Priscilla: [00:00:00] Today we're sitting down with Bob Campana. 40 years building, investing and reinventing. Across hospitality, travel, real estate, and aviation. So we're in for a retreat today. Bob has lived the kind of life that most founders dream about. We're talking the calls you make when you dunno how it ends, the pivots you didn't plan.

And moments that you either learn fast or you lose. Bob has a new book out. Don't look Down. The Improbable Adventures and the Battle Tested Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneur, and that really fits this episode because. The decision rules he's used over decades and how to take smart risks without blowing up your life.

How to rebuild after setbacks and how to stay optimistic without being reckless. If you're building something and you're in that, I'm not sure, but I'm moving. Anyway. Season, this is gonna be well worth your time.

[00:01:00]

Priscilla: Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Kitchen, Bob Campana. Bob, I'm gonna start with this question, what is the ultimate don't look down moment of your entrepreneurial career?

Bob Campana: Priscilla, thank you so much for that illustrious introduction. I was taken aback by that. At any rate I guess the book starts out with one of the revelations I had at 21 years old. I sold everything I owned, which wasn't all that much, but I sold everything I owned and I took a , seven eight month journey around the world.

With some friends. And upon that journey at a 21-year-old that had never left my home state, in the United States of California to see Southeast Asia, India, Europe it was eye-opening. And when I came back, I was walking with my backpack across an overpass in San Francisco.

Area right by the airport [00:02:00] and I was struck by the sea of cars that our country represented at that point, and the wealth , that the United States had in relationship to other places that I had visited. But at the same time the other places that I visited, their people were so happy.

Even though they didn't have the material possessions that I thought as an American were required for happiness, it was like a revelating moment. But I, at that point, I said to myself, America offers opportunity that was not available in other parts of the world at that point, or at least wasn't evident to that.

And I didn't want to squander that opportunity. So I made a decision there and then. That I would not trade my time for dollars and I would be a self-employed business person, not knowing where that journey would take me or how long it would take to go down that road. But that was the beginning of 50 years, making payroll every week.

Priscilla: Why the title? Don't Look Down. Bob,

Bob Campana: if you read the book, I'm a [00:03:00] pilot. I pilot both helicopters and airplanes. And just the fact that you're looking forward and you're looking above and always looking towards the next mountain, the next horizon is the way I look at things and I don't, reflect too much on a downward path.

Even though as an entrepreneur, you will find yourself in a downward path from time to time, and you have to react to that. And what piloting does is most of the time when you're flying an aircraft, you're off course around 90% of the time. And you just have to make minor adjustments to get back on course.

Either it's sideways, up down or whatever. There's wind that blows you in one direction or a thermal brings you up or whatever it might be. And that's the same as in business, you're going along the road, but you have to constantly make minor corrections, course corrections to basically keep yourself on track.

And the don't look down came from my helper writer that I had to write my book and,. It was [00:04:00] a metaphor about flying.

Priscilla: I love the way you look at business. It sounds kind of scary though, I have to say. Bob, if you could tell us what is the thing that you'd say is the through line, because you've been in a lot of industries and what do you think is the thing that, , even as you make adjustments, how do you know you're making adjustments in the right way or you're headed in the right direction?

Bob Campana: You know what everyone starts out in any venture thinking that this is the course I'm gonna take, and this is what I think the opportunity is and this is what I'm going to do. But as time goes on, you discover that your idea might not have been exact. On track or exactly meeting the market, so to speak, as to what you needed to do.

As data comes to you and as you experience the growing of your company, you have to make those corrections and changes to adjust for profitability or for cost control or for a variety of things. Human, interaction with people. But I would say mostly [00:05:00] from my experience and what I basically really focused in on in the last like probably 20 years of my career, has been the human connection of people and how the guiding and leadership of people is the true key to not only having a good life and helping others, but also being able to develop a strong business because.

I work on the business primarily. I don't usually work in the business. I've owned several restaurants, but I have never had a job in the restaurant. I would always work on top of the restaurant, creating the environment, creating the environment for not only the customer, but also for the employee, and been a cheerleader and supporter of the businesses.

And as I look on it on the outside, then I make these minor constant adjustments and changes to improve the quality of the service. Improve the quality of the experience for the customer in the restaurant business. One of the things that I have worked on I don't know if I'm getting [00:06:00] long-winded here or not, but , when I was in the swimming pool, construction business was the first business that I really grew and eventually sold. I read a book by a guy named Jan Carlzon that ran Scandinavian Air Systems and this book talked about how he transformed the business from losing $77 million a year to turning a $17 million profit in like around 24 months.

And. They interviewed this man and said, what exactly did you do? And he said. What I did was I studied the way the business operated, and this was a time when you had the phone to make a reservation to get an airline ticket, and there wasn't any Expedia or anything like that. And he basically said, what I discovered was that there was about 25 or 30.

Different instances that people could judge the performance of the business. And he called those memory moments. And that memory moment was any time a customer had an opportunity to make a [00:07:00] judgment on the performance of the business. And then the second item was the moment of truth, which is when a customer was given an opportunity to recommend that business to another person.

