The Magic Is in the Work You’re Avoiding: with Restaurateur Kevin Boehm

27:59Like, dude, you hated me my whole life. Larry was regretful. My mom adored me. Woody was regretful. Woody was getting older and knew that he had watched me from a distance all these years. It must have been hard on him. And now he wanted me to just instantly feel like he was my father. Did you look like him? I did. But I couldn't flip the switch of just loving him. And with Larry, he was too far gone. Once you go through the things that I had gone through with him, this is a guy that hit me in the face when I was eight years old. There was no going back with him. Maybe someday I could find something with him.

28:38But our relationship for all intents and purposes at that point was dead. And as much as I loved my mom, I felt suffocated. And I just got to the point where I was like, man, I'm going to go all in on me. Whoever this new me is, I'm going to create this new me that doesn't have to deal with all of this baggage. And so all I wanted to do was pretend that all that didn't exist. And so I needed a new town to create the new me. None of these people know me. They're not going to know anybody to ask questions. The fake resume was symbolic of everything that I was trying to do. It's interesting for me to hear you talk about each of these people and feel your energy.

29:19It's different when you talk about each one of them. I adore my mother. You adore your mother. What I'm feeling - I feel sorry for Larry. I never knew Woody well enough. Why the emotion and the tears for Larry? I so desperately wanted him to like me. that never went away. So the tears are really for you? Maybe. And for him. I actually finished my book and I had turned it in. Larry had a heart attack. And my sister called me and said, you know, Larry died for several minutes last night, but they revived him. And she said, I'm just letting you know. She didn't say, come down. She left that up to me.

30:01And I called my therapist and she said, what are you going to hope you did five years from now? Seems very simple, but it's a great question in a lot of different ways. And I was like, I'm going to wish that I went down there, even if it was just to support Missy. So I drove to Springfield and on the middle of the table was a letter from Larry. A seven page letter was an apology letter. It was not an apology about his treatment to me when I was a kid. It said nothing of him not being my father. It was very specifically about him never really getting to know me or my kids. And he said, you don't talk to me anymore and I know why and I'm sorry.

30:49And I was able to go to the hospital and forgive him. I think I wrote in the book that when I told him that I loved him because I wasn't sure if I really did or not, that it felt like throwing a curveball with a broken arm. It was not easy to push out of my mouth. I had not told him that I loved him since I was a very little kid. And I had never said it to my real father. And I was like, it's what he needs to hear. And what the hell, just do it. So I did. How do you feel in hindsight? Good. I'm glad I did. And like 20 minutes later, Crazy Larry came out. And I was telling my sister a story about me running in the Tough Mudder and adding up in the medic tent.

31:29And then he goes, goddamn stupid moron move per usual. And my sister and I just laughed about it. We went to the hallway. She's like, well, we're not crazy. He's still there. I'm missing the years where you really found a version of yourself from 19 on. Talk to me about that time period. Yeah. Well, one, I found my people. So I went into restaurants and I met these people in restaurants. I became so intrigued about food and wine, hostility and service. And I met the restaurant people and I go, wait a second. These people are smart. They know a lot about food, wine, music, and they're dangerous.

32:09I mean, they go out to like four in the morning. And I'm like, they're cool, man. I mean, like everybody else is boring compared to these people. So I was like, okay, I can hang with these folks. That was fun. Those first few years where I was saving all that money up. And like I met the girl that I opened up my first restaurant with and I found my running buddies and friends and I didn't need to sleep much. So I would go and I would sprint hard on the dining room floor and then I would go straight from the dining room floor to the bar, from the bar to the bed. And I wake up in the morning and I'd run six miles.

32:43I was a maniac. I was a total maniac. Were you experiencing highs and lows at this time? Yeah, I would still experience all the crashes. And so the running was part of like the crashes because I would wake up and I would be hung over and I would feel like I wanted to die and I would go run and I'd feel a little better and I'd feel terrible till work and then work would make me feel better again. And then as soon as I started to crash, then I would add some tequila to the equation and then I would feel better again. And I was like, well, if I just keep doing this for 40 years, I mean, what could go wrong?

