Ep. 63 | This is What Passion Tastes Like - Chef Felipe Milanes

In this episode of Shakin' Hands, Jack sits down with Felipe Milanes, a Panama-born chef whose global culinary journey has taken him from working under legends like José Andrés in Washington, D.C., to competing internationally, before returning home. While Felipe shares pieces of his story, the heart of this conversation delves into the realities of building something authentic in an industry fraught with pressure and expectations. He and Jack unpack the emotional toll of entrepreneurship, the necessity of clarity and purpose, and why knowing who you're creating for matters more than chasing trends. Listeners will hear hard-earned wisdom about failure, identity, mental health, and staying true to your roots. It's an inspiring and unfiltered look at what it takes to bring a vision to life, especially when that vision is bigger than you.

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Transcript

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Welcome to Shaking Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. If you're looking for business mentorship, I have a place where you can get feedback on your unique personal development and business growth challenges. Over the last year, I've brought together a group of impact driven thought leaders where we meet every single day to discuss psychology, communication, mindset, and business case studies. We have people who have made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, Harvard MBAs and new entrepreneurs like you and I. Entrepreneurship can be lonely. So if you're looking for a support system, please follow the link in the description below for some more information. It's very naturally evolving conversation, but you got some good. Like I was listening to some of your guys that you invited and they have some fucking really good input. I was like, oh yeah, that I went, oh yeah. We try to talk about the things that I think are important, which are the soft skills of. And it's not necessarily just entrepreneurship. It's really more people that are followed in their purpose. And I think, you know, my own belief is that by chasing those passions, that is the best contribution and the biggest impact you can make on the world is when you're doing what feels true to yourself, not just like doing what society tells you. You should be a doctor or, you know, very nice. And so, yeah. So I think that having an authentic conversation that's naturally evolving 90% of the time, I don't even know the person's name before they sit in the chair. So it's me genuinely asking the questions about the person that I'm interested in and trying to get to know them. Okay. And and there you go. That's how it flows. Let's go. Are you Panamanian? Originally Panamanian. Born. Raised. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I've heard that. It is like a very emerging food destination. Here it is. Why is that? Are we on? We're rolling. Oh, shit. I thought you were going to be, like, three, two, one. Well, hey, you know what, Felipe Milanes thanks for, It is, man. It really is. I've been here for ten years now. When I say that, it's because I left Panama for 15 years to study culinary arts fell in love with the profession. And by doing that, I traveled the world. And I came back in 2015. Now that you just said that when I came back in 2015, I was like, yeah, man, I want some ramen. And there was no ramen in Panama in 2015. I'm telling you this because where you just said in 2015, only ten years ago, there was no ramen in this country. Now there is more than five ramen, destinations and franchises. So is it growing? Yes, it's growing hardcore. Why? And that's the question. Why is it growing? Why does a culinary destination grow? Because of the people. As a chef, I can go as far as what you want, right? So Panamanians ask for something, you do it, and you keep evolving. Panamanians have been traveling and traveling. Every time you travel, you come back and you say, fuck, this is awesome. I want this now. So they ask for more. And that's what's been going on with the culinary scene in Panama. And then you have guys like me, 45 year old, live 15 years out came back. So all these things I train my staff with how I was trained in first world countries because this is a third world country. I love it. I'm Panamanian. This is third world, right? So now you have all these chefs coming, traveling, coming to Panama and doing their thing. So that's why Panamanian cuisine, that cuisine food scene is like blowing up. What inspires your food creativity? Because it's like an art. What do you know why it's an art. What's art? It's an. I don't have an exact definition for it, but it works out for you. For me, it's like a it's a language. It's language. Reaction of emotion. You see a paint, you say, man, that makes me feel scary, right? You hear a song, you say, well, that makes me a my my my ex-girlfriend. Food is emotion, but that's why it's an art. But it's not an art because we're artists. I'm not an artist. I cook, I love to eat. I'm a fat guy. That's why I cook