So what he did is he managed the memory moments in a orchestrated way to. Make a positive moment of truth for a positive endorsement. And an example of that was when I was building swimming pools, I would make sure that the people's yard was kept neat and clean information was given to them. They were basically constantly informed about the way things were going.

And, uh, if a problem occurred, as a general rule of thumb, we would just ask one question. We'd say, what do you suggest would be a good remedy for this problem? We apologize for it. If the customer made a satisfactory or a reasonable request, we would just grant that request to say, well, then that's what we're gonna do.

When the moment of truth came along, when they're having the [00:08:00] barbecue at the end of the pool construction, inevitably a neighbor or friend would come up to them and say, we're thinking about building a pool. How did this company do? And would you hire them again? At that point that customer's brain would scan all those memory moments, and if something negative happened, they would spurt that out.

As an example, if there was a crack in the concrete or something of that nature, they would use that as an example. But then they would say, we called Bob out. We told him about the problem. He looked at it. He asked us what we thought we should do. We said we'd like to have that piece of concrete replaced and fixed.

He said then that's what we're going to do. They would use that as an example, that they had made a good decision hiring me to do the work and the, as an example that if something went wrong in your job, they would make it right and correct it. And that was a, basically an endorsement to the company.

If that person called me, it wasn't really a sales call, it was an order taking experience, and that was through working through people with integrity and listening [00:09:00] to the customer and then reacting to them in a positive way.

Priscilla: Yeah, I think that approach, a lot of times founders, we think about the work and we don't focus on that, what you said, the memory moments and the moment of truth. We just think about, accomplishing, the task or whatever it is that people are being paid for. Now, I wonder, Bob, what do you see, you know, thinking of a new founder or.

People who are starting out in business, where do you think that we could focus more on or where do you think we're focusing incorrectly from what you.

Bob Campana: Most people that start businesses only know what they know. And, uh, another influential book that I read, I don't know if you've heard of it, was called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. And this book talked about systems and how to put things in place so that you could replicate a particular experience.

So as a founder, you have to learn the fundamentals. If you don't know about bookkeeping, well by gosh, by golly, you better. Take [00:10:00] some courses and learn about bookkeeping. Even though you may not do the bookkeeping physically yourself, you need to understand it and know what's going on and be able to read those financial statements.

That's number one. Number two, every founder needs to be a great salesperson because without sales, they're not gonna have any business. So they have to be able to understand the sales process and be able to make that process transferable to others in their company. And those. Basic right off the top, but in my viewpoint right now, the biggest thing that you could spend your time on is fostering your ability to connect with people.

If you are able to connect with people in a trustworthy and fantastic way, you are way ahead of everybody else because currently. The technology in some ways is bringing this together like you and I being able to have this podcast. I'm in California, you're in Australia. That wouldn't be able to happen without technology.

But on the other hand, the human connection, , we all live somewhere. We all live [00:11:00] in a town. We all live in a community. We all are interacting with people, we are all experiencing people's faces buried into their phones. If you were to take the time to communicate with people and foster that skill, , it would be something, in my viewpoint that a lot of entrepreneurs are not focused on now.

They're focused in on their spreadsheets or focuses on their computers, online this or online that, but. When you come right down to it, our communities are made up of brick and mortar businesses. They're people that we go and visit the restaurant, we go to the shoe store, we use those services and those businesses that are able to foster a strong connection with their customers will get a constant flow of referrals in their community.

Priscilla: We do kind of get lost in the technology of things and forget that it's really about people. Bob, why the swimming pool business it's an interesting starting point for someone to get into business. How did you.

Decide that this is what you wanted to do.

Bob Campana: So I went on that world trip. And when I came back, in the San Francisco Bay area. There was [00:12:00] like a liberal area called Marin County, and I went to Marin County and went to a hot tub party. My parents lived in a, small community up in the Sierra Nevada mountains called Murphy's, an Angels Camp, and their local energy provider called Pacific Gaston Electric had a series of little dams , and then those little dams would have lakes on the top of a mountain, and then they would have a pipeline that would go down to the bottom of the mountain.

And run a little power generator. In the war of World War ii, all of the metal was being reed by our government to make armaments and whatever they were using. So these pipes were made by redwood pipe. , It was called a pen stalk. They made a redwood pipe with rings around it. They were replacing those pipes in the mid seventies , so we made an auction and we bought this pipe.

After going to the hot tub party, knowing we could disassemble it and put bottoms in the [00:13:00] pipe and segment it out and make hot tubs. So we basically made these hot tubs with a mentor that helped me get started in the business. And what happened swimming pool contractors would start calling.

US because they didn't want the spa attached to the pool. They wanted a hot tub. So we would basically work as a subcontractor to the swimming pool contractors putting in these hot tubs. We, thinking we were so smart, said we can build swimming pools too.

So we basically got the swimming pool contractor's license from the state of California and then began selling. Swimming pools. That started out again, me looking at the weak links in the market, keeping job site neat and clean, basically communicating with the customers. We basically built this business up to where after 25 years, I had 170 employees.

I was building around 500 complete swimming pool projects a year, and at that point, one of my competitors came to me and said, [00:14:00] if you're ready, fight 'em and join them. I'd like to buy your company. And at that point I decided I would sell the company to him and go onto greener pastures. And I took a relaxing moment.

