E258 Franck Desplechin

This week's guest is Fronk de Pachein, who joined us from Connecticut in the United States. Chef Fronk, as he is simply known as the author of the new book titled, We Let Mis Growth, cultivating a chef's mindset for professional fulfillment. Chef Fronk has had a remarkable journey, he entered the working world of kitchens at the age of 15, and has dedicated his life for over 25 years, to leading Michelin starred restaurants and luxury hotels, and now helping professionals unlock deeper fulfillment through his consulting firm, Incraventum. In our conversation with Chef Fronk, we discussed his start in the industry when he left school at 15, and started working in kitchens and his early exposure to the culinary arts.

Chef Fronk described the intense process of earning a Michelin star, emphasizing the relentless pursuit of perfection and the constant pressure from chefs and inspectors. We discussed how the new generation is shaping the industry. Chef Fronk discusses his journey of moving from France to the US, and how he handled the language barrier by immersing himself in the culture and watching movies. We talked about Chef Fronk's transition from Chef to starting his own consulting company, plus a host of other topics as always.

We had a terrific time talking with Chef Fronk, and you'll enjoy this interview too. You can find more information about Chef Fronk on his website, cheffronk.com, and that's spelled C-H-E-F-F-R-A-N-C-K-DOT-C-O-M, or check the show notes for all the links as always. Enjoy the show. And we're back with another episode of the industry podcast.

My name is Kit, and this is Dan. Hey, that's me. How's it going? Great, man.

How are you? Still awesome. Pretty awesome. Good.

A fun day for work. Got to go for nerds out there. Got to go visit a data center. Yeah, that's exciting.

Yeah, it was a lot of computers. Yeah. And a lot of security. Yeah, it's like an imagine.

Yeah, like no taking pictures, nothing. No, it was a... So I'm not going to say anything. No, that's a bunch of cables and computers.

OK. All right. Well, that's exciting for you. Yeah, totally.

Thanks, Dan. The end of the house. Yeah, so by the time anyone's listening to this, we'll have powered through the Christmas holidays and New Year's, and hope everybody had a good one. I'm sure we did.

We don't know yet. But we're assuming we also did. Yeah, that's correct. Because as I've recorded this, it's totally December around December 8th.

And it's fucking cold out. Yeah, we got blasted by the winner very early this year. Got over a foot of snow, and it's about minus 20 Celsius, actually, today. Yeah, got to open up our encore.

That's what I got to do. Make it happen. First world problems here. Yes, definitely.

World problems of kitchen and water. You should come visit my bar, Sugar Run at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram. It's in downtown Kitchener. That Sugar Run Bar is where you'll find out everything that's going on down there.

And if you're interested in spirits or wine from Ellora Distillery or Malabore Winery, you can hit me up directly. Kipsonders at gmail.com, kyppsaum.com for wine and spirits needs. If you like what we're doing here on the show, the best way to support us would be to subscribe, follow, rate or review the show, Telefran, not always helps. And if you were interested in being a guest on the show or provide support for the show, the best way to do that is using both the industry podcast.club or you can email us directly on Instagram, which is at the industry podcast, where you will find the amazing artwork from the uber talented Zacana at zacana.co for all of your graphic arts needs.

Yeah, so check that out. Feel free to shoot us an email to provide support for the show as well. It's also the avenues to get in touch with us. You know, and if you're just at home not doing dry January or you're a bartender, professional bartender and you're bored of shit because everyone else is doing dry January right now and you just want to play around with some old cocktail recipes, what would you do then?

I would consult one of my favorite apps in Biblioth. Today's episode is in partnership with in Biblioth, the visual cocktail app built by bartenders for bartenders, building recipes in in Biblioth feels like the future intuitive UI for separating liquids and solids, smart unit selection with exhaustive options for both volume and weight and the flavor map updates in real time as you dial in your spec, with over 4000 ingredients, including obscure Amari and housemates, or ups, you can workshop new cocktails virtually before touching a bottle. Missing an ingredient requests usually get fulfilled within minutes. Here are all the details in episode 216 of the industry podcast.

See why it was featured by Bon Appetit, then hit number one on the up store, when it launched, the free download gets you 500 plus recipes and all core features and subscription options for individuals and businesses to unlock advanced tools and connect entire teams. Visit www.mbiblia.com or check the show notes as always for all the links. In Biblioth, we love it, you love it too. Yeah, and that's about all we have to talk about before we get to our guest today, joining us now from Connecticut, the author of the new book, Relentless Growth, Cultivating of Chef's Mindset for Professional Fulfillment is chef, Frank, Dave Leschamp.

