192: Why Passion Alone Can’t Save a Failing Business with Randy Cohen – 8FE

Have you ever thought saving a dying business might be a fun challenge—or even a legacy move?

Randy Cohen did. After building TicketCity into a $100M+ company from just $1,200, he figured reviving Z’Tejas (a beloved Tex-Mex chain in Austin) would be a way to give back and preserve something special.

It wasn’t.

In this episode, Randy opens up about what really happened when he bought the restaurant chain out of bankruptcy and tried to turn it around.

Spoiler: it didn’t work. And the reasons why are something every entrepreneur needs to hear.

Randy and I also talk about:

• What it means to be an owner vs. an operator
• How ego can wreck even the best intentions
• Why culture doesn’t stick unless you’re showing up every single day
• How COVID became the final gut punch that forced Randy to shut it all down 
• What it emotionally takes to walk away

… and so much more!

This one’s raw, real, and loaded with hard-earned wisdom—especially if you’ve ever held on to a business too long or felt the weight of trying to keep it all together.

Tune in now.

Inspiring Quotes

• “There is no true passive business ownership.” – Brad Weimert
• “Don’t open up a new store until you prove that you’re successful in the old one and you have that down.” – Randy Cohen
• “How you do anything is how you do everything.” – Randy Cohen
• “Sometimes we’re blind to things or you just think you can turn things around because you have in the past.” – Randy Cohen
• “I don’t like to lose. I’m from that old school. You work, you get paid.” – Randy Cohen

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:01 Why open a restaurant?
• 08:11 Let’s talk culture
• 13:57 Investing in a bankrupt business
• 29:03 When it’s time to sell
• 33:34 What it emotionally takes to walk away
• 38:32 The price of not running your own business
• 46:46 What’s next for Randy?
• 50:27 The Gathering of Titans
• 55:24 Advice for entrepreneurs starting out

Randy Cohen 0:00
I guess with some of the things that happened this year, I had a stop, and it was teary eyed when you’re throwing in the towel at something an old, iconic part of Austin

Speaker 2 0:11
after more than three decades in downtown Austin, a home grown restaurant chain plans to leave its original location.

Speaker 3 0:17
Z Tejas is closing its sixth street location, the location in Kyle, had its last dinner service on Sunday.

Brad Weimert 0:24
How do you handle that on a day to day basis?

Randy Cohen 0:27
It beat me down, pretty good. I didn’t even want to go in there. I was getting depressed. I don’t quit. I try to win. There’s fight in me. You show up every day in any business, even through the bad keep getting up, keep showing up. You’re not gonna win every battle, but if you win on seven, you tie on two and you lose on one. I have a feeling you’re gonna you’re gonna come way ahead at the end. That’s what life’s about. You’re showing up, giving it a shot.

Brad Weimert 1:00
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad Weimer, and as the founder at easy pay direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. I doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million, eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million. Randy Cohen, you were on beyond a million episode 36 quick recap. We covered a bunch of this, but you founded ticket city, and it was one of the, I think it was like one of the first secondary markets to sell tickets in the world. 1990 you started with 1200 bucks. You grew it to 100 million plus in revenue covid hits, and you’re selling tickets to live events covid hits, which almost destroys the company entirely before that happened. Leading up to that, you bought Z Tejas, which is this iconic Texas brand, chain of Tex Mex restaurants. And the punchline to that is pretty crazy, and so that’s kind of where we left off in the last episode. I want to talk about that. I personally have always thought the idea of having a business that was reliant on expiring goods seemed like a terrible proposition. Coming from ticket city. What made you want to open a restaurant or take over restaurants?

Randy Cohen 2:39
Yeah, now let’s think about Austin, Texas. I’ve been here since 1982 I love this city, and I saw so many restaurants just disappearing, some of the restaurants I’ve grown up with, and I just got tired of that, and I’m thinking, I don’t want to see another one go by the wayside. And I was an investor in all the Z Tay houses, and we owned, I think nine of them at the time, with my with our investment group, and it went through bankruptcy again. And I’m thinking, I look, I’ve got good culture, game ticket city has grown over the years. I can do this. I, you know, entrepreneurs, we we figure things out. And so I said, I’ll do it. And I bought all the assets to Z TEOs without having a restaurant background. And this thing was hard.

Brad Weimert 3:37
I mean, listen, the foundation that you just laid, sure, I’m sure nobody hears that and thinks, oh, set up for success, right there. That’s a weird formula.

Randy Cohen 3:45
And and I didn’t want to be the operator, so I hired an operator. And you cannot own and run restaurants if you’re not going to be in them, I think, almost in any business. And the fact that I just wanted to own a restaurant, to have a place to go and to shake hands and kiss babies and the book of good save an old brand in Austin that people love the stories that were out there about people getting engaged and proms and married there, and, you know, so many lifetime Stories, I didn’t want to see it go away, so I jumped in all in cannonball. And, you know, I fought hard, and then covid hit, and, you know, I mentally kind of almost went away. I mean, there’s no tickets to sell in the world of ticket city, people can go to the restaurants you had a separate tables every six feet. People wanted to not wear a mask, and some wanted to, they’re not wearing masks. And it was just brutal, the the yelling, the people yelling at each other, when all we’re trying to do is is. Is make them feel good and break away from the everyday mess that they’re having to deal with. We did a lot of good during covid. I mean, Z Tejas brought food to hospitals and old age facilities. And, you know, I mean, we, we made a difference. It was, it was, it felt good. But there’s only so much you can do. You can only give away so much, you know, food. You got to still be profitable. And it was impossible to be profitable. Luckily, they did have the, you know, the the give backs from the government that, you know, helped us break even what year during covid. But at the end, if you’re not operating in any business, all in full time, it’s almost impossible to win. And it went south over the last, you know, five years, pretty fast. Let

Brad Weimert 5:53
me, let me ask you a question about your perspective on that. So if you’re not operating in a business, it’s almost impossible to win. Certainly, there are business owners that, and I think there’s that, like, there’s this line somewhere between owner and investor, right? But they’re the they’re these. There’s this escalated path of operator, CEO, chairman of the board, whatever is the belief that you have to be operating in the business for long enough to get it systemized? Or do you think the restaurant business is unique in that you have to be present there forever? How do you look at that now that you’re that you’ve gone through this process of both having ticket city, which you still do, and Z test.

