Robert Irvine [00:00:00]:
I can do what I want, when I want, and I can pick and choose who I work with and who I work for. And I think that's kind of the goal every entrepreneur should have, not money. Because if you chase money, you will chase your tail and go around in a circle. Money will always find you. You need to go to bed at night and sleep and know that you haven't altered your direction in any way, shape or form for anybody because you stuck by your guns.
Matt Tait [00:00:31]:
I'm Matt Tait, Founder of Decimal and fellow entrepreneur. Yes, I'm one of the crazy ones. I've chosen time and time again to hustle my way through that first million. Now I'm scaling to the next 50, so I know firsthand what the messy middle is really like. And I know that entrepreneurs and leaders like us need a destination for empowerment, community and, and encouragement. This is our place. This is After the First Million. All right, well, welcome to today's episode of After the First Million.
Matt Tait [00:01:04]:
I am really excited about today's guest, Robert Irvine. And if you haven't heard of him, he's a world class chef, entrepreneur, philanthropist. We could go on show host Restaurant: Impossible. One of the things I like most is author of Overcoming Impossible: Learn to Lead, Build a Team, and Catapult Your Business to Success. So with that, Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Irvine [00:01:27]:
Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it. It's good to be here.
Matt Tait [00:01:30]:
So before we dive in, Robert and I did a little bit of prep before this, and it's great because he disagrees with a lot of my premises behind this show, which for those of you who know me as a recovering attorney, disagreement is my love language. But before we really get off, I'm interested. I think a lot of people consider it to be a little bit crazy to start your own business to be an entrepreneur. When did you know, Robert, when you were one of the crazy ones?
Robert Irvine [00:01:57]:
So back in 1986, I came to the United States of America from England. I worked, my first job was with Donald Trump and the Taj Mahal. Atlantic City, New Jersey. Yep. They started there coming out of the military and I would say started there. I already had a job in Jamaica putting two hotels together for a year before that. But it was my biggest job working with Trump for four years. I ran the biggest casino at that time in probably the country.
Robert Irvine [00:02:31]:
I wouldn't say the world, but very big. It was doing 784 million a year in revenue and 15 in food and beverage. And he came to me and said, how do I change this to make more money instead of giving Petrus away to people that lose 6, 8 million, $10 million. How do I make money? And I said, well, it's really easy. You have to buy futures, meaning beef, chicken, pork, you know, any high expense items. He didn't know how to do that. I did. And I was making at that point, somewhere around my first salary was $35,000.
Robert Irvine [00:03:10]:
Then it went to 55,0001-250002-50000, and then four and a half million dollars in bonus. Little discrepancy there because I took a percentage of the money I saved in purchasing the product. Buying futures, that would be the turning point in my career. Shortly after that, I started a company on my own. I got it back all the way up because I think the military, I was in the military for a long time. The military taught me dignity, honor, respect, teamwork. Listen, voice an opinion when needed and if something's not right, correct it through the right channels. So I give all of my props for being a successful entrepreneur and having failed.
Robert Irvine [00:03:59]:
And we'll get to them, too, to the military.
Matt Tait [00:04:02]:
I find it fascinating how many successful entrepreneurs do have that military background and the foundation that that can set to be successful later in life. What's interesting to me is, so you took your job with Trump and you leverage it to start your own business.
Robert Irvine [00:04:20]:
Yes.
Matt Tait [00:04:21]:
And that was your first time running a company. Tell me about that.
Robert Irvine [00:04:25]:
I started at Trump as the executive sous chef number two. Then whilst I was there, I had a foray into the military feeding program of taking flank steaks and skirt steaks and tumbling them in spices and herbs, fajita, smoky rotisserie and garlic powder. I never forget it. And the people who were tumbling my beef and selling my beef were a hamburger company, the largest in the country. The problem being about eight months into really being successful as a side gig, their company went bankrupt based on a total recall of listeria and hamburgers, which, you know, made my company fail because they were doing my product. I then went into another company, Herbs and Spices, that I was already tumbling the meat in, called Irvine Thyme. T H Y M E didn't do very well. I stopped it.
Robert Irvine [00:05:24]:
It was on online retail sales. I didn't stay long with that. And then I started another company which was helping people run their business. Right. Walking into the company's hotels, casinos, and watching them for a couple of minutes, a couple of days, actually, and then saying, okay, this is what you need to do, and here's what I'll deliver to you. One of the biggest things with business is self confidence. And I think a lot of people don't have that self confidence to start a business. Although I worked for one of the biggest casino groups at that time, I was very comfortable knowing food, I was comfortable purchasing food.
Robert Irvine [00:06:06]:
I was comfortable because I'm in military career leading people. Even though I was a young kid, I was 29, 30 years old, running 11, 32 people, you know, payroll schedules and all those kind of things. I worked 18 hours a day. I loved it. You know, I was a junkie for it. But again, I went from a building two hotels together to running a mega hotel, fruit and beverage wise, not any other ways and learning lessons. And I, and, and you said something really telling there. I used that casino to build my resume, to, to build my network, to build my infrastructure while I was working there.
Matt Tait [00:06:49]:
I think that's an interesting point you make there of how you use one step as the stepping stone to the next one and how every, every kind of path in your journey is a building block. And I think some of that kind of gets lost a little bit today. I want to circle back because you also mentioned self confidence and how a lot of people don't have the self confidence to necessarily start a business. You started out consulting and now you've quite literally made famous consulting. Have you found that part of entrepreneurship too is that people who were confident enough to start a business can lose that confidence along the way?
Robert Irvine [00:07:32]:
I'm going to take it back a little bit. So when I started with, I'm going to answer the question, but it's kind of an in depth answer because when I started at Trump, I was very confident in my own abilities. Then I would have Trump come to me and ask me questions directly. That's intimidating. I had a president who I loved and a vice president who was very insecure with then two people coming to me and not him. So I had to get over the, the hump of, of my boss disliking me because they would rather come to me for the answers and go to him. And I would say, look, number one, I don't want your job. Number two, I'm making a lot more money than you.