How are you, Frank? I'm good, how are you guys? We are doing all right. Thank you very much, taking time out of your schedule, join us tonight.

Appreciate it. I'm very, very excited about this episode and I've been listening a little bit of you guys recently and you guys are doing great jobs. I'm enjoying listening. I'm enjoying listening it.

Thanks very much, appreciate that. Well, we want to obviously talk a lot about the book and your consulting company as well, but let's back it up ways and talk to us a little bit about how you, where you from originally and how you got into the service industry. Yeah, of course, I mean, you can tell from my accent, I'm definitely not from here. I am from France, originally, born and raised in France about 41 years ago.

And I got the industry, you know, when you grew up in France, hospitality is kind of in your broad, you understand and you feel the service of hospitality anywhere you go. And I was very fortunate that both my parents knew how to cook, both different kind of cuisine, but they both knew how to cook and I got curious. And then from that point on, I was not someone that was normally attracted with the school system. Let's put it that way and therefore, you know, you kind of pivot directly into culinary school.

And I found myself being quite interested and at the same time, scaled very quickly. So I made a career out of it. Yeah, I remember reading in your bio there. You mentioned you left school at 15?

Yes, that is correct. Wow. Yes, I just finished middle school because in France, I would say middle school, I would say I would say middle school, and I never went to high school. I like to throw that sentence that takes once in a while, just like I've done well for myself, but actually never went to high school.

Right. That's crazy. Yeah. So obviously, they're part of you just was probably bored with school, but then another part of you realized you had a talent for cooking.

So you decided that was the way to go. So you go to culinary school and did you get your first job in? Sorry, what part of France were you living in? I was in Brittany.

OK. And so is that where you got your first job? Yes. So the when you go into you're getting out of school, the normal school system in France, you get to pick you either go into a culinary, hospitality, specialty school, and then you go to stash.

This is very similar to what you would find in US, or you can go into apprenticeship. And apprenticeship is you ended up finding an apprenticeship, what they call an apprenticeship master, if I were to call it. And technically, you go to school still one week of months, but you do work three weeks out of the months. And so what you do that for two years, you still go get a certificate.

So I got my certificates after two years, and I decided to go do another certificate above that, which is hospitality management, was a kind of major in culinary arts. And so I did two more years, which I would say it's considered the equivalent of a bachelor degree. So I kind of went and stayed within the study world, but I was definitely working. And what kind of restaurants were you working at this time?

Were they high rent? So the first restaurant was traditional. You know, I was 15. They didn't know nothing.

They barely know my left or my right. So my parents kind of put me into, oh, I know this guy is a chef. He owned a restaurant. He was at school with me.

So you're going to go there. So that was kind of the first thing. And as I kind of find my voice and my style during those first two years, and I got attracted with the world of Michelin-style rated restaurants. And so my second apprenticeship, I went directly into a restaurant when we ended up earning the first star while I was there.

Oh, wow. So talk to us about that process of like earning that first star because I know it's very detailed to get the star. So maybe give our listeners a taste of what it was like being part of the process while you're working to get that star. Yeah, of course.

It is hard. It is very, very hard. It's especially trying to get that first star because you don't know what to expect. You don't know what it means.

You just kind of have this somewhat of objective far away from where you are today. You have a chef in this kitchen that is completely delusional about absolutely everything. And you just kind of have to believe that he knows where he's going. But at the same time, you've been put down in every five minutes for something you've done wrong and this is back in the early 2000s.

So the chef were not as soft as they are today. And then us as apprentice or young workers, let's say that we have a generation now. It's probably a bit more sensitive and I don't excuse them for it. I'm just saying is we were taking it in a little bit harder back in the early 2000.

Therefore, you just kind of get into this environment when you have a, I would say, an agent or a inspector that would come to the restaurant up to three or four times a year. You don't know who they are and they could come any time of the year. And you have to nail it every single time in order to be in the conversation. So you have to be on your A game for every lunch and every dinner throughout the entire year.

And this is the precision. This is a menu that's been elaborated from the chef's vision. And then you're working on your technical skills and then all the things that you are required to do as an apprentice, not only you're learning, but you expect it to know better already. So you have the peer pressure, you have the pressure from the chef.

And at the same time, you are eternity short staff. Welcome to the industry of hospitality. This is not a new problem. You're a pretty short staff.

