194: How a 25-Year-Old Built a $25M Hospitality Empire from Nothing w/ Sava Lelcaj – 8FE

She didn’t have a plan. No investors. Not even a laptop.

At 25, Sava Lelcaj had 60 days to figure out her next move after losing the lease on her 10-table café. Most people would’ve played it safe. She didn’t. Instead, she convinced investors, who’d just lost money on the space, to hand her the keys to a 300-seat restaurant. And somehow, it worked.

Today, Sava runs a $25M hospitality group with multiple restaurants, guest houses, and a farm. In this episode, she talks us through what it actually looked like to scale with no roadmap, why being underestimated helped her win, and what she’s learned about leadership, mostly the hard way. 

Sava didn’t have capital, experience, or a plan. She succeeded through sheer grit and determination alone. Wanna do the same? 

Tune in and learn from the best of the best!

Inspiring Quotes

• “Every decision leads you to the next decision. It’s all a progression to the next best thing.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “There is no mistake that is not valuable.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “If we’re busy beating ourselves up, then we can’t find the lesson in the process.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “I bet on myself.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “People are the most difficult variable in business.” – Brad Weimert 
• “If you put in 80%, you’re gonna get back 80%.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “What you put in is what you get out.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “Nobody will work as hard as me to make this happen.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “Being underestimated is the biggest advantage.” – Sava Lelcaj
• “We live in a world where everything is at our fingertips. If I don’t know it, I Google it.” – Sava Lelcaj

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:51 The intersection of AI and hospitality 
• 07:17 Sava’s experience with being a female entrepreneur 
• 12:41 There are no bad decisions 
• 19:30 Sava’s sheer will and determination 
• 26:48 From a tiny cafe to a huge restaurant 
• 32:04 Holding on or letting go? 
• 37:43 Leasing vs. buying real estate 
• 41:02 Becoming a good leader
• 47:38 Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
• 53:47 Outro

Sava Lelcaj 0:00
At that time, nobody was gonna be dumb enough to give me money. He was only five years old. Had like, 500 credit no business experience. I went in there with just sheer will and fruition. I literally looked these guys in the eyes, and I was like, nobody will work as hard as me to make this happen, because I need this. It’s my only option. It’s my only out if my story can demonstrate one really valuable lesson here, is that there is not just one way. There’s a million right ways.

Brad Weimert 0:30
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. 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.

Brad Weimert 1:10
Saba Farrah, I had known you for 20 years, which is insane. You moved here as a child from Albania. You opened a little cafe with eight to 10 tables. At the age of 20 220-323-2032, years later, you convinced somebody to give you money to open a 4000 or 5000 square foot restaurant.

Sava Lelcaj 1:35
So I convinced nobody to give me money. At that time, nobody was gonna be dumb enough to give me money. Five years old. Had like, 500 credit, like no business experience that my experience was running that little cafe. So if you recall, CBS had bought our building at that time, yeah, and I had about 60 days to leave the space. And you know, that was a job for me. I just, like, sort of created myself a job. And across the street, Zanzibar had just gone out of business, so I went into the Zanzibar space and convinced the investors that were behind that restaurant to let me, you know, sort of pick up and take it where, you know,

Brad Weimert 2:18
there was the sales pitch. That was the sales pitch. Got it, yeah, so I in my head, you had gotten a loan to do it, and that

Sava Lelcaj 2:24
wasn’t the I wasn’t. I was I wasn’t. Yeah, no one was gonna lend me money. Amazing.

Brad Weimert 2:28
So a person or a table restaurant, or 10 table restaurant to hey, I want to have this massive space. Fuck it. Let’s give it a shot. You we were talking about yesterday. You had no business doing it, yeah? And you were just like, let’s roll the dice and find out not. Now today, you have tons of different places across Ann Arbor, and you’re this, you know, hospitality icon in Ann Arbor. Thank you. I’m excited to talk about, kind of the whole history of that, but one of the things that comes up routinely now is AI and in the digital space, tons of people that I talk to, have software companies or digital companies in different capacity. How does AI intersect with hospitality right now, and how’s it changing things for you?

Sava Lelcaj 3:10
Yeah, good question. Changing things for me personally, making my life quite a bit easier. Like, I’m really enjoying where we’re going with AI. And I understand that there are like, massive risks to this. But I’m old enough to remember when, like, Google came out, when people thought that was cheating. And it’s like, but don’t you wanted to go to the library and pull a card and flip through pages. It’s like, I know I don’t want to do that if I don’t have to. So you know, there’s going to be some growing pains as we, you know, really become an AI, you know, generated society, no question. And I trust that people are going to figure this stuff out. That’s not my that’s not my role in it. In terms of the hospitality industry, we’re about one of the we’re one of the industries that’s about as far removed from AI as you’re going to get, right, because our work is about personal touch. You know? It’s about how we make people feel that cannot be replaced. So, you know, I’m seeing big shifts like, let’s say downtown, where, you know, we’re seeing far fewer students come out to eat, right? Because the way that they’re spending money, the way that their social habits have changed so much, partially because of AI, partially because of covid. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of of transformation happening with the student groups. And we’re just seeing them visit restaurants less. That’s, that’s a fact. And we’re serving them through DoorDash, which is, like, amazing to me, like that. This is how they want to experience restaurants nowadays, and they’re paying a premium to do it, and that’s where we’re like, recouping some of that student business. But, you know, I think that that will be changing over over time as well. So, you know, in our work, like we are very, you know, high touch hospitality, so that’s not going to be replaced, you know, by technology ever. You. You know, you come here for experience. You come here to feel a certain way. You come here to touch the glass where, I mean, feel this glass here. I know I can see this sort of and hand etched, you know, sitting on these furs, experiencing this nature. So, you know, that can’t be replaced by technology.

