Brandon Marshall: Only 1% Make the NFL… Here’s Why Most Fail | DSH #1817

I want to say the statistics say like 1% of high school athletes make it to the NFL.

And if you look at 50 states, you know what I'm saying?

You look at all the different cities within the state.

You know, how many high schools within them cities, right?

How many players on the team, right?

That's millions of kids, right?

Millions and then only a small percent make it to the NFL.

That's how competitive it is, right?

And also like not even just the competition between the athletes,

it's the politics that are involved too.

You know what I mean?

Like people don't really understand, but they would never, if they're not into it.

But the NFL is very political.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I've never played or talked to you so far.

It's political.

All right, guys, out here in Vegas, we got a local today.

We got Brandon Marshall on owner of Hadi Marie's Restaurant.

Now former NFL player, thanks for coming all, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, how's the restaurant doing?

It's doing well, you know, definitely a tough, tough industry.

Something I had zero experience going into, but you know, it's doing well.

We just actually reached our one year milestones.

Nice.

It's a blessing.

Yeah, it's one of the toughest industries every time I've invested in one,

I've lost all my money.

Yeah, now I get it.

And I understand why, because I've been invested into a restaurant before.

Yeah.

Just more of a solid investor, you know, that's supposed to build 10 stores.

It was called Dirty Bird.

And that's the one I put in.

Oh, really?

Same here, right?

With Aaron, you know, lost all of it, you know, and so this next time,

I just kind of felt like, you know what?

You know, I'm actually on, I pray my own to see how it is.

You know, so, you know, we've been blessed as far sales go.

You know, our sales has, you know, we hit, you know, 2.5, 2.6.

I actually, within our first year, first year is 2.6.

So definitely a blessing, you know, things have gone well,

but I understand how, you know, that can close.

What I think happened to Dirty Bird, I think they just tried to grow too fast.

It was too, too rapid, you know, with the growth.

And it was all over the station line.

It was all over the place, right?

I know they were supposed to have one or two here.

The bulk of their stores is in Utah, but, you know,

maybe they just didn't have the correct infrastructure, you know,

the main two to to grow that fast.

They probably should just started with one locked in on one,

make sure they got everything correct, all the SOPs, everything,

and then start to expand as I agree, you know, as they did that.

Yeah, because they were on launching a new store every couple of months.

Yeah, it's crazy, too, it's too much.

And I see that now because, you know, now I have investors that are coming to me

and they want to talk to me.

And so, you know, I'm like, okay, cool, perfect.

You know, now, you know, because I own my business 100%.

Yeah.

But now that I have investors that are coming to me,

I want to make sure that everything is, you know, on point,

because I don't, I don't play with other people's money.

Yeah.

That's one thing that's about me.

I don't play with nobody else's money, right?

Because I don't want nobody to play with my money.

So I want to make sure everything is on point before I say, okay, cool.

That's what you should invest in.

And this is what, you know, this is why you should invest with me.

It's back to 25 first year owning 100%.

That is very impressive, man.

Thank you.

Well gone.

Appreciate it.

You guys really crushed the marketing.

That's how I found out about you guys.

I saw some Instagram posts, a couple viral videos, right?

Yeah.

Yes.

You seem really organic and good.

Well gone.

That's not easy.

No, no.

Initially, we was, you know, my first marketing, you know, a person

that hired, he wanted me to buy a page with already, like $50,000, $50,000 followers

on it.

Yeah.

And I just didn't really, you know, it just didn't sit right with me.

So I was like, you know, I want to just build my page up from the ground up, you

know, from zero followers, and let's just see how it can go, right?

And right now, I want to say we are 28,000.

Just all organic followers didn't buy one.

The engagement is doing pretty well.

And every time I get a guest that come in, they say, I found you a TikTok, I found you

on Instagram, Facebook.

Wow.

Nah.

So social media is doing well for us.

I think you've embraced social media, whereas a lot of restaurant owners are on the older

side.

And they're not embracing it, right?

Yeah.

Now you have to.

You know, one of my boys, he owns, with love always, right, Drew.

And he just told me, he was like, man, social media is a way to go.

He said, forget all the other marketing.

And not to forget it, because, you know, there's one for SEO, there's one for a lot of

different marketing, right, or marketing tools.

But he said social media is the way to go.

And I noticed that because like the radio station came in and they wanted me to use their

marketing, right?

They wanted me to, you know, buy, you know, buy ads with them.

And it was like $3,500 a month, and I'm like, damn, you know, $3,500, like that's kind

of steep.

You know, and I don't know how many people listen to the radio for real, you know?

And that's why I said it was steep, because if, you know, I can pay an influence at $3,500,

you know, and I pay people less, right?

And they have $500,000 followers, you know, like that, I feel like that has equated more

traffic to my business than the traditional radio, let's do radio runs and, you know,

different things like that.

So, you know, honestly, the influencer in the game is the way to go.

Yeah.

I mean, think about it.

Whenever you went to a restaurant based off a radio ad, never, never, never, never,

you're on TikTok.

You're seeing that food looks amazing.

Let me go there.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

My girl sends me a new spot every couple of days and all that looks amazing, what's going

there next week?

Yeah.

I mean, I went to New Orleans and this is my first time really, you know, hanging out in

New Orleans for a few days, right?

And my only plan was to eat.

It's the eat.

And I was like, you know, what?

I'm just going to go on TikTok.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm going to TikTok and I'm going to try all these different, you know, types of, you

know, food.

And that's also how I got, you know, I added one thing to my menu.

We got sweet potato binyes.

And I went to the spot in New Orleans called Mondays.

And they had sweet potato binyes and I'm like, you know, this is crazy.

Nobody in Vegas will have sweet potato binyes.

And it was such a hit, you know, my mom makes the banana pudding in my restaurant, too.

We decided to stuff the binyes with banana pudding.

And those are even crazier.

I got to try that.

Yeah.

That sounds fired.

Yeah.

I heard New Orleans has some good food.

I've never been there.

Amazing, man.

Just be prepared.

You're going to gain about five to ten times.

When you were traveling with NFL a lot, were you eating pretty nice?

It was tough, right?

Because I got a game the next day.

You know what I mean?

So during the season, no.

Because even though I would want to try, you know, different spots and I did, I did

indulge every now and then.

It's like, hey, I can't, I can't go too crazy because we got a game tomorrow.

Right.

And we were flying Saturday.

We always flew inside today.

So depending on the, on your head coach and depending on where you was at, like, so

if we went to New York, you know, we may fly, you may fly in on Friday, depending if

it's a one o'clock game, you know, on Eastern.

If it was a night game, then we were still flying on Saturday.

But in the off season, I definitely indulged.

I love it.

How many pounds did you put on in the off season?

Man, I would say my Ricky year, I messed up because my Ricky year, I said, I'm going

to take a full month off.

I'm talking about no working out.

For a full month.

And I was the worst thing I could have done, you know, I mean, it was, I was, I was eating.

I was hanging out.

I was enjoying myself, you know, I had reached a milestone.

I had, I had always wanted to reach into a accomplish.

Right.

And, you know, going from the draft, or my bag, going from the season to the combine,

right, to the all-star game, to the combine, to the draft, then to, you know, OTAs in

the training camp.

You have a long stretch as a Ricky, you know, so I told myself I'm going to take a full

month off now.

It wasn't healthy at all.

It wasn't the move.

But I probably gained probably 10 pounds within that month.

And then you try to come back.

All right.

Cool.

Now January is off because I was playing for the Jaguars, right?

It was terrible.

So we never, we never made it into the playoffs.

February, I started and I was like, you know, I'm, I'm really out of shape right now.

You know what I mean?

I could never take a month or a full month off again.

It could never happen.

Yeah.

So what, what, how long do people take off on average?

Two weeks.

That's it.

Yeah.

I think two weeks is two, two to three weeks, maybe max, but I would say two weeks because

after my Ricky year and I learned that lesson every year after that, I was like, okay, you

know what?

Maybe give myself my body two weeks to adjust.

And then start back slow.

Like you couldn't ramp it back up, but you never want to give yourself a full month off

because somebody else is training still, you know, I mean, somebody else is still going

hard.

Somebody else is out there, you know, putting in work to some capacity.

It don't got to be, you know, full on out, you know, windsprints or gasses or some crazy

like that.

But you got to get your body moving, you know, I mean, if you start really slow with

the stretching and the different modalities, treatment, whatever the, whatever the case

may be, you got to, you got to stay on top of it.

Yeah.

So you're pretty much working 50 weeks.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

And you have to.

That's impressive.

Because it's so competitive.

When you really think about it, you know, I want to say the statistics has like one percent

of high school athletes make it to the NFL, right?

And if you look at 50 states, you know, I'm saying you look at all the different cities

within the state, you know, how many high schools within them cities, right?

How many players on the team, right?

That's millions of kids, right?

Millions and then only a small percent make it to the NFL.

That's how competitive it is, right?

And also like not even just the competition between the athletes, it's the politics that

are involved too.

You know what I mean?

Like people don't really understand, but they would never, if they're not into it, but

the NFL is very political.

Oh, yeah.

I talked to you.

It's political.

College football is very political as well, even in high school at some schools.

At some schools.

I coached at Bishop Gorman last year, yeah.

Political.

You know what I'm saying?

Like top three high school in the nation, you know, donors going crazy, right?

So it was a lot of money involved with Bishop Gorman, political.

Yeah.

So it's like I try to tell my kids, you know, that I've coached, right?

Because I coached for about four years.

And I tell them, hey, man, just, you know, control what you can control, right?

You know, it is political.

Yes, maybe, you know, Johnny's dad, you know, is a booster and he paid.

But at the end of the day, man, all you can do is control your control, right?

So the film at the end of the day, the best player has to play.

But if it's close between you and Johnny, Johnny's going to play because obviously his dad

is a booster.

Right.

You know what I mean?

You got to be way better.

You got to be way better.

So in the NFL terms, right?

Let's say it's close between a, like a eight year vet that's making five million,

seven million a year and a second year player who's only making six hundred, seven hundred

thousand.

If it's close, it's like, hey, man, we got to save money.

So we're going to put the, we're going to push, we're going to push the vet out.

Wow.

Absolutely.

It's like that 100%.

Holy crap.

Even though they may be better.

If it's close, they're like, you know what?

Let's save some money.

Wow.

For sure.

So you got to be dramatically better than the guy.

You got to be better.

You just got, it can't be close.

Honestly.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

It can't be close.

Obviously film, right?

Because at the end of the day, coaches want to win too.

They have their, they have their jobs on the line.

Right.

And a lot of times, I don't think the coaches decisions match with the GM decisions.

Because the GM is looking, making decisions, yeah, he wants to win a Super Bowl.

But at the same time, he's trying to, you know, make cap room, cap space.

He's trying to figure out different things.

Okay, what's going to make the team better?

The coach knows.

Okay, cool.

Well, if I got this player, you know, I really want him because he has, he's experienced

he's seasoned, but the GM may have a different mindset with it, right?

So it's money, but also it's like how much better are you?

You know, can you really go out there day in and day out and practice, by the way?

And in the game, it showed that you're better than this young kid that we drafted to replace

you.

That's not.

And did you know all this while you were playing?

Are you?

I learned it.

I learned it over time.

I learned it over time.

I imagine a lot of the younger guys don't know this.

No, no, no.

I've seen people, you know, just fall out of love with the game because it is political

and it's not always, you know, a lot of people feel like they don't get a fair shake.

And it's true though, you know, you know, let's say, you come into the league and, you

know, you went to William and Mary, I don't know, but you were good enough to be an undrafted

free agent.

You're on training camp, but you're a fourth string.

How many reps are you really getting in?

You know, I'm saying you're not really getting that many reps.

And so, you know, like those one or two reps that you may get, whether it's defense,

offensive, special teams, you got to show out, but a lot of times it's not enough film.

It's not enough, you know, a time, you know, to see what you can do, right?

So sometimes you just get lost in the shuffle.

Yeah, because these teams want to, they all want to win, right?

They want to win.

They want to play musical chairs.

They want to win.

So, you know, a typical reps scheme is like, in any given period, like the ones, you

know, the starters may get six plays.

You know, the tools may get four plays.

And this is just training camp and the threes, right?

The third string team, they make it, they get two plays.

So you got two plays to show what you can do, right?

And if they, and if they feel like, you know, you're tied with somebody, let's say it's

four, let's say it's four people, right?

So, first, second, first, second and third string, and then there's a fourth string.

If the only people that get reps is the top three strings, they may split that rep with

the third and fourth string, the third string might get one rep, the fourth string might

get one.

Yeah.

Right?

So you got one play or you, or you may get no plays in that period.

And the third string guy gets the, the two plays, the next period, no, that's when you

got your chance to shine.

Cheers.

You know what I'm saying?

So it's just tough.

It's tough.

You really don't got many chances once you do it.

No, no, no, no.

You got to show out, show up and show out immediately.

Cheers.

Immediately.

It's a lot of pressure.

Yeah, yeah.

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How tough was it climbing the strings for you?

So when I got drafted, I was second stringed right away and that was cool, but I slowly

started to decline, you know what I mean?

And I thought that just how things worked out for me in Jacksonville, it was a lot of

lessons that I learned.

I learned a lot of lessons.

It was a lot of ups and downs.

I got cut twice in one week my first year.

And also on top of that, after the season, my linebacker coach, Neffat Forgive, his name

is Mark Duffiner.

He told me, I don't know if the NFL has cut off for you.

And so at that moment, I came out of Crossroads because I was first of all, and that moment

I was hot, I was hot at him.

And I really wanted to say something to him, but I just kept it quiet and I said, you

know what, I'm just add this chip on my shoulder.

And so the next year I came, I went to Miami with Marija Jones Drew, you know, that's my

dog and I trained really hard.

And I came back and I was better the second year, but I got cut again from Jacksonville.

So that's my third time being cut.

So I was like on and off practice squad in Jacksonville, you know what I mean?

I would be on the active roster, they never cut me, I'd be on practice squad.

So you know, I started off second string, but then I went down a third string, right?

Then after my third time being cut, I went to Denver and I was on practice squad for six

weeks.

So practice squad is technically third string.

Because on the 53 man roster, you only have room for two strings, honestly, at first

in a second.

So I was third string.

And like I just said, you had an opportunity every day to show up, to show up and show

out.

So I was showing up and showing out in practice every day.

Every day I was in practice, like, you know, making a play, going hard, doing whatever

I needed to do to be, I was here to improve myself, right?

And that's when the coaches started noticing me.

And you know, one thing that I'm not my linebacker, I want to say it was my strength and conditioning

coach, Luke Richardson.

And he told me that, you know, number 18, Peyton Manning was the one that started talking

about me and meetings.

No, what?

Yeah.

Man, he started noticing me.

He started saying, he was his number 54 kid, like, we can't stop him.

Wow.

Right?

In practice.

So then, you know, the officer coordinator started to come up to me.

His name is Adam Gays.

And he started competing with me in practice.

He was like, yeah, I got some for you today.

And then, after that, then John Fox, the head coach started saying something to me.

And then, you know, so people started noticing me.

And even though I knew I wasn't going to play, right?

I was still prepared every day, like, hey, man, this is my game day.

You know what I mean?

And ultimately, I'm just going to, you know, build this foundation brick by brick.

And at some point, I'm going to get my shot.

And for Peyton Manning, the voucher for you, or Hall of Famer, you know what I'm saying?

Legend.

That, like, did it for me.

And then when I got my shot, I was ready.

Wow.

That's crazy.

And did you get the shot?

Uh, so I got my shot, uh, week 17.

Wow.

Late, late, late.

So week 17.

So unfortunately, uh, Vaughn Miller in the tennis ACL.

Yeah.

And so they put me up on the actor roster.

I just played special teams.

And at the end, it was funny because like towards the end of the game, we was playing

the, the Oakland Raiders and we was blowing them out.

The head coach was walking down the sideline, like looking for a guy, young guys who could

play.

And then he stopped and looked at me and he was like, coach, can he play?

My linebacker coach, like, first of all, my linebacker coach was sitting there, like

dumbfounded, like unsure, like, damn, they're shaking his head, no, I was like, yeah, I

could play.

I could play.

And I was like, come on, coach, like, show me something love, but he, he wasn't sure.

I was like, yeah, I could play.

Winning there made a couple tackles, you know what I'm saying?

And then that was my trial, because the coach said, hey, this is your trial to see if we're

going to play you during the playoffs, because back then it was only 17 weeks, right?

Now it's 18.

So I was like, okay, I got to do well this week to know if I'm going to be up for the

playoffs, up meaning on the actor roster or up meaning on the 46th dress game day,

because 46 people dress and then the other, you know, seven people, whatever are just

in street clothes.

And I did well enough, man, and I played in the playoff games, played in the Super Bowl.

We got blew out by the Seahawks, but my special team's coach said, told me that I got a

special team's play of the game for that game for us.

And the next year, man, I was starting in one of the package in our nickel.

And, you know, after that, man, I just got my shot and I just took advantage of you

right in the playoffs, right then, right then, because I'm like the most intense games.

Absolutely.

They did.

Yeah.

That's crazy, man.

Good stuff.

Yeah.

Appreciate it.

Then you made the all decade team for the Broncos.

Yeah.

Not I was crazy.

Yeah.

A lot of big names on my team, right?

Yeah.

That was crazy.

To even be, you know, because I went to the, to the University of Nevada, Reno, right?

Not highly touted.

I was a two-star out of high school.

And I'm being drafted fifth round, but then had, you know, my turbulence, right?

Being cut three times from the team, practice squad, to making all decade team for NFL

team.

You know, and mind you, I grew up a Broncos fan, which is crazy.

You know what I'm saying?

And so I'm like, damn, I'm really, I'm really out here, living my dream at a high level

though, you know what I mean?

And so one thing I used to question, I used to talk to my, my, my boys about in college

was like, man, I feel like we could play at, at LSU.

I feel like we could play at Oklahoma, you know what I mean?

But we at Reno, so like, you know, nobody's really giving us that, that type of love and

respect.

And then I get to the NFL and I'm competing against guys from Oklahoma, from Alabama,

from LSU, from, you know, these different SEC schools and, and big 12 and all that.

And I'm beating people out that went to these schools and then I'm competing against them

on the other side of the ball.

And I'm like, oh, no, I could have, I for sure could have played in the SEC, you know what

I mean?

And I know it's, I get it, the SEC is, is, you know, the closest thing to the NFL, right?

You could definitely say that.

But there are a lot of hidden gems out there that could absolutely play and, and dominate

and do well at SEC schools.

Yeah.

Did you get any looks from SEC when you were getting recruited?

No, man.

I had two, two offers.

I had Colorado State and, and, uh, University of Atlanta, Reno.

Wow.

So you were sleeper.

Big sleeper.

And you feel like you peaked kind of later in life?

I did.

Absolutely.

I peaked later in life.

So, you know, my junior year I had, my junior high school, I played pretty good, but

I only had like four and a half sacks, five sacks.

I played running back to my senior year, I had nine sacks, um, had a bunch of touchdowns,

you know, I think I maybe had like, I don't mean to have a touchdown because I played running

back to and tied in.

Damn.

That's right.

So I played different positions, but I was just versatile.

Yeah.

But at the time, no, I was looking at Vegas, you know, like Bishop Gorman wasn't where

Bishop Gorman is now.

So, you know, even now, right, I coached at, I coached at Cornell High School and I coached

at Bishop Gorman High School, you know, coaching at Bishop Gorman.

I see a lot of the coaches, a lot of the scouts come in and, and look at the Gorman kids.

But also they, they go to look at RBVU.

They go to look at disappointments, they go to look at these other schools too.

And it just wasn't, Vegas wasn't as big of a market as it was as it is now back then,

you know, because even if let's say, you know, you're a scout and you're watching this

kid from Bishop Gorman on the film and you know the kid at Spring Valley, like, damn, who

is this kid though?

You know what I'm saying?

That's, that's kind of how it works too.

Interesting.

Right?

So, no, I was, I was a big sleeper, but, you know, luckily I got a scholarship offer and

I, I made the most of it.

Nice.

You like coaching or playing more?

I'll play it easily.

Easily.