So the few staff that are coming through the door, they're just a regardless of where they come from. They're just rarely lasting more than a few months, some, a few weeks, some, just a couple of days. So you just kind of see the revolving door and you have to go to a serious mindset, kind of overhaul in order to understand why am I not the one walking out of that door right now? And you just kind of keep going until until you get that first start.

The first year, we didn't get it. Then we thought we would get it. And so that second year, when we finally got it, you know, when you finished that first year and you don't get it, you don't know what is it that we missed? Like, what did we did wrong when we thought we were like as close to perfect as we could?

And then that second year, it was just, it was just crazy. The D hours intensified, the work intensified, technical skills intensified, the pressure from the front of the house to back of the house. And then when you get it, you just feel like a level of relief. But then we had a chef that wanted to second mission start.

Therefore, we're already the next day, we got the first mission start. We're already on the journey for the second, which is just crazy. It's just never ending. But you've got to fall in love with with with that pressure.

You almost kind of need it in order for you to be on your A game at all time. Yeah, and it must take like a certain kind of personality to be the type of person who's willing to stick with that kind of pressure and also the like, you know, like I don't want to call it abuse, but like you're getting, it's a hard training that you're getting from your chef, right? It is super hard. It's constant dissatisfaction.

It's just this chef is just coming is always something you're doing wrong. It doesn't matter if you just like open the door of the fridge, you open it wrong. Like it's just as simple as that. And you're just constantly being held accountable.

You second, you don't even second guess anymore. If you did something, you just assume you did. And so you're living in this constant mindset that someone is out there to get you. You have to pay attention to everything.

You have to be focused. And when you focus for 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, your brain is completely mush by the end of the day. And you just choose there. You still have the whole week to go.

So it's just those there are things that makes it very, very, very complicated and very hard to go. And on top of that, I got, I guess I could say now, you're 26 years later, fortunate that I always felt like I had a chip on my shoulder. When I was in the school system, I was not the most athletic person. I was not the smartest person.

So I always felt like I was kind of outcast it in some way. They never felt like I'd belong kind of. And when I got into the culinary world, I was good. I was good very quickly.

And therefore, just had this level of appreciation from my surrounding that was making me feel like, oh, I feel like I belong here. And when you have that feeling like you belong, you just kind of go the extra mile just organically. And so I just felt like, you know what, I'm good at this. I'm going to continue to do this.

And and of course, there's the doubters and the haters, especially the doubters, people that don't think that you're going to make it. And I was always the ones who say, OK, watch me or challenge accepted. I'm going to take care of that. Yeah, I was going to, you kind of answered this, but I was going to ask you like what you thought that was in you that made you feel like you could stick this out.

But that's it having this chip on your shoulder, a little bit of a middle finger and everyone who didn't think you could do it. And like, and knowing that knowing that you had the talent, but also you also have to prove that you have the durability to. I think the talents get through to the door, but after that, the resilience, the ability, the perseverance, all of those things is is I didn't know I had it in me because I didn't really need it prior to being 17 years old. You know, you don't really know.

And so when you get to that level of discipline, you're also being part of something that is bigger than yourself. And so you just be part of the journey of getting a mission star. The mission star is as much the one for the chef that it is for me. I feel like I have a earn a mission star when you get to that level.

Even though I was I was 18, 19 at the time. And so so you just kind of taking it in, you're putting on your resume and suddenly that opens even more doors when you're starting to get for another job. So you kind of you kind of work hard in order to earn it. I got to say, that's pretty unbelievable.

You think about 18, 19 year olds today. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I was kind of where I was going to go with that, which is like, as you mentioned earlier, younger people are more sensitive now. And the industry has changed.

Excuse me, someone say for the better, someone say for the worst, based on how we train these younger people because they are more sensitive and we have to be more careful. Like, how do you do you feel like this has had an effect on the industry in a good or a bad way from like the hard sort of conditions with like, you know, chef Zilla that you had to deal with back in the day compared to like a softer, warmer chef that like, how do you think that's affected the end product? I think it affected. I think it affected both ways.

I think it affected a generation like me, which is kind of the earliest millennials that you could find when we think we know better and we think our generation is the best, you know, and I like to think my dad also thought that his generation was the best. And we all do. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So, so and going into things, we all think that the generation after us is softer. Yeah. At the end of the day, softer or not, I think I think the generation that came after me to Gen Z and now the gen alpha that will come in the workforce in about a year or two now, when you have this generation that are coming, I think they're challenging an industry that has yet to reinvent themselves. I think right now I applaud Gen Z.

