Transcription
You know, I'll hit you with a few things. Okay? Number one: take the word "no" out of your damn vocabulary. Okay? Don't assume something's done because you have somebody do it; always follow through. I said, know your numbers. There are no spare customers. It's a competitive world, no matter what you're selling or what your business is. And so, make sure you treat every customer like it's the last, because there's somebody else out there trying to steal them from you. So if you do those few things, you'll be successful. Don't assume; no spare customers; be friendly; and know your numbers.
[Music]
Hi, I'm Tillman Fertitta, owner of the Golden Nugget casinos, Landry's restaurants—everything from Mastro's to Bubba Gump to Del Frisco's to Claim Jumper to Rainforest Cafe, Saltgrass, Chart House, and a lot more—and the owner of the Golden Nugget casinos and the Houston Rockets. And I'm here to talk to you about my new book, *Shut Up and Listen*, with Brian Elliott.
Behind the Brand: Welcome to the show.
Great to be here, Brian.
I usually ask my guest, "How'd you get this job?"
How did I get this job? I fell into it because I didn't want to work for anybody else. And so, I just said, "I'm gonna go into business for myself." And I started at an early age. And I had to go to work for anybody yet.
Well, that's amazing.
Take the chronology back as far as you want to go. You know, this show's been around for a long time; we're one of the originals. Talking about origin stories before long-form was popular, and our audience really wants to know how you got started, but they also want to know the pitfalls, the mistakes you made in order to get it right. How far back can you remember wanting to be an entrepreneur?
I've been an entrepreneur since I was a kid. I mean, I used to walk around when I was eight, nine years old with my grandfather's briefcase and say, "This was my business." Okay? I didn't read comic books and watch cartoons; I always talked about business and was always looking for that opportunity, no matter if I was in junior high or high school, and and then through college or whatever, was always trying to make money however I could make it.
That's awesome.
Did you have encouragement from your family? Like other entrepreneurs in your family, or did they want you to go down a certain path?
You know, it's amazing, but but everybody—there's a lot of entrepreneurs in my family, so it's definitely in the DNA. And not every—of course, nobody's become as successful as I have, but but there's a lot of entrepreneurs, and and I do think that you're born with the entrepreneurial gene. But that doesn't mean that you can't go out and say, "I'm gonna be an entrepreneur," and and be successful. But remember, you can be just as successful going up the corporate ladder. Look at Bob Iger, who started as a film guy. So it don't feel like you just have to be an entrepreneur. There's many millionaires and even a few billionaires who work for somebody else.
There's a lot there that I want to unpack, but let's go back to the assertion that entrepreneurs are born and they're not made. What makes you say that?
I just knew how to make money, just like a singer is born a singer, or a person who can play an instrument is born with the music—music ear. An athlete, a lot of times, as as much as you want to play professional football, basketball, or baseball, you can't make yourself that good; you have to be born with the talent. And and I do think that I do have an entrepreneurial gene, but at the same time, I became a sponge and grabbed it to make myself much better.
I actually agree with you. I think there's a large debate on nurture and nature, right? You know, it's the environment that you grow up and can have a huge influence on you. At the same time, you know, I have kids, and I hundred percent can see certain things are DNA; it's, you know, it was built in, and they're different for me, and and you can definitely see those differences. But let's go back to maybe identifying—because a lot of people talk about self-awareness being a really important thing, and I agree—being able to understand yourself, and maybe there's a lot of people in—though they don't think it's age-specific—that are still trying to figure out, "What am I good at? Or what is in my DNA?" So how do we help those people identify those gifts that have been given?
You know, if it's James Harden, you know, certainly that DNA helped him get to the NBA, no question about it, and then he perfected. But what are some of the signals that we can look for?
Well, and I talked about this in the book, is that God gave us all a gift, but you got to find out what you're good at, because he did make us all special in our own way. Everybody has something that they're better at than everybody else, or they're better at—
I agree with you. Okay. So so how do we figure that out?
I think that you have to sit there and look at yourself in the mirror sometime and say, "What am I good at?" You might be a great poet; you might be a great author; you might be a great athlete; or you might have a great voice; or you might be great at taking an engine apart and putting it back together; you might be the greatest painter that don't even need tape that can paint this line in this room. But we all have a talent; we really do. So some people are great people people, where they're great charm, and so they're great salesmen. So so and some people are great academia is, but keep you locked up in a room, and I'll figure out any issue for you. Find out what you do well.
