Like just getting your phone out and talking to it, talking to us, I think is, is great.

Yeah, I think I need to do more of it.

And the funny thing, I went back and I rewatched a bunch of the podcasts I've done lately.

And it's like, of course, I'm the exact same person telling the exact same story with the exact same perspective because I'm, and I know Phyllis can relate to this, I'm fairly incapable of bullshit.

You know, like I can kid around, you know, Generally, I use humor a lot, but I'm kind of incapable of bullshit.

You know, it's like you asked me a direct question.

You're going to get a very direct answer back.

Come on,

What are you playing

with? Right now, wood and fire.

So, you know, I had an epiphany about what's broken in my tech stack last week.

So I will derail for a second.

So, you know, everybody kind of knows my story at this point.

Rapidly scaling catering company.

The person I bought it from was a micromanager that used Google Sheets, period.

So we'll just leave it at

I got to say,

I think, Phyllis, you should be on every call.

You weren't on the power of saying no, and I think you should lead a power of saying no.

Yes, the power of saying no. Phyllis will tell you no, for sure.

So I'm Scott Kleckner, owner of Olivewood Pizza, Southern California's premier wood-fired catering company.

Some great things came up today.

I'll first start with what I was going to talk about, which is how hard it is to be specific in sharing numbers about your business when you're being public online.

mic drop mic drop i'm making the website for the computers not for humans that is amazing yeah it's it's for computers and agents like what are we ourselves ourselves here no we're not like

Good

point.

I'll jump in to continue to die on the Hill of I've been telling people not to take pricing this year to find efficiency in their operation.

As an industry, we're seeing higher check per customer and less visits.

And that is not just out here in my beloved Southern California or New York, where I spent a chunk of my career.

But nationally, you have almost half of restaurants that weren't profitable.

And the trend across almost all restaurants is less traffic and trying to get more out of the people coming through the doors.

Amazon?

What are we doing to keep our minds healthy? And gratitude is such a simple way of doing that and to have that positive impact on you, if that makes sense.

I think something I hear from what you said, Richard, and calling back to what Dean was talking about, to me, I always remember the saying, this too shall pass.

Mike, that probably rings true because you said you had a bar mitzvah, so my mother would Probably talk about it more in positive times that, uh, this too shall pass.

Right? Don't get too cocky.

Um, but in negative times, it's important to remember, um, the things are temporary, right? So you can always choose your mindset.

You can always choose.

Like, I'm an eternal optimist and I nicknamed my wife and my mom doom and gloom because they can find the wrong in anything where something's going to go wrong.

Then you can toss it over to Mike to go next.

Thank you.

I mean, today's already been good for my ego.

So thank you, Matt.

Thank you, everybody.

Hi, Scott Kleckner, owner of Olivewood Pizza, Southern California's premier wood-fired catering company, and 30 years in this business.

So I have probably 5 million stories, but I'm gonna try and stay focused and limit it to one.

But before that, I'll say I am a firm believer that everybody should work a job in hospitality or retail in their formative years, full stop.

shooting all over themselves

Go

ahead.

So I'll give a scrappy and then I'll make a confession.

So scrappy.

i've been taking a rising tides live and putting it into an app called opus clip and it chops it into different imperfect clips and i post them anyway and typically i want to remove all the ums and uhs and yeah see and at the same time it's like it's been a way where i'm taking these conversations taking a short clip and actually creating content out of it.

So that's the good, the bad.

So when I had the pleasure of eating some tacos with Sean and Michael, you know, Michael and I talked about there's a guy that opened a pizzeria.

Scott, go for it.

And I'm curious, when you go to make new decisions on behalf of the business, what are some of those questions you're asking yourself?

So I grounded everything in what a previous boss called the North Star document.

So back up six months before acquisition, I had a business plan.

I review that regularly.

I eventually threw it out because a lot of what I thought to be true was not true.

A lot of what I tested was more true.

But I currently have a growth plan that I refer to.

well i was going to answer my kind of next question like how do you expand right like how do And do you invest more into it? Do you find new partners within that community? Is this something that could be replicated in other towns and cities that are like it, but aren't in the LA kind of Orange County area?

No way.

And so I had an incredible first chapter of my career doing all sports and entertainment venues.

Everything from opening Staples Center.

No way.

Renovating Dodger Stadium.

Come on.

Renovating Angels.

What's next?