Sure. I have my view on thing and I wish that some of them were a little bit more perseverance. So they're a little bit more resilient to things, but I had to adapt because this is where I'm short stuff with my old way of thinking, Oh, I'm just kind of adapting into, okay, what is it that they want? What is it they looking for?

What kind of leadership are they looking for? And you reinvent yourself and you realize that they actually almost the smartest one because they're the one that are going to not apologizing to choose work life balance over something that I normalize, which is completely not normal. I should have I normalized to be working 16 hour shifts, six, seven days a week, and having a health condition that is completely down to shit at 25 years old. I applaud them for this.

The only thing is you do find some Gen Zs and you do find some younger generation that once you find what's motivated them and what they're actually seeking out in their career in their life, man, they can be some of the best worker you can get. You just have to, it's just like a new way of getting your head around how to motivate them as opposed to like the sort of fear that we got motivated with growing up in the industry in this sort of era that we did where it was like, like fear of getting fired, fear of getting screamed at fear of getting something thrown at you. Now it's like, we have to figure out a different way to motivate this generation and they can be just as good, if not better than us. But but but they just they have a different sense of how they want to be motivated and it's on us to figure out how to do that.

Yeah. I mean, we I come from a world where it was a strong, you shut the fuck up, you do what you told that just do it is your chef and then you just do it. So so you and when you become your own chef and now you have a team to manage, you only know how to replicate what you've taught because you figure it out. You say, okay, I'm going to self assess myself.

I turn out pretty good. Therefore, I'm going to use the same method. And then you realize that by using the same method, you end up in HR very quickly. You just like you just that you being sat down, you being lifted up and then you kind of if you don't have that level of self awareness or emotional intelligence, you just start to cast blame to everything.

And you just don't even look at yourself. And if you're smart enough, you're starting to look at your own way of doing things and you you just go and find ways and and the way I found that has probably resonated with the most and what I've made my success in my career as a chef and leader in the hospitality is is the coaching and mentoring that I wish I had received when I was younger because I came with a lot of handicap. Sure. I was a I was a hell of a cook.

I knew how to manage a kitchen. I knew how to expo. I knew how to get smacked for Saturday night and not being like not being bothered by it. But at the same time, I didn't know social skills.

I didn't know how to get a team together. I didn't know how to keep a team together. I didn't know how to mentor a chef to become a better person than me. So so all of those things you kind of have to learn and reinvent yourself.

And and you realize that the coaching and mentoring instead of taking the amount of hours that you need to prep and produce and doing all those things, you just spend time to sit down with your chef and say, Hey, how are you doing today? Man, I've noticed the past couple of days you've been a little late. Is everything okay, man? Like you just kind of just kind of going into a little bit more of the human side of things and remove the chef at four minutes and you realize that people are just saying they feel relieved when their boss is just like, Oh, he just asked, he just made time for me in the middle of his busy schedule.

So suddenly you're building those rapport and you end up finding those people that you move to a new job. They don't want to say, Hey, can I can't work for you again? Can I come work for you again? And then you ended up building a team that just stays with you loyal to a fault.

And then that's what makes you successful because everywhere you go, now you have already your team. Yeah, then it takes the team. And that's like, and the key is to, I always find is like that you can't, you need to treat everybody equally, but you can't treat everybody the same because everybody's different. And like everyone has their own way of in which they want to be motivated.

Some people want the sticks. Some people want to care it, right? Some people want a combination of the two and it's your job as a leader to zone in on all of those individual personalities and what they need to get motivated. And almost almost kind of as a continuous system, because I can tell you, um, Kip at 25 is all one different thing than Kip at 30 and one Kip at 34.

So it is, it is you job as a leader to check on the Paul, the John, the Sally and the Sophie at all time, year after year to make sure that, I actually just now this year, I just want some, some time with my family. My dad is getting very sick. I want time with my family. Okay, do we know that?

And so you get those conversations, but you don't get them out of nowhere. You just got to build that rapport in order to make sure that people want to open up with you because you've delivered, you've paid attention, you took notes on what they say. And then when they coming with a PTO form and saying, Hey, I already did this time off in the middle of summer, you're just kind of just saying, okay, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Take that week off. We'll figure that out. Like you just kind of do those things. When, when that person comes after that week of vacation, that was unexpected in the middle of summer, you have them loyal for a very long time.