So it sounds like you're saying there's got to be a bit of trial and error. You got a—you got a try stuff; you got to do—you can't just maybe guess or wonder or hope.
You know, and once you figure that out, what are some of the signals? Is it—well, let's go back to you—a comment you just made—what I think was was interesting that struck a chord with me. He said, "A lot of entrepreneurs in my family, but none is successful as me." So how should we be measuring success? And let's make it in the context of that level. Let's say I'm, you know, just getting started, or maybe I'm, you know, where I'm at right now, and I'm pushing reset and I'm on the second time around. How do I measure success?
You—everybody has their own parameter for measuring success. When I was very young, okay, I told myself, "When I'm 35, I want to own my first jet." I told myself, "I want to be in the Forbes 400." Well, so let's go—about how much does a jet cost that you were talking about here?
You know what you got to remember? My first jet was a Citation jet that I paid—it was used—that I probably paid 700,000 for, but that was also 25, 30 years ago.
Okay. And what's that worth in today's money?
So seven hundred thousand, you know, probably three million dollars, let's say.
Okay. And then it's not—I have two G5s today, so I'm definitely up—great. So to be able to afford a three-million, four-million-dollar plane, what did your income need to—need to be?
Well, I had—I hadn't gone public yet; I was still a private company, and just like I'm private again today, I owned a hundred percent of my company. But but I think I was making about four or five million dollars a year at that time.
Okay. And so, I mean, life was not bad at all.
Yes. Good. And why did you decide that the plane was such an important benchmark?
Because I truly—I hate flying commercial, and I haven't flown commercial since then, just for the record. You know, just the aggravation and have—where you sit, and you get stuck in a middle seat, or whatever, you know, just jacked with the airport, then you sit on the tarmac, and I just said, "This is—this is not good." And then I was trying to grow my company, and and so honestly, I was opening a restaurant in Austin, Texas, and the last flight out of Austin was at 8:30 in the evening, so I couldn't even be there really for the dinner hour because I had to get on the plane and come home. So I'm going over to the terminal, but yet I see down this road—Austin jet, you know, sales, rentals, whatever—and I just walked in there one day and started talking to him, and next thing you know, a few months later, I had my own jet.
Yeah. I just got a little flash of Elon Musk, you know, and Elon here in LA, he's got a company in Hawthorne, not far from here, and he hates traffic, and so, you know, instead of—he's a problem-solver, like it sounds like you're a problem-solver—he's decided he's gonna burrow underground—the tunnel underneath all the traffic. So it sounds like that's what you were trying to do.
We'll see. I don't—I don't need to go underground because I just use a helicopter to get to the airport.
So you're a problem-solver. The—the—the benchmark, the goal for the airplane was less about vanity and more about just solving—you probably just had an efficiency thing. Time was valuable. You know, all the hassle of that—
That's a pretty big goal, though, let's face it.
I mean, yeah, but you know, when I was 21, I won my first cattle—I selling Shaklee vitamins—direct selling. And so I always had goals, just like about that time is when the Forbes 400 came out—list—the Forbes came out for the first time, like 40 years ago. So I knew that I just had goals, and I said, "I want to be on that list one day."
So you're ultra-competitive.
Ultra—yeah, this is a sport. Yeah, there's a sport. You're not—they're growing up—yeah, through high school—but why didn't—good enough to go to the next level—and you—real—you recognize that, though?
Oh, 100%. You have to recognize what you're good at and what you're not, because your—isn't from Texas, right? It's still from Texas. And what sport was big growing up?
As a baseball—was a football—football—yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you try sports?
No. I always played them all—junior high school. I guess where I'm getting at is I'm always curious about where people come to that—you know, to recognizing that's a fork in the road, right? Like you just know—you just know, "I'm not quite big enough; I'm not quite fast enough; it's just not quite good enough to take it to the next level." If—and that is god-given talent and size and everything, but if I was good enough, I would—would have played professional football, or—
Yeah. All of us—yeah. Yeah, we love sports. So it's fascinating to me, though, you know, it's another question I think a lot of people on the show always ask is, you know, zooming out a little bit from sports and maybe looking this more as a metaphor for other things—how long do you give with quotes this great idea before you cut bait?