Robert Irvine [00:08:18]:
So you know, it's not about money for me, it's about education and how can I learn to be better than I am. So self confident. I was always self confident in my own realm, which was food ending with food buying, purchasing, cooking. That's my world. The thing I was insecure about was dealing with people that were higher up the chain than me. And I don't mean Donald Trump. I mean, it's almost like a blase attitude of, look, I know more than you, so just let me do my job, and you'll look good doing it. Right.
Robert Irvine [00:08:53]:
And it's hard to do that. It's like you as a lawyer saying, oh, just trust me and let me do what I do. But self confidence, I think, gets shattered as you start a company. You keep getting doors shutting, your face. Right. Number one, I've got this great idea. No trash. No.
Robert Irvine [00:09:12]:
And then when you get to that point of 15, 20, 30 doors slammed in your face, then you start thinking, well, why am I doing this? Why shouldn't I just work for one of those people? Yeah. And that's the biggest mistake you can make. I told you, in my book, you mentioned Overcoming Impossible. I talk about wins and losses. It doesn't matter how many losses you have, as long as you have one win, it negates all the losses. And I had 1, 2, 3, probably 4 or 5 losses before I had one win. And that one win started when I was working at Trump Taj Mahal, because the Navy came to me. The US Navy came to me and said, how do we do this? And I said, well, it's really simple.
Robert Irvine [00:09:58]:
You got to do this, this, this. And by the way, it won't work for you because of this, this, and this. And it went on to build a relationship that I have today with the military, which is huge. So I think self confidence, using that environment where I was purchasing food, where I was meeting new people, I was in the White House twice a day. Twice a week. Sorry. While I was still working at Trump. So I got all those.
Robert Irvine [00:10:24]:
Those dynamics going on at the same time, and it was juggling balls for me, which was exciting. Yeah.
Matt Tait [00:10:32]:
It's kind of funny how many people enjoy and thrive in chaos versus those people who get overwhelmed by it. It's funny. As you kind of talk about this, what I find is interesting is as more and more came onto your plate, you started to thrive more and more, which also brought you to continue to seek out more and more. It seems like through your career, a lot of people kind of reach that point where they're like, all right, I'm going to lifestyle this and cruise. You more used it as the. I'm kicking the snowball down the hill and let's build it.
Robert Irvine [00:11:03]:
Yep. You know, for me, every day. Eleven years ago, I started a company. It's in the billions of dollars. Now. We have 14 companies, 8,000 employees, and I just bought two new companies last week. Right. Because I see the future of what's happening in technology, in AI, in restaurants, in hotels and cruise ships, in our military and the feeding platform and the alcohol platform.
Robert Irvine [00:11:31]:
Everything we do, it ties in together the common. And this is where a lot of people, I feel, get lost. My core competency is what I do is food. So what surrounds food? Is it plates, is it cutlery, is it cups and sauces, is it sauces? Is it meat products? Is it. That's my core competency. And then I go out and say, well, okay, well how do I deliver that in a mass form either in a restaurant, which I used to do on TV, or in our military with 2.7 million people five times a day around the globe. So I look at strategic positions in saying, well, okay, how can we make it better? I think, and I'm twitting my own horn when I say this, but I think I'm a problem solver, I'm a solution provider. You have a problem, bring it to me, I'll fix it.
Robert Irvine [00:12:25]:
And that's how I've thrived in my business is okay, there's an old pun. Nothing's impossible. Right. That's why I made the brand on. Yeah. But I truly believe if you sit down with a group of people that like minded, not yes men or women, by the way, that you can put a problem in the table and say, okay, here's a problem. What do you think? And you're going to get a thousand things come around table and then one person, and we've proven this a thousand times, I'll show you how in a minute one person will come up with thong. This is the ideal and it will just come from people talking.
Robert Irvine [00:13:07]:
We have a program on our foundation is where we give dogs away to post traumatic stress military first responders. And I put five puppies in a compound with the person other than five puppies. One of them puppies is going to go to the person. We take that out, put it with another four puppies and see if it goes back to that person. If it does, that's the puppy we train you with. It's the same idea when you put a group of people, there's always somebody thinking out of the box instead of the generics. That's the people we attract. That's the people I want.
Robert Irvine [00:13:41]:
I don't want people to say, oh yeah, what a great idea, Robert, then why, why am I paying you? I want you to argue with me and disagree with me nicely, not abusively. Right way. And come up with a better thing that nobody else has thought about. Because we started a company 11 years ago, a protein bar, by the way, still the only protein bar that's individually owned by. By a person, meaning me, in the world, is number three right now in the world. So because I made a bar, I didn't follow the trend of mixing and extruding and cutting. I want my people to think out the box and what makes us unique and different.
Matt Tait [00:14:21]:
So what I think is interesting here and there's a lot to unpack, but one thing really stands out because when a lot of people think about being successful, they think about that I am right type person. But when you're talking about having a table of people that have ideas, that requires you as the leader to have a level of humility to say, I'm not going to be the one that has the right answer all the time. And I'm willing to disagree. I'm willing to listen. And humility is not something that is typically talked about in successful people.
Robert Irvine [00:15:01]:
You're right. Not many. And I talk about that in the book. Actually, there's four characteristics I look for. One of them is not humility, but it's empathetic leadership. Yep. Knowing that Matt's mom has autism and he's having a bad day because his mum's having a bad day. And I've got to recognize that you're having a bad day and say, you know what, Matt, I know you've got Trojan.