33:16You felt like it was fine. Like you had found the potion. Yeah. I was like, oh, well, this is fine. This is not unhealthy. what's five to seven margaritas a night between friends? And then that gets to be a little bit more. And I knew I was pretty good at it. And I instantly just - What made you good at it? I didn't have very good technical skill in the beginning as far as wine service or being able to talk about terroir and what great wines were and the characteristics of the individual Pinot Noirs on the list. And I wasn't good at table maintenance and I wasn't serving from the left side with my left hand yet.

33:49And all these technical skills that I had not learned but I still got a ton of call tables. General manager was baffled by it. He would tell me, he goes, you are not a great server. I understand why you get eight freaking call tables a night. My emotional intelligence is good. And I was really concerned with people having a good time. Then I was able to catch up on the technical skill part of it. So as soon as that happened, I was like, okay, I can open up my own restaurant. I looked at the people I was working for. I was like, these people sort of know what they're doing, but I don't think they know what they're doing a whole lot more than I do.

34:22I think I can go do this. So I went and opened up a six table restaurant on the money I'd saved up with my girlfriend at the time. And we went to work. How do you look back on that time? Oh my God. It was just absolute and total chaos. It was so poorly drawn up. I mean, we opened for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and there was two of us, which means you'd get there at like 6am and work till like midnight. night. We dropped breakfast pretty quickly because it wasn't sustainable. But her and I had deeply fallen for each other, but we're both pretty hot blooded. And so instant way to ruin a good relationship, open up a restaurant together.

35:01So we ran hot because sometimes there'd be 40 people in our dining room and it was two of us washing dishes, serving, prepping, cooking. She was the chef on the line. I would have the cold station. We would both wash dishes. And she had a daughter. And her daughter was underneath this counter we had with a little TV-VCR combination watching The Little Mermaid. It was absolute insanity. But for those first six months, I wrote something in my journal. And it was like, not sure if this business will ever fill my pockets, but it sure as hell fills my soul. And I was pretty poetic for a 21-year-old kid.

35:41And so I was happy and it was mine. I could go out and people would be like, oh, what do you do for a living? And I was like, oh, I own Lazy Day's Cafe. That made me feel so good. I had something that was me. You weren't saying like I'm waiting tables at this restaurant. Correct. And I could tell Larry that. I'm a restaurant owner. That's big. It was big. So how does one cafe turn into 46 restaurant openings? Well, you find out at a certain point, the size of our restaurant was a really bad size. We didn't have great weather conditions in our restaurant. It was like a back deck that had like plastic Vizqueen wrapped around it with a kerosene heater.

36:21If it got really cold, we were kind of screwed. And so Seaside Florida became very popular. Somebody bought that building and they bought us out. And I went up the street and I go, what are my three favorite things? Well, I love sushi. I love wine. I love rock and roll. 100 wines by the glass, sushi till 3 o 'clock in the morning, live rock and roll seven nights a week. Now that sounds like, oh, what a cool concept. In the Panhandle of Florida in 1995, it was just downright weird. But people dug it. That's cool. And there was only a couple places to drink late night on 30A, which is now kind of a famous road.

36:56And we killed it. It was busy and I was having a blast. I probably would have stayed there a long time, but somebody came, made me an offer to buy it. And I was like, I guess I'm flipping restaurants. I still wanted more. It was still stuck together with bubble gum and scotch tape. And I was like, I want something just a little nicer, something that feels a little more real. And weirdly enough, I took the money I made off of that and I went back home to Springfield, Illinois, and I said, OK, I'm going to show everybody what I've done. You know, it was like this also ran kid in Springfield. You know, I was a kid on the other side of the tracks who went to like not the best high school and lived in the little house.

37:36And I wanted to go back and say, I'm going to open up the best restaurant in Springfield, Illinois. And, you know, maybe I can buy in some respectability in my hometown. Make Larry proud. And I told mom to quit her job. I go, quit your job at TJ Maxx and come do this restaurant with me. And she did. Were those special years? Very special. Very special because my mom was so hardworking and so smart. And if you gave her a project, she was going to do it 10x better than you drew it up. And she was brilliant. You said your mom hid from the world most of her life and only found peace and purpose after 2019 when she got her cancer diagnosis.

