DAN SIMONS

There are probably dozens of reasons why Farmers Restaurant Group was named one of the Best Places to Work in the DC area by Washington Business Journal. I am thrilled for our entire team and especially psyched, of course, that people really like working with us. Honestly, there’s a lot I strive for yet often fall short. But I do know some of the things we get right. Below is a large part of our playbook to create a great place to work. 1. Build listening skills in all of your people. There is really no better ratio as a guideline than two ears and one mouth. Listen more. Talk less. 2. Break down taboos and stigmas around vulnerability. Make it safe to be vulnerable by revealing your own vulnerabilities. Your team is far more likely to be genuinely inspired by you, and will be more invested and more motivated to work hard, when you have revealed your own fears and imperfections. Covering up weaknesses just creates distance between you and those you’re trying to lead. 3. Knowledge is not power. Sharing knowledge is power. Teach your leaders how to teach. Promote teachers, not producers. You may have excellent producers, but if they can’t teach other people how to get results, don’t promote them. 4. Build a culture of lifelong learning. In our company, no one is ever “done.” Our goals are clear: personal productivity and continuous improvement, continuous learning, continuous evolution. 5. Create equality and diversity in the workplace at all levels. For real. You will never have equality unless you have diverse voices at the highest levels of authority. Begin with the fundamental belief that the status quo is not only unequal, but out of balance. Even if you can’t exactly see it, you must doggedly look for it. Continuously evaluate your company and your playbook. Take your EEO data and do the math. Establish ways to measure and re-measure your progress. Do you have gender parity in positions of power? Do you have pay parity by race? By gender? When folks are looking up the ladder, are there people that look like them at the top? Be honest with what is working and where much more needs to be done. In our company, we’re crushing it with gender parity through compensation, power, and several other measures, yet we have far more to accomplish with racial diversity at the executive level. 6. Rules are valuable, but the real magic is in the grey area, not the black & white. Teach managers to apply rules through a situational lens that balances head with heart for the best possible decision-making and outcome. 7. Treat everyone who works for you as an indivisible whole. Embrace the entire being, not just the pieces you want working for you. Prioritize success and mental well-being over performance. Never ask people to leave their problems at the door. 8. Recognize you are building a community, not a company. Unaligned teams of individual achievers are never champions. Align individual winning with team winning. Never make it all about the company mission, but instead, make it about the collective mission. Document the company vision and mission, and hire team members who are a natural fit. This makes the march towards a goal a communal one, with upside for all. Diligently respect and appreciate employees, knowing that the burden is on the company to deserve the talent, rather than presume the talent is fortunate to have a job.

We all need role models. Derrick Dockery is a role model for every phase and stage of life. Watch the video for insight into his thought process and winning at football, family, politics, and life. Or view video at YouTube. Related Blogs: In the Weeds with the Founders of Compass Coffee (video) Five Key Ingredients for a Winning Partnership

If you’re the loser and your cellphone is the winner (cuz that’s where I was), here’s a winning playbook to get back in control. FYI: These steps start with becoming more aware and then moving into action. 1) Consider yourself warned: Smartphone operating systems and app developers have said they’re on a “race to the bottom of your brainstem.” Meaning: their products are not merely designed to help you or make your life easier, they’re also designed specifically to get you addicted, to keep you attached to your device, with your eyes glued on their channels and advertisements, as they continue to sell YOU. Make no mistake. Your addiction and attention are the products being sold. 2) Get real about your use: Be totally honest in assessing how bad your phone addiction is. Use iPhone Screen Time, Android’s Dashboard, or get an app to track your use. Learn how many hours you spend on your phone, on what apps, and how often you pick it up. Remember what we’ve all been taught to say to someone with a substance-use problem? The first step is admit you have a problem and to see it clearly. 3) Ask yourself how your phone serves you. Is it a good tool? Does it keep you organized? Does it help you be more productive and efficient? Does it perhaps relax you or bring you ease? Or… does it distract you, waste your time, and make you anxious? My hunch is that it does it both. Your job is to break down which functions are helpful, and which are detrimental. This starts with noticing what triggers you to reach for your phone, and how the phone makes you feel. 4) Set reasonable but strict limits for yourself. Especially look to restrict time on the apps that you know are your most addictive, with lowest value creation – meaning those that truly have zero value other than soothing your impulse to touch your phone. If you know watching YouTube videos helps you relax, great, consciously decide how many minutes per day or hours per week is valuable for you, and set that limit. Who knows? Thirty-six minutes of cat videos might be just what the doctor ordered for you, but an additional 40 minutes is a pure waste. Consciously determine this time/value relationship. And stick to it using screen time limitation programs and apps to control your use. 5) Turn off ALL notifications. Except, of course, those required by familial or work obligations (but look closely and assess/keep those that are true must-haves). What does this mean for you? No banners. No sounds. No little red numbers popping up. Turn them off. All of them. YOU decide when to check for emails, texts, voicemails, Snaps, Instaposts, Tweets, etc. Stop letting your phone pull you into its clutches with the constant prompts from your multiple apps that are always saying, “pick me up, look at me, don’t miss out…”. Know these prompts are all deliberate, not to serve you, but to manipulate you, to keep you tethered to your device. To keep you addicted. (ALSO TURN OFF ALL THESE SAME NOTIFICATIONS ON YOUR COMPUTER, meaning no banners, no noises when emails or texts arrive, no little red circles alerting you to the queue in your inbox.) 