Rich Bryant

00:00At What Chefs Want, they deliver the seven most needed product lines to meet the unique needs of chefs and restaurateurs. From local to global, and from staple items to gourmet rarities, they have the variety of products to cover all of your needs – produce, seafood, meats, gourmet, staples, to-go, and dairy. At What Chefs Want, they're transforming food service by eliminating minimum orders, offering split cases, and providing daily deliveries with 24-7 customer support. This means chefs have the flexibility to order what they need, when they need it. Experiment with new ingredients and keep their kitchens consistently stocked with fresh supplies. It's all about empowering culinary creativity while streamlining operations. Check them out at WhatChefwant.com or give them a call at 800-600-8510. This is Jen Heidinger-Kendrick, founder of Giving Kitchen. Let me tell you a little more.

01:01Giving Kitchen is a national nonprofit that helps food service workers. Headquartered in Atlanta since 2013, Giving Kitchen has served over 19,000 food service workers and awarded over $12 million to food service workers in crisis. If you or someone you know works at a restaurant, food truck, catering company, concessions, and needs financial assistance or stability network resources due to illness, injury, death of an immediate family member, or housing disaster like flood or fire, please ask for help at givingkitchen.org slash help. 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.

02:05My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. And man, it is, I feel like it's been a while, you know, we haven't recorded something in like over a week. And Crystal is opening the Cafe Cheesery, which is over at the Frist Center. So she is slammed. And I was invited to go to the Restaurant 365 Festival, I think is what it was called. It was at the JW Marriott and GoTab invited me to come. Rich Bryant from GoTab said, hey, we'd love to have you come down. So I came down to check it out. Amazing, amazing event. Got to hear some great speakers. Got to hear the state of the industry and just kind of I love I love talking restaurant stuff. So that was really cool for me. After the show, I said, hey, Rich, I'd love to get you on the show. That'd be a lot of fun to have a conversation about what you guys do. And GoTab is a all in one POS system.

03:05Really amazing stuff that they're doing. We talk a bit about that in this interview, which is today, Rich Bryant. And the real part of this interview that I absolutely loved was kind of the end of the interview. We take a commercial break and do some commercials and then we got to do some real stuff. And man, it was it was both of us were like crying at the end of it. It was really powerful. And I want you guys to hear it. We were vulnerable. We went out there. We said some things. We are all people who have are fallible. And look, we've all made mistakes ever. Hopefully you make mistakes. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying. And I think what you learn from those mistakes, that's the lesson here, is we kind of both talk about some things that we've done and what that looks like today. And it was really powerful, really great conversation with Rich Bryant. So I'm excited about this. If you want to watch this and we'll put this out on YouTube as well so you can actually watch the video, all of our podcasts are out on YouTube and a lot of videos out there.

04:12If you wanted to watch the interview with Freddie O'Connell, whoever, like there's there's lots of stuff, the Will Gadara interview, you can now watch it. It is live. You can see what that interview looked like as we were talking to him. Lots and lots of fun. So I hope you enjoy this one. Coming up this week on hopefully Monday, I will be putting out another episode. You're going to get back to backers here. And this is the preamble to Brandon's Book Club. Yes, we are bringing it back. And this book is called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Go out and get it. If you'd like to join the book club, here's what we are going to do. We have Deborah Sunderland and she is the owner of Deborah Sunderland Coaching. She's a coach that I work with and she's incredible. She's absolutely incredible. And the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership is really important, important stuff has changed my life. I've been focusing on a lot of this over the last couple of months, over the summer.

05:13And it's just been absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend it to anybody. And you get a chance to work with Deborah on this. And I think that that's something you should definitely do. So go get the book, 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, and at the end of September, we are going to bring her back on and we'd love to have you come join the show. So if you want to read the book and then come in and talk to her about the book, this is life changing stuff. And I really recommend that you do it. Excuse me. All right. So we've had a lot of industry adjacent people on the show recently, as I have lots of people that reach out that want to be on the show. And sometimes I'm like, yeah, let's try it. Let's see what this does. But we're going to get back to more chef interviews, local restaurant people. I've been spending some time in Atlanta working on Atlanta Restaurant Radio. And so I'm spread a little bit thin. We've got the three restaurants and the two podcasts. It's it's it's been a lot so that you haven't seen a ton of content coming from us. But that's about to change.

06:14We're about to get some some great local chefs in here. And I'm really, really excited about that. If you have not checked out Atlanta Restaurant Radio, I highly recommend you do it. It is on Spotify and it is at Atlanta Restaurant Radio. If you're not following us on Instagram, please do. Atlanta is very similar to Nashville in a lot of ways. And this community in a different city is really, really cool. And I'm really getting I'm just excited to meet these people and see the similarities and some of the differences and gain the perspective that I'm getting from another really big city. And I hope that I hope you can check it out. It's it's really a lot of fun. Yeah, I don't even there's so much going on. I don't even know what to talk about today. So we're just going to jump right in right now with Rich Bryant. I hope you guys enjoy it. Let's go. This is Rich Bryant, and he is the captain of the relationship over at GoTab. Aka account executive.

07:14And all in all, good guy. Thank you. Thank you. That's kind of you. I'm excited to have like a impromptu episode. So we I attended the Restaurant 365 Restaurant Transformation Festival in Nashville. And that happened yesterday. And Rich from GoTab said, hey, would you like to come? I didn't have tickets to go to the thing, and they were a sponsor of the event. Previous sponsor of Nashville Restaurant Radio, maybe again in the future. We're figuring this out. But I've always been a fan of what GoTab does. And now I'm a fan of you. Well, thank you so much, man. Glad to be here. Happy to be on the show. Talk about whatever we want to talk about. How's your experience in Nashville been so far? This is a crazy town. I had no idea just how crazy it was. You know, I live in Reno, Nevada. So Reno's like a mini version of Vegas.

08:14And I never go downtown because I live there. And why would you go downtown if you live there? But wow, this is like Vegas. I think I've heard it called Nashville. Yes, you've heard that. Yeah, yeah, it's in the morning. The streets down on Broadway smell like Nash Vegas, I think. Did you go take a walk this morning? Yeah, no, I've been out every morning. I avoided most of Broadway this morning because I wanted to breathe in some fresher air. So the stink down there. I don't know. I'm never down there in the morning, so I couldn't tell you. Well, you'll find out for yourself. Go for it. Go do a walk down Broadway at 8 a.m. Clear your olfactory system and see what you get. It's interesting. There is there's a combination of several smells, but I think that the strongest smells are. Maybe vomit. I'm not sure. Oh, yeah, that's a smell. You know, it's interesting because I drove you guys after after the event yesterday, we went to a Fait La Force Brewery.

09:16Love Parker and everybody at Fait La Force, an amazing brewery. Now with Jam Box, they had some pimento cheese. It was delicious. But you guys were going to Printers Alley and thank you for the invite. I politely declined. And but I said, I'd be happy to drive you over there. And as I drove downtown, I noticed there wasn't as like if you drive through downtown in July, it's a whole different demographic. Because right now, everybody's in college. All the kids are back in school. They're going back to school. They're not partying in Nashville. There's still bachelorettes, but the crowd was a much older crowd that I saw as I was driving by last night. Normally, it's just a million kids out there. And it was just a different kind of vibe. So I imagine the vomit would go away with all of the adults. But I guess that's not a thing. You know, it's probably it's probably not actually vomit, but it's definitely stale beer. It's probably vomit, too. I mean, there's a lot of could be. It might have been some urine involved.

