Christin Marvin: 0:08

Are you a struggling restaurant owner who is thinking about closing your doors for good? If so, join me for this candid conversation with a restaurant owner who did just that and came out on the other side happier than he's ever been in his entire life, and came out on the other side happier than he's ever been in his entire life. Scott Bauer spent 25 years in the restaurant industry, commencing his journey at the age of 14 in a family restaurant and concluding with the closure of his fine dining establishment, Butcher's Bistro in Denver, Colorado, in 2020. Throughout his formative years, Scott navigated every aspect of the restaurant industry, starting in the kitchen under chef Kevin Taylor and later transitioning to working in dining rooms as a general manager for Snooze. As Snooze expanded, Scott took on a regional manager role before eventually opening his own restaurant, Butcher's Bistro, in 2014. Before eventually opening his own restaurant, Butcher's Bistro, in 2014. Since its closure, Scott has been on a quest to discover his identity, apart from the industry that molded him into the man that he is today. In this episode, Scott is going to share with us how his business struggled for the entirety of its six years in existence. Talk about the turnover of six executive chefs in six years, the moment he knew he needed to close his restaurant, and what he's learned about himself after letting go of all that stress and all that pressure pressure.

Christin Marvin: 1:46

Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I am your host, Christin Marvin, with Solutions by Christin. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant leaders to help them overcome burnout, increase retention, reignite their passion and drive successful businesses. I also work directly with restaurant leaders through one-on-one coaching and group workshops to help them identify their blind spots, build their confidence and overcome challenges in their business. If you're curious about learning more, visit my website at kristinmarvincom contact to book a 15-minute goal planning session.

Christin Marvin: 2:33

This podcast is sponsored by ScheduleFly. Schedulefly provides a simple web-based and app-based restaurant employee scheduling software backed by legendary customer service. If you are using pen paper, Excel or fancy scheduling software with tons of bells and whistles that you don't use, ScheduleFly is perfect for your business. When I was a regional manager handling seven locations, ScheduleFly was our go-to for scheduling. It's, hands down, the easiest platform that I've ever worked with, and their employee scheduling tool is awesome for shooting out mass messages about crucial restaurant updates. Visit scheduleflycom and mention the no Hesitations podcast to learn more and get 10% off. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi Scott, what's up?

Scott Bauer: 3:26

Not much. How are you?

Christin Marvin: 3:27

I'm good. How are you?

Scott Bauer: 3:29

So great. It's always a good time to hang out with you.

Christin Marvin: 3:32

Yeah, you too, we're shooting the shit.

Scott Bauer: 3:36

I think I can swear right.

Christin Marvin: 3:38

You absolutely can. I marked that little explicit box on my podcast for a reason. Anybody that knows me knows I love a good cuss word when it's appropriate. So absolutely, this is super, super fun and such a blast today. I really appreciate you being here. We, you know, have known each other since 2012. You were my boss at Snooze when I jumped on board and we worked together for a short time about two years and then you ran off and opened your own restaurant right across the street. So we're going to really talk about that journey today. But I have to say thank you. Because of you getting promoted to regional manager at Snooze, you opened up a GM spot for me to just slide right in at 7th of Colorado. So thanks for that.

Scott Bauer: 4:25

You're welcome. I'm good at flipping things in.

Christin Marvin: 4:30

And for anybody that knows Scott knows he's wildly inappropriate. So we're going to have some really fun conversations today. I can't wait.

Christin Marvin: 4:39

So, no, don't apologize, it's great. It's been so awesome to just stay connected with you over these years. You know your wife has been our accountant and just an incredible resource for us, and I know you and I jumped on the phone probably about a year, a little over a year ago and just kind of checked in on our new lives and what's going on and and uh, your journey since, you know, getting out of the restaurant business. So, yeah, um, I'm excited today to share and and let listeners that are thinking about you know that are really having a hard time with their restaurant. I'm excited for them to be able to relate to you and your experience with Butchers and talk about the hard decision that you made to close your business and what that journey was really like. So thank you in advance for your vulnerability and transparency as you, as you, are.

