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An interview with SpaceX executive chef Ted Cizma about butcher shop beginnings, feeding 3,500 people in an Aspen parking lot, building a restaurant inside a rocket factory, breakfast burritos in mission control, and ending childhood hunger. Live right, set a good example, and hope they are paying attention.
A podcast exploring the life arcs of smart, creative, driven people who helped Elon Musk and SpaceX revolutionize the space industry. How did they get there? What was it like? What world are they creating now?
In all my previous discussions on It's Not Rocket Science, I've interviewed people who are engineers or HR professionals and I could at least imagine doing their jobs. Today, I'm gonna introduce
Ted CIzma:Ted Cizma, a former executive, chef at, SpaceX. We have lift off.
Jeff:We have lift off. So how did you end up getting into like, did you become a chef? For me, the arc of your career is something that's a mystery. I have no sense of how it develops and comes together. So what what was your journey that brought you to being a chef and then brought you to being SpaceX?
Ted CIzma:Yeah. So my dad and my grandfather were were butchers. My grandfather had a couple of local neighborhood grocery stores with prepared foods and things like that. And both of them were sort of the primary cooks in our family, feeding our big extended family. And so the two coolest guys I knew cooked, so it always seemed like something that would be cool to do.
Ted CIzma:Right? I wanted to emulate them, of course. And so I did. I worked with my grandfather as a young man. I worked learned to be a butcher at a young age.
Ted CIzma:I like to tell people that I learned about food from the from the inside out.
Jeff:Okay.
Ted CIzma:So I learned all those basic foundational things and learned to cook basic foods, prepared foods, and things of that nature. Working for my grandfather, I I got my first job in my restaurant when I was in junior high. And, you know, really worked in restaurants and things of that nature all through, all through high school. And my parents, like many working class blue collar parents, wanted more for their kids than for them. Right?
Ted CIzma:And so they were very, very insistent about myself, my brothers and sisters pursuing professional careers. So my undergraduate degree is actually in political science and had planned to go to law school. Graduated from college in Chicago. And of course, I worked in restaurants all through college, right? I was not the world's best student.
Ted CIzma:And so when I got out of college, said, I'm gonna take a year off before I apply for law school and things like that nature. And the rest, as they say, is history. I never applied to law school, never went back, continued working in restaurants. Chef I was working for at that time encouraged me to attend culinary school. So I did follow my graduate school was culinary school.
Jeff:Mhmm.
Ted CIzma:You know, was just so much of this business is about luck. Right? People people say, well, you make your own luck. And there there's a there's a certain degree of that. But over the past fifty years, I've just been very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and get the opportunities to work with some really terrific people.
Ted CIzma:And part of that too is acting on the opportunity. Lots of people get opportunities. Some people don't act on them. I've I've always been pretty not really risk averse. So I'm like, let's let's do it.
Ted CIzma:Right? And so I started my career started my, you know, real culinary career working for a chef named Charlie Trotter. Pretty famous seminal chef in Chicago for a lot of firsts. And that really set the foundation for me. And over the years, I had my own restaurants.
Ted CIzma:I had three restaurants in Chicago for quite a few years. About twenty something years ago, was named best new chef in America by Food and Mind magazine. Got to be on the cover of a bunch of magazines and New York Times and do all that media stuff back when back when print media really meant something. Right? It was really drove industries.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. In the early two thousands, I had at this time two older kids and my wife unexpectedly got pregnant seven years after our second daughter. And it really made me stop and sort of evaluate. Because at that time, I was leaving the house before everybody got up in the morning and coming home at night after everybody was in bed, right? You know?
Ted CIzma:Yeah. Five, six, seven days a week. Mhmm. And we're sitting in the kitchen, my wife and I discussing the possibility of selling my restaurants because there was a developer that wanted to purchase our business because they wanted it for other purposes. So we're discussing this, and my daughter at the time was 11, walks through the kitchen.
Ted CIzma:I turned to my office and said, is she is that your shirt she's wearing? She's like, yeah. And I said, is she wearing a bra? And she says, yeah. I'm like, holy shit.