You know, there's a period where—and I think there's a book about this, right?—*Think and Grow Rich*—book I read in high school, I think—and the analogy is, you know, you're three feet—this is—the Gold Rush in the 1800s, and you're three feet from discovering the next gold, right? But didn't you quit just a few feet away? And a lot of people do that, right? So how do you know when to keep digging three more feet to get to the gold, or when to, you know, cut bait and go on to the next dig?
Well, that's kind of an—it's a great analogy, but you don't know if you're three feet away or 300 feet away. And which—that isn't what's happening in the real world in business. You know, if you're getting better and a little closer—yeah, and that's what I want to know is like what are some of the signals? How do we know? Is it just—you just know? I mean, I'm—I'm almost there. Is this business that I'm trying successful? Do I feel a lot smarter doing it, and I'm more confident in doing it, and you just know? It's not like, "Oh, if I just happen to dig three more feet, I'm gonna hit the pot of gold." Because—but you should know if you're three feet away or thirty feet away or 300 feet away. And I think that's where people have to evaluate themselves and say, "Am I close? And if I'm close, I'm gonna keep punching. But if I'm not close, I really gotta go try something else."
Yeah, I hear you on that. I just keep—I want to stay on this because I'm playing the other side of it, which is not everyone can see the value in others, right? We may be—we know ourselves what we're capable of, but let's face it, we get judged most of the time by what we've already done.
Totally. And so that therein lies the problem. It's like, "I feel capable of this," and I'm being judged, or, you know, put in this little box. And so you don't always have the opportunity—you know, speaking on my own from my own experience—I think that's why I started this production company. I was at the movie studios; I was doing big things, then I felt capable of doing this, and so I did it. But I will tell you that almost everyone I told about what I was gonna do said, "You're nuts; you're crazy; you're—you're—you're leaving this big job; you got this big salary; you've got all the benefits; it's cushy; just stay here, and you know, go with the flow." And I said, "Nope. I see—I see a new road."
Well, only—you know, nobody evaluates you like you do yourself. Okay? But but I've mentored people and told people to jump off the cliff before. I have a good friend, Dave Jackman, who was a banker and did all my M&A work when he was with Montgomery Securities and then Piper Jaffray and a few others, and he wanted to go out on his own and was scared to jump off the cliff. So I gave him that first deal, but now he controls 50% of the M&A in the consumer restaurant industry.
You know, it's magical about that is that you saw the value in him, and you gave him permission, and he'll tell you that—that if Tillman—forty—that does not tell me—"Go jump off the cliff," I don't do it.
I love that. My question is, what do you do if it's the opposite? If you feel capable of doing it, but the boss says, "There's no way you're gonna succeed; you're gonna—you're gonna fail; you're gonna jump, and you're gonna jump to your death."
That's the boss not wanting to lose you, so obviously they see a lot in you because I don't want to lose you. And so—don't take them—but but nobody ever said to me, "Hate him, and just keep going; you're gonna be successful." I never had that person pushing me. I had my dad say to me after I was making a few million a year, "Why in the world are you gonna go take that risk? You're so successful; you're making three, four million dollars a year." I don't remember what the number was, but but I just knew that I was just getting started. I wasn't even—I mean, I mean, my—I had dreams. You got to have dreams to begin with.
That's a real subtle but important lesson I think you're talking about right now. I want to underscore, just for maybe if you missed it if you're watching, I think Tillman, what you're saying is you really have to be careful of the source, because if I'm not mistaken, your dad is in the restaurant business.
He had a restaurant, yes. Right? And he was successful, you know, in—in his world.
Yes. But you had a whole different vision.
Totally. And so if you would have taken his context, you know, based on his upbringing and his track record, you probably could have kept on going at his level, but you said, "No, I have a different vision, and I think I can succeed far beyond, you know, what we've already done here," right?