I think coaching for me is just, I enjoy coaching, but really just to stay involved in the

game, you know, I do miss football, you know, honestly, football is, football was my first

love in life, period, you know, outside of my mom, you know what I'm saying?

Like, I love my mom, you know, and I love football and, you know, I've played football

for, for, you know, 22 years of my life, from eight years old to 30 and I stopped at

30 and, you know, I'm 35 right now, I'm about to be 36 and I literally, I imagine doing

something for your entire life, you know what I mean, and then you just can't do it no

more.

Your identity was tied to it.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And you know what's crazy?

Because I used to tell myself, I'm more than a football player, you know, I'm more than

an athlete, you know, I got my, my, my philanthropy, I do, you know, I got different things

of other interests.

I'm like, yeah, I'm better or I'm bigger than football or I'm more than the game.

Identity is more than the game.

But when it was actually time for me to do it and approve that my identity was more than

the game, it was tough because I'm like, damn, okay, well, I, you know, I'm sitting on

the couch.

I got all this free time.

What do I do?

And all I can think about was football, you know, and then I realized, yeah, my identity

was really tied, heavily tied to football, you know, I mean, it still is.

And my heart was really in it, you know, I mean, because I told you it was my first love.

My mom told me when I was a kid, I was too young to play.

My brother was able to play it because he's two years older than me.

She told me he brought his pads home and I, and I took his helmet and I slept in it.

You know, I'm saying I was six years old.

And I just naturally just loved the game, right?

So transitioning and showing a lot of a lot of former athletes struggle with the transition,

like it's not easy to assimilate into into a normal life.

And I'm going to say normal because what we did was abnormal, you know, I mean, like

making millions of dollars and, you know, working, you know, a plan of game we love, right?

You know, being on national TV, like, you know, being gladiators, but also being rock

stars at the same time, having a pocket full of money and just having four months off.

The year with all this money, you could just do whatever you want with,

all this attention, endorsements, you know, whatever, everything, right?

It's abnormal life.

And when you assimilate into into normal life and you try to, you know, be a family man

or, you know what I mean, try to, you know, into the next career of your life, you know,

because some of us can for sure sit back and chill.

But most of us like, obviously, you know, the reason why we made it to what we make it,

because we were so driven.

Right.

You know what I mean?

And so most of us can't sit on our hands anyway.

So it's like, okay, what's next?

What do I do?

I don't know.

You know what I'm saying?

I don't know.

And I tried different things.

I tried different things, man.

I tried to, I tried to breed Frenchies, right?

Did that one time I worked for this NFL agency that's actually local out here to recruit

college players.

You know, I was in talks with, you know, a real estate firm to help raise capital.

For commercial real estate.

And, you know, you know, I do broadcasts and still, you know, what's I do and enjoy.

But I'm like, man, like, what is, what is really, what's my purpose?

What's next for me?

Like what's, what's, and nothing stuck?

Like I had a CBD business too.

Wow.

You know, the man I started CB, we was in, and we was in Hardin and everything.

Holy crap.

And, but my partner, I was with, he just, I, he was being a little shady with the, with

the money.

You know what I mean?

So I was like, no, I can't really rock with it.

So, you know, and I'm just transitioning to the Hardin Marines.

How that happened when I was about 13, 14 years old.

You know, I was driving to Northside of town with my mom.

And we drove past Mcdonalds.

And I looked at Mcdonalds and some, it was a weird feeling.

Some came over me.

I would say it was God because I feel like God speaks to me at different points of my life

and different junctures of my life.

And I literally heard, you're going to own them, I mean, Donald's one day.

And I was like, it was pretty strong.

You know what I mean?

But I was, I put that to the side, just focus on ball.

But towards the end of my career in Denver, I remember that gut feeling I had.

And I was like, man, maybe I should, you know, see what's up with the restaurant industry.

Only because I got that, that it was almost like it was like a loud, like God spoke to me

in that moment.

Yeah.

And, you know, my mom was the one, because my, you know, one of my best friends, his name

was Joanne Thompson.

He, I played with him in Denver, but his family owns his restaurant in Atlanta called

Hattie Marie's.

And my mom went and tried it.

She was like, yo, you should check this out, like maybe, you know, you could open some

Vegas.

And I, and I went and tried out, I loved it because it had barbecue, but also had seafood

too.

And I'm like, yo, I can get ribs and catfish.

If I want to, I can get gumbo, you know what I mean, brisket, mac and cheese.

And I was like, ah, maybe I'll just bring it to Vegas because I don't think Vegas

really got nothing like this.

And so, boom, I entered into, you know, a commercial real estate, the lease.

And I tried to back out because like, it was the construction price was high.

And, you know, for those who don't know, you can't, you can, it's, it's, it's hell to

get out of a commercial lease.

You know, it's, you know, it's, you know, I was just 10, 10, yeah, it's tough to get out

of that.

And so, you know, once I, I made it off of it, get out, I made it off of like 300 K.

I was like, just to get out, just to get out, just to get out like, yeah, just 300 bands,

just to get out.

And they was like, nah, nah, because the total term was like a million for 10 years.

Yeah.

So there's like, you're going off to offer more or whatever.

I was like, man, if I'm going to offer 500 K, I might as well just put it towards and

see what, and see what it does.

Yeah.

And so I just went all in.

Totally crap.

Yeah.

That's a big investment.

And having no experience before none, bro, zero, you're signing up for a 10 year, you

know, a lot of it has failed within the first year or two, right?

Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

A lot of, a lot of restaurants fail within the first year, you know, then most of them,

you know, I think 90% maybe failed within the first five, you know, if you could make

it past five years, you know, first of all, a year is a milestone regardless because

even I know, like I had to come out of my pocket to make payroll a couple of times.

Yeah.

I had to come out of my pocket to, you know, obviously to, you know, we got to, for

cost of goods and stuff like that.

And so, you know, luckily, I don't have to live off this right now, right?

That's up, that is a blessing because the owner, operators that, you know, are counting

on the money from their restaurant to live on, it could be, it's tough.

It's tough, man, because you got payroll, you got cost of goods, you know, rent, you got

loan potentially, you got all these other things.

And it's like, if you ain't really doing numbers, you know, how can you, you know,

look to survive off your restaurant, you know, I'm saying it's a low margin business

anyway, you know, so, you know, and then, you know, like you make mistakes, like I made

a mistake.

I made a hell of a mistake.

I thought that all the sales tax was just getting pulled out, you know, for myself anyway.

Oh, I dropped 8%, right?

You know, 8.375, I thought all my sales tax, I'm like, okay, cool.

My sales tax is already getting, because my POS system right, my point of sale is it's

toast.

And it'll line item, okay, sales tax, this boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know,

I'm saying we're grossing that, all that.

And I'm like, okay, cool.

They automatically taking it out.

And then, I had got a consultant, he was like, hey, you paying your sales tax?