you. You ask why? My passion is I like eating more than I like cooking. So that's why I cook. And it's so happens to loving, to eat so much made me have to cook. And now we have what we have. But yeah, food is art because it brings an emotion. If I give you something and you go, Holy shit, this reminds me of my grandmother when she used to make this. And that's what art is. Art is saga. Emotions from somebody. But what what makes me want to cook is the fact that I fucking love eating. I don't love cooking. I love eating. I've always said it. How do you keep that creative integrity when you have so many opinions influencing that creativity? Listen, at the end of the day, you have to literally listen to the people who are around you right? As a cook, you always try to replicate what made you happy when you were a kid. I don't think there's going to be any chef that can tell you, like, nah, that's not true. All of us chefs, cooks, people, humans, whatever. We always want to remember those memories. So every time we're cooking and all those voices are coming around like, you should do this, you should do that. This is what's trained. This was not. You always go back to when you were a kid. Fuck. What made me happy. It's. It's all about always being a kid. And then you're like, okay, I remember I used to eat this. Now how can I make this a little more sophisticated so that people can taste a memory that made me happy? Because that's what you try to do. So all these voices you go from and you go back to being a kid, and he's that's what I do. And I can assure you, many chefs do the same thing. You always go back to when you were a kid. So you said that you studied, culinary arts. Yeah. What was that early journey like? So first of all, how did you decide that you wanted to be a chef? When did that happen? And then once you just made that decision to pursue this profession, did you jump right into starting your own restaurant or you worked for someone else or just talked about that experience? So I never wanted to be a chef. I was awful in school. I the school system wasn't made for people like me. And nowadays, you know, of people like me. What do I need? People, like, need ADHD, all these other things. Right? I did seventh grade three times. Literally seventh grade, one year, seventh grade, again, seventh grade three times. So I was off on school by the time I graduated from a night school. My mom's like, yo, you gotta do something with your life. I said, okay, I'm going to study marketing. I think I could be good in marketing. At that time, there were no culinary schools in Panama, so I went to the US. My mom and my mom at the time worked in the embassy of DC, the Embassy of Panama in DC, saying, why don't you come over here, let's get you in college, see what happens. By the way, there's something called culinary school over here. You've always liked cooking because you like eating. Why don't you come check this out? So I remember I went into a classroom and everybody's really fucking eating and writing stuff down, and I'm like, are they, like, in recess? No, no, this is this is this is college I but they're eating. Well. It's 90% that 10% classroom. I was like, are you serious? So I'm going to come five days a week, one day in a classroom. In four days, I'm going to be eating cheese. I yeah, that's that's culinary school. I'm like, fucking sign me up. That's I never want to be a chef. So I was like, mom, this is what I want. She's like, okay, well, so I got into culinary school and something happened. I don't know what maybe was the fact that for 21 years I didn't even read one book in my brain, which just like ready for information that when I started my first day in culinary school, I just I became obsessed with it like nothing in my life. I was like, oh, became obsessed with it. And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna I'm going to do this shit, and I'm going to be the greatest, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna and that's it. And I just never looked back, man. Since 2000, 2001, I just started school randomly because my mom taught me, and I thought it was cool to go to school and eat, and I had to study and never looked back then. So once you left school, did you start working for someone else or you immediately started for. No, no, I always worked, I was worked, yeah. There's a, chef called Charlie Trotter. May he rest in peace to me. He's one of the pioneers of, modern American cuisine. And he was one day in school, right. And he had every student ask him a question. So my question was, listen, dude, I'm studying two years. My associates, should I do two more years? My bachelor's. And he goes, listen, flipping it's not what you do in school. Who's going to make you the chef that you're going to be? It's what you do after school. And when you work, it's not the hours that you get paid for that are going to make it a chef that you're going to be. It's the hours that you work for free. So my opinion is, fuck your bachelor's. I never went to school, work for free as much as you can, and that shit hit me and I was like, cool. So