Randy Cohen 6:41
It’s about culture, okay, if you have, you know, Jim cons the right people on the right seats in the bus and, and, I mean, Brad, you have culture in your company, you know? I mean, I see it from the way people are walking in the door, hanging out at the water cooler, getting fun things. You make culture magical, and people wanna stay and they wanna, you know, they run through walls. They take bullets for you. And that’s what I think it was for ticket city. The average person that works at ticket city has been there 25 years. Okay, in the restaurant world, you know, you and I go to break bread together and go to a few places. And, you know, we like the places that we see the same person over and over again, the same bartender, the same, you know, food server. And you know, it makes us feel good. We are creatures of habit. And the restaurant world is very transient. It is. And in Z TEOs, I had very few people that stayed for long periods of time, maybe because they weren’t making that much money, maybe we weren’t doing enough advertising to get people in. Maybe people were tired of the same food after 40 years, you have to continue to reinvent yourself. But if an owner is not in there paying attention on a daily basis, you’re like a fish in the ocean. You got, you know, the flying fish. You got the fish trying to eat the flying fish from below. You got the the birds trying to eat the flying fish from above. And the same thing with what you talked about in the beginning. You have food spoilage. You have, you know, potentially servers and bartenders and managers taking things that might not be theirs. You know, from taking stakes home to taking cash, who knows what could be happening. And you know, before you know it, you’re just having to put more money in a business that is bleeding and hemorrhaging, and how long do you want to do that for before you want to wave the white flag

Brad Weimert 8:49
from the culture side of things? I think I’m aspiring to create that all the time, and I think that that’s a difficult thing to do for a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs, and I think a lot of the time, traditional knowledge in business is seems a little cliche, these ideas of your core values and your mission statement, and this is the stuff that’s taught in school around business. A lot of people do that in a way that comes off as inauthentic as a result of that they’re told they’re just supposed to do it. You have a very boisterous, charismatic personality. You’ve referred to yourself as the chief energizing officer in the past. How does that personality play differently in a business like ticket city, which is sort of office environment versus a restaurant, and how important is that personality driven CEO in one type of business versus the other?

Randy Cohen 9:53
You know your culture, my culture, at ticket city, showing up every day from beginning when I started. To this, you know, going back to the 90s, you’re putting in your, you know, 18 hour days there, you know, there’s no if ands or buts. You got to show up and and live and breathe it. And you do that still today. In your business, I put in my 18 hour days, you know, if I go back to the beginning of time, probably cost me my first marriage, because, you know, that’s your that’s your wife, that’s your baby, you know, when you’re trying to help that grow and run its course and be super successful. And, you know, with Z test, I don’t think I wanted to do that anymore. I did not want to go, you know, be in these restaurants for 18 hours from, you know, working with the, you know, chefs, and doing the things that you had to do yourself. So you hire somebody, and if you hire that wrong partner or person, you’re not going to win. And also, I think there’s a language barrier, you know, I don’t know Spanish, but you know Spanglish, and, you know, I get along great in Cabo. You know, if I’m gonna go catch some, you know, I

Speaker 4 11:05
would say your objectives in Cabo might be slightly different than your objectives running a restaurant. Well,

Randy Cohen 11:10
you just have to know where the margaritas and surveys are and the Banos and, you know, get your la quinta for Yeah, you know the fact that, you know, yes, I’m going saying hello to the cooks and the chefs every day and talking to them and how’s the Familia and what’s going on. I don’t know if the sincerity is really there, if they’re buying into it, even though I’m hugging them and high fiving them, living my chief energizing officer mantra, you have to be authentic if you’re authentic, humble and kind in any business, I think that helps, but it’s not the end all. You need to be tough. You need to, you know, not get walked over. You need to do the things long after the feeling of doing them leave you and starts by showing up. And I was not showing up at all these locations. Remember, it’s covid going on. Okay? What are we going to do? Am I going to go in and, you know, spend time there all day. I struggled, you know, covid. I lost my identity. You know, we’re not selling any tickets anywhere. We don’t have anybody really coming into the restaurants for a while. I mean, it hit home hard. And you know, when you are full of life zest and swagger and you have this, it’s it’s depressing. So it was tough. But look all those things pass. You know, life goes on, and before we know it, we’re in Texas, and Texas isn’t following all the same rules that the rest of the country is. I mean, it’s, it’s party on,

Speaker 4 12:51
yep, our covered was much shorter than the rest of the country’s, and it’s pretty good covid. I’m not complaining.