10:16Oh, it's it's interesting. We'll just leave it at that. But I will say it's incredibly clean. So, yes, for all intents and purposes, the city does an amazing job. Trash comes through, I think, three or four times a day and empties. You don't just see trash littered everywhere. And it's not just like New Orleans. There's areas that you just walk through and you're like, because I would can I would say Nashville is probably more like Bourbon Street. If anything, it's just a free for all of. I remember Bourbon Street. It's like five for one coronas. You're like, what are we trying to do here? Like, what what is the point of five for one coronas? Like, that doesn't make sense. And so I feel like that's more of what Nashville. I think you nailed it. Yeah, it's Vegas. There's gambling. There's all this stuff. But like Vegas is more spread out. You have more people, but it's more spread out. So it doesn't feel like more people. Yeah, you know, it was like, it's awesome, man. That that whole Broadway area, all the bars, the rooftop, the bands, the live music.

11:21It's absolutely awesome. It really is. I'm really glad I'm not in my 20s. I mean, if I was 22 years old living in Nashville, I'd be like, hell yeah, that's a that's a party right there. And I used to go downtown when I was like 16, 17, 18. And I would cruise. We didn't cruise. Browder wasn't a thing. It was Second Avenue back in the day. We would go drive down Second Avenue and you just do the Union Street background, like it was like a loop and you would just drive around and wave at people. And it was like a whole cruise downtown. They outlawed that. You can't do that anymore. But that's what I did when I was like, you know, 30 years. Did they outlaw cruising everywhere? Because I grew up northern California in the town over. I mean, I grew up in a small farm town. So there was cruising was like, you know, the six guys in high school who had a car. But but 30 miles away, there was a town of 25,000 people. And they had cruising every Saturday night.

12:22It was a thing like the streets would shut down. Everybody from every surrounding little town would show up. And I don't think they do that anymore, do they anywhere? Like maybe they have a special evening once a year where it's like cruise night. You know what? I'm so old. Like, I don't even know at my restaurants who goes out and drinks with each other. You know, I mean, somebody that the night said, oh, we always go out and have drinks and I'm like. I have no I have no idea who goes out because I don't drink and I don't I'm not there at 11 o'clock at night and they all go hang out. I don't I don't even know. I don't I don't want to know. I don't even know what happens at 11 o'clock at night anymore. Are people still awake? I am playing like a solitaire game on my phone while my eyes are like gently closing, watching The Daily Show or whatever it is. And I'm like, OK, I'm done. And then I then I just sleep 30 seconds later. You know, that blue screen bad for you right before bedtime, right? You know, I like it.

13:22Bad things for me, I like for some reason. For some reason, if you tell me it's bad for me, I'm like, oh, that's my fucking jam. That's what I want to do. I got to give it a go. Yeah, I got to try that now. Oh, that's not good for me. Let's see if I can make that happen. That sounds like a challenge. Sounds like a dare. It's a dare for sure. I have I have the Calm app. So at night time, the Calm app, the Calm app. Yeah. What does that do? Calms you down. How does it calm you down? Does it have a syringe? It's that kind of propethol, that kind of extra. Yeah, it's the Calm app. You know, people with nice voices telling you soothing stories. You're good enough. You're smart enough and doggone it. People like you. Thank you. So many people are like, who is that? Who's Stuart Smalley? I don't understand. All right. We're getting off the rails. OK, Saturday Night Live. Let's let's talk about that for a second. All right. What do you got?

14:23Old SNL. Apples and oranges compared to new current SNL. Everything in this world is apples and oranges compared to the old stuff. I know, but man, like I'm not going to bash SNL because I grew up with it. But I feel like you and I could write better skits in five minutes than what I'm seeing on today's modern SNL, man. I hear the differences. I feel like back in the day you could watch it until 1130 because the first eight skits were really good. And now the first four skits are really good. You get into the last four and you're like, but the Lorne Michaels is a genius. I still like that Nate Bergetzi bet where he's like the general. And he's like, we will create a unit of measurement and it will be 12 inches to one foot. And how many feet in a mile? Five thousand two hundred and eighty.

15:24Like, it's like, what? How many yards? Nobody knows. That was a brilliant bet. Like, there's some really good stuff. But I just I just really miss, you know, Basamatic Church Lady and Landshark. Well, that's different, you know. Yeah. Colon blow taking a box. It's another thing that you have to pick and choose. Plus, today's world of comedy has changed so much because there's so many sensitivity and I understand the sensitivities around it. But it's an art form and it's a medium that is and they have to be very because it's a very national show and they you can't offend anybody. And I don't want them to offend anybody. I do. Just a little bit, just a little bit of offense. Offend us all. Make fun of tall people. Well, how tall are you? You and I are six, six. You're six, six. Also, I think we're 13 feet, two inches between us. Wow. Well, 13 feet.

16:25Actually, that would make it 13 feet. It would be 10 inches in a foot or 12. Yeah, I met you yesterday. I was like, man, this guy's I'm looking at him right in the eyes. This is fantastic. After you walked away, my my colleagues are like, is that your brother? Could be. Maybe. Who knows? Might be. Get along. Yeah. I don't know my dad, so possibly. Let's talk about GoTab. How long have you been working for GoTab? That's right. I have a job. Yeah. Coming up on three years, I started out as a reseller this time three years ago. A reseller. What does that mean? So what give me the what does GoTab do? They're a POS system. People are listening. If they've listened for the first 10 minutes, they're like, I have no idea what this guy does in this industry. GoTab is a I have no idea what I do in this industry. I hear you. I'll give you the 30 second and the minute long. 60 second elevator pitch, as I like to call it. Our CEO exited a successful e-commerce platform back in about 2013.

17:30Did what any young guy does with those kind of means. He purchased himself two breweries in Arlington, Virginia, Caboose Brewing. If you're ever in Arlington or Vienna, Virginia, check them out. Really cool. But being an impatient tech geek that he is, he hated that people had to wait in line or wait for a server to pay. So you do what anybody does in 2016, 2017. You integrate with your point of sale and you put QR codes on the receipts so that people could pay. That seemed to work. So in 2017, 2018, beginning of 2018, built the platform out a little bigger, put QR codes on tables so that folks could order and or pay with or without waiting for a server or standing in line. Pretty simple, right? That worked. We rode along as an integrated order and pay solution with other point of sales. We weren't a point of sale at the time. So we did that until until that. What was that thing that happened? COVID?

18:32COVID. Yeah, I've heard about that. Would it tell me more about that? COVID, it's I don't even know what it is, to be honest. COVID hit and we had a large brewery in San Diego called Stone Brewing. Using our platform and they kind of encouraged us to build a point of sale at that point. So lo and behold, we built a point of sale in 2020, rolled it out second half or back half of 2020. And we've been growing along ever since as a full e-commerce F&B platform, order and pay solution, point of sales, kiosks, handhelds, the whole thing. So we work with all kinds of venues. We kick ass in like large sprawling, complex, high volume venues, food halls. We don't have any of those here. No, I know. I noticed you were just downtown. You didn't see any of those? Nothing, nothing. There was nowhere was busy, nowhere had a lot of people in it. All the large sprawling, multi-floored.

