Eddy "Chinese Tuxedo" Buckingham

Eddy: Wait a minute!

Tommy: Crossface!

Eddy: The Daily Talk Show. A conversation sometimes worth recording with Josh Janson and Tommy Jack.

Josh: Daily Talk Show live from New York City. This is our final episode in New York.

Tommy: Yeah, from the Big Smoke. This place is forever pumping. And we've got another Aussie joining us today.

Josh: Chief Pumper.

Eddy: I'll take that.

Tommy: That could be taken wrongly. Eddie Buckingham.

Eddy: Hello, gents. Very happy to be here.

Tommy: Mate, thank you so much for coming on. This is— I love—

Eddy: You guys did the hard work. You've come all the way to New York. You're here in Chinatown, my neighborhood.

Tommy: And you gave us some amazing hospitality at your bar that you have here in Chinatown.

Eddy: Yeah, thank you for coming through.

Tommy: Mate, our mutual friend Benny Squires.

Eddy: Very good man.

Tommy: I was training with him at the gym and I told him that I was coming over here.

Josh: I missed gym that day.

Tommy: Yeah, and the other 3 months before.

Eddy: And so Benny was pushing massive stacks, I know, 'cause I was there with him before. So that's good to hear nothing's changed.

Tommy: I asked him, who should we get on in New York City? And he said, my mate Eddie, he's your man.

Eddy: Fantastic.

Josh: He's the chief pumper.

Eddy: He definitely didn't say that.

Tommy: That was Benny that day, he was pumping some iron.

Josh: Can you explain where are we in New York City?

Eddy: So right now it's late on a Wednesday night. What is it? It's about just after 9 PM. We're down in Chinatown, which for those, anybody who knows Manhattan geography, it's kind of in the heart of downtown Manhattan, but it's a really unusual and special neighborhood. You guys have been here the last few days and I know you've seen a lot of the city, but like Manhattan is such a dynamic and vital place with so much going on, but Chinatown exists is, although it's smack bang in the heart of the lower portion of the island, it's a little bit different to the rest. It's really a true Chinatown, developed kind of mid-19th century, and for a long time it was kind of caught in time. As the rest of the city gentrified and developed and changed, it was stuck in its own little time warp for a long time. And what that means is it's created this remarkable and unique neighborhood. We're really close to the financial district, side of the former World Trade Center, and we've got Tribeca just to the west, Lower East Side and SoHo above us and to the east. But so it's a little pocket, it's only about, the official old-school Chinatown is only about 8 blocks by 6 blocks. So it's tiny. I'm trying to think of an Australian equivalency, you know, it'd be smaller than, about the size of a mid-sized park in Australia. But you have tens of thousands of people who live here. And the last few years it's undergone a bit of a change. So for a long time it was really dominated by Chinese migration. But probably the last 10, 15 years, the bulk of new migrants to the East Coast aren't actually settling here in Chinatown. They're going out to the outer boroughs, areas like Flushing, you might have heard of, downtown Brooklyn. And so Chinatown a long way behind the other neighbourhoods is starting to have this bit of an evolution and undergoing some pretty interesting change. I personally live in this neighborhood. I've been in New York 9 years now and I've lived in a bunch of different neighbourhoods downtown, but this was one that I think growing up Australian as well, you know, we have such great Chinatowns in Melbourne and Sydney. This one really caught my imagination and it's a bit unlike anywhere else. It's a very special place.

Tommy: Mate, I tell you what, I felt like I was on a bus tour in New York with the best bus guide. Yeah, this is legit. Giving us the tour.

Eddy: Yeah, exactly.

Tommy: I don't need to come back.

Eddy: Some history, some geography.

Tommy: You launched Chinese Tuxedo with your business partner in 2016?

Josh: Yes, yes.

Eddy: So I, you guys were just there, I have a restaurant which we opened a couple of years ago in the heart of old Chinatown on a street called Doyers Street.

Tommy: I'm just gonna say I had a heart attack because I was out the front waiting for you and Post Malone was there.