Brad Weimert 12:57
Yep, me either. What’s something different about the restaurant business that you didn’t see coming, diving into it,

Randy Cohen 13:06
yeah, um, gosh, it’s a business where you’re trying to make pennies, stacks of pennies. You cannot say, let’s buy these things now. These are cool, and you will worry about paying for them later. Let’s fix this thing now, repairs and maintenance when you don’t own a building. And you know, we had that old building on Sixth Street, I mean, it was getting beaten down. And if you don’t own the building yourself, you’re not putting money into it to fix it up. And this thing was going to go away in a few years. The expiration was going away. It’s gone now. So, yeah, I mean, I had to open up new stores. I decided open up one north, but don’t open up a new store until you prove that you’re successful in the old one and you have that down. Yeah. We’re big thinkers, man, we’re like, let’s go. Let’s go, l, e, t, s, G, O, it’s gonna fall into place. We, we have that lucky charm about us, and you know, it all this works out. It doesn’t. You have to be thinking Penny mindset from the moment you step in, where are you saving money? Where are you saving money from your vendors not buying beautiful, you know, cups to sell to people and shirts. No, that’s not, that’s not going to get you to where you need to be. It needs to be very, very patient. What

Brad Weimert 14:36
I heard there was because restaurants are low margin businesses and you didn’t come from necessarily that place. The lesson was you have to be much more conscious from jump about every little decision about what you’re doing and the unforeseen things. In one case, was a maintenance of a property that you don’t own, which is most common in restaurants, right? It’s uncommon for restaurants to own the real estate underneath. Restaurant, but that’s always my fun game, and I know you play in real estate too. So one of the things that I didn’t know until recently or digging into this is that you bought CT house out of bankruptcy. What is that process like? I know a couple friends that have done this before, and I’ve invested in some that have been bought out of bankruptcy and gone through that process, but I don’t know the steps

Randy Cohen 15:23
really, yeah, you know. And I had a partner that turned out to be not really a partner when you don’t know what you don’t know, and you jump in, you you trust that you know, I have good relationships and you’re gonna have each other’s backs. And my partner was out for himself, and I I ended up not doing well on this deal, but you have to go to courts. There’s so much legal jargon for a court to say, okay, you don’t have to pay any of your old vendors

Brad Weimert 15:54
to buy something out of bankruptcy. Actually, let me clarify this, because I didn’t know this. Either you were an investor in in in that are in the company, yeah? And then the company went bankrupt, and you, as an investor, said, Okay, it’s going through bankruptcy. I’m gonna buy the whole thing.

Randy Cohen 16:08
Yeah, we I was one of nine, and for there were nine restaurants at the time, and I put in a quarter million dollars to with the with the group to buy the assets of these nine locations. I think there were four in Texas and four in Arizona, and there was also a taco guild. And the taco guild was in Arizona. It was kicking butt. There’s an old church that they turned into a restaurant in Arizona was beautiful, and that was doing really well, making a bunch of money. The ones in Austin really were, couple were breaking even, a couple were losing. So what happened is, you know, they started cutting costs, and they took away the free cornbread, which, you know, everyone loves going to Z task for the cornbread. Well, you take something away that just pisses off your clientele, and they try to do cornbread for a cause. Look, we still have the cornbread, but now you have to pay $3 and you know that all goes to charity. You don’t take away free cornbread from people. And that was the beginning of the end when they did that. Then it went from nine to four restaurants, four or five restaurants, and it ended up going through bankruptcy again. So my partner took it out of bankruptcy, or put it through bankruptcy again. Took it out, and I was one of the only investors, or two of us at the end that said, I’ll do it. I’ll be in charge, and we’re going to bring this back from the depths of death, and we’re going to win. And boy, Asher did not know what I was getting into. And then covid happened pretty quick thereafter, and it was a, basically a four year battle after that, trying to figure out what to do and see what could stick. And you know, I even opened up one in Kyle, where I owned the dirt and Kyle and Kyle wanted a sit down nice restaurant, and they were all in, what can we do to bring you guys to have a nice restaurant here? We need it bad. They offered incentives, and I never was paid rent for 18 months trying to make this as the owner of the dirt out there, Z task could not afford to pay rent for that establishment, and you can’t, you know if you’re not paying rent to the owner of the building, even though I’m one in the same I had a I had to end it.

Brad Weimert 18:43
So the punch line is that, after seven years of this process, you closed the last CT ass. You murdered.

Randy Cohen 18:56
Yeah, yeah. I mean, how you do anything is how you do everything. And I, I don’t quit. I, I try to win. I There’s fight in me. I get up 10 times, and I’ve only fallen down nine times, you know, I’m getting up. And I guess with some of the things that happened this year, you know, I just turned 60, which I look very sexy. By the way, I’m feeling good, incredibly. Yeah, thank you. And you know, with with everything that happened, I just, I had a stop, and it was teary eyed when you’re when you’re throwing in the towel, that something an old, iconic part of Austin. And so I did. And let me tell you, it feels good. I’m back in what I call flow, you know, flow is, I think, where we all need to be in life. I mean, you’re talking about a river going, you know, down the waters turning. If there’s a big boulder in that river, you know that that water is hitting that boulder and a little bit out of. Flow. You take that boulder out, and Z test was my boulder. I’m back in flow, so I’m feeling pretty good. There’s still a lot to unwind when you kill a restaurant that’s, you know, two in Arizona and two here, and people are trying to get paid what they’re owed, and it’s a lot. And so, I mean, this is going to take another, I think, year to unwind, but I’m back in flow at

Brad Weimert 20:25
least. Well, I love that, and I obviously say it playfully because we’re buddies. But there are tons of things that jump out that I think are lessons that I want to learn, so I avoid some of those mistakes and certainly articulate to other people, one of them that that hit me just now was you owned the real estate underneath which, for people that don’t own a bunch of different entities and participate in different industries, this stuff can get complicated, but you so you as an individual or some entity you own, owns the real Estate totally separate entity you’re involved in. Z Tejas needs a place to build a restaurant. So you build a restaurant, but Z Tejas, that company, doesn’t have enough money to pay you, so it’s not paying rent. Now, there aren’t other situations really that exist where a restaurant could do that, unless somebody owns both the real estate and the restaurant. When I hear that, I think immediately, Whoa, that’s a scary sand trap, like i It seems like it’s an advantage as the person that owns both, because you have the ability to start something without the overhead, but it also seems like it’s a potential trap. And if the business, and this goes back to what you said before, if the business isn’t stable in the first place, don’t create another one. Don’t replicate it. And so launching that business to do that again, would you have tried to open the one in Kyle with you as the landlord, or would you do that differently?