Robert Irvine [00:15:23]:
Mum, go home. I got you. Don't worry about it. I'm going to pay you. If you're gone a month, you're still getting paid. Don't worry about it. I got you. Yeah, that's what empathetic leadership is, understanding the people that work with you.
Robert Irvine [00:15:34]:
Then comes trust. You trust that I'm going to pay you. Because that's what we do. We have each other's trust. Egos. There are no egos in the room. Because if there are, you. And that's what the biggest thing in business, in my opinion, that makes people fail.
Robert Irvine [00:15:47]:
Unfortunately, 500 companies down to mom and pop is egos. A guy comes in, brings his scene. Nope, this is it. This is the way.
Matt Tait [00:15:55]:
My way.
Robert Irvine [00:15:56]:
He's going to fail miserably. And the last thing is authenticity. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to share that. You don't know something. It's okay to. And I find that in every TV show or every fortune of our running company, and I do a lot of them, I go in there and I'm like, so what's the roadblock here? And it's ego beating the chest like a gorilla because you want to be right all the time. And there's no such thing as being right all the time.
Robert Irvine [00:16:25]:
There's no such thing as running a multi-billion dollar company and thinking, you know, because we don't. Anybody tells you do, they're full of it.
Matt Tait [00:16:34]:
Yeah, it's, it's quite frankly just not possible.
Robert Irvine [00:16:38]:
Right.
Matt Tait [00:16:39]:
We've had a saying we use with our leadership team and that I talk a lot about when I, I do coaching sessions with our team at Decimal, which is we like to have strong opinions that are loosely held. If you have an opinion that's worth sharing, I want you to believe in it. But if somebody comes up with a better opinion that they can back and that they feel good about and that quite frankly undercut yours, move on, accept it.
Robert Irvine [00:17:04]:
See, I'm of the same idea except the difference is when I go against big companies, and I do very often, by the way, I love the fight, I make sure that I'm, I'm armed with the ammunition to go against that. Anybody can go in and disagree with something, but if you're going to disagree, you better have the backup by it. And I found in big companies, I hire a company, I won't say the name, but it's a big company to give me the data up to the minute data to go in. So when they put all these big fancy screens up and they're doing their thing, I'm like, okay, great, keep your screen up. I'm going to be real 24 hours. This is what happened. I see 24 minutes or 12 minutes or four minutes ago, this is what's happening in your arena. And they're like, they look at me like well how did you get that? And we don't have that.
Robert Irvine [00:17:51]:
There's different tools in our toolbox of all of us and I rely on that data because most people are data driven. Show me something that's real, don't just tell me something, anybody can do that. But when it's data driven and I walk in and I say to a company, okay, I can drop 28% to your bottom line in four days from now if you leave me alone. And they're like, not possible. Four days later, I deliver it. It's about understanding their systems. Why do they do their systems and how can we make them better standing operating procedures for every company, I don't care what company you have, are all very similar because it's just the way business is done forever. And I'll give an example.
Robert Irvine [00:18:38]:
An aircraft carrier in 1940 was built this way. In 2024, it's still built the same way. There's just different armaments on it. Underneath, it's the same ship. Why? Because nobody's bothered to change it. And nobody saw what we do with cruise ships and, and, and, and evolution changes in everything. Just because this is the phone doesn't mean it can't be better, run smoothly or do more things. And we found that over years.
Robert Irvine [00:19:06]:
Jeff Bezos is a prime example of that. Elon Musk, look at what he did, you know, two weeks ago when he put a rocket booster back into its handles. You know, his grip. I mean, there's always a better. But when, when you as an entrepreneur go and say, well, I think I can do it better, there's a general perception of, yeah, whatever, dude, you know, no way. And it's just disruptors in business that are making national security decisions today. Small companies, not the Boeings of the world, yes they, they do a lot. But there are small independent companies that are entrepreneurs that are making the difference in our national security.
Matt Tait [00:19:47]:
And I think that's fascinating. Your businesses and your companies touch such a variety of areas of the economy. I mean, you're touching national security, you're touching public service. You're also touching just general consumer buying. You're touching, I'm going to go to Vegas next week. You have a restaurant in Vegas. You have so many layers of society that you touch. And yet also through your platforms, through your show, through your books, you touch people on advising them to be better.
Robert Irvine [00:20:25]:
Just before this call, I got off, a friend of mine is a consultant and wrote a book and did all this. And again, he's now lost self confidence because he lost a couple customers, right? And I said, look, unless you get up, dust yourself off, go through yellow pages or, or get on the phone to people, you're never going to grow your business. My business is, this, is, is providing solutions to clothing in the military, feeding in the military, drones in the military, nutrition, all those kind of things. So we, we provide a solution where they're, there are other solutions out there, but we feel we're a better solution for a lower cost at a higher quality, whether that be on a TV show or any of the companies that we deal with. I started a relationship 14 years ago, thinking it was going to be a one year relationship. Here I am 14 years later, still doing the same thing, but a lot larger than I started. So for me I want to help those that need help the most. By the way, you may think mom and pop.
Robert Irvine [00:21:33]:
It's actually not mom and pop. Yes. Small business built America. Entrepreneurship is alive and well. And I don't care about politics giving you this money. That money, this money, I don't care about that. Entrepreneurship is alive and well, but it doesn't come free. And you know this.
Robert Irvine [00:21:51]:
As a lawyer, you went to school, you spent. My daughter is doing the same thing, criminal justice right now. Paid a lot of money to do it. But if you start a company, it's a lot of pavement pounding, it's a lot of knocking on doors, it's a lot of relationship based or I believe that entrepreneurship is relationship driven. So before I go and pitch somebody something, I'm like, let's go and have a cup of coffee. Let me listen to what your problems are, and let's see if I can come up with a solution. If I can't give the solution, then I'll find somebody that can give you a solution, you know, And I believe in that. Hey, by the way, Fred Frank, Jesse Dueling.