So, so you just have to remove the industry side of things and all these negativity and toxicity and kind of get back to the human basis of relationship. Uh, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it's like, it's funny, like being a chef in or like a bar manager of being the same, same idea with, is that like you have a lot of nichos because you're responsible for the creativity of the menu. You're, you're physically working.

And now you're also have the secondary side where you have staff to motivate and keep, and keep happy. What I was going to ask you next is, so you've been working in France for a while. At some point you come to North America. What was the impetus for that?

It's funny you asked that because it's pretty much the first story of my book. Um, so I came to you as about 13 years ago. I was, I, I traveled a little bit of everywhere. I worked in France that I moved.

I went to leave in Australia for a minute, then I came back, then I went to leave in the Caribbean that I came back. So I've always kind of navigated throughout the world. I'm a huge advocate for living on islands. I love living on islands in, in dumps, some of those beautiful resorts.

And so when I came to US 13 years ago, I didn't speak a word in English at all. Um, and so I went through an entire interview process without speaking a word in English. Um, so it was, it was fun. Um, I, I got the first interview.

The chef was French of that property that was in Kauai, on the island of Kauai, and I messed up the interview terribly. And then the next day called me a few hours later, he called me and he just said, if I'm going to send you the interview questionnaire in French, I need you to study it and we'll do another try tomorrow at 8 a.m. And so I spent the entire night at the time, there was no chat GPT, no nothing. So we kind of, I took all the questions, I highlighted them, typing them back on Google Translate, it was pretty poorly at the time.

Um, you putting in there, you translate in French, I answer in French, and then I translate in English, then I just translate, translate back on a piece of paper. And you have like, I did that. That took me the entire night from like probably 10, 30, 11 o'clock until 7 o'clock in the morning. And so, um, and so I got the next morning, I had my desk, I had all my answers in order, question one, two, three, and then, uh, interview start and asked me, I don't, I think it was question four, question six from the get-go.

And I'm just like, I just like, fuck, I don't even understand what the fuck is. And so, and so I just, I just blame it on the, on the, on the Wi-Fi signal that was poor to make them repeat. And so once I got through the keywords, I started reading my answer and making it sound like I was not reading and I was not prepared. So I was just like, um, um, um, um, um, and so I just just kind of, uh, deal a real role play here and, um, they'd say, okay, well, we'll get in touch.

They end up the phone and I don't know what they're supposed to think. And then two hours later, uh, the chef, only say from you going to the next interview with the HR director and I say, great, I've made it. And lucky media, HR director, um, like most of the HR director, they like to hear themselves talking, therefore, I didn't have much to talk. And they just said, what do you think about all this?

It's, it's just great. This is great. This is great. This is great.

And at the end, I say, oh, I feel great about this. So let's move on to the next. And so I nailed it. And then, uh, I was supposed to get with the general manager of the property because the position was to be executive, Facebook chef of a, uh, five star resort and, um, and, uh, lucky me, the general manager had to postpone the interview twice.

And because he was kind of slowing down the process because there was a visa involved, you just say, let's, let's make him an offer. Let's get him in. And so that's how I got into Hawaii. And when I got to Hawaii, everyone thought I spoke English because I got to an interview process and they realized very quickly that I didn't speak nothing English.

And it's been 10 months. They didn't have a leader in their department. Uh, and so everyone, every restaurant, there was about nine outlets in these things. And they were all waiting for them to change, all of them.

And so they all can start coming, sending the emails. I was reading emails. They did not understand anything, nonetheless, answering them. So it was, it was the first month I was like, what the hell am I doing here?

Um, I became emotional several times. Like I have no problem admitting that like just crying in the walking, just said, this is way too hard. What the hell am I doing here? Uh, and you just kind of, uh, I'm, I'm lucky because the team that I had, this saw how hard I was working.

I had a team of six. I have one. His name is Chad Pacheco and, uh, he became my Hawaiian brother. I mean, it was one of my, uh, one of my, uh, grooms met at my wedding.

That's how it was nice. And he saw how hard I was working. I was coming every day before the first baker was there at five o'clock in the morning and leaving at 10 PM at night just because I was delayed. I was handicapped.

I was delayed and, uh, they did, they were handicapped at that point because their leader was not on top of their game. So, so I did what I knew how to do, which is I'm going to cook. I'm going to bake. I'm going to show you without talking.

And so, so that started to evolve. And then obviously over time I captured the English, uh, but men, so many meetings that I got into it. My nickname was a nothingful group because that's what I could say. You know, you go to a leadership meeting on Thursday at 2 PM.