Josh: Tommy was very, I didn't know who Post Malone is because I'm the official dork of the show, but Tommy lost his mind. And can I say for the first time first time pulled out his phone for a selfie.

Eddy: I never— I'd be cool, man. Be cool. Don't embarrass me in front of my friend Post. If you were there, I wouldn't have.

Josh: Is Post his first name?

Eddy: Um, no, he got his name. I don't know his real name, but he punched his name into a, uh, random hip-hop name generator online and it came up with Post Malone. And it was like, can't do better than that.

Josh: We need to actually get on our Reddit, we'll put that generator. Yeah, because I want to know what my rap name would be. We know yours is going to be Cheap Pumper, but we don't So 2016, you rock up.

Eddy: So a couple of years ago, well, it was actually a long way before 2016. I first kind of said, yeah, we're gonna do this back in 2014. And it took nearly 2 and a half years to bring to life. So what had happened is I opened a bar in Midtown years ago, 2011. And my background was more in bars, nightclubs, music venues and the like. And I opened that bar for a few years and then I wanted to do something a bit different. Pivot a little bit. And the general contractor who built my bar in Midtown was Chinese American. He migrated, actually he migrated to Chinatown back in the '70s from Fuzhou in southern China. And he and I, I really missed the great Chinese food that we were spoiled with, that we're spoiled with in Australia. And so, 'cause I hadn't found anywhere that I really liked. And so I spoke to Jeff and I was like, can you take me to some of the places that you like to go to? And I can see, you know, some places maybe I wouldn't have accessed myself. And so we got into a bit of a ritual of just hitting everything from like the dim sum places for lunch to the Cantonese places for dinner. And there are some great restaurants here, but they're not, I think typically not really of the standard of some of the great restaurants that you get in Sydney and Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, more broadly Shanghai. And we're out to, we're actually having lunch at a dim sum place just around the corner from where we are now. It's called Golden Unicorn. Which I wish I had thought of that name first. It's my favourite name for a restaurant ever. And we're having lunch at Golden Unicorn, which is— it's what they called dim sum here, we call yum cha back in Australia. And so we're basically having yum cha, picking, you know, dumplings off the carts and the like. And I said, you know, it's a shame that Chinatown doesn't have a restaurant that can stand up with, you know, the great French restaurants or the great Italian restaurants in this city, the great contemporary American 'cause this is an amazing food town. But Chinese to New Yorkers was really that kind of cheap and cheerful, you know, Sunday night takeout noodle box kind of vibe. Which don't get me wrong, I love. A good example of that is awesome. But it wasn't beautiful dining rooms with top flight service and interesting crowds and the like. So over lunch in 2014, Jeff and I were like, well, let's, why don't we do it? I said, "Yeah, we'll do it." And so that was kind of how it was born. Now, it was a great idea over lunch. 2 and a half years later, we actually finally opened the doors to it. So we had some challenges and false starts, but the thing that made the project had such a long gestation period was the space that we found. So it was originally a theater. It was an opera house. So it was the Chinatown Opera House, the first Chinese language theatre on the East Coast of the USA, built in in the middle 18th century, but over the years it had lots of different uses. So when we took it, it was like a small mall, a bunch of different suites. It was like a fashion boutique at the front, then like a travel agent, an acupuncture office, an accountant, stuff like that. There was a legal mahjong room at the back, but it was really narrow corridors, really low ceilings. The room now has this big scale 'cause we basically demoed and took everything out. And that was a really exciting couple of weeks as we're doing doing the demo and we're discovering things, you know, that have been covered up for over 100 years and things like uncovering the decorative columns from the mid-19th century, the original wall details and stuff. So it was doing the demo and bringing it down. We were like, well, this, we can't do any better than this. So we tried to retain as many of those historical elements as possible. So that's really part of what makes the magic of the restaurant. But it also meant it was 2 years to build, which was a long 2 years.

Tommy: Oh, that would do my head in.

Josh: Well, fit out seemed to be, I mean, I did like a tiny fit out of an office and it was literally, when I say fit out, we painted a room and it was—

Eddy: So we're speaking the same language.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. And it was enough to drive me crazy.

Eddy: And we also had to figure out a system to feed 300 people a night as well.