Robert Irvine [00:22:30]:
Hey, I've got this job. If you want to take it, it's yours, you know, but we're also cutthroat, and I don't get that. I never have, I never will. There are better chefs out there than me. My two own corporate chefs are 10 times better than I'll ever be. Can they do what I do? No. I can drop in the middle of Afghanistan and feed 30,000 people with nothing. Right.
Robert Irvine [00:22:52]:
Can they do that? No. But are they better chefs than me? Absolutely. So we all have a niche in our workspace, and I think that's exciting when you come across people that are way smarter than you. You know, I sat down before I used to have a talk show. It was called the Robert Irvine Show. Funnily enough, there's a kicker. But whilst we were trying to get it on air and looking for a production company, I got to meet a young man who used to run Disney, Michael Eisner. And he was all about.
Robert Irvine [00:23:21]:
I met him in New York City for two hours. He was bidding on the show, and I had no control over that. It was whoever was going to get is going to get it. But I wanted to meet him. And I sat for two hours in Roy's restaurant in New York City just listening to him. How do you run a company of that size? Yeah, for two hours I'm like, I don't care about the stroke. Just tell me, what are the trials and tribulations of dealing with those things. You know, his number one thing was people.
Robert Irvine [00:23:48]:
And I think I've learned that. And by the way, 10 years ago, I could never say this, so I'm telling you honestly, I've learned to listen more than talk. Because you find out more when you listen. Oh, yeah. And when we started the show early on, I would, like, go in, this is how we're going to do it. I know better. And by the way, I did. But I would never listen to the individual whose restaurant or whose business it was about, what their vision was before it failed.
Robert Irvine [00:24:19]:
And, you know, 10 years later, I've learned to go in. Tell me what your problems are. Tell me what your. Your actual vision was when you started and where do you feel it went wrong? Which I couldn't tell you, Matt. That was really hard for me, but I had to do it.
Matt Tait [00:24:37]:
Is it getting easier?
Robert Irvine [00:24:39]:
Most of it, yes. Because I understood why. Why they did certain things. Yeah. Before going to rip their heads off for doing those things. You know, I never understand where people use credit cards and max out credit cards to start a business. Sorry, I don't. I've done it years ago, before the race went ridiculously.
Robert Irvine [00:24:59]:
But I was, you know, people that take money on credit card receipts and things like these that I see every day. It just baffles me why and who told them to do it? How did they get to it? And there they are in half a million dollars in debt. So I've learned to listen a lot.
Matt Tait [00:25:16]:
Do you feel like. I think I know the answer to this question. Do you feel like listening and improving at that has helped improve outcomes?
Robert Irvine [00:25:27]:
Yes, totally. Yeah. I would say, look, there are some times when you have to walk into. And I tell my wife this all the time, sometimes you have to walk into a room. And when you walk into a room, people have to stop and they're like, oh, you know, he's walked in, whoever that is. Right. When you walk in and you command a room, there's a piece of fear. Right.
Robert Irvine [00:25:49]:
Because they don't know what's coming next. And when you sit down and you just listen and you observe and you're silent, the fear actually grows. Oh, yeah. So when I ask five questions in any meeting, it's an. It's an old interrogation technique that the military uses. Five rapid questions in succession. By the time I get to the fifth question, you're answering the first question. It's really interesting what people will tell you.
Robert Irvine [00:26:17]:
Oh, because half of it's got nothing to do with business. But it really does. Because when they tell me these things outside of the business, it actually affects the business, meaning their family life, their, you know, everything that happened to them up until that point.
Matt Tait [00:26:32]:
It's interesting as we talk about this, and I'm going to go back to something that you talked about because I think it ties in here, your concept of wins and losses. I always joke to people, I grew up playing a lot of baseball, and baseball is my favorite sport. And even as I talk to my kids about it today, one of the things I talk about is I love baseball because it's a great microcosm of business. You can succeed 30% of the time in baseball and be a Hall of Famer in business. So much is failing and being okay with failing. But when you get that 30%, leading that into success and tying that and understanding when. When success happens and following it and when failure is happening and stop it, and I'm interested, as you listen to people, is part of that just helping them also understand how to stop failures before they keep going and see successes for what they are?
Robert Irvine [00:27:32]:
There's a twofold answer there. Yes is the real answer is teaching them when to severely think about stopping. The other part of that is no. Because if you've got a solid business plan. In our foundation, we bring veterans that want to learn cooking and business into food trucks. We teach them, literally, I think, 5,500 hours of schooling 50 small businesses that we put together, they go into a food truck for five months, get out all the kinks, they learn about money, about purchasing, about travel, about, you name it, then we put them into brick and mortar. The reason I do that is because there is a point, a pivotal point in business where you feel you're failing, but you can't stop then. And by the way, if you're half a million dollars in debt, maybe you should stop or at least pause and think about it.
Robert Irvine [00:28:31]:
But I always say, look, in every business plan, I look at the worst scenario, because P&LS we build a P and L and it's like P in the sky. It's, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. It's never real, but you have to be as close to reality as possible. My first year, I'm not even going to break even. I'm probably going to lose quarter of a million dollars, half a million dollars, whatever, whatever. Can I sustain that loss and move on? But most people, when they do business plans and entrepreneurs, don't do that thorough enough. And so I do A DAV Disabled Veterans camp every year of entrepreneurs. I do Shark Tank for veterans.
Robert Irvine [00:29:14]:
I do all those kind of things. And the biggest thing I say to all these companies that go, I don't care about the product, product is if I can put a cup on. We sell a cup is what have you thought before you get to the product? What makes it unique and how are you going to deliver this and why, why is it better than this? Then we'll talk about the product. Yeah, give me a solid platform that you've thought about the business plan, then we go to product. Because the business plan can be a spoon, it can be a cup, it doesn't matter what it is. As long as I sell a business plan, I can sell anything. And that's the biggest thing I find with entrepreneurs. They haven't and I'm one of them.