At that time, I rewarded myself with a bell Jet Ranger helicopter, that didn't last too long. Just because , if you're used to running a company and all of a sudden all you gotta do is get up in the morning and read the newspaper and not really have much obligations, you're bored to tears at 50 years old.

So my daughter said, I own this business that was like a wedding venue where just like a side kind of thing going on, but it was a nice piece of property and the girls talked me into starting a restaurant. And I was full of myself at that point thinking that I was a great entrepreneur, but anybody that hears the word restaurant runs for the hills because of the failure rate and the complexity of it and the fickleness of people about food and the rest of it.

And I decided I'm gonna take it on. So I took that job on, built a restaurant over 20 years again, [00:15:00] and that restaurant became the most popular. A special event restaurant in our area. It was voted the 18th most romantic restaurant outta 68,000 restaurants in the state of California on Yelp. And that in the story got a little more interesting because my neighbor was the Mormon church and they decided to build a temple on the property next to me, which was $180 million.

A temple for the Mormons. They built six or seven of 'em a year in the world. And a bar and a fine casual restaurant on the entryway into the temple was not what the Mormon church had in mind as an idyllic setting. So we negotiated over the course of three or four years, and when they had a multiple.

Almost three times the value of the business as their offer for me to move on. I decided that wasn't gonna come around again. So I took advantage of that offer and then I negotiated 20 [00:16:00] months to physically move the restaurant. And that point, a multinational corporation owned by a billionaire out of the UK that does development in Dubai. Poland, France, south and North Carolina, Texas, California, Canada, and South Korea. Found out that one of his managers was a big fan of the restaurant and they came and made me an offer I couldn't refuse, where we basically took the restaurant buildings, picked them up, put them on wheels, move them 20 miles down the road to a new location, and now we're building a brand new.

Restaurant and we're gonna insert the old building into the new building to make it an amalgamation. And it's all fostered around the ability of that restaurant to build the human connection and the reputation that it had made as a special part of the community. And now we're going into a brand new community called River Islands in California, and we will [00:17:00] be the glue and the impetus of the restaurant and special occasion place in that.

Structure and my actual partners are the billionaire Corporation that basically are looking all over the world and they're competing. On how can they make their community better? How can make their subdivision better? How can they make a quality of life for their customers better? And they chose this restaurant, my restaurant, and my leadership to be a very big part of that.

So I'm very honored that I'm able to work on that project right now. Also, if I'm given one of those shameless plugs, you can go on YouTube. We're documenting this entire move. It's all. There so people can watch the construction of this restaurant and the amalgamation of it, putting it together all the way to the point to where it opens up the menu selection and , as a matter of fact, I'm leaving for China for 10 days to procure materials and supplies for inside the restaurant, lighting and all different kinds of aspects there.

So it's just an amazing journey for me at this point in my life at 72 years old to be having this [00:18:00] kind of a project on me. 

Priscilla: um,

I look forward to seeing that on YouTube as things unfold. It sounds very exciting. I wonder, Bob. You said 20 years ago you decided to focus on human connectedness. Before that, what was your focus and why did you realize that this was the way to focus?

Bob Campana: When all entrepreneurs start out in business, they're chasing money. You know, you've got cashflow needs, you've gotta make payroll, you've gotta do all of that. And there's like a focus on that. And a lot of times we get laser focused on it because that's the lifeblood of the business.

Well, after a certain amount of time, if you're successful enough, you will realize that there's more than chasing those dollars it's a lifestyle thing and as a reward of yourself. I think the real focus though came. When COVID came around when COVID hit, we had to close our restaurant down.

Three different times through the wonderful management of Governor Newsom in the state of California. So we would have a walk-in refrigerator box that would have [00:19:00] between 10 and $15,000 worth of food inside of it, and they would shut it down arbitrarily on a Friday. And we had to basically give the food away to our employees, to homeless people, to shelters and all of that on three different occasions.

Well, when the restaurant opened back up. And the way the people came and just loved it as their third place a place where they could have community and so forth. It just really crystallized on my mind how important. People are seeking out that human connection and how it's vaporizing away from us in so many places in society because of technology restaurants can play just such a vital role in the community of bringing people together people communicating and talking and rewarding themselves in a small way.

my restaurants are basically based on escapism. They're beautifully designed inside. The lighting is put together. I take really uh, pains for acoustic so that when we're in a [00:20:00] table, we can hear each other speak to each other. We've all been in those restaurants that are too noisy and it's not really pleasant.

When you get to my age, it's 72 years old, it's really hard to on a conversation if there's a lot of ambient noise in the background and so forth. So I'm really focusing on that, I think that in a subliminal way, I call it nonverbal communication, where I basically aesthetically set these vignette settings up.

When people come in and sit down, it's like they're home. They're basically feel comfortable in this little environment in the table. They get beautiful service and they forget about their problems. They reward themselves with a beautiful meal, with a glass of wine or a cocktail, if that might be the case, or even just a beverage that's non-alcoholic.

But then they connect with the people that they're having dinner with. And for those hour or two when they're having that experience, they don't think about their troubles, they don't think about their problems because they're not going away. As soon as they open the door to go out in the parking lot, they'll hit 'em right back there in their face again.