6) NEVER allow your phone in your bed. No scrolling before bed or when you wake up. Kick your phone out of the bedroom and reclaim that room for two or three most important things the bedroom is really for. Get yourself an old-school alarm clock. If you won’t, or can’t, then set your phone alarm before you get into bed. If you don’t have any need to receive calls in the middle of the night, use Airplane Mode. Learn how to use Downtimeon your iPhone or Android’s Dashboard, or some app like Wind Down or Shush. 7) Turn phones off in meetings and put them out of view. No ringing, no buzzing no vibrating, and move them out of sight. If leading meetings, require this of everyone in the room. In my company, we use a “phone jail,” which you can see in the photo above. 8) Pay attention to how changes in your smartphone use impact you. At first, you may feel anxious, even uncomfortable. You may notice something feels amiss. You may want to reach for your phone. You may even miss your phone. You may feel edgy and irritable. Alternately, you may feel good right away. But you won’t really know how you are going to feel until you get there, so pay attention. Try looking around the elevator or in line at the store, see all the other humans likely looking at their phones. Or notice your environment. Maybe there is art, or some cool design. Maybe you can look up at the sky. Try daydreaming. You might find it refreshing to let your brain wander around, detached from your device, free to do what the brain is intended to do. 9) READ MORE ABOUT SMARTPHONE ADDICTION. Start by reading The Binge Breaker. Next, get yourself a copy of Catherine Price’s How to Break Up with Your Phone. And, if you want to read my longer blog on this topic, check out Who's the Tool? You or Your Smartphone?

That’s a headline that you read and instantly you know it’s wrong. It’s just gotta be wrong. I promise, it IS wrong. Yet, the actions of our politics and often the (in)actions of consumers send that message. I’d like to think people inherently know that farmers matter. But you might not know just how much or all of the reasons why. So, I want to amplify two of the big ones that every single American needs to know. But first, let me also define who I am calling a “farmer.” I’m not talking about the industrial giants who run TV commercials with actors playing farmers. Those corporations certainly produce product, but they don’t farm with the vision, values, and priorities that I’m referring to. I am talking about family farmers, the actual people who live on and work the land. We all need to support these farmers, our American family farmers, and here are two big fat reasons why: 1. Family farming is critical to everyone’s health and wellness. Don’t roll your eyes just yet. I am not talking about organic chickpeas and tofu, although I have nothing against either. Family farmers are individual people often doing what their family has been doing for generations, working together to cultivate the land. They actually care about the food they are producing and the land they are producing it on. Their families eat the food they produce. And while the bottom line of “how-do-I-pay-my-bills” is a driver, it’s not the only tractor in the shed. And it likely isn’t the biggest. If corporations own every single food producer in this country, and force them to maximize their bottom line irrespective of long-term consequences, food production will be driven by how it can be made faster and cheaper. If we can grow pigs faster and cheaper by standing them in mercury and ingesting human growth hormones, why not just fill their stalls ankle deep with whatever works, and watch the revenue soar? When someone notices and alerts the government, the smart lawyers and lobbyists will play word and money games until no one knows which end is up. Eventually, it will take a lot of sickness and an Erin Brockovich to force that company to stop the mercury madness. At which point, it will be way too late for many. We’ve seen this movie, and this story, in real life far too many times. 2. Food security equals national security. For reals. Think about our country’s enemies and the warfare of the past 20 years. From the Twin Towers to cyber attacks to anthrax, why wouldn’t our food supply be a target? Our country will always have an endless supply of enemies, and the possibilities for this type of warfare are equally endless. Setting aside terrorists, what happens when big corporations oversee all of our food production down to the seeds farmers can get? The CEO seed king who controls most of the seeds for the entire world, as well as the fertilizer, and the pesticides – the modern farmer’s tool kit – holds the whole deck of cards. They can control the success and the failure of crops, can genetically engineer seeds to fail or harm us, can slowly deplete access, increase prices, or require us to rely on other countries for our food, because our food supply has dwindled or failed, and then what? You think the CEO seed king won’t entertain financial offers from our enemies? You think the CEO seed king will have an unhackable cyber network? Look, this isn’t my idea or some crazy new thinking. Our founding fathers and mothers were farmers and they knew that in order to create a strong and independent country, they needed to develop and control their own food supply. Now, imagine if someone or something else