Ted CIzma:Like, how did
Jeff:I how
Ted CIzma:did I
Jeff:You missed something. Yeah.
Ted CIzma:And I missed something. Right? And that was I took it as a sign. Right? And so Yeah.
Ted CIzma:Put together a deal, sold my businesses, all the underlying real estate in one fell swoop, and, you know, looked to do what was next. And I took a little time off, knocked out a few of those things on the list, those we should do list, rented a motor home, toured The United States, did a bunch of stuff like that. And then the following year, I got the opportunity to cater the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado. But I'd never done anything on any kind of scale like that. But I found I think everybody has a special gift, Jeff.
Ted CIzma:Not everybody recognizes what it is.
Jeff:Right.
Ted CIzma:My special gift is being able to get that 10,000 foot view, see all the moving parts, know what needs to be done in the order that they need to be done in order to make those big things happen. Right?
Jeff:So that is like an essential skill in many careers too. So it's like good that you recognize that and that you have it.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. Yeah. So the Winter X Games was crazy. We we basically they gave us a parking lot and said, hey. You got to provide 3,500 people breakfast, lunch, and dinner for ten days straight in this parking lot.
Ted CIzma:Make it happen. Right? And this is in January in Aspen. So it's dumping snow. We're putting up temporary tents and kitchens and hiring staff and renting equipment and stuff.
Ted CIzma:And we pulled it off and it was great. But I came away from that experience knowing what I wanted to do in the next phase of my career. And that was big complex operations, right? So I ran some hotels, resorts, things of that nature. And then one day I get a call out of the blue from a from a recruiter.
Ted CIzma:Now at the time I was running a high end luxury resort resort in Sedona, Arizona. A lot of movie stars, things of that nature. And this this recruiter was a technical recruiter from SpaceX. I don't know if you recognize the name, Afton Detwiler.
Jeff:Yeah.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. Early technical recruiter. Because, of course, there's no there's nobody at SpaceX knows anything about food. Right? I get this call, and she's like, can I work for a company in Southern California yet to be unnamed?
Ted CIzma:Right? And we're interested in building a restaurant to feed
Jeff:Yeah.
Ted CIzma:Our employees. And and I wasn't really looking for a job, but I was kind of passively exploring it. Right? I said, oh, well, you know, I never say never. So I go through this series of phone interviews about this.
Ted CIzma:Right? The final inward view I have was with an an HR intern who used to work in a restaurant.
Jeff:That's as close as they got.
Ted CIzma:That's the closest thing that any level of expertise anybody had at SpaceX about food. Right? And so clearly so anyway, they said, doing great. Why don't you come out and meet Elon? So I fly out.
Ted CIzma:They put me up at a hotel. Right? I spent two or three days coming back and forth to SpaceX. Elon never shows up. He gets tied up at Tesla, can't make it.
Ted CIzma:So I go back home to Arizona, I have a phone interview with Elon. It goes really good. Come back. Okay? So I come back.
Ted CIzma:I get to meet Elon. Go through the whole thing. Everybody says, oh, it went great. He loved you. This and that.
Jeff:Yeah.
Ted CIzma:You know, I'm sure an offer is gonna be forthcoming. A week goes by, two weeks go by, three weeks go by. Finally, I get a call from the current VP at that time, or the director of recruiting, was Dolly. Dolly Singh. And she says, yeah, sorry, Ted.
Ted CIzma:We've decided to go in another direction. They had hired a chef at Tesla and then pulled the plug on the food program at Tesla. So they were going to move this guy from Tesla down to SpaceX to be the chef. So I'm like, Hey, fine, Yeah. Whatever.
Ted CIzma:Like, I got a job. I'm I'm good. You know? And and at that time, SpaceX was nothing. This is 2010.
Ted CIzma:Right? Like, no big deal. Yes. Anyway, months go by and the phone rings. Dolly call me back or effed in.
Ted CIzma:I forget which one. So it didn't really work out. You still interested in a job? I'm like, yeah, I'm still interested, but the price has gone up since last time we talked. Okay, fine.