Scott Bauer: 5:39

So I look at this as my own, like personal little therapy. This is my own, like personal little therapy. I'm just excited to run through all the experiences I've been through and see what I discover for myself, too, in this process. I love it. I love it.

Christin Marvin: 5:52

That's great. Would you start off by talking about the concept of butchers and tell us a little bit about you know, your journey from snooze to opening and what your motivation was for opening the restaurant?

Scott Bauer: 6:06

So to rewind and go to opening Butcher's would be. At the time I was really excited because it was like oh, I get to do my own thing and be my own boss and set my own rules. In hindsight, having closed the restaurant, a piece of me realized that I kind of opened it just because that was the next step. I'd done everything, I'd done everything to do in a restaurant, starting at 14 and washing dishes all the way through, running 10 restaurants as a regional manager and those along those lines. It was like, well, what do I do next? Well, I got to open my own place and so I kind of just did it out of a social next step, if you will.

Christin Marvin: 7:01

Yeah, well, I will say, you know, we got I got to call it the elephant in the room and I thank you for giving me permission to do this. But when you decided to leave Snooze and open your own restaurant, it was right across the street from Snooze. It was a period at Snooze where the CEO the new CEO had come on the same month that I had. We were talking about private equity money coming in. We were talking about national growth. There was everything was changing in the company. You know from from the bigger picture, higher level perspective, and you decided to open a restaurant and you took quite a few of the teammates with you and it was. It was pretty controversial for sure, and I I remember the conversations of like, oh my gosh, who else is going to jump ship? Oh my gosh, they're opening right across the street and oh my gosh, they're doing brunch. Will you, will you address some of that?

Scott Bauer: 7:49

Oh for sure I think. I think there's also perspective in some of that. One of the big things I would say is that when I started with snoozing in the first place, I had said at some point I wanted to own my own place and that I would be leaving place. I had said at some point I wanted to own my own place and that I would be leaving, and when all that went down, there'd been well over a year of I'm actually working on a business plan and had owners had looked over said business plan and helped me in it in some way, in a lot of ways, in some way in a lot of ways. And I think once it all happened and, like you said, new CEO, and it probably I'm seeing now that it probably had an impact on you guys and caused a lot of conversation I think some people came after the fact it was really just Tyson and I working on it to begin with and then some others showed up in the mix.

Christin Marvin: 8:47

Totally, and what you did was not unusual. Right, there were other people in Snooze that went off and opened their own companies too. Right, and the owners and John and Adam, the founders, were, I feel like, always consulting and advising and mentoring people and starting their own businesses. Right, I had had a conversation with John back in the day, similar of like hey, down the road, I think I want to have my own thing, and he started, you know, he jumped all in and said great, let's create a vision for it. And you know, here's the blueprint, here's a book, and you know things like that. So I know that they were super, super supportive and I love that you shared that perspective, because I think the conversation was around I think, mostly with us newcomers in going like, what the hell is happening?

Scott Bauer: 9:29

You know what's going on, so I've got all these holes to fill and like I guess I'd never really looked at it from that perspective either Like, oh, my God. Like there's like now it was supposed to be just the two of them, yeah. And now it's like oh, now now two, three other people have jumped ship too, yeah, and and and I didn't go poach them either. They came to us, yeah, because it was kind of I'm a fun guy to work with and you are, but it definitely put people yeah, it put me in a weird spot you know I feel like some of the friendships that I had fell apart a little bit.

Scott Bauer: 10:05

It kind of saddens me that we haven't been able to some of those relationships haven't been able to repeat in different ways. It'll probably come up again in this conversation that sometimes relationships do come to an end.

Christin Marvin: 10:19

Yeah, yeah, 100%. So let's fast forward. So Butchers is open 2014,. Right.

Scott Bauer: 10:25

Yeah.

Christin Marvin: 10:26

Your vision what was your vision for opening Butchers and talk a little bit about the concept in that neighborhood.