Brad Weimert 5:17
Yeah, no, for sure, there’s a, I think there’s a, there’s a narrative out there that we’re going to have a resurgence of low tech human connection activities, and the younger generations are going to just want to have less technology around. I think that’s inevitable. I think I think it is too but it’s not going to disappear. And there are elements of business that change with tech and AI, one of the things in hospitality is you’ve been using stuff like this for a long time, but I would think menu analytics would be something that you would be able to that would be better now than it wasn’t that.

Sava Lelcaj 5:56
Yeah, absolutely. So the back end of you know, of like our technological systems, like, yeah, it does make running restaurants a lot more streamlined. You know, from calculating tips to handling payroll to even ordering food to analyzing data, most definitely and now, all the systems are sort of integrated with one another. We’re able to communicate with our guests in new and creative ways. You know, texting them before their reservation. You know, keeping profiles on guests so that we can really improve that, that personal touch and hospitality, yeah, like, I’m sure you have a profile. So whether you go to any one of our restaurants, Brad walks in, you know, they know whatever you’ve shared with us, if we’ve done our jobs properly, through your experiences. They know that you’re a friend of Sava, they know that you let sitting at the bar. They know that you’re an out of Towner. Whatever data we’re collecting at the table is going into our system so we can be building a profile on our guests and further personalizing the experience. And I think that’s what people are craving more than anything as we become more and more disconnected because of the advance of technology and AI and everything that’s so automatically generated right now those like those personal touch moments, just mean so much more than they ever did. Love that

Brad Weimert 7:17
I have a limited amount of female entrepreneurs on the show, and not because I don’t want to, but because statistically, there are just less of them. How has your experience of being a female entrepreneur changed from having a small 10 table restaurant with a tiny staff to having this empire in Ann

Sava Lelcaj 7:39
Arbor? Yeah. Well, thanks for asking. So first, when I first entered, you know, the business scene, I never really thought of myself as a female entrepreneur. Frankly, I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur either. So I was just a hustler. I was just working hard. I was just a hard working person trying to figure out, you know, my path in life and doing what I love, which is hospitality. And it wasn’t really until, you know, years later, when I started really understanding, as my business evolved, and, you know, the number of people working for us grew, you know, I really started embracing the leadership role. And well into that, I started understanding the difference between, you know, sort of female leaders and male leaders, and I realized the expectations that people had of me were different than the expectations they might have had, you know, in their previous experiences working for, let’s say, a male restaurant owner. And that’s right, when I started understanding, I’m like, oh, okay, so I’ve got to be, like, kind of intentional about, like, my presence, because I am a female, and there are expectations that, frankly, my employees had, that’s that’s when it was first, like, rubbed up against this. It’s sure I knew when I was walking into the bank or negotiating a lease with a landlord, I was well aware of the fact that I was, you know, of a gender that they may not be so familiar with working with, just like you don’t have many females on, you know, on your podcast, they don’t have a lot of females, you know, in their offices, either. But I had a bigger challenge to overcome, which was my age, right? So it’s like, not only was I female, I was a very, very young female, so that’s what I was more conscious of. So it just kind of blinded me to the fact that I so that those blinders, I think, really helped me out a lot. And I dealt with shit, you know, I’ve dealt with, you know, inappropriate comments. I’ve dealt with, you know, I’ve even had comments made to me like, you know, I remember I was working with a contractor the first time he told me a general contractor I still work with today. I said, Well, why didn’t that subcontractor get back to us? He’s like, do you want the honest truth? I said, Yeah. He’s like, they only play with girls. He’s like, why these guys just don’t like playing with girls? It was like, Oh, cool. They will just. The guys that like play with girls like so I just never felt bogged down by that. I never felt like I never felt like it was a limitation in if anything, and I’m aware of the I’m aware of the stigmas, I’m aware of the judgments. But I was always just like, well, then let me put me in circles where that’s embraced, where that’s celebrated, and let me when I feel like that’s not embraced and celebrated, let me just back out of that situation like I could choose any bank I want to work with. I could I could rent a space anywhere. I could pick, you know, subcontractor out of the Yellow Pages, knowing that it there are some limitations that come with being female. I was really just leaning towards like, the advantages, like, even down to like, being underestimated. Like, that’s a massive advantage, because you walk into a meeting or a negotiation and you’re being underestimated by your opponent, you already have the advantage because they’re not bringing their A game, like they’re not waking up thinking they’re gonna go into the tank with a shark, you know, they’re thinking they’re gonna go to the tank with a goldfish, and then they’re like, Oh, what’s this octopus doing in the tank? And I say in my company, the Pulpo group. Oh, okay, yeah, the pool. What that means it well, the Pulpo group. Pulpo is octopus in Spanish, and that’s kind of our spirit animal for the organization. Amazing. Yeah. So, you know, it’s like, I see, I see the look in their eyes a lot of times when I’m sitting at a table with sharks, where they’re like, the fuck, let the octopus in this day.

Brad Weimert 11:36
That’s amazing. You know, like,

Sava Lelcaj 11:39
like, I’m not going to come invite you, but you know, you know, you know much about octopus? No, well, they are very creative, they’re very cunning, they’re intuitive, they’re emotional. And then the tentacles, the power of those tentacles. I mean, each of those tentacles has something like 260 suction cups on them. So it’s just they’ve got like, eight brains, multiple hearts, like, I mean, it shows, this is a, this is one of the most like complex creatures of the sea. Do you eat them? You know, I don’t. I like some, sometimes I do, I really, sometimes I do.

Unknown Speaker 12:14
I don’t, but sometimes I do. You know, if I

Sava Lelcaj 12:17
do, if I have to eat it for, like, a tasting, I am, but I’ve gotten to the point where I just have such an affection for the aquifers that I can’t eat it anymore, like I won’t order it out

Unknown Speaker 12:29
eventually. You ever watch the I think it’s my teacher.