But for that time that we have them. In the restaurant, we want them to [00:21:00] really reward themselves and escape from that world. And we are able to create that environment through them being happy to be there, having good service, not worrying about where's the water glass gonna get filled up, or what is my server got lost or their MIA or whatever it might be, and they get good experience.

And that basically goes into repeat customers, but it also goes into happy people.

Not only with the serving staff, but also with the customers. You have to have happy employees or the customers are never gonna be happy. So you have to create that environment in both worlds, so you've got all the employees that have to wanna be the work there, and everybody can sense that.

If you're in a restaurant or if you're in a business and you see this underlying surface tension, you can feel that. People feel it, but they also feel if everybody's happy too. It's the same thing.

Priscilla: , You get into the restaurant business, like you said, people hear, restaurant, and they run for the hills, but you managed to look at it at a different angle and really focus on that. you termed escapism and really the detail. [00:22:00]Really taking care of your customer and your employee, because it's a difficult industry, what do you think makes for success in that restaurant and what would you be looking for if you're a founder in that business?

Bob Campana: , Our federal government. Does what uh, call SIC codes, which are standardized industrial codes, and those codes are filled out on our tax returns and they scan that data and they sanitize it to where you can see. So like for example, there might be SIC code or standardized or industrial code in the restaurant business might be a 9 7 1, for example.

And that code would say , fine casual dining experience with alcoholic bar and catering would be the. Scope of that business. There might be like 20,000 businesses like that in the United States, or 8,000 or whatever the number is. They'll take that data and they will reveal it. So out of those 10,000 businesses, there might be like. 10% are like really low performers. They're barely making the money or they're doing okay. And then [00:23:00] maybe 40% of 'em are like they're okay, but they're not really making a great living, but they're still making a profit and they're doing all right. And then maybe another 15, 20% are doing pretty good.

And then there's this top 5% that are outliers that are really knocking it out of the park. makes an outlier business? And that was what I focused in on. So like in that area. In the percentage basis, if you had like a fine casual restaurant a poor performing one might make three to 5% net profit.

When it's over, an average one might make around like nine to 11% net profit, a really well run. One might make like 11 to 12 or 14, but an outlier can make 18 or 20. Percent profit. The outlier how are they doing that? They're doing that by focusing in on highly. Profitable ways to perform business.

So in my particular case, I use aesthetics and the [00:24:00] actual environment to subliminally talk to people that they're in a special place. requires, a little bit more money to have a dinner here because of this environment that we create. And then by being able to put the food down, create the service, and then what I will do is I will monitor the reactions on that, on the.

Tipping average. If a customer comes in and loves their meal and tips 20% or more, I already know that they like their experience cause they're giving a good tip. And if my tip average over all of my servers is over 20%, then that basically tells me the entire restaurant is operating.

In a favorable way because the customers are voting with their money. Then I'll layer that by me walking around the restaurant on busy nights, coming up to tables, touching people, looking in their eyes, interviewing them, thanking them for coming to the restaurant. And basically being able to be inside the experience.

So I'm able to really take a judgment on what is [00:25:00] going on on the actual moving parts. The combination of all of those things allows me to, number one, take the pulse of the restaurant, but also go back to those minor corrections that I might need to make. I might need to make a minor correction here, there, whatever that I'm observing when I'm watching that process.

Always in the interest of improving the experience.

Priscilla: Wow. You're a masterful strategist, but I'm interested to know, because you said strategy is the easy part. What happens next? Is the interesting part, and I was captured by that statement and I wanted to know what exactly you meant by that. 

Bob Campana: Implementation execution.

we can all have an idea. That makes sense. That sounds like a good idea. But we have to be able to execute that idea. And through execution we find the little flaws in the idea, and that's the minor corrections that we need to make to maximize that idea. And that's like an [00:26:00] ongoing process.

I can tell you right now, Google is making minor corrections as we're speaking. uh, On the way that their service runs, all technology companies are constantly monitoring data. They're turning around and making minor corrections to improve the experience, to capture more data, to do whatever it might be.

My little small way with my little walnut brain that I have, which is not very smart. I basically just do it in a way that it's more centric around, I live somewhere. I am in a community. I'm not in this island out in the middle of nowhere, standing in front of a computer screen and where I live. I wanna be a part of that community.

I wanna enrich anybody that comes into my sphere of influence. I want their life to be enriched by that experience. So if they basically decide to come to the restaurant to go out with another friend and to have a dinner, or celebrate a birthday or have a anniversary. Or even celebrate a life of someone that's passed.

, I was talking about it the other day, that I come up to a table maybe once every six, nine months or whatever it is, and it's a four top [00:27:00] table, but there's three people sitting at it. And I'll go, oh, thanks so much for coming into the restaurant. And they'll say, our friend loved your restaurant so much, they passed away a couple years ago, but every year we come in and have dinner in their honor and remember how much they loved your restaurant.

And we really thank you that. Alone when that happened to me the first time, it was such a revealing. that somebody would honor their life from someplace that they wanted to go or where they went for their life and they could bring back good memories of that. And that basically really focused in on what our lives are about.

Our lives are about the total sum. Accumulation of our memories and our experiences, in my first career was just in the pool business. I had to turn around and gain trust with people. I had to basically draw a sketch or a word picture of what their pool would look like because I couldn't open up a box and say, here it is.