Scott Bauer: 10:35

So the neighborhood. I really was never planning on being across the street. I was planning on being relatively close because I knew that area. I'd been in that area for 10 plus years already. At that point I knew lots of people. I sat on the neighborhood association board.

Scott Bauer: 10:53

The space that happened to open across the street just happened to open and it was kind of the size we were looking for all the things. So that that was purely out of coincidence that it was across the street. So that was purely out of coincidence that it was across the street. But our goal was to be a neighborhood butcher shop and restaurant, being able to work with whole animals from cows, pigs, lambs, bringing in a whole carcass and actually using every part of it. That was our goal and we wanted to be able to sell to the neighborhood as like a meat market as well. A butcher, a neighborhood butcher. That piece never really took off. It didn't ever pan out as a viable business part, and so over the years that we were open, the layout and concept of the restaurant continued to change. We kept trying different things to really make it all work.

Christin Marvin: 11:47

Why don't you think the butcher site ever took off?

Scott Bauer: 11:49

To be honest, I don't think there's never going to be enough traffic for it. I think in that area, in the neighborhood that we were in, it was a lot of people it was all younger people going out to eat, not having the won, the money to buy premium pay for a premium product or uh yeah, there just wasn't enough client. We were in the wrong market. Our market research was wrong got it.

Christin Marvin: 12:17

Yeah, I mean, I remember you know you were really like the locally local watering hole for us after we get off work right and come in, and I remember you know tyler and I would come in often and on our way out. I loved it because it was like, oh shit, we've just we've had another great meal here, a couple of great bites. Let's grab something out of the case on the way home to eat tomorrow, you know, or in the next day or two.

Christin Marvin: 12:37

So that was, you know, more like a grab and go kind of kind of thing for us.

Scott Bauer: 12:41

So kind of thing for us. Yeah, and that's where most of the business came from was from people sitting there, eating and going. Oh, I can make my meal for tomorrow night or later that night, if I just had appetizers, whatever it was.

Christin Marvin: 12:52

Love it. So talk a little bit about, I mean, how was business, even though the butcher side of things didn't really kind of take off. How was business from 2014 on?

Scott Bauer: 13:03

Hard, really hard. From day one I felt like we spent yeah, yeah, from day one. I think. I think I'd set my expectations a little too high. One I'd come from a restaurant group that I'd helped build up and was every location we opened from day one was busy and the old cliche yeah, the old cliche is true. Like lots of money movement.

Scott Bauer: 13:34

Yeah, can can hide a lot of things and when you're in the restaurant industry, those margins are so tiny that if you don't have the business, you can't hide, you can't, you can't hide from the fact that all those bills still come due.

Christin Marvin: 13:49

Yeah, totally. What are some of the things that you tried to drive sales?

Scott Bauer: 13:56

Oh, so many different neighborhood things and doing through Eat Denver, doing tons of competition, food competitions, and we'd won a couple of those.

Scott Bauer: 14:09

Through my years at Snooze I'd made plenty, a lot of connections with different people within the industry, like the food critics, writers, stuff like that.

Scott Bauer: 14:17

We got in our second year of being open we got Denver's Best Steak Editor's Choice in 5280, one of the top magazines there in Denver, and got a decent review from Westward and a lot of it was about a year and a half in my business partner and I didn't see eye to eye and he left and from there started searching for a chef on repeat. I had years of experience in the kitchen but to be honest, I never planned on opening it. Experience in the kitchen, but, to be honest, I never planned on opening it to be the one that had to be there day in and day out. Tyson, I will still say to this day, is one of the best chefs I've ever worked with in my life and the plan was that we would come in, we'd get it going and I would step back and he would run the boat. And when he left the boat then I became captain and I wasn't expecting to be there.

Christin Marvin: 15:15

Was there tension between you and Tyson? No, I spent a lot of time finding Go ahead. Was there a tension between you and Tyson because of the financial aspect of the business?