Ted CIzma:So anyway, all of this altogether, this is like a year long process. Finally get the job offer, fly out. Jerry Fields was in charge of HR at that time. Said, hey, I want you to start now rather than later because we're about to have a shareholders meeting and the price of the stock is gonna go up. So we want you to get your grants at the current price.
Ted CIzma:Right? That was a good indicator from early that they were looking out for me. Right?
Jeff:That they were generous with that.
Ted CIzma:They were generous with that. Right? And, of course, the stock options in 2010 meant nothing. Right? I think it was I think it was $7 a share at that time.
Ted CIzma:Right? They we're like this far apart on salary. Because I'm moving from Arizona to California, price of living obviously much higher. Right? I got four kids, you know, and like cash flow is king.
Ted CIzma:So they they come up a little bit in the salary, and then we'll give you x number more options. Like, honestly guys, not really interested. The option's great. I appreciate it. But does it means nothing to me at this point.
Ted CIzma:Right? I need money to pay the bills. So anyway, my stubbornness at that time actually ended up working out. You know, current situation has has worked out worked out well. Right?
Jeff:When you had your discussion when you had your discussions with Elon, did you get a sense for how particular he was about things, including his including catering? Because I think he was. And one thing I was thinking about as you were saying, they didn't have anybody who knew anything about catering. Of course, Elon's brother is a restaurateur. So it's funny that they didn't manage to bring in any expertise when they were in interviewing you.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. And I I did talk to Kimball throughout that process a couple of times and we actually got to be acquaintances. In fact, Kimball, over the years, Kimball kinda became my backdoor to Elon because listen. There were things I was I had a great relationship with him. I I would wager to say I spent as much time with Elon as almost anybody because I was feeding him every day.
Ted CIzma:I was doing all kinds of stuff. Right?
Jeff:Doesn't surprise me.
Ted CIzma:But there were some things that I couldn't ask him or I couldn't say to him. But your brother can say anything to you, can ask you anything. So if I had a particularly difficult ask, as a chef, I would call Kimball, another chef and restaurateur, and say, hey. I really need to make this happen. Can you assist me in this process?
Ted CIzma:And more often than not, he did.
Jeff:That makes sense. Because I know that, you know, my experiences with Elon in that kind of catering area is that he was pretty particular about stuff.
Ted CIzma:He was very particular. And he he a lot of the questions and things we talked about, he's drilling down was he was making it clear to me that SpaceX only recruited the best of the best. The top oomph percentage of graduates, of engineers, of everything. And he says, I expect that same same process to be applied to the hospitality and the food service here. He's like, here's my mandate.
Ted CIzma:He's like, when you build my restaurant in this this rocket factory and this is legit. This is exactly what he said. He's like, it's gotta look like it belongs in a twenty first century rocket factory, which is pretty broad description, but I I can work with that. He says, and it's gotta be badass. That was straight up.
Ted CIzma:That was my mandate. Those two things. It's gotta look like it belongs to the twenty first century Rocket Factory, and it's gotta be badass. And he's like, I will give you all the resources you want, but you just gotta be successful. And that was my experience over the ten years that I was there is that, you know, here, we'll give you whatever resources you want.
Ted CIzma:You just have to succeed. You know what I mean? So that that was that was great.
Jeff:Did you ever end up finding out what he didn't like to eat or what he really did like to eat? You know, was that like, did you guys did you crash on anything, or was it pretty smooth?
Ted CIzma:Yeah. He quite I never really experimented with with Elon. He he would tell me what he wanted, and he he honestly, he didn't really care too much about food. He he he ate for fuel. He ate for fuel.
Jeff:Right.
Ted CIzma:Pretty some pretty funny experiences. Right? Like, I would get a call from whoever his EA at the time was. Initially, it was MB, of course, and then Alyssa and and other people after that. But, like, oh, can you bring Elon's lunch now and deliver it to Executive Conference Room?
Ted CIzma:Yeah. Sure. So I come bring him his lunch in the Conference Room. He'd be in a meeting with 15 people. Nobody else is eating, but I would have to bring in a plate of food and set it set it in front of him.
Ted CIzma:He never thought anything of that because it was just, hey. I gotta feed myself now in order to go. That that's it. It was never no no consideration of of what it meant to everybody around him.
