Today I had the pleasure of walking in on a fascinating conversation where a restaurant owner verbally smacked around his peers behind their back.
His main point was people believe they are special and innately have the secret sauce in them that will allow them to succeed where others have failed. This gentleman was like, “whatever, I diversified, worked hard and made sure I stayed on top of my game,” with a clear implication there is no secret sauce beyond good work ethic.
No names were said, but having spoken to a couple of hundred restaurant owners I understood where he’s coming from.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned in the restaurant game is that it’s so very similar to what I hear in the music game.
For the most part these restaurateurs, like most entrepreneurs, are artists in their own right.
People like to believe their local communities are special in some way
There’s this idea that the problems faced by the underground Montreal Hip Hop scene are unique.
Turns out Montreal restaurants go through a similar hustle, only there’s a lot more money involved. At one point I vividly remember Chilla Jones describing to us on his PRPSCTVS episode the problems with the underground Boston Hip Hop scene. It felt like Chilla Jones had stolen the script from our OGs hustling to make it.
There’s this one dude over in St. Louis I’m friends with on Facebook, and half the time he posts about the underground, I forget he’s not in my city.
The reality is, in any industry with an extremely high failure rate, you get the same set of personalities involved creating the same drama.
It’s not that special anywhere.
If these problems are shared the solutions may lie elsewhere
One of the things that drives me nuts about people who focus on identifying the problems is they rarely have solutions to offer.
Thankfully we live in a world where for the most part we have access to information on how other communities handle problems. You can look into other underground Hip Hop or restaurant scenes and see what success stories you can steal ideas from. That Michael Moore movie, Where to Invade Next?, was a fascinating take on investigating interesting initiatives elsewhere with the intent of bringing them back to America.
Even if there’s a good chance most fail, the infusion of new ideas will lead to something greater.
Unfortunately very little will stop the fact that there will always be limited slots and only a few will get what they want.
The rest of it boils down to jealousy.
It’s worth remembering most “my city sucks” problems aren’t unique
Since life is a game of politics and if you want to create some meaningful change you’ll need to get support, then you need to be realistic.
Most majour cities have traffic and construction memes, even if Kevin Hart doesn’t make jokes out of all of them. Where I live in Montreal, we get off easy with relatively no traffic (despite what locals think). Most cities even have a much worse housing crisis than Montreal.
Not to say these problems don’t exist, but they exist everywhere.
I think the extra emphasis people put on it being worse in their local area, becomes a prison that keeps them from trying harder. If the system sucks, then why bother mentalities become easier to rationalize. Even if most failure stems from not being real about the landscape you play in.
The world is often much bigger than we think.
The next time you feel there’s an “insert community problem” try and see if there’s anyone who solved it.
You may end up pleasantly surprised.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone