there's something to that stadium. So that's it. Hey, I love it. I think that, you know, for a team like this that's losing, I think in life, the most lessons come from losses. Like when my kids play soccer, they get excited when they win and they played indoor soccer last week and they won like 12 nothing. And they leave the game like how we we killed them. And it's like we're a better team. You guys were bigger, stronger, faster like you beat up on kids.

18:38You were bigger than I mean, it really was. But then they get their ass kicked and it's amazing how many excuses start coming out. And it's like that's where the lessons are. That's where the real good conversations of what part did you play in letting that guy by you? And what can you do differently next time in order to prevent that? And I think when you lose a lot, there's that there's a balance between being the this is who we are and believing that or there's a lot of lessons to be learned in that that you can grow from. Does that make sense? I mean, you know, Ollie, when you're in the studio and things aren't necessarily in tune with what your vision is, you work harder on creating that vision that you see than you would have if it worked great. You just can repeat, rinse and repeat. Right. Yeah, no, absolutely. I totally agree. I mean, I think that when you when you have the seeming setbacks, they present the best opportunities to have the mirror to where you can really see yourself in different ways and ask yourself the right questions.

19:39So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're going to get into Ollie. You got because we got two completely different industries here, but I think there are all three industries when you talk about football, you talk about entertainment and music world and then restaurants. Right. I just want my last thing I want to say. And then I want to ask you guys a quick question. I thought this year when we cut Tyler Lockett or when Tyler Lockett left, I thought that was the biggest statement the Titans made all year long, because when he came in, he was so jacked to be a part of this team. And I felt like he was a leader every post. Man, let's go. Kim Ward. Here we go. Here we go. I felt like that was an indication of leadership. I'm coming in. This isn't what I expected. And that that was one of those things to me. I don't know. But what it did, though, is it showcased Mike Borganzi, the general manager's draft, because then you saw Ellic IU Manor. You saw Gunnar Helm. You saw D.K., a chairman D.K. become huge parts of that offense because they did get rid of the bigger, more known faces, right, the veterans.

20:41And it just showed, I mean, from almost the first round where Kim Ward was taken to the fourth round with those two of those dudes were already taken in that third round, fourth round, just how impactful his draft was. So it allowed them to kind of grow in essence. Well, I want to say thank you, Brad. I was part of the vote. Yes. On the tight when I was a kid, I mean, I was a young adult growing up. I remember you. Thank you. I remember you. I was here. I came up as one of the contingents from Houston to help vote that referendum in in nineteen hundred and ninety six. I love saying that, by the way. I was a senior in high school during this time, and I was so I wasn't a big NFL guy. I'm from Southern. I was an Angels fan. And, you know, I just professional sports wasn't my thing. We lived in Nashville. Yeah. And so when the Titans came, I really got into the NFL and I went to probably eight games a year. I mean, I was there all the time, every game. I had friends. We would go to all the games. I was at the first game after nine eleven when they had the stealth bombers fly over. And I remember tears streaming down my face.

21:41The Music City miracle was one of those. I remember the Music City miracle moment for me. Like, I remember nine eleven. Like, it was that. I mean, I'm not trying to. I'm just saying memories. Were you in the stadium? No. OK. You like five hundred thousand other people that say that they were there. I wasn't. I was not there. I know you were. I'm just saying. Seventy two thousand. The stadium seats sixty seven. Seventy thousand people. Right. But when you asked about the history of that five hundred thousand people were there, half a million people were there. Half a million people saw the Music City miracle. I was in Murfreesboro. I was at MTSU and I was watching the game at a friend's house. It was like a little split level condo kind of thing. And I remember I ran up and down the stairs screaming fifteen times. Just like just up and down the stairs. And I was like sweating, like crying. Like I cannot believe that those moments and that team were so special to me. And just I you're the one of the main reasons being a part of that was there too.

22:41He was just in the stands at like five years old for four or five years old. Yeah. So thank you for that. And thank you for helping introduce me to football and that team. Well, you're welcome. So much to me. And it's just amazing. So we want to create moments like that. But imagine instead of being at that little complex that you're at, you're at. So I've been visiting a lot of restaurants recently. And one of the comments I hear a lot is, well, we just post online. We do marketing ourselves. And guys, you need to speak with a professional. And that is where Miles hospitality marketing comes in. She works exclusively with independent restaurants and small hospitality groups, helping you build a smarter, more strategic marketing plan without hiring a full time team. The best part owner Christine Miles brings over 25 years of restaurant marketing experience to the table. She's worked with everyone from beloved neighborhood spots to national chains. And she knows what works in real world restaurants.

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26:56And we were providing our service for one of our partners. And it was through that relationship that we were presented this idea of opening a sports bar. It wasn't in our purview. You know, we were staying in our lanes of just expanding our business like we are today. It still exists and we're, you know, we're happy to be a part of that. But what came to us was the ability to be business owners in the hospitality space. Bryson and I, obviously, we don't have hospitality in our background, so there's a lot of learning that is a part of this whole endeavor. But just like when we were playing football, we were committed to being the best versions of ourselves to make this thing a success. So it was just presented to us that we could be a part of it by name branding and the uniqueness of our story being two father and father son having NFL experience. And also, like we just talked about for the last 10, 15 minutes, part of the history of sports in Nashville. It's not like sports didn't exist here before we got here, but the NFL and its and its its relationships have helped spark what you see now.

28:05Downtown is the new Nashville. Oh, 100 percent. OK, so with that, we were part of the very beginning of that. And with that, we thought and our partners thought this would be a great opportunity to create a unique environment where we showcase the history of sports, but also do it in a venue that entertains like we're where Ali's background is and also provides good food. I remember telling some people that we're moving into the Wedgwood, Houston district and those people that live in neighborhoods in that community, they love sports, but they love eating more so. So they're like, hey, whatever you do, we know the beer is going to be cold, but put some good stuff in there so we can walk down and have a meal. You know, I mean, because that's what we nowadays when you're talking about Nashville being a destination spot, they want to go someplace that's entertaining, but also has a good meal because we love entertaining, going out and doing that kind of stuff. And when we're talking about the Wedgwood, you're talking about, well, I don't want to try and say where, you know, Wedgwood, Houston is whatever else. We are the most visible part of Wedgwood, Houston, because we're right off the freeway, right off the freeway.