Josh: I can't even grasp what that takes. Like, what do you start with on a fit out like that? Like, what's the first like thing that you demolish? How do you approach it?

Eddy: Well, I'm lucky, as I mentioned, Geoff, my business partner, is a very experienced very capable general contractor. So I don't want to give myself too much or any credit on this matter. He made some real magic happen.

Tommy: Did you pick up a sledgehammer?

Eddy: Oh, of course I did.

Josh: Amazing.

Eddy: You did a lot. That's the best part though.

Josh: Got the Insta storey and then just put it down and hit it.

Eddy: I'm embarrassed we're laughing, but that literally happened. I can show you the photo. This is before stories. This is way back in the day. I can show you the post though. But so, so we draw up plans. So obviously, to file everything with the Department of Buildings. So I sit down with the draughts person who does it all in AutoCAD. And at that stage, it's a bit of a theoretical exercise. Like, you have a vision or a plan or whatnot, but it's a long evolution from there. Geoff and I designed the spaces we do ourselves. We don't use a design firm. So we don't use, we don't have like fully realised renders and everything, which means it's an exercise in trial and error to a degree, but it kind of, it's an evolution. It comes to life over time. And I love that process. It's a really exciting process.

Tommy: Do you like, I always think about 5-year plans or thinking projecting in the restaurant business. That's hard to do. 'Cause if you don't get people in the door. I just hope it's still open in 5 years. Oh yeah, well if you don't get people in the door, you're not getting paid. Yeah. So how do you approach that?

Eddy: Well, it's definitely a week-to-week proposition for us. We just do a dinner service. We don't do lunch because like our neighbourhood and the size of our dining room, we feel a lunch service wouldn't really work.

Josh: And fasting anyway, who eats lunch now, right?

Eddy: That's right, that's right. But so we're only closed, what is it, 3, 4 days a year. We're open 365 days a year. We close on New Year's Day, Thanksgiving over here, the Fourth of July, and then Labor Day, which is another holiday over here. I earmark that day for my annual kind of team outing. I do something with the team every year. So that's why we close then, but we're open on Christmas, we're open through all the other kind of holidays of the year. And it's in part because you have to. You know, the rent doesn't change every month, the payroll still has to run every week. And so, you're really only as good as your last dinner service in some ways. Obviously you come to market with working capital and you know, you're operating income in time should get stronger and you get a bit more comfortable. Life's a lot better now going into year 3 than you're that first year. It's a little bit less stress-inducing and we were lucky. You know, we had some wins, a great New York Times review early, soon after our open. Things like that help. We've been well reviewed and we're busy, which is great. But, you know, there's seasonality to it. Our restaurant is in a basement with no windows. So, in the fall, like right now, or in the winter, things are super strong. But in the summer, here it doesn't get dark till like 9 PM, 9:30 in the summertime. And people want to be in the rooftops and the outdoor cafes and garden restaurants and the like rather than in a basement. So, you have to manage your payroll, your purchasing, your inventory, inventory all in mind to that. But that's why they call it work, you know, that's why it's a job.

Josh: You mentioned payroll. I feel like you're in the perfect position to explain to us as Australians tipping. Oh yeah, you're good. What's the deal? Is it something that should be embraced in the sense of like, we know that we have to do it, but do you think—

Eddy: Well, in the States you have to.

Josh: Yeah, you have to do it.

Eddy: You have to, and I can't stress this enough. Otherwise you're an asshole. If you come to, the US, or if you're dining in the US, consider the tip as part of your bottom line expense.

Josh: Yeah.

Eddy: You know, if you're buying a $100 dinner, it's $120. And if you can't afford the $120, you can't afford the $100 dinner. That needs to be the mindset.

Josh: This is what I'm confused about because in a—

Eddy: I get that. I will say this though, it's a damn shame because it is a broken labour model here in the United States. And it's difficult as a small business operator I would love if it wasn't the case. It hurts my heart, the income disparity between my front of house and my back of house, because by law I'm not permitted to cut kitchen staff or non-client-facing staff into the tip pool. If I do, I'm liable to a lawsuit.