Jeff:It's funny. In my memory of it, it was, like, on his plane once, the staff on the plane were trying out different kinds of coffee that they could feed him on the plane and bringing him back, you know, again, for fuel, for caffeine but it had to like taste right and there were some rejects and then some things that worked. And I'm sure that they spent tons of time trying to figure out how to do catering in that environment too.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. You know, his mom, May, is a dietitian and nutritionist. And I you know, over the years, I always wanted, you know, his time was so tacked, you know, his schedule is so I always wanted to help him with his diet and nutrition. And I made that available to him. I offered him all he was always taking supplements and things like that.
Ted CIzma:And he over the years we were together, would say, I'm just gonna eat flat flat iron steak and black beans or or whatever. He would find something that worked for him and he would eat that over and over and over again, things like that. But he was never really never really open to it. But his mom posited the potential that he was a super taster. Taste things that other people don't, that you're more sensitive to things like that.
Ted CIzma:And I I I think that that's I think that that's fairly fairly accurate.
Jeff:I think it's actually probably reflected in a lot of his sensitivity to design elements.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. Yeah. Uber focused, you know, details.
Jeff:For sure. Did you have a classic SpaceX story that came to mind when you're, like, thinking about that, Or is it more a series of stories?
Ted CIzma:Just from the very beginning. Right? You know, like, we built a we built a restaurant inside of a rocket factory. Right? We built a building inside of a a a building.
Ted CIzma:And, you know, the the initial ask was, Okay, build a restaurant. The initial ask was going to be a restaurant. Like order off a menu, put it on a plate, get it served to you at your table by a waitress, right? I think when I started, we had about 500 employees, right? So that was doable.
Ted CIzma:And he told me, he says, oh, we're never gonna have more than 2,000 people in this building. So build your maximum capacity for the cafe to be feeding 2,000 people lunch a day. That's it. Just gonna do lunch every day. Well, the day we opened that cafe, April 2013, we had 2,100 employees.
Ted CIzma:So we immediately started planning to build a mezzanine cafe above it, which, by the way, was included in my original plan, was to have that upper level. Oh, we won't need it. So, yeah, we we needed it. So built the mezzanine, built another restaurant up there, eventually expanded that by almost another 50% at one point. And then, you know, of course, kitchens at West Campus, grab and goes.
Ted CIzma:We eventually converted half of shipping and receiving into a prep kitchen, Cape Canaveral, MacGregor, etcetera. I think when I left, I had 277 culinary employees working for me across the company.
Jeff:So by the time you left, you had more culinary employees than there were employees when I started at the company.
Ted CIzma:Is that right? What year did you start, Jeff?
Jeff:I started in 2007. We had just, you know, just over 200 people.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. I think I was I believe I was employee 529. That's that's I think that's I think that's the number that that I that I that I recall. So
Jeff:And that was about the time that I left which was late two thousand ten.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. So I did my orient. Well, I actually yeah. I did my orientation, I think, in November 2010.
Jeff:And how did you end up moving on from SpaceX?
Ted CIzma:SpaceX, you know, of course, it I mean, the the truth of the matter is by by by 2020, I was really more of a figurehead than anything. I had built this unbelievable staff. Right? I had this core group that had been with me from the very beginning. And any one of them in their own right could have run the whole operation on their own.
Ted CIzma:Right? I was spending a lot of my time going to MacGregor, going to The Cape, going to Redmond. And at this point, Starbase, or it wasn't even called Starbase, that point was just starting to come online, right, and doing some stuff down down there. But the reality was is it was a it was a smooth running machine. Right?
Ted CIzma:And I was spending the bulk of my time in meetings and looking at spreadsheets, which I can do, but it's not fun. Right? And the fun part for me was building things, building teams, building infrastructure, building programs, all that stuff, which we did nonstop at breakneck speed for almost ten years. And now I'm in a position where all you do is show up in the morning, whatever. And and quite frankly, I lost a little bit of interest.