It's all vision, it's—and it's all what you think you can succeed, but it's also what you're made of. All of us are made differently, and it's such an important thing that you're saying. It's so important. I want to just make sure we understand—they love—but it might be wrong—usually—is it depends though, right? If that person, you know, is encouraging—like you—you encourage that—your—your colleague to go for it—that's the good side of it, but you have to think—I think—take that context into—I take that advice into context and make sure that you consider the source of the person—you know, what's their background, what—you know, what biases do they have before we just start taking blanket advice like, "You should do this or should not do this."
Agree or disagree?
Totally agree. But but at the same time, it still always comes back to you, and you have to know if you're—if you're getting there or you don't. The problem is, nobody tells anybody, "Darlin', you keep singing; don't worry about getting a job. I know you're a waitress, but you keep doing that because you're gonna get a break, and you're gonna win a Grammy singing in a couple of years." Or, "You know what? Don't worry about that waitress job; you're gonna win an Oscar one day." Oh, Tillman, you know, "Go ahead and open up another restaurant." There's a lot of people who opened—start it with one restaurant that are on the Forbes 400. Okay? So I mean, you just got to—you got to just feel it. And the person sitting over here and evaluating you doesn't get it. Yeah. Okay? It's you—it's in you.
So the example I was thinking about is the Rainforest Cafe, right? So on paper, maybe the rest of the world at the time—you bought—correct me if I'm wrong—would have said that's a terrible investment; you know, stock is down; nothing's happening, and yet you saw that as a real opportunity. Talk about that acquisition or talk about that business plan. Why did you decide to get that over?
Well, once—once again, how well a company is doing and how much money it makes doesn't have anything to do with each other. It's just when you're a high-growth company, and your growth slows down, your stock goes to—to the bottom, yet you could still be making a bunch of money. I mean, look at Walmart—when there's a gross slowdown—Microsoft—both of these companies stayed in the dumps for 10 years, but they were making billions of dollars a year. For the same thing happened with the Rainforest was, you know, first I tried to buy him; I wasn't able to buy him because somebody outdid the—vote—swiff—I think Teacher's Fund in Wisconsin—because I didn't think I was paying enough. And so I bought them for—what—six months later—450 million less. And but I bought this cash flow, and I even had like fifteen or twenty million dollars in the bank. I mean, so it was an unbelievable deal. But this goes back to something that I talk about in the book a lot is that if you're going to borrow money, you can do a best-case scenario on your deal, okay? Because that's how you should think—is positive. But one of the reasons that I've always been successful, and the bad times haven't gotten me, because every deal I do, I do a worst-case scenario performance that I keep close to my chest. And if the worst-case scenario doesn't work, then you better not do the deal, because you know what happens 90% of the time? It's the worst-case scenario that happens and not the best case. But in the Rainforest case, what I decided to do was, "I'm gonna look out three to five years, and at these thirty Rainforests—if I can't make it on just these big five—there's three at Disney; there's one in the Mall of America; and I think there's one in Chicago—and I said, 'These are the five that are doing the most money,' and if they're not gonna be around, then I shouldn't do this deal." Well, here it is—what—20 years later—and I still think there's 26 Rainforests, and I've made my money over and over and over again because you know what? There's new kids every day, and they want to go to the Rainforest because it has that kind of appeal.
Yeah. I mean, I love that lesson. I really think that goes a lot to your expertise to be able to see the diamond-in-the-rough, or, you know, one—one man's trash is another man's treasure.
But that's—every deal I've done is that it's usually poor management at the corporate level, but it has nothing to do with how successful you are at the store level.
Yeah. What—maybe that's why, you know, you're a billionaire and we are not. I mean, you can see—you can see the valley, but that comes very easy for me. But that's every deal I've done. When I bought an old California—change—Chart House, you know, 20-something years ago, and realize these are the greatest locations in America—I'm gonna change the logo, redo the restaurants, upgrade the menu, and I still have 30 of them 20 years later.
Let's talk about that a little bit deeper in the restaurant business. So historically, one of the worst businesses to get into, one of the riskiest—so in the highest fail rates, and yet you're crushing it. What are some of the keys to your success in the restaurant business?
Well, number one, I write—and I have great systems and controls, and and I'm constantly changing. And these are all things I talked about is that you've got to change—change—change. And just because you're successful, that doesn't mean you're gonna be successful tomorrow. But that's how I've even taken older brands like Chart House and Morton's and and and updated them tremendously—by new menus, new atmosphere, new music, new waiters' uniforms—and keep them fresh, especially if they had good food, and then upgrade the food to what people are eating today. So I prefer to buy something that is having issues and fix it up; it's less expensive than building it new.