38:17You describe it as the best time of her life. She described it as the best time of her life. Oh, she described it. Excuse me. And it's because she found out how people really loved her. That's hard for me to wrap my head around. No, it's a heartbreaking statement because I interviewed her. And I asked her, I said, Mom, what was the turning point of your life? She said, after I got diagnosed with cancer, I found out that people really loved me and weren't just tolerating me. Wow. And I was texting this back and forth with her. I just cried. I was just like, Mom. She really did think that her whole life, that she was so hard to love.

38:54I started reading her diaries after she died, and I couldn't read them. And my therapist said, don't read them. She was like, they were never meant for anybody else to read. They were meant for her to read. And she said, that's how she was feeling at that exact moment. It doesn't mean that she felt like that all the time. Did watching her find peace towards the end of her life influence your process at all? It did. Because she really did seem so zen. And it was the best version of her that I had ever seen, even with me. My mom was not super excitable. And she threw around compliments like manhole covers.

39:30And so for the first time, she was saying stuff like, you know, she really amazed me. And it was this really sweet version of my mom. And I was like, it proved that there is evolution with people and that you can get better. My whole life, I knew there was something wrong with me, but it took me a long time to figure that out. You know, I remember being a kid. When you get in bad moods a lot or you get dark a lot, you just think everybody's like that. It's a Herculean leap to go from I'm in a bad mood sometimes to I'm bipolar. And so my mom was definitely bipolar. So, you know, as I looked back on it, I was like, oh, my God, my mom had it worse than I did.

40:10And her mom had it. My mom always talked about how depressed her mom always was. So the first time I ever went to a therapist, I was 27. I went when I was 27. I didn't go to a therapist again for 23 years. I went one time. She was an hour and a half evaluation. She goes, Kevin, I think you might be bipolar. And I told her to go F herself. I was like, you don't know me. Did it stay in the back of your mind? A little bit. I was like, you don't know me. I'm not bipolar. People throw bipolar around a lot. That's like a dig on somebody, right? They're like, oh man, she's crazy. She's bipolar. And so when I heard that, it was like somebody telling me that I was crazy.

40:50And I was like, no, no, no, no. My mom and dad are bipolar. Haven't you seen my life? My life's amazing. I get in a bad mood every once in a while.

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43:34you write in the book ambition and adrenaline was your drug of choice so how did you learn the difference between this healthy drive and what you didn't know at the time was bipolar disorder there's the loss of diminishing returns with anything and so every time i opened up a restaurant had the big opening it was like up here and then it was here and then it was here and then it was here. And so I knew that wasn't giving me the same response that it used to. But then when you're standing on a ledge in Los Angeles, getting ready to jump, you start to realize that everything you thought was true was not true.

44:14And that all the things that you had done didn't really mean anything. If you were miserable and sad and wanted to die and wanted to check out, and your life felt so bad that you were willing to leave your family and your friends and leave this earth, then pretty much everything that you were doing was probably wrong. It's a tough thing to think that all this stuff I've done all these years right now means absolutely nothing. That was the rock bottom. Then that was the gift. Do you think that's true? That it was a gift? No, that it meant nothing? No, no, not now. Yeah. Not now, because it kept me alive.

44:55So once the dust settled and I was able to look back on it, I was like, okay, first of all, one, there's been a lot of great things that you've done in your life. Two, you have had a lot of really joyful moments that you helped produce. Three, you've done a lot of things that have helped people throughout your life. And you have provided a lot of beautiful experiences for people. And the problem was, like, I just wasn't doing it in the right way. I needed to be a part of it again in a way that I could feel it again. I become numb. I wasn't feeling it anymore. So I've been an extremist my whole life.

45:31And so coming off that ledge, I was like, I'm going to throw the kitchen sink, the happiness. If somebody's done it for happiness, I'm going to try it. Because you had thrown in the kitchen sink on every restaurant, every project you've ever worked on. This time you chose happiness. This time I've thrown it in myself. Yeah. I had done all this for business and all those things my whole life. And I'd done a bunch of superficial stuff, but I was like, the real work. What is the real work that I'm going to do? So that was in the beginning therapy five days a week, stopping drinking. I stopped walking dining rooms and being around people for a series of months.