19:35That's where we really shine. That's where Goat's Head kicks butt. Like if there's a if there's a multi-level and there's ordering from everywhere, we make a difference for those folks. We can be a point of sale for anybody, any F&B venue, coffee shops, bakeries, what have you. But where we really make that big difference is in those big sprawling, multi-level, spread out complex venues, food halls, entertainment spaces, pickleball's a thing now. Eater-tainment? Eater-tainment, yeah. You know, if there's food, beverage and something to do. Did you see any trans-pertainment downtown last night? The people that- You know, there's buses. Yeah, yeah, I actually was, I probably gave high fives from the street to people hanging out of buses. Yeah. A hundred times in the last three days. Trans-pertainment. Trans-pertainment, yeah. That's what that's called. So Eater-tainment, trans- everything has attainment to it now. I'm telling you, I was skeptical about giving fives to drunk people hanging out of vehicles.

20:43Then you just embraced it. I embraced it, but I thought eventually some jackass would pour their beer on me, and it never happened. So these drunk folks hanging out of vehicles were actually rather kind. They just wanted high fives. I don't think they wanna waste the beer. For a beer, I don't have a beer anymore, and the point is to drink the beer. You're right, you're right. They don't wanna waste that beer. I will tell you that we have had Tim McLaughlin, who is the CEO of your company. He has been on this very podcast, and I'm gonna went back to the date here, May 30th, Memorial Day weekend, 2022. You know what? That's how ahead of the game I was on this thing. I think that was kind of him to do your show on my birthday. Wow, that was very kind. It's your birthday's May 22nd. My birthday's May 30th. Oh, okay, well there you go. You said May 30th, 2022. Did I say May 30th? You said May 30th. I did say May 30th. The year was 2022. The 22 of my brains got there. Yes, so May 30th, that's the day.

21:45That's when Tim McLaughlin was on the show. So if you wanted a full hour of learning more about Gotab, you can go back to May 30th on the podcast, and you can learn more about him on Nashville Restaurant Radio. I'm gonna put this out in Atlanta too. You on Atlanta? That is awesome. In Atlanta? Yeah. I'm gonna put this out as an episode on our Atlanta Restaurant Radio show also, because I think this is a really cool platform. I think everybody uses toast. I use toast. Everybody uses toast. They've just dominated the market. I'll be honest. I had some toast for breakfast this morning. It was pretty good, man. Threw a little avocado on it. Avocado toast? Oh, you had some white boots? You could be a bachelorette. Toast is, yeah, you know. Yeah, toast. Here's the deal with toast. They built something really cool. They were the first true cloud-based food and beverage point of sale that came out in like 2012, right? They're big. They're everywhere. They're monsters. Everybody knows toast. If you could ask anyone who's not in the restaurant or the food and beverage industry, what point of sale have they heard of?

22:52They'll tell you toast, more than likely. You know, we do things that toast doesn't. Toast is awesome at a lot of the things they do. We're awesome at everything we do. But we have, we just have some differences. And I think our differences are compelling to certain types of venues, in particular those large, complex, high-volume venues. So I won't go into detail about what we do that they don't do and whatnot, but we just have some fun features that are different, unique, forward-thinking. We're not my grandparents' point of sale. Are you less expensive? Yeah, yeah. I say yes, mostly honestly. Yes, we are less expensive. We're not an all-in-one platform. So we're not gonna promise you to do all of your accounting, all of your scheduling, all of your inventory management, right?

23:54Toast is an all-in-one platform. They bring everything to you under one umbrella. But you guys integrate with scheduling platforms and all of these different things, right? That is not kind of, that is our roadmap. That's our model. We wanna be best in class at what we do. We wanna stick to our inch-wide, mile-deep trends that we've built, right? We're an incredibly solid point of sale that's gonna really do three things super well. We're gonna increase sales for folks who use us by about 30%. And that's just because when folks have the ability, the option to order from their own devices, they order more. Yeah. Pretty simple. And you can actually, it's so much easier when you order from a phone. When you order, I think there's a number that when you order your food online, you order 10% more because automatically when you click I want the Santa Fe salad, a button pops up and says, hey, would you like fire-grilled chicken?

24:58Would you like grilled salmon? And you're like, no. Would you like a shrimp on that? And it prompts you to do that sales pitch. And if you're calling somebody on a telephone or you're giving an order and the server or the person taking the order doesn't know to sell you all of the things, you don't even know you have the option to sell it. So the server would have to say, you wanna add grilled chicken to that? Do you wanna add a filet to that? Do you wanna add grilled chicken, shrimp, and a filet to that? You can't online, it does that automatically. Hey, looks like you have nothing to drink. Wanna add a Coke? And you're like, sure. One button, it's a click. It's almost like there's between paying cash and paying with a credit card. Paying cash, you're separating yourself from pictures of dead presidents in a credit card. I'll just swipe and it's mine. It's that similar kind of a mentality. It's the Amazon effect. You have a cart. You can just willy-nilly fill that cart up. Yeah, it's scary. And then lo and behold, you click the send button on a full cart.

26:00You just order more. Plus you're not waiting. You don't have to wait for anybody, right? So we're gonna help you sell more. We're going to make the, we're really a kitchen operations platform as much as anything in the sense that what we do is make the back of the house run way more effectively without additional labor necessarily, right? And we built the platform so that the kitchen could get the orders, the bar could get the orders immediately from the guest or from the server. You got the hybrid model, whatever. But it just makes for a very efficient back of house unlike printed tickets coming in one at a time, first in, first out type model, right? So we're going to make the back of the house run more efficiently and we're going to create a super smooth, easy guest experience on their own devices. I mean, we all have a point of sale in our hand, a kiosk in our hand, right?

27:02All the time. I mean, we all, we walk around with them. You see people looking at their point of sale all day long, a la AKA phone. So why not just make that device fully functional and it's going to save a restaurant, a bar, a brewery, a tap room, a whole lot of money to be able to give the guests that option. Well, I think it's, you know, the QR code. I think some, there's like tipping, there's a QR code fatigue, you know, people like, I don't leave me a voicemail. I'm not going to hear it. I'm not going to go, like, I don't, who's leaving me a voicemail? I see that you called, I'll call you back. Send me a text message. But I'm also a guy that likes to talk on the telephone. I'm driving, I don't want to, if it's, I got to cover nine things. I don't want to text back and forth for 30 minutes. Call me, we'll knock it out in four minutes. I'm old school like that. Some people are old school, nothing wrong with that. I think that if you're a restaurant manager and it's hard to hire people or hard to get good people, Janie doesn't show up for work today.

28:06Well, hey, we're going to close her section. What are we going to do? We can't serve as many people. I mean, I think that what you do is you put QR codes on those tables and you say, hey, would you guys like to sit in a section where you place your own orders? Like, I bet you get 15 tables that day that want to sit in that section. And then you just run the drinks out to them, make it easy. I also, thoughts I was having while we're talking about this are bundling, and I can argue both sides of this, right? But since you're here, I'm going to argue your side today because this is complimentary to what we're talking about. We talked about the great unbundling about a year and a half ago. I did, because these companies like Toast that want to get you on your scheduling, that want to do your inventory and all of your back office food cost management as well as POS, as well as the myriad of things that they do, they're keeping you from exploring other opportunities. It keeps you in a box. It keeps you with me and don't go over there.