Yes. I'd—you bought your jet used; you probably saved a ton of money on that. I see your face—rubs off—so we can get some of this, but never drink your own Kool-Aid. I mean, I always do a worst-case scenario, and if the deal doesn't work under the worst-case scenario, don't do it.
Yeah, that's smart. You know, risk-reward analysis is super smart, right? That's why it made it—yeah. You got to be able to come back and play a different—another day.
The stand—restaurant for a second, so you know—sounds intuitive—update the menu and keep the uniforms looking good, and you know, if your neon sign—in a letter—fix the light. I mean, it can't just be that look. What else?
Well, you just stay ahead of the game. You've got a—you've got to stay fresh; you've got to stay new. And sometimes location isn't a good location anymore, and you move on. But but if you have a great location, you just make sure you're always updating everything from your interiors to your menus to your music. You've got to change. It is an industry—when I was growing up, you just went to a restaurant to eat, okay? But today, it's an atmosphere that you have to have because people want to go there; it's a social gathering; it's an experience.
It is an experience. Yeah. And I think I also heard somewhere—maybe I read it—that you consolidated the G&A to save a ton of money, like you had all these companies scattered all over the place, and you consolidated, didn't you?
Right. You know, that was—everybody uses the word "platform" today; it's a real buzz—buzzword in the—in the business world. I was really the first person to ever start doing that in this industry. So you go to Chicago, and you buy Morton Steakhouse, and you shut down their corporate office. If you go to Minneapolis, and you shut down the Rainforest office and the Ocean Air corporate office. You go to California, and you shut down the Bubba Gump office and the Claim Jumper office. You go to Portland and shut down the McCormick & Schmick's. I just bought Del Frisco's; we'll shut down their office in Dallas, and you bring them all into one corporate platform. So you get all these G&A synergies because there's only one CEO, only one general counsel, only one CFO, and then you get the purchasing power because this is a multi-billion-dollar company, and so you save millions and millions of dollars that way.
And let's talk about the F-word for a second—fear or failure. A lot of people will say, "Failure is not an option," but that's—there's really no truth to that, because there's absolutely no truth to it. You have to have failure to have success. So in that context, what have you—what's gone wrong in order for you to figure out how to get it right?
You can always have failures, okay? And you just—sometimes you open up wrong, and you just screw up. Or once again, you believed your—performer that you gave to the bank instead of the conservative one for yourself—thinking up to your restaurant—
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I—you just blow openings; you have the wrong management in it, or just whatever—you just—you just didn't do it right. But your—if it's just a numbers game, and and if you open up X amount of restaurants, you're gonna have some failures. But what I try not to do is—and it's all right when you're opening a single restaurant and have a failure, but you never want to buy a company and it be a failure. And that's why you got to do that worst-case scenario.
I'm gonna go a little bit deeper. I want to pry a little more into that because I think all of us want to know a little bit more detail. So can you think of maybe—I'll try and pin you down on the most painful failure that you've had? And again, you know, I've heard it said, "Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn," so it's really not a failure if you're learning from it. But like, can you think of an instance that still stings, and you learned a valuable lesson that helped you get to where you are today?
Do you know? Probably the one that stings me the most is something I tried to buy, and I negotiated it too hard, and I thought they would come back to me to buy it, and while I was waiting for them to come back to me to buy it, they liquidated it and just sold it off because it didn't mean anything to him. And and I mean, I'm so—right, they even say it was—it was something silly, but it was an unbelievable car collection, and they even had this historical place and all the real estate with it and everything, and there it was—so many of these muscle cars that are worth so much money today, and I really had it bought—right—and I mean, in the—sit there and negotiate hard over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and it would probably be worth quadruple that today, but it's not even the money as much as it would have just been a great asset to own; it would have just—they would have just been a great asset to him. And it just—it didn't change my life at all, but it just—for some reason—and this was 25 years ago—it—I'm still pissed off about it.
Yeah, the one that got away.
It's just the one that got away. Yeah.
What did you learn from it?