Sava Lelcaj 12:31
Yeah, totally wild. A wild. I mean, you know, just their their capabilities, they’re just and they’re so underestimated, and most people don’t know, you know, the power of this animal

Brad Weimert 12:41
crazy. I love that. Okay, so I want to talk history and kind of as you how you went through your journey. But before I do, what is something that at the time, you thought was a no brainer, and later you were like, Oh, fuck. Why did I do that? Like it seemed like it was a T of success in business. Absolutely, I’m doing this, and later, in retrospect, it was so clear that was not the right decision.

Sava Lelcaj 13:08
See, I have a hard time with this type of question, because even when I’m making the wrong decision, I feel like I’m making the right decision. This morning, my I was driving my kids to school, and they said something about, you know,

Unknown Speaker 13:23
like, out of champagne at 830 right? Yeah,

Sava Lelcaj 13:27
they said something about, something about bad behavior. And they’re like, well, about my bad behavior? I said, Well, I don’t remember that, because I delete my bad behaviors out of my memory right away. So maybe I’m more of a goldfish in that way than an octopus, but, you know, I really think, you know, and there are tons of those, you know, more bad decisions and good decisions, but I think every decision leads you to the next decision. And like, when it comes to, like, bad decisions or no brainers, you know, like, I’ll often think about, like, certain hires I’ve made, you know, like wanting to, like, bring somebody on the team who’s, like, the wrong person you know, or, you know, splurging on something, you know, whatever it might be splurging on, you know, these curtains in this room, or things like that. Let’s help you like, you know, like, I’ll look back at making these bad decisions, but they all lead to the next decision. So it’s like it’s all sort of a progression to the next best thing, and you’re never going to get it right. It’s never going to be done. You know, this is just all part of, like, just an evolution. I look at it that way. So it’s like those mistakes are bad decisions. To me. They’re just sort of the next step along the process. And when it comes to bad decisions and mistakes too, I think I don’t get hung up on them, because I do take the time to learn the lesson, and I’m not going to make that same mistake again. So for me, there is no mistake that is not valuable. I’ve learned something there that I’m going to take into my next you know, the next. This version of this thing,

Unknown Speaker 15:01
yeah, taking the time to learn the lesson as a good takeaway. Yeah, that

Sava Lelcaj 15:05
takes, you know, that takes a certain kind of absence of ego, right? Like, acceptance of the mistake, acceptance of the bad decision, ownership of it. And, you know, I’ve learned over the years to, like, not beat myself up about bad stuff, because if we’re busy beating ourselves up, then we can’t, like we can’t find the lesson in the fate.

Brad Weimert 15:31
How do you balance the idea of drawing motivation from beating yourself up versus having grace with yourself and not learning the lesson, which, I think, for a lot of people, drives behavior, right? Hey, I made a mistake. Fuck, I made a mistake. Okay? And it creates this pressure to create action, right? Versus like, I made the mistake.

Sava Lelcaj 15:52
Yeah, that’s never going to be me. I’m never going to be like about it. I get very calculated when I’m making when I’m making mistakes, or, you know, making, you know, bad calls. But the first thing I do, honestly, when I make a mistake, and usually when I’m making a mistake, it’s in how I react to something. But the people that are around me, like know that I have that quality, that intensity about me. But the first thing I do is I pause and I sort of give myself a moment, I’ll say that wasn’t an appropriate reaction, and then I’ll give myself a moment to, like, not beat myself up about it, because then when I beat myself up about stuff that now I’m doubling down on my bad behavior, you know, sort of recalibrate versus keeping that pressure on. And then that that continues to grow, yeah, but, but yeah, I didn’t like that reaction seeing you in like two years, yeah?

Brad Weimert 16:49
For anybody listening, yeah, listening or watching when Saba, when you came in the room, immediately you notice a broken door, and had a very visceral reaction to it, and yelled emergency to your sister pick the door was not opening. You know, it

Unknown Speaker 17:03
could have been an emergency for somebody else.

Brad Weimert 17:06
Yeah, totally. Look, you’ve got, I actually love seeing people in their working environment, because very often you see a different personality, yes, then they’re dated. Oh, oh yeah, because, yeah, I walked in raw. Gotta get shit done, right? I definitely have a people that have never seen me working or never working with me, have a different perception of me than those that work with me.

Sava Lelcaj 17:31
Yeah, I’m pretty much, like, the same sav anywhere I go, any situation I’m in, I’m just like, and plus, I’m always working. Yeah, it’s like, wherever I’m at, yeah. So you’re gonna get pretty much the same version of me, which is pretty unhinged, all the time, unhinged, but like, and see it, I keep going back to animals, but, you know, I love the cobra, because the cobra is at all times, absolutely calm and absolutely intense at all times, right? So it’s like, so that’s, that’s that balance that you asked me about earlier. It’s like, how do you balance that, like, calmness and that intensity. Because in as entrepreneurs, that intensity and that pressure and that insecurity that comes from within, you know what I mean? That’s just like, that’s a that’s a that’s a burning fire all the time. So how do you contain that fire enough where it’s like, because once that fire extinguishes, you’re out, you’re out of the game. You know, and you know how you die can vary, but you’re dying, right? So you know that fire has to keep going, that intensity has to keep going. But you know that, I think over time, those of us who find more sustainable ways to do this are introducing that sense of like calmness and that sense of like groundedness and a sense of like presence, right? So, yeah, that I’m constantly balancing those two dynamics and and how I’m just aware of it. That’s it. I’m just aware. I’ve become aware of it over the years. Like, for a long time I wasn’t aware of it, but as you become aware of it, and you don’t have to be perfect, like, I’m so far from perfect, but with my team, the way that I manage that is I’m very transparent. I’m very communicative of what my process looks like and and they know me, and they know like what they’re working with, and they know I love them. And then they can bring their whole selves to work. They could bring both parts of themselves, or all eight personalities, or whatever they’ve got going on, yeah, but that’s that’s an authentic work environment, and also one where we’re all taking ownership of what we’re bringing to the table, because we’re all bringing our junk to the table. Yeah.