29:06I mean, when you pull up, you're going to see Aura in all of its glamour right at the Wedgwood exit going north into town. And we're the last exit before you get into all the congestion, before you get to Devon Rand and Broadway. It's so easy. It's the best location ever. It is. It's the most visible part of Wedgwood, Houston, right off the freeway. A hundred thousand cars pass by every single day. And if you're wondering, like, why is he talking about, remember if you drive on 65 before you get to Wedgwood, you would see the Mac. There was a Mac store, Mac authority, right? It was right there. You see this big Mac sign and you're like, what is that? That's that area right there. So when you get off of Wedgwood, you almost make a U-turn. You get off of Wedgwood and make a right. You're going to turn right and it's almost immediately you're going to turn right and just keep going straight. And there's all kinds of cool stuff back. That's where the Aura, that's where Aura is. That's where Aura Lounge is. And that's where Beehops is going to be. A hundred percent. And that's it. That's it. Lots of free parking. Yeah, there's going to be parking available.

30:07There's parking available. I like it. Easy parking. Obviously, we're not going to be comparative to paying forty dollars an hour for parking downtown. If I want to go out to eat on a Tuesday, if I want to go check it out, if there's a Preds game I want to watch and I got one of my options, I can go to this place where I can park and not have to pay thirty dollars. Exactly. And I can go into a place, wall to wall TVs. Tell me the idea behind what is it going to be like inside? I'm going to get to you, Ollie. I swear we're going to do it. I'd like Ollie to go ahead and take this because Ollie is more of the development of combining the sports and the experience that you're going to have when you go in there. So let them know your vision about what Beehops is. Let's go back to you. You're an entertainer. I started out, yeah, as an entertainer and became an entrepreneur doing that process. But yeah, that's my background. I started out, I just wanted to hear my songs on TV and travel the world and be on stages. I love it.

31:07And you did this for twenty years. I did this for twenty years, yeah, and still doing it. Still doing it. Still very much doing it. And so the idea behind the Aura Lounge was? So the idea behind Aura Lounge was really when I moved to Nashville, I had plans to open a small speakeasy bar that in my vision at that time, it was fifty people, maybe a thousand square feet, a stage for me and a stage that I could invite other people on. You know, so that was the vision. Obviously, real estate is much cheaper here in Nashville than it was in Southern California. It's a thing. It's a thing. So I came here looking for that and through that search of meeting with commercial realtors and the business partner, our other business partner, Micah, who Brad was, Luxnash they were driving and how they met, we lived in the same neighborhood that I moved to.

32:08So when I was here, I was like, hey man, you know any commercial realtors? Because I was meeting with different guys and they didn't have anything in my specs of what I was looking for. And he was like, yeah, I think I know a guy. And, you know, at this time we were just buddies. We were just working out together and stuff. So, you know, it was really more of a, you know, a personal relationship. And through that, in just a series of synchronicity, I met a guy. I was at SoHo and ran into the owner of that complex there who also owns a lot of other properties around land around Nashville. And that's how I discovered that area. I say discovered because it's always been there, obviously. But my first thought when I first, when he first took me back there, immediately in my mind, coming from Southern California, I was like, wow, this could be like the Grove. If, you know, if you're familiar with, you know, that area, I just saw like I just saw it like immediately. I just had a vision. I just yeah, I was like, dang, like this is right off the freeway. I lived downtown. Well, I lived not too far from that, but like downtown was like right there.

33:10Sure. And I was just like, this is crazy that nothing is like this isn't it's just industrial. That's like kind of nothing back there. So that's kind of how it started. And when I was shown the district immediately, the division had to get bigger because keep in mind, I was only looking for like a little small thing somewhere. So then my mind started to work. OK, well, how can I like how do I make this work? Now I got to go, you know, pull together a deal. Right. And and that's how the conversation started with my at that time, my friend and my neighbor about, hey, man, I found this thing. Here's what I want to do. And then that's how the vision kept expanding and growing. And here we are. So how did you guys meet? I met Ali through Micah. Yeah, Micah is our other business partner. Actually, our other business partner, Cory Mason, he has a lot of background in the restaurant business. He's probably the catalyst along with Steve Ford for losers. And he was the general manager of Morton's. He's been in the space. And that try out that triad of those three, Cory, Ali and Micah, we just kind of were introduced to the concepts.

34:18You know, I mean, so like I said, we weren't in the very beginning thinking about opening a sports bar. We were just basically worried about getting some cool cars and allowing people to have a great experience and growing and scaling that business. But it just turned into that relationship that Micah and I had introducing me to Cory, introducing me to Ali. And obviously, Bryson was alongside of me for that whole conversation. So it just grew into it. And what I thought was really cool was when Micah presented the idea about B hops, he knew me being, you know, someone that kind of was a part of the very beginning of the NFL being here. But he made sure that it was about a father son situation because there hasn't been a lot mentioned about the fact that he and I both have played in the Super Bowl. You know what I'm saying? Now, ironically, the team that he played for and won the Super Bowl was a team that beat me in the Super Bowl. True. You know, that's right. That's it. The point is Micah thought it'd be an even better story, a more compelling story, something that we could really grow and market is the fact that we have two B hops.

35:24You know what I mean? So it's not B hops. I always say this. It's not B hops. It's Brad hop. It's apostrophe. Yes, it's B hops plural because there's two of us. B hops squared. We thought about that. We thought about that. Like a two in the end. Well, B hops squared would be four because if you do B hops squared. B hops squared. B hops squared. Good point. So we were at the original question I asked you was when you walk into B hops, what's it going to look like? What's the vision? What are we going to experience when we get there? The idea is like if you're watching your games, the big games, you know, in the home of your favorite athletes, it'll feel like family. I mean, going back to the legacy that the Hopkins have and that family vibe. So, you know, there's wall to wall TVs. We have one of the longest bars in Nashville. I think it's a 70 foot bar. 70 feet? Continuous. Almost goes from one end to the other.

36:24That's awesome. Yeah, 70 foot bar. You know, there's a section with some some nice comfy seating, you know, pretty TVs outside pretty much anywhere you look. You got the best seat in the house. But I think overall from just the aesthetic, the bigger part of the feeling that we're, you know, we're creating is that that sense of being at at home. Like it's like if you were watching the game at your favorite athlete's house and they're like, hey, come into my house. Like, oh, here, like, what do you put your feet up? You know, that kind of thing. You know, so, you know, and then also there's an element that is a bit of like a museum in some source because there's gonna be a lot of really cool like memorabilia and like different, you know, maybe highlights and photos of big moments in not just football, but sports history. Now, are we going to have athletes and people in there? Are you going to bring friends with you to watch games there and for meet and greets and stuff like that? Bryson has a connection with the more current athlete.