I had to draw a plan. I had to basically have them imagine what that project was gonna look like. Then I had to execute [00:28:00] it as per the way it was presented to that customer. At the end, and a lot of times it's like 50, 60, 80, a hundred thousand dollars of their money was going into this thing. So they had something very distinct that I had planted in their mind of what I was going to make, and then I had to make it and produce it through that execution.

So when I got into the restaurant business, I understood. Imagery. I understood how people have dreams. A dream of a swimming pool is not the same as a dream of going out and having a steak dinner, but in a lot of ways they kind of are. 'cause their anticipation, they're something that I expect that I want.

If you go. And get a steak dinner and they don't cook your steak right. Golly gosh, that wasn't a good steak dinner. On the other hand, if they cook it perfect and if the experience was fantastic the side dishes were fantastic and the music was just right and you could hear your companion and you had a great conversation and you talked about [00:29:00]events that were going on that were important and you were able to just go through that whole thing, then I've created something that you wanted and that's why you went there.

Um, if on the other hand things didn't go that certain way, you would remember that. And my student or my teacher on that was Mr. Walt Disney, because he basically said he was the first person that truly sold experiences. He basically made an experience. Then people went to pay for that experience. So I just basically really studied that and I go, you know. In a small way. We're not talking about a Taco Bell here, a drive through or something like that, but when you go out to a beautiful restaurant with a view or something like that, which Sydney. And Australia has so many of them. I went to some beautiful restaurants at Brisbane. They were fantastic.

All over Australia. So that's basically what's going on with our, , experiential level that we're trying to create. We're trying to create [00:30:00] something that people, at the end they wanna come back because they can't really put their finger on a little bit, but they know it's a great experience. 

Priscilla: You know, 

It appears that your leadership is what has really been the thing 'cause a lot of founders, they work in the business 'cause they don't want to lead people. I think that's become a common thing where, people wanna have online businesses where they don't have to deal with leading people and you.

Are able to do that so well. Really, I think your vision for things it's quite clear and I wonder for that, what do you think is happening where people don't want to lead people and they wanna be in business, but they don't wanna work with people and they don't wanna talk to people and they don't wanna lead people?

And how can a founder make that transition

Bob Campana: That's true. , I have four daughters, two daughters work in tech. Both of them worked at Google and one of them now works at OpenAI, and the other one works at Google. It [00:31:00] doesn't really matter. Even in those tech companies, there's an ecosystem in that tech company where they're interconnecting with people and they have to be able to form that leadership.

So in my viewpoint, it's interesting because. Text messaging as an example. I think that the statistics are something like 85% of all communication is text. Now. People don't even wanna pick up their phone and talk to people. in America. If we were having a conversation in depth is what we're conversing here.

Just not like small talk, but having a conversation. A lot of times you can't start those conversations without people thinking you're a weirdo. You know, like, What's going on here? They're incapable of making those conversations. , I blame that on tech to a certain degree.

Gaming these kids are growing up and they're not having to have human connection. It's like one of my friends is kid says, Hey, we're gonna watch movies tonight. Okay. They all go into their own room, [00:32:00] watch the same movie in their own room, but their kids are in their different houses and they're watching a movie.

They're not even connecting together. It's really odd how that is evolving what's going on there. And I think that anybody that develops, I've already said this already, but if you develop a skill to. People. I think that is gonna be a very highly regarded thing because chatbots do not spend money on your internet business.

They take people to formulate trust and spend their hard earned money, even for an online. So being able to promote and show people that you're trustworthy. , Someone correct to do business with is either gonna transpire through your way, you communicate online and the way you're able to create credibility or in a brick and mortar business, which is what our communities are made of.

If you drive around town, that's what a community is. It's like houses and businesses that interconnect and support , that [00:33:00] community. Being able to be a part of that community and be able to contribute that community and make people feel good when they interconnect with you is something that is worthwhile for everyone to do.

That in business, we have it in religion where people get together of a common interest. Uh, people that are in a community that have a brick and mortar business, they're there to serve the public, but the public is gonna serve them if they feel good about going to that company and they feel trusted when they go in there and spend their money for that.

That skill is something that is lost on focus. 'cause we're chasing the dollars. We're looking about what we can do, how much we can charge for this and that. Then I think that they lose the fact that people do business with people that they like.

Priscilla: So many good things you said Bob, there. From the beginning of our conversation, when you're talking about those memory moments and you know that moment of truth with your customer and creating an environment of escapism, you're selling a dream. What's the dream that you're selling your customer and then that skill of connectedness [00:34:00] that I think, like you said, if people understand how to do that, I think that is really gonna set someone apart.

I also love that you talked about how you look at the data. Looking at the restaurant business, a tough business, and then understanding the outliers. You have such a way of thinking about things and I think a way of leading people. But I think you mentioned, you're looking at the tips and your waiters are getting average above average tips, and that gives you a sense of how are people feeling and how they are happy as employees.

I think that's another issue where, how to get people to be happy to work . In the place that you've created how to really approach that, I wonder? 

Bob Campana: That word comes down to one word, it's called respect. When I come into my restaurant on a given night, I'll enter into the back door and the first people that I will thank in that restaurant will be the dishwashers. , They have the hardest job. They're under pressure all the time.