Ted CIzma:I didn't have the passion for it anymore. And so I really wanted to take the sabbatical and go do some work with my nonprofit and things of that nature. And then basically a week later, the country locks down. This is February 20 And yeah, there's a few other things involved family wise, private wise. But the long story, the short story is I just ended up not going back.
Ted CIzma:And I I didn't know what was next. I didn't know whether I was gonna retire or not at that point. But I took about a year year off there during the pandemic. I I delivered groceries to shut ins, you know, volunteered, and did a bunch of stuff like that. And then ultimately just moved moved on a little bit from there.
Ted CIzma:But I have have zero regrets.
Jeff:Yeah. For sure. And did that SpaceX trajectory for you help you to spend more time with your family or did it actually end up taking you way more from your family? Given the the comments that you made early on about how the career in catering and being a chef is something that doesn't mix well with your, like, home obligations?
Ted CIzma:Some of both. Right? SpaceX definitely gave me stability and the fact that it was a corporate operation versus open to the public. I mean, the first year or two were crazy. They're all all the time.
Ted CIzma:But as it smoothed out a little bit, I started to have more regular hours, weekends off for the most part, things of that nature. Also, the ability to take time off to go on vacation with my family. Right? So I believe it was May 2013 when we linked up with the ISS for the first time. And then Yep.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. Because it was actually on my birthday. May 2013 is when we docked. I happened to be in mission control delivering breakfast burritos at the time. And I was standing next to Gwen.
Ted CIzma:And when Dragon docked successfully, Gwen turned around and hugged me. I was the first person that she hugged after that. I'm like, that's my story, right? The president on SpaceX hugged the chef upon, you know, upon docking with the space station. And I'll never forget that moment.
Ted CIzma:It was power and the energy in that room was was was incredible. Right? But that that
Jeff:that Yes.
Ted CIzma:They he gave us all he gave the whole company a week paid vacation off after that. We called it SpaceX spring break. Right? And I had had been traveling pretty extensively at that time, setting up all the other things. So I took my whole family to Maui for a week.
Ted CIzma:Right? Like, all the kids stayed in a nice hotel, did everything you got to do. Like this is something I had never done before, right? I don't think I'd ever taken more than three or four days in a row off consecutively in the last And fifteen so the ability to take a vacation away from work and not worry about anything was amazing.
Jeff:That's great. I had totally forgotten about the spring break thing. I was able to come to Hawthorne for that docking maneuver and it was an amazing day. And but I had forgotten that he actually did follow through and give everybody time off after that.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. On top of that, I mean, that was huge. I mean, think about the financial ramifications of of, like, that. Course. I mean, massive.
Ted CIzma:But from from morale point of view, it was fantastic. And and I recall watching all the social media that following week, right? Like there were people getting dropped off on top of glaciers in New Zealand to do extreme skiing. There were two or three other people on my plane. Kent and Lucas was on my flight to to Mali with me, and people just went all over the world and did these fantastic SpaceX things.
Ted CIzma:You know?
Jeff:Yeah. And that's kind of the flip side of the fact that for years, maybe a decade, that people had been expecting like, well, I won't be able to have thanksgiving dinner with my family because something's gonna come up and I'm gonna have to go to work. Right. The flip side of that is you finally can release that pressure.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. And and you you bring up a good point. Like, so for me being in the hospitality business, I mean, I never went out with my wife on Valentine's Day. Never went out on New Year's Eve. Almost never went out on Thanksgiving or Christmas because I was usually providing a big holiday buffet at some hotel or something like that.
Ted CIzma:So you know, moving into corporate world, even SpaceX where everybody worked super, super hard and long hours, we did, for the most part, get the traditional holidays off and stuff. And to me, that was a revelation too, being able to, you know, have those days off. Now, I still don't wanna go out to a restaurant on on Valentine's Day, but at least I don't have to work it. You know?
Jeff:Yeah. It's a it's a choice that you make. So it sounds like it did manage to bring you together with your family a little bit more during that period of time.
Ted CIzma:For sure.
Jeff:Even though it was a high intensity workplace. It also sounds like you built a team that you trusted that really was a team of the best people you could find. Yeah. And that eventually that eventually can clear the way for you to step aside.