controlled our food supply. And here’s the thing, to some degree, it’s already happening. A handful of the world’s biggest companies are now controlling the holy trinity of modern agriculture – seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides. These are not all American companies. This is global marketplace. So what are our action steps to support American family farmers? Learn more about American family farmers. Buy products directly from American family farmers, whenever you can. Ask for family-farmed products at your grocery store and when dining out. Support the restaurants, butcher shops, cheese mongers, and retail businesses that support the independent farmer. Talk about the importance of American family farms; bring it up in conversation, be vocal. Advocate for family farming, and join the many concerned farmers and activists working to change the trends, including a growing collection of non-profits trying to recover some of the seed development from the corporate giants and promote biodiversity for generations to come. This is grassroots work, using your voice, your keyboard, and your wallet. How and where you spend your cash can make an impact. I know I am biased. I co-own a restaurant company with American family farmers and they are some of the best partners I have ever known. In fact, I have learned everything I ever needed to know about what it means to be a good business person from these partnerships. It is also true that their interests are now part of my daily life and are intricately embedded into my own. However, while all of this matters a lot to me, it is not my sole driver to talk, write, or share the importance of family farmers and my concerns about the current state of farming in the U.S. and the world. Nor is it because I think family-farmed food tastes better (although it totally does). Nor is it just to encourage you to support the family farmers in your local community. All are reason enough to do it. But if you’re still sitting on your “don’t-care-not-my-problem” bum, stand up and look around. Supporting family farming is critical to maintaining your health and wellness. It is also necessary to protect the liberty and independence of the USA. Our nation was founded with this clear understanding. A nation can build and maintain its independence and security when its citizens produce and control its food sources. Farmer and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, knew the importance of independent farmers: “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.”

When we get a bad restaurant review, whether an online guest service (eg, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Yelp), print media, or even live and in person, there is almost always some primary catalyst for the complaint. As a restaurant manager, it’s always worthwhile trying to figure out what it is. In our restaurants, we pay close attention to exactly what is being said, the entire narrative. If written, we read the entire review carefully. If spoken, we hear them out. We don’t judge the person offering their feedback. We investigate, using our intuitive brains, restaurants smarts, and any data we have about the event from staff or our electronic systems. We root through all of this intel to see if we can uncover if there is something going on in addition to or underneath the complaint -- a seed from which a wide-ranging complaint has now bloomed. For example, let’s consider a sample negative review on Yelp, a couple that seemed to hate everything about the restaurant, the wait, the service, the food, the ambiance. We engaged them, receiving all of their criticism, every single word. We parsed through it, talking to the host about the experience and their interactions, looking at their reservation time and when they were seated, any notes provided or previous reservations and meals with us, reviewing the food they ate, the timeliness of the meal, the server they had, and when they left. An undercurrent story was revealed, as is very often the case. This couple was bummed because of what happened early on, and it cast shade over their entire experience. They had recommended our restaurant to their friends and invited them to dinner. We failed to seat them on time for their reservation. The 15 minutes they waited beyond their reservation time was almost humiliating and literally painful. One of the guests had a terribly bad back, and there was nowhere to sit in the waiting area because it was so crowded. Thus, this became the lens through which they saw and experienced everything else about the restaurant that evening. The food and drink they received were executed properly, the service was spot-on once they were seated, and the ambiance was what it always is, but it didn’t matter. Once I understood the seriousness of the catalyst, I could focus on saying sorry for that, and making things right, rather than debating with the guest that in fact their other criticisms were off base. I was able to deeply and honestly address our completely unacceptable failure to seat them on time or to care for their physical discomfort. I empathized as I have a bad back too. I acknowledged our failure and how much it sucked for them, and offered and promised a “do over” that would allow them to truly enjoy the best we have to offer. What I didn’t do is get caught up in their highly emotional feedback. I didn’t judge them for their inaccuracies about their service or the food and drink. I didn’t even address it. Had I gotten caught up in any of these pieces of the story, I may have missed what really made them unhappy. And I may have even backed myself into a corner defending us, making the whole scenario worse. We have a system in our restaurants that we use to filter our online feedback. We call it our Social Media Neutralizer (see graphic below), which has roots in how we respond to negative feedback in person. We use this process for all of our negative feedback, whether live and in person, on the phone, or electronically. It goes something like this: We get negative feedback on something, anything. We jump into