Josh: So back of house, people in the kitchen are making less, are they?

Eddy: Or— Drastically less.

Josh: Really?

Eddy: Drastically less. And you can't pay them So we pay above the award rate in every department at Tuxedo. Here, the minimum wage for our tipped staff members, that's our front of house staff members, in New York right now till the end of this year is $8. We pay $9 an hour, but we also have a tip pool across the board, and our front of house team do well, very well.

Josh: Tip pool meaning if we give a tip to an individual Does that then go into a group pool that then is shared?

Eddy: It does. It does. So, so every restaurant is different. Some, some places the server who directly services your table will take the entirety of the tip and discretionary tip out their support staff and the like. That's a very old-school model, but you'd find most of the quality restaurants opening in New York now, there's a movement to do tipping included restaurants, tip-inclusive restaurants, but the non-tipped restaurants would typically be in a tip pool. So everybody's tips go into one pot and then pending the number of hours that you worked and your role, hence your tip cut, you'll be tipped out based on that. It's unnecessarily complex. It's not equitable. It's a constant thorn in my side because I'm really lucky. I have an amazing team, a really, really good team, and I feel like we have a great culture. But everybody remembers the night that they feel the tip pool broke bad for them. They remember the night where they had a big whale in who dropped a massive tip and they look at the paycheck at the end of the shift or the end of the week and it doesn't quite reflect that. But nobody ever remembers the night when you did great. Like when your colleagues kind of carried you. So it's not such an issue for us because also we're a busy restaurant. Our guys are doing well.

Tommy: Yeah.

Eddy: But then the minimum wage here in New York at the moment for non-tip dip staff, it's currently $13, it's going to $15 on the 1st of January. You know, there's a huge disparity between what my front of house guys and what my back of house guys will make in those entry-level positions. But like I said, by law, I'm not allowed to mess with the tip pool.

Tommy: Yeah, so we're 3 years in. Into the third year of this business.

Eddy: And birthday's next month. Yeah, so it's coming.

Tommy: Awesome. Uh, you— it's a, it's a Wednesday night. Sorry, my voice is going. And you've been generous enough to give us your time. There would have been a point in this business I could imagine you are on the ground for hours and hours a day, do— just doing your craft because you're a mixologist, or you've You've worked as a—

Eddy: As I mentioned, I come from more of a booze background, more of a liquor background than a food background.

Tommy: So do I, but it has nothing to do with our business model.

Eddy: So there's professional and personal interest.

Josh: As a mixologist, is that like calling us a video— like, I hate when people call me a videographer. It's because it's, you know, like I do video production. I like this. I'm not quite a filmmaker because I don't have enough runs on the board to call myself like— it feels like it's a bit Hollywood. But is it mixologist from a re— we talk a lot about rebrands, personal rebrands.

Eddy: Yeah.

Josh: What's that? What does that mean to you?

Eddy: Well, there was that kind of culinary boom going back late '90s, early 2000s and the rise and rise of the celebrity chef or the personality chef. And I think the mixologist tag was in some ways the booze world kind of glomming onto that going where barman won't cut it or bar person, barman, barwoman. I want to, you know, elevate the title a little bit.

Josh: Add some fire.

Eddy: I don't personally identify as a mixologist.

Tommy: It was also followed by—

Eddy: I like to make drinks.

Tommy: To Justin Timberlake.

Eddy: That was a job.

Tommy: So you were JT's mixologist.

Josh: That was a job.

Eddy: Yeah, for a couple of years.

Tommy: I told Josh this and there was some confusion.

Josh: I thought a mixologist, I thought you were a DJ or something, right? Justin Timberlake, you were—

Eddy: That would be much, much cooler.

Tommy: What happened with JT? How the hell did you How does that happen?