Randy Cohen 22:05
If your business doesn’t pay, you rent. A business doesn’t pay you rent, a landlord is going to shut that down ASAP. You know, my operator made many decisions based on, okay, there’s no money in the bank. Who can I pay? Well, I have to pay payroll. I have to pay the people that are giving me the food and the alcohol I can’t afford to pay rent, and if a landlord does not pay rent, they are going to lock those doors ASAP, which I saw happen in Arizona, and then my operator had come to me and say, you know, daddy, Randy, we don’t have enough money to pay rent, and they lock the doors. Dad’s going to come to the rescue of his daughter. And, you know, make that happen and you don’t mess around, the landlords are going to shut you down. I didn’t shut ourselves down. I didn’t follow the proper rules. I should have shut it down after, you know, six months of no rent coming in. It’s not viable. We are losing more to cover all the other businesses. We are losing 100,000 or more a month, even though it’s showing that we’re maybe making money, there’s a lot of missing parts in there. So you got to be really knowledgeable about everything that’s going on. And if you’re owner and not operator, you’re going to miss a lot. And I was not paying attention. I was an absentee owner. Yeah, that was ego. I’m going, I think that was more ego. And you and I can we have egos we don’t know you’re talking about Randy. So we learn a lot, and my ego got in my way?

Brad Weimert 24:02
Well, the reflection and self awareness is definitely good. What was the and I that might answer this, these questions and or that question anyway, but there’s a every business has struggles. Every entrepreneur goes through these hiccups in different moments of discomfort or horrific loss or something on that spectrum, there is a time and a place to push through and there is a time and a place to end things and move on. When was the first indication in the Z Tejas story, where you thought, shit, maybe I should let go of this.

Randy Cohen 24:47
We have core pockets of friends. And you know, you know, when friends are telling you over and over again, you gotta, you know, throw in the towel. Or, you know, if you’re if. Uh, dating a beautiful girl that you think is your missing puzzle piece, and your friends are telling you WTF, and you don’t listen because, you know, sometimes we’re blind to things, or you just think, you know, you can turn things around, because we have in the past, you have to listen to them, and it just enough. Was enough. I mean, it was hard because I love Austin. I love a lot of the brands that are in Austin, and I really didn’t want to see it go away. And I fought hard to keep, you know, another one from biting the dust. And finally, I had a, you know, the pocketbook was getting beaten down so bad. I I just, there’s nothing left. You know, you can’t make anything out of a rock sometimes, you know, it’s just done. You gotta, you gotta squash it. It

Brad Weimert 25:57
sounds like you wouldn’t have made that choice to invest in Z te us. Had you had to do it over again? It How easy

Randy Cohen 26:05
is it for us to be Monday morning quarterbacks? Come on, all you NFL gamblers out there, you know, you didn’t see that thing coming at the very last second. You know?

Brad Weimert 26:15
Well, if you did do it again, what would you have done differently?

Randy Cohen 26:19
Okay, you gotta get the right person that’s a partner. You gotta make sure they have the experience and they have the know and wherewithal to to make things happen, and then you gotta be in there, you know, I mean, I just turned 60, and I do not want to do any more of these 18 hour days. I want to live life. I want to, I want to enjoy my new grandkid that I have and and live vicariously through my twin boys that are, you know, 31 years old, living in Austin, my daughter, who’s doing great. I want to, I want to be a cheerleader for them. I’ve had my heyday now. I still love mentoring. I still love learning and helping others and growing, but, you know, I’m not trying to take over the world anymore. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

Brad Weimert 27:17
Yeah, I think that. I mean from the outside, and I’m mostly the outside on this, because we know each other well, but I haven’t. I wasn’t watching the operations in any capacity from the outside. It sounds like when you took over all the assets, you were still behaving as an investor and not as an active participant in the business.

Randy Cohen 27:42
I was a cheerleader. I would go to Arizona. I’d stay at the W Hotel. I’d check out the restaurants which were close by, IW shake hands. I’d kiss babies. I’d meet my staff. I’d sit there at the bar. I’d have drinks. I’d buy people drinks. I was Ringling and Barnum. I was having fun. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, stand back. Non believers. Let’s go. Let’s go. Ellie TS Geo, let’s have some fun. Here are these the best catfish beignets you’ve ever had, these margaritas. I love them. And you know, I’m meeting them lovely, amazing people, but that’s what you have to do, but Barnum and Bailey, they were at the circus every day. They were, you know, building the culture with their staff. They were interacting with all the guests coming to, you know, the circus. I was in a circus with this happened today. You’re kidding me. I would hear the stories of things that went down, and I want to purge myself every day. You know, with the stories of stuff that can happen from staff to it’s just ridiculous in that kind of a business,

Brad Weimert 28:55
what do you mean?