Robert Irvine [00:30:00]:
I went from zero to 95,000 retail locations. And you, you were on about scaling earlier, which I don't want to steal your thunder on, but I was making protein bars by hand. 18 people, three lines, making by hand. Now all of a sudden I'm in every retailer there is and how do I now I can't do it by hand, right? So what do I do? I tell people they can't have it. I find a company to manufacture, to make me and Design me a 400 foot long unit that does all the things that I'm doing by hand, but that takes a year and a half to get right and put in and ten and a half million dollars later, that was the answer. 300 million bars a year. But then where do you get the funding for that? All these scaling up problems happen and I didn't use outside money, so. And by the way, I'm not rich and I am not rich.
Robert Irvine [00:31:05]:
I bootstrapped all of my companies. I didn't go to the bank for loans. My first company was $400,000 I started and I can tell you it's way up there right now. And everyone, everyone else, we've done the same, the same blueprint. So when you scale, you need more people, but you have to find the right people to be able to scale that business with you. Because believe it or not, you may have the idea, but there are people way smarter out there than me or you or. And you've got to attract them.
Matt Tait [00:31:37]:
So I want to make a statement and then I want to get into our argument on scaling.
Robert Irvine [00:31:42]:
I love it.
Matt Tait [00:31:43]:
It seems as you talk that underlying your four key traits, you write about your book, the empathetic leadership, trust, ego authenticity is also resilience and having a passion for what you're doing like that seems to kind of underpin as a theme is that off base, they're the.
Robert Irvine [00:32:02]:
Basics you have to have. The fifth one is communication, right? Yeah. Unless I can communicate what I'm trying to get from you, Matt, which is I want free lawyer services for the rest of my life. Even if you can't do it, you are now my guy that I'm going to come to for IP intellectual property, for patents, Right? You're my guy. And by the way, that's how he did it. I had one guy who I was in a lawsuit with, I couldn't pay. I said, just stick with me, I'll be able to pay you. You know, by the way, it was not that expensive, but I couldn't pay it.
Robert Irvine [00:32:38]:
I said, stick with me. He's been with me now 17 years and I do the same thing. I'm like, okay, we need to paint, paint the name. We need to patent this. We need to patent this. We do this, he does it. You have to be able to find those people. And it sounds like to me, and I came to this country in 1996, I started business in 1997 and I didn't know anybody, so I got took for a ride for $250,000.
Robert Irvine [00:33:09]:
Somebody stole it from me. Lesson number one, don't trust anybody. And now I don't. I have systems in place in all our companies. We have one holding company, 13 companies under that holding company, or 14 now I should say, as of last week. And nobody has the right or the authority, not even the CEO to write a check, not one, unless it comes to me. And if they write it and it goes to the bank, the bank calls me. So there are systems in place that once you get bitten once, you're never going to get written twice.
Robert Irvine [00:33:39]:
Because that's the worst thing you can do is allow people authority with your money. So I think communication of when you start a business, what are the expectations of that business? What are the expectations of the people? And you have to hold them accountable on that weekly basis or that daily basis or whatever it is. And I can tell you on my phone at 11 o'clock at night, I get P Ls from every company and by the morning they've all got replaced to the P&L. So when they wake up, and by the way, if we do a lot of military business, so if I get a call at 2 o'clock in the morning from Korea, my CEO gets a call five seconds later. I don't care what time it is or what the world we are. That's the culture that we've created in our people. And by the way, they get paid extremely well for that. Here's another thing.
Robert Irvine [00:34:36]:
I also give people a piece of the company after so many years. Yeah. So it's not a paycheck, it's an annuity. If a company sells at this, this, and this, you walk away with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10%, depending on the level you are. You always find great people when you do that. Always. They don't want a paycheck. They want to see what is their hard work giving them.
Matt Tait [00:35:04]:
They want to be part of something. Team company culture. And I agree. We, we do equity too. And I think it's important to give people a sense of ownership over not just their role, but over the, the entire mission and goal of the business. I think you, you get more out of people for that and it feels better. So where we started arguing earlier today, we started talking about scaling. And it's, it's a lot of what we talk about on this podcast is going through that messy middle of, hey, you've started your business, you've gone through startup phase, now you're building a real company.
Matt Tait [00:35:40]:
And that, that's different, and it brings out different traits. Not everybody is as good as you are at figuring out, hey, I need to bring in people that are complementary or who are different than me. You've seen a ton of companies. You've done it yourself. Talk about some of your thoughts behind that messy middle behind scaling and where people maybe struggle again.
Robert Irvine [00:36:03]:
I go back to the beginning. I think we never feel that a company is going to get to 50, 100, 200, 300, a billion. We never feel that when we start a company right. And I can tell you I didn't feel that the first company or the second company, I should say that I started 11 years ago, was going to get to a B. So it's easy. I give away percentages based on revenue. So when we sold $5 million worth of product, I was like, yeah, we made the money. Although I had made no money, by the way, because I had to buy equipment, I had to relocate, holding the products.
Robert Irvine [00:36:43]:
So instead of making it in Pittsburgh and transporting it from Pittsburgh, I had to go to New Jersey to put on the main artery, all those kind of things. There's a point in your company and only you will know what, whatever that is, whether it's fuel, whether it's trucking, whether it's do you buy that next truck and do you, do you take the leap of faith that you can make that next milestone that you put together again? It's self belief. Instead of selling big bars, we could sell smaller bars for mom and pop instead of bodybuilders. That paid off for me. Right. That's what got me the, the small bars got me into, into, you know, 95,000 homes, 95,000 retailers, millions of homes. But if I stayed with the muscle head bars, maybe it wouldn't have. Right.