46:10Went to both my companies and both my C-suites and said, leave me alone for a while. I told them to leave me alone for a while. The next day, like several people called me and I was like, I don't think you heard me yesterday. Leave me alone. I did ayahuasca. I did bufo. I got on medication and I went to Hoffman. And I know you've talked about Hoffman before and you want a big heaping spoonful of self-awareness. Go to Hoffman. It's not just about you. It's about your parents. And this idea that 90 % of who you are is because you either tried to emulate or rebel against a parent. With me, it was so true.

46:46Why do you think you were so open to everything this time? Because the alternative was dying. I had come to a point in my life where when I got on a plane and if there was extreme turbulence, I'd be pretty okay with this plane crashing right now. That's a bad place to be. Or when I got really anxious and really stressed out, my mantra was, if it gets any worse, you can just kill yourself. I mean, what a terrible, dangerous, awful place to be. And so I'm going to try everything. And I was hoping something would stick. You know, but this is all stuff I'd never tried before. There was some low hanging fruit there.

47:25Therapy was some low hanging fruit. Medication was really low hanging fruit. And my therapist asked me, she goes, why do you think that you've never done this stuff? You try everything else. Why do you think you've not done this? And it came back to Larry only believes in the traditional ways to get somewhere. You go to college, you get a degree. This is what you do. Pay your taxes, you get life insurance, you get married at a young age, you have two children. And I wanted to be the opposite of him. My rebellion from him was, I'm not going to do anything traditional. And so I was like, I don't need therapy.

48:02I'm going to go float in a tank for an hour. I was starting to hurt myself in my rebellion against him. Do you remember the first moment that you thought, I've made it and what that feeling was like versus the feeling now when you're sitting and like you've really made it. You know, in my profession, the James Beard Award is like the biggest thing that you could win. Yeah. My partner and I won outstanding restaurant tours in America in 2019. And man, for about a week, everything was right in the world. It's kind of like my mom. I was like, wow, people do like me. Oh, thank God. And I reached this pinnacle and nobody can take that away from me.

48:41And I felt like I made it. I was like, man, that's my Oscar. It lasted for about a week. To really making it was in the last year. It was a very quiet moment. I had finished my book and I was sitting in my house, my new house that I really love. And I was listening to Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. And my girlfriend was there and I was just having the most beautiful, peaceful night. And I just thought to myself that I was really happy. My whole life had been about creating these giant, loud moments. I lived a really loud life, and I found happiness in the quiet. Miles Davis' Kind of Blue was the album I opened service with every single night.

49:26That album was Lazy Days. Start with So What, and it was just playing in the background, sort of the soundtrack of my life. But instead of working a room this time, I would just sit with myself. I think it takes a lot of courage to write a book while you're still kind of going through all of the feelings. I was writing the book while I was living it. And so once I got to like chapter 13, it was no longer the past I was writing about. I was writing about while it was happening. That's sort of my question because you don't get that a lot. A lot of people write in hindsight and I understand why they do it.

50:03Why did you choose to write, to quote Renee Brown in the messy middle? Well, there had to be a beginning, a middle and an end. And when I started writing the book, I hadn't figured it all out yet. I was in the mess at that point. And so I was hoping something was going to happen that was going to button it all up. And honestly, I'd written the ending before Larry passed away. I remember, I think it was my publisher's like, you know, you have to take the book back. Life just kept happening. And it was like I was writing in a journal. Some of those loud moments that you mentioned, your life seems so rooted in connection.

50:41And you have such great stories. Can you share a story from your restaurant life that really means something to you? One of my favorites is at the Indigo Wine Bar in the mid-90s, a man, it was his wedding anniversary. and on his wedding night, his father had given him a bottle of 1961 Chateau Lafitte. And so he came to me and said, hey, this is really special today. We're gonna open this bottle. You know, 61 Lafitte's one of the most expensive and most renowned bottles of wine in history. 1929, 1945, 1961, 1982, the best years in Bordeaux. And 61, you know, this is a multi-thousand dollar bottle.

51:23The invitation to the wedding anniversary was a picture of the bottle. It represented his father being there that night because his father had passed away. So he brought it to me about 45 minutes before the party started for me to decant it. We were going to display it. He had a podium, we were going to put it on it. And I go to open up the bottle of wine and it's court. He had stored it all these years and it was bad. And he cried in front of me. He couldn't believe it, like hysterically crying. And I was like, sir, what if I replace it with one of these bottles up here? And he's like, Kevin, these people are super wine savvy.