37:24The 50 plus. I got you. We got the bring in. He's gonna bring in the OGs. Just like you said, and they get just as much love around as anybody. Oh, man. It's gonna be great. But I do have a lot of immediate connections right now with people that are still playing. So we're planning on doing some things around and maybe get a couple of podcasts in the in the bar itself. Oh, nice players, bring them in, be up there, maybe speaking a little bit while you're enjoying dinner. We don't want to be too loud. We know the game's on. But, you know, we got something to say to as well. I never know. But you never know who if I if so, if I take some buddies and we're going to go watch the game there, you never know who you might be watching the game with. And that's the cool part. I never know. Hey, that's Eddie George. Look at that. Oh, my gosh. What's he doing? A lot of this will have some, you know, some intentional items, some activations where we have people in, whether it's artists, you know, in all these space, he works in that and those in those areas, celebrity athletes, those people. But we want those athletes and celebrities to feel like they don't have to be announced when they come.

38:27It's like, hey, what are we doing? Where's there a spot for America? I work. I drive a lot of country music artists, right? And they just want some place to go to watch the game kind of in peace. Yeah, it's a true story. And when I say not in peace, like they don't want to be bothered. It's just like because obviously if you're out in public, you have to and you and your known name, your known brand, people are going to want to just say hi to you. And that's part of of who they are anyway. But the point being, they want to be able to go somewhere and be entertained. You know what I mean? So our peer group is going to definitely take advantage of the venue of Behob's and of course, those people that he's talking about that, you know, are elevated status or maybe a celebrity or something. We want them to feel the exact same as our customers in terms of feeling comfortable at home. Obviously, it's a different experience because you can watch the game at home, but you're not going to have the food. You're not going to have the drinks. You're not going to have the or I did it again in the in the building that we have. I'm going to keep doing that. This guy's good. He's had media training. I can tell. Yeah, I'm the most recent media training. But yeah, we want it to feel and all of that happens from genuine organic relationships that we share with people.

39:36It's not like we're paying people to come into. We want them to come hang out with us and they want to hang out with us like, you know, and they want to hang out with us as well. So is there going to be a private space in there? Will you have like a like a private room? Give like a private dining area where I could do like an event or if I was Keith Urban and I wanted to bring some friends in and watch a game, we could all do that in my private. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so not like a room per se. You'll still be able to experience the ambiance of the bar itself while it might be a little secular. Like Corey, like Ali was mentioned, soft seating that's available. And on that side of the bar, the venue will be more of a of a walled off, not not room per se, but just something that kind of keeps people at a distance. But when you're talking about like, you know, putting on like events and stuff like that and just like, you know, a party or whatever else, you walk 500 feet across the parking lot. And that 10,000 square foot space over there is designed to do whatever you want to do. So that's why, like Ali was mentioning in the very beginning, the entertainment district is going to cover a lot of of of spaces as far as like sports entertainment, you know, corporate outings, you name it.

40:46You make that you turn it. You talked about off the freeway and we pretty much have something for everybody. All right. So what are you going to be actually doing in this restaurant sports bar? Are you going to are you going to be an operator? Are you going to be in the building? And you too, Bryson? Am I going to see you bus and tables? He'll probably be more of like the the front of the house dude where he's making sure everybody is is is accommodated. Me, I'm trying to learn, you know, the in the weeds about it all. Yeah, I had to get my my save surf, surf, save my surf, save my ABC license to be able to slank some beers. You know what I mean? So I went, oh, you are getting in there. So you got it. You got your ABC license. Hell, yeah, you did be able to be Sam from Cheers. You know what I'm saying? So when you walk in like, you know, like Norm comes in, you know, what's shaking? So, you know, I want to just be in that space. And, you know, obviously, do you get that reference, Bryson? You know, I'm going to be honest, I did not.

41:48One of our core values in our restaurant is Cheers. And every time I do an orientation, I say, so Cheers is not about like the television show, you know, Cheers, the show. And they go. Yeah, I don't know what that is. You want to go where everybody knows your name, the whole thing. And they go. Never seen it. And I go, well, good. Well, then never mind everything I just now said. It's crazy when you get like the younger durations like that's that's not. So that's that's part of it, though, you know, when you go into B house, we want, you know, part of the ownership to be visible, especially if our names on the building. You go in and you're going to see Bryson, you're going to see Brad. You know, we're going to be there to to help with that experience and make sure you leave there with a memory. So you're going to be the mayor. Yeah, about all that. Well, the mayor of B hops. I mean, you guys can both be like where you're look, I call it playing restaurant because there's a lot of things in my restaurants. I don't necessarily have a specific role to operate the restaurant. But when I come in, I see it and I can do those things.

42:49But really, I'm walking around talking to people and recognizing regulars. I'm hey, you know, the drink over there. And I just find like the little accoutrements throughout the night. But if I got to bust a table for an hour, wait, and there's two tables that are dirty that need to be clean. Well, I'm going to go do that because I want to get this table ready for you, Dr. Johnson. Like you do that. I might just sit down with Dr. Johnson and take one of the wings off his plate and have a wing, you know, as he's sipping his beer. There you go. That's part of the experience. And then comp it. And then because I because I ate off his plate. You're going to comp every you're going to walk around and buy everybody's food. I like it more. Cory, make sure that we have some of that built in because we obviously want to be able to have first off an epic experience, you know, making sure that people are happy when they come to the door, but also, you know, to show our appreciation for being in the community, trying to create something of a foundation for moving forward. You know, this is this is something we want to have be around for decades. Yeah, I think this is so cool. I'm so excited in that area over there because 17 days a year I'm over there. I'm in Nashville, S.C. season ticket holder and I go to all the games and it's so perfect.

43:55There's another place over there called the Wedge back behind there. And pre-gaming at B-Hops would be perfect. I mean, you want to talk about built in 17 days a year. We can go there and watch on wall to wall TVs. Nashville, S.C. going to be a lot more than 17 games because you got every game. But you could be the home base. Titans games, Preds games are so many sports. Are we getting the baseball team? You know, I heard we were. I heard that there's a stadium maybe in the making, you know, really where they're playing right now. The sounds are playing right now. I don't think you can accommodate MLB now. But but there's a lot of real estate down there on that river. You know, I'm saying you're talking about the new Nissan Stadium and how glorious that's going to be. Why wouldn't you put something like that that could side saddle it? I mean, you still got Bridgestone has done an amazing job. Matter of fact, I watch my fighting a lot. I'm going to whip them Tennessee volunteers in a basketball game. Yeah, I threw that out there. I threw that out there. The right, the right, the right orange one on that day.