29:08Don't look behind that curtain over there. You just keep everything right here warm and fuzzy. When everything's in one place, it's so easy. It's so easy because I don't have to go anywhere else and I'm comfortable and it's nice and it's warm, but it's expensive. And they can charge you whatever they want because you're not comparing prices. You're not looking at it. So I think they lull you into a false sense of security that everything is in one place. And yeah, I know it's expensive, but it's six different things. Well, if I called four scheduling companies and I asked for features and benefits of each one of those scheduling companies, who they integrate with and why, I'll bet you I could find something a lot less expensive that has a lot more benefits and features that pairs perfectly with GoTab that's seamless, right? And then you get to have a new relationship with a new company and then you have to go do the work and really understand the different nuances of scheduling. When it comes to food cost management systems, is it restaurant 365? Is it this? Is it this? Well, let's just do it all through toast.

30:08There's a lot of stuff you could be missing because you're bundled into one spot and I don't need to go anywhere else. I don't need to learn. I don't need to grow. And I think it can be dangerous. It's, you know, it becomes the, what's the saying? I don't know, the devil you know, right? It's easy in the sense that you don't have to look elsewhere. They offer you everything. Whether it's the best of everything or not, you're willing to make the sacrifice. Look, the all-in-one platforms are great for some people who say they don't have the time to look around. They don't have the time to explore. They don't have the time to see what else is out there. Our model is not that. We don't ever wanna be the all-in-one. We want to integrate with the restaurant 365, with a schedule fly, with the seven shifts, with a whomever, right? We have all these reservation platforms we wanna integrate with because we're not gonna do all of that.

31:10We're gonna give you the best-in-class of what we've built and then we're gonna take the best-in-class tech stacks or tech orgs that are out there and offer you two or three of everything, but they will be the two or three best at what they do. And you can build your own stack from there. I could give you stack ideas and tell you, hey, if this were my place, I would do this, this, this, and this, right? But then you do the work on your own. Do a little research, find out what's best for you. We're consultants before we're salespeople. My job isn't to sell you a new point of sale. Sorry if you're listening, bosses. My job is to show you what we've built. See if it works for what you do. You're supposed to be curious about somebody's business and find out if your solution is something that can help them. Totally. If you have a, if your business, if we're not a good fit for your business, I'll be the first to tell you. And then if you need other aspects of folks that we work with, I'll tell you who to call, right?

32:17So this is the fun thing I love to do. We just had Abhinav Kapoor, and he is the CEO and co-founder of Biki. And my fear is that when you have an all-in-one tech stack like that, this all-in-one solution, you're good, you don't need to go anywhere, you don't need to learn anything else. I'm fine, everything's working fine, but this thing last night, there's a whole row of vendors, accounting vendors, POS vendors, all these different people that nobody in this city has ever even heard of, right? There's a million things out there that can help your restaurant succeed that you've never even heard of, because, and I'll also tell you how many local restaurateurs I saw there yesterday. One, Arnold Mint, and he was speaking on stage because he was on Top Chef, and he's an amazing chef in his own right, but it was another Top Chef alum in him up there, they were talking about Top Chef, they pulled knives from a thing, it was a bit, but I loved what he said, he did a fantastic job on stage.

33:21He was the only other restaurateur that I saw there that I knew, and I know a few of them in this city. And this is a restaurant transformation festival in Nashville, not one Nashville restaurant there that I saw. There could have been a chain of some kind, I wouldn't know who they are, but there wasn't one local restaurateur there, and I'm like, we don't have time to do all this stuff, to get out there and find it. So, I love meeting people like you, I love doing the demo for GoTab and learning everything that you have, and going, oh my God, this is really great, this is really cool stuff. Nobody knows about it. We need to get in, we need to find a way to get in front of locals. And not just GoTab, but like to your point, to your point. Well, there's just so many, so much technology that helps restaurants succeed. There's so much out there that will give you the data. Oh, I'm gonna go another tangent here. The guy said, during Arnold's thing, they were giving away Yeti stuff, and he said, what's the outside the box marketing that you use to build this, whatever it was.

34:32And two people stood up and gave an answer, and I was like, man, they were just terrible answers. I did not, I wasn't, they were not good answers, in my opinion, but I'm an asshole. After just having that conversation with Bickey, you know, the thing is like, how do you market? Will you strategically market, you get a sniper shot to the person that's gonna come back multiple times. The staggering number of 80% of people that go to restaurants don't come back, is staggering, is staggering. So if you can identify the 20% of people that come back, or if you can convert any of those 80% of people, if you can learn that 80% of people that never come back, their buying habits, when they buy, why they buy, all of that stuff, and then you can strategically market to each one of them based around their needs, you go, oh, that's playing chess. That's not, that's not, hey guys, we're open at four today, come holler. You know, like, it's not a, that's checkers.

35:32Like, some of these tech stacks allow you to do things you didn't even know were possible. So at Caboose Brewing, and several of our operators use a marketing organization where you can literally see what every guest in your building is looking at, at any given moment live in real time. So if you go into a place and you look at avocado toast every day, but you never order this avocado toast. You just, you're looking at it every day. You click on it, you read it, you see what's on the menu, right? Literally, if I'm the owner of this place that you visit all the time, and you're always clicking on an item, but you never order it, I can see how many times you've looked at that item, and how many times you've ordered that item. Through GoTab? Through the integration with this particular marketing. Okay, gotcha, I was like, whoa. Through GoTab, yeah, but through, it's through an integration, right? Okay.

36:33So I could send you a coupon while you're sitting in my restaurant for avocado toast, because I know you've looked at it 10 times. You thought about buying it, obviously you wouldn't be looking at it and reading. Just walk by and tell the guy, hey, you should order it finally. Or I could do that. Hey, man. That's true too, but. You know what I really like is the avocado toast, holy shit. Exactly, point being, to your point, there are so many tech companies out there that give you the data, that give you the power as a restaurant owner to make such quality-informed decisions around your guests. There's no reason not to explore. I know everyone's busy when it comes to running a restaurant, but really, you have to make the time to see what's out there. We'll come to your town eventually, and we'll ask you to show you what we're doing. But in the meantime, it behooves you to explore, to see what else is out there, because man, the landscape has changed a ton since COVID.

37:40A ton. A ton, and the tech companies are, we're sifting through them, and the cream is gonna rise to the top, right? You're gonna get the best ones in the near future. Those that have built something that's not all that, doesn't offer the functionality that you're looking for, or that everybody's looking for, those are gonna, they're gonna go away. But the ones who have built stuff that changes your life as a restaurateur, they're gonna stick around. So it's pretty cool, man. It's a cool time to be a part of the industry, an industry that I can sadly and honestly say I knew nothing about three years ago. So it's been quite the learning experience for me. I came into GoTab, I'll backtrack, go back to the beginning, as a reseller, right? Three years ago, and a reseller is just someone who has an agreement with the company to sell their product, and they benefit financially by selling their product.

38:47I'm gonna work for the company. There's the only vested interest is that they're out pushing their product. I was introduced to GoTab and told that they wanna get into stadiums and arenas, and I like sports. Yeah. And concerts. We're big people, you didn't have a choice, did you play sports when you were younger? Yeah, yeah, I was a horse jockey. No, I played, yeah, I played. I was a master table tennis player. Yeah. I was really good at miniature golf. You see a lot of sick, sick guys taking up table tennis, and you know, we don't have to move very far, though. No. It's kinda cool. I'm actually pretty good at table tennis. Same here, I can reach, but I can, I'm ambidextrous as well, so if there's no rule against switching hands with your paddle, I'll just go lefty righty, it doesn't matter to me. No, I've realized when I quit drinking, how really good at games you play while drinking I got. Yeah. Does that make sense?