51:55they're going to know that this bottle right here is not that 97 silver oak. You know, I was like, wait, I go, there's an old man here who has this incredible wine cellar and he's so sweet and such a romantic. He goes, Kevin, I don't have the money to buy that. I go, just hold on a second. I call my friend up and he goes, hold on. Comes back. He goes, I don't have a 61, but I have a 66. I was like, I'll be there a second. How much do you want for it? He's like a hundred bucks cash money. Drive my car, race down there, grab the bottle of 66, 100 bucks down, go back, decant that bottle. It's perfect.

52:30We rinse out the bottle of 61, pour it out, put it next to the decanter, throw away the bottle of 66. And right when I do that, everybody comes into the room. He pours wine for everybody and he tells this beautiful story about his father. Everybody's crying in the house. And then everybody tries the wine. And the whole chatter is about, this is the greatest glass of wine I've ever had in my entire life. And he comes over to me. He pours me two ounces of the wine. And he puts his hands on my cheeks. He kisses me on both cheeks. And he goes, you are a beautiful liar, young man. He goes, my father would have loved this story.

53:07I completely changed the temperature of what would have been a disaster. And I was like, this is my purpose in life. I get to play a cameo role in people's lives, sometimes really big moments. and I'm that guy that comes in for a second and can steal the scene and then dart back out. And so then I became obsessed with finding those moments where I would dart in. I've never heard anybody put it that way. And I love that because we all have the opportunity to do that. You mentioned purpose. You faced homelessness, bankruptcy. You've dealt with being bipolar, divorce. And there's some trials that I haven't even named in that list.

53:46You've opened 50 restaurants and you've become a leader in the independent restaurant coalition, people in hospitality idolize you. Like you say your name in hospitality and people's eyes light up. Those are some highs and lows. Yeah. What did the lows teach you about purpose? The lows taught me that if I don't protect and restore myself, that I'm not going to be able to restore other people moving forward. If that's really what I want to do, if my purpose is restoration, then I have to constantly set boundaries and set rules for myself that allow myself to be restorative. I'm the happiest ever event in my life right now, the second, thank God.

54:30And so it still allows me to do some pretty great things when I have those moments where I know I can like dart in for a second. It's interesting for me to hear that you've never been happier because you said it's actually never been harder to be happy. Yes. I think that statement will resonate with a lot of people. Yes. I have a weird relationship with that statement, Kevin. Okay. And I don't know why I do, but I want to better understand, because I think most people would agree with you. I got some hacks for it though. Okay. Well, one is I treat my pantry and I treat my social media feed the same way.

55:08If I keep junk food in my pantry, I will eventually eat it. If there's Doritos in there, there is going to be some night where it's like 1.30 in the morning. I'll be like, fuck it. Give me the Cool Ranch Doritos. If I keep stuff on my feed that is bombastic or negative, or I keep it on there because I like to be outraged sometimes, I will carry that energy with me all day. And so I put both of those things on a diet. I only keep things in my pantry that I think serve me. And I only keep things in my feed that I think serve me. And my feed isn't just my social feed. It's also the people that I converse with and talk to on a daily basis.

55:51And so I challenge everybody out there to look at everything in their life, including the contagious behavior that they surround themselves by with people. I don't hang out with the exact same people that I used to hang out with, but fuck I've added some real beauties in these last few years man and there are a couple people that know me only as the person that I am now oh that's interesting and so they don't have an expectation level set of me as the old me what is that like I went a year without drinking I'm not drinking right now but like when I first did it and this is like maybe 2022 I went a year and I decided to have some drinks because we had something to celebrate.

56:33And afterwards I went to a friend's birthday and they were pouring tequila shots. And she looked at me and she's like, ah, too bad, you're not drinking. And I was like, actually I am drinking tonight. And I took a drink and she put her hands on my cheeks and she goes, yes, I love drunk Kevin. And I looked at her and I go, everybody loves drunk Kevin except for drunk Kevin. And yes, I continued to drink that night. And then the next day I was like, damn it. And since that time, I haven't had a night where I went off the rails like that. And I haven't had a drink in months and months. It just doesn't serve me anymore.