And I'm like, it's already been taking out, right?

He was like, nah, man.

So I go to my NevadaTax.com and I open my account, I look at my account.

And I owe like $130,000, $130,000 in sales tax.

And because I'm doing well at the time, right?

Like, my bank account is up.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm like, $300, and just from sales, like, so like, cool, I'm making a lot of money.

But then I'm like, oh, damn, I didn't even realize this, and I got penalties now, right?

So I tried to get the penalties waved, and they said, no, you have to pay the full amount

before you get any penalty waved.

So I had to send $130 out the door.

And your margins are already pretty thin.

Marge, it's like 8% margin business.

Yeah, restaurants are slim margins.

You know what I mean?

So imagine just sending $130K out.

That's all your profit right there.

I'm like, damn, you know what I mean?

So these are the mistakes that a first time business owner makes, right?

The mistakes that, you know, and mind you, I own the business 100%.

So it's not like I have partners in this that are like, you know, we can tackle different

things.

You know what I mean?

So it's, obviously it's best to have partners because you could go farther faster because

you can, you can tackle this part of business, I can tackle this part of business, but we

can have all areas covered, right?

Right now I'm kind of driving with just like this type of vision.

And I do hire consultants, you know, I have hired consultants to help me open up my vision

and then the general manager to help me, you know, because things slip through the cracks

like that, you know, and then it's like, you can't pay attention to everything in the

restaurant, right?

So you got to have managers of trusted help that can help see your blind spots, you know

what I mean?

So that 130, you know, and my consultant told me, his name was Gideon, that's my, that's

my guy.

He was like, and this one's going to hurt.

That's a lesson learned.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

You think you guys would ever go to the franchising route because raising canes is killing

it right now, right?

Yeah.

So this actually is a franchise.

This is already a franchise.

And so the original restaurants in Atlanta, now they've been closed for over a year, right?

So I'm trying to get that from the close, they've been closed for over a year.

Struggling out there?

No, they was open for seven years.

Oh, come on.

Right?

There was open for seven years.

So they did well.

They was trying to just move from a college park to, to Buckhead, right?

The more premium spot out there.

And they had other franchises before they all felt relatively quickly.

I'm not even sure, maybe six months or whatever.

But they've been closed for over a year, right?

Trying to, you know, do that thing, but I'm trying to get that from them, you know what

I mean?

And if I can't get it from them, then I'll just do my own thing and move on.

Wow.

So you're one of the few standing from that franchise?

I'm the only one.

Holy crap.

I'm the only one.

That shows you're doing something different than what they were doing.

Absolutely.

Wow.

I wonder if it's being in Vegas too.

That helps.

I think a couple of things help, like my, my name, you know, my name, likeness and image

or recognition in Vegas.

I grew up in Vegas, you know, former NFL player, you know what I mean?

That helps a lot because a lot of people come in looking for me.

And I'm there a lot, you know, people that's been there, they know I'm there, they're all

the time.

They come looking for me.

They come to take pictures.

They come to check out the restaurant.

And they walk in and they're like, Oh, it's beautiful in here because it's a nice venue.

And you know, I got jerseys up, I got TVs, I got a good R&B music plan for, you know,

it's a nice aesthetics, how to upstairs or downstairs.

And then that's like, so that's the first thing that happens, right?

Then the next thing, obviously, they end up liking the food.

Then they say, Hey, who was haddy?

Who was haddy Marie?

Is that your grandma or something?

That's your mom?

I was like, No, that's the original owner's mom, right?

So one thing that I messed up on right is, because typically when you franchise, one of

the business fits of a franchise is, is like, like name recognition, you know what I mean?

That's why people like Rick Ross would franchise wingstop because everybody knows who wingstop

is.

But what wingstop is, everybody knows what raising canes is Dave's hot chicken just sold

for Billy, right?

Everybody knows what that is.

Everybody knows what you can go anywhere in the country and you know what tropical smoothies

if you want, and you know what you're going to get.

That mistake I made was franchising a restaurant with no name recognition, you know what I'm

saying?

Like nobody knows what haddy Marie's is on the West Coast, right?

So I had to build this thing up from the ground up, you know what I mean?

Because if I were to just franchise the Chick-fil-A, I don't have to say nothing.

You have to do nothing.

I don't have to market nothing.

I don't have to market nothing.

They walk by, they draw by, oh Chick-fil-A boom, I'm pulling up, you know what I mean?

But you drive by and see how the Marines, what is that, you know?

So I bet on myself essentially in that, right?

So instead of the name recognition, they brought, I brought the name recognition, you know

what I mean?

And to help drive traffic for the people I know and for me just being an NFL athlete.

So that did help.

But in the future, franchising a restaurant with no name recognition, it's not the smartest,

it's not the smartest.

Because that's the real benefit of franchising.

You know, outside of obviously already the recipes are already done, but it's like cool.

I know anywhere in the country where coldstone is and if I want ice cream, I know what coldstone

tastes like and I know where it is and I'm going to pull up.

You eating ice cream these days?

I know you're pretty healthy.

Yeah, I try.

But lately I'm eating yoghurt land, so yeah, I try to be healthy, but you know.

You got the sauna at the crib, even the biohacking and all that.

What's biohacking?

It's just like sauna, cold plunge, like taking supplements, like stuff like that.

Absolutely.

I meant to all that.

My cabinets full of supplements.

I actually just took this test, trying to call it, it's from volume, V-I-O-M-E.

I just had the founder on.

A word.

A pod, yeah.

So I took the full body intelligence test and it was extremely thorough, like the app

is right here on your phone and you know, I sound like I'm over here, you know, saying

marketing it, but for real, the app is on your phone.

You know, it's a stool test, the pee, you know, the pee in the saliva.

No blood.

My bad, my bad, so it's not the pee, it's a, it's a, you know, stool, blood and saliva.

I got it.

You're still blood in saliva.

And it just breaks down everything, like, you know, it's at my bio age, my biological age

is 28, holy crap, which is dope, I'm 35.

But then it said my inflammation age, right, it's called, it's at inflammation, it's

like medium.

So like I got improved, my body is kind of inflamed.

Is that from NFL, you think?

Probably.

NFL, but probably diet too, you know what I mean?

I'm trying food and, yeah, you know what I mean?

So like, inflammation outside of like you said, the NFL playing, you know, my body is hurting.

But you know, if you eat and sugar and you eat and all that stuff, right, your body

is going to be even more inflamed.

But it was crazy to even see that it told me to stay away from turmeric for six months.

Really?

And you think about it, turmeric is healthy, right?

Anti-inflammatory.

Anti-inflammatory.

Anti-inflammatory, but something about my system doesn't resonate with turmeric.

Can't you stay?

I mean, and so even the stuff I seen that I need to limit, right, which is like everything

sugar, which is the, I think the hardest thing to cut out, right?