Brad Weimert 19:30
I mean, there are million ways to run a business, so that’s interesting. You hear that. Let me take this back to the beginning. So when I met you, you had saw this State Street Cafe, and it was a small place up some stairs, so it was, it was like retail level, but up some stairs to the restaurant, and you signed this massive lease for a place that was four or five times the size in all your experience was just running this little, tiny CAFE.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
And almost by myself. I mean, I started by myself.

Brad Weimert 20:02
Why did you think you could do that? And second, would you do anything different today if you were redo that today, it’s popularized, like the superheroes of the world are entrepreneurs, which is crazy, right? I didn’t grow up with entrepreneur icons, but I was like, oh, I want to be like that person. Yeah, same. And today, there’s a lot more of that. It’s a lot more accepted. So there are lots of people on their journey that are like, do they take a huge jump? Do they take a little swing? Do they have a side muscle? How do they do it? And that’s kind of the place that I’m coming from with this is like, why did you think you could do that and would redo it today?

Sava Lelcaj 20:35
Yeah. So I had very little time to find a new home once I knew I had to move out of my my space, right? And and I had no resources, so I wasn’t gonna find investors. I didn’t have much money in the bank. I didn’t I was, I didn’t even own a computer to, like, put together, like a pitch deck or a business plan or anything like that. Like, I just needed to, like, find a scrappy way to move into another space, right? And this restaurant had just gone out of business across the street, which was like, we’re talking a 20 seat restaurant to a 300 seat restaurant scale, right? So this restaurant just gone out. I’m 25 years old. It was really my best option, if not my only option. So I went in there with just sheer will and fruition and convince these guys, these these, these investors that had lost tons of money in the previous restaurant entity to hand this like, 25 year old punk the keys to this restaurant. And like, I literally looked these guys in the eyes, and I was like, nobody, nobody will work as hard as me to make this happen, because I need this. It’s like, it’s my it’s my only option. It’s my only out. And I’m like, just on hard work alone, I will make this restaurant work. And they’re like, put how. You know, this is the largest restaurant down. Don’t worry about the how. And, you know, you know, how did I think it could work? It’s like, I had a file, I had a base following, so I had some proof of concept that people like my product. So it wasn’t totally a blind deal. However, you know, we’re 10x in the size. So it’s like, could I, you know, could I 10x the popularity of this restaurant? I was like, Look, if anybody could do it, why not me? I’ve always had that attitude. I’ve always had that, that that mentality. I’m like, if anybody could do a thing, why can’t I do it? What? What do they have that I don’t have education, maybe. But, like, we all have, like, education in our back pocket. If you’ve got a cell phone, like, just Google that shit. Like, what do you need to know? If you need to replace the light fixture? You need to you need to learn empathy for your team. Google the best book on empathy. Read the top three picks. You know, it’s like we live in such a world right now that everything is so accessible, so at our fingertips. And like, I was willing to work hard, I was willing to learn. I was willing to do whatever I needed to do, like, what, what didn’t I have I could get if I didn’t have it, I could get it so and I just banked on me, Brad, that was really the answer. I was just like, I just, I know what I’m capable of. I knew what I was capable of, and I bet on myself. That’s what, that’s why I that’s how I got those guys to believe in me, and that’s what helped me make it through the first few years where I was severely under equipped to run that restaurant. So I went in and then the rude awakening, which I was expecting, but certainly not to that scale. And you don’t really know what to expect. You just know it’s been hurt, yeah, and I went in knowing it was gonna hurt. And the day we opened that restaurant, we had a line at the door, because everybody’s like, I got to see this. What’s she thinking? It’s like 25 year old kid from the Bronx taking over, like, the largest, you know, footprint restaurant in in in Ann Arbor, in downtown Ann Arbor, one that was ran by, like, some of the top restaurant tours and failed. What does she think she’s got? And, you know, it took me a while to figure it out. And I mean, you were in the restaurant when I would be in there, just like, apologizing for, like, long waits and service. And I was, like, running the restaurant from the kitchen as well. Because I, like, that’s where, like, we were just getting clobbered in the kitchen because we were serving, you know, we were from serving 120 people a day to serving like 600 people a day. And I didn’t have operations in order. I didn’t have any kind of processes, like we, you know, when I walked in emergency, that was my life for like, two straight, you know, it was like screaming emergency in my head. It’s like it was rough, but we had fun, you know, and it was like I was 25 My staff was a heck of a lot younger than me, and we just worked hard and we played hard and we stuck together. I had my two little brothers working with me. I had, you know, friends and family that had come out to help me. I met those, those sort of things really help get, you know, help you get through those. Really, really hard times where, you know, we’re just working insane hours. It was, it wasn’t the doubt. I wasn’t, I was never concerned about, like, granted, like, I was like, bouncing checks at that time, and, like, couldn’t, like, finance the business. And put it like, I just knew that stuff was going to work itself out. We were just, like, building towards it. But yeah, it was just, it was really the physical part that took a toll on us, you know, because this kind of work is extremely physical. It’s very athletic work. So, you know, you’re working long hours on your feet, you know, high pressure, and then it’s like, then I’m like, done working, go out party, get home, get back to the restaurant early enough to, like, write the bills, make a payroll, order the food, get us set up for the day. It was just like, I’m glad I was 25 because I could never do that now,

Brad Weimert 25:46
yeah, I can only imagine. I often think about the absurdity of running a business that has expiring goods. Oh, and, you know, I think about the how nice my you know, every business has got its ups and downs, right? Yeah. But my digital, recurring business, my goods don’t expire. I don’t have to go get the if I don’t get new customers today, or don’t talk to anybody today, it’s fine. You don’t have to sell anything. Like, there’ll be days here where we’ve got like, a

Sava Lelcaj 26:16
$200 estate. Like, we get like six of these $200 stakes. We got three days to sell them like, you know,

Brad Weimert 26:22
that’s that’s pressure. Yeah, that’s crazy. If you’re enjoying this episode, make sure you make it to beyond a million.com. And check out the newsletter. It is a lightweight way to get the best tips, tricks and strategies from all the guests we’ve ever had, so all the big names you know, and some of the people you’ve never heard of, but have killer, killer things to teach you. Go to beyond a million.com and subscribe to the newsletter. You’re not going to be disappointed. So I want to talk expansion, because most people, when they expand, create the same concept again, somewhere else, right? Restaurant, one, restaurant two, same concept, not only in the success rate, by the way, when you do that is much higher than when you just create another concept entirely.