Scott Bauer: 15:24

For sure. That's where most divorces start too. That's where most divorces start too. It was, it was, it was tumultuous, to say the least, you know, like he. Just he didn't understand why we couldn't spend like snooze spent, and get new equipment every day, it's like, well, because we don't have the guests coming in the doors to to pay for it. And I said I that that was probably mostly my job was to try and get more butts in the seats. And then, when he left, my job became trying to keep my staff in there, to keep guests in there.

Christin Marvin: 16:03

Yeah, yeah, and I mean your staff was always super warm, super welcoming, super hospitable. You know, I it didn't matter if there were if there were, you know it was one person at the bar or you know 10 tables in there, the it was just a really comfortable vibe always that your team created. So thank you for that. Um so year and a half in I'm good at that part?

Christin Marvin: 16:25

Yeah, you are. Well, it's. You know what? It's a very, it's a very foundational part of hospitality that a lot of people miss these days. So it's, it's very important and it's it's easy to do, but it's not. Yeah, it's, it just doesn't show up a lot. So, anyway, so you're in half in your business partner leaves, sales are still down. What do the next few years look like?

Scott Bauer: 16:52

Next few years felt like I was just scrambling to try and keep it all afloat, throwing money in here and there to keep everything at bay. And it's funny because COVID is where we actually closed down. But I had decided about six months earlier that I'd had enough and it was time to move on. I had five years or no, a couple of years left on the lease and so walking away clean wasn't an option. It was what do I do from here? How do I? I don't want to walk away and have a whole bunch of bills looming over me for the next 20 years. So I started talking and found a company that specialized in selling businesses basically specialized in selling businesses. Basically. That company actually didn't do anything for me but other than the paperwork and take a percentage of the sale of it eventually. But it came from me meeting somebody in the area and he was interested in it. Covid came along and we'd closed door and I had already been in conversation with him before covid.

Scott Bauer: 18:12

And then covid came along and he pulled the emergency brake wow if you will, and was like hey, why would I buy a restaurant and when I don't know if I can open?

Christin Marvin: 18:27

what'd you do then? Um left did you you just said I'll get them out I mean, well, we.

Scott Bauer: 18:35

So when covid hit, we were, we were open for about a month, month and a half, kept trying different things, tried to do a different uh, selling food to go, things um and none of it really worked out. None of it. It didn't translate to selling to-go food, you don't? There aren't a lot of people that order a $60 steak to-go.

Christin Marvin: 19:04

Yeah, yeah, unless you're in a hotel or something right, but yeah, you weren't in that neighborhood yeah.

Christin Marvin: 19:11

Hey there, listeners. Before we dive back into today's episode, I want to take a moment to address something many of us can relate to burnout. We live in a fast-paced world and sometimes it feels like we're constantly running on empty. If you're nodding your head right now, feeling the weight of burnout on your shoulders, I want you to know that you're not alone. Recognizing the need for change is the first step towards a healthier, more balanced life. So if you're ready to make a change, head over to my website at kristinmarvincom, slash contact and schedule a 15-minute discovery call. This call is an opportunity for us to connect, chat about your unique situation and see if there's any way that I can support you on your journey to a more balanced and energized life. Let's work together to design a lifestyle that brings you joy, purpose and renewed energy. Don't let burnout hold you back. Empower yourself to thrive. Now let's get back to the show. Thanks for being here and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Scott Bauer: 20:16

Yeah, we closed up shop. We closed up shop for a little while and actually we were planning a trip for that summer, just spending two months in an RV, and that two months in the RV ended up becoming much more later down the road COVID hit. We closed in March and didn't close the deal on selling the restaurant until December. Got it.

Scott Bauer: 20:44

Between Kristin and I, using Accounting Genius, and myself, we managed to. Kristen and I, using accounting genius and myself, we've managed to make all the bills, pay all the bills ourselves until that sale went through.

Christin Marvin: 21:04

Wow. So I want to go back for a second when you to the moment when you realized you had said COVID hit, but six months prior you knew that you wanted to get out of the business and close the business. What was that moment for you where you said this is it?

