M&Ms: A Business Lesson from Beers and Strikes

An important business lesson in the 107th edition.

The chefs decided to strike on the busiest night of the week.

The reason?

They got mad at me.

I was the bartender, and they got mad because they couldn't have more beer.

I can still hear Javier's voice saying, "Mira, Louie, give us the beers, or you won't get any food tonight, man."

The Chefs fed us after each shift was over, and usually, that threat of no food was enough to get me to hand over more beers. That's because the food at Enzos Restaurant was something special.

The end-of-the-night staff meal was dished out for us family style and, at times, included plates of authentic Chicken Paramagiano, sides of sauteed Broccoli Rabe with garlic, and Sausage. It had pasta sides, among many other fantastic dishes.

The food at Enzos was so good it even attracted billionaires to dine there. Mayor Bloomberg was a regular then, and he is quoted as saying it was his favorite restaurant in The Bronx.

But that night was different; the threats from the Chefs escalated.

What started as a ha-ha-banter about the staff not getting fed turned severe quickly. That's because I was under strict orders by Enzo not to give the Chefs more than three beers each. They were getting drunk, and it was impacting quality.

I could've lost my job if I didn't listen.

Enzo was a nice guy, but you didn't want to mess with him.

I don't think Enzo was ever in The Mob; hard for me, a lowly bartender, to know, but I knew he fed The Mob. And so I assumed that if one messed around, besides getting fired, they were probably one favor away from getting whacked if necessary.

And so I was in no position to mess around.

But the Chefs thought they were; they thought they were irreplaceable.

And what ensued that night was the greatest business lesson I ever learned. Something that even helped me climb in my big corporate job later in my career.

When the Chefs learned I was under orders by Enzo not to open any more Coronas, Modellas, or anything of the sort, they got pissed.

The Chefs went downstairs, took off their aprons and hats, dressed in plain clothes, and staged a walkout in the middle of the busiest night of the week, Saturday night.

Enzo confronted them. He said, "After everything I've done for you, how much I pay you, and everything I've taught you, you will walk away because of some beers?" They ignored him and left.

Any other restaurant would've had to close down from an event like that, at least for the night.

But not Enzo's Restourant.

Enzo went downstairs, put on his Chef's whites, got behind the stove, and started cooking.

Enzo had finished school for corporate law with honors, with a 3.9 GPA. But here he was, cooking meals for his customers on a busy Saturday night.

Before starting that restaurant, Enzo spent a year in culinary school on top of cooking at another restaurant for some time. It was an unconventional path that led him to open a restaurant. But he found he enjoyed being a business owner more than being in corporate law working at a big law firm.

When this all transpired, I couldn't help but feel like I had messed up a little. After all, I thought, if I'd been more tactful, I could've maybe prevented this.

I decided I would apologize to Enzo.

And he said, "Louie, the lesson here for you is when you go into business, you never want to be in a position where someone else has you by the balls." He added, "If you were to quit as a bartender tomorrow, I would jump behind the bar and make drinks if I had to. If the dishwasher left, I would wash dishes until I could hire someone else."

The next day, realizing they'd messed up, the Chefs returned and begged for their jobs back. They weren't going to find a place that paid them more or treated them better in The Bronx.

But that event became legendary for me.

At that moment, Enzo joined leaders like Henry Ford in my eyes. There is a story in the book "Men and Rubber" where Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and Thomas Edison are on a road trip, and their car breaks down. A broken radiator and fan iron almost left those folks stranded in the middle of nowhere.

But, "Henry Ford stepped up, business-like, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to it like a real mechanic who knows his job and is anxious to get to tinkering around in the machinery.

Mr. Ford was anxious to get a crack at that engine, I think—anyway, he took the darned thing apart, adjusted things here, and readjusted things there, and, in no time at all, he had the car running slick as a whistle, and we were on our way again. All of which proves that this man Ford certainly is on intimate terms with every little bolt and nut that goes to make up an automobile—and which proves, also, that a man must know his business from the ground up before he can have twenty-five thousand people working for him."

—Men and Rubber

Some may think this lesson is fantasy and does not apply anymore because the business world is just too complex.

And I do know this message is somewhat controversial among the managerial class, those who cannot do anything except "manage."

But later on, long after I moved on from Enzo's Restaurant when I was an engineering leader at a fast-moving startup, one of my engineers quit unexpectedly during a critical project and before delivering his part.

But having internalized that lesson from Enzo, I never went into anything where someone else "could have me by the balls," as Enzo put it. I came up the engineering leadership ranks first as an individual contributor; I still code in my spare time. 

When that engineer quit and gave us no notice, I rolled up my sleeves and helped my team write the rest of the code and then some. We delivered that project. And we were on our way to the top.

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A quick note:

A huge thank you to the folks in this cohort of the newsletter course, which we are running through Small Bets, for giving feedback in this edition.

And speaking of our cohort, week one is over.

We had over 600 people sign up; most probably just wanted the recordings.

But we had about 95 show up for the first live session, and that still makes this the biggest live online cohort class I’ve run in my life. And on Thursday, the worst possible thing happened, my internet cut out for a little bit. But thanks to my partner

Chris Wong

we recovered.

Overall we got about 40 drafts so far of the first editions of newsletters we gave feedback on. And some of them are incredible. I will highlight some of those next week when they are published.

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Two Things: AI attempting to replace Humans, Social Media Arbitrage

The transition to AI won’t be as easy or as simple as many folks in business today think it will be.

My friend

Chris Wong

pointed this out to me: “When people think that AI is going to steal people's jobs, I want to send them this picture. 

4 traffic cops at an intersection with a traffic light.”

There is a lot of complexity in the world, and a lot of times, 95% of the way there is still not good enough.

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What a fascinating hustle, doing work for free just to grow on social media.

Two Tweets From Me (that seemed to resonate):

Some people think what you do for work is who you are; no, what you do after your “job” ends tells us who you really are.

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Most people can accomplish far more than they realize in the modern world.

This is somehow a secret in plain sight.

We all have the capacity, the tools, and the lessons to be modern-day Micahelangelos if we chose to.

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Two Memes: To Start, Bots and Offices

This tweet hits close to home because I wrote all of the code for my personal site, louiebacaj.com, myself.

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Why can’t we send the bots back to the office?

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As always, thank you for reading.

-Louie

P.S. You can reply to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it even if I can’t always reply in a timely manner.