Robert Irvine [00:37:36]:
So I took a risk on myself. I didn't borrow money, which is a little different. I use my money. And by the way, I was, you can ask my wife, she's in the other room. I was a nightmare because I was scared to death. I put everything I owned into expansion. I mean to the point that I had to go when I wrote the check, I had to go to an emergency room because I thought I was having a heart attack and it was anxiety. Your self belief suddenly becomes, am I stupid? Oh yeah, I've been there.
Robert Irvine [00:38:13]:
And then you have to forget about it. And for those people that are going bigger than me at that point and you get the money lenders, as I call them, what are you giving up when you buy that or you borrow that money? And that's a huge bone of contention to me. When you borrow money, at what rate are you borrowing the money and what are you giving up? Because I've never wanted partners that would influence my decisions. When you're scaling and you borrow that money, you're giving away 9 out of 10 times some percentage of a company which allows somebody or a board of company, a board of directors to tell you what to do in your company, then I think you lose excitement about that, that company. When somebody says, oh, I wouldn't do that, Robert, or I wouldn't do that, you know, right. I get that, I get building, but you have to be very careful with what you borrow and how you borrow it. I tried to give no equity away to my people that work with me. Yes.
Robert Irvine [00:39:20]:
But I, I never borrowed money. So I put my house up. I've done all the other things that I've done, but I've never borrowed money from institutions. So therefore I've kept control of, of everything we do from. So we own a distillery, right? I buy the bottles. Yeah, the bottles. I buy bottles at a million dollars at a shot now because they have to come over the water ship and, and store and all those kind of things. If you said to me, you know, When I bought a restaurant in the Pentagon, I built a restaurant inside the Pentagon.
Robert Irvine [00:39:50]:
It was supposed to be half a million dollars. Cost me 2.6. 10 years later, is starting to make money. But what it did for me in the community of the military, open all my other businesses. Do I do it to make money? Yes. I have to. I have to cover my costs and make a little bit. Or do I do it for a bigger picture? What is.
Robert Irvine [00:40:13]:
What is my end goal in mind? If you'd have said to me, you know, do you want 13 companies? I said, that's stupid. No, if I can sell one for this, I'll be happy. I'm never happy. Because it's the entrepreneurial spirit that says, oh, we've done this. We succeed. Well, why don't we try it with this? Because there's a need. Yeah. And we.
Robert Irvine [00:40:31]:
And we use the same playbook or blueprint to do that. It's really. How much. How big are your kahunas to take on that debt? I told you I wasn't like it. And my wife, she'll tell you, she took me to the emergency room having wrote a check for. For everything I owned.
Matt Tait [00:40:50]:
I'm interested in that story because when we started, we were doing a prep call and I said, one of the things I like to talk about is the emotional toll that being a business owner can take and how sometimes it's isolating. Your response was, and I quote, and at the same time, the anxiety created by you taking a risk caused an ER visit to the hospital.
Robert Irvine [00:41:15]:
Yep.
Matt Tait [00:41:18]:
For me.
Robert Irvine [00:41:19]:
So the anxiety for me, and I go back to the. In a minute. The anxiety for me was because I chose to do that business. My wife wasn't in, my kids weren't in it. Yeah. I chose to put everything we owned on me because I believe there wasn't a conversation with my wife, which is, by the way, I don't ever agree. Don't do that.
Matt Tait [00:41:43]:
I've been there. I agree with your point. 100 percent.
Robert Irvine [00:41:47]:
It's painful. It's painful. That was part of my divorce, by the way.
Matt Tait [00:41:52]:
You know, they never remind you of it either.
Robert Irvine [00:41:55]:
Not until you get divorced. Then you do. And I said this before, I went from 1. 1 million to 5 million to 50 million to. And stupid money. I never expected to get to that point. So that was the anxiety for me. I didn't have anywhere to borrow the money from.
Robert Irvine [00:42:17]:
Right. Except the bank manager who had my house and my $463,000. That was the number. I had a TV show I was making $4,000 a show. That's a true story. And I said to a lot, I need ten and a half million. And she laughed at me. She laughed at me.
Robert Irvine [00:42:37]:
By the way, she's still my banker. Today I got the 10 and a half million which allowed me to grow the business. Right. But everything was tied to the house and the business and car and everything else. The decision for me to spend the money without talking to my ex wife was what caused the friction. If I'd have talked to her and said, hey, this is what I'm gonna do, right, Instead of just doing it, it wouldn't have interfered with my relationship, communication. My wife now of 15 years has nothing to do with any of my companies. My business, other than being on the phone at midnight with somebody.
Robert Irvine [00:43:22]:
Never interferes with my business. Very rarely do I get that, by the way. So we have a rule. After a certain time, unless it's some very higher position in the military or government, I don't answer the phone. We have a cutoff time. My gym is my time. My home time is my time. My sauna.
Robert Irvine [00:43:42]:
I have a sauna and cold plunge every night. Don't talk to me, that's my time. We have a separation when we finish work. She has an hour, I have an hour. Then we'll both cook dinner together. So when. When people say it pays an emotional toll. Yes it does, but no it doesn't.
Robert Irvine [00:44:03]:
If you're open minded with your wife. Not like I was because I wasn't my first wife, I should say my ex wife. There was no aggravation even when we started the companies. It was only that I didn't tell her that I was. And by the way, it sounds funny, but it was my money. Yeah, right. Hours. But it was mine, Right? Right.
Robert Irvine [00:44:23]:
I put it away before I got married. And yes, you can say you're married. 50. 50. I get that. I totally understand that. I should have had her part of that decision for sure. But if you're a new entrepreneur and you're starting your business and you have a spouse, that's a decision you both have to make.