Keeping the dishes clean, making sure that everything's just right. And every single employee when I am in the building will get an eye [00:35:00] to eye contact with me and a direct thank you for them, working and making our guests happy and they are given respect and in a lot of cases. Managers take things for granted, or they don't honor people for their efforts, they don't highlight them out, they don't publicly praise them, or they make them feel good in front of others for work that they're doing.

And that's all been lost. And a lot of the owners are under pressure. I understand it. They're chasing that money. They've got payroll, they've got all of that. They've got things that they perceive as more important than going and giving an attaboy to the dishwasher. I'm here to tell you, it's very important.

You give an attaboy to that dishwasher and it's sincere. It's not just a superficial how you doing kind of thing. You truly care about them. People will sense that and they will fight for you in that regard. I'm working for a woman right now. Her name is Susan Dell'Osso. And she has created this environment where she works for the billionaire that we talked about that [00:36:00] we're doing this restaurant project with. It's actually just phenomenal thing. This woman. It's so refined in the ability to connect with people, to be able to have them work for her. I am just so honored to be around her and she does it all through respect of the individual, finding something to praise people on and encouraging them to do a better job to tomorrow because of the job that they're doing and they challenge themselves.

And when people are respected and they're respected in front of others. And you're honoring them in front of others and , they see that they want to get that same respect. And when you sprinkle it around all through the system, then everybody understands that you're sincere and you're not superficial.

Priscilla: so much you've said there, Bob. I know you've got your podcast coming soon and I think people will really gain a lot from learning from you and the things you've experienced.

Bob Campana: Well, It's interesting. It's like the book. Okay. So I am cognizant of my mortality. I'm [00:37:00] 72 years old. I've got eight grandchildren. Those grandchildren, I wanted them to know who I was. And that was the impetus to write the book , you know, you pass away in one generation, or even if that long, people don't even mention your name anymore.

You're dust, it's over with. And I would want those children to know their heritage of where we came from. So writing that book basically, gave me insight into. How I could connect with people in a broader way. Because once I wrote the book I had a ghost writer too. There's no sugarcoat in it.

, I don't have the prose or the skill to actually write the book. So I met with this guy a year one hour to two hours a week, and we would talk about my life and it's a weird deal because. You don't really, as a person, retrospect on what was I doing when I was 10, 12, 15, 18, 22?

You don't really think about that. So being able to review your life and go over that was an interesting [00:38:00]exercise. And then once that was all done and completed, we submitted the book to a publisher as per his recommendation. The publisher, right on their website says, we only take seven to 9% of submittals to work with the people.

They immediately called back and said they wanted to publish my book, but in the same sentence they said, we want you to rewrite the book. I go what? But they wanted it to be an entrepreneurial event where mine was more on a memoir kind of thing, because I was doing it for the grandkids, so we rewrote the book in a way that each chapter I lived like, I traveled around the world, then I came back.

What did I learn out of those travels? What could I give little words of wisdom? And I wrote these little bullet points at the end of each chapter. And then they took my whole life from the beginning to where I am right now. And now at 72 years old, I'm working on the largest project I've ever had. I have a, billionaire [00:39:00] partner basically so this is a funny story.

So Susan comes and meets me at the old restaurant before we tore it down and we make this video. 'cause I'm, now, I'm into YouTube, you know, so I'm gonna make videos on everything. So I make this video and, we send this video to the billionaire. Alan is his name.

In 24 hours. He calls back and he says, I wanna do this project, pick up the restaurant and move it. Okay. That's crazy. Two weeks later, he just randomly shows up, Sue goes, Alan's here, he wants to meet you. Oh my gosh. So he comes in, we walk through the restaurant, sits down and speaks with me for around two hours.

Just feeling me out. Who am I? Asking questions. Going through that, he is the third largest landowner in Napa, California. He has a 1400 acre. Vineyard there with two wineries and all of this. He was saving the premier [00:40:00]lot of this 5,000 acre subdivision to build a miniature winery on to tie his Napa Winery into his subdivision in the Central Valley of California. After that meeting was over, he got into the car with Susan and said, Susan. I want you to make a deal with Bob. I wanna build the Redwood Cafe on my lot, and I wanna go in partners with him to make the Redwood Cafe in that place. All of a sudden, in a couple of weeks, my retirement plan changed to where I thought, I had sold my business to the Mormons.

I was gonna ride off into the sunset. I'm working on an apartment with some friends in Sicily. I'm gonna basically be going between Italy and I got this whole map laid out and now of a sudden I'm building a 16,000 square foot restaurant, three quarters of an acre of landscape grounds. Fire pits multiple bars next to a event center that's gonna have a live venue where we're gonna be doing shows and [00:41:00] everything out on my patio I can watch down on there.