that magical space between stimulus and response. We don’t throw gasoline on the fire by having an emotional response. We hear without planning our response. We pause, take a breath, and consider carefully what is being said. We take all of the negative words, overt emotions, loud voices, and even any offensive language, and we toss them all gently into the trash, without mentioning it. This allows for a deep breath and a “step away from the keyboard” moment knowing there’s thinking to be done before formulating a response. We hear what is being said, all of it. We hear what the complaint is. We investigate using all of the resources we have. We work to uncover the CATALYTIC NEGATIVE EVENT. We sincerely apologize for what we have done wrong. We admit our failure(s) and our mistake(s). We ignore any superfluous complaining that seems to be a ripple of the catalyst. We try to make amends. We seek a "do over" – a chance to prove ourselves, a chance to win them back. We follow up with operations to discuss the event and see if there is a “fix” to the problem so it doesn’t happen again; there’s also always coaching and sometimes there’s a systemic change to implement. We celebrate our efforts. We hope we have earned a loyal guest. The graphic above illustrates our process. We use our Social Media Neutralizer, or some version of it, for all of the negative feedback we get. Not only does it prove to be a useful tool, but it also is a relief in the midst of an emotional interaction to know that we all have a path to follow and a plan to respond. This process is more akin to the flow of martial arts than the body blows of boxing. The mindset is that engagement is always positive, rather than being oppositional and conflict-centered. Our Social Media Neutralizer has potential beyond the restaurant industry. Any service industry or retail business could follow this process, from airlines to grocery stores.

Step 1: Have your big, amazing, awesome business idea. Step 2: Raise money. Step 3: Go forward with your big, amazing, awesome business. But then, bummer for you, because at some point, and often only with hindsight, you’ll realize you took one vital misstep: You thought money was money. And it’s true that it’s all green (well, in the USA it is), and it spends the same. But, here’s the catch: Money always comes with strings attached. These strings need to be understood. One way is to think of the strings as labels written precisely in the language of your investor and attached to each cent they invest. These strings are what the investor cares about, why they’re investing money, and what they want. If it isn’t immediately obvious, do the homework and figure it out. You want to be speaking the same language. You want your investor’s strings to align with your principles, values, and goals. And you need that alignment more than you need misaligned money. If they don’t align, which is often the case when you take whatever money you can get, you will have established one potentially fatal flaw in your big, amazing, awesome business. When things get difficult, the strings of the money yank you in one direction, your investor’s priorities, while your principles or character are pulling you in another. Fissures are created and, whether it rips the company apart the first time or just weakens the foundation making the company vulnerable to the next (inevitable) shock-wave, the stage is now set. If you are trying to create an earth-friendly operation and you get money from big oil, well, you might as well kiss your greener pasture plans goodbye. Clearly such misalignment would be obvious. It’s the nuanced misalignment that can be tricky to identify. If your capital investor expects profits short-term, a founder’s decision to focus on slow, smart growth gets negated quickly. If the founder wants to make the world a better place, but takes capital from an investor that solely wants their corner of the world to be a richer place, then the conclusion of the story is foretold then and there. Alignment is always in the secret sauce of the companies that win. Just as creatively and carefully as you hatched your business plan, work to consider who your best investors are. Look for people who align with your vision and your plan, who believe in what you are doing AND how you are planning to do it. An example of one such organization is the Slow Money Institute. Organized around an economic principal of “bringing money back down to earth,” Slow Money has become a catalyst to direct capital to organic farmers and food entrepreneurs via dozens of local networks. Since 2010, they have invested more than $57 million in over 600 organic farms and food enterprises nationwide. At Farmers Restaurant Group, the money invested in our restaurants comes with strings attached – strings connected directly to the North Dakota Farmers Union. For us, we have a contractual obligation to run the restaurants with a long-term view, spreading the messages and priorities of independent American family farmers, with the goal of directly and indirectly increasing demand for family-farmed products, all while pioneering a business model that gives farmers a greater share of the food dollar. So we have strings attached. Our strings mean that we cannot go off the rails that we initially built and initially aligned when we envisioned and formed the company. We can’t prioritize profit above mission. We can’t start using lower quality products just because it’s easier and more profitable. We can’t stop composting and recycling just because it is complicated. The list could go on and on, but you get the point. When you are raising capital, look for the strings. Get money that aligns with your culture or the culture you are trying to create. Starting the company from the very beginning with what I call "poisoned seeds" will only produce an underlying sickness that can never be treated. On the other hand, starting the company with like-minded investors adds essential nutrients to the soil you are tilling so you can grow a healthy enterprise. And have that big, amazing, awesome business.