Eddy: Yeah, so I worked with them for a couple of years. Actually, that period I was speaking to before when we were building Tuxedo, that was how I was paying my rent. I was spending all the money I had on the development and needed something to kind of keep body and soul together. So yeah, as mentioned, I had a bar previously in Manhattan and you meet all kinds of people from all walks of life in New York nightlife. And I was doing a little bit of work with a liquor group, a big liquor group company, Suntory Beam. So that's the, it's now Japanese owned, but you know, who own the whole Jim Beam portfolio, those sorts of things. And they'd been on me for a while. They said, do you wanna come on board and help us with some of our recipes and some of, you know, maybe a brand ambassador spot or something like that. And while I own the Liberty, I never really had the time to go in and give it the attention it required. But after selling my stake in the Liberty developing Tuxedo, I just had a bit more bandwidth to do it. So I got more involved with those guys. And at about that time, the Beam Group and Timberlake kind of had a co-branded tequila called 901 Tequila. 901's the area code of Memphis, which is Justin's hometown. And it was a tequila that he was developing out of Jalisco, Mexico. And you know, here in the States, every celebrity has a liquor brand now. And so I helped them with their cocktail recipe book and did a few events and the like with them. And then met Justin, we did some events together out in LA initially. And he's a lovely guy, lovely guy. Like anybody who wants some celebrity gossip or muckraker, I don't have any. The guy is a massive talent. Like you just put a microphone in his hand and whether it's singing or just engaging an audience, is an absolute natural.

Tommy: It's actually really annoying, to be honest.

Eddy: I remember we did a conference in Vegas once and there's a crowd of about 3,000 people. I'm not gonna lie to you guys, I was nervous, like nervous as all hell.

Josh: What's the context of a mixologist in a conference with Justin Tim Blake? What is— can you paint the picture?

Eddy: I think I signed an NDA about all this. I'm not sure. I just realised now.

Josh: There's a few thousand Tell us the public view of it.

Eddy: There's nothing that compelling or interesting. But so it's an internal kind of brand conference.

Josh: Okay.

Eddy: They bring all their salespeople and internal strategy people together and whatnot, and they'll speak to new major initiatives happening within the company. 901 was a new brand. Obviously they had, you know, a really exciting partnership in that. Not me, I wasn't excited about this. It was definitely Justin. And so we were speaking to them, me to speak about the product and the like, and then Justin to kind of excite and enthuse the labour force for them. So for me, I'm a long way outside my comfort zone in a context like this. And we're backstage and he comes up to me and he's like, "You're nervous, ain't you, buddy? Ain't you, buddy?" I can't do an American accent. I've been here 9 years, I should be able to, but I can't. And I was like, yeah, man, I'm not going to lie. I really am. And he's like, it's cool. Don't worry. I'm really good at this. And he's like, you are too. You are too. I'm like, thanks, man.

Josh: Did you have like a Madonna mic on or something like that? I did.

Eddy: Yeah, I did. I did. I had a head mic.

Josh: Yeah.

Eddy: And he prefers a handheld.

Josh: Okay.

Eddy: So he had a handheld. And then after that, I only go do handhelds now. I think it's much cooler. I'm like, whatever Justin does, I'll do. You got set up. But it was a fun gig. We went to some cool places.

Tommy: Jimmy Fallon.

Eddy: Lots of golf courses. Did The Tonight Show, which I was less nervous about actually. Yeah. Having done those a few times with him. He said something, he was like, and it's actually a principle I try to take into work now, where he was like, everybody out there is on your side. Best case scenario in this is for this to go great. Like, and that's a good principle. So often I think if we're harbouring anxiety anxiety about something in our work life or anything for that matter, or just when there's a, you know, when we're presenting of ourselves to a group of people, invariably 99 times in 100, yeah, there are haters out there and whatnot. But I think people want what's best for one another. And it's a great result, you know, to let people shine. So I think about that in the context of other people doing things, just get around them, support, pay it forward, do what you can to help and support them to do cool stuff. And also in things I'm doing where I go, oh, this feels risky, or is this a good idea? Is this a bad one? Well, just have a crack, have a dip.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Tommy, this reminds me of what we were talking to Seth Godin about, the tall poppy syndrome. As an Australian spending the last 9+ years in the States, is tall poppy, is this just an imaginary thing that we've created? Do we need to move away from even talking about it, do you think?

Eddy: As an Aussie principal, you mean?