So you just never know where your life is gonna go or what's gonna happen or when opportunity is going to strike. But I can tell you this, anybody that's in business, you create a reputation in a community and opportunities are gonna continually come to you because you're not common. You're a common person and you're basically taking an effort and people will note that you are. Taking pride and care in what you do and you respect your employees and your customers along the way, and that reputation will be so respected in any community and it goes over time. You're not gonna be able to do that in one or two years. It's gonna take a while to do that. One of the things that I did in the restaurant, which was fun, I took a trip to Vietnam. And I'm walking down the street and I see a gong and ceremonial drum store. Now, I have never really seen a gong store per se, where all they sell [00:42:00] is gongs and drums, number one. That was kind of an odd retailer. I'd never seen that, but so I walk in and I look at all these different gongs and stuff, and.

Decide I'm gonna buy a gong. Well, I buy a gong and I'm, , bringing it back and I go, what am I gonna do with this damn gong? Well, we always have, you go to the, A restaurant you have like the people sing Happy birthday, or they leave a little duck and they quack it or whatever the hell they're gonna do for your birthday.

Usually it's embarrassing and people don't like it, but you know, they restaurant does it. So I came up with this idea to. Hit the gong. So I go to a customer and I say, look it's your birthday. What we do here at Redwood is we hit the gong. You hit the gong, the noise goes out. The ethos of space and the gods.

Grant your wish. Yeah, people loved it. So I would be having like 80-year-old women hitting the gong, making wishes, doing all this kind of thing. And then people in the restaurant where they would hear the gong go, what's going on with that gong? What why are you doing that? And it became a thing for Redwood Cafe where people really [00:43:00]loved that.

And that was another part of escapism because nobody. In their 82 years when they were having their birthday, had ever hit a gong to celebrate their birthday. So it's a unique thing. The gong came around, the iPhones came up, people were sharing it on social media they're hitting the gong and all of that kind of thing.

So some kind of a way. That you can take a regular everyday occurrence, which is a birthday or an anniversary or something like that, and highlight and honor the people that are there I'm talking specifically about a restaurant when they're at your restaurant or at your business, and you can honor them in such a way as to make them feel special and different.

Come up with that idea and you will get not only the rewards of those people happy, it'll make you. So rewarded and so happy inside your heart that you're able to create that for people. And when you can make those kind of connections like that, that enriches your life. I came to the realization that when you get to my age, which is 72, and I keep referencing it, all you really have [00:44:00] is the summation of your experiences.

That you carry with you and those become higher and higher value. It's almost like in your phone, all of the photographs you have of the moments that you wanted to capture, and you want to save those to memorialize those events in your life. Those experiences as you go through life are the.

Total sum of who you are , what you discover. At a certain point in life, giving is better than receiving, and then how you can give in such a way that you get reward out of it, but you also lift others up. That's the way that a leader. Is able to turn around and have people work for them. Susan, who I reference is a master at that.

I watch the way that she orchestrates it, and I try to the best of my ability and I'm constantly learning on how to respect people and how to honor them. And it becomes a rarer and rare trait as time goes on. So It actually becomes easier and easier to be stand out [00:45:00] when you do that type of thing because it's not as common as it used to be where everybody would interconnect.

Everybody would sit down and have dinner at five o'clock. All of the kids there wasn't TVs, there wasn't cell phones. There wasn't all this distractions going on where you really did connect with your friends, family and neighbors. And now if you create an environment where that occurs, you uh, become.

Very crucial to the mechanisms of the operations of your community.

Priscilla: Yeah. That's amazing. Bob, please, before we finish off, if I could just do a rapid fire question with you.

Bob Campana: Priscilla, you are in charge. I am your servant. Whatever you command, I am here to do.

Priscilla: I appreciate that, Bob, if I'll just ask you seven questions. Rapid fire, the best business decision you've ever made,

Bob Campana: Best business decision I ever made was probably to sell one of my companies.

Priscilla: the most expensive lesson you learned.

Bob Campana: I flew my helicopter into a lake and crashed it.

Priscilla: a belief around [00:46:00] risk. That you think people should know?

Bob Campana: Risk is a calculated guess or gamble, but it doesn't have to be risky. It's just a calculated risk that you do. Risky is making a decision from the hip. A risk is making a calculated decision that has a higher probability of success, but other people aren't willing to take that chance because they haven't researched it well enough.

I would infer. The restaurant business, something that has a stigma. At the other hand, there's so many rewards on it, if you could get it right.

Priscilla: the traits that you screen for when you're looking for partners.

Bob Campana: You Know, it's interesting when you say that and basically I don't know if you're familiar with neurolinguistic programming. Where you basically make eye contact with people and you mirror their actions and so forth and what have you, body language and all of that. I'll basically observe someone and I see well,, how they will treat others when it's not important and.

Just [00:47:00] observe over time. That's why they say if you play golf with somebody for 18 holes, you'll basically know what kind of person they are. You will know a person if you make observations to them and see how they conduct themselves in a general atmosphere with people that don't make any difference to them.

And when you see that's an indicator of their character.

Priscilla: when you think, okay, this is a negotiation that I need to walk away from?

Bob Campana: that is a good one because if you're in negotiations, you're usually pursuing and you wanna win that negotiation. it can get to a point to where you can lose sight of a good decision and request just to win, you know, to basically make that negotiation come to a, end the ability to step back and walk away from a negotiation that isn't providing.

What you thought was gonna be a good outcome. , If you're making too many concessions , you're not getting a gut feel on it, I would walk away and give it a little bit of a break for a while [00:48:00] and reflect on, is that as good of a deal as I thought it actually was. And as a general rule of thumb, either that deal will come around to where it's more favorable or another thing will pop up to where you're gonna go in that direction.