39:48Like, if there's a sport you can do while drinking, I was like a king at that sport. It's like, oh, we're gonna run track. I'm like, nah, I'm not doing that. I'm not playing basketball anymore. Is there a cocktail at the end of this on the dart dash? We're playing darts? Yes, I am great at darts. Pool, ping pong, all of the stuff you can do while drinking, I'm in. We have to play some darts. I consider myself a pretty good dart thrower. Well, you know what, that's good too, because every time I play darts with anybody, they go, well, you're practically just putting the thing in the board because you're tall, and I'm like, when I play, that's why basketball players are tall. The 800 hours I've played darts had probably had nothing to do with it. You know what I've mastered, which I don't see anyone else, because of that comment you just made. Oh, you're right there. Well, I'll challenge you to behind the back darts. So. You will win that. I have not practiced behind the back darts at all. I'm wicked good at throwing a dart behind my back. Well, I'm good at, but it's fair, because you can't give me that excuse. You can't say, oh, you're putting, because you're right there with me.

40:50No, we're equal. This'll be an equal strike. For my short friends who have T-Rex arms, I will scoot back to. You will scoot back? I'll make you feel like you have the equal advantage. Oh, man. I can't help if your arms are. Vertically challenged is the word we're looking for. Is that the word? Yeah, gravity hasn't helped your arm length ever, I guess. So. You were telling a story. You love sports. You were with GoTab. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I came in as a reseller, trying to break us into stadiums and arenas. And I knew nothing about point of sale, other than where I pay for my things. And I knew nothing about getting a company into a stadium or an arena. Oh, my God, I don't know how this works. Well, I mean, that's how you learn, though. Yeah. If you don't know how to do it, you just, I mean, I remember the Titans, I'd knock on the door, like, hey, I want to sell you lettuce. And they were like, are you with Aramark?

41:52I'm like, no. Yeah, that's what I learned, Aramark. That was a big name. Are you with DNC or Delaware North? That's funny. You mentioned these because I didn't, I had never heard of Delaware North three years ago. I had heard of Aramark because they have the trunks everywhere. The Aramark, yeah. They have cars, I mean, they're just everywhere. Never heard of Sodexo. Didn't know what idea what that was. Sounded like, I don't know what that sounded like. It was like universities use Sodexo. Levy, I thought that was a jeans company. I had never heard of any of these things, right? So I start, well, I had hernia surgery in the November three years ago, basically. So I'm like, well, I'm just going to take the time and learn what LinkedIn is too. I had no idea what. Oh, you're just welcoming yourself to the 21st century. Like recently. I was. Congratulations. I was 10 years a personal trainer prior to this and 15 years a childcare provider for a really cool job.

42:55Corporate kids events. Shout out to my buddy, Garen and Mike. But you're also from like the late 1900s. So yeah, no, I'm a child of the sixties, man. So I've been around for a couple of decades. The corporate kids events we provide. Mid 1900, sorry. Mid 1900s, let's get that straight, right? Bohemian times. We provided childcare for conferences and conventions worldwide. So there was no need for technology with what I was doing for 25 years of my life. I used my computer to schedule clients, personal training clients. Yeah. But for nothing else than for surfing the web. I thought that was cool when the web came around. We all have an AOL account still, don't we? Let's keep, let's back to the sports story where you didn't know we could do this all day. I'm going to get sports because there's another topic I want to talk about. And we're going to take a break here shortly and talk to our commercials, but do some commercials. But I want to finish this story.

43:56Okay, so I'm trying to get GoTab into something I know nothing. I'm trying to get a product I know nothing about into a place I know nothing about, stadiums and arenas. So I start reaching out to NFL teams, right? End of seasons coming up, like, they'll be doing some shopping soon enough. Reaching out to major league baseball teams, their season just ended. And I'm getting the same response from everybody. They'll take a meeting with you. And I quickly learned this is awesome. I can get a meeting with the GM, with the VP of an NFL team. They just direct you to the sponsorship guys instantly who want, you know, three quarters of a million dollars to do business. For you to do business with them, they want to take your money, a lot of it too. A lot of it. I was so naive. So I got invited down to a Super Bowl, LA, not to the Super Bowl. No one was giving me a ticket, but they said, come on down. The festivities. Yeah, exactly. The pre-game stuff.

44:57Was that this year? No, that was- Couple years ago? Yeah, three years ago. It was in SoFi. Okay, I remember that. Whatever, three years ago. The Rams were in the Super Bowl. Yeah. At SoFi. Baltimore Ravens had been talking to us. They liked what we had built. I don't think they liked what we built. I think they liked the idea of, you know- A tech company sponsoring the Baltimore Ravens. Yeah, exactly. They wouldn't give me a price over the phone. They wouldn't give me a price in person. I mean, they wouldn't give me a price in any way except in person, right? So, okay, I live in Reno. It's a quick flight to LA. So I flew down- Not too bad. Saturday morning, day before the Super Bowl. Flew down Saturday morning. I was all pumped up. I'm surprised you get a flight. I was all pumped up, man. Like, yeah, it's Reno. It's easy to get a flight out of Reno. You just might have to make six stops. You might have to fly to Seattle first before you go to LA. But that's cool. Anyways, flew down there. Had a hotel for the night.

45:58Like, all right, this is gonna be awesome. Met with the Ravens for about two minutes. And they said, high six figures will get you in our stadium. And I said, you mean like hundreds of thousands? Like, is there any decimals in these six numbers? That's where the decimals start. We're talking like 100,000 or like high six figures? Like 900,000? What are you referring to? Like 999,000. And they made it clear it was closer to the seven-figure side, right? So I threw my middle fingers up in the air and said, sayonara. Canceled my room reservation, got myself a flight an hour later, and I was out of that town. I went home and took the advice of several GMs and the pros that I had spoken to over the previous couple months who said Minor League Baseball is the way to go. So I start reaching out to Minor League Baseball teams. And this is fun, fascinating stuff.

47:00Levi, who? Levi, if you're listening, I really hope I get to work with you someday. Pro Sports Catering, love you guys best ever. Reaching out to Minor League Baseball teams, killing the demos, right? My VP and I are giving demos left and right, left and right. And we get a letter from the brass at Levi and Pro Sports Catering saying, stop reaching out to our teams. We don't know who you are. You can't talk to our teams without going through us. I shook my head for a second. I'm like, I didn't know you guys owned all these teams. Holy crap, that's crazy. Anyways. It's like Luxottica owns every sunglasses in the world. Dude, wild, right? Anyways, we'll get there. Three years into this, I'm still working pound and pavement for stadiums and arenas. We're close with the DNC's, Airmarks we work with, but not in the stadiums and arenas yet. This is a good example of never give up.

48:01Never give up, baby, just keep going. So that's, I was a starving reseller trying to get a company that I knew nothing about into a place I knew nothing about. And finally, after starving for about four months, I begged the management at GoTab to please hire me. I need to be gainfully employed. I'm, you know, early 50s. I'm trying to learn a new industry and I'm starving to death. So you got hired. So I got hired, yes. And you know, God bless Tim, our leadership team, Darius, Mateen, my VP at the time, Jake. Met Mateen last night. That guy's awesome. He's the best. He's a good dude. He's the best. But our leadership team is phenomenal and personally and selfishly, I love that they kind of let me roam. Well, do my thing. I'm part of the partnership team. I'm part of the sales team. I do marketing stuff whenever I can. It's like, I just, I bounce around, so. You do it all. You'd like to help restaurants succeed.