I learned sometimes you got to call them back, or that could happen again. So yeah, maybe a little better—just a negotiating tactic—and that I just played too hardball, and I wasn't—the—the person on the other side was a son selling a dad's asset, and so he didn't know how to negotiate, and I didn't recognize that he didn't know how to negotiate, and that I was dealing with an amateur, and he went and did an amateurish move and just sold the assets off and didn't get any more for him, but I should have read that I was dealing with an amateur.
Good lesson. That is excellent. Thank you for that. That's really—really smart. That's really the only thing that really just chaps me and stings me. I'd love to own that asset today. Yeah. But but how valuable that lesson, right? Because I'm sure the vibrations you—
Know the pain, obviously. 25 years ago, it's right there on the surface. Right? Oh yeah, I didn't even have to think hard about what it was. Yeah, it was it was something that and I have learned from it. And so therefore, when I do want something, I go at it more aggressively today and do whatever it takes.
If there's something I really want, like I decided I'm gonna buy the Houston Rockets, I missed out on it 25 years ago for 80 million dollars, but I'm gonna go and do whatever it takes. And so while everybody else was trying to figure out, "How do you justify paying over two billion dollars for a basketball team?" I wasn't worried about that; I was working on how I'm gonna raise the money to do it. And so everybody else is trying to justify it—I already had it done.
The reason you did that was because you could foresee, you know, in the next decade or two or three, it just continued to multiply and appreciate. Everything is content today. Yes. And an NBA franchise is an unbelievable content. 45 at the top, 50 at the leads with followers in America, be a players; it's a it's a world sport, it's an international sport, you know, and it's it's such an incredible numbers game to the limit it has on the players. I can actually make the NBA. There's scarcity, right? Compare the NFL that carries 50 players for its life, right? It's unbelievable. You don't care that that doesn't really affect the the money about of it because it there's a collective bargaining agreement and they get approximately fifty percent of the revenues. But but it was just an asset also that of a professional sports team—football, basketball, baseball—there's never been one sell for less than it ever sold for. But you've always been proud of it. Very proud of it. And and but I can promise you this: ten years from now, I know that that asset will be worth a billion more or ten—exercise—I do know that. Okay, because 25 years earlier somebody paid eighty million for it, which was a crazy number. In here twenty-five years later, 2.2 billion. Yeah, it's just something that's gonna continue to go right, 100 percent. I mean, it's a it's a very good lesson, you know.
Oh, it is. But there's probably not five teams in America, maybe not three teams, where somebody owns 100 percent of a team in their hometown. You know, a lot of owners have to own teams in other towns or whatever. That's pretty special. Pretty special. Is this what you consider one of your great accomplishments? We know career accomplishments?
100% yes. Because if I feel like I've been very fortunate and accomplished a lot. By the time I was 40, I had already taken a company public on the New York Stock Exchange, was already the second youngest person inducted to the Texas Business Hall of Fame, behind Michael Dell, which in a bad business guy, had already hosted President—a sitting president—in my home. And so it was kind of that one thing that I just felt like I never had accomplished. I never got to own; I always wanted to own a sports team.
Feather in your cap? Yeah, it was just kind of that final final thing that makes me happy. Okay. Well, then that sort of shuts down my next question, which is, you know, what's the next big—which what's your next Mount Everest? Right? Which what's the next big novel? I've got it. I've got it right now. I've already lion things alia for the next plane. Now, do I feel the need that if I don't get there that I'm a loser? No. But this is sport to me. And so I have to have that; if I don't have that, I would not function well. And so I always have to have that next thing that I want, you know, just like this book, you know, getting on the USA Today bestsellers list, Wall Street Journal's bestsellers list, like Chicago, sometimes publishers best-selling list; it's something that I had to have. Yeah.
