Do Cool Sh*t (19 page)

As for dating, we both won, lost, and kissed some of the same boys throughout the years, but we never let a boy come between us. We stuck to the “I saw him first” rule, and while it could be frustrating, it saved us both a lot of heartache.

Slowly over time, Yuri separated herself from us and started to gain her own identity and make her own friends. Radha and I continued to do everything together. When Yuri left to go to Harvard, we decided for the first time not to follow her. We chose to go to Cornell instead.

Rads and I roomed together in college every single year except for when we studied abroad, and once we graduated, we lived together in New York for our first five years. Anytime either one of us had a boyfriend, he soon learned that he basically had two girlfriends to deal with most of the time.

We did try to learn about personal space, even if Radha and I were sharing a physical space for most of our childhood and adolescent years. We learned how to be individuals and part of a collective but that only really happened years later, just in time for us to start our own (separate) businesses. Regardless, our twin partnership saying will forever be: “From the womb to the tomb.”

When I started my
business, I had to start thinking in terms of a different kind of partner—an actual business partner. I initially looked for someone who was like my other partner, my sister. I hired a person who was like me: young, excited, educated, hungry to build something . . . with no real regard for their level of experience. I had done it, so they should be able to do it!

I figured that I was smart enough to step in and figure things out if my manager didn’t know how to do something. I figured wrong. No matter how smart my partner and I were, it wouldn’t help us serve customers faster or manage a new staff of twelve people when neither one of us had ever managed anyone before.

For the first few years of my business, it often felt like the blind leading the blind. There was the former coworker who was fun, smart, and dedicated, but who had no experience at all. There was the know-it-all who also had no experience. (A know-it-all who doesn’t know it all is the worst!) Then there was the culinary institute graduate who had experience in the restaurant business but whose true dream was to be a chef, so I lost her as well. I finally learned that what I needed was someone who was equally excited about making the business grow but who was much more experienced than I was.

Looking back, I would have spent more time raising money so I could hire someone experienced rather than go through years of messing up and starting over again and again with different people. Don’t make my mistake! Spend the time and money up front to get it right the first time. Choosing your business partner is one of the most crucial decisions you will ever make.

So back to that
Sunday afternoon on what will forever be known as the Day the Pizza Place Ran Out of Pizza.

I asked my manager why we were out of dough. She said that it was a weekend and that no purveyors were dropping off supplies and she had forgotten to check inventory on Thursday for a Friday delivery. Since the ordering wasn’t done early enough, she missed the delivery cutoff time on Friday. She said that even if the dough was delivered on Sunday, it wouldn’t be ready on time for dinner service. The only solution she could think of was to close the place. Since she couldn’t or didn’t want to think of a creative solution, it was up to me. I told her to go to the neighborhood pizzerias and buy enough dough from them to last through dinner.

To my surprise, she said, “No, I’m not doing that.”

When I asked her why, she said, “Because it would be humiliating.” She sounded defeated.

“What would be more humiliating would be to close a pizza place down on a weekend because we have no dough.”

She refused to do it.

I was stuck. In the end, I called my kick-ass friend Kosta, an entrepreneur who started several businesses himself and knows what it means to be resourceful, and asked him to go around to neighborhood pizza places and borrow dough from them. Within thirty minutes, he had brought back fifty units of dough and I had personally called around from upstate and got another twenty-five units of dough available for pickup.

It became clear that I needed someone experienced and fast. It’s wrong until it’s right. You just never know how things are going to play out.

Do Cool Shit Lesson

Hire slow, fire fast. I can’t stress that enough. No one has ever said that they fired somebody too soon.

Always check references. This is so important in the hiring process. There must be at least three working references and they must all check out. It may take time, but as with the last piece of advice, it’s worth it to take your time and get it right from the start.

When you call references, ask these four questions:

• Did the candidate ever do something extraordinary without being asked? If so, what?
  
• How would you describe the way people react/interact with the candidate?
  
• Why aren’t you working together now?
  
• Would you hire him or her again?
  

Even if you have experience in the industry in which you’re working, make sure your partner does too. Another option is to approach people who have experience and offer them a small salary, plus equity in the company.

Your business is going to take up a significant portion of your life. If you sense that your partner does not share your values or vision, don’t be afraid to cut them loose. They will drag down your business, energy, and excitement, and in the end your business will suffer.

I understand that it’s hard to let go of this partner because you don’t want to be left alone to pick up the pieces, but the sooner you do it, the sooner you can move past it.

You may be daunted by the prospect of starting over, but trust me, it’s like tearing off a bandage; it’s terrifying at first, but it only stings for a little while and when you find the right person for the role you need to fill, things will get exponentially better.

ON PARTNERSHIP

There are some important questions you should ask yourself when contemplating a partnership. I break it down into two categories: business characteristics and personal characteristics.

Business Characteristics

• Do you have a shared vision—do you both envision the same future for your concept?
  
• Can you learn and be challenged by this person?
  
• Do you have different complementary skill sets? What does he or she bring to the table that you don’t have?
  
• Will he or she have your back no matter what? Even through fights, do you have confidence that he or she will never screw you over?
  
• It’s important to debate, to have passionate discourse. It means that both parties
  care
  . You don’t have to agree on every single detail and should argue why your idea is important, as long as the overall vision is a shared vision.
  
• If you find yourself disagreeing with the way someone carries him- or herself, approaches business, or treats people, you are fighting an uphill battle. You can address specific actions and events, but the odds of you fundamentally changing someone’s behavior are slim.
  

Personal Characteristics

• Laughter is essential anytime, anywhere. Is your partner able to put things in perspective and cut the tension with a little humor or silliness?
  
• Do I admire the other person? Admiration in both friendship and business are so important. Generally you admire someone who can do something better than you or can do something that you simply can’t. Have different skill sets. And vice versa. The mutual admiration is
  key
  .
  
• Is he or she curious? Is this someone who is constantly interested in learning about your industry, constantly striving for more, discovering best practices, and simply finding new ways to kick ass in business and life?
  
• Do I generally like the other person? Would I be OK sitting next to this person on a twelve-hour flight?
  
• Is he or she resourceful? You want someone who willingly takes on challenges that don’t have set instruction manuals, someone who solves problems without a set path in place.
  

Once you find your partner and find yourself hiring new employees, make sure they feel their voice is heard and valued. Your partner will feel validated if they are contributing to the growth and identity of your organization.

If you are bringing on a managing partner, let them help you lead the hiring for the rest of your team. Trust that they will want the best workers to work for them and it will also create a clear line of protocol between you and the employees. The employees will deal with the manager and the manager will deal with you. All of a sudden, you went from dealing with dozens of workers to one or two managers. It will free up your time to think more about the bigger picture and the growth of your company.

If you think that your manager has skills that you don’t have, has staying power, and will continue to make the company better,
incentivize them
to stay by making them an equity partner and grow with equity and profit sharing.

Hiring the wrong management person or team can completely stunt the growth of your business. I had to dig myself out of a hole several different times because of lack of experience and poor management skills, and if I simply had someone who had a positive attitude and who understood the fundamentals of a business, it would have exponentially sped up the business’s learning curve to success. Hiring incorrectly did help me go through the “hazing” process of starting my own business, so I do feel stronger because of it, but I would definitely have chosen the easier route if I knew better by hiring the best person right off the bat.

There are some very simple things you can do to make sure you’ve found your perfect match. Take your time, do it right, and reap the benefits.

I finally have two
great
partners right now, one with forty-four years of experience in the restaurant business, John Arena, who owns the popular pizza chain Metro Pizza in Las Vegas surrounding areas. He is encouraging, positive, fun to work with, and
knows
this business inside and out. He is also a karate instructor on Saturdays, so he has a real Zen sensei quality about him. My other partner is Tony Hsieh, of course, whom I gain so much inspiration from pretty much all the time. I feel blessed and ready to tackle the next stage of this company!

13

DOING GOOD AND DOING WELL

How Can I Follow My Dream and Still Fix the World?

From what we get we can make a living; what we give however, makes a life.

—A
RTHUR
A
SHE

T
he super what?” the six-year-old boy asked while he was visiting the restaurant with his family, looking at one of the colorful books that he’d picked up off the shelf.

“The Super Sprowtz!” I said.

“Who are they?” he asked excitedly.

“They’re a gang of superhero vegetable characters who keep us safe against the bad guys like Pompous Pollution and his evil henchmen!”

He leaned in, excited to learn more about these new superheroes. “Really? What are their names?”

“Well, my favorite is definitely Colby Carrot.”

“Why?”

“His super power is super sight! He can see things far, far away and has laser vision, even better than Superman!”

Nick’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Oh yes! So when you eat carrots like Colby Carrot over here, then you can get super sight too! Do you want super sight?”

“Yes!!” He ran over to where his parents were, grabbed a carrot out of his dad’s salad and stuffed it in his mouth, and exclaimed, “I’m going to get super sight!”

His parents were shocked. His dad came up to me and said, “That is the first vegetable my son has ever eaten raw in his entire life. How did you do that?”

“Superpowers,” I said, “will get you everywhere.” I handed him a Super Sprowtz book with a smile, and as I walked away, I thought of how wonderful it was that children could be encouraged to be healthy like this.

The power of the imagination, I tell ya.

I always knew that
I wanted to do something beyond simply starting a successful (and growing) small business. Building more locations and having the opportunity to franchise my business is exciting and all, but I knew that I could get even more satisfaction from helping my community.

As usual, when confronted with a problem, I thought of my parents. My mother is a Buddhist and my father is a Hindu, so we grew up with plenty of Siddhartha and Gandhi stories. We learned about the value of helping others early on.