what I would do was I would go and if my schedule was from two to close, I would go get hit in the morning and work for free from 8 to 2, then clock in and then work. But I always worked for somebody. I was a line cook. This is the thing. I was a line cook for eight years, bro. Eight years. Like nobody wants to be a line cook anywhere anyway. What? Everyone wants to be a sushi chef, a chef, a junior sous chef. I was a line cook for eight years. What is it like? A line cook is a guy who goes to a station, sets his station up, cooks all night, then breaks down the kitchen, cleans the hood, mops and cleans. After eight years, I took my first position as a chef. So I worked as a line cook for eight years and my year nine I became a chef and I got my first position as a chef. So through that experience, through through that mentorship, you were getting in those experiences, through those jobs, what skills were you taking away outside of cooking that you use today? Okay. Repeat that. So when you were in those experiences getting this mentorship, obviously there's a lot of personal habits that you have to have to be a successful professional in any profession. So obviously our our audience is entrepreneurs. So I want to understand what are the skill sets and the lessons that you took away that are not specific? Okay. This is how you, you know. Oh, got a vegetable? But what were those personal habits that are allowing you to be successful? Okay, okay, okay. That's a great question. Human beings. Right. Learning to understand human needs. That's what I learned from it. Because you can't grab a ten inch stick and hit everybody in the head with it. And make them understand what you want. Every person is different. I could scream at you, and that's how you understand. But I could scream at him and he just blocks down, shuts down. What I learned, which is the most important thing, is how to deal with fucking human beings. And I say fucking because, oh my God, human beings, human beings that that's the most out of everything that I know right now. We have 14 restaurants, our social media, we have businesses. And when people ask me that is dealing with human beings, it's something incredibly you have to have so much passion. And throughout the years, I try to understand human beings more and more and more, because when I meet somebody that does an amazing job, I don't think they're human. Man, because it's hard to find really, really, really good quality of of a team. And we have a great team. But I think, I think I have aliens working with me because they're really good about the fucking do, because every time you hire people and you deal with people, it's like, dude, I told you, this is seventh and it happens to everybody in this room. Everybody in this room at one point has had to say, hey, we're going to do a podcast the way millionaires make sure the light is on me, dude, why is the light not on? And that okay, it's because he's a human being. Human beings learning to deal with humans has is what taught me. It's been it's been everything. What is the key to successfully dealing with human beings? Saying fuck it and being okay with saying forget. What do I mean by that? You get frustrated when you try to teach somebody something in the person doesn't learn it. So you keep trying and you get frustrated. You get frustrated at the person. But that's not it's not the person's fault and it's not your fault. So what you have to say is, dude, this is our fourth podcast and you still don't have the light on, man. Forget you're not the guy or you're not the woman. Fucking say fucking is okay, you sometimes you have to just say fucking. That's how I deal with human beings. You put a big emphasis on how important your team is. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, building a quality team can be one of the biggest challenges when developing your business. What have you found to be the keys to attracting the right type of people to your team? Okay. Your culture. Right? You create a culture. Okay. What is the number one brand in the world? Catholic Church? I'm gonna give you that answer fast. Catholic church, fucking amazing brand. First book, second book. Jesus. The nine guys, the whole story. How did he create that? I'm using this Senegalese example because this is what I this is what I did. How did he create that? He said at this moment, yeah. So these are the amendments, right? He preached to his how do you say it in English disciples? Yes, he preached to that right. When you open a business like I have done my first, and I'm not compare myself to Jesus at all. Fuck. Not even nada. But what did I do? I said, I come from the United States and we have. You're going to create one of the best restaurants in Panama, and these are the Ten commandments that, that, that, that, that, that. And I was preaching every day and I'm cooking every day, and I'm talking to you and talking to you and talking to you. I'm preaching my word of my world. Right? So I created my disciples. That was my first restaurant. So what did the disciples do? They go out and preach your word, but they have to hear from somebody first. So when you open up your first place, whatever it is, selling clothes, bikini shop, on that, a pool, you build pools, whatever it is, you have to be Jesus. And you have to preach the word. And those first people that you have are going to hear the word directly from Jesus. And then you say, okay, it's time to open up our next bikini shop. Who's going to open it? My disciples. And they're going to preach the word for me and that's how you do it. Your team, you build it at the end of the Jesus. That's that's what I've done. My team that is now with me has been with me now nine years, and they're in charge of all the restaurants. Why? Because they started with me in the heritage, the word la palabra del chef. He was there every day cleaning, working. But they tell palabra and now they preach it. We have six cowboys, six big burgers. I don't cook in any of these fucking restaurants. I love them, but my disciples now, they're the chefs. But it all started with the first restaurant. So if you're going to open up a place, you have to be there. You have to visit La Palabra. You have to say, these are my management. Well, listen, you come in, you say hi to everybody, you shake everybody's hand and you look at them in the eye. Numerals. You everything tan, tan tan tan tan tan. Again and again and again and again. So a new people come. I don't even say anything. They're like, no, don't do. No, no, you didn't say hi. We shake everybody's hand. We come in here. Okay, okay. I told your disciples, that's how you do it. So you obviously have a great product. You're a renowned chef here in Panama, but. At obviously at some point, people didn't know that. How were you able to get that message and that product out to so many people? And what do you think are what were the methodologies to start distributing that product and getting your message out to people? I was fortunate enough that I'm from Panama. Right. So Panama small, you see all these amazing big buildings, but we're still a little country. Yeah, the countryside is small. So when I came back from the US, it wasn't really difficult for me to say, hey, dude, I'm back. You know, I've been out for 15 years in Panama, small and between my friends and family, the word spread out. So I have to say, I'm fortunate. I have a great group of friends that they all supported me and they just spread the word like, man, Felipe, Gregory. So let's go to his restaurant. They go taste it. And then it started from there, and then it just, you know, bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah. So Mary, when she was obviously who introduced us to you, she was showing me your, like, social media page. It seems like it's really growing. What's been that? What's that journey been like? That's that's fun, man. That's fun because people listen, right? It can go both ways. Like, I was just saying. I'll show you the video. I did a video yesterday with Sandra Sandoval. She's very famous singer. I was hammered yesterday. Fucking smashed. That's what we do. We have a good time. We have drinks. And I forgot that I was doing a video with her and she came in, and I'm sure I'm going to get a call from my mom. She's in the US right now, and I'm looking at the video and I'm like, fuck, I'm smashed. You could tell that I'm smashed and you know, and I'm sponsored by by brands even specialized, like, you know, I'm the ambassador of specialize. I'm. But to do 130km in four months. How is it? It's it's it's fun. But at the same time, it's a responsibility. Because people listen. They listen, they hear. And. And what you say matters to people when you have social media, like like the one I have, I don't have a million followers. I 140,000 followers, which is not much. But I have an amazing engagement and I know that what I say and what I do could either make somebody pissed off, make somebody happy, or could change their day. So it's a big responsibility. But but I enjoy it very much. Like so much. I wake up every day, I open my phone, I answer to everybody, if you're walking down the street and you're like, hey, chief, Como? You gave us a bar, the gate, the crib. I wrote to you the other day. I said, I know, and I answered, right, I yeah, you did. I answer every message that I get in Instagram and it's fun. Why do you think it's important that you answer the messages and not just delegate that to someone else? No, I like the connection. Do you think that that is imperative to your success? And that's I think that if you have a social media, I don't care how many followers you have, I want I can't say that because I don't have millions of followers, but I think that if you have social media and you do content like what I do, it's in responsible not to answer. So why the fuck am I going to post a recipe if and then somebody asks me about the recipe and me not answer, it's don't post that shit and don't do that, you know? So to me it's a responsibility. I post things, people ask, I answer, you ask a smart question. I give you a smart answer. You ask a stupid question. I give you a stupid answer. That's it. Simple. Why do