Randy Cohen 28:58
Why people can’t show up at work? Why people said what to a customer? What you just, you know, cussed out a customer this. It’s the most ridiculous things that happen on a daily basis. You just are puking, you know, like, why are you doing this to yourself to try to make pennies, when Nvidia is making 80% margin, all you have to do is, you know, put money into your stock and watch that go up, or Bitcoin and watch that go up. You know, this is hard to make a penny. The

Brad Weimert 29:42
friends that I have that are restaurant tours that are just like, that’s their world. I can’t even imagine. Can’t even imagine. So let me ask you on the way out of that, and I want to kind of talk about handling some of these things as an entrepreneur, but on the way out of that. That you had some you explored the idea of trying to sell the businesses. What was the viability of that? And when did you say, doesn’t look like I can sell them, I’m going to have to just close them.

Randy Cohen 30:14
Yeah, there were, there are a lot of suitors that wanted to take over the assets of the leases. Your leases are, you know, worth something. And so we had people that wanted to put their own businesses in there and take over the leases. And it just got furry because, you know, other than Kyle, which I own the dirt, you had these landlords that needed to approve the new tenants coming in. And I was close, you know, several times, and I was going to get paid, you know, money to help me break even and move on. And then it just fell apart. You know, things are going on in the economy right now, a lot of restaurants aren’t doing very well. There’s a few doing well. You hear Chili’s and Darden have done pretty good with their, you know, $10 meal deals. So again, selling something for $10 in a sit down restaurant with full service. You know, it’s like, you know, the Southwest Airlines model, you can’t be the best service on an airline and, and also the cheapest, you can’t do that and, and it just wasn’t working. So I finally had to just say, Look, I’m done. You know, our lovely government allows us to do a little write off. So if ticket City is doing well and I can match the losses up against some of my gains, I’ll save a little bit, but it’s still losing a lot of money, and we don’t like to lose, you know, I’m from that old school. You work, you get paid, yeah, you know? And then, if you’re not, just don’t do it now. It was a labor of love. I was not trying to make money on this deal. I wanted to save an old brand, but I don’t want to save an old brand by having it cost me a million dollars a year. Yeah, do you know? No, I mean, I Yeah, it’s, it’s fun to go get a free Margarita at your restaurant, but that’s a million dollar Margarita, buddy.

Brad Weimert 32:24
Yeah, I think there are, there are a bunch of investments. I got this concept from a friend of mine in town. He, He gave me this phrase, coined this phrase, but he refers to investments and things like restaurants as club investments, because really, you’re only investing so you can be a part of the club,

Randy Cohen 32:41
100% and if you’re a member of a country club, and you got to put 100,000 in, and then you’re 2000 a month to be a member of that, I would think of it a little bit like that. Okay, I’m good with 2000 a month, not, you know, 100,000

Brad Weimert 32:58
a month too. And then you show up, you can be the, the investor of the restaurant and one of the owners of the restaurant, and feel cool,

Randy Cohen 33:05
yeah, you might as well just, yeah, you can do the same thing in any restaurant. You and I want to be the, you know, I know we go to Eris sometimes in town, and, yeah, you know, we might as well just, here you go. Here’s, here’s all this money. We’re we’re treated really well. They like us coming in there. That’s right for our little membership fee. That’s that’s a lot better. Yep, I like it better. Exactly.

Brad Weimert 33:29
Okay, this is the interruption where I’m supposed to take money and let somebody else advertise on the podcast, but I don’t really want to do that. So I’m going to remind you that I also own easy pay direct.com and if you’re a business that’s accepting credit cards or needs to beyond the fact that we can do a rate review to save you money, beyond the fact that we give you dedicated account reps, world class customer service, world class technology, and can actually optimize the way you accept payments online. You should understand why we have 1000s of people a year come to us off of platforms like Stripe or PayPal, and why they prefer easy pay direct. You can check us [email protected] forward slash, B, A, M, that’s epd.com forward slash bam. Four years is a long time, yeah, going through something like that, and you are a fundamentally upbeat, positive, energetic person. What is the emotional journey like when you are dragging a business along, not able to turn it around, seeing that it’s walking towards the edge of a cliff, yeah. How do you handle that on a day to day basis? It

Randy Cohen 34:45
beat me down pretty good. I didn’t even want to go in there. It’s like a relationship with your girlfriend or wife. If you’re you keep showing up and. It’s the the same old thing, you know. I mean, it’s the old sanity rule, you know. And the same thing was happened. I was getting depressed. And, you know, when you have a guy that has a personality that’s a woo, woo, rah, rah guy, it it it hits, you know, I mean, I’m not crying myself to sleep, you know, because there’s no quit in me. But I didn’t even want to go in there. I didn’t want to travel out to Arizona to see how they were doing and to support them. It was hard. And, you know, I had my operator, and my operator was not the right operator, and I kept that going way too long, way too long, and I finally demoted the operator and said, We need sales. You’re now going to be in sales. Your salary is getting cut. I’m going to find the right operator. So I brought somebody in from a background that I thought they were be successful, and they didn’t have the experience. They were too young, and they didn’t have the experience either, even though they came from a restaurant that had just been sold and did pretty well, and they were out the door within two months. So I was back to square one. Then I hired somebody else that had experience to try to one last swoop of turning this around, and then you’re starting to get sexual harassment, you know? I mean, like I said, You’re the flying fish you have, you know, employees that are, you know? I mean, who do you believe? I mean, someone asks you out to lunch or dinner, and then the that’s not appropriate. You can’t dip your wick where you know your your staff is, you know, you have to keep that separate. So that was kind of I didn’t want all the things that happen anymore. I was that flying fish, and they they were almost eating my tail, and the seagulls were jumping in and, you know, Brent and all the different things. Bills, I just said, Here you go. White flag

Brad Weimert 37:29
for clarity. You’re saying that the staff, yeah, has lots of personal relationships going on, and the sexual harassment was management versus the rest of stuff. And it