57:03But like there was a certain amount of people that were like, come on, give me tequila, Kevin. He's a blast. And I'm like, hey man, sober Kevin can be a lot of fun too. I heard Rob Lowe say that he thought when he got sober that he was never going to have fun ever again. That's what his original thought was. And I guess I thought about that a little bit too, that I wasn't going to be able to have fun if I was sober. It's so wrong, man. I'm having so much more fun in this version of myself than I did that old version of myself.

57:40When it comes to advancing your education, you have more options than you think. At Rasmussen University, we find ways to remove barriers, not build them, like a new laptop if you're eligible and enroll in select online or on-campus programs. That means flexible and engaging online courses and resources tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more. Online nationally or check out their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen.edu. Wait, this is a soda? Yeah. And it has protein? 10 grams. No sugar? Zero.

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58:51And they got some kick too. That turbo? Torque is crazy. The most in its class. It moves, moves. Rogue doesn't mess around and peep the space. Merch on merch, gear, mics, all of it fits. Load up, we out. 2026 Nissan Rogue. Built for all of it. Auto Pacific Segmentation. 2026 Rogue vs. Latest In-Market Competitors in the XSUV Mainstream Mid-Sites Class, excluding electrical vehicles based on manufacturer websites. I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment from KQED. Every week, Snap drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once. With everything on the line, what do you believe?

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1:00:24So you say that your actual rock bottom is a supreme gift and that all the supposed rock bottoms before it were fucking pretenders. I love when I have to read people's quotes and they make me curse. What is the difference between a real rock bottom and a pretend one? Well, the pretend one is one that you go back and just keep doing the same behavior. So a lot of people have back problems. They go to the chiropractor. Chiropractor adjusts them. But the problem is they stand in a certain way or one leg's longer than the other. And so it just goes back to the same problem again. The guy adjusts you.

1:00:58And this is the whole financial model for chiropractors. Instead, how about get orthopedic shoes or really correct the problem or go get surgery or what have you? A lot of times with alcoholics or addicts, and I've listened to Dax Shepard talk about this before, that he has like 36 entries in his Alcoholics Anonymous book that were all the times he thought he hit rock bottom until he finally hit rock bottom. And so for me, I kept going through these moments where I felt like I wanted to die or I had suicidal ideation. Then I'd feel okay again. I'd go back to the same behavior and I'd end up in the same place.

1:01:37I finally had to fix it at its foundation. So if you're going through anything, depression, addiction, just general malaise and unhappiness, usually you have to go 20 steps backwards to go 50 steps forward. And most people aren't courageous enough to take that bargain. They're like, I already feel like crap and you want me to get worse? What are you talking about? That's where I was for a long time. And then when you have a moment like I did in Los Angeles, I was like, if I don't really correct it at its core, I'm going to die. What led to the moment in LA? In successive order, my mom passed away.

1:02:21We closed all of our restaurants. My partner and I had to borrow basically$6 million just to keep our company afloat because we had like$10 million a year in rent alone. We had a couple thousand employees that, you know, paid for everybody's insurance, made sure everybody was intact. We were burning money at a rate that we were only going to be able to be open for so long. And then there would be like some government intervention. And then we would use all of that. And then it would start up again. Every day felt like I was going to step on a landmine. And then there were like little moments where it seemed like everybody was also turning their guns on the restaurant industry.

1:03:02Somebody wrote some terrible blog post about us and I just couldn't handle it anymore. I just felt like my marriage was crumbling and I felt like everybody was turning their guns on the restaurant business. And I didn't have my mom to call and I didn't know if we were going to stay in business or not. I was having a nervous breakdown. And I also didn't have my restaurants to go into that were a joyous place. The restaurants felt like fear. And so I was in Los Angeles. I'd had a bad meeting. We were trying to open up a restaurant there. We were in the middle of building a restaurant during the pandemic and we couldn't even open it.

1:03:40And we were bleeding money. And I went and sat at the bar at the hotel and had like 15 drinks. and I woke up in the morning and I was terribly hungover and terribly depressed. And I just sat there and decided I was going to kill myself. I was trying to figure out which way I was going to do it. Sorry you were in pain like that. It's awful. It's funny where the mind goes when things like that happen. First thing I thought of is what's the saddest song that I can put on that helps make this progress go faster. I'd already decided I wanted to do it. And I wanted to feel as bad as I possibly could.