44:55I love it. Bridgestone has a terrific environment for not only hockey, but for basketball as well. So I'm not going to call for, you know, the greatest to move to Nashville. But when you talk about the sports venue growing, I definitely see an MLB team. I don't want to take it from Memphis, but that'd be pretty damn cool. That'd be cool. I mean, they might want to come up here by now. Let's come to Nashville. We had all the majors that would be really. We'd be for real then, wouldn't we? We'd be right on par with New York and Houston and L.A. We'd be a real big boy city. Think about it. I know. That scares me, though, also, because Nashville's I'm on the I'm on board now and I don't live in Nashville, so I don't paddle taverns. Have a good time. I go downtown. But I do not recognize downtown anymore. When I was a kid, we used to cruise Second Avenue. Had a Jeep and we'd drive down Second Avenue. What's up? Yeah, I mean, we used to go down Broadway up second and you go down Commerce or Union and then you'd come back down. You just do laps for hours. You just cruise downtown. This is like 96, 97, right as all of this is happening. I don't I went down there the day I was like, this isn't what the hell happened.

45:58This is not and it's great. I guess if you're coming in from another city, it is what it is. Blame it on Ali because Ali came here as a transplant from L.A. I'm from California. I'm originally from California, too. My saving grace is I came from L.A., but I'm from Louisiana. So I'm a country boy. I'm born and raised. So, you know, to L.A. To L.A. That's why he was Jambalaya. I guess next is going to be lower Alabama or something. Where are you going? What are you doing now? This is like you're telling your future. He's like, hell no. So if this is a smashing success, let's just say that this is the premier place to go watch sports and it just takes off. Where do you see it going? What would it do? You see more of these? What do you think? What's a 10 years from now? What's a dream scenario for you? We're not going to hold out from anybody. So if more people want to experience B hops, we're going to do whatever we can in order to instill that. Now, Ali already said earlier that the property values here in Nashville are lower than California.

47:03However, they're they're rising as everything. So we need to get on that, you know, as soon as we can start acquiring property. Yeah, exactly. Now something. But good. No, and I was going to say, like, like to that to that point, I think even to like, you know, when we think about expanding outside of just like the physical location here, there's a certain atmosphere and a certain experience factor that B hops will offer that is unique to sports. It's the sports bars anywhere. So I think there's a there's a huge opportunity to expand, you know, not just in Nashville, but, you know, beyond Nashville with this similar kind of hybrid between, you know, being watching the games with your favorite athletes. We have to be we have to be in tune with that ever changing landscape. You know, as people move here, as people move away, as people just, you know, come in and out of the city of Nashville, we have to be in tune with with what they would want, not only from a sports venue, but from an entertainment standpoint. You know, artists come and go all the time. We have to be able to be in tune with what people want to see, what people want to experience and then be fluid, be flexible in understanding exactly the best way to to create an experience that people want to continue to see.

48:15And not only do we want people to obviously that have been in this city ever since it started seeing the growth, but for the new people moving in, you know, we want we want something for them to to understand, hey, you know what? I just moved here like six months ago and I went over to this place called B hops and it was incredible. And they're telling their people about it. So and I think we have an advantage, especially because of this team that we have drafted together that have that have come together by God's will, because you would have never thought this team would have would have been together the way that we are. But just like a football team, any other sports team out there, there's adversity and there's things you have to adapt to. I think that we have all the tools and resources in order to do that. So in terms of providing that environment that Ali speaks of, we want it to be genuine. We want it to be real. We want to you to feel that we care for your experience and we care about making it better, care about making improvements. We know just like you said earlier that you learn most when you lose, not that we're going to have a lot of losses, but we're going to take every lesson that we can that we can take and get the most out of it because, you know, that's a good segue.

49:26Yeah. There's a lot of vision going on here. Execution is a different animal. You said you went and got your ABC license, serve safe, certified. What do you most what do you where do you think your opportunities are? What are you excited to learn? What are you excited to fail doing? You know, being an NFL player is a unique situation. Incredibly. What you're doing is you're you're positioning yourself for your entire youth to be able to have an opportunity to play sports, right? And then just like that, it's gone. So part of being an athlete is the transition into the real world. And when I say the real world, it's not like we're living in some sort of bubble or whatever else. But the reality is you don't see 60 year olds playing football. You can't play football until you don't see any 40 year olds playing football. Well, tell Philip Rivers that you don't see many. There are.

50:26I was making the joke. Is he playing? He's come back. Is he coming back? Yeah. Danny Dimes went down and they just went by. I saw the headline. I saw the headline that they were going to work him out. I didn't know he was actually going to come play. But the point being, and I'll let Bryson speak to this as well. I played 13 seasons. And in some instances, that's a curse because I had 13 years of less job experience than people that came out of college when I did. They're probably doing right now the things that either A, their degree required them to do, or they found a job that now they can take until their retirement is an option for them. But for me, I was 35 years old playing the same sport that I played since I was 15 years old. And there's no job experience in that. It's like being arrested, blocking and tackling is not a part of anybody else's job description once you leave the sport. And your body is like Father Time is undefeated for a reason, right? Yes and no. I mean, we all know that while it's not a specific trade, you know, like restaurant industry, what you're really good at is executing on fundamentals.

51:36You understand the primary thing that it's not about the reverse dunk every day. It's the bounce pass. It's learning how to dribble. It's learning how to see the field. And whatever you go into at that point, you're preconditioned to seeing, okay, so if I can execute on the Xs and Os of whatever industry it is, you're going to be successful. That's it. You have that job experience. Sports at this level, at the level that Bryson and I played, it's really about technique. Yeah. Because your body gets older. You're not able to do the same things that you did when you were younger. I couldn't jump near as high or run as fast in my 30s as I could in my 20s, so I had to use my brain a lot of the times. And those are the things, the processes that you take into the business sector. So, sure, the experience that we both have as athletes, we will then transition into being entrepreneurs because we do have a standard that's set about working with people. Think about that. I've worked with a group of 70 to 100 people ever since I was in college, you know, and for 13 years professionally, which meant I had to understand exactly what my role was to play in there.

52:40You know, I wasn't throwing the football. I wasn't getting interceptions. I wasn't tackling anybody. My job was to block. But also understanding that I played a pivotal role in our team's success. That's the same approach that I have to have in this business. I'm sorry. You said that and I thought, could you come back? Yeah. If we could get somebody to block for the quarterback, that would be really awesome right now if we could do that. I mean, he says no. I took it way off track. I'm sorry. I started laughing. I was like, man, we could use that right now. Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, you had a role to do and you did it well. How does that translate to a restaurant? Going into it, what are you seeing right now? How does all of that translate? You can jump in, Oli, too. How does that translate into what you're going to be doing? Yeah, I think to Brad's point, the real direct translation is knowing how to be a great team player. And I think these guys, they've demonstrated obviously the ability to add tremendous value to their team so they can win.