Josh: Yeah.

Eddy: Or I think there is a bit of a tendency in Australia, and Australia has an expectation to have a degree of humility, which I think is healthy to a degree. But at the same time, I think when people are doing cool shit, get around them. Yeah. I look at some instances with like Australian athletes and stuff and this culture of Oh, it's a credit to the boys and all of that. I remember, this is years ago and this is gonna be an obtuse Australian football reference. I remember Myler Carr who played for the West Coast Eagles. He's a small forward, still plays for them. Kicked 12 goals. 12 goals for a small forward in contemporary football is unbelievable. I hope some of you listeners like the footy haven't turned off the dial. And I remember like I went on AFL.com and I'm looking at it online and I look at the post-match interview And the journalist who's interviewing him is like, "Well done, Mark," whatever. And he goes, "Oh, it's a credit to the boys." No, mate, you just dumped 12 goals. Nobody does that anymore. And I was thinking to myself, an American athlete would have been like, "I'm just that good. I'm just that good." And now, and I think that idea I would have rejected. So I've been here 9 years. As I mentioned, I would have rejected previously, but now I'm kind of all about it. Like, you go get what's yours. You know, something I've struggled with and advice I give to a lot of Australians who come over here is like, if you're going into a job interview environment, you have to act as your greatest advocate because nobody else will. So if you walk into a job interview, it's not the time for false humility. Whatever you feel, is. So in that context, mate, you're not a videographer, you're a filmmaker. You're the best filmmaker since Spielberg. He's bloody good. Well, and, and so, and look, like all things, there's a healthy position somewhere in the middle probably, but, but I think Australians can have a degree towards a socialised pressure for a false humility. Which is a shame. Now that doesn't mean you should stand on the treetop singing your own praises, and I think you can see through the bullshit pretty quickly, but I like to, in my friends, community, people doing cool stuff, interesting stuff, I like to champion excellence. So in that weird anecdote I said, I told about Mark Lacroix before, I tell him, mate, good on you, on your 12 goals, and it's nobody but you, you're the one who kicked them, not nobody.

Tommy: Did people get around you here when you you were starting this?

Josh: Absolutely.

Eddy: The community, particularly the Aussie community, it's a really special group over here. I think there's a really— because the fact of the matter is it's not easy, and you know, you're a long way from home. This is a wonderful city with a lot of opportunity, but it's a challenging one. It's a trying one. Everything from You know, it can be things like cost of living, getting that first apartment is a punish. And there's a lot of stuff as a foreign national, their fixation with credit ratings and stuff here. You know, they don't make it easy for the outsiders coming in, which means anybody, no matter the context you're coming over here with, whether you've come over transferred with a job or you've come over looking one, chasing a dream, whatever your field is, you're doing that hard graft early. And a lot of us, depending on how long we've been here, like you can remember back to that hard graft and you're still doing the graft. I've been here 9 years and there's still stuff you put up with. It's a long cold winter, for instance.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Eddy: And so when you're in that first one, when it gets to about April and it feels like it's been freezing cold for 6 months, it's a hard graft. So I For me, my first couple of years, the support I got from new friends was very special and important in my kind of early period here. And so when you see the young guys or young guys and girls, not even that young necessarily arriving, I like to get around them and support them. And that culture has really established and propagates, which is nice.

Josh: Business partnerships. Tommy and I are in the process of merging all of our stuff. We've had two separate businesses.

Tommy: We've done a big merger.

Josh: We've done it. Congratulations. Our new company is called Big Media Company.

Eddy: Fantastic.

Josh: Um, you know, to, to honour the fact that we're, we're merging two small companies together.

Tommy: Why not start big?

Eddy: That's a great name. So, so I've always wanted to start a company called Global Mega Corp just because I think that would be dope.

Josh: I don't know what the company is yet, but I love domain names and we've got bigmediacompany.com and that was enough for us to get excited about it. But what advice can you give us? You know, like obviously we're in the honeymoon phase, things are great, we're laughing, we're having a great time with Eddie. When shit's gonna hit the fan, how can we prepare?