Sava Lelcaj 27:06
Yeah, I wouldn’t know that because I didn’t go to business school. I knew fuck all about business and it’s one of the things that kind of helped me a lot, is I’ve never had parameters. I’ve never had I’ve never had these models in my mind, like, oh, when you do this, and then the next step is you go A, B or C, like, everything’s been so organic for me because I hadn’t had those sort of, I didn’t have those models in my head.

Brad Weimert 27:30
Well, that answers the question, kind of, as to why you thought that that was a good idea. But you went, you went from this so you figure out tiny cafe to something 10 times the size, then you functionally open up a grocery store. Yeah? Why not just create another restaurant? Why do something totally different?

Sava Lelcaj 27:48
Yeah? So I gotten in the restaurant. So when I started my first restaurant, it was like, so small, low footprint. I you know, I wasn’t, I didn’t seem like a threat in the market. And then I opened that, that the real sabas, the big sabas, and I dealt with some serious, like, bullying from some of my male counterparts in the industry. And I was like, you know, 2526 I was just like, I was getting a lot of hate and a lot of bullying, and it was just like, and then just like, and I was also like, dealing with the imposter syndrome, and then I’m just getting all this hate raid as well. And, you know, just kind of like it, you know, it created this, like, self doubt naturally, right? And I didn’t have the tools I have today to, like, just like, you know, let that stuff wash right off. And the first chance I got to come up for air, I hired my first few people that were, like, gonna get me out of the kitchen. Like, I remember Armando Lopez, like his job was to get me out of the kitchen. And I hired this guy says, What do you want from me? He was like, one of the top he’s working in a restaurant. He’s working at side track, and IPS landed. Oh, nice. And he was running that kitchen, and that’s a baller kitchen as well. Like, you know, they pump out volume like Savas was. And, you know, somebody’s like, you know, if you know, if you want to get out of the kitchen, you’ve got to find and hire Armando Lopez, like, done. So I finally get Armando, and I said, Yeah, I need you to get me out of the kitchen. And he successfully did. And the first, like, gulp, I had to come up for air, like I was I was introduced to somebody that was opening a building around the corner, and they said, why don’t you do another restaurant at that Portland lost building right around the corner from song was like, why would I do a restaurant around the corner for my restaurant? Like, it just, like, makes no sense. Like, you know, again, I don’t have all these models in my head to, you know, do another concept, but I always felt like Ann Arbor was missing this, like, quaint neighborhood grocery store, just like what you experience and like what they have in a lot of major cities, you know, in a lot of major markets, these sort of restaurant grocery hybrids. So I was like, brought into this concept. They threw a bunch of money at me. They helped make it happen. And I was like, Okay, I could see this work. King, but I knew I didn’t want to do another restaurant because I really just wanted to differentiate myself in the in the food, in the restaurant scene. And I wanted to open a business now having, like, some experience from opening the Savas, but I didn’t want to do it and compete with the market that was existing for various reasons. But to be honest, you wanted to, like, a little bit of it. Now that I’m like, talking to you, it’s like, sort of hitting me. It’s like, I just didn’t want to compete with these guys that were like, truly, like, bullying me. And I want to be bullied. So it’s so funny that I even use that word. And I wasn’t, like, majorly affected by it, but I was just like, You know what? I want to do something. I want to do. I want to provide something to Ann Arbor, like another restaurant is not needed here. Slash, I don’t want to compete with these guys, and I want to do something where it’s like the expectation isn’t so clear. So I really wanted to introduce a concept that wasn’t this, or it wasn’t that. It was just sort of like this out of the box situation that was going to just be, I mean, you remember this place, I hired a, I had hired a visual designer to like design the window fronts, right? I remember that it was, it was surrounded by windows, and I put walls up in front of the windows, like an art gallery. And I hired a guy to do gallery installations in front of every window. So it’d be like, tomato sauce, and then, like, all of a sudden there’s like, this window with, like, this woman in a dress made with, you know, tomato cans and tomatoes hanging from the ceiling. Do you remember that? Yeah, totally, right. We just wanted to have fun in there, and, you know, so I didn’t want to be in any of the boxes, and I didn’t want to compete with this guy or that place or that, you know, I just like, that was like, part of me, like, really, like, one in a lot of ways, it was like a thank you. Like Ann Arbor had made me like this restaurant. Savas was so successful, and it enabled me to do another concept and like, what do they really need? They don’t really need another restaurant. They really need something awe inspiring. That’s where I went to brief ran arbor.