53:48And I think that in anything that you do, whether it's a band or whether it's a sports team or it's a restaurant or anything like that, right, it's all about people. It's all about relationships. So I was in the military myself. So we have a lot in common in the sense of like you got to know how to work with other guys and everyone, you know, iron sharpens iron. So being around Brad and Bryson, you know, in this time that we've been working, it's definitely iron sharpening iron. So I'm really inspired about the future of like where their legacy goes and seeing B hops. And so, yeah, I think that you guys are perfect candidates to make excellent restaurant tours. And I think athletes, musicians are both these industries intertwined really well. Let me tell you why. I think that it's unpredictable. I can't every day people say, why do you work in the restaurant? Because you know what? Every day is a new fucking day.

54:48I don't know what's going to happen. I wake up today and I have a game plan and it gets blown to shit by nine o'clock in the morning every like every day. I look at my emails and I'm like, well, I was going to do this today. And when you're playing football, it's the same thing. You have a game plan, but then there's a fumble. There's a bad snap. There's somebody gets hurt. And all of a sudden your game plan changes. And do you go back to the sideline, put your head in your hand and go, oh, we're going to lose. This is over. You figure it the F out. You go back and you have to lead a team through that. And that is every day in a restaurant. It's every day in your industry as well. And walking into that being preconditioned mentally to walk in every day and go, no matter what happens today, we're going to get through it. And we're going to create these experiences. We're going to keep it going. It's weak willed people that come in and they go, oh, this is never going to work. But it doesn't work.

55:48No, that's one of the things that's also like a credit to athletes and entertainers that we work well under stress because they are stressful environments. Like you mentioned, I mean, I watched a performance the other day where the guitar string broke right before he's supposed to start doing a gig. Right. So he's on the fly trying to make this thing work while still maintaining this, like, you know, obviously the atmosphere that he's about to perform in front of. Same thing can be said about a play. We don't know how the outcome of a game is going to be. You've got to play 60 minutes. That's what determines it. But like you said, the fluctuations, the stress that comes involved with that, you know, athletes and entertainers know how to best, you know, work in that space and make sure we get to the other side. It's that winning mindset, I think. And like you said earlier, you know, mindset is everything. You know, if you have a one in your mind, then you can never win in real life. So I love being around these guys because they're both winners, not just on the field that demonstrated, but in their mind, because that's the only way they would have been able to win.

56:48My favorite quote of all time is from Henry Ford says, whether you think you can do a thing or you can't do a thing, you're right. Yeah. And I tell my kids that all the time and he's like, Dad, I can't do it. And I go and look at him. He goes, I know whether you think you can or you think you can't. You're right. And I go, so do you think you can or do you think you can't? He's like, I'm just going to fail. And I go, and then we're going to learn lessons from that. And we're going to keep going. And that's that's like you have to have that mindset with everything. If you think I can't do it like, well, you're right. You can't do it. I think part of having that, too, is the so that right there transitions me into thinking about perseverance and just getting through, you know, toughen it out, but also having a passion for what you do is so much more different than feeling like you have an obligation to do something. Because when you have a passion to do it, you're going to go above and beyond completing that task, making sure that all your boxes are checked. But when you just have an obligation, your boxes get checked a little bit easier, you know, because you don't have to think about outside of yourself.

57:49So in terms of me, I started playing football when I was a junior in high school. I played one year in sixth grade. Honestly, I was good. I hated it. I was going to that's part of my questioning was, did you grow up loathing or loving football? I loved watching my dad play. Now, I wasn't the most attentive child, you know, in terms of like being a five year old at the stadium, I'm not locked in to every play. Like, what's he doing? Dude, did you see that block? He chopped him in the corner and he came this way. Like, I can't believe the linebacker was blitzing and he caught it. Exactly. Most of the time I had no idea what's going on. I'm just looking for 72 big boy out there doing this thing. But I can't say that growing up in that atmosphere allowed me to appreciate it and the work that he put into it because before everybody else understood, I understood that it was a job for him. Most of the time he took me to work when he could with them, you know, I was trying to be around him as much as I could, a little bit too much, you know, to the point where I was worried when I didn't know where he was, the facility so big.

58:49But, you know, I learned to have an appreciation for the sport, which opened up the door in high school for me to try it. So when all the coaches around me and all the players, the other players that are playing football, they're like, why don't you play football? I didn't I didn't want to play football at the time, but I let not other people decide something for me. I gained insight by seeing it from their perspective. Like, if I don't try this, I might be disappointed in myself in the future that I didn't try it and have a regret. You know, I could have been good at that and I didn't want to try it to please other people. I wanted to satisfy the inner me, you know, coming from a legacy. Like, what if I could create something here? Knowing that I had the skills, which is also crazy. Not once that I ever this might sound naive, very naive. Not once did I ever think in my mind that I didn't have what it took to be a professional athlete, whether it was basketball, baseball, football, not soccer.

59:52I will say that because I admire soccer wholeheartedly today. Like, you know, those guys are pretty good. They're crazy. I want to be like you in Nashville FC and go see some of those games more. But let's go. Come on. I'm down. We'll save you a parking spot and be hot. So I got you. It's on. We will we will do. We will pick a game next year. I said I said right on the field, too. It's great. We got good seats are fun. Have you been to a game yet? I have. I've been to a couple of awesome experience, bro. You know, this is top notch. It is a top notch park and there's not a bad seat in the place. And I I'm sorry to say this. I can't stand going to I went to the Titans game two weeks ago. It's a lot to go to a Titans game. The parking, the getting in and all of the time, like half the time, it's just commercial timeout soccer. Forty five minutes of action. There's a 15 minute break. Go to the bathroom, get something to eat, come back. Forty five minutes, a two and a half hour game. And it's like you're there for an hour and forty five minutes of action. And then there's a little break. So you get like, OK, so we can go do this.

01:00:52Like, I love that aspect of it. Yeah. If when somebody gets hurt, which is every seven seconds late, what's up with all the embellishing and the flopping around? Well, that's the only thing I can't do. I'm with you. And I learned this is that that's their timeout. Oh, they can't call time. There's no timeouts in soccer. So if it's a hot day and somebody they clipped their toes like, oh, they lay on the grass when football players do it. Because you. Because we just spent 30 minutes in a TV timeout and watch the the shoe carnival kicking game for five minutes. And the guy, let's get let's watch the peanut game up here. You're like, can we play fucking football? Like, what is this? I always want to do this. Soccer doesn't have that. So when they get tired, somebody actually gets hurt. They lay on the ground and roll around. Watch. They all get waters. They take a break. Come back. Yeah. And then that stoppage time at the end. My brother calls it though the grass. Look for the grassy knoll. Because it's like somebody. Exactly.