I think I’ve been ranting about phthalates since the early 2000’s. And I have definitely been ranting about it in our restaurants since we opened the first one in 2008. They have been called the “everywhere chemical,” found in everything from plastic straws to lotion to paper to our medicine, and to, wait for it… our food. If you know nothing about phthalates, it’s time to slay the ignorance, because you can’t afford to keep your head in the sand on this one. That’s why I am constantly giving away copies of one of my favorite books, Slow Death by Rubber Duck by Rick Smith & Bruce Lourie. It is a necessary manifesto about the toxic stew we traverse in our homes, workplaces, restaurants, and everywhere we live, eat, and breathe. Let’s start with how to say it. Ignore the "ph" and just say "thalates,” or more specifically, “tha-lāt.” Phthalates are not one chemical, but a category for a number of chemicals. Merriam-Webster provides a definition: "Any of various salts or esters of phthalic acid used especially as plasticizers and in solvents." Of course, this leads to the next question: What’s phthalic acid? According to the National Institutes of Health definition, "(1) Phthalic acid is an aromatic dicarboxylic acid, with formula C6H4 (COOH); (2) Phthalic acid is used mainly in the form of the anhydride to produce other chemicals such as dyes, perfumes, saccharin, phthalates, and many other useful products." According to the Environmental Working Group, phthalates are part of the “dirty dozen” endocrine disruptors, joining the likes of BPA, arsenic, lead, and mercury. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, follow this wiki-trail. Why are phthalates bad? They are endocrine disruptors. According to the National Institutes of Health, this means they mess with your body’s ability to produce or effectively use hormones. Look, I want to rant and rave and give you all of the details, case studies, and links to the science, but the bottom line: This stuff is nasty, and has no business being in or around the human body. It really F's things up. OK, it’s clear I’m not a scientist, but there’s no shortage of real scientists making this crystal clear. One solution, or at least a huge step in the right direction, is to ban phthalates in all food products and all food packaging. We also need to ban them in all consumer products, but we need those business people and entrepreneurs to solve that industry from the inside out. My platform is restaurants. And while I’m deeply saddened by the effects of these chemicals on all of Earth’s creatures, I am aiming my attention where I can help create change. It turns out that human exposure to phthalates is worse in most restaurants than it is dining at home. A national research study looking at the increased phthalate exposure to people who dine out was summarized in the San Francisco Chronicle. In our restaurants, I can say with confidence this isn’t the case. We don’t turn a blind eye to chemicals in and around our food or in and around our guests and employees. We have taken the lead since the day we opened to be people- and earth-friendly, for real. Everyday we are working on new solutions and contributing to a supply chain that isn’t adding man-made poison to what should be real, clean food. But even still, our mission and our intent isn’t enough to avoid these destructive bastards, cuz they are lurking in all sorts of places. I’m continually hunting them wherever I can. But I, and we, need help -- we need a movement, we need regulation, and we need conscious capitalists to create replacements and solutions. My team is always saying Everything Matters, which means to us that being sustainable is part of our mission. We pursue LEED and Green Restaurant Association certifications for all of our restaurants. We pay attention to our construction materials, our paint and our carpet, the solvents we use in our cleaning products, and the hand wash in the bathrooms. Since we opened, we have said no to plastic water bottles, filtering our water and serving it free, flat or sparkling. We select to go packaging that is phthalate-free, and we are working with suppliers to use cardboard boxes and other containers for produce that is phthalate-free. We have eliminated plastic cocktail and drinking straws, in favor of paper straws, and recently launched a campaign-turned-non-profit – Our Last Straw – to eliminate plastic straws across the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Even our receipt paper is BPA-free (which most isn’t). We are working to create a safe environment for our guests and our employees, and the planet. We can’t just hope for our government to do the right thing. We need to propel the government to do what we deserve and demand. Frankly, I think we all should be pissed. Seriously. Why do the governments in Europe and Canada get these products banned before the U.S.? How is it that the U.S. bans are use-specific, eg, banning particular phthalates in certain uses like children’s toys? It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out… the plastics lobby, which is really the chemical and petroleum lobby, spends millions to prevent legislation and regulation, and then once it becomes inevitable, they ensure the final regulations get narrowed and watered down. The U.S. has banned a few of these chemicals, but not enough, and not in enough uses. Phthalates affect puberty and brain development. It’s not evolution if we’re ruining a generation or two of humans. It’s unregulated profiteering at its worst. Think that you, your children, or your friends aren’t affected? You’re wrong. Go down the rabbit hole for a little while on these nasty chemicals, and I promise, you’ll be ranting and raving just like me. And then try and avoid phthalates completely. GOOD LUCK. After you order your all-natural, organic meal, you’ll be holding a pen and putting your hands on the paper to sign your credit card receipt, and then putting your fingers on a piece of gum that goes into your mouth… along with the BPA from the receipt paper, and the phthalates from the plastic pen, the gum wrapper, and the “fragrance” and flavor in your gum. Keep studying, and you’ll find that your organic, all-natural meal was made with yummy ingredients, including the phthalates that got into your food from the packaging while transported from farm (or factory) to table. WTF? This is not okay. Learn about phthalates. Figure out how you can help yourself and everyone around you get this crap out of everything we touch and breathe every minute of every day. And talk about what you are doing. Preach it. You might just be saving the world.