49:03I wanna help restaurants succeed. I truly do. Bars, breweries, sports teams. Look, my former wife owns a restaurant. She's 12 years into it now. And God bless her. It is a struggle sometimes in this market. I like that you said former wife. She's my former. Instead of ex-wife. Former wife. I think former wife sounds a lot better. It's looking more friendly. I think so too. It's a good thing. It's a nice thing. So former wife, you're now in this job. You're crushing it. And in January of 2024, you had a massive heart attack. Yeah, there's that. And we're gonna pause on that. We're gonna tease that as we take a quick break for me to tell every single person out there about Giving Kitchen and why the Giving Kitchen is important to me because I have so many amazing employees and staff members and coworkers that sometimes need help. Look, I need help sometimes. I need help a lot more than you probably recognize.

50:04And we have some sponsors out there who want to help. And we're gonna start off with All-Star Fire Protection. Rob Bowman and his team are local. They've been local for 36 years. They will come into your restaurant. They'll do the inspections. They will take your fire extinguishers, get all of those tags up to date. The best thing they do is they actually care. Is they're really cool because they will come in and they will teach your team how to use a fire extinguisher. I know it sounds rudimentary, but you know you'd be amazed if you show up in lineup, pull a fire extinguisher out and say, who knows how to use this? One or two people might, but they've never really had to. And if you have to, you need to know how to use it. So they will come in and do all of that, as well as if you call them and you have an inspection done, they're gonna make a $50 donation to The Giving Kitchen. All you have to do is call 615-865-8500 and talk to Rob Bowman. Jason Ellis is SuperSource. We all know that he is the best. He's taking over the world and you need to jump on this train because SuperSource is absolutely amazing.

51:06He supports this community like nobody else. He's amazing and he wants to donate. All you have to do is just get a quote, right? So call Jason. Hey man, will you come in and give me a quote? The best part about calling Jason and getting a quote on your dish, machine and chemicals is that he's gonna tell you what you're currently doing and he's gonna decipher your current invoice and let you know what you're doing now. And don't give him pricing or anything, just let him know what you're doing and he can help work as a consultant. It's one of those line items on a P&L where we kind of gloss over and look at, nah, it's this much, it's this much, but you could be saving thousands of dollars a year. He doesn't have you sign contracts and if you get a quote, all you do is get a quote. He's gonna make a $50 donation to The Giving Kitchen. You're gonna call Jason Ellis at 770-337-1143. Robins Insurance, you can see them over my shoulder right here. You can't really see them. It's that one behind me. But Matthew Clements, who is now a partner at Robins Insurance, is their hospitality specialist and if you're using an insurance company where you don't know who your rep is, that can be a problem.

52:12I've had to call Matthew Clements in the last five years, maybe five times, because he does all of our insurance, but it's amazing when you call somebody and they go, no problem, Brandon, I got it. You just go back to work. And you're like, wow, that's it? He's like, yep, I'll handle it. And the guy just does it and he knows me and he knows our businesses and that's what you need, especially if it's gonna cost you less. The way that you get ahold of Matthew Clements is 863-409-93-72 and he as well will donate $50 to the Giving Kitchen if you call him and get an insurance quote. You don't have to buy anything. Just get an insurance quote from him. I think he'd be really happy. Tell him that Nashville Restaurant Radio sent you. Cali Sober is a THC sparkling beverage. They've got three flavors. Berry Ginger Fizz, Paloma Spritz and Ranch Water, five milligrams of hemp-derived THC. It's 100% legal. It's taken over the city and Cali Sober is leading the charge. You get it through Lipman Brothers. If you bring in any one of those flavors to Cali Sober, if you bring him into your restaurant, start selling this THC brand, he's gonna make a $50 donation to the Giving Kitchen and I love him for that in the way that you do that as you call Lipman Brothers.

53:21Or you can call Michael Dean himself, who's the VP there. His number is 980-297-6481. We got two more. The Chandler James team over at Lee & Associates. Miller Chandler and Lee Ann James are the dynamic duo to help you find your next location. If you are, you got one, you got none, you're the guy that throws the dinner parties that everybody says, man, you should open a restaurant. You don't even know where to begin. This is where you begin. You call Miller Chandler and you say, hey, I need to talk about maybe a space or what do you think, ideas. He can help you. Lee Ann James can absolutely help you. You wanna add locations, you wanna open a boutique. They are Nashville natives. They know every different borough in this city and they can get you set up. His number is 615-473-2452 and Lee Ann James' number is 731-335-1121. And finally, this is the big one, Gordon Food Service, our amazing title sponsor. Any new business, if you call Gordon Food Service, you call Paul Hunter and his number is 615-945-6753.

54:26If you place your first order with Gordon Food Service and it's at least $1,500, they're gonna take $250 with that $1,500 order and they're gonna give it right back to you, cash in your pocket. There you go, good times, go spend that money. But then they're gonna take 250 as well and they're gonna donate that to The Giving Kitchen in your name. So lots of opportunities to help restaurant workers through our amazing sponsors. And I just wanna say thank you to all of them for everything that they do. And now we're gonna get back with Rich Bryant, who's been waiting patiently for me to get through all of that. And you've learned a lot about some of our sponsors here today, haven't you? Yes, sir, I love it, man. This is, dude, I love what you're doing. This is cool. Like, I just wanna hang out here all day. I've got a poker table back here. And the thing, I got a poker table, I'm like late at night, we turn the TV on, I've got a monitor in here, it's a lot of fun, you can. I feel like you're. Guy's nights. I feel like you're gonna take all my money, but.

55:28We'll put a dart board up, you can take it back. It's okay. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Behind the back darts, baby. Before I went into that break, we were talking and I said, you had a heart attack. We were talking before the show started and you were like, yeah, I don't really, this isn't like public knowledge and this and this. And I said, man, this is interesting stuff because that's a major moment in life. And I think that life has categorized me when I stopped drinking that day that I made all the mistakes and all of the things and I had this rock bottom moment of like, oh my God, I have to get shit together. Like I've got to do something better with myself. Everybody has these catalyst moments in their life and I don't know if this was one of them. I imagine it was, we didn't get to talk too much. We were kind of talking about a little bit beforehand and I was like, wait, I wanna talk about this on the show. Without all of the crazy details, January, what day in January was it? 26. January 26, 2024. This is not that long ago. Seven, seven months.

56:29So without all of the details, can I paraphrase it a little bit? Please, go for it. You had thrown your back out and you were taking Advil. How many Advil were you taking? I was taking six at a time, AKA 1200 milligrams four or five times a day for about a week. You were in a lot of pain. It was enough to warrant feeling like I needed a lot of Advil. And so we're both big dudes, right? And so there's a theory that if you're supposed to take four Advil, but if you're five foot four and you weigh 105 pounds, well, I'm six foot six and I weigh 250. I should be able to like time and a half that, right? I mean, that's cause I'm bigger. That makes, there's some weird logic I tell myself when that happens. I don't do it. So I'm never taking more than four, but you were taking way too many and you had- I was, I've been, I love my buddy.

