Chef & Co-Founder of Back Home Hospitality

This industry requires sacrifice. It's not gonna change. It's already changed a lot, but at some point you have to realize even if you're working the easiest eight-hour day in a restaurant, the easiest eight-hour day in a restaurant is already gonna be 10 times more on your body than an eight-hour day at a desk. You just have to either decide that you're gonna sacrifice and be in this game or you're not.

Learn to have discipline. This industry can be unforgiving, and it can burn you out and chew you up. If you want to have longevity in this, you’ve got to look at the best athletes in the world. LeBron James, Steph Curry, they treat their body like a fine timepiece. They don't treat it like a garbage can.

Stick it out, be patient. Not everything has to happen in your time, and most importantly, a year is not a long time. You can wait anything out for a year. You can wait anything out for five years, you just have to stick it out

We're not doing people a favor by letting them come into our restaurants. We should value every guest and make them feel really good about our industry and what we do because this industry is really incredible. What we do for a living is really special. We get to make magic happen every night.

The truth is there's so many different ways to be successful in this industry. If you love what you do and you're good at what you do, you have great work ethic and you have great skills, there's gonna be a home for you.

At 13 years old, I got my first job stacking produce at a produce stand in the Bay Area. A restaurant owner asked me to cover for a dishwasher that didn't show up - I showed up, and honestly I was hooked. The vibe in the kitchen, the chaos, the curse words, the fun. It all just came together for me there, and I've never stopped. This is the only kind of industry I've ever worked in.

I really wanted to go to the nicest, fanciest culinary school I could go to because I wanted to make up for the fact that I wasn't going to college. I ended up in New York at the CIA, which was just incredible. From then on, I always tried to work in the best restaurants with all the best accolades and the Michelin stars and those things, because I was constantly trying to make up for the fact that I didn't go to college. I wanted to show that I was a success, and that was great in certain ways, but it wasn't about how much I loved the food, it was more about all the accolades. That's what eventually led me to opening Che Fico: I really wanted to open something that I was excited about eating at every day and that I would have regulars in.