High Functioning Teams with Michel Falcon

george grombacher 0:00
You. Michelle Falcon is the founder and CEO of brasa Peruvian kitchen. He is the author of People First culture. He is a keynote speaker. Welcome to the show. Michelle

Michel Falcon 0:11
George, thank you for having me. Excited to have you on. Tell

george grombacher 0:14
us a little about your personal lives, more about your work and why you do what you do.

Michel Falcon 0:20
Personally, I’ve been with my wife for eight years, Married for one. Live in New York, spend time in Toronto as well every month. Born in Edmonton, Canada, raised in Vancouver, Canada. I own restaurants, I play hockey. I have a beautiful Rottweiler named Maggie, and I am now building what I think might be my last company, because I love it so much and I can’t think of wanting to do anything else, and that is brass approving kitchen. My parents are Peruvian. I’m Canadian, Peruvian, and I’ve had a lot of joy building this company, and it was extraordinarily hard. It started in 2021 in Toronto, and I’m not certain how many listeners are aware, but outside of China, Toronto is the most locked down city in the world, so building a new restaurant brand in the middle of the pandemic was easily the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I’m here to tell you about it. So we’ve we survived it. I navigated the headwinds, and I feel like we have some tailwinds now. And I just love it. I love the business. I love the hospitality element of it. You know, the mission of the company is, is very sincere and true to me as the professional that I’ve always wanted to become. So, you know, comes with its its lashes. You know, the restaurant business is extraordinarily challenging. It’s a game of nickels and dimes, and you just hope that there’s a lot of them at the end of the month left over for you and to invest in into the company and more growth. So that’s a little bit about me, both on the personal and professional side. I am a keynote speaker as well. I love posting presentations and what a what a racket, what a luxury that I get to travel the world and get paid to speak, and it’s so humbling that anybody cares about anything that I have to say. And wrote my book in 2018 I released it on my birthday, and that was in 2018 October 16, and then October 16 of this year, 2024 I signed a new lease for another brass improving kitchen location. So every year I like to do something for my birthday as as a gift myself. And you know, as I was signing the lease this year for another brass improving kitchen location, I was like, wow, you just signed a 10 year obligation. What a What a bizarre gift to give yourself. But and then the last layer to this is something that I’m so excited about, because the community members are getting so much value, is I host a coaching community called teams by Michelle Falcon and I teach, and that’s the URL teams by Michelle falcon.com and I teach senior leaders throughout North America how to build their strongest team ever within nine weeks. And it’s just such a great collection of people like Kyle, the electrician, who oversees 40 team members, Joseph and logistics, Kimberly in dentistry, and it’s great. It’s something that really lights me up, seeing people have other wins using the strategies that I use within my business and I have in my career.

george grombacher 3:58
I love it. You’re a fortunate person to be able to do things that, that that you enjoy, and sometimes you choose to do painful things to yourself on your birthday, like sell them or sign tenure leases. But exactly, I think that that’s all awesome. So you mentioned that you’re so connected to the the mission of of the restaurant. What is it?

