Jon Murray Talks Changing The Hospitality Industry, People Over Profit Motto & Why Hardships Are So Important

This week on Make It To Midnight we sit down with one of the top restaurant owners in the COUNTRY. Jon Murray started as a dishwasher in AppleBees and then became one of the top employees at Indigo Road Hospitality group before taking a leap of faith and starting Noko Nashville and Kase-Noko. Jon's restaurant's are less than three years old but have already received nationwide awards including OpenTable's Top 100 restaurants. The reason I wanted to talk and learn from Jon is because I have never seen a restaurant and its staff treat people so well. However, after talking to Jon I understand it. He treats his employees better than most business owners in general and in return they treat the customers the same way. It's unique leadership that has roots in adversity, risk-taking, and faith leaning moments which ends up creating incredible fruits. I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I hope you keep on making it to midnight! 0:00 Intro 4:00 Origin of doing things differently 7:40 Travel Fund for employees 9:30 Lessons from traveling 10:30 Leaving stability for building Noko 13:40 How a DUI changed everything 15:35 Losing his dad at 16-years-old 18:30 Taking pride in his work 25:50 The feeling of never being enough 30:00 Creating Kase x Noko 34:30 Jon's unique hiring process 42:00 Biggest influences 55:00 Make It To Midnight Lessons