So if wrong, we have something to say, I just have shit ton of things to say. I don't know how to say it. So nothing for the group. So, so you kind of evolving, you're building that, that resilience and you just kind of, uh, you kind of showing up for the right reason and you kind of trying to dismiss the things that makes it hard.

And you just kind of keep showing up, showing up, showing up and you learn English. And there's no better way to learn a language that being immersed into a culture that you don't understand. And so that's kind of what happened to me about four years. Wow.

So all your knowledge of English has just been through just working and just no, like, and no courses or anything like that. No, no, no, I'm a huge cinema enthusiast. So, so what I did is I watched movies a million times the same movies from a younger than 10 years later. They came out on DVD, watch it again, then Blu-ray, watch it again.

Then you just kind of evolving with all this. And what I did is I watched the movies that I knew by heart in English, subtitle French and in French, subtitle English. And so in that's the way I captured not only the English language, but I understood the American way of speaking and pronunciating. It was easier for me.

It was funny because when I was starting speaking English and I was, you know, speaking English, but then the American were looking at it and say, I don't know. I thought I was speaking English. And so and so because my pronunciation was not right, I had to learn pronunciation. And when you're in Hawaii and they speak Pigeon, and you can only imagine that you have to understand how to speak American to the Hawaiian.

And then and so you kind of learning to do this. So my pronunciation becomes almost a way of me being able to enter rooms. Like I found sometimes some French people like me, they have a much thicker accent that I do that you can tell. They're very, very French.

And for me, I've tried to emphasize saying my pronunciation a little bit more in order to communicate because a lot of my communication was not through emails and through phone. I needed to have rapport and relationships with people face to face. That's crazy. And so, OK, so then after a while, you obviously stay in the US and you make it over to the mainland and you've been working in restaurants there for a while.

And then at some point you start your own consulting corporation. And now so you take, you kind of took a step back from being on the behind the line. And now you're doing more of a consulting job. How did that develop?

So I built my company. So as I became my own leader and I team and people were kind of coming with me and whatever job I was taking, I, they're people that worked for me. They made me realize that I had a way of leading in a philosophy of leadership that was resonating. They really wanted me.

For me, I was just being me and I was just doing what I knew how to do. And so I have adapted. And so they don't want me to realize. So they, one of my friends and one, Brinson, say, well, why don't you certify?

And it's a certified for what? And you say, I don't know, certified for coaching or something, I guess. So you can kind of do this. And so I, I, I listened.

I went to certify myself to be a coach, speaker and trainer with the John Maxwell certification program. So I did that for about a year, then COVID hit and that was back in 2020. And so I opened my company literally one month before they shut down the entire country. And so I was still working full time.

I was not ready to go full entrepreneurship. So I did my full time job, opened my company. My company had nothing to do with consulting at the time. It was purely about coaching, speaking and training, just, just switching the good word into what I had learned and my philosophy.

And COVID happened, my wife got pregnant. And so when we got my first daughter, we moved into Connecticut, where she was born and raised. So we were located in Connecticut. I worked with the Beers' Result Collection, which is kind of a very trendiest brand name in the world of hospitality.

And so I did that for about two years. In 2023, I took her leap of faith and decided to just go on and do 100% entrepreneurship. I added the consulting of food and beverage with an emphasis on culinary and front of the house because I kind of, quote unquote, retired from a W2 role as a director of food and beverage in the luxury property. So I kind of offered a lot and one consulting project after another.

It just led to me to realize that the relationship that I had built over time and the network that I had fostered and cultivated over time was coming back to me and say, Frank, I'm so glad you're free. Would you be able to come help me out with this project? I say, sure, no problem. I haven't heard you from six years, but your outcome help.

So it's all of those things. I think my work ethics over the years never kind of faded away for some people. And when they realized that I was, when they realized that I was available, then they just, they just reached out in order for me to go help. And so that's kind of what transpired over the past three years now, a consulting job.

And my wife announced she was praying of my second daughter and she said, I cannot have you being on the road for three, four weeks out of the month. I need you to be home a little bit more. And so I asked her, how long do I have? She's seven and a half months.

OK, so I created and created the task force management services. So anyone like me consulting independent contractor in US chefs, food and beverage director or pastry chef or director for office that living that life, I actually deployed them on assignment across the country. So if I have someone calling me, say, Frank, let's say the Fairmont in Chicago, they're going to tell me, Frank, I need an executive chef for two months. Mine just quit.