Eddy: Well, I think the ferocity with which the shit hits the fan depends on your own guys' preparation. A business partnership is like any and all relationships. We always enter into them with the best intention. I've had a business relationship disintegrate, a business partnership disintegrate, which was a difficult time. And nobody goes into it going, well, I wonder how we'll do this when we go bankrupt. And we didn't go bankrupt or anything, but you, any relationship, business partnership, like any relationship, is started with an eternal optimism to start, which is great, and that's necessary, and that's how cool stuff happens. So that's not a bad thing, it's just the reality of the matter. And what's important, I'd say this kind of like a relationship, a romantic relationship or a partnership, is the foundation you establish early, and it's capacity for communication Understanding one another, and so understanding one another's strengths, but probably more importantly one another's weaknesses, and having a capacity and a space to talk through issues and challenges. So at the first sign of trial or tribulation, you know, somebody doesn't just throw a shit fit and throw their toys out of the pram or whatnot, or maybe one partner does, and maybe that's their style.

Josh: What's the difference between a shit fit and having the conversation? What's a productive way of doing it versus a destructive way?

Eddy: Well, I'll say two things to this. Jeff and I spoke a lot when we established about what our informing principles were. And it was very good and we've written them down and we have them and it's a great asset for us as individuals, as partners and for the business because it makes a lot of decisions much easier. You have myriad, decisions that you have to make in the development of any business. And you can get almost like a decision fatigue in some ways. But if you have these informing principles that you can return to, very often, 9 times out of 10, there's a simple solution there. And then so you can save your real creative bandwidth, your real problem-solving skills for the stuff that really is a challenge. So having an easy, uh, like a filtering system Well, just a why are we doing this? Because that can be easy to forget sometimes. And then another thing that Geoff and I and my team more broadly with my head chef Paul, my general manager Dan, my events coordinator Laura, we've got a lot of talented people around us, but we're just trying to stay solution orientated. Things will come up, there will be challenges, but engaging in a blame blame game or dwelling on the problem. You know, we've had some crazy stuff. We've had a fire in the space. We had a sprinkler head freeze in the winter, and then when it thawed, it blew out the sprinkler and flooded our kitchen. And they're just like building issues. We had the, the city electrical grid— there was a fire under the street outside of our restaurant. There was an intake into our basement, filled our basement, and blacked out the restaurant on a Friday night. Stuff like this happens. That's the beauty of working in a 200-year-old neighbourhood with a 100-year-old electrical grid. But staying solution-oriented. When your sprinkler head is pissing water and the place is flooding, if you stand around going, "Oh, I'm getting wet, this sucks," you're not helping anything. Establishing and understanding your informing principles and retaining a solution orientation is a really valuable thing. After the fact, after you've found your solutions, after you've worked through your challenges, you can sit around and have a beer and go, man, that sucks. That sucked, past tense. But when you're in it, it's good if you're moving forward and keep that solution focus.

Josh: I need to start drinking more, I think. And so—

Eddy: Or a seltzer, whatever, soda water, whatever you like.

Josh: And so do you think that it's like how productive is pinpointing the exact issues? Like how do you find that? Because I find that I need to say, okay, well, if I'm gonna bring a problem, I need to be very specific and that can come across as pedantic and nitpicky. How do you balance, you know, when do you communicate versus when you're like, actually this is a personal insecurity that I have versus an issue that I need to, address?

Eddy: It's a fascinating question. I think everybody's different in that regard, and I think it speaks to like a team structure. You want to— a team is best when it's an assortment of strengths and skill sets. You know, a basketball team has point guards and power forwards. I don't know why I'm going with all the sports euphemisms. My apologies, guys.

Josh: Well, we're an Aussie big sports podcast.

Eddy: We'll do the scores after this. And so it's great if you can consider and partner with people with complementary skill sets. And so, because you want to at once be both micro and macro. So you're speaking about your specificity, an amazing quality and strength, but it has to remain and exist within context. So I don't, probably don't have your same attention to detail, that degree. I tend to be more macro in my thinking in some ways, but I have team members and teammates who hold me to account to ensure that, you know, we're executing on the detail as well.

