Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: I'd love to close our conversation with one of the places that we started. I'll call the idea sort of process as art. Your Picasso example of going to the trouble to expose the process as part of making people aware of it. The whole conversation maybe I would sum up as know your customer, know what you're selling, and sell it to them. It sounds so simple but so many implications. What do you think about just businesses in general and how they communicate with their end customers and whether or not things like ... We mentioned Michelin stars a few times and I think of that as this amazing thing that changes the trajectory of a restaurant. But that ultimately the best thing would be to create that impression directly to the consumer, not through Michelin. Close with any thoughts on this idea of process as art, direct to consumer, and just the future of business.
· Nick Kokonas
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. I mean, you have all the tools to know your consumer and interact directly with them. For the first 10 years of Alinea, every single day when I woke up I emailed two people that were either diners or posted on their blog about their dinner. Or on Yelp or wherever it may be. Because I figured over the course of a year I would email 700 customers and they would be like, holy cow. That's a very simple thing. It took me about five minutes a day to do. And as social media grew up around it, I just went, "Oh, that's even more effective way of doing it." I think that knowing your customer literally, who is it, and then having the ability to interact with them in an authentic way is the key to all business. At the end of the day you buy the person as much as the product. And that's why in America so many executives, both for good and bad, come to be known ... If you say Apple you think of Steve Jobs still. When you think of Tesla you think of Musk. That's because they're out there actually selling their product and their ideas. But of course they're the cumulative ideas of thousands of people. But they're the good communicators. And at the end of the day ... You're a philosophy major, I was a philosophy major. One of the things I learned in studying philosophy is how to think critically of something that I've learned or read, and then how to write about that in a concise and efficient way. So when I write a business plan, I don't understand the business until I can write about it on a single page. I have chefs all the time email me with business plans. And I say, "Do me a favor. Write up one page of what it's like as a diner to eat at your restaurant." And then I don't hear from them for two months, if ever. Because they don't have a clear vision. They have a clear vision of what food they want to give to someone. They don't have a clear vision of who that person is and what sort of emotionally resonant experience that you're creating with them. All the time we try to communicate directly with our guests, both on the Tock side and the Alinea Group side. And I've consulted for other businesses as well in the past couple of years. These are the kinds of really stupid questions I get paid money to ask. I'm always amazed when I go in there and I was like, "Okay. Show me your customer list for the last six weeks." And they can't.
· Nick Kokonas
That just seems insane to me. And let me tell you, almost no restaurant can do that. There's also a lot of other businesses that can't do that. So that's incredibly simple to do, but it's really hard to execute. And none of this has been fun. Let me also reiterate, COVID has been terrible. It's been emotionally draining. It's been incredibly difficult on our staff. We've had to hire people back. We've had to re-furlough people. We've constantly had to change. We were about to do a popup at a hotel which gave us extra square footage so we can run at 50% capacity. We were about to spend $30,000, $40,000 creating this really cool multimedia experience for diners in there. We were working with sound and lighting companies and all that. And then they shut indoor dining again. The next day, as soon as it was shut I was like, "Okay. All that's done. We're not going to do that this year." And then people were like, "Why not this year? It might only last two weeks." I said, "Well, we can't outlay all that money and then open for a week and then close for Thanksgiving and then open for two weeks and close for Christmas break." So it's become easier to make those quick decisions, but I want to reiterate none of it’s fun. It's all been a struggle. It's not like I have the answers. We're willing to try things. And it's been very, very difficult and sad frankly. It's never fun to sustain a business and your employees and not have a goal of thriving. We do keep that as the goal, but it's been challenging.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Nick Kokonas
[00:00:00] S0: I'll remember this awesome conversation for a lot of reasons, but just for the first principles thinking no surprise that you're a philosophy major at all. I'll turn to my traditional closing question that I ask everybody which is to ask you what the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you is? [00:00:00] S1: I'll make it a little bit generalized. Any time that someone says thank you for something that was done a long time ago is a nice thing. I try to do that for some of the people who were mentors to me. I think a really nice act of kindness is just to sort of recognize somebody when they've done something nice for you or they've helped you out. Or sometimes it's tough love. It's not always a good thing. So recently I've had a couple of instances in the midst of all this. People have called up and said like, "Hey, I really appreciate that these were difficult decisions." Or, "I really appreciate that I wouldn’t had started my company without you." Allen Hemberger, who is running all of our publishing stuff, once stole a napkin from Alinea. He is an autodidact. Amazing guy. He learns so much different stuff. And one day I got a knife in the mail with a story written to it that said, "I was so taken by Alinea when I was there years ago. I never imagined working with you guys. And I've never done anything like this but I actually took one of the napkins and I wanted to return it to you today." [00:00:00] S0: Wow. [00:00:00] S1: It was embedded in resin in the handle of a knife that he hand forged from a kiln that he hand built. [00:00:00] S0: Wow.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Nick Kokonas
[00:00:00] S0: Wow. [00:00:00] S1: So I opened it and I was just like, "That is one of the most amazingly cool things anyone's ever done." Now, it's not the fact ... And it's kind of amazing that he made the knife and all that stuff. What's really cool is that he took the time to do it and sort of said, "Hey, this is important to me." Those kinds of little kindnesses are the big ones. [00:00:00] S0: Well, this is so damn fun. I could have done it for three hours. Sorry we only had an hour and a half. But it's been an absolute pleasure to meet you and to speak and learn from you. Thank you for the time.