01:01:52Somebody's running around and all of a sudden looks like they got shot. And you're like, where did that come from, man? What is that? He barely touched him and he's on the ground like he just got shot. It's a crazy thing. Are you one of those people who's always on the hunt for the next restaurant location? You open any sweet deals on retail space that may come your way? Why not be proactive and have the market experts out there working for you? The retail team at Lean Associates, led by Miller Chandler and Megan Glaser, is your go-to for all things commercial real estate in Middle Tennessee. They're located downtown in the heart of it all in the Batman building. Miller is a Tennessee native, so you know he knows the neighborhoods and demographics. And Megan is a California transplant who brings fresh perspective as she fully embraces the Music City culture. They use the best prop tech like Placer AI and Esri to analyze the data while also leveraging their own industry knowledge and relationships to find and negotiate a killer deal for you.

01:02:54If you're one of those people and you'd like to get a hold of them, their office number is 615-751-2340. Or better yet, you can call them directly to get your conversation started on your next restaurant location. You can reach Miller Chandler at 615-473-2452 or Megan Glaser at 760-846-6193. That is the retail team at Lean Associates. Give them a call today. Very excited to be partnering with C&B Linen. If you know me, my number one topic of conversation is linen companies and how shady linen companies can be. I am just disgusted with how the business practices work in this industry, which is why I was so excited when I found C&B Linen. They're out of Waynesboro, Tennessee, and they don't charge any fees. So the linen price that you have, whatever that first linen price is, that's your price.

01:03:55And so you may say, well, every year they must raise the price on this seven-year contract, right? No, because they don't do any contracts. There's no gas fees. There's no clean green service fees. There's no replacement cost. There's nothing. The only price you pay is the price that you pay for the actual product. I know it's too good to be true. No contracts. They do formats. They'll make custom formats for you. They do fresh linens, cleaning supplies. And guys, I just did a tour of their facility and it is immaculate. It is state of the art. I'm going to post pictures on my Instagram. You can go find them and you can see how absolutely gorgeous this is to the point that they even wash and sanitize every one of their used laundry carts. It's just absolutely amazing. If you're looking for a linen company, you can trust who wants to earn your business every single week. Go back and listen to our episode with Jason Cruz, the owner of CMB Linen.

01:04:55Hear it from his straight from his mouth. Exactly what they do. Or you give them a call at 931-722-7616. Or you can DM me at Brandon Styll on Instagram for my exclusive pricing through the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance, NARA for short. I am so excited to tell you about a brand new website called Shared Spirits dot com. What this is, people can buy you a drink through this app, but you as a restaurant have to be on the app. It is a marketplace where people can go and buy drinks for other people. If you imagine wanting to buy a beverage for a friend, and how do I do that? They're going to the Green Hills Grill tonight. Well, you can go to Shared Spirits dot com. Find the Green Hills Grill. Find the drink that you want to buy them. Send it to them. It's already paid for. It already has gratuity on it. They just have to walk in and say, hey, somebody bought me a drink. Bam. Free drink. You got to check your ID. No tipping. It is so clean and perfect, and it benefits both sides.

01:05:58If you're a restaurant and you want new butts and seats, go sign up. It is free to get on this marketplace. You need to do it. If you are somebody who might want to buy a drink, go check it out. Shared Spirits dot com. Running a restaurant is tough. Staff turnover, rising cost, and the endless tasks that bog you down and take you away from what you love. Let Adams Keegan lighten that load. They're a privately held Tennessee based restaurant and hospitality focused outsourced HR, payroll, and benefits firm. The team at Adams Keegan removes the administrative burdens of HR administration, payroll benefits management, garnishments, unemployment claims, compliance, 401K, and so much more. From their proprietary HRIS platform to seamless payroll and competitive benefits that keep your team smiling, they've got you covered. Adams Keegan lets you focus on what you do best. Creating unforgettable dining experiences while they handle the rest. Essentially, think of Adams Keegan as your back office HR department right here in Music City.

01:07:00One of the many things I love about Adams Keegan is that unlike big publicly traded companies out there, they have an incredibly high standard of customer service. And that's what we all need is really good customer service in these areas. They don't give you a 1-800 number and make you fill out an IT ticket submission. They surround every client with a team of experts, all based right here in Tennessee. You can call them today at 615-627-0821 or visit adamskeegan.com. That's A-D-A-M-S-K-E-E-G-A-N dot com for your free HR consultation and see how they can create a customized solution to help your restaurant thrive. All right. We're at the 49. We're rolling towards the end. I want to talk about something that's curious to me, just because I have two sons. I have a 10 and a 12-year-old boys, and I love them with all of my... Do you have children? I have one son.

01:08:00He's 11 months old. Oh, man. Congratulations. I appreciate that. Somebody else on another party, the Nashville Dads podcast, they said, what's the highlight moment you're excited about being a father? And I said, I think when my kids have a kid, like when I become a grandfather, I go, because at that time, my kids will know how much I love them. Like, I don't think they... There's no way they could even understand a parent's love until their heart grows in that moment and they recognize it. So to be a father and knowing how much you love him, knowing your entire career, going to the Super Bowl, what was it like to watch him in the Super Bowl? Four catches, 47 yards, in the Super Bowl to win the Super, walking on that field. What was that moment like for you as a father? I got a picture that encapsulated exactly how I felt. I literally, when all the tape was coming down out of the ceiling at SoFi and Bryson was standing there with his Super Bowl winning hat on and all this stuff.

01:09:10I found him on the field because the cool thing about this, they allowed the parents to come down. So Bryson and his mom and I, we got to go down to the field right before the last second told for the Super Bowl, right? So when they were celebrating, we were standing down in the field and I just looked at Bryson and we found each other and I said, what the fuck just happened? You just won the damn Super Bowl, man. Are you kidding me? Dude. There's a picture. We're just staring at each other like, wow, what just happened? As crazy as it sounds, he got to live out what I wanted to do. Which is even better. We, not even the Super Bowl, it's just my position. I was a fat tight end when I went to college and I ate my way to tackle. That's true story. I wanted to be what he was in college. We both had grandiose ideas of being hoopers. We're both 6'5", 6'6". I'm 6'6". That's short for basketball players, right?