Tommy: Yeah.

Eddy: So that's letting go of my ego a little bit. I need to sometimes and go, okay, this isn't my strong suit. This isn't my strength. I need to surround myself with people who are better at this than me. And trust, empower them, and in turn trust them. Does that make sense? Yeah, roundabout answer.

Tommy: I love it. Are you a big picture guy? You know, vision, big vision?

Eddy: Typically, I'm the guy, I think I, you know, frustrate a lot of my team where I go, I've got this great idea, we'll do it, and then I'll go, and then this is the next idea, like we're still on this, working on this one. But yeah, I tend to be more of a macro perspective on things. But then there are some things where you have to get down in the weeds on it. You have to get in the detail. But yeah, naturally I would characterise myself as more of a zoom out type.

Tommy: We spoke with Seth Godin today. My voice is really going, isn't it? Yeah, it's about personal brands. And you know, you being here as an Aussie, you know, thinking about how you you're coming across what your brand is? Or was it something top of mind when you moved here?

Eddy: Look, definitely not when I moved here. I took a job here just 'cause I really, really love New York. I came here on vacation and I was living in Sydney at the time and I went back to Sydney and, you know, different people have different places that they love and that speak to them. And I was really lucky that I think that I found New York when I did. I was 26 years old and loved it. And so I was just, there was no thought to big picture, big plan. You sound like a big picture guy. This was not, none of this was scripted. But, and I think in some ways this idea of personal brand is a very 2018 thing to talk about. I don't know, there are people who are better at this industry than I am who would attest that it's an imperative and everything. I try to stick to the formula. Do good work and let the work speak for you.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: It's a perfect balance in some regards to that tall poppy syndrome that you're talking about, which is like, you know, pump yourself up when you need to, but also put your head down and actually have something to back up those words.

Tommy: Yeah.

Eddy: Yeah. No question. And look, there might be some opportunities I've missed out on by, by not trying to fuel the personal brand side of things. And I think for, you know, food and bev is a creative industry and the cult of personality around creatives is pretty powerful. I think that applies more to the chefs in the field than the operators. At the end of the day, a really good operator, if a good operator is doing a good job, you shouldn't know who they are. You don't need to know their name.

Josh: Yeah.

Eddy: You know, and maybe if you're, pump up your profile, it's a little easier to get investment or things like that. But I think if you do good work, set a culture, set a tone with your team, then I suppose that's personal branding to a degree, but not the kind of thing that is fostered and formatted via Instagram.

Tommy: Or grow, it doesn't come across gross.

Eddy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't wanna be too, well look, I say you don't wanna be too thirsty with it, go, be thirsty. Be thirsty. Beer's thirsty is a damn well lie. It's 2018, we're all supposed to be super thirsty. The Kardashians are the most famous people in the world, you know, there's no shame in being thirsty. Yeah, but I'm 35 years old, so I'm not like— I'm a millennial, just.

Josh: Yeah, you're hydrated, but I'm a little bit thirsty.

Eddy: I'm a little thirsty. It's all just, you know, means to an end really. Yeah, and the truth is I'm trying to use my phone less, so things like the social media outreach and everything, it's not helping. I don't want to make that part of my job, you know.

Josh: Eddie Buckingham, mate, you've got to go back to what you do best.

Tommy: Yeah, Bill Clinton might be there.

Josh: Exactly. The Daily Talk Show. I think people should definitely go and cheque out what you're doing. What's one other place that you'd recommend other than your joint that people should go and see in New York City?

Eddy: A restaurant in New York? If you're visiting and you're here for the first time or the 10th time for that matter, I think a fabulous Another spot that really speaks to what's interesting and happening in New York food right now is a little spot called Estella on Houston Street in SoHo. Small dining room, maybe about 40 seats. Contemporary kind of Spanish inflection. Great head chef there. Really thoughtful wine list. Beautiful spot.

Josh: Awesome. Thanks for the thoughtful chat. It's The Daily Talk Show. Hi@thedailytalkshow.com if you want to send us an email or go to reddit.com/r/thedailytalkshow. Have a good one.