Then I'm just reaching out to my roaster and I just make placement and send people there. And some people just love the lifestyle because they get to, I get to be their boss, but I'm not their boss. So they don't have to ask me anything. So Frank, I don't want to work this summer.

I'll see you in September then. So as simple as that. Yeah. That's good.

So the whole, the company does quite a few things then. Like you're doing consulting, you're doing, you're still doing some instruction. And then you're also doing job placement, which is great. Like multifaceted.

And my wife now has joined me since the month of July. My wife is an hospitality as well. She was a director of rooms in hospitality and I was director of F&B. So we both kind of complete each other from a new town perspective.

And my wife, what she does now, she's an area director of training and development in her own job, but she also joined me when she does a senior job with me. And what we do also is we go and assess, so you're going to have an hotel that's going to reach out to us and say, Hey, I would love to get an assessment of our operation. And so us with two young kids, we have two girls, five and two years old, nobody will have a guess that we're here to already their tell. Right.

So we go there as a family. My wife's going to take care of everything related. We're going to go into restaurant. We're going to just send an assessment and based on that score, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to give them a score and that score after that.

We go into the second phases. We give you the score, the assessment, and you can take it from there or you can choose to hire us to provide you a critical pass in order to be better based on these reports, or you can choose to even do even more hire of a retainer is not only we create the critical pass for you, but we also come and train your team. And so now we kind of going into multifaceted company with the Task Force Management Services consulting in the world of hospitality and now also the assessments and the audits within the luxury segment. That's amazing.

Yeah. And it's great. Like, because especially since COVID, like we've all, everyone sort of added to their ways to monetize the service industry because we had to pivot during the time where nobody could actually work. So for you to bring all these different sort of roles together, one company makes just so much sense.

And so obviously at some point you decide to put this to a book, what, what made you decide to write a book? I know it's hard and tell our listeners, give us the rundown on what the books about, but don't give us too much information because we don't want people to survive. So the book was, let's say that I've always felt like I had a book in me, but you know, you just, you just never sure if you not only have enough ideas to write a book or if the one idea you have could make it 250 pages, how to structure it, you just, you just wish you knew how to write a book and you just sometimes just procrastinate about it. And that's probably what happened to me.

I just procrastinated about it for a long time, but at the same time, I was never very serious about it. I think when I turned, when I was about to turn 40 years old, I felt mature enough into my level of articulation and my level of expertise that I had on the field that I felt, there was a level for me that I felt ready. I just felt ready to write something. And obviously not only I've never written a book before, but I've also didn't know how to write it in English.

And so I've reached out to a book coach and they said, you know what, I'm going to get help. So I find out book coach, she's out of Chicago, Sabrina, she's awesome. And so I said, I need help. I'm going to be intense, but this is what I have in my head.

This is what I want to do. I was very intentional about every single point of the writing process, because I wanted to write a book that I wanted to read. And so I stayed, I, every aspect of the book was me having getting involved with it. And I've hired a professional in order to do that.

I've hired developmental editors, I've hired copy editors, I've hired a designer to do the cover, an interior designer, I have a self-quabishing assistant. So I'm hired all those professionals in order to do the best product forward. So the book is, it's about what I believe is the search of fulfillment. I think everyone in life is looking for fulfillment.

Some of them will be, I need a family life. And when I'm surrounded with my kids and my family, I feel very fulfilled. And for me, it was my career. My career was something that was fulfilling to me.

And so I've decided to provide kind of a blueprint in a way, not a guide for, not a guide, it's necessarily, but a blueprint about how to navigate one of the most demanding industry in the world. I read a lot of self-help book and the book about hospitality, they're, they're, they're always kind of the same. They're always a very targeted topic about what you need to learn and not necessarily about hospitality, or they're just book written by chef about their, their memoirs. And so you don't really get to really get a blueprint for the student of us, we tell the leaders of tomorrow, the one that are at school right now that's wondering, how am I going to help you survive in this industry?

And so I really wanted to bridge a gap by providing a source of inspiration and a source of, I would say, relatability into, I was in U-shoes 25 years ago, and I've done this, therefore maybe you can relate to some of it. And so I've written the book with 10 chapters. Those 10 chapters are broken down in the steps that I believe is the order of things that you go through in your journey of fulfillment. And then within those chapters, there's about three to four subtitles that will break it down the chapter to make it more accessible for you.

If you ever want to go back to a subtitle, you kind of remember where it is. And then the last part of it, the third layer that goes a little bit deeper is, I wanted to make the book relatable, not just talking about theories and concept. So I have just started the book start when I'm a young child that's going up in France, and the book is ending when I'm becoming an entrepreneur. So you kind of following my journey to illustrate all my points, these chapters about the redefining failure and what it means to redefine failure.