Speaker 1 4:18
Yeah, word for word. And I don’t have cheat sheets or anything, it’s stitched into my brain. George, word for word, it goes like this, verbatim, to build a company that the world needs more of, one where everyday people are empowered to make great money, achieve career growth and help close the income equality gap. And if I could unpack that for you, it took me one year to put that together, and not because I can’t string a couple sentences together, because I really wanted it to resonate for decades for me, not just, you know, mission statements quickly write it down. All right? We got the mission statement. Cross it off our to do list, right, and then it becomes a platitude and hollow. The reason it took me one year is because, one, I had nothing but time, because I was supposed to open brass Peruvian kitchen in 2020 so I had nothing but time to really sit and think about the company that I wanted to build, the company of my dreams, one that I would want to work for. And, you know, I would sit at Cherry Street Beach, cherry Beach, part of me in Toronto, where, when I lived there, and I would bring a note paper and a pen, and I would just kind of scribble some thoughts down, like, what Who am I trying to serve? Like, why do we even come to work? What are we about? Why do we exist? So within the company, we actually call it the Why do we exist statement, not the mission statement. And so to build a company that the world needs more of, I want to build a profitable, good hearted company, right? Where we put people first. You know, after all, I wrote the book on it. I have to lead this way. Not just have to. I want want to. It’s in my bones, one where everyday people I, you know, the Elon Musk that Jeff Bezos, the Oprah’s of the world, all respect to them, but I don’t, I don’t obsess over them, right? I really care about the everyday people that power our economies. You know, my parents are those everyday people, George. They migrated from Peru and, you know, really integrated themselves into Canadian society, and we’re key contributors, paying your taxes, raising your kids with certain values, like these are the individuals we need to prop up to make great money. We it’s not taboo to talk about money at brass Peruvian kitchen. You know, if you search my first name and last name and pay transparency, just search anywhere online, you’ll see that. About a year and a half ago, I got a lot of media about doing something that I’d always wanted to do, and I revealed the pay of every single person in our company, including myself. And I did it in a strategic way, so at any moment, George, any person on our payroll. Can access our Google Drive and look at this document and see how much does Joey make, right? And I wanted to bring that transparency to the thing that helps us secure our livelihoods. And often, companies will say we’re a transparent organization, except for this one thing. Don’t talk about that, and if you do, you’ll be punished. Okay, well, that thing helps us sleep at night, helps us pay for our bills, tuition for our children, the vacation, whatever the case might be, and you’re not punishing us. You’re fracturing the trust that we have with you and the company if we can’t talk openly about the thing that matters to us the most. Now it’s not the only thing, but compensation matters, right? Especially when you’re a high performer and trying to build a high performing culture to help and then career growth. If you go to our website, brassapprovid.com, scroll to the bottom, click the careers link there, scroll about halfway down the page, and you’ll see we share the stories of people that have graduated. So graduated means they came. This is what they did. Here’s how long they stayed in. This is where they work now, somebody like Vanessa came joined us, grew left. Now she works at a firm in downtown Toronto and orders brasa for catering, right? But then you’ll also see a section called elevated, where read the stories of the individuals who have grown within the company. There’s Natalie. Natalie joined us part time two years ago, earning $20 an hour. Today, she earns 90,000 US, and she I brought over from Toronto to New York. So that is the career growth element, along with the make great money. And then the last element to that is help close the income equality gap. I’m not going to be the person that solves this, but I’m not going to be a contributor of paying minimum wage. If you’re an organization that pays minimum wage, expect minimum effort. Fair is fair, and I don’t say this to be insulting George at all, but there’s a better way. I pay 21% more than my industry, and I have better labor percentages. It pays to pay, and I’m very This isn’t an analogy. This is real world. It. And I’ve proven it out, but there’s methods to be able to make it work. It’s not as easy as just saying, pay the most, get the most. No this strategy behind the scenes that needs to take place in regards to leadership and coaching and how you monitor on a weekly basis.

george grombacher 10:16
Well, I love everything about that and and kudos to you for spending the time on on Cherry Street or cherry beach, or whatever it was, and getting these ideas on paper, but quite another to then actually put theory into practice and to actually do it, and to publish everybody’s salaries and how much money they make. I’m sure that there was a lot of discomfort, but now that you have a little space between that discomfort and where you are today, it’s probably responsible for a lot of your success. Well,

Michel Falcon 10:47
let me speak to that. Actually, for me, there was no discomfort at all. I had, I had tunnel vision with this. I had wanted to do something like this since 2009 and I was never in the position as being the CEO and founder of a company where I hold held the majority position in the company to be able to do it. Now I will say I had some peers tell me, like, this is not the right thing to do. And I said, Well, I’m doing it anyways, and I my company doesn’t implode. Maybe you can follow along with me, because I think it’s the right thing to do. It is not the right thing to do for every company. Okay, please do not do this like this. Here’s my warning label. Tomorrow. You need to make sure that you have the right company culture built, prepared for and everybody can get prepared for it. There are some steps to it, and that’s what I teach in my coaching program with you know teams about Michelle Falcon is like, how do you get prepared to do radical things to create a workplace that has never been seen before? Maybe it’s not the pay transparency, but it may be. It’s something else that’s complimentary to that, or similar in nature, to create this experience that your team has never seen before. Immediately, engagement goes up. Once engagement goes up, so does performance. Once that happens, the customer gets a better experience. But even before then, people are selling more, customer service gets better. Your customers are buying more, and the outcome is a reward we call profit. Profit is a reward of how people, first, you can become and not just monetarily. Like George, we always think, profit money. Profit money, yes, of course. But what about the profit of having high employee retention, the profit of having customer loyalty, having a revered brand in your community, those are all profit free PR, right? Like, I got tons of free PR, 10s of 1000s of dollars of free PR, because of the people first pay transparency that the media decided, like, wow, this is story telling worthy. Those are all profit measures for me, and it’s because we built the people first culture.

george grombacher 13:05
Profit is the people first reward, or the reward of taking a people first approach. I think that’s incredible. And doing something a little radical causes engagement, which leads to growth. It makes sense when you