Scott Bauer: 21:14

You know, I think I just had enough. I had been, I was on my now fifth chef, I think fifth or sixth executive chef at that point, in a total of six, six years, and I was tired of running, I was tired of trying to figure out what, what's the next step and what's the next thing. And I definitely started drinking a lot more during that time uh, just to try and hide from it. And when you're in a restaurant, it's real easy to get this. It's really easy to get cheap or free booze too, like even getting it for free from reps and things. Like you know, like there are ways to oh, I know, I was married.

Christin Marvin: 22:04

I was married to a white. I am married to a white rep. Right at 15 I got free.

Scott Bauer: 22:08

I got free booze from him. In lots of different ways like it, the ways they all play out like yeah, are they really free? I don't know, but I didn't pay for the bottle. Um, yeah, and I think one of the biggest things that I realized through that piece of my journey is that I actually really like working for someone. I really like having a team goal to work towards, and I felt like in the restaurant I had to be the team goal, I had to be the one coming up with that goal, and it didn't fit me as well.

Scott Bauer: 22:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah I really enjoyed the hospitality of it.

Christin Marvin: 22:54

Yeah, that's awesome Noticing what was the impact like on your home life, with your relationships, your wife, your kids.

Scott Bauer: 23:03

Kristen will tell you time and time again that those were probably the hardest years of her life. My kids, when we opened the restaurant, were six and eight or no, let's see four and six, and that's a lot of like. They still need a lot of attention at that age, like now would be a much better time in my life to open up a restaurant. However, I'm choosing not to do so. Um, it was really tough on our relationship and, like I said, I started drinking more. Um, it was heavy. There were some heavy years. It was the same thing on repeat. Are there going to be people in today? I lived for fucking new year's. You know the big days where it's like you know you're going to be busy. Yeah.

Scott Bauer: 23:57

And I lived for going in. I still, to this day, miss my guests. I could sit here and name names of people that I'm just like damn I really miss so-and-so, and there are people that I still send a happy birthday to every year and those are the things I miss, but I found those in other ways. I hope um yeah yeah, it's. It's heavy to think about all that time I spent inside the same building doing the same thing, not saying no enough.

Scott Bauer: 24:32

Yeah, another thing that learned yeah wouldn't take it back for the world, though it was a fun adventure what's the biggest gift you took away from that experience?

Scott Bauer: 24:43

you know, towards the end of it and then, really after I got out of the restaurant, I found myself, I think, going through. I mean, it was, hands down, the lowest point of my career was closing the restaurant, like I'd been every aspect. I literally have done everything that you can do within a restaurant, and getting out of it led me to go. Wait, I've just spent my whole career trying to please others and make everyone else happy, and I'm I don't know that I am and I finally found that myself and within myself rather than outside of myself. So getting out of there really made me feel like, oh wait, I, I like me, so things I can do that go ahead do you hit the road with the.

Christin Marvin: 25:44

So you packed up the family and went out on an RV, for you said two months, two months, and then it turned into how long.

Scott Bauer: 25:52

It turned into just over 18 months. My wife and I have a knack for being very spontaneous with weird things, like we'll just jump on a plane and go for a quick weekend somewhere. Uh, with weird things, like we'll just jump on a plane and go for a quick weekend somewhere, or we'll uh our honeymoon, for instance, we flew to australia with a plane into sydney australia, with a plane ticket back three weeks later from melbourne and nothing planned in between, like no hotel, no anything.

Scott Bauer: 26:29

It was just a let's just go and we'll figure it out day by day. And we were. We went out for two months this was during COVID. We had gone north, we'd owned an RV for years and so we in all of our families on the West coast, so we'd done a lot of the West. We had to do North to Montana, follow the Canadian border because we couldn't cross it because of COVID. Got to see a ton of the country during COVID was amazing because if things were open, you were the only people there.

Christin Marvin: 27:05

It's amazing I love it.