So it said cassava, which is a form of sugar, right, maple syrup, which I love pancakes.

It said white sugar, you know, I'm going to say cane sugar, you know, I'm saying like any

form of sugar, I need to just limit it.

Wow, even cane sugar.

Even cane sugar.

It's talking about white rice.

I need to limit.

I need to limit.

It's something to limit mangoes and grapes and I'm like, what the hell?

I love mangoes, but you know, there are, you know, other things that, you know, it says

that I can indulge in and, you know, I really enjoyed that test because it gave me some

real good insight on like, you know, how I need to, you know, adjust my lifestyle, my

diet, moving forward.

You know, I mean, if I want to optimize my health, yeah, I get all sorts of tests, man,

because a lot of people out here are guessing.

Yeah, you know, I guess I get blood tests.

I get MRIs, I get, you know, I've done the hair test, the cheek test.

It's all important.

What's the cheek?

Yeah, the swab.

Tell me about the hair test.

Hair test is similar to urine, but a lot of, you could find out a lot from the hair.

Yeah.

Every part of your body, you could find out a lot from.

There's people that can look at your eyes, you could find out your health from your eyes.

They can look at your teeth, see where you have a cavity in which organ that's linked

to.

That's crazy.

Yeah, there's so many health modalities.

So even if you look at like a, like a Michael Jordan, right, what's up with his eyes?

You know what I'm saying?

Because the, the yellow, yeah, and people think it's jaundice, you know, you could learn

a lot from just looking at different parts of the body.

It's fascinating, man.

It is.

When you were an athlete, did you take the, the health side pretty serious too?

Yeah, I had to, you know, because really, I learned it from the vets.

You know, a lot of our veterans and they say they're doing this and they taking this

and they, you know, one thing I, I never focused on that I wish I did was my gut health.

You know, my teammate, bro, my dog, a man, you know, Sanders, man, he told me one day

I remember just sitting in the locker room, just talking to him, he was like, yeah, man,

he was talking to him, talking to me about the gut brain connection and, you know, I'm

saying, yeah, like the, the gut is the, you know, it's the brain of the body and, or the

brain of your, you know, your immune system or whatever the hell you was talking about.

I was like, I, whatever, but I was younger, you know, I'm sad.

And then as I got older, I remember 2018, I want to say I took a test, a full, there's,

there's a spot in Denver called resilience code and you do, you could do like a full body

assessment. And it said, I had leaky gut. I'm like, I don't know what the hell leaky gut is.

Then you start researching it and I'm like, oh, okay, this is probably why maybe I'm starting to

feel, you know, obviously outside of the, the pounding I've taken on my body for a long time,

but my inflammation is up because my gut health isn't proper. You know what I mean? And it's

not filtering out, you know, certain things and certain stuff is, you know, seeping through the

cracks and then my, my body's having a response to it, you know, and I'm like, okay, so maybe I

need to tighten up my, my gut health. And that was also my reason for doing a volume test too,

because my skin started, you know, I started getting like white spots. Yeah. And like, I'm like,

what's going on my skin? I'm like, it has to be good. Wow. And so, you know, once I, you know,

did the volume test and it says, okay, these things are inflaming you. Your gut health needs to

improve. I think my gut health was on the, gut health overall was on the low end as far as the

scores go. And then they also help, they also send you supplements too, which is fire. Wow.

Right. Like these supplements, right? You know, will help your body optimize, will help optimize

your body. You know, the microbiome, right? That's needed for your gut is these seven, eight,

whatever. We're going to send you that. You can obviously have to purchase it. But yeah,

I've been taking it, man. So, you know, now the next step is, you know, being in that type of

restaurant, right? Soulful barbecue, you know, I'm saying fried food desserts, right? Licker.

It's like, okay, who always got a bartender saying, hey, be try this drink, right?

Maybe the yams were off, you know, I'm saying the mac and cheese was off. So, I got to try and

like, nah, this ain't it. We got to do whatever do we got to make it audible to it. But, you know,

that's me consuming sugar and dairy. You know, I'm saying liquor and consistently though, right?

So it's like, I'm like, man, I can't keep doing this. You know, I'm saying, like, you know,

we all know what it's supposed to taste like, but there are times where it's like off. I'm like,

yeah, why does the yams taste like this? Right? Or maybe I need to taste it because the customers

are sending it back. Then I'm like, let me try it. And I wish I had somebody else to do it,

you know, and understand, like, the taste buds of what, or understand what everything's

to taste like. And I do, I probably should just lean on more people more like, hey, you taste that.

Hey, you got to hire a full-time food teacher. You taste that and see why is it off? Well,

okay, yeah, that's off now. We got to adjust, you know, adjust the recipe or just, you know,

in and out that moment. Yeah, I'm picky where I eat these days, man. Yeah. You know,

there's an app called Seed oil scout. Have you heard of that one? I'm gonna download the

download that shit. Are you familiar with seed oils? Absolutely. Yeah, so this app lists all the

restaurants in your local area that don't use them. Oh, that's not crazy. That is crazy. You

say seed oil. Seed oil scout. Seed oil scout. Yeah, so every time I order on postmates now,

I look on seed oil scout, see if they use like canola oil. Canola oil, you know, all the seed

oils. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, so when you cook at home, do you just use avocado oil,

grape seed oil? Yeah, olive, avocado, coconut, all the healthy ones. Coconut. Is grape seed oil

still considered healthy? I don't know about that one, but I know canola is pretty bad.

Terrible. Yeah, that one's like the worst. Yeah, you got to be careful with the oils you use.

Absolutely. Yeah, so I just strictly use avocado. Smart. I hear, you know, different, you know,

reviews on olive oil. I feel like it's healthy. Yeah, but it eat quality olive oil.

Because if you go to the grocery store and buy the $10 one, there's actually seed oils in that one,

you know, they're deceptive with the labels. Yeah, do you cook more with coconut oil or

depends on what it is. I love olive oil. Just taste amazing. Avocado is pretty good too,

but my wife does most of the cookings. Yeah, there you go. You got to be nice on the

other frying pan. Every nine in, you know, saying every nine in, I don't really do too much,

but you know, especially because I be busy. I mean, busy, man. I mean, you're working harder than

ever right now, working harder than ever. And it's just different. It's funny because people

will come in and ask me, you know, what's harder, playing the NFL or own the business, right?

And I just say it's like, it's just different. It's just, it's just not the same.

You know, obviously, they both are extremely, extremely difficult to be an entrepreneur is like

extremely difficult, but to make it NFL is crazy. You know what I mean? Like,

the percentage of people that make it NFL and last, so it's just like it's slim.