Brad Weimert 32:04
So that location turned into a variety of different things. Bob was closed and it rotated through a couple different concepts. How do you know when you should stick something out or when you should close it,

Sava Lelcaj 32:22
yeah. So that that one went through a lot of concepts, so that I always looked at Babos like, sort of our R D facility, you know, I was R and D ing, different concepts. I was R ding, like what we were capable of as a company. I was R and D ing products, you know, like Aventura would have never been born had we not had that meat and cheese counter at babo where we fell in love with, like, Spanish products. Oh, my God, I got introduced to the cheeses and then the wines, and I was like, Oh, the quality and value of these wines. And, like, really fell in love with just, you know, all their products, their oils, their olives, you know, they were just doing this in such a unique in a way that was very unique to me. I wasn’t familiar with Spanish products, and then all of a sudden our deli had converted it, like naturally morphed into, like, a Spanish inspired deli case. So, like, I always say, Aventura was born at the cheese counter at babo. So that was like, you know, that was really our R and D facility for so many reasons. And it was never like, we’d love to make money there, but that wasn’t, that wasn’t the sole purpose of that business. It was really to test and play and experiment and like and it was so, it was so important in our evolution. But we got to a point where, you know, we’d opened up Ventura, and we can go back to how that came about. And then this restaurant, dixboro, had come on to market, and I just had my first child, so I’m like, a brand new mom. This restaurant closes here, which is like 100 year old restaurant that we’re sitting in, like one of the most iconic restaurants in Washtenaw County goes out of business after almost 100 years. And I live right up the street from here, so I’m driving downtown with my new baby, you know, going to work every day, and this thing is just like hissing at me, Brad. It’s like people like, what did you decide to do this restaurant? Like, no, no, no. It picked me. Like, literally, it was like to all my all my properties, all my projects, all my properties. It is a mutual relationship that, like, I feel like the properties pick me and I just sort of do what I’m asked to do, that we could get. That’s a whole nother

Brad Weimert 34:35
podcast, right there. Yeah, that’s a whole nother podcast. Well, let me, let me back up so you jump to digs bro project. But I want, like, the progression is super interesting to me, because you jump to this huge location at the what is now Savas in Ann Arbor, you open up a grocery store that goes through a bunch of different iterations. And then the third thing you do is open up Aventura, which is, again, a totally new concept, yeah, with Aventura. I remember when you opened it, you took your staff to Spain to do already right to see what tapas place should be like. That seems like a fun thing to do, especially as a young entrepreneur that has money, but I always wonder about things like that relative to actual ROI. Yeah, to do it again. Do you think that things like that are necessary and important, or was it like I thought I’d give a shot, I won’t do that again.

Sava Lelcaj 35:31
There were seven of us who went to Spain for like 10 days and ate at like, over 100 restaurants, and we were tasked with, some were tasked with, you know, the beverage sites, and were tasked with food side. Some were tasked with, you know, design and architecture. And we all went, we all had our sort of, like focuses, and then we’d come back together and, like, download what we’d learned in the photos and whatnot. The restaurant was born on that trip. Like every aspect of it was born on that trip. We wrote the menu there, which our menu today is yearly, similar 13 years later, we we created the experience on that trip. And the seven of us that like, were on a trip, like, when we see each other and come together, is like, Oh brother, there’s just, like, such a bond, because we really, like we created, but when I went there, I wasn’t sure I was gonna come back with, you know, convinced that a Spanish restaurant would be where we where we would wind up. You know, we had fallen in love with the products at babo. And we’re like, you know what in a space really lent itself, you know, when, when I was in that space, and, you know, wherever tour is now, it’s like, it’s the second oldest building in Ann Arbor. Lot of brick work, a lot of stone like it just like it looked very Cavey. It just reminded me of these, sort of like, you know, wine caves, or these, you know, cellars where, you know, cheese is aged. And it just kind of gave me that vibe. And, you know, we called it a Heidi at the time. We were down in the basement one day, and we were like, What should we do with this building? Because I bought this building in like, 2011 idea, I if you know, it’s like really Spanish restaurant, like, a month later, we were in Spain to feel it out. Like, is this what we really want to do? Yeah, and that was one of the most exhilarating creative collaborations of my 20 years of business is working with this team of seven. We were so bonded, so committed, and we came back and nailed it, you know. And when I was building that restaurant, was like, we don’t need a Spanish restaurant in Ann Arbor. Who’s gonna eat a Spanish restaurant in Ann Arbor? I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. And, you know, 13 years later, it’s, it’s, really doing great things.

Brad Weimert 37:43
Still crazy. I love that story. Well, you mentioned that you bought, we’ll joke around here because you mentioned that you bought that real estate in 2011 Yeah, I know that when you obviously, you said you took over the lease of Savas, real estate is a huge part of my life. And, I mean, it’s a huge shock my time these days. How has your How does real estate fit into your world? As a restaurateur, lease first, do you think you should buy the real estate? Is there a perfect scenario? Does it depend?

Sava Lelcaj 38:15
I think it’s different for everyone. Like, there’s no perfect scenario for any type of situation in my in my in my belief, in my mind, right? So, but for me, leasing first made sense, right? And particularly leasing at a low risk lease, like that month to month lease that I walked into was perfect. And then I got into this, like longer term lease at Savas, and I’ve been in in that new building now 1617, years, but today, I would never lease. I’m in the real estate game, like, I love the restaurant part of it, but I’m in the real estate game. That’s the long game. Because, you know, really, if you think about restaurants, like, you know, as as as much as I love the hospitality game, it’s like, I love it more than anything. It’s a young man sport. And, you know, it’s changing a lot. It’s evolving a lot. And at the end of the day, like, our end game is the real estate play on these restaurants. So I would only buy at this stage of the game. And it gives me a lot of control, you know, it gives me a lot of like, it also gives me a lot of pride. Like, I love coming here early in the morning. You know, I take my shoes off. I walk this land. I’ve got on this property seven acres overall. We’ve got, like, nearly 20 acres with all of our properties combined. But I walk this land weekly, barefoot again, back to some whoo shit, and pick up the trash and, like, sort of experience the land. Because, you know, when you own this type of acreage, like you’re, you know, these trees are over 100 years old, like somebody planted the seeds to these trees, you know, and like, I take a lot of pride in taking care of the property here, taking care of the buildings, and it just gives me a lot of pride, a lot of flexibility, you. A long term play that without I don’t know how committed I you know, I feel differently about my properties that I own. I lease one, I lease sabas, and I feel very differently about the actual property, not the business.