01:10:11And besides, I was 2'70". I wouldn't know. What's your boy from New Orleans? You know I don't know. The basketball player. Zion Williamson. I wasn't Zion Williamson. I didn't have hops like that. So the point being, we both kind of picked up our passion for football late because I was the same way. My dad used to force me to go play football because it kept me out of trouble. It kept me out of the streets. It taught me discipline. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to spend all my time playing basketball. Working on my crossover. Going between the legs. Doing all this stuff. We would spend hours during the day looking for pickup games. That's what we did. I didn't want to be a football player. But when the opportunity came to get a good education, those schools that were wanting me to play football had a higher level of education. And it was Division I sports. So I played football. But I ended up playing tackle because I just basically was undisciplined and gained a bunch of weight when I wanted to do exactly what he did. This dude was the Big Ten Titan of the year.

01:11:12He was a guy that was an All-American in his own right. You know, he was a draft pick. And so watching his career, it was like even though I sure have had a good career, I wanted to do exactly what I'm watching my son do. Catching passes in the Super Bowl? Are you kidding me? Scoring touchdowns? That's what I wanted to do. And big catches, too. I'm not bragging because he's my son. They wouldn't have won that Super Bowl if he wasn't in it. These are first downs in crucial moments. Those are facts. I watched all your catches. I went back and I was like, I want to see it. It was like, that was a big moment. Going back, I also have a picture of Bryson walking off the TSSAA football field having lost a state championship and how it broke him. Where'd you go to high school? I went to Innsworth. So that was the fifth. Right down the street. Right down the street. So the point is, I got to see his growth and just watching his maturation from being this high school kid that just barely understood anything about football other than what he watched his dad do to being a guy that won the Super Bowl. Are you kidding me? I'm not going to say it ranks up there to the day I got to hold Roman.

01:12:15My grandson, because that dude right there, you're 1000% right. If I'm having a bad day and I go grab that little rascal, everything else just disappears. Oh man. He is, just last night he walked to me. Probably for one of the first times he's walked to me anyway. And it just almost brings you to tears just thinking about the generations that you are now creating through our legacy. So hopefully, BeHops will then be some place that not only Roman wants to grow up in in that environment, but also maybe be a part of it because we're creating something that we can then transition to the rest of our family. Same with Oli. When he decides to have kids and whatever, maybe there's a space for him or BeHops. But we're giving back to the people that we love and we're creating an environment and a foundation for them to be able to be proud of. I love that. Yeah. That's beautiful. That almost broke. That hit me in the feels. I love that story.

01:13:15That hit me in the feels. So it's Roman, not Broman. It's Roman. No, you didn't go with a B name. He's going to take over BeHops one day. I mean, it's got to be a... We should call him Bro-Man though. Bro-Man. Bro-Man. It's Ted Bro-Man. It's BeHops. It's another BeHop. You know, you got to have that. If your leadership team is not on the same page and you are constantly having these long meetings and you're not getting traction, this is your opportunity. Today, I'm talking about the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. Yes, it is based around the book by Geno Wickman and Traction. We use it at our restaurants. They use it at Frothy Monkey. They use it at Edley's Barbecue. They use it at Carrington Row, Germantown Cafe, Park Cafe. Lots of restaurants are using it because it helps. And let me tell you today, Justin Cook is a great facilitator. Justin helps business owners and their leadership teams implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is a set of simple, practical tools, disciplines to help you get better at three things, vision, traction, and to be healthy.

01:14:22Vision is getting you and your leadership team 100% on the same page with who you are, where you're going, and how you're going to get there. Traction is helping your leaders become more disciplined and accountable to execute on the right things that will make your vision become reality. Because a lot of times you're doing a lot of stuff, but not the right stuff. Healthy is helping your leaders become a healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team. Because unfortunately, leaders don't function well as a team. If you start with the leaders, the rest of the organization will follow. And you'll get to a point to where your entire team is crystal clear on vision. Everywhere you look, people are executing the things that make your vision come true. And it's a great, healthy, fun place to work. If that resonates with you, you can email Justin right now at Justin.Cook at eosworldwide.com. Or you can call him 615-336-7133 to see if EOS is a right fit for you. He will come down and do an initial kind of introduction and ask you a bunch of questions.

01:15:22It is totally free. Definitely call Justin today. All right. We're going to let you go. I do want to ask you the same question, though, because as a father, when it's your bolt, as a son, when it's your bolt, what did that mean to you seeing him? Could you feel like this is something, Dad, you came so close to? I did something for us. Was it just about you or was it bigger than that for you? I'll put it this way. I didn't know what the hell just happened until I saw him on the field looking at me. Like, because he was like, what happened? So I was like, I don't know. Did we just win the Super Bowl? And I knew it, but it hadn't set in yet. You know, like, I didn't necessarily have a 1500 yard season and go and like get hurt in one game and then persevere through that. Like, I waited for my opportunity. I played in the season and games, but I didn't have as big of an impact, say, as a 13 year veteran would who started.

01:16:23How many games in a row or 190? Yeah, which is a crazy stat. 190 games in a row? Not in a row, but 190. 190 games. I'm like, that's incredible. I broke my hands a couple of times. I played with Cass and stuff. So that sets the standard right there. So when I think about it, I'm not downplaying my achievement on winning, but I recognize how much work it takes for other people to get there. So I had to have an appreciation for the moment because I know that a lot even more people have worked even harder than I did to get there and that it meant so much more for them. So I let everybody in the building's emotion kind of pour into me and soak that up, which is really where I hold the value in this situation. But like I said, I didn't know I could you wouldn't be able to tell by the look on my face. After the game, as soon as the confetti starts falling, I'm just still standing there. I get shocked. Yeah, the worst part of it, I just thought about when I lost the Super Bowl, we came up a yard short.

01:17:25That same color damn ticker tape was falling on my face. I just thought of that same color. Right. And I speak that blue and yellow. I support the Rams because my son played for them, won a championship. Right. But in the same instance, I hate the Rams. Because think about what would Nashville be if we'd beat the Rams and had at least one Super Bowl in our legacy. To this day, it would have been something. Right. So in other words, but I try not to talk about it. I tell Earl Bruce or Isaac Bruce, I tell Isaac Bruce, I tell Marshall Marshall Falk and those guys whenever I bump into him, I say, you know what? That Super Bowl will never be remembered as you guys winning it. It'll be the one yard. Dyson with the lost it. Exactly. That's that's the memory of our Super Bowl. It ain't you. It's us. That's not how it is in L.A. I'm going to say right now they love we got plays called Marshall and Falk. And we got they tell me they remember it differently. Sure. They're the raiders. So fuck you, Bryson.

