What You Can Learn from a Master Chef and Restauranteur: Remarkable News #11

If you have an open mind, there are important lessons to learn from sectors unrelated to yours. Take for example, what people can learn from a master chef and restauranteur. 

I recently interviewed Roy Yamaguchi, the founder of Roy’s Restaurants. Roy invented Hawaiian Fusion cuisine, which is a unique mixture of his culture, education at the Culinary Institute of America, and experience in world-famous French restaurants. 

I thoroughly enjoyed talking about Hawaiian food in Hawaii with him, but I also learned a few lessons that apply to almost any business: 

• Business is not a game show or reality television. You can be a star on one of those and even win it. This might get you a start, but it doesn’t mean you have a viable business because that involves creating a great product; hiring, training, and motivating people, and meeting the expectations of your customers.
• One way to achieve a state of flow or zen in cooking is to clean as you go. At the end of preparation, you do not end up with a kitchen full of dirty pots and pans. Is your office environment clean and tidy, so that you can “flow” as you work too?
• It’s not about the tools. Roy doesn’t use the latest, greatest gizmos nor does he have an “Architectural Digest” level kitchen at his house. His tools are simple.
• What separates him from other chefs are two factors: 1) he wants to please his customers, and 2) he’s constantly innovating. Is this any different for your business? 

This newsletter cannot do his interview justice. If you want to learn more about the cooking gospel according to Roy, CLICK HERE.

 CLICK HERE LISTEN TO THE NEW EPISODE

Stay safe and keep physically distancing,

Guy

 More Remarkable News:

Roy's three-ingredient steak sauce

Hawaiian Malasadas 

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Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist Canva, an online graphic design tool. He’s also a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He was previously the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. His books include Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, and fifteen others. He has a BA from Stanford and an MBA from UCLA, as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. He and his wife, Beth, have four children.