Brad Weimert 40:16
Will you overpay on a lease for the business in the name of paying down the real estate, because you own it,

Sava Lelcaj 40:27
not really, because the way that I run my businesses in the finance I’ve built in partners at each of the restaurants, so people that have worked at the restaurants who become partners or come in as partners, I’m open to that as well. So I’ve got partners, so I lease at fair market value, because I think that’s the right thing to do, due to my partnerships in each of the Bloat patients, yeah, Hannah, don’t have a choice. I do have a choice. I could charge whatever I want, just like my landlord at Savas, he’s got a choice, and she exercises that regularly.

Brad Weimert 41:02
That’s fair, yeah, but the because you have a partner, the equitable proposition is to have fair market. That’s right, please, got it, yeah, I definitely will. I ask selfishly, because I definitely will overpay. Actually, my last two office buildings, my core company, easy pay, direct pays higher to market, uh, rent, and that’s because it’s just me, yeah, so I don’t give a fuck, yeah, you know. So, like, I may be the only one on. Pn, up, right? Exactly. So the profitability is a little bit less, for tiny bit less from the business and I own the real estate that pays it off, yeah, that that works for your model, yeah? You know, totally. But with Parkers, that’s a different proposition, yeah? Uh, okay, how has, how has your relationship with being a manager and a leader changed over time? Because, you know, you start doing everything you jump into a business that’s a restaurant that’s 10 times as big, you have to hire managers, and you’re, as you said, operating from the kitchen, and then you go to a place where you have multiple businesses, multiple properties, a bunch of partners. How does your relationship as a manager and a leader change over time?

Sava Lelcaj 42:12
Such a great question. I mean, it’s changing every day. You know, I’m learning every day, and I’m evolving that my style leadership every day. I don’t see myself as a manager. I was never a very good manager, you know, I know a lot of really good managers, I just didn’t happen to be one of them as a leader. You know, that was, that was one of the most strenuous journeys of my life, is becoming a leader that I wanted to be, right? So entrepreneurship for me was very, very natural, and in some ways, leadership was very natural, too, but I was leading in the ways that I saw leaders lead, and it wasn’t the kind of leader that I really aspired to be like when I first started, I was like, what? That’s how, that’s how I learned you got yelled at. You messed something up. You got yelled at. We’re all yelling at you. But I remember the day that I, like, recognized that I was a really shitty leader, and I was shitty at leading myself, the company, my teams, you know, and why did I feel like I was shitty? It just didn’t feel good. Like we were getting so much done. We were so successful. We were like, making money, we were opening new concept. We’re so innovative and creative. But it’s just like, my interactions weren’t feeling good. I could see that people were burning out. I was like, totally burned out. And, like, I realized, like, geez. Like, at this point, I’m like, 2829 and I’m like, you know, I’ve got a long way to go. Like, I don’t think I can keep operating this way. And I hired an executive coach, actually, to help me understand, like, what I was missing. Actually, I hired an executive coach to help me understand how to get my employees to do what I needed them to do. Like, that’s what I thought I need, that I thought they were the problem, and how do I get them to do I told them three times, you know, I was like, there’s gotta be a way that other people get their employees to listen and remember shit. You know, it’s amazing, yeah. And like, now that I haul these young leaders working for me, I’ll see signs of this. And I love what I get to call this. I like, listen, I know you might be feeling like a bad leader right now. Bed manager and I know a thing or two about bad leadership, because I used to be one. They’re like, what like we all? Are we all? You don’t, you don’t start out as a great leader. It’s just, it’s just not possible. It’s just like, you don’t start out as a great parent. Like, what do you know about parenting. The day that baby, you take that baby home, there’s no way you’re a great parent. You’re a parent who aspires to be great. You love the shit out of your baby, but like, what makes you a great parent? You have no skills. You cultivate that greatness, you cultivate that leadership, you cultivate that ability to parent properly. And you know, if the love. There, of course. So, you know, yeah, I started working with a guy, Larry Nissen, this guy, just like, saved my career, saved my life in so many ways. I tell him this all the time, because I was, like, so burned out, and I was like, there’s just, I just like, like, there were like, days like, literally didn’t want to get out of bed to, like, just like, deal with, like, all that I had created, not knowing how hard it was going to be to manage, like, the creation part is so fun, that’s what I’m addicted to. But now it’s like, how do I, like, manage all of this complexity? And like, you know, I didn’t have the systems, I didn’t have the leaders around me, I didn’t have the talent around me. I didn’t have the resources. And, like, I remember, you know, starting to work with this guy and, like, realizing, like, oh, okay, I have created a monster here. It’s like a company doing X million dollars a year, whatever we were doing at that time, 300 whatever employees, and we were just running on just sheer passion, adrenaline, etc. And, yeah, it was like, Okay, it’s like, it’s like, you’re, you’re like, got this, like, 18 wheeler with a bunch of people back and like, running some of, like, Ann Arbor is, like, most recognized brands. And you’re going like, hundreds of miles an hour. And if you can’t gain control of this, it’s like, good crash,

Brad Weimert 46:26
I can only imagine. I think people are unnecessary. People in business, unnecessarily evil, a necessary, oh, a necessary evil. Well, yeah, it’s, I mean, you’re in hospitality, so you were in the people business, yeah. And I very much, like I love my staff. I have great people on the team. Also, if I can do something without people, I’m doing Oh, yeah. People are the most difficult variable in business period. For frame of reference today, in your octopus company, how many employees are there? How many entities are there? Whatever stats you want to

Sava Lelcaj 47:02
share, yeah. So we’ve got, we got three restaurants this. This property has two concepts within it. So really, we’re four restaurant concepts. We’ve got a farm here on the property. We’ve got a guest house next door. We’ve got another guest house, actually, that two guest houses here on the property. So yeah, we’re kind of like a sprawling campus here in dicksboro, with two restaurants downtown, about 350 employees. You know, gross annual sales this year will be 22 to 25 million. I’ll say, yeah, it’s not bad.