1:04:19I played that song on repeat for about two hours. And my saving grace was I stood on a ledge and I lifted my hands off of it to jump. And for the first time in two hours, my phone rang and it stopped the song. Who called? Nobody of circumstance. You mentioned two quotes in the book that help you heal that I really love. The first, can I share it or do you want to share it? Sure. The magic you're looking for is in the work you are avoiding. And the second is? Everyone is responsible, but no one is to blame. How did those mantras help you move forward? Well, these both came later in life. One of my low points, somebody looked at me and it was one of those where you kind of get punched in the face by somebody really giving you the truth.

1:05:06And they're like, Kevin, you can keep going on these like silly hiking trips and thinking this is healing you. but if you really want to be well and you really want to be happy do the work asshole who was saying that to you this was i went on a hiking trip and i had had the gateway to therapy the ranch in live oak it's actually a really great place it's amazing you should go it actually did help me a lot but i was on the mountain with a guy and i was telling him all that was going on and he was telling me why i should do ayahuasca and all this stuff and i was like i don't know about that. And he's like, well, have you gotten therapy and was asking me all these pointed questions, all of which I was saying no to.

1:05:46And he was like, bro, the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. And sometimes when somebody gives you a whole lot of truth, it pisses you off. That was one of those moments where it stuck with me for weeks. And he was absolutely right. And the other quote, I was never going to get anywhere if I didn't forgive these three damaged people and understand them a little bit. And so if you scratch under the surface, Larry Boehm was an only child who's had a mom who ran her house with an iron fist and was very cruel at times. So all those years when he saw me, he saw Woody. And so when my father passed away, at the very end, I saw who he was and I had empathy for him.

1:06:34It took me a really long time and I was with him when he passed. And we had a moment together. I never knew Larry Baehm until the very end. And I don't blame him anymore. He's definitely a part of my story. He's definitely a part of why I became who I became. But I can look back and look at his patterns now. And it wasn't his fault. It was just the cards he got dealt and the cards we got dealt. And then with Woody, I always thought that Woody got away with something. And so I look at all three of their stories now. They were all doing the best they could. And they didn't always show up in the best way, but I haven't always showed up in the best way either.

1:07:17What would eight-year-old Kevin think about your life today? Oh man, I think he'd be super proud of me. I always think kids sort of have these visions of what their life will be like. And the differences of how they play out are really interesting to me. Did you think this was gonna be the path? Well, first of all, going back to your eight-year-old question, it depends on what video you showed eight-year-old Kevin. You could show him the highlight reel of all these years, and he'd be like, wow, so amazing. Or you could show him the low-light reel, and he'd be like, what the heck happened, man?

1:07:49He can watch the whole reel now. Before, it's just selected moments. Pick which one you want to look at, the high Kevin or the low Kevin. I like it that I'm more of a coaster now. I'm a lot of sevens and seven and a halves, and that's just fine. If there was a line from your memoir that outlived you, what would you want it to be? Everyone is responsible, but no one is to blame is a good one. I think we live in a victim society a lot of times. I think that being self-critical is super important. I think most people think that they're a good person, but I think that most people aren't self-critical.

1:08:27you really want to take a good look at yourself and who you are and who you become and i think you got to poke holes in that all the time and i think all of that is within that everyone is responsible but no one is to blame part yes you were shaped by your parents and you were shaped by your circumstances but at a certain point i'm going to take control of my life and this is an infinite game. And that means there's no winning and there's no losing, but I'm going to get a little bit better all the time. And that's where I am at in my life right now is like, what can I do every single year to get a little smarter, a little better, a little bit more empathetic, be a better partner.

1:09:12And so I feel pretty good about where the evolution's heading. Okay. You ready for some rapid fire? Yeah. How much do you tip for bad service? I never tip lower than 20%. Even if it's really bad, like I'm usually like a 30 %er. And so if it's 20%, that probably means it was bad. I was a waitress. Yes. And when people tipped cash, I was so grateful. Now I always try and tip cash. How much do you tip for great service? 30%, 40 % sometimes. Really? Yeah. Do you tip on the alcohol if you're drinking? It's very kind. Okay, the best dish you've ever eaten. That is so hard. I don't know. Weirdly, nobody's ever asked me that question in my entire life.