Slim to none. Yeah. And, but I always reference this. The difference that I see is,

you know, when in the NFL, right, I have people surrounding me,

all high level athletes and individuals that, you know, bus day as day in and day out,

right? Away from the facility or not. And I know I can trust them. I can lean on them to get

they job done to the highest level, right? Do we make mistakes? Yeah. But they hone in and they,

you know, locking on a craft day in and day out regardless. So I go to war. I step out. I step

out in that field with them with my other 10 guys and I know all 10 of them put the work in all

week, all year, right? And they're going to give it they all. It's not like that, especially in

the restaurant industry. You know what I'm saying? Because when I look at employees and I'm very

grateful for everybody who's putting in work and putting time ahead is, you know, because I can't

do it by myself. But the motivation level is just, it's just, it's just different. You know,

it's really just a stepping stone for a lot of people or a segue to whatever else, you know,

I mean, and, you know, it's the hospitality industry that's, and it's Vegas. There's so many

different, they can work at any restaurant and they come in to work just to get through the shift,

not to excel, right? And that's the difference between the NFL, like the NFL, they come in the

work to excel, because you have to excel. Or you lose your job. Are you going to get replaced,

right? A lot of people come into work just to get through their shifts, just to punch the clock

and say, hey, you know, I, you know, I showed up for work, but not to, to, to improve on that

crowd day in and day out. And so it's tough to manage the people, right? So that's the hardest

thing is to manage the people, you know, the PNLs or the PNLs, right? I mean, obviously you can do

whatever you can to, to, you know, to, to increase your bottom line and to help out, you know,

cool sales and maybe out of cut costs here or cut labor here or whatever the case might be.

So the PNLs, the PNL, it's the, it's the people, like, like that variable is just unpredictable.

You know what I mean? It's unpredictable, right? So it's definitely tough, both incredibly hard.

I excel that one, and I believe I'm going to excel at this other one too.

Yeah, it's a different type of work you're using your brain a lot more to, yeah, yeah, exactly

use your brain a lot more. And, you know, I mean, don't get it twisted, like on the NFL, you have

to use your brain, you know, playing football, right? But it's, I guess it's limiting in the fact

that, okay, cool. I got this coverage, you know, I got to drop to this spot. If somebody comes

over here, I take them if they don't, then whatever, or if they run the ball, I just, this is my gap.

And I got to be in my gap, right? And entrepreneur, you got, like I said, blind spots.

There's so many blind spots that can take your business down. There's so many things that you

got to correct, you know, because they say, right, high or slow and far and fast, right?

There's certain, you know, because you can have a cancer on your team, right? Or I could be slowly

bleeding in an area where I don't even know if somebody's still in, somebody's taking ribs

at the back or somebody's taking liquor, you know what I'm saying? Or like, hey, my, my labor

percentage is too high. I got too many people. I'm paying out too much. But, you know, I'm saying,

a lot of moving parts, a lot of moving parts, or damn, I forgot. I didn't even know I had to pay

my own sales tax. I thought the POS system automatically, you know, takes it out and takes, and sets it

aside or puts it, or takes it, or puts it to the state. No, it's just so many different,

definitely so many different areas. Okay, cool. We've been slow this month. How do we increase sales?

Let's have a meeting on the minds. You know, I'm saying, is it full quality? Is it marketing? You

know what I'm saying? Is it service? Are we lacking on that? Is it just because of tourism down?

Right? Like, okay, what can we do? All right, now let's implement XMID. You know what, let's do,

it's football season, let's do specials. You know what I'm saying? Let's do specials, right?

You know, let's, and I think what people are really seeking now is experience. You know,

people want to go somewhere and have a good experience, right? Yes, food is part of the experience.

So that is a given. But the service, you know, the atmosphere, the music, and I always say this

you know, you may forget, you know, how, or you may forget what somebody said to you, right? But

you never forget how someone, somebody made you feel, right? Or you'll never forget how

something made you feel. And if something makes you have a positive feeling, you won't forget that,

and you are more likely to return, right? So I'm big on how we make people, how we leave our guest

feeling. You know, I'm saying, and I do that in my life, my personal life, you know, how do I make

you feel? How do I leave you feeling? And I think it's even more important in business because you,

you need repeat customers. That's where, that's when, when, that's the name of the game. Yeah,

repeat customers, especially in your industry, repeat customers. So, you know, we just got to create

a good experience for them, you know, you mentioned tourism being down. I know there's a lot of videos

saying Vegas is dead or dying. Do you believe any of that? Are you seeing that in the restaurant? Yeah,

oh, um, so we, we've, you know, our peak was in February when we, when I had them influences,

right? So ourselves have been really good from, from February, right? So, but it is slowly,

you know, we have been slowly going down, right? And so that's what, you know, you have this

meeting, you're trying to figure out, okay, what is, what is the reason for the steady decline?

Right? And how can we combat that? Right? Let's, let's have a meeting in the minds and let's figure

this out. Part of it could be tourism, right? So then if it's tourism, then, hey, when we need to

really hit the locals hard then, right? Um, and it's interesting because when I, when I'm in my

restaurant, Sean, like 70% of the people are tourists. Wow, that's high. Every time I talk to

somebody, literally seven out of 10 people, I'm from somewhere. Holy crap. Right? So it's like

perfect. We got the, you know, I mean, that's, that's cool because we are nationwide TikTok

on social media, which is good. But I'm like, okay, what then how can we capture more locals then?

You know, I'm saying maybe we're, we're award programs. Is it reward programs? Yeah. You know,

is it, is it our text message marketing? We got to be better at? Yeah. Absolutely. Is it our email

marketing? Absolutely. You know, I mean, like it's different things that we can do. Um, so yeah,

I've seen a steady decline in ourselves. It's a little bit over the year. But it's, but it's still,

it's still fantastic, right? Like I still did over two million dollars in the first nine

months of the year. By yourself, I was an owner. You know what I'm saying? In the first nine

months of the year. So it's still fantastic. But hey, it is, and I, I don't like to wait till

it. We already down. It's like, yeah, you know, I, okay, I see the trend. Let's, let's talk about this.

You know what I mean? So, um, I don't think Vegas is dead though. I think, you know, um,

the higher up sort of powers that be whatever they're going, they're going to find a way to go

with the trend. And I think that's what it is, right? You know, obviously, some of it could be,

you know, what the president is doing, you know what I mean? Yeah. That could be part of it, right?

But also, I think they'll find a way to, you know, figure it out. Because Vegas is still the,

you know, hospitality, you know, capital of the world. Yeah. Vegas will always be Vegas. But

these resort fees are getting out of control. Yeah, they're going to have to fix, they're going to

have to, it's got to be more discounts. They're going to have to lower rates. They're going to have

to fix it, man. It is what it is. You know, um, or you're going to go out of business. So,

hey, you got to go with the trend. It's all, it's all good. Yeah. And honestly, you know,

it's a couple of things I could do. You know, I'm not sure even a charging for parking is,

it's something, is that a hill you want to die on? Or like you said, the resort fees, can you lower

it? Do you want to die on that hill? Yeah. Now, if, if we see ourselves are down and things are

training in the wrong way, we got to just, you know, hey, let's, let's make a complete 180 or,

or let's do some things to make the guests feel more comfortable. And I'm thinking, maybe it's

probably, you know, because the economy, you know, truly raised in 2020, it started in 2020,

right? After COVID, like things, so I got crazy, right? So, you know, cost of living is higher,

you know, cost of goods are higher. Different things, but people are probably still making the same amount

of money. Yeah, they are, but the price on everything went up. Exactly. So cost of goods is higher,

and people are making the same amount of money. They don't have excess spending money, right?