57:30I got a doctor buddy who's bigger than us. It's a big boy. He's like, you could take a little extra when you're in pain. Yeah, long story short, I was killing the Advil for about a week or so. And little did I know that leads to what they refer to as a bleeding ulcer. And then, you know, that can lead to some catastrophic events. So I went to my doctor on a Friday. I was going to pull the dude card where it's like, I'll just wait until Monday and see how I feel, right? So Friday morning, this event started happening where I just, I wasn't feeling quite right. Friday afternoon, I'm like, I should probably go to the doctor. Doctor said, it's Friday afternoon. You should probably just run over to the ER, get a couple of tests taken. So I'm sitting in the ER with Suzanne, my better half, and we're there for about 10 minutes. And I look over at her and I say, I think, because I've never had one, but I think I might- And you're in shape.

58:38You're not- Pretty decent shape. But you're not like in risk for it. No, no, not at all, not at all. You're sitting there in the ER. Six, six, 215 pounds. I mean, I'm not big. I'm pretty fit for the most part at that moment anyway. Yeah, I just, I looked over at her and said, I think I might be having a heart attack. It's a good way to speed up the emergency room visit. I'll tell you that much. They went from, well, you're maybe a two hour wait to, let's get you back right now and see what's happening. Come on down. So yeah, literally I was there for about 10 minutes and they wheeled me on back to the back and I'll never forget that moment where the nurse looks at Suzanne and I could cry talking about this, but I felt so bad for her. I'd never felt like that for someone else when I'm the one going through what I was going through, right?

59:42The nurse says, Suzanne, you're gonna wanna get out of here. There's gonna be 20 people down here in one minute. And the look on her face at that moment was, excuse me, but it was wicked, man. It was crazy. So anyways, thank you. Anyways, me being a goofball, I look up at the nurse and I ask her, I said, are you telling Suzanne that I'm having a heart attack? And she looks at me and says, you're having a massive heart attack. I'm like, oh, well, that's awesome. I said, I look at Suzanne like, we'd be sure to come back in in just a short bit and check on me. Were there feelings at, this is a, there's an imminent doom thing. Did you, when she told you you're having a massive heart attack, did it register that you might die? No. In your head, like, there was no part of you that was like looking at her saying, will you remember me?

01:00:43Will you, was there any, you were just like, come back and, I'm gonna be okay, I'm at the hospital, but come back and check on me? I didn't think I was gonna die at that moment, no. No, it was exactly what you just described. It was like, well, come back in a little bit and make sure I'm okay. Do you think that that's? That's really weird, though, to mention it. Like, I didn't have that thought. I felt like I'm where I should be for this kind of episode. Apparently, it took the heart surgeon a while to get there, so there was a decent amount of concern. For me, I had no idea. They gave me some aspirin and said, Doc will be here soon. Hang tight. You'll be all right. It's a massive heart attack. Don't die yet, doctor's on his way, man. Yeah, and within, I'd say realistic timeframe, I think within about an hour and a half, they had thrown a stent in where a blood clot had traveled to.

01:01:48Wow. Cleaned me all out and that was January 26th. I was, took about a few weeks to get back to what I felt was somewhat normal for working out, walking every night. What did you think when you got home? I mean, we'll get into that, but how long were you in the hospital? Three days. So you're laying in the hospital, people come visit you. Are you okay? Oh my God, you know, the whole thing. But you get home, like, what was that? Were there moments of reflection that you had sitting there by yourself and was your brain, I shouldn't have taken the Advil or was it deeper than that? Was there a moment where you thought like, holy shit, like I gotta, were there changes? Was there- It was way deeper than that. Was there gratitude for people in your life? Like what were you emotionally feeling during that time? That I had never felt closer to the folks who I was close to.

01:02:52Like the amount of love that was shown during that, those three days, like you just kind of grow distant from people, not distant, but you know, we're all doing our own thing, right? My adult children are doing their thing. My friends are doing their thing. It's like, you just, you're doing your thing. You don't think when you're 54 years old and in decent shape that you're gonna have a heart attack and possibly die, right? The thought never entered my mind. And it happens like that. So it wasn't a planned thing. If I didn't check in on you weekly, I probably wouldn't have any idea that that was a thing. No, not at all. I had no idea that was a thing, right? So yeah, you know, I had started my road down being, very faith-based over the last several years, like five or six years. I had gone from being mostly just a non-believer, not knowing what, not a non-believer, not knowing what to believe, right?

01:03:58Most of my life. And Suzanne is very much in tuned with her faith and that had grown on me over the last several years. But when you come out of an episode like that, you turn the corner even more, right? Okay, why am I here still? Why was I chosen to make it through this moment, right? If I hadn't been where I was, doctor said I'm dead in 10 minutes. So that's a God thing. For some reason I got there. For me, the day that I lost my job because of me drinking, gigantic rainbow showed up. Like the moment, like, hey, we're gonna let you go. And yeah, the whole thing, it was like, oh, fuck. Do you remember the day, the date, the year? It was October 30th, 2019. Yeah, I was at 2.27 in the afternoon. I have a picture of the rainbow. So I know I have the timestamp, but that's also my sobriety date is October 28th.

01:05:02This is two days after that day. I never had another drink. That morning we woke up and go, I'm never drinking again. Like I literally never drink again. I've got another significant, significant date in my life. March 3rd, 1993. I was, I had a, oh man, I can't believe I'm talking about these things. I had a bad meth addiction for about three years. What? March 3rd, 1993. It was either kill myself or call my grandmother. So I called my Nana from a payphone in Concord, California. And she lived in Grass Valley, California. I'm like, I need someone to come and get me. And I've got nothing. And that was the last, the last day of that former life. She came down and got me and cleaned myself up March 3rd, 1993. So yeah, significant dates, right? They just don't leave you. But that's powerful what you just said. I mean, the vulnerability for you to talk about that just now.

01:06:04I mean, that's again, one of those moments where you're at that bottom. I have two options. One is I feel like I need to, I just need to die or I'm gonna raise my hand and ask for somebody's help and accept love. For me, I can't accept love. I don't have the ability to like, it's hard for me to believe that you actually care about me because everything is so superficial and it's just so many things going, like you actually genuinely care about me. I can't accept that a lot of times. So for me to ask for help from somebody, it really feels like I'm gonna owe you something if you help versus, and I'm a big strong man, I can't ask for help. Why are we like that? Why are guys like that so often? Well, I don't get to have six foot six dudes on here too often who are go-getters and stuff like that. And I think that there's this perception that, well, you're a giant, you can do anything. You're bigger than everybody.

01:07:04And maybe people don't give me honest answers because they're afraid. I have a big title and when I come into a room, I'm bigger than everybody else and it's like, oh shit, there he is. And it's like, no, I'm a big teddy bear. I don't wanna be that guy, it's okay. But I think people immediately respond to us that way and over 50 years or 40 years, you kinda start believing the way that people respond to you is real. And it's like, that's not me. It's a weird dynamic. It is, it is, but something I've learned early on is if you need help, ask for help. Whether it's, whatever it be, it doesn't matter what it is. I do the guy thing often where it's like, I can get through this on my own. And then you have that realization that you just can't, you can't do it. You need to accept help from others. You need to accept that you're loved and that people just give a shit, especially those in your circle.