Michel Falcon 13:21
say it. It does in theory, right? But then how do you make it? It’s like the delicious meal the chef made for you. And be like, Oh, wow, I could never do that. Now you could, but you gotta learn the inner workings of how to do it first, which is, you know why I wrote a book saying this is how you do it and George, I am not special in any means. I don’t come with an MBA or well financed from, you know, like, I don’t really have any unique special, you know, I’m not in Mensa. I’m just like a regular person that believes that there’s a better way of doing things, and I apply myself by studying companies that have come before me, the Warby Parkers of the world, say what you will, Starbucks, Zappos, you know these, these companies, but there could also be small companies in your community that don’t have the cache of the Amazons or whatnot, study, study, study, and ask yourself, What can I learn from these companies, and how may I be able to implement similar strategies into my company? I don’t have all the money in the world to create these robust systems, so I have to think creative in a creative manner to be able to apply these strategies within my company. And that’s what anybody listening can do. Start small, gain some momentum, right? Once you gain that momentum, you’re going to have some confidence, you’re going to start seeing some results, and then you’re going to be like, What can I do next? And then it’s just all Brick Lane, brick after brick after brick. And then. Ladders up to this, these radical ideas in this, people first culture,

george grombacher 15:07
any concerns or trepidations about going from whatever number of stores you’re at today to 100 and to be able to keep this together?

Speaker 1 15:16
Yeah, three, and I think of them every single week. One financing. How are we going to afford all this? Right? I have to you know, part of my job is raising capital, sharing the story of brass, improving kitchen, and how I believe we’re going to get to 100 locations in North America and beyond. Now I daydream like, what does brass look like in China or in Japan? So that’s why I’m financing access to capital. Number two would be real estate. Every fast casual restaurant, Chipotle, Caba, sweet green, all want great real estate. Why me? Why bressa? If I can get in front of the landlord, I can bring it to the finish line. I can do a pretty good song and dance and share the vision of brass and proving kitchen and why we may be better partners than the next. I will tell you George that lease I mentioned that I signed on my birthday. I wanted it really bad when I heard that Starbucks and blank street coffee or gunning for it that, you know, it’s maybe because I’m, you know, five nine, not a very tall man, and my oldest friends tell me of Little Man Syndrome. But I just when I’m when I want something I am laser focused on. I’m like, I’m getting this and I don’t think, I think I was late for dinner because I was for my birthday dinner, because I know that I was leaving my birthday dinner because I was still working on this deal. I was like, I’m not leaving until I get this but and then here’s the third one, people, how are we going to grow a people driven business without high performers? That is my number one job. It is one A being the ambassador of the company, having high performers leave where they are to come join us and build what is the future of fast casual restaurants. And I truly believe that with grass approving kitchen is we are earning a reputation of doing right by people, meaning our team members, by our guests, by our suppliers, by our shareholders, anybody that interacts with the company but the people part. There is no bra without people and high performers. I feel confident in all three, but those are absolutely major barriers to us being able to get 200 locations at the time of recording. We have four, and then we have five and six coming in the next six months, which will bring us into 2025

george grombacher 17:53
really exciting. So gotta break a couple eggs to make an omelet. I’m reaching on this one. Michelle, certainly not everything’s gone perfectly. So can you think back to mistakes you’ve made? Oh yeah,

Speaker 1 18:09
the first one I real estate selection. This was new to me, and the excitement of growth blinded me in one circumstance within our portfolio of restaurants right now in I don’t know if I should have signed that lease. Now, this location is growing and it will perform to where we need it to be. Here’s the problem. It’s taken us a lot of effort in in retail, which I’m ultimately in. You have a decision to make, do I pay less rent to be in a neighborhood that you have to pioneer, meaning you have to let everybody know you exist. It’s not on a major street, perhaps. So on one hand, you’re like, oh, great, favorable rent. But on the other hand, you’re going to have to pound that drum, and that could be expensive or time consuming. On the other hand, pay more rent, open your doors, and people just come because the foot traffic is there. I no longer pioneer neighborhoods. I rather pay more rent and have the foot traffic right there, because I’m so confident in what I call the three Ps. So the ultimate review George at brass improvement kitchen, are the three Ps, product, people, property. We are having an internal celebration within our company and our Slack channel. If a guest like George mentions people, so if at all they leave a review saying they’re so hospitable, they’re so friendly, kind and so forth, check next to the people product. So. Having consistently flavorful meals. Now say what you will about McDonald’s, but a Big Mac is a Big Mac is a Big Mac anywhere in the world, done masterfully. How can we do that at scale? And then the third, clinically clean restaurants. George, if you visit us ever in New York or Toronto, I want you to do me a favor, pay attention to the sneeze guard. The sneeze guard is the pane of glass that protects the food between the team member and the customer. I obsess over fingerprints on it. I don’t like fingerprints on it. When I told you, know, I obsess over dust. You know, we are akin to a hospital. We cannot have filthy restaurants, right? And that might sound obvious, right? George, but how does it get done? It gets done through the engagement of the team members. They have to make it feel like it’s their own home. And we definitely spot check this through mystery shopping and many other systems and processes. But going back to kind of mistake is just the real estate selection I’ve got. I believe I’ve gotten better at it, and because I’ve studied, you know how to choose demography and paying attention to put traffic more so and whatnot. But that was one mistake, and then the second was maybe we should have grown into New York a little bit sooner than we did, because the density in New York is just phenomenal. You know, the consumerism in New York is just something that I have never paid attention to until I officially moved here and just saw the transactions happening everywhere. And if you have a good business, you will do well.