1:09:57How about a memorable one? Because best is hard. There was a dish that just caught me at the right moment one time and had more umami in it than probably any dish I had in my entire life. It was warm nashiki rice, and then it was room temperature beef tartare, and then cold Hokkaido uni at the top in one shooter. And it was freaking magnificent. A food you secretly don't like. I don't like corn chips. I hate corn chips. That's so random. I hate corn chips. I hate the smell of them. Like really? Like Fritos corn chips? The best food city in America. Okay. I want to qualify this because food to me is not just food.

1:10:42Food to me is a combination of hospitality and it's a combination of atmosphere and design. And it's a combination of actual food. I'm super biased, but the alchemy of those three things, I don't think anybody does it better than Chicago. And I am in love with the food in so many cities. and I think it variates between Chicago and New York, but right now, the second, I'll give it to Chicago. I love that you said that because I think about this a lot. Yes. And New York has an array of options Chicago doesn't have. Yes. Like you can have incredible Jamaican food in New York, incredible Indian food, like, and there's a bunch of spots you could go to, but the service isn't the same as in Chicago.

1:11:29Everybody is kind, mostly. Indeed. Yeah. Mostly. It's like, I do think that Chicago is a no bullshit town. And so I think when people are giving great service, it's because they really want you to have a good meal. And I think people feel the sincerity. They digest it. It becomes part of the meal. Something everybody should try once. Writing their own life story. Whether they publish it or not, sit down, strip all the coats of varnish off of it and write your life story, you will learn a ton about yourself and your place in the world. Has it freed you? 100%. A book that changed your life, something you think everybody should read?

1:12:11The Tender Bar by J.R. Morringer. I think he's a great writer. It's a great coming of age story. It's a great story about the relationship between the people who raise you and your actual father. And what's more important, having somebody who loves you there. And sometimes that's a team of people. Grab the question everything card game, please. And pick whichever card calls out to you. What compliment do you hear the most? Which means the most to you? And which one makes you the most uncomfortable? I get a lot of compliments about speaking. I speak a lot to groups or at small tables. Just the way that I talk to people.

1:12:51I think that one means a lot to me. My whole purpose is to make people either feel more comfortable or feel motivated or feel better about themselves. And if all those things happen and I'm able to do that just with words, that makes me really happy. People have been saying stuff about my hair my whole life. I shaved it off recently. I had this long hair my whole life. I think that probably makes me uncomfortable. My business partner, when we won the James Beard Award, actually said, first thing I'd like to thank is Kevin's hair. It's opened up so many doors for us. Kevin, thank you. I'm just going to say it's not just on behalf of me.

1:13:25I think you've opened so many doors in this book for healing for people with all sorts of pain. So thank you for your deep honesty. You pulled a real Barbara Walters on me and made me cry a couple of times here tonight. That doesn't happen very often, but yeah, glad we have some real talk. You know, the one thing in life that I'm completely allergic to a small talk, a small talk for a living. I ran a front door for so many years of my life. And that distance from the front door to the table is almost always about small talk. You can only get into so much during those times. So everything outside of the restaurants, I never want a small talk.

1:14:03I want to get right into it. Let's do it. Religion, sex, relationships, all the taboo subjects. Let's talk. All the stuff. All the stuff. Did you have any go-tos for small talk? Because the weather is the worst one. I try to stay away from the weather. I always thought if you ask people a question, with a question mark, not a period, you get a real answer. So the one I would always do is I would just be like, how's your life right now? And if you really asked, like you cared about it, sometimes people would take it back, you know what? It's pretty great. And I'd be like, well, tell me what's so great about it.

1:14:40So then the follow-up question, they're like, you know what? It's pretty great because my son just went away to college. He's really happy about his choice. I'm like, that's fantastic. Let's celebrate that tonight. So it would lead to a dialogue piece to where if they're in a bad mood and something just happened, let's try to make it better. And if they said something great, let's figure out how to celebrate that. That's a good tip.

1:15:09Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day to have a good day. I'll see you next week.

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