So give me like a Hollywood-style log line, you know, the log line is it's like a tag line from a show, a summary if you know you had the chance to put your hands on the shoulders of the person who's gonna read your book and and tell them this is what I want you to take away and like one short little thought, what is it? Never stop dreaming and know what you're good at and know what you're not good at and you're to separate yourself from anybody else, you just have to want to do it. Well, talk about the 95/5 rule. What's that about? You know, 95% of everything is right and 5% is not. And that's in any business—it's my business every day—it's your business. And I can walk into anything or any place and and I know that doing 95% of everything right, but look for the 5% that's wrong. Walking into this hotel, walking into this room, walking into a restaurant, you know, when you pull up in the parking lot, is is there cigarettes in the parking lot? Is there empty bottles? Is is there a dead weed over there? Is there a dead plant or their lights burn out? Get by the front door, the candy wrappers on the ground or somebody walked out through there candy wrappers for their toothpicks. Now they're smudges on the glass before you ever open the door. Is the door painted well? I can tell you if that's a good operator forever walked in the front damn door because I looked at the five percent and not the 95 percent. I got just so. Devils in the details. Devils in the details always always. It's another good lesson that. So should we start with the details or or in that sort of as telling that there's a larger problem or, you know, I guess my question is, so where do we start with that? Do we start from the bottom up or do we start from the top down? Like, so is that a management problem or is that like a cosmetic problem? Talk about that a little bit.
Most companies, a lot of times, like every restaurant company I've bought had successful restaurants, okay, but it's the management up here that screwed them up at the corporate office where they were continuing to grow too fast and signing leases that they shouldn't sign or spending too much capital in a particular box or whatever. And and but but I'm down here, a lot of things are done right; it's usually mistakes made in the corner office that screws companies up, but the people down here are doing a lot of right. Yeah, I was gonna ask that. The example that came to my mind is back to your Cadillac, you know, here we have this iconic American car brand that had its heyday, and then all of a sudden, you know, Japanese company called Lexus, for example, comes along and attention to detail and and perfects all the imperfections and then starts the Cadillacs lunch or BMW or Mercedes, right? But they all did. Yeah, 100%, because you're General Motors and you're forward and you never think anybody is gonna come in here and be bigger than us. And that gets back to what I talked about in the book: there's a paddle for everybody's ass, but General Motors at least overcame the paddle and became still a very successful company, and and they created the Escalade, which is just, you know, the best SUV of them all, I think, for the money that it cost. Yeah, we got one. Win, 100%. But but that's why you get up every day and and and I worry about that paddle. Okay, and this gets back to your fear. I don't fear anything, but I worry about everything because I know that paddle is out there, and it doesn't take a bunch of bad Moo's to get paddle, even as big as you are, like me. Yeah, it could be a light bulb or an unpainted door. I don't think it's gonna be that solid. I think—no, I think it could be. Yeah, if you know what you let your property start running down, okay, and you start slipping a little bit and your food slips a little bit, the consumer is very smart; that's you got to give the consumer a lot of credit, and and they know when you're not up to par, and that's how companies fall so quick. General Motors and Cadillacs a prime example.
Let's go on a slightly different direction; let's talk about brand. This show is called Behind the Brand, so we're going a little bit behind Tillman's brands; there's many of them, but I want to talk about branding for a second, 'cause I think it's really important. You know, I think the way I'm thinking about it right now, it's sort of binary: either have a logo or you have a brand. Give me an example, warning your restaurants. You know, restaurant brands; let's talk about it for a second. Throw anyone you like. Mash Pros. Okay, does Mastro's have a brand or does it have a logo? It has a brand. So how do you how do we know that it has a brand? Like, how do we build a brand? You're a brand builder or you know you're a you're a guy that comes in and fixes stuff and you know makes it amazing again, pumps new life into it, resurrects it, whatever you want to say. What's the difference between—how do you know—you know, let's take it another way; let's take one that I think will touch even more people. Yeah, let's take the Golden Nugget brand. Okay. Okay. And and the reason I like that one is is because it's one that I really thought of all the old Vegas casinos and all the great names; it's the only one today that it's really still there and as thought of as this big brand. And and I can tell you how it's helped me. So a Steve Wynn built this iconic—he bought this iconic brand back in the 70s, and it was his first deal, and he made this place so special in downtown Las Vegas. And I can remember going there when I was in my 20s and just looking at what Steve Wynn had created, but he recreated a brand, and then it changed hands a couple of times, and and I ended up with it about 15 years ago. But what I realize is I could take this brand and I could go to other gaming markets like Atlantic City and right outside of Houston, Lake Charles and Biloxi, Mississippi, and Laughlin, Nevada, and and and people would flock to this brand because it was a brand. Yeah. So what makes it a brand? That's all I don't know. Well, it's because in the consumers' eyes it's a well-known brand all over the world that when you came to Vegas you wouldn't visit at the Golden Nugget. Yeah. Well, when I think of Golden Nugget and you know I'm not this connoisseur of casinos, but I just think of like Frank Sinatra, I think of all, you know, the Rat Pack, classic vintage Vegas, right? But at the same time that's great because see you think positive, but I've updated it, so you go to the Golden Nugget today, and even though it's 70 years old, somebody says, "God, I can't believe how nice this is for a 70-year-old property," because you keep updating it. And therefore, what the brand people know it all over the world, so then when I go to an Atlantic City and and you have the Golden Nugget brand and you start the internet gaming and people are on their phone or on their computer betting gaming and these other ones are just companies and they say, "You know what, that's a brand, that Golden Nugget, so I know that I'm safe to bet money with them because that's a brand; it's not just some name. I know if I don't get paid, I know where to go. I can walk in the Golden Nugget and ask them where my money is." Yeah, so it's its brand building, and that's really what I've done is that I all these companies that I've acquired are all brands. The Houston Rockets is a brand.