01:08:12They really, you would take a bullet for anyone in your circle. I know I would. And you would never expect anyone in your circle to take one for you. Nope. But they will. That's where I struggle. Cause I'm like, nobody would. Nobody would, nobody would. Me too. And then you have a life-changing moment where you realize, shit, I've got all these people who will. Who will. It's pretty powerful. It is. It's special. Makes me cry. I'm a crier. This isn't the first time I've tried about this. I can't see me over here with my glasses on. There's a reflection. Man. Life is, it's. But that faith thing is really important. And for me, going to meetings and working the steps of getting out of recovery, they teach you about this higher power. And for me, I grew up Christian. I don't know what I believe as far as did Noah build an ark and all that stuff. But I will tell you, I believe there's a higher power that has my best interest at heart.

01:09:19And I have to have faith in that. And my insanity is I think I can control everything. My insanity is I think I can do a podcast. I can raise children. I can be a great husband. I can operate three restaurants. I can help people with consulting. I can work with the giving kitchen. I can do fantasy leagues. I can do charity events. And it's like, dude, you can't do all of that. And I think that I can. And I can control all of it. And I can't. And so when things don't go the way that I want it to, I reflect on myself as bad. I'm a failure. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. I just beat myself up. But I really feel like giving all this stuff over to a higher power. I can't control everything. But if I give it away and I pray, then I get what I need. I can handle the things that only I, this is a serenity prayer. The things I can control, I try and control, but I can't. And that's where my faith is in this.

01:10:21I pray all the time. And I don't know who I'm praying to. It's God that I'm praying to. But I'm also not coming to you saying, you should pray to God above because he's the one truly. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying for me, that's how I get through day to day is through prayer and giving all this stuff away. That's a good point you make, man. I would never, like I was, again, never faith-based for 48 of my years, really, right? I was baptized as a young child. And then, well, I have a crazy life. We're part two. We'll get into some of this stuff. Sounds like it. We'll go March 3rd and before next time. Just a quick, yeah. I came home second grade from school and the house was empty. Mom packed up, moved across country. What? Nana was waiting for me, though. Thank goodness. But at that moment, like church became, religion became not a part of our life.

01:11:27It was just one of those things. So I went through most of my life not thinking about it. Not being a non-believer, but just not, again, not knowing what to believe, right? I think it's almost better because then when you become an adult, you get to decide what you want to believe. It's not just indoctrination that you've had your whole life. And that's where I'm going with this was to your point, right? We're all gonna have a moment, or not, but for a lot of folks, they'll have a moment where they realize there is a higher power. There is something that I do not have control of with my life. And all you can do is accept that and know that I'm just gonna live my life the best I can and be kind to people around you, right? It matters. It matters in how you feel internally. So treat people well, be kind to the folks around you, and life works out okay.

01:12:28It really does, man. It really does. Cranking up, dude. I didn't know this was gonna turn into a therapy session. Well, I told you yesterday. You said, what do you talk about on the podcast? And I go, well, I want people to get to know you. It's not necessarily all about the podcast. I like to talk to the person. And he's like, well, I'll give it a shot. And this is what I was talking about. Not sure if you wanted to know so much, but. You know what, man, thank you. It's really brave what you shared today and there's courage in that. And somebody out there who's listening maybe takes a bunch of Advil and they don't realize that it can cause a bleeding ulcer or maybe somebody's in that place that you were where there's an addiction that they're feeling right now and they don't know how to get out of it. And it's either a, I gotta end this thing or I can ask for help. And to hear how you've come out of it and how you've made a life for yourself and the experience you have with your children and Suzanne and the people who came to your hospital that had to tell you they loved you. Had you ended it that day, the sorrow and you wouldn't get to experience this interview today.

01:13:33We wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to share your story and maybe your story helped somebody out there. And that's brave, that's brave. That's the thing that I want. This industry's full of people who are broken, who don't think they're Humpty Dumpty. They don't think they can be put back together again and you can, you can, 100%. It doesn't matter where you are. You can recover and hearing testimony like yours today is proof. I hope, I hope someone takes something from it. I really do, man. And hey, anyone out there can reach out to me at any time for any questions, any guidance that I might be able to provide. Man, if there's something you take from this and you wanna know how it worked for me, reach out, please track me down. What's your email address? rich.briant at gotab.io or if you wanna make it simple, richfromtrucky at gmail.com.

01:14:38Either one. T-R-U-C-K-Y? T-R-U-C-K-E-E, the little town of Truckee and near Lake Tahoe. Yeah, I live in Reno, man. I live in Reno. I lived in Truckee for 10 years, so. I stayed at the Grand Sierra Casino in Reno one time. Grand Sierra. Waiting for a. GSR. Yeah, the GSR. Stayed there one night after a ski trip to Tahoe. Reno's an interesting little town. I didn't get to do anything. I stayed at the GSR. I got a massage. It was great. Like if you've never been to Reno, Reno's okay. Don't. Exactly. It's like that's not your bucket list place. But 15 minutes from Reno is Lake Tahoe. So if you've never been to Lake Tahoe, that should be on everybody's bucket list. It's a phenomenal, just, it's a. Beautiful. Yes. Beautiful. It's 26 miles by 20 miles. You can see an average depth of 70 feet down into the water. It's very Mediterranean. Crystal clear, gorgeous. But it's at 6,200 foot elevation, so it's a bit chilly.

01:15:42And it's surrounded by 10 to 13,000 foot peaks all the way around it. If you're really gung-ho, you can do the 160 mile loop. Might take a couple days, but. And if you go skiing there, when you get to the top of the mountains, all you see is lake. It is. So you're skiing down a mountain, looking at a lake. It's gorgeous. It is phenomenal. I mean, I know there's a lot of beautiful places, beautiful places in this country, but man, it's to die for. Rich, thank you for joining today. And thank you for yesterday. And you know, it's amazing sometimes when people put people in your lives. On LinkedIn, you get a message, and hey man, I'm gonna be in Nashville. You wanna come to this event? And here we are, two dudes crying over microphones, talking about trials and tribulations and all of the things we've gone through. And I just, it's a blessing, man. Thank you for coming in today, spending your morning here with me. And so much fun. Thanks for having me, man. You are incredibly easy to talk to.

01:16:44So I appreciate that. Thank you. Man, right back at you. Final thing we do is the Gordon food service final thought. Gonna put you on the spot now. He's like, again? Make this about GoTab, make it not, whatever it is. You get to say whatever you wanna say to take us out, right? So the mic is gonna be yours. Whatever you wanna say. Hey, two things. One, for all the folks in the restaurant industry, I would just love to show you what we've built, man. It's really special as far as the company goes. GoTab, if you've never heard of us, name recognition is where we struggle because we're not a toast, we're not a clover, we're not an aloha, right? Not everybody knows us, we don't have, we don't spend that kind of marketing dollars on putting our name out there. So if you hear this and you get the opportunity, please let us show you what we've built, man. Maybe it's for you, maybe it's not, but love the opportunity.

01:17:47And then secondly, on a personal note, and to everyone out there, and if you're struggling with anything, anything in life, whether it's alcohol and addiction-related thing, any kind of addiction, any kind of mental questioning, don't be afraid to reach out because people, they care. People will help. No one wants to see folks struggle in this life. So that's all I got for you guys. Rich, thanks again for joining us and have a safe flight home and we'll keep in touch and talk to you soon. Excited, thank you. You got it.