I’ve never liked being alone. Playing, winning, losing, laughing, crying, wandering… I’ve always preferred being with another person. I grew up in a small town, with great buddies. We did everything together, and those friendships have lasted a lifetime. I’d do pretty much anything if I could do it with a friend or as part of a team. Gym class? I’m in for the team stuff. Studying for a math test? Give me a study group. Shoplifting t-shirts at the mall at age 14? Yep, with my crew. Raising a family? With my badass wife, Suzi. The thought of losing alone isn’t fun, but the thought of winning alone is even less fun for me. So, it is no surprise that I’ve had one business partner for 15 years, the great Mike Vucurevich, or as we all affectionately call him, Mike V. We’ve had wins, we’ve had losses, we’ve taken serious kicks to the gut, we’ve made individual errors and joint errors… but we’ve never, ever, not once, thought of not being a team. Partnerships might seem easy when times are good, but you find out what you’ve really got when the credit cards are maxed out, the Capital One Convenience Checks with their mob-boss level fees are being used to fund operating losses, there’s no positive end to the financial story, and your business collapses. I know that ulcer. I know that business failure, and I also know that it feels like a comprehensive life failure. And through it all, my partner never wavered… not in his own resolve, not in his resolve for the partnership, not in his trust in me, not in his trust in us. #BetterTogether is clearly what we both know. In the face of odds where it is widely reported that “more than 70% of all business partnerships fail,” we’ve found the ingredients that makes ours a winning partnership. So how do we do it? Compassion. Respecting and accepting individuality. Treating each other with understanding and with fairness. Taking the initiative to help one another without being asked. Showing empathy. Caring for each other’s needs without expecting anything in return and without needing to tell the other what we’ve done for them. Courage: Seeing what is truly in front of us, doing what needs to be done, and going beyond hearing to truly listening. Knowing when to say “yes” when saying “no” could be easier. Saying “no” when saying “yes” could be more comfortable. Speaking up when silence might seem easier, in a way that allows for effectively-received feedback. Being Truthful: Delivering on the promises we make to each other without compromising the promises made to others. Not choosing which of our principles to follow, but following them all. Knowing that integrity gives us, as individuals, credibility. Commitment: Dedication to the hard work necessary to achieve success, every day… regardless of what the task is. Buying into what we’re doing and remaining aligned, regardless of which one of us had the idea and regardless of doubts we might’ve had about the idea prior to making the commitment. Knowing Our Lane: Knowing there’s a difference between passion and talent. Knowing that just because one of us has a vision for something, it doesn’t mean we’re the one with the right talent to lead. Asking each other for help, early, before a crisis. Knowing how and when to get out of each other’s way, never letting ego impede our progress or drive us into each other’s lane. Not criticizing each other’s outcomes. These are the ingredients that make our partnership work. While we see other partnerships striving to “synergize” their business with a 1+1=3 formula, Mike V. and I are comforted knowing that somehow, we are simply 1+1=1.