Ted CIzma:Exactly. Yeah. It's it's interesting because, you know, when I started, I was given I mean, I was given they said, listen. You know, build a team. Right?
Ted CIzma:And so I was able to go back through my past and seek out and recruit the best people who ever worked with me. Right? It was really interesting because I was going back to the Midwest, right? To Michigan and Chicago and the East Coast and flying these people to Southern California, you know, in the spring and early fall, giving them the whole dog and pony show at SpaceX. And, you know, I I would pick them up at LAX and drive down PCH, and we stop in Manhattan Beach for lunch on the, you know, stuff like this.
Ted CIzma:It was it was trust me. It was an easy sell. Right?
Jeff:It is an easy sell. I I came to Los Angeles from England and I'll tell you, the day that I met with Elon in LA is like, if the weather was like this in England, nobody would go to work. And he was like, well, here it's just another Wednesday.
Ted CIzma:That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's right. And so so then, you know, I I built this core group of young men and women who had worked with me in the past, plus a few locals that that I brought on.
Ted CIzma:But interestingly, so I would I would go through my my resumes looking at at the the the candidates. Right? There's something like you say about England. Right? There's something there's a sensibility from people from the Midwest.
Ted CIzma:Right? Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota. Like if half of the year you have to get up an hour and a half early to dig your car out of the snow and all that stuff, you deal with adversity different, right? You tell somebody who grew up in Fernando Beach that you got to set your alarm two hours early because you're going to have to dig your car out of the snow to get to work that look at you like you're insane, right? So I gave preference to recruiting these people from these cold weather climates.
Ted CIzma:Really, that whole core group was all from the from the Midwest. Some of them are still there. You know, in fact, Bonnie Bristol worked for me. She was a smart kid, graduated high school early, was in culinary school in Traverse City, Michigan, came to work for me at a hotel there at like age 17, Worked me through my whole tenure there. Followed me to Sedona.
Ted CIzma:Worked me in Sedona. And she was I think the second person I hired at SpaceX. Her and her boyfriend who's now her husband. We hired them both for SpaceX. Worked for me my entire tenure at SpaceX.
Ted CIzma:And then Brett, you know, I spent the last five years at SpaceX working for Brett, the CFO, asked me for a succession plan. And so she took over for me as executive chef. When I left, did that for the last six years. And then she just retired at age 38, by the way. Timing was good for her for sure a couple of months ago.
Ted CIzma:So, you know, pretty interesting.
Jeff:It's a sweet story. And and what are you passionate about now? What's going on now for you?
Ted CIzma:Yeah. So I'm still working. I I do mostly consulting now. I really got very fortunate. I have basically one client that runs sports and entertainment venues around the world, which big stadiums is comparable to feeding a rocket factory, right?
Ted CIzma:It's a lot of moving parts, concessions, and catering, and in seat, and things like that. So I have kept up the travel a little bit and doing that. But I'm deeply involved with a charity, No Kid Hungry, you know, feeding feeding hungry kids. And I have a I run a charity cycling team called Chef Cycle. We do big rides and raise money to to, you know, to to help end childhood hunger in The United States and the and the world in in general.
Jeff:What's the focus of that charity? How does it work? How are you guys tackling the hunger problem?
Ted CIzma:No Kid Hungry is a sort of a smaller division of Share Our Strength, which is, you know, a long time, charity. What No Kid Hungry does is it focuses on school meals. So we're providing breakfasts in public schools, lunches in public schools. We don't give money directly. We assist with grants, infrastructure, lobbying, programs, things of that nature.
Ted CIzma:But the reality is, is right now one in six kids in America is experiencing food insecurity, which is unfathomable to me because I know how much excess food we have, also how wealthy our country is. It's a completely solvable problem, right? This is not like curing cancer, right? Feeding hungry kids just means feeding hungry kids. And I will tell you, current administrations, cuts to snap and things of that nature have been have been devastating to to to a lot of families.
Ted CIzma:So the work we do now is is is even more important. But we've we've had a lot of forward progress. I mean, even here right here where I live in Torrance, Torrance Unified School District, any kid in the school that wants a lunch gets a lunch no questions asked, right? It's not like when we were kids where you had to fill out a form and get the special Right. The poor kid lunch, right?