Randy Cohen 37:39
wasn’t even, you know, there was just a complaint. It wasn’t a sexual harassment. Sexual harassment. It was just, you know, a letter saying, you know, I don’t want this guy asking me out, you know, okay, it wasn’t a big deal, but I’m calling it that, because all these things can fester. And you know, one of the things early on, you know, my actual partner was dragged into a, you know, sexual harassment in the beginning of this, and he was involved in it, and it was a sham. You know, he was actually helping the insurance company. I mean, helping the girl get money from the insurance company. Whoa, and dragged me into it. And I found that out later. I mean, I’m like, there’s just, like I said, You’re the fish, and you know, they’re, they’re coming in from the top, and they’re coming in from the bottom and and you better be in it, knowing everything that’s going on. And if you don’t, you are going to get eaten alive. So there were so many things over the years that just mentally anguished me about this, you know, this whole deal, it’s not easy. You know, life isn’t easy, but at the same time, restaurants are not easy. That’s why you see them going under all the time. Yeah,

Brad Weimert 38:55
they’re tremendously low success rate with restaurants. This has been a incredibly uplifting episode

Randy Cohen 39:01
so far. Yeah, I’m sorry, we got a lot of you know, death is inevitable. Well,

Brad Weimert 39:06
that’s that death is inevitable. Yes, there’s a but the thing is, I wanted to, I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to air a lot of this stuff. Because everybody in business, and you can forget business. Like everybody in life goes through a lot of different dramatic things, handles them differently. It is an inevitability that, yes, everything dies, but also that you’re going to have challenges and struggles throughout the path. And the lessons around what to do when you see them, how to avoid them in the front end, are tremendously important. And one of the big ones that you’ve hit on a couple times is just be present for the business. And that means something different, depending on what type of business you’re in, what type of owner you are, what type of CEO you are, but you can’t abdicate responsibility. Mm. And you can’t just throw money at something and think that that’s going to return money. There is no true passive business ownership. If you want to invest and just be an investor, okay, then you are completely at the mercy of the owner operator. But if you are an owner or operator that that can’t be the solution. You have to understand the metrics, and you have to understand the business in order to see, at a minimum, the health in real time, and know how to

Randy Cohen 40:27
intervene. Well, let’s uplift this a little bit. Let’s, you know, let’s try to, you know, spin this around a little bit. Now, all businesses are going to go through ups and downs. You’re not going to just, you know, sky’s the limit and it’s hockey stick up, and your company’s doing amazing. You show up every day in any business, even through the bad and I’ll take you on a ticket city story that was during the Super Bowl in Phoenix one year. You know, the market just shot up because people that sold tickets on our site at ticket city didn’t, you know, deliver the tickets that were sold, and then there was no inventory out there, and it was a complete disaster. All right, so here you are going to the Super Bowl, and ticket City is a successful company, and and there’s no tickets available yet. They bought them from your site, because we have other people that put inventory on our site, and so we have to figure out how to make good on the these tickets. You got someone that flies out there to see their team, and there’s no inventory. So we had to call all these people before they were heading on out to to Arizona, and there’s not going to be tickets for you. What we’re going to do is give you a full refund. Give me an extra $2,000 a ticket if you want to come on out there. And tickets do become available, we’re going to get them for you. But if that’s not the case, we’re throwing them a party. And you know, it all, it all worked out, but it’s hardships right then, you know? And that’s what ticket city, I mean, you, you know, that’s a company that’s thrived over the years, but you’re going to go through some ups and downs. Ticket city backing up a few years. Had some amazing events. We had our own ticket city bowl. All right, we had, the very first year the ticket city bowl, we had Texas Tech versus Northwestern. They let me do the coin toss. Then the following year, we had Penn State, which fell down, or a bowl that was the Joe Paterno stuff that wasn’t very kind. And they ended up playing University of Houston. And I’ll never forget getting this a little upbeat. I got to have fun. They let the CEO go do the coin toss on these bowl games. So here I am out on the field. You know, I’m about to do the coin toss, and I’m thinking, Man, I can’t just do a coin toss. You’re the chief energizing officer, Randy. You need to talk to these players. And I’ll never forget, I had Penn State towering over me to the right, case Keenum in Houston towering over me to the left. And I looked at these boys, and I said, Gentlemen, victory loves preparation, and today, you all have prepared yourselves to be victorious. And I looked at the Penn State players towering over me, and I said, fellas, will you all play with the soul of a lion and give it everything you have. Can you do that for me? Boys? And they looked at me like deer in headlights, like, why am I getting a pre game coin toss speech? And then I looked at case Keenum, and I said, case, will you all play with the heart of a cougar and and do everything you can to win? And he’s like, Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I will. And you know what I did, the worst coin toss, the highest Guinness Book of World Series, coin toss in college football history. The coin wafted, I’ll never forget. It hit at Penn State player in the element, wafted about 20 yards. The referee had to chase down this coin. It was heads. That’s the only thing Penn State one all game. Houston destroyed them. After the game, I’m getting to carry this trophy onto the field. I have got case and his team looking at me, and they’re all behind case. And you know what case points to me and says, he says, heart of a cougar, baby, heart of a cougar. That kid paid attention and I got to enjoy those guys surrounding me, hopping up and down, saying, show me the money. They had a great memory for me over something that I loved. You know, being a part of college football and being a part of ticket city in my own bowl game, that’s fun. It’s not all fun in life and work,