Robert Irvine [00:44:43]:
Yeah, because. Because there's an old saying my mother said and I used to use this on the show. And if you ever watch the show, you'll hear it. When poverty knocks at the door, love flies out the window. Meaning if you've got no money, you know there's going to be sparks. I never had that. Never. Only my initial signing of the business.
Robert Irvine [00:45:06]:
You're starting a business from scratch and you have no money. And you're using a joint credit card. Yeah. It's going to be issues because when. When your wife can't put food on table or buy lipstick or put gas in the car or all those things, it will. But if you're smart about it, it won't. And again, I go back to the planning stage of your business. If your wife knows you're going to be a lawyer, you're going to go to school for four, five years, whatever the number is, and you know you're going to pay this semester, she knows that.
Robert Irvine [00:45:39]:
There's no talking about it. When you both say yes, it's going. There is no conversation. Because I would always go back to. And most men would. And most women would, by the way. Well, we decided this together. This is what we decided.
Robert Irvine [00:45:52]:
We're seeing it through. Whether it was you as Amy and me as Matt, we agreed to do something. That's what agreed to. So if we end up beating, you know, noodles every day for a better future, then it's noodles every day.
Matt Tait [00:46:11]:
It's funny you bring up that story with your wife. I have a similar one, and we're still married 13 and a half years now. And she's very forgiving of my flaws as an entrepreneur. But when I was a practicing lawyer, the firm that I worked with merged. And one morning I get an email that says, hey, we're offering a really long couple of year severance package to the first two people, 20 people that walk through the door and ask for it. I immediately got up, sprinted up 10 flights of stairs, collapsed in that doorway, and said, I'd like to get it. The only person that beat me to that door was the person that had the office next door. And I accepted it.
Matt Tait [00:46:48]:
I signed the deal. And then I called my wife. And it's the last major decision in my life that I have and will make without talking to her and communicating for it or before it. But luckily it worked out well in the end. But I 100% agree with the thought process of communicating beforehand and doing it, because she still does occasionally bring that up with me.
Robert Irvine [00:47:14]:
I don't think they ever forget. It's like the elephant, you know, it's always there for something. But I will say this. I make decisions every day. So every. Every January, I have 60 people in a room in Phoenix, Arizona, and a couple hundred on Zoom. And we do our meetings of all our companies, and my wife sits in there and my daughters, just so they understand what I do. Right.
Robert Irvine [00:47:37]:
Because it changes daily. We get offered. Once you're a success in one business, I find people sort you out and find you and want you to do not only investments, but also help them do their things. And I do that a lot with big companies to bring out the culture change or to change something that they're doing. I talk to my wife about every day, but it's like she's busy doing her thing and you can tell till you're blue in the face about everything we're doing. We have a lot going on. She goes to me and said, oh, I never known about that. I'm like, well, we did tell you last year, you know, Christmas happening a lot changes our business and entrepreneurs changes so fast.
Robert Irvine [00:48:19]:
Yeah, you know, whether you make a product or you have a service, that product can change. I remember our first product. We made pizza, and it was made in Michigan and distributed all over the place. The biggest pizza manufacturer in the United States made my pizzas for me. And then all of a sudden, you know, somebody came in a big company, bought the spot out, paid marketing money and got rid of Irvine's Pizza. You know, so you've really got to be smart and on the, on the game all the time of, you know, what is the product. If you're going to go against digiorno, and I've just used that as a Pizza Hut pizza or whatever, you know, you're going to lose. Right.
Robert Irvine [00:48:56]:
They've got more money to spend.
Matt Tait [00:48:58]:
100%.
Robert Irvine [00:49:00]:
I fought Nestle. Literally, Nestle came after me. Month two of FITCRUNCH. You can Google it, Irvine versus Nestle. Because my, my FITCRUNCH bar had similar colors to their chocolate bar. It was completely different, but they came after me. And if they did one, by the way, they cost $28 million to, to fight. And luckily I had insurance on the product.
Robert Irvine [00:49:23]:
Not me, but it's out there. I mean, I won the U.S. they won Europe. As an entrepreneur, you gotta be really careful what space you go into, because these big companies just swallow you up because they can. And your, and your product never gets to see the marketplace because they'll just buy you out.
Matt Tait [00:49:43]:
Right.
Robert Irvine [00:49:43]:
And by the way, sometimes that's good if it's, if it's worth the multiple. But you always be wondering, what if I succeeded? And what could that multiple be after that?
Matt Tait [00:49:53]:
You know, as you and I have talked, there's. There's one thing that I found really refreshing and very different from people that have reached your level of success and your personal level of authenticity. I'm interested because for me, it took me a while to figure out who, who I was, who, what authenticity really meant for me. And I did a business that worked out well. I did another one that failed. And now I've, I've hit my groove. And part of it is I'm getting older, I'm interested. How is your path to that true authenticity? And I assume it's also evolving as things change, as you change.
Matt Tait [00:50:38]:
But what's kind of given you that confidence to just be yourself?
Robert Irvine [00:50:42]:
I think my wife, number one, the support I had from her having failed and realized why I failed, I think they're the two things that make me feel. And achievements. Right. And achievements also make you feel comfortable. But I think the humbleness. And again, I'm not always humble, by the way. I say sometimes you have to walk into a room and you have to own that. And my wife will laugh at me.
Robert Irvine [00:51:10]:
She said, oh, there he is, you know, the alter ego. But it's not an alter ego. It's actually controlling the room to achieve what you go into that room to achieve. If I go into a room full of four star generals and the Secretary of Defense or President of the United States, they're always bigger than me. I have to now stand with them. Right? Yeah. So I think there's that. But I think being comfortable again, look, money doesn't, and this is a.
Robert Irvine [00:51:37]:
How old are you?
Matt Tait [00:51:39]:
41.