Yeah, let's talk about what the what are the Rockets stand for, like what how would you describe a brand on the opposite side? You know, here's sort of the litmus test now. Let's go back to casino. So if I were to close my eyes, walk into any casino, look down at the carpet and just kind of peek up at the machines, what I know where I'm at? The question is, I mean, the answer is probably nine times out of ten no, right? If you go to Vegas, literally it's like the same kind of colored carpet, all the machines are making the same kind of noise, and so I would argue that some of these casinos don't have a brand, they have a logo. You know, Golden Nugget certainly has legacy; it has that that history. See, and you had the advantage of capitalizing on that. What's the Houston Rockets stand for? I think success. They've been very competitive for many many many years. Yeah, if I could say the same thing about Lakers or Celtics, they've had success too. 100%. They've had more success, and and I didn't say that the Houston Rockets were the number one brand, but they are looked at as one of the better brands in the NBA just from being competitive and star players for over the years. Is there a differentiator like, you know, "Come to Houston because this what we stand for" versus "You go to LA, you're gonna get that brand of basketball"? Yeah, come to Houston, and we have a lot less state; we have no state income tax, and to live there is about 35% less than LA, so you're much better off living in Houston. Ok, it's a value proposition. Absolutely. I guess and I always comes back to ownership, coaching, general manager, other star players; it's all the above. Yeah, I'm always curious about this this brand proposition because I think it's such a big deal, you know, and you you sort of alluded to it before with the Golden Nugget, you talked about trust, and people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust, especially if it comes to parting with their money or, you know, jumping on an airplane. Maybe that's another reason you want—didn't it remains another reason you want to buy your own airplanes because you know you want to bother with all that stuff, you just want to go direct to the source. I don't know, but brand building is certainly think something that a lot of people watch this so think about and and they grapple with, you know, they think they have a brand, but maybe they just have a logo. It's an ongoing debate, you know, when I was doing my television show, *Bein' Dollar Buyer*, the thing that bothered me the most about people I would deal with is they didn't know their numbers, but they also thought their product was better than everybody else's, not being smart enough to realize that I could walk a block away into another store and see basically another homemade organic product or whatever that was just as good. But wait, so man, my grilled cheese sandwiches, five kinds of cheeses, and and you know one of the things that I think has helped me as I never thought just because I own it, it's worth more or just because I own it, it's better. And that's where you got to look at yourself in the mirror and be objective with yourself and realize, "I'm really not any better than anybody else, so I got to find something to do differentiate myself from everybody else." But that's funny, the biggest failure that a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they think they're better, and they really aren't. I love it. All right, final parting words for entrepreneurs. Give us sort of your best advice. Best advice to entrepreneurs trying to, you know, take it to the next—you know, I'll hit you with a few things. Okay, number one, take the word "know" out of your damn vocabulary. Okay? Don't assume something's done because you have somebody do it; always follow through. I said know your numbers; there are no spare customers; it's a competitive world no matter what you're selling or what your business is, and so make sure you treat every customer like it's the last because there's somebody else out there trying to steal them from you. So if you do those few things, you'll be successful. Don't assume; no spare customers; be friendly; and know your numbers. [Music]