george grombacher 21:57
I appreciate you sharing those. And certainly, think we all have had the experience of walking into a space and it it being extremely clean, clinically clean and and it’s it’s refreshing, and lots of experiences where things are grimy or they’re clearly run down, there’s not a pride of ownership. It’s clear when the employees don’t care. And, you know, maybe they’re getting paid minimum wage, so they’re getting minimal they’re so they’re giving minimal effort, which makes sense,

Michel Falcon 22:26
it does, doesn’t it? That’s a fair trade off, not positive, but it’s a fair trade off between both parties. When I built our restaurants for the clinical and clean part, I told our contractors and designers I want this to somewhat feel like a jewelry store. We just happen to sell food, because with jewelry stores, the lighting is really bright and the glass is always clean, isn’t it, the floor making sure it’s clean. So I said it’s got to be akin to a jewelry store. And then if you go to any of our restaurants, feel free to ask anybody say, Hey, can I see the red light? Our food sits, you know, just like Chipotle or sweet green or any of these fast casual brands, our food sits idle for periods of time, right? And I’ve always had a concern that, if it sits idle, what’s going to happen to the product, quality of it? Well, let’s inspect it. Let’s look. You know, when a potato is dry, right? You can tell or cucumbers start oxidizing, or or some other example. So it wasn’t enough, George, for me to tell our team members, I want you to inspect the food every hour, because life happens. You’re going to forget, right? So I was thinking to myself. I was like, what? I was like, what type of process can we build? Because something I learned early in my career, people don’t fail. Processes do. So if Johnny isn’t getting it, maybe there’s a process that is missing for Johnny to have an aid to remember their duties. So I asked my contractor. I said, I would like you to the electrician. I asked the electrician, I would like you to put a dial on the wall that’s set for 60 minutes, so just one button that’s programmed for 60 minutes, and I want you to connect it to a light bulb that is not customer facing, so the customer can’t see the light bulb. Only our team members know where it is, and we’re going to install a red light bulb, a piercing red light bulb that you can escape. So every 60 minutes, automatic, 60 seconds, Pardon, pardon me, every 60 minutes, the red light bulb illuminates. That is the internal cue for one team member who is scheduled to manage the red light to go inspect the food. Go look with your eyes. If the broccoli does not look fresh, taste it. Try to salvage it or replace it. Once you’ve done your inspection, click the dial the red light goes away. Right, and in 60 minutes, we’re doing it again. People don’t feel processes too there’s a reason why our Google reviews are so high, and I promise you, George, it’s not my mom and dad leaving Google reviews with pseudo names. These are real customers, because we put a lot of effort in making sure that our team members are supported with the right processes, and whether it’s in dentistry or electrical or logistics, whoever I coach in my coaching program, it doesn’t matter what your industry is, so be it that you can buy into the fact that high performers also need some guardrails and processes to make sure that they’re able to flourish within your organization, to exceed your expectation and as a leader. George, it’s our responsibility to make sure we’re exceeding the expectation of our team so that they can go above and beyond for our customers, and then they reward us by spending more.

george grombacher 25:56
I love it well. Michelle, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they get a copy of the book people first culture? Where can they learn more about teams? Give us all of them. So

Speaker 1 26:11
here’s the unique thing about my name is I don’t think there’s another human with my name. So if you go to Google and just type my first and last name, and you’re going to find me, whether it’s LinkedIn or Instagram or my personal website. There’s teams by Michelle falcon.com we welcome visitors. If people are like want to know what this is about, you can come as a silent visitor and see what that’s all about. But church. Michelle Falcon, connect with me wherever you like to spend your time. I’m likely there, and if not just, you know, DM me and say hi. Love to meet new people, especially individuals that invest the time to listen to podcasts like yours. George to you know, help continue to refine their abilities. I love people that invest in their own growth and really take ownership over it. So we probably will get along if you’re a listener of this podcast, because I, too am an avid listener podcast and educator trying to find a competitive edge wherever I can. Amen,

george grombacher 27:15
if you enjoyed as much as I did, show Michelle your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go ahead and throw Michelle Falcon, M, I, C, H, E, L, F, A, L, C, O, N, into your favorite search engine and then learn more about everything that he’s working on what we’ve been talking about today. Pick up your copy of People First culture, check out teams, the training program, and transform your culture in nine weeks or less, and then obviously check out brasa Peruvian kitchen and keep an eye out coming to a city near you very, very soon. Thanks again, Michelle, thank you, George, until next time, remember do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.