They don't have it to go and party. It's not, now I'm in like self-preservation or I need to save.

Yeah, when I was growing up, Chipotle was 78 bucks. Exactly. I was double the price. Exactly.

You know, but they're not really increasing, you know, cool. Every nine in, you know, they'll get a bump

in the, you know, I know Nevada is like $12 for, you know, minimum wage now, right? But the bump

in the cost of goods versus the bump in pay, each state has, it doesn't add up. It's not enough.

Right? So I think that's part of it, too, because hey, man, since COVID, you know,

you know, we've had a crazy influx in far as cost of goods go. And, you know, a lot of people

are moving out of California to try to save money, different lifestyle. But at the same time,

it's like, man, we don't have, I don't have extra spending money, you know, I mean, to do these things.

So that I obviously directly affects people in the restaurant industry or people in obviously

a customer service industries. So it's like, how do we adjust to? Yeah, 100%. That's why every

restaurant's forced to raise their prices and then people get mad, but they have no choice

or else they would lose money. Let me tell you something, man, my catfish, all right?

Started off this year at $50 a case, all right? And it was a 15 pound case. So, you know, I don't know,

I'm just guessing right now. Maybe it's probably like 30 catfish in there or whatever,

30 pieces, something like that, but 15 pounds. Ever since dining, I'm gonna call them dining,

implement the tariffs, right? My catfish went up from $50 a case to $77 a case. So I'm like,

damn, like, I gotta raise my prices, but I don't necessarily want to. So first of all, there's

there's two different things, fish that are similar. There's one, there's another fish that

is similar to catfish. It's called sway. And I know the difference. I could taste the difference

of sway, right? And customers can too. Now, I don't want to sacrifice quality, but it's like, what am I

gonna do about this catfish crisis? You know what I'm saying? Because my fish has went up, you know,

I'm saying $27. So that's affecting my margins on my catfish, right? That's a big jump. It's a

huge jump. And then so now, cool, you know, there are different food vendors. So now I'm, you know,

I go with another one that's cool, now 65. All right. So now I'm going to strictly buy from you

that 65 dollars. That helps. But I'm like, damn, will I ever be able to, you know, get back to this

$50, you know, case or in the 50s, you know, that'll help my margins are, right? So it's like

certain things like that to stop the bleeding in business, you know, hey, my to go cups, my

form to go cups. Amen. You know, these are, you know, whatever per, you know, per, you know,

whatever since or whatever, whatever dollar per per sleeve, per 25 pack of sleeve, whatever. So,

hey, you know, and maybe instead of this one, you got to buy this one. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So that's the name of the game, really. And it's like, you know, just trying to find the better

deals, but even without sacrificing too much quality, but 77 a case for the catfish was crazy.

That's not just crazy. Seafood price jumps are crazy. I had the third largest seafood wholesaler

on the show. They're based in Vegas and Chicago. And dude, he was telling me the price jumps

of lobsters, crabs, shrimp, everything's up like crazy. It's crazy, right? So then

tying that back into, you know, the consumer and how they

at the cost of goods have gone up, but the wage hasn't necessarily gone up. Yeah.

So now I got to charge instead of, you know, whatever my catfish plate is now, I got to charge

extra five or, you know, I'm not gonna go crazy with five bucks, but maybe I got to charge extra

two to five, you know, I'm saying dollars, right? And then they coming in like damn, you know,

I'm saying now it's like now you may lose customers because, but the same time I got to cover

my end, right? So what is, what is the answer? What's the solution? The solution for me is to,

okay, let me, let me try to do it on the back end first. Let me figure that out before I have to

raise prices. You know what I mean? Cause I don't want to raise prices or I don't want to make

y'all feel like, man, this is, I can't afford to eat a hat in Marie's. So you know what,

if I can just adjust my, you know, my vendors, you know, because right now, currently,

and I don't know if you know anybody, I'm currently looking for like just a straight butcher.

Oh yeah. That I can buy brisket from, you know, I'm saying that I can buy ribs from because,

you know, you cut out the middle man, you cut out some of the costs. Right. So, you know, I know,

you know, one of my boys, he said he buys a whole cow in Utah. And, you know, he might split it

with somebody and that's cool, you know what I'm saying? But I'm doing such volume, like, I need

like 20 brisket, 25 brisket is a week. You know what I'm saying? So it's not about just buying one

cow, but maybe if I can go to, if I can find out whoever the food vendors are going to, right?

Cisco, US foods, you know, whatever. If I can find a butcher and then I could just cut out the

middle man and just, I'm sure that'll cut out a lot of price. I bought half a cow. It was like,

like 1400. Okay. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. It lasts like six months. It lasts six months.

I mean, it's a ton of meat, dude. For two people, just made my girl like, yeah, it's nuts. Yeah,

that's the move if you have the freezer space. If I have the freezer space, cow. Absolutely. Yeah.

Dude, when I first moved here, I love hot and juicy. Mm-hmm. Have you been there? Absolutely. Fire.

A pounded king crab legs was I think 65. Okay. Now it's 140. Stop it. A pound. Isn't that crazy?

140? Yeah. That's why I took the crab off my, so I have seafood platter, but I originally had a

like a crab plate. Yeah. But it was snow crab. I couldn't really find the big ones, but I didn't buy

a king crab because the price is too high, man. It's too expensive. I'm going to have to charge

you crazy. Just for you to come in and eat some king crab. Yeah. Even snow crab shot out, though, too.

Yeah. But 140? Yeah. 140. From 65? That's crazy. It's been four years. Yeah. That's madness, man.

Well, man, where could people watching this come to the restaurant? Yeah, man. So,

man, Hayden Marie's, man, it's on Las Vegas Boulevard in the South Outlet Mall parking lot.

You know, so we are, it's a black bear down over there. It's an Outlet Mall. So it's, you know,

you can't really miss it. So we're on the south end of the Outlet Mall. So,

they all come check us out, man. It's really good food, good vibe, good energy. You know,

if you like good music, if you like being on Tuesdays, we got karaoke on Thursdays.

Nice. So we do some fun things to try to get the community involved. Let's go. I'll pop in.

So stay tuned on my Instagram. I'll post it. Oh, yeah, sir. Yes, I'm out, guys. See you next time,

peace. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It

helps to show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.