Robert Irvine [00:51:41]:
I'm 59. Money doesn't drive me. And it used to be 30s and, and 35, 40. It was about money. When you achieve a level of, oh, I've got enough money to go on vacation and I'm not worried about this, and I'm not comfort, I think that also settles you down and starts you're thinking, okay, I feel good about myself. I can produce for my family, I can do what I want when I want, and I can pick and choose who I work with and who I work for. And I think that's, that's kind of the, the goal every entrepreneur should have, not money. Because if you chase money, you will chase your tail and go around in a circle.
Robert Irvine [00:52:24]:
And I say that in my book, if you do the right things, money will always find you. And people don't believe that. But all of my career, I found that if I've done the right things and baby, I said no to somebody, and I can tell you there was a mayonnaise offer on the table for me to endorse. It was $8 million, and I said no. It doesn't really fit with my health and wellness and fitness kind of portfolio of what I Do said, if you come out with a, a non fat, kind of healthier version of this, I'm in. But. And my agent said to me, well, why do you. Number one, he was going to get, you know, 20% of that or 10% of that, but it would.
Robert Irvine [00:53:10]:
I would have broke my own rules. And I think once you stay, stand tall and what you stand for and you say what you mean and you feel. And this is, this is not feel what you say. Say it in a way that doesn't offend 50% of the country. Right. The way we are right now. Unicode. Bed at night and sleep and know that you haven't altered your direction in any way, shape or form for anybody because you stuck by your guns.
Robert Irvine [00:53:41]:
And I think that's for me, what I'm lucky. I get to do great things with heads of state, with actors, with all those things. They're just people to me that wear a different uniform, they have a different job, they're no better than me. They may make more money than me, they may have more power than me, but they're still human. And I treat them the same way they treat me. And if they're rude to me, I'll say something. If they're kind to me, I'll say thank you. And I think it's a respect again, going back to that military thing.
Robert Irvine [00:54:18]:
Honor, respect, dignity, teamwork, and the ethos of helping each other. When we say team together, everyone achieves more. So if I can help you, then why wouldn't I do that? Because down the road, you may turn around and say, hey, Robert, I've got something. Do you want to do this? That, to me, is what the world is. It's not about me, me, me, me, me is about we, we, we, we, we. Because that's the way that we're put on this planet for. And I, and I feel that sometimes businesses are so cutthroat and they want the business. I won't do certain things for a certain amount of money.
Robert Irvine [00:54:56]:
But I'll say, do you know, hey, Matt, there's a job here for 20, 50,000. Are you interested in doing it? Because I'm gonna put your name forward. Yeah. And then they talk to you and you decide what do you want to do or not? Great. I do that with all my chef friends. I won't do appearances. Except if it's this, it doesn't help me. Right? So, you know, that's what I believe.
Robert Irvine [00:55:17]:
That's how that's. I'm that way with everybody.
Matt Tait [00:55:20]:
Well, I really like that. I took away really believe who you are and what you're about and really know it and believe it and communicate it well. And also the, the little sprinkling of pay it forward. And I firmly believe in that as well. Robert, I really appreciate your time and, and I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
Robert Irvine [00:55:41]:
Well, I appreciate you. Thanks. Wow.
Matt Tait [00:55:47]:
I have to say, Robert's episode was truly an amazing one for me. I was taking notes the entire time and I think for somebody like Robert Irvine, who is so famous and has been so successful, to really sit down and distill his story and really what's important to him and what he's learned down into one episode was truly fantastic. But if I had to really take Robert and everything that he said and distill it down into kind of some main bullet points, I would say there were three things that really stood out to me. Number one, embrace independent thinkers on your team. Two, confidence and resilience are non negotiable. And then three, humility and listening are your best leadership tools. So going back to number one and unpacking these embracing independent thinkers on your team, I think that's so important. As you grow as a person, as you grow as a company, having people that will push back, that'll push the boundaries, that'll think outside the box, that's only going to improve your ability to be successful and to be happy.
Matt Tait [00:56:52]:
And it can be hard because those are the people that aren't the yes men or women, but they're actually going to push you. And to challenge you at Decimal, we constantly are trying to hire people with diverse backgrounds, diverse thinking processes and skill sets. Having that really kind of true spectrum of human beings and leaders and people working for us has made us a better company. And that's something that Robert attests to as well, which I think is really, really cool. Number two, confidence and resilience. Non-negotiable. Anybody that has run a business that has been a leader can tell you failure is part of the job. Things will happen.
Matt Tait [00:57:30]:
Some things are in your control and some things are out of your control. Heck, we all just got out of a pandemic that wasn't perfect for everybody. Things are going to happen. You will fail. But if you are confident in yourself, confident in your mission, and if you have that fight, that resilience, hey, bad things happen. I'm going to stand up and I'm going to keep fighting on. That's what will give you the ability to continue to grow and continue to be successful. And I think that's such a cool part of Robert's story.
Matt Tait [00:57:59]:
And then finally, number three, humility and listening are your best tools. It's almost counterintuitive when we think of, hey, we just talked about confidence, but also being humble and listening. Surrounding yourself with people that have skill sets that complement you means understanding that you're not perfect, that you have things that you're not going to be good at, and that's totally okay. It's also hard for people who are first time leaders to say, like, hey, I don't know what I'm doing here, or I need somebody that can help me in this place. Having that kind of humility and then being willing to listen to the people that you bring in is really, really important. The more you trust and empower your team, which also means listening to them and being humble enough to do it, the more successful your company will be, the better your team will be, and I think in general, the more happy and successful you can be. And these are, I think, really great insights from Robert's story and I think we were all lucky to be able to hear them. Thanks so much for listening.
Matt Tait [00:59:02]:
After the First Million is presented by Decimal. To listen to more episodes and find tips to help make running a business easier, visit decimal.com/afm Want to join the conversation? Reach out to me on LinkedIn and let's explore the messy middle.