Brad Weimert 44:42
it’s not and I like, I like the I want to go back to the Super Bowl, gone a ride. Because what I what I got out of that was, first of all, something that was out of your hands. In a lot of ways, people bought tickets and basically just defrauded the system. So the. Sold tickets on your platform and then never delivered them. So then you have people that think ticket city is responsible for this, and you are in some way. And so you’re like, shit. People are headed to the Super Bowl, and we don’t have their tickets, but they paid for them, and we’ve lost money on it. Yeah. And so instead of saying so sorry, you said hey, you can come and we’ll still try to find the tickets. We’re going to give you an extra two grand back, so we’re paying you for it, and we’re going to throw you a party. Yeah? So you double down on the situation to make the customers happy, for the sake of goodwill the brand, and in my language, doing the right thing. Yeah, whatever the fuck that means. But it is looking for the win, win for all parties. Even if it doesn’t feel good to you in the moment, you

Randy Cohen 45:42
can’t be an ostrich sticking your head in the sand. You know, you got to do the right thing long after the feeling leaves you of doing it. And you know, it might not been the right thing for every customer, but it was the right thing for me and ticket city. By you know, obviously, you know, there’s other companies that ran and just disappeared. No, you meet it head on. And that’s what life is about, meeting it head on and showing up. And we did that. We took care of everybody and gave them an extra 2000 per ticket. And people that didn’t get to go to the game, we had a place for them to go watch the game, food and drinks. And, you know, we took care of them next year if they wanted to go to the Super Bowl again. There’s, you know, no one died by not going to this game. There’s bigger problems that could happen, you know,

Brad Weimert 46:29
I mean, yes, but I think a lot of those people probably felt like they died.

Randy Cohen 46:32
There was, there was some crazy stories. Oh, my God, I had one. I had one guy, I think he sold tickets. This was a tour operator that sold tickets to a cartel, and this is the tour operator, and he was sitting there just frozen for days hoping to get his tickets, or he was telling me, I’m going to die if I don’t deliver these tickets. He sat there for days waiting for his tickets. We were able to get him his tickets. There’s no death on my shoulders. But yeah, there’s in any business, you have your horror stories, things you know you don’t win on every every battle, but the end, you know, hopefully you feel good about how you how you got there and and you win that

Brad Weimert 47:25
way. So what’s next? You’ve got ticket city has been charging for 30 plus years. That market is crazy and ever evolving, the secondary ticket market, yeah, what’s the plan for Randy Cohen moving forward?

Randy Cohen 47:43
Yeah, I mean, ticket city is still there, and very viable company doing really well things change. You know, Uber comes in, displaces taxis. You know, teams do things differently, and might not want to partner, you know, with you, as you know, the secondary market sponsor. You just keep on figuring it out. You gotta evolve. I still love what I do, so I’m continuing to be there. I’ve got amazing employees like you do that show up every day and and take care of our clients. We own a lot of inventory in in the NFL space with personal seat licenses and college football spaces, and you know US Open Tennis spaces and masters and all the events that you know we see every day on TV. I love sports. Who doesn’t love showing up and being a part of these amazing events? So I’m, I’m just continuing to, you know, stay in flow and paddle down the river nice and easy, and, you know, enjoy my journey.

Brad Weimert 48:58
Yeah. Well, you’re, you’re definitely doing that, if nothing else, in life, enjoying your journey. Yeah, and I enjoy being around you because you’re enjoying your journey, which I think is also a lesson for leadership with

Randy Cohen 49:08
people. Yeah, I have a note to talk to you about gathering of Titans. Ah, love that. What does that mean? This is pretty cool. So I’ve been in this group called gathering of Titans, and it’s the same group of 70 CEOs that have been getting together in Boston at MIT over the last 25 years. Darius, I think, is a part of that. Darius, who has an amazing podcast as well amazing CEOs,

Brad Weimert 49:38
dariusha day, who we’ve also done an episode with whose brand colors are pink, which I think is

Randy Cohen 49:43
hilarious. He’s great. He’s awesome. And you know, this group has been gathering for 25 years together, and when it’s called the gathering of Titans, we gather amazing CEOs that come and talk to us, that we learn from over the years. And I was the one. One That Got to throw this event, and it’s my world for an entire year. And let me tell you, it’s a full time job when you are bringing amazing speakers from all around the world to Boston to be a part, and they stay, the speakers stay for five days with you. You’re in classes and you’re learning and you’re growing and you’re breaking bread, and it’s amazing. So I wanted to do things a little different. This year, we had one of our founders, Rick Savio, who had passed away from pancreatic cancer, and this guy fought hard to beat pancreatic cancer during the 12 months leading up to me being in charge of it, so there was a lot of emotions coming into this. And I had flown somebody, we had a group song called, you know, the power of love is here now, and I flew her out to be a part of the group, starting us off.

Brad Weimert 51:06
Sorry, let me back up for a second. Tell me about the structure of this. So gathering, the gathering of Titans, is a group that rallies at MIT, and it sounds like somebody is appointed for the year to orchestrate, organize the next event, or what’s happening that you’re right the general framework.