Scott Bauer: 27:07

On our way back from the two months that we were out, we were driving through Iowa, headed back to Colorado, and Kristen looked over at me and goes so I've been thinking maybe I'd like to keep doing this and I keep having this thought about selling the house, and I went oh my God, I've been thinking the same thing and I thought I was crazy. So that was in September and by October we'd sold our house and moved into an RV.

Christin Marvin: 27:34

That's awesome. What was it about that journey? With our dogs and yeah, dogs, homeschooling the kids, the whole thing right. Yeah. I love it.

Scott Bauer: 27:43

What was it about that journey that helped you rediscover yourself, getting rid of all the noise and the things that I distracted myself with. Um, I hurt my back somewhere along the way in there as well, and yoga is what ended up getting my back back for me backpack, um, but uh, yeah, just you know, I got into meditation and yoga obviously. Um, I started doing a lot of different coaching things. I worked with the shaman for three months. I like I've done a lot of uh, a lot of different things along the road, and I think one of the things that happened when I opened butchers and I'm seeing this right now for the first time is I opened it and I shut the door to my mentor at the same time. My mentor, my coach, you know those, whatever you want to call it and I think if I'd had that weekly check-in is just it's so vital, uh, it's, and it can be so trivial. It can be a half hour just talking to somebody, but it can make all the difference in the world because it's your growth. Yeah.

Christin Marvin: 29:05

It's. You know what. It's so interesting that you say that? Because I'm I'm in the process of writing my book and today I was writing about my first journey into management and how I fell flat on my face as a GM at 24, because I I had not created a transition plan for myself. I had no. I did not find a mentor. I had too much pride. I thought I could do it on my own. And I remember coming to snooze and having you and John talk talk to me about having one-on-one, having one-on-ones with the team, and how important it was. And I'm an introvert, so small talk is really uncomfortable for me and I had never done one-on-ones before. And you two really set the example of how to have a one-on-one with me and I didn't realize it at the time. You were just there and you were supportive, and those meetings were at like 5 or 5.30 in the morning, so I was still trying to figure out how to wake up that early.

Christin Marvin: 30:02

But looking back on those moments, I agree with you Sometimes those conversations are just shooting the shit, which a lot of them were, because you know, especially for you and I in the beginning, because we were just starting to establish a relationship and get to know each other but you always came with advice or a fresh perspective and helped me think bigger and think differently about what I was doing and challenge me whether I liked it or not. Right, sometimes you'd walk away and I go fuck. You know, I didn't like what he just said, like right, like be a human, and I'm like I don't know what you mean, right? So I was just so guarded then.

Christin Marvin: 30:37

But um, yeah, those I could definitely see how not having a mentor or not having somebody to talk through during that time could really, you know, impact its leadership is so lonely, especially when you're going through something really, really heavy like you did.

Scott Bauer: 30:54

Yeah, no, I definitely like literally just seeing that right now. It's a, it's a cool realization, how, um, how a different perspective gives you a different perspective. Yeah, you know, I'm just trying to find better words for that, but it is. It's like if you can get outside of yourself and have someone else ask you a question, you can see something you can't see on your own. Yeah.

Scott Bauer: 31:22

And you have to be willing to be vulnerable and share, and that's what our time was in those mornings. And you have to be willing to be vulnerable and share and that's what our time was in those mornings. And one thing I still wake up at four in the morning. It's still a thing. I still love it. It's my favorite time of day and I was getting just as much out of those meetings as you were getting from me, like being able to just like go oh, where's. How do I do that better? You know it makes me ask questions of what did or asking questions of myself. What would I do in this situation if I were you? And that's where the answers to any question you ever asked were. It's just in me asking myself the same question like what would I do?

Christin Marvin: 32:07

Yeah, well, that's such an awesome leadership. Trait of yours is just that curiosity. Right, you were so humble and you were so open and transparent, but you were just always curious about how to do things differently and how to make them better and genuinely cared about the team and the people and how everybody was doing, which is really awesome.

Scott Bauer: 32:25

Yeah, the team is more important than the guests. Yeah. Because I can only touch one guest at a time if it's just me, but if I can get my whole team doing it, I can get 20 guests touched at the same time. That sounded really bad. That's not what I meant, not in an inappropriate way.

Christin Marvin: 32:47

One of my. I remember so, transitioning from fine dining to working at snooze. You know, we'd have these blowout anniversary parties every year right At the original location. They'd always have a theme, and theme days were something I was getting used to because I, you know, I'd show up at the restaurant and some of the staff wouldn't have a lot of clothes on and I'm like what the fuck is going on.

Christin Marvin: 33:08

So, anyway, I remember one of the most uncomfortable positions I was in with you was you were up on the bar at ballpark and you had on a leotard, like a fringe leotard, with tights on, and everything was just on display and it was that. And then you had the yellow brick, uh, the yellow brick road suit or latex. I don't even know what that thing was, it was just all spandex. It was uh, it was just really, really uncomfortable. You always made it fun. You were always so goofy, but you also were. You know, you showed up when you needed, when we needed you to show up, and gave advice, and we're just super empathetic and, uh, just really appreciate you. So thank you for all of that, thank you. So let's talk about, before we, before we uh, leave today, what does life look like for you now?

Scott Bauer: 34:06

I have, as of recently, filled my days with more things than I can possibly handle, which tends to be my MO I've been doing. I mean, since I left the restaurant industry I've kind of dabbled in a whole lot of things. I'm very blessed in that I've made some. Kristin and I have been together since we were 19 and that lends in its own sense that we've kind of been able to build together everything that we have, and she's amazing at what she does, so I support her with her business. And then we've got now three rental properties that I'm managing and working with. I doing a ton of volunteer work with big brothers, big sisters feeding the homeless here in st Augustine, just working with Peyton with my daughter's school. I'm dabbling in a lot of things.

Scott Bauer: 35:09

I went on teaching classes but wanting to understand yoga and its practices through and through, not just my own, just going to a class and having someone tell me what to do. I wanted to know why I was doing it, and so that was. That was a really fun journey to go on. Yeah, it's just, I'm surfing like crazy under the best health of my life, uh, uh.

Scott Bauer: 35:32

I took January off from drinking, as as usual, but it's the drinking is under control and not a problem anymore, which is it should, which is great. Like it's still something that I do on occasion, but it's more on occasion than on every day. Yeah, I don't know, I'm just feeling more alive and feeling like I get to. Being around my family has kept me from getting a job, to be honest, like I think I've really enjoyed being able to see them, and there's parts of me that are like, oh, I should go get a job, but then I'm like but then I'd have to be gone on the evenings, or I have all these stories in my head as to how it will restrict my life and how I live. So I just keep trying to find ways to make money without having to go get a job from someone else.

Christin Marvin: 36:22

I love it. It's, you know, it's interesting too. I've realized, not being in operations but being in restaurants for 20 years, I can do a lot of things, I can accomplish a lot and I'm super curious and I feel like we can manage 10 different things at once and make it look easy and be fulfilled for sure. So I think that's a byproduct of just being in restaurants for so long. But I'm so glad that you you know, I know you spent a lot of time away from your family over the years and I'm so happy that you are getting that time back now and investing in yourself and investing in them, and just you just sound like you're in a really, really awesome place now, which is amazing.

Scott Bauer: 37:04

Thank you, I'm excited for you as well. It's been awesome to watch you like move on and start. We kind of both did fairly similar things of just starting a new chapter, like I didn't I'm not throwing out the old book, it's not like an old book, it's it's we're still in the same book, but we you know what I want this. I want this book to go in a different direction and I'm going to try this out for a little while. And it's cool to watch you grow as well. So proud of you.

Christin Marvin: 37:34

Thank you, I'm proud of you too. All right, well, really appreciate you being here again. Scott, thanks for sharing your story with listeners and everybody. We're going to wrap up. Thanks again for listening. Be sure to share this podcast with any leaders you know in the restaurant industry that could benefit from listening, and be sure to follow me on LinkedIn at Kristen-Marvin. We'll talk to you next week, everybody. Thanks so much.