01:18:27You guys are amazing. Thank you so much for the trip, Grace. Do you want to throw anything in here? She's been so talkative over here in the corner. Yes. Anything there. You're great. I disagree with the thing about the balls. Oh, she was the one you're talking to. All right. She's like GBO. I got the GBO. Let's go. All right. He's like, yeah, orange. I got this. The right orange. The right orange color. We got Bryson's sister. My daughter went to eat. She won a national championship in dance there. So. All right. So oranges are obnoxious, by the way. I'm sorry. And I went to Innsworth. So I read. I'm with you on that either. Hook them whatever there. The orange is not my color. I'm a blue. I love the Titans are blue. Blue is like my my favorite color. And it brings your eyes out. It does. It does. How do you know? My wife says, you know, she likes it. So I like it. Last thing we do on the show is the Gordon Food Service final thought.

01:19:28Right. There's three of the three of you. So we all get to do one. You can. We'll start with Ali. I want you to say whatever you want to say. Sum up the conversation. If you have a motivational quote, whatever, if you want to promote your restaurant, you want to do whatever you want to say. As long as you want to go ahead and knock it out. We'll start with you, Ali. Oh, well, I think a good thing that's on my spirit right now to say and that I've been inspired from this this interview is that everything starts and ends with people. And I'm just very fortunate to be working with great people and to right now to say and that. Sorry about that. You're good to go. Yeah. And just be working with great people. And I'm this there is no limit to what we can create together when you have that winning mindset. So to whoever's whoever's listening out there, you know, keep keep people first. And I truly believe that, you know, when you when you you do right by people and you have a winning mindset, that's a cocktail for success in any industry.

01:20:34Love it. Great. Great. Final thought. Who wants to go next, Bryson? I'll go. Yeah, because it's crazy that that you said that all the I was thinking about the people and I was thinking about how rare the genuineness in the people in the spirit and the hearts of the people of Nashville is to have. And that's ultimately what we were most excited about when creating B hops is we have so many family and friends and loved ones, people that we genuinely love. We want to see them in that environment in B hops, enjoying the food, enjoying the drink, being warm, being cheerful, running up and down the bar like you did the stairs on the Music City Miracle. You know, we'll create a space for you to do that if you want to. But that's ultimately why we're here, because we want to make this family bigger and we are growing every day. Just like you said, you never know what's going to happen, but growth is going to happen no matter what, as long as you take it that way. But yeah, I'm just excited for this opportunity, not only for the people in this room, but the team that we required and the lessons that we're going to learn and the men we're going to grow to be and women.

01:21:44Very nice stuff, Brad. Through Christ Jesus, anything is possible. Amen. If you don't believe that, look at us. You mentioned our backgrounds being so diverse and so different. But yeah, here we are on the same show talking about the same thing. I can't wait to see the culmination of our passion. And you know the old adage, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. And part of that comes with what you do and who you do it with. I'm blessed to be able to work with my son. I'm blessed to be able to work with a great team like Oral Holdings Group and all the people behind the scenes, because it's not just us. We're just a face of what you're going to see. At the end of the day, we created a team that will hopefully win its own Super Bowl. I love it. Oh, that was not the wrong one. That was the wrong one. You just ruined the moment. This is so terrible. You just shitted on the moment. The tear was falling until I heard freaking Buddy Hacker.

01:22:45Buddy Hacker, yeah, like that'll ever happen. I was like, oh, I'm supposed to be laughing now. That was an epic fail. And you know what I was going to say? I was going to say the aura is really good in here today. The aura is great. I love it. I thank you. I really love that, too. You are absolutely correct in everything you just said. And I'm really excited to see what happens and to see the outcome of this whole thing. And I want to be involved in any way I can. This is really cool. This is so cool. And, Grace, thanks for bringing these guys in here today. I wish you nothing but the best of success. And I can't believe I pushed that button. Just over here, just like, damn, that was the wrong one. How did my finger? I'm going to move. I'm moving the rim shot to a different spot. There we go. I got one right. Guys, have a wonderful rest of your day. Have a Merry Christmas. And hopefully your holiday season is amazing.

01:23:46When are we opening? Aura will be open. Well, yeah, so the aura to finish on Brad's thing will be open in the next couple of weeks. Soft opening. But BeHop's early spring. Okay, so we got a few months. Yeah, we got a few months. Excellent. I love it. Thank you guys again. Have a wonderful day. And come join us again on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you, sir. Thanks for having us. Okay, I'm still laughing from my little rim shot here. Sounds like this. It's right next to the clapping. I have lots of little sounds in here. I'm getting better at them. Sometimes I miss moments. How about that? All right. So hopefully you enjoyed that one. I sure did. I love the moment where, you know, I don't do these interviews on Zoom really anymore.

01:24:46I like to do them in studio because when I'm looking at Brad and I'm looking at Bryson and I said, what was that moment like as a father? Like going down the field, seeing your son reach this level of pinnacle. And he said, you know, I just said, what the fuck just happened? There was like this genuine like there were like tears in his eyes telling this story, looking at his son, kind of telling him what that meant to him. I just pinch myself in those moments. I mean, that was really special. It was a lot of moments like that in this episode today. Hopefully you felt him being in the room. You definitely felt him. We got to bring Ollie back because Ollie was just like the coolest guy. He came in like 10 minutes earlier than everybody else. And he and I just sat here and talked for like 10 minutes. And I feel like we got like so much of like the good stuff. And then I just went straight towards Brad and Bryson when they got in here. So we need to bring Ollie back because that guy's a really interesting guy, too, with his music career and what he's doing now.

01:25:49That Aura Holdings, that whole Wedgwood Entertainment District is going to be really, really cool. I think the BeHops will be really, really unique experience for Nashville. Yeah, so stay tuned Monday or sorry, Friday. We are going to have Stephanie Still, my sister. She'll be on the show. And then we've got like so many episodes already like recorded and are going to be coming out very soon. So stay tuned. If you do not have this saved as a podcast, where are you listening to this? If you haven't subscribed, do that because I don't always put them out on the same day. They come out whenever I have time to put them out. So if you subscribe, it'll give you a notification, let you know when new episodes are available. And I would love for you to tell somebody about this. Tell a friend, say, hey, have you heard Nashville Restaurant Radio? You should listen to it. We've got I think it was like 80 some people. This is your number one podcast from the Spotify wrapped, you know, kind of extrapolating these numbers.

01:26:50So there's 80 of you out there who this is your number one podcast. If you're still listening at this point, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for everything. Thank you for all of your support. I want to say thank you to all the sponsors and all the other people who are checking in, tuning in, tell a friend. This thing is just getting started. And in 2026, without being in a restaurant for 50 hours a week, we're going to start seeing some interesting stuff. So stay tuned. Really super stoked. Thank you guys for listening. Please be safe out there this New Year's and love you guys. Bye.