Randy Cohen 51:24
So let’s back up. It started off as event called birthing of giants. And this is a program through EO that started 25 years ago, and it’s a three year program. Vern Harnish, the founder of EO, and he has a book, The Rockefeller habits, and, you know, orchestrates off some of the Jim Collins stuff. And we were in this three year program as a group 25 years ago, and our group was so passionate we wanted to keep it going. So we literally formed our own group. We couldn’t call it, you know, birthing of giants, and stay there. So we kept going, and it became the gathering of Titans, G, o, t, and we meet there, at MIT and outside of Boston, at the Endicott house every year. And it’s the same people have been gathering the same group of CEOs, and we’ve, we’ve developed these amazing friendships, and I see them all across the the world when I travel. You know, I was just with the mayor of Vancouver, who’s in our group, Brian Scudamore and Kent. You know, Cameron has talked to us from one 800 got junk is in our group. We have so many amazing heroes of business that are a part of this group and this journey together, and we’ve learned so much from one another. And it was my year to run it, and you know, I’m pretty proud of it, because it was a full time job when all the other stuff was going on, and it was just in April, so I just finished it. And you know, you’re, it’s a lot of work to prepare this thing. You have, you have a, you know, three or $400,000 budget. The speakers don’t get paid. But you know, you’re throwing an event that is just, you know, full of love and joy and and learning. You know, these are 70 lifelong learners, and it was voted best of all times. I call it boat, you know, it was, it was that humbling of an experience, you know, where I am bringing in Barnum up front, hurting the speakers, getting them in the proper order to orchestrate this amazing, learning, heartfelt moment for everybody for four days, and it was spectacular. And everything I put into this thing, it was basically my Picasso in life to give this amazing event to everybody on our journey celebrating a friend’s passing and helping us get through that and to grow closer together and to learn from the speakers. And I met with these speakers once a month, individually, on really getting the most out of them, just like you do when you’re visiting with you know the people you have on your podcast.

Brad Weimert 54:23
What role have mastermind groups or adventure trips or other entrepreneurial connections had in your growth as a business owner?

Randy Cohen 54:37
Yeah, you and I are lifelong learners. What can we learn from all these groups that can have help give back to people that we work with every day? I mean, we’re learning and transference. What we learn to our our posse and and our families and our friends. I mean, how can we help? I. Ourselves and them get 1% better every day. You know, it’s how we do anything, is how we do everything. And if we are learning and growing ourselves, our team is going to see that, and it’s that rising tides are going to raise everybody

Brad Weimert 55:13
Yeah, I definitely prioritize those events, and I struggle with it a little bit because it takes me out of my day to day environment where I know I’m directly pursuing an outcome or goal, and it feels like it’s a divergence from it, but I rationalize it, because I know that while it pulls me away momentarily, I definitely have things that I can feed back into the business or the core mission immediately, and I also know, in the long term, those relationships are of more value than anything else I could be doing, and

Randy Cohen 55:45
that’s why you do them and and they’re fun, you know? I mean, come on, that’s got to be a core value in your company. I you know, I don’t know all your core values, but I mean, come on, love what you do do. Well, keep on doing. Have fun. But you know, that’s why we’re here. It’s a it’s a short time. Let’s enjoy it. Well,

Brad Weimert 56:03
that’s a good thing to remember. Randy Cohen, what advice do you have for new entrepreneurs starting out? Keep

Randy Cohen 56:10
getting up, keep showing up, and have confidence in yourself. You know, I mean, how you do anything is how you do everything. I’ve said that several times today, and you know, go for it. You’re not going to win every battle, but if you win on seven, you tie on two and you lose on one, I have a feeling you’re going to you’re going to come way ahead at the end. And that’s what life’s about. You’re showing up, giving it a shot, if you want to give it a shot, or do you want to just always be working for somebody else? You know, there’s got to be a time learn on someone else’s dime. I don’t think you should dive into anything. You know, when I graduated from UT, I worked for Wallace Computer Services. I learned on their dime for four years, and I made a lot of mistakes. And you do things on the side, and when it’s working for you, then keep on growing and adding to it. Don’t Don’t go big without showing that you’ve proven your your wins first. And I did not follow my own advice with Z task, which we talked so much about today, I went big, and now I’m going home from that, but I’m back in flow, and I have no regrets, because I did it for the right reasons. I wanted to save an old brand that I loved in Austin, and sometimes it’s not meant to be

Brad Weimert 57:40
Randy. Love talking to you. Love hanging out, man. You have a number of books. I’m looking at the secrets of swagger, how to own your cool in life and business. Love that you have a kids book on the table, which is also awesome. Where do you want to point people?

Randy Cohen 57:57
You know, first book I ever wrote was ticket to the limit, how passion and performance can transform your life and business into an amazing adventure. Lot of information in that lot of information and secrets of swagger, how to own your cooling life and business. Those are fun books to learn and grow from. If you’re an entrepreneur, if you get one or two takeaways, they can make all the difference in the world. You know, the kids book Didi and daddy’s big night out that was for my darling daughter, and I just had fun doing these things. I mean, they’re part of giving back. And I was fortunate enough to speak in front of many groups about my wins and losses and how to give others a chance to do the same for themselves. So enjoy them. You know, they’re out there on Amazon. You can find them my they’re on Audible. You can download it on Audible and hear my sexy voice talking to you for four hours. And, you know, thank you for that plug. But, you know, I it’s just giving back. You know, right now I’m at the point where, what can I do to help out others make a difference in their world. And, you know, thank you for having me on again talking about not the upbeat woo rah rah things. I mean, this was, this was not a woo rah rah, journey when you’re offing a iconic restaurant that’s been around Austin for 40 years and Arizona. So you know, thank you for doing things a little bit different on your podcast. You know, getting the heartfelt humbleness.

Brad Weimert 59:37
Yeah? Randy, well, I appreciate you opening up and sharing the stories that people need to hear. Yeah, thank you. Good to see you, man,

Randy Cohen 59:45
love you, brother.

Brad Weimert 59:49
That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Please subscribe and most importantly, leave us a review. It takes like 30 seconds, and it makes such a big impact, it helps other people find us also. And you might not know this, you can watch over 100 episodes of beyond a million with guests like Grant Cardone, Wes Watson and Neil Patel at beyond a million.com.