I can’t sit by and watch us destroy the planet. I need to do something. Right now, I am working to stop our mindless distribution and use of single-use plastic straws. As a co-owner of seven restaurants and a distillery, I’ve always made sure we do not use plastic straws in our restaurants. But that isn’t enough. So, I took our efforts beyond our walls and founded a non-profit, Our Last Straw, a business-led coalition working to eliminate the distribution and use of plastic straws. Recently, I did something else, something that surprised even me. I got on the town council in my small, Maryland town of Garrett Park. My first order of business with the Garrett Park Town Council: Ban Plastic Straws. Tonight, with the help of some excellent public testimony from my son Finn and his buddy Eddy the Turtle, we passed a vote banning plastic straws that will take effect on March 4, 2019, making us the first town in Maryland to implement a plastic straw ban. Our little town is taking action to make the world a better place for the future. The City of Rockville, MD also has a plastic straw ban coming in July, and Charles County, MD has passed legislation banning straws. On Wednesday, there is straw legislation to reduce usage up for a committee discussion in our state capital too. I plan to testify that what they are proposing is not enough and encourage them to ban plastic straws across the state, rather than just reduce their use. Let’s hope the lobbyists (none of whom actually represent individual people or the environment or the interests of anyone I know) are ineffective at blunting my message. In these ways, I am trying to do my part to make a difference everywhere I can. If you want to see our town’s legislation and learn ways to make a difference in your community, please get in touch with me in the footer below. I encourage you to take steps from caring to acting. With even a small amount of effort, the impact can be huge.

One of the most important skills in business -- and frankly anywhere in life where there are more people than just you -- is the ability to listen. Many don’t know what this actually means. Many mistake hearing for listening. Hearing is done with your ears. Listening involves the brain. Hearing is the faculty of perceiving sounds, the function of the ear that allows you to distinguish sounds. But when you actually listen, you can absorb what is spoken and even what isn’t, and sometimes this means listening so well that it can challenge what you believe. It’s why when someone says to me, I hear you, I’m tempted to respond, I’m certain you do, but are you listening to me? Most businesses face moments of truth, where they are getting feedback, whether words or data, on how they are doing. Before the knee-jerk defensive canons start blasting, it’s worthwhile to listen carefully to what is being offered. In business, it is even better if you can create systems to allow a true capacity to always listen. In my restaurant company, Farmers Restaurant Group, we have what we call our Social Media Neutralizer, a process we use when responding to negative feedback, primarily online, but this process is useful even with live, in-person feedback. This Neutralizer can help you decide how to respond to the information being received. Some of this is timing. Allowing enough time for the person talking to actually get their full and complete thought out before you jump in to react and respond. You may have friends or colleagues who interrupt all the time, where it feels hard to even get a word in edgewise. Or friends whose words are always nipping at your heels as you speak. I think of all of these folks as not only poor listeners, which they are, but also conversational multi-taskers. They are simultaneously hearing what you are saying and preparing their response while you are talking. We know multi-taskers are essentially doing a lot of things at once – badly – so multi-tasking in conversation, whether business or pleasure, is never wise. If you are lucky, you have that rare friend or colleague who pauses after you speak allowing you to always convey everything you want and allowing time to then collect and process his or her thoughts. Sometimes these folks can feel like awkward conversationalists at first. It can feel too slow-paced and methodical. There are moments of silence, which many rush to fill, but if you allow for them, these gifts of quiet can be great fodder for real appreciation for what has been said, and consideration of what you want to say in response. In truth, these slow conversationalists, the pausers, are the real listeners. They aren’t multi-tasking. They are giving you their all, their undivided attention. Or as the wise Stephen Covey has said, they are listening with the intent to understand. Not the intent to reply. Developing good listening skills, like your friend that may seem like a slow conversationalist in the din of interrupters and blurters, is necessary business acumen. In business, listening extends beyond individual words and communication between colleagues and partners to often trying to listen to a chorus of voices at once, some in unison, some not. Tim Chi, founder of WeddingWire, the multimillion-dollar global company that burst into being in 2007, believes his company’s success is based on listening. “Early on, we became known for our unlimited vacation policy. It was born out of regularly held focus groups and brainstorming sessions with staff. We wanted everyone to be happy working here, and the best way I knew how to do that was to ask them what would make them happy, and listen to their perspectives.” With a burgeoning business and a global staff that has grown to nearly 1,000 people in 11 years, listening and paying close attention to what their own people are saying is clearly one of the ingredients that makes WeddingWire a winner. WeddingWire’s capacity to listen created staff loyalty. Their people felt heard and even respected. Listening also creates trust. Most people know when they are being listened to and when they aren’t. And they are more likely to communicate if they think someone is really listening. So, what’s my point? You may need to give yourself a little bit of self-evaluation. Even if you think you already know what kind of listener you are, see if you can pay attention to your own behavior in conversation over the next day or two. Are you actually listening to what is being said? Or are you one of the interrupters out there, in actual spoken words and/or thoughts? Are you one of the multi-tasking conversationalists? When you are talking to a friend, family member, or colleague, are you planning what you are going to say next? Are you lost in your own thoughts, crafting your own narrative? Are you hearing, but not truly listening to what is being said? If so, here’s my advice for getting started on the path to listening, rather than hearing: Practice just listening. Without planning what you are going to say next. Just listen to what is being said. Notice where your brain wants to go, and if it is hard to give what the person is saying your full, undivided attention. Don’t interrupt. Allow a pause after someone says something and use that time to formulate your response. *Note: If you are conversing with a real talker, one of those people who just fill all time with spoken words, this can be tricky, because they may never stop talking long enough to allow a pause to reflect on what you are going to say. Slow all of your conversations down. Just a tad (or maybe more if you know they need it). Model this good listening behavior across your life. There are a lot of reasons to work on your listening acumen. We generally aren’t learning when we are talking, and we aren’t growing simply by hearing. The magic happens, as in the above illustration, when we stop using our mouths and start using our ears to listen… with our full brain power. When we stop talking, even stopping our mind chatter, is when we really listen. The bottom line: Listening is a path to creating healthy, functional, and productive relationships in all aspects of life.

I grew up on the East Coast, have lived on the West Coast and in Texas, and have visited plenty of places in the Midwest, but my experience with farmers was anecdotal at best, and pretty much dominated by stereotypes. What I have come to find out, from having farmers as business partners for the past 10+ years, is that sometimes stereotypes are true and, in the case of farmers, that’s kinda nice. Here's my list of what I have learned (so far) from my farmer partners: Your word is your bond. It’s about the handshake, not the contract. Have zero tolerance for BS. Don’t complain about the weather (or anything else you can’t control). In fact, stop whining and just do the work. Life is all about family, this generation and the next. Your purpose may require profit, but don’t make your purpose all about profit. Develop strength, toughness, and grit but don’t lose the tender touch that can still handle seedlings. Pretty good life list, right? I am thankful my real experiences with real farmers have shown me that the stereotypes I was harboring were pretty accurate. And, that they are great life lessons worth modeling.

Trash. Waste. Carbon footprint. Guilt. Capitalism. Ugh. It can all get overwhelming for me because I care. I care about all of it. When I feel overwhelmed, there are two things I do in rapid succession: Plan and Take Action. It makes me feel much better when I’m in motion, moving towards something, rather than drowning in self-inflicted inertia. A bit of history. I never used plastic straws in our Farmers restaurants. From the very beginning (2008), we used compostable straws and we had (and still have) a compost program. A few years ago, I learned that if a bioplastic compostable straw goes into the regular trash or ends up in a stream or the ocean, it behaves like a regular plastic straw – lasting for hundreds of years. So, I decided I had to do better than compostable. We made the change to paper and hay straws so that we had a straw that was rapidly bio- and marine-degradable. Then, as I continued to learn more about plastic pollution and its impact on the planet and on humanity, I felt paralyzed, but quickly realized I needed to do something. How could I ever explain to my kids that I stood by, allowing the world to fill up with trash, and I did nothing to try to combat it other than run our business in an enviro-friendly way? I’ve taught them that silence is never an option when a problem presents itself. I’ve taught them to get involved, protect people, stand up for what’s right, and never be a bystander when something bad is going down. Plastic pollution has serious consequences. Ugh. Inertia? PLAN and ACT. I decided I needed to go outside the four walls of our restaurants and spread not just the word, but solutions. Supply chain solutions. Public education solutions. Business-centric solutions. Regulatory solutions. Our Last Straw was born. While I knew nothing about starting a non-profit, I knew that with a mission, motivation, and an amazing team, we could do anything. And here’s the thing. Yes, I know straws are small. I know they are a tiny part of the massive single-use plastic tragedy of how we humans are destroying our planet. But they aren’t insignificant. They are in the top 10 of marine debris. Plus, and here is why they matter to me, they require behavioral change by all of us to #StopSucking mindlessly. Straws allow us to raise awareness that plastics are wreaking havoc on our planet – they are the wake-up gateway plastic to the big picture. The more awareness and resistance there is to the mindless plastic consumption, the more businesses, including manufacturers, researchers, and investors, will be motivated to come up with solutions. Ask many of the traditional plastics manufacturers where they are putting their research dollars. We know: Into better single-use plastic alternatives. That didn’t happen by accident or because they wanted to come up with alternatives. It happened because buyers of their products (end users and retail businesses) are starting to demand it. There is power in individual straws, individual choices, and individual actions… and that power is massively magnified when we plan, take action, and become a focused, sensible coalition.