Okay, let’s get down to business, or shall we say, let’s get down to business…

Kay & Shi:

…to defeat the Huns.

Kay:

Oh yeah.

Shi:

We told you there’d be Disney. A little “Mulan” reference there for you. I feel like you can’t see the phrase let’s get down to business and not hear that song, at least certainly if you are a Disney fan like we are. But today we want to talk a little bit about our business journey and growth and just share some of what we’ve learned in the last 18 years of business ownership and entrepreneurship. That if you are at all interested in growing a business or helping develop a dream or a message in any way we hope and think this will help you.

Kay:

So, as you’ve heard us say, you know, 18 years ago, mom and dad bought this failing restaurant in the California mountain ski town, blah, blah, right. But the story. But the reality of what they did was mom and dad cashed in all of their savings in retirement and put absolutely every single chip our family had in their corner, into this failing restaurant up in that California mountain ski town which means that we had to learn a lot of our business savvy, really the hard way and boots on the ground.

Shi:

In the trenches and it’s easy to say, you know, they bet it all, and then 18 years later here it is, “it’s a success” however you want to define that. But 18 years is a long time and can you imagine making that kind of bet. Mom and dad, we know you’re going to listen to this, and we are just so glad that you did.

Kay:

Thank you.

Shi:

Thank you so much for seeing the vision, believing in yourselves, and betting on us as a family to be able to do this, because it’s been an incredible journey and we really have learned so much from those trenches of a family business. But like come on you all, it was trenches sometimes.

Kay:

Right. Well, let’s talk about what the reality of that looked like. Circa 2005 Shila and Chad are waiting tables. I’m bussing tables alongside dad. No, I would run the line. Dad would buss the tables. Mom would run the food and you and Chad would serve. That’s what it looked like. 10 and 17 isn’t a joke. We were a restaurant family coming home to bake the biscuits and do the laundry and watch as mom and dad balanced the books and figured out what it took to create something of success.

Shi:

We also watched them learn that journey of what it took to create success. and we watched our mom engage in mastermind groups and invest in marketing and to be smart and strategic with her business plans and to watch our dad work really hard to make each guest experience and matter and to place importance and value on the cleanliness. Chad brought forward this focus on people and helped develop our early inroads for culture and being able to do that. We did that on the daily and we got to learn altogether. But truly, mom and dad were able to show us so many of those lessons and give us that early love of personal growth and development, which is now our business. So, so very, super cool.

Kay:

Well, it really took that entrepreneurial spirit and I think when we start to examine the entrepreneurial spirit, obviously, there’s that risk-taking that happens when somebody pushes all of their chips in. But the entrepreneurial spirit, I think Shi, you just encompass it very well. It’s having that focus on people. It’s being able to focus on the outcome like dad was so focused on that guest experience. It’s being able to be savvy and strategic in how you move about things. So, we learned it at a young age, and we caught fire for it and it’s really amazing to see how many people out there are catching fire for that entrepreneurial spirit as well.

Shi:

Now, it’s fun to reminisce about the really old days in the business, but the more current reality of what the Squeeze In restaurant chain has been. The last nine of the 18 years, I was the President of the company. Kay came in as Vice President, about five years into that, oh, I’m sorry, four years into that and we led together and that’s 180 employees. It’s 10, 11 locations. It’s growing, it’s across four states. It’s liquor licenses, it’s lawyer meetings, it’s all hands, it’s menu analysis. We were definitely in the onslaught of operating and truly being business operators of a very large chain and it was a lot of responsibility. We learned a heck of a lot.

Kay:

Yep.

Shi:

And we’re proud to be on the other side of it helping encourage and coach others to do the same.

Kay:

You know what’s one of the things that we learned the most was just how much we didn’t know, right. Going from the single unit family-owned business to even four, to then a franchise having 10 locations like Shila said, 11 across four states. There was a big gap there and a big leap that had to get taken. And so, we learned how it was to be a micro business and then we learned how it was to be kind of a larger, small business, still technically a small business. In these last seven months, we have been on the hunt and have finally found a professional chief Executive Officer to come in and take over the restaurants so that we can focus our new career paths in the personal growth and development space, which really actually started taking off for us in about 2019.

Shi:

Yes, and that’s when we got to launch the Neuroencoding Institute, but what we learned in the restaurant industry will always give us that heart for hospitality and, as we’ve mentioned, we are still co-owners and co-chairs of the board over at Squeeze In, but it’s been so fun to get to explore a new industry and learn a new business in something that we are incredibly passionate about and we’ve learned so much. It’s funny how many kinds of overarching business themes there are, whether it is you’re running a small brick and mortar restaurant or a large online institute with personal growth and development celebrity that a lot of the mechanics still look the same.

Kay:

They do look the same even though the loads don’t look the same and we’ve certainly have learned a lot on our way and excited to talk more about that in the next segment.