Ted CIzma:There's no stigma attached to it. Everybody gets it. You can want it or not. If you want it or not, same with breakfast in the classrooms. Right?
Ted CIzma:It's there for everybody. It's part of the program. There's there's no stigma attached to it. And so we are making progress, but, you know, not as fast as as as I would like.
Jeff:Yeah. It's never seems to be as quick as what you want or equal to the size of the problem. I mean, in some ways, that kind of answers my first one liner about, like, do you think we can make the world a better place?
Ted CIzma:Yeah. I do. And I think it's an I think it's I think it's it's an individual effort, but millions of individual efforts become a collective effort. Right? So my dad said to me, he's like, listen, the best thing you could do is live your life right, set a good example, and hope they're paying attention.
Ted CIzma:Right? Because you can't make your kids do anything. Right? So I, my dad, my dad lived his life and he let me watch him And do so that's how I've taken my approach to parenting to my children is like, hey, man. I'm trying to do the best I can.
Ted CIzma:I hope you're paying attention to what I'm doing, you know, and try to emulate, you know, the actions that I've taken.
Jeff:Yeah. And in some ways, you can't do it the other way around. That's for sure. You can't say to your kids, well, don't do what I do because they all they always see you.
Ted CIzma:Exactly. Like, yeah, don't smoke. Don't smoke kids. You know? It's like it's bad for your health.
Ted CIzma:Right? I see that see that all all all the time. It's like, yeah, they're kids are, you know, humans in general are smart and perceptive. And they see what they see. Right?
Ted CIzma:And they they they model their actions on what they see.
Jeff:I think that's true. I think that the second question I always ask is about getting on to the career path that you have. Like, what would you give as advice to somebody who wants to get into that? Because actually, there are a lot of people who wanna get into catering or to really being chefs. It's very attractive.
Jeff:It's one of those things if I'd grown up in a parallel universe, might have imagined doing that. You say that it's built on luck, but it also seemed to be built on sort of being present for the opportunities.
Ted CIzma:And and hard work for sure. Yeah. So the the the main advice that I I give young men and women or anybody you know who's interested in culinary career is try it first. Right? So many people like get right out of high school, go to culinary school, spend $100 on a culinary education, and then get into the field and find out, oh, it's not as much fun as I thought it would be.
Ted CIzma:Because cooking and being a chef, it it really is more of a lifestyle than a career. And it's not for everybody. I mean, really isn't for everybody. I mean, like some of the things I've said, think about it. You're never going out on a Friday night, right, with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, right?
Ted CIzma:You're gonna work every holiday, every weekend for the most part, things of that nature. You're you're gonna be working when all your friends are gonna be, you know, be doing fun fun things for the most part. So it's something that you really have to feel strongly about. I mean, passion is an extremely overused word. Generally, people tell me, oh, I have such a passion for cooking.
Ted CIzma:Hey, yeah, great. I pretty much discount that immediately. But you do have to really have deep, deep feelings about it. So get a job. Get a job in a hotel, in a restaurant, anywhere where you're working with food, and see if you like it, right?
Ted CIzma:If it's for you, great. Pursue it. You can always get that education later. But really the most important thing about this industry knowing that it's what you want to do and liking the process. And along with that process comes the camaraderie, right, and the teamwork and the sense of accomplishment.
Jeff:Yeah.
Ted CIzma:And the one great thing about working in a restaurant is immediate satisfaction, right? You make the food, you serve it, the people love it or hate it. Right? But either way, you know. And then you got another, like, you know, if you say you had a 100 seats in your restaurant, you got a 100 chances to get it right every night if you don't get it right that first time, you know?
Jeff:It's not like starting a company where you have to worry about the long term and you never know whether it's gonna be successful. At least you have some feedback in the short term.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. I have some friends that are winemakers and they have to wait an entire year every year to know whether their whole year's work was successful. Right? It's like, I couldn't take the stress. Right?
Ted CIzma:Like, at least in a restaurant, I serve the food. I look and see. Do they like it? Okay. They liked it.