And it's usually better to walk away than to force something.

Priscilla: You talked about gut feel, when you're thinking gut feel and data. How are those two things working together?

Bob Campana: Yeah. That's like a dichotomy, isn't it? Because data's telling you one thing, but your gut feels telling you something else, and I would have. To tell you, at the end of the day, I'm gonna have to trust my gut over the data because data can be presented in a variety of different ways, and you might wanna skew it to your way, you wanna look at it and everything.

But at the end of the day, they have a saying inside of Las Vegas. It's called JDLR. Just don't look right. You know that somebody's winning at the poker table, and how are they winning? Why'd they keep winning the JDLR? It doesn't look like, let's hit the camera, see what he's doing. He got cards up, his sleeve, whatever it might be.

As you go on to [00:49:00] a business deal and you have this interconnection with people and it's an ongoing relationship, you can determine relatively quickly if there's things that the JDLR. Just don't look right in that relationship. And when that starts to happen, that's your gut telling you this isn't a good thing.

I went into a restaurant experience where I had this guy work on me for, oh my gosh, several years. He had this beautiful building, wanted me to put a restaurant in there, wanted to do this, all of that. I just rebuffed him At a certain point, I said, okay, look, pal, you give me a half a million dollars.

You let me run this restaurant, I'll improve everything and we'll go forward with this deal you pay for everything and everything. And the guy goes, yeah, I'll do it. But I should have never went into that business because the person was not good. It was not a good environment, it wasn't a good situation.

And they tempted it me through this offer. It was one of the worst decisions I made, and I had to extract myself out of it. After I put a year and a half of building this absolutely beautiful restaurant, I had to walk away from it because of their, [00:50:00] incalcitrant, egotistical, narcissistic behavior, which was not evident when I first got into the deal.

'cause I didn't do this observation I just told you I should have done. So you can make mistakes. Believe me, 72 years old. I'm still learning new tricks.

Priscilla: Oh, thank you for sharing that. What makes you feel most alive now at 72? Bob?

Bob Campana: I'm gonna have to fall back on that human connection thing. Being able to connect with people, bring joy and happiness to them, and have the power to do so. Put yourself in a situation though. What do I mean by that? In my particular case, I love to take these little journeys, these trips, with our little travel company and being able to, have transformational experiences for people is so rewarding.

And being able to grow people. I've mentored several young men along the way. I have four daughters, so I never had a son. So I would adopt these young, adopt meaning I would hire them or I would get in a relationship with these [00:51:00] young men and put 'em to work in my business nurture them and grow them to a point to where they were little birds that left the nest.

And I've had that happen probably around five or six times with men through the course of my career. that is such a rewarding thing. To be able to look back and know that you were able to impact people in such a favorable way. So I would say, people my age in their later stages in life, they have so much wisdom to give to younger people step out and put yourself in the game and help people in their journey of life from the experiences that you've had in yours.

And I think that you'll find that at an extremely rewarding exercise.

Priscilla: thank you so much, Bob. You have a YouTube channel where they can follow. How you're building this out. I'll link that in the description so people can see this. When people read the book , if you were to say in one sentence the thing you want them to walk away with.

Bob Campana: we're not alone. We're all, together on this thing, everybody makes choices every day as to how their day is gonna go. [00:52:00] And if you have a positive mental outlook and you're willing to go forward, well then your life is gonna be, it's not gonna be, uh, Skittles and bits, you know, it's not gonna be all perfect peaches and cream and all of that, but your outlook is gonna be so much more favorable and your heart's gonna be so much lighter.

My experience in my book, dish up my failures because failure is your teacher. That is when you have to make an assessment. What went wrong? What did I do? What could I have made a better decision on? And when failure puts this way up, I referenced this, thomas Edison was once interviewed by a, journalist and he said, at this point, Mr.

Edison, you've had 1800 experiments that were a failure and a light bulb won't work. Don't you think it's time to give up on this? And Edison said, no, I only know 1800 ways it won't work. So a lot of people need to make an assessment and maybe their initial approach isn't. yielding the results that they thought.

That's what comes into the correction. A self-assessment, take a look [00:53:00] at it and then dive back in. Basically stay focused on the end goal. The end goal gives you a rudder as the direction is to where you're going. And being able to set a goal and moving forward is something that we all talk about, but executing it in a way that actually has consistent results takes discipline.

Priscilla: Thank you so much, Bob. I've learned so much in this conversation. It's been amazing. Pleased to the audience. Bob's book is called Don't Look Down the Improbable Adventures and Battle Tested Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneur. I'm also gonna link his YouTube channel. You can have a look at what's going on in his world, um, really amazing and some really interesting things, and we look forward to your podcast.

Bob, thank you so much

Bob Campana: Priscilla, thank you so much. It's bob campana.com and the YouTube channel is Get Back the number two work exclamation point. And I wanna thank you sincerely for conducting a fantastic podcast today. I felt [00:54:00]comfortable and honored all the way through, and I can see why you're so successful at what you do.

Priscilla: Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Bob.

Bob Campana: Thank you Priscilla.