Unknown Speaker 47:38
What advice do you have for a 25 year old entrepreneur getting going right now.

Sava Lelcaj 47:43
You know, so much of the advice I have to give these days has to do with, you know, I became one of these people. I didn’t, I didn’t come in as one of these people was taught to me. I was indoctrinated. But it’s because it’s so damn important, but managing your interior world for sure, like really knowing what’s going on, like what, what thoughts are driving you, what beliefs are driving you, what habits are driving you. Wellness of all kind, mind, body, spirit, you know, if you, if you really want to play the long game, you’ve got to find ways to to manage, you know, and to invest in mind, body, spirit, daily. That’s what’s been really important for me. And when I look at the leaders around me that are really thriving, like, that’s what they’re doing. Like, if you really love what you do, like, don’t look at the time. Don’t look at what day it is. Like, this how we started this podcast. We like we doesn’t matter to us. Like, what day or time it is or what continent we’re on, the shit just goes and like and like, fall in love with what you’re doing so much that it doesn’t matter. You’re not waiting for the weekend. You’re not treading a Monday. It’s like, you know, fall in love with with your work, follow up with your process. And like, in the hard work. And it really is a hard work that gets you there, but it’s, I see people struggling when they’re coming in, you know, putting in 80% you put in 80% this what you’re gonna get back 80% you know, no matter what you’re doing. And I had the same energy, the same drive, the same passion, when I was waiting tables in Coney, bulletproof Coney Islands in Detroit. Like, that’s where I started. It’s like I was giving that shit 100% you know what? I got back 100% so it’s like, what you put in is what you get out in life, in business. And I just see too many people not going all in on their lives, and then they’re living these like, very, you know, underwhelming based on what they were expecting. But it’s like, what are you putting in? And I just think hard work wins every time. That’s how I got in the game. That’s how I’ve survived. That’s, that’s, that’s how we continue to thrive, that’s how we continue to evolve. It’s just like you got to work hard and like and smart and take care of yourself in the process whatever you’re doing, and then and then realizing that there is no one way like, I think if my story. We can demonstrate, like, one, like, really, really valuable lesson here is that there is not just one way. Like, we think it’s got to be like this, or it should be like this, or, Oh, I heard it won’t work if you do this. Do what feels right to you, you know, and stick to and commit with commit in that, you know, it’s like, versus thinking there is a right way. You know, what I say is like, it’s like, there’s a million right ways. My the right way for me is my right way, the right way for but my right way is not your right way. You know, it’s just like you’ve got to find your right way. And you find that through knowing who the fuck you actually are, you know? And it’s like, then to be like, oh, what does that mean? Google it like, you know, knowing yourself truly, and being able to look at yourself, you know, being able to, like, really look at yourself and and ask yourself, what are those thoughts and beliefs that drive and motivate me? And is that okay with me? And if you’re good with it, then you’re, yeah, that’s then keep going that way. If you’re because, you know, there’s no right way to think, there’s no right way to be, there’s just your right way finding out what that is and and I think when you when you’re living life in alignment with who you really are, that’s when things happen with ease and naturally. And you’re not just like, you know, you can work hard, but you’re not, like, pushing against you’re not efforting like, you’re just, you know, it’s, it’s that feel good work hard versus, you see people who are like, working hard, it’s just like, oh man, you’re just, like, going against the grain there, brother, you know, like, so, you know, that’s, that’s, really, is just like, it’s just operating your own Personal operating system. Just like we had to build operating systems for our businesses, we had to build operating systems for our lives and who we are, how we want to conduct the business of yourself.

Brad Weimert 51:53
It seems cliche coming up in sales, sure, but you still hear the message all the time, and you hear it more from established adults, that it’s your mindset, it’s it’s the program that you’re running internally that is where success comes from. And it seems they’re a cliche as a brand new entrepreneur or a young person, right? But the reality is, it’s true, and the way you figure it out is by fucking working, because you do reps, and through the one rep, two rep, 10 reps, 100 reps, 1000 100,000

Sava Lelcaj 52:27
reps, yeah, that’s how you figure that out. And if you can, and by working, and then if you can, work in proximity to high achievers, that’s the accelerate that’s the super duper accelerant, right? Because you could be working hard around, you know, people who haven’t figured it out that’s gonna get you. It’s gonna reps are good, right? But it’s a lot tougher. So I would go and be a personal assistant, like my tie tie, you know, or, you know, running coffees or dry cleaning, or be the mail person at the office of the highest performing person that I could get around. And you just it’s proximity to high performers and watching that, they just do it a little differently. It’s those small nuances that you want to pick up on. Or, Hey, if you can’t get the job, get the YouTube video, get the book. You know, there’s we are so well resourced, we’re drowning in inspiration right now. Instagram, Tiktok, wherever you get your your your information, like find the people that inspire you, that you can learn from

Brad Weimert 53:38
beautiful where can people find out more about you.

Sava Lelcaj 53:41
Well, thepool group.com is my website where we’ve got all of like our company information.

Brad Weimert 53:47
Well, I appreciate you coming outside. Thank you. Yeah, awesome. All right, that’s a wrap for this episode. I’m supposed to tell you that you should subscribe to the show and you should leave a review. I really want you to leave a review, though, because it makes like, a radical difference in the algorithm and getting other people to be able to see the show. So can you please go loop a review? It’ll take you, like 30 seconds. Also, if you want more episodes that are amazing, you can check out the full length video versions at beyond a million.com, or youtube.com. Forward slash at beyond a million. You won’t regret it.