And I had to go deep into vulnerability to share a story about one of my biggest failure in the industry. And so because I want to make sure people can, when they realize that, I say, wow, he has actually done all this, but I'm realizing that he's also went through this. So therefore I might be on the right path. So just helping the younger generation and the student of us be navigating hospitality, I think that's kind of the gift that I wanted to give.

Yeah, it sounds amazing. So tell our listeners where can they find a book and how can they support your goals here? Yeah, of course. So they can find my book pretty much on any platform, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles Target.

They can also buy it on my website at cheffrong.com. And if you buy directly from me, I got the opportunity to sign. I've created a page in the book when you can also give the book to someone with the author signature. So you get to do that.

And if you order again from me, you also get an exclusive packaging that I design in order to receive a nice little collector exclusive packaging that comes with it. And otherwise, you can find me on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, very, very unpleasant on LinkedIn. And otherwise, I've also started a newsletter back in August, which is called frankly speaking. So I get to speak about hospitality and with my chef voice and my honesty and my directness, I get to be able to call out the things the way they are a little bit more and apologetically.

And it seems to have landed with a few hundreds of people so far. Well, what sort of advice would you give to anybody? Listen, sort of looking to get into like a lot of people who grew up in the service industry and are looking for how to get older. You don't feel like you can do the physical work as much anymore.

So a lot of people, I think you would be a good model of what a lot of people will be looking to end up in a role where you're doing sort of consulting and writing books and doing your website. Like all of this stuff is some allows you to kind of be off your feet and not behind the line as much anymore. So yeah, so what if I could get to our listeners to get into something like that? Yeah, of course.

I think and my book can actually help with that because I would say that someone that has been in industry for as long as I have been, I was passionate about cooking, but I've always or so be passionate about helping the next person. I've always been passionate about mentoring. And so I guess as the time evolve, I think a family traveling, settling, all those things, that kind of became a natural progression for me to kind of stay out of the line and the demand of six days a week, Saturday night, the Christmas and the New Year's. I've kind of pivoted organically and naturally towards trying to get a better environment for me and a better mental space.

And so I would say for the listeners, if you are stuck where you at, you've got to find a way to reignite your desire and your passion. And sometimes it doesn't mean doing what you have been doing for the past 30 years. That's the comfort zone. You're doing it because you go through motion, but I think finding what's actually still making you wake up in the day to come into work and doing what you do.

And sometimes it's about cooking class. Sometimes it's starting a YouTube channel and sharing your knowledge because you're pretty badass at making sauces or if you're a baker and you're just starting to show all the tips of how to bake properly and so the like just starts something on the side that's going to start with maybe two, three hours a week. And eventually you're going to start to change this entire process and realizing that you actually can make money, especially in US, you can make money was pretty much doing anything. And so as you come to US, you're finding out that you're good at this, you take passion for it and then you just becomes that new way of you providing all this expertise, knowledge and passion to someone else.

So I think, especially now, living in the world of social media, in access to information as good as it is now, you can be seen on the platform. You just need to go out there. Right. Well, that's great advice, Frank.

And thanks so much for coming on the show. I'm excited about your book and what's coming next. What is coming next? Are you planning on writing another book or just concentrating on the company for now or?

Well, I've never on one thing only. The company has a few things in the work for 2026. I love to daydream. And so I'm always thinking of what's next.

And as far as the book, I've written the first book knowing that there will be two more after that. And the reason three is because I believe everyone loves the good trilogy. That's the first step. And then now that the book, the book that I've written, the first one is a lot about you and the work you have to do with you versus you for you.

So now the second book I'm going to I'm going to really focus on now that you have kind of a relentless growth mindset. What do you do with it when you arrive in a workplace that is completely fucked up? Like, well, how do you influence an entire workplace? How do you find the right people?

How do you make them to drink the Kool-Aid? Like, how do you actually transform a culture of a workplace because of your mindset? And so I'm really kind of thinking now out loud that the second book will be kind of the blueprint in order for you to be able to implement some of the things that has made my success and be able to transform some of the culture in the most remote and fucked up place I've worked at. Right.

Amazing. Well, we're looking forward to that and keep us posted. Obviously reach out again when the next book comes out and we'll be happy to plug it for you. Yeah.

Thanks so much for coming on the show and best of luck going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Bye bye.