Ted CIzma:It's good. They didn't like it? I go out. I take it back. Like, let me try that again for you.
Ted CIzma:I'll make it again. You know? You can fix it right away.
Jeff:I love that. And I think the advice is great too to to not look at the romance of it. You know, you watch the bear so you wanna be a chef, but to try to sample the real life.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. Because, you know, the Food Network really romanticized being a chef and cooking. And over the past probably fifteen or twenty years when that's really become sort of a big part of our popular culture. Right? Many, many people have gotten into because they, oh, I wanna be a celebrity chef.
Ted CIzma:Like, ugh. Like, your odds of being Bobby Flay are the same as getting chosen first in the NBA draft, quite frankly, right? It's just not going to happen. Like, what are we on season 27 of Hell's Kitchen? Can you name one person who's ever won Hell's Kitchen?
Ted CIzma:No, right? They get fifteen minutes of fame and you know, it's over with. So the the vast majority of this business is made up of people who just show up to work and work hard every day, you know, but totally totally anonymous.
Jeff:And I guess that's true in most industries too. If you decide you're gonna be the person who's famous you Yeah. Are really rolling the dice on that one.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. What are your mo and what are your motives. Right?
Jeff:No. I was just gonna say it's been really kind of awesome getting to meet you and getting to talk to you and explore some of these things. Was there anything else that you wanted to to talk about? I I love that you're coming to me from a coffee shop. You dropped off your daughter.
Jeff:You know, you're in the real life.
Ted CIzma:In the in the real life for sure. Yeah. It's, well, you know, we're at a very interesting juncture of our of our company. Right? Like, honestly, I never I honestly never thought we would see SpaceX as a public company.
Ted CIzma:I mean, Elon said it many, many times. We'll never be public. We'll never be public. And so I had sort of I'm 62 years old, right? I was planning for retirement already.
Ted CIzma:I'm happy with my preparations. So this has like added a whole, this whole recent events have added a whole new element to my life. And I'm thinking about things completely differently now, right? Like I'm not going to go crazy because basically I got everything I want, right? Been very fortunate because of SpaceX.
Ted CIzma:All my children are, for the most part, out of college, no debt, right? Be able to give them that gift to start their career unencumbered, right? And taking care of all the basics for the rest of my family. So this is just like this is like we're in bonus time right now. So looking to be able to do some good things, do some good things with that, help some people out.
Ted CIzma:And honestly, most likely pass the majority of it on to my kids so they can enjoy it now. Right? Because, I mean, my my needs are finite.
Jeff:It's true. And I think that it's good to talk to somebody who's already been involved with what you consider to be an important part of charity work
Ted CIzma:Yeah.
Jeff:And passing that success and that good luck forward into the wider community as well as into your own family because I think that that's a challenge that those of us who are fortunate do face is how do we balance up what's going on in our family with what's going on in the wider world.
Ted CIzma:Yeah. It's it's it's been pretty interesting and I and I love all of the things that SpaceX has accomplished that everybody said can't be done. Right? Like, listen. Again, I'm just a cook.
Ted CIzma:Right? But I was along I was along for the ride. I was there for every inch of the way. And I I 100% drank the Kool Aid from from day one. And, you know, I'm so grateful to have been able to play even just a small role in that process and to be present for all those things that happened.
Ted CIzma:And if you weren't inside there, if you don't really understand what we've accomplished, right? Like Ilan said something on X. Like what people don't understand that is if we meet our goals, SpaceX will be more valuable than Earth. Now that's a polarizing statement. But, you know, it just gives you the idea of what the potential scope of the the the reality is.
Ted CIzma:You know?
Jeff:And it gives you an idea of the size of the vision as well Yes. Which is that if we're ever gonna be in Star Trek world, then that statement is gonna be true. And so we just have to see if we get there.
Ted CIzma:The success is the best revenge. Right?
Jeff:I'm gonna leave it there. I think that's a good that's a good place to call a halt to it. I really appreciate your taking the time this morning. It's been a blast getting to know you and to to share these ideas.
Ted CIzma:Appreciate it. Thanks very much.