you think it's important to devote your energy to social media, as opposed to something else within the business? What is the power of that social media? Well, I'm a the power of you move masses. That's extremely important. To know that you can create things with just your words is important. And to fucking makes me money. So yeah, I work with, I don't know right now nine brands and they makes money and it's good money. You know it's it's me, my team. He gives jobs and it's something I never in my in my mind ever. I'm a 45 year age. Never I had a meeting today. I just closed for two more years with Alicia. I posted it all my installs, the Easter egg. Alicia. It's, Spanish beer from Galicia, from Spain. And I never thought that somebody would pay me to drink beer. You know, I think that's so cool. And that I'm. I'm raising three girls that they see that their dad wakes up every day like, holy fuck, what is today? Have now like, my boss send me a memo. And then they don't hear any of that. They hear like, Holy shit, every day Papi has an adventure. And I think that to me, that's amazing because I'm raising three kids that are like, that's life. That's all life. Supposed to be fun. Bobby and Mommy, they're always single. One burrito. They're always fill me. They're doing these things are drinking. They're eating. They're always there's. It's fun. Life should be an adventure, man. I'm 45. 15 years ago, I didn't even have a kid. Now I have three like that. I'm going to be 80 watching this podcast. I can't fucking remember when I was there eating soy sauce, beer. So to me, all these things is. That's what it is, man. It's just a snap of fucking finger. Yeah. It's, it's super powerful and and I'm curious, like, do you think that. It was an accident or not an accident? Do you think that you just got lucky to have that lifestyle? Or is it some action or some piece of your personal ality that has created the foundation for this lifestyle that you live in? Is it repeatable by someone else who may not be living the life that they want? Listen, it's going to sound crazy because I'm Catholic and I believe in Jewish things, and I believe in Hindu. I believe in everything that I put into my world. I created a world where I believe in different religions. I think it was my time. I don't believe in luck. Luck does not exist. I believe that in my past lives, God brought me to this one, to this moment. Because there is no way that a guy like me, who grew up in a house, that food was just to eat, to have energy. There was no passion of food in my in my house. It was just let's eat so we can continue working or whatever. I must have in my past life paid a bunch of shit to get what I have now. That's what I think. That's what I tell people, dude, if you're not, if it's not happening in this life, just keep, keep, keep doing it because it's going to add up. And trust me, in the next life, for the next life, you're going to get what you're supposed to get. I think that, fuck, I'm living the cool life that this guy eat a lot of shit in other lives. That's what I think, and that's what I believe. So when you ask me that is is that is mental core. It's my turn. This is my life now, the next Philippe. I don't know what that is. It's fucking the. I'm living this one. And I know I did a lot of things in my past life to bring me where I am now in the food and beverage industry, there is a lot of distractions, right? Yeah. What habits have you instilled in your life to not to not succumb to those distractions? Oh, I mean, before I had my kids, it was all very crazy. The restaurant world is high stress. There's a lot of drugs. It's very crazy. Me, I'm a father, right? So I always look at my kids, and I have an amazing wife. Like, every time I get invited to a podcast, I'm like, she should be next to me. Because the truth is, if I didn't have my wife right now, I would be naked under a gutter, hammered crazy with nothing. She's that, you know, ylang ylang. Not only my kids, but her like, okay, dude, you got to slow down, okay? Now go up, go down. What did I do? I married the right woman. Man. The most important decision of a man or a woman is who's going to be your partner. Forget about everything. When you're talking, the most important decision you're going to make in your entire life is not what do you want to do for a living? Who do you want to be? Know who is going to be your partner of life? That's the most important decision you're going to make in your life. Coaching. And I made the right one. So what is the biggest horror story that you've encountered to date in what? Because there are many things I can talk about through your business. No, man. Always losing, losing money. I've opened restaurants and I've, wait, probably three, 4 or 5 restaurants that have gone under maybe six. Losing money is never fun, but it's always a PhD. Any time you lose a lot of money and a place goes on there, it's like, okay, well, I have a PhD now. I have one doctoral. But the most horror story, shed, I can't say this on video. Just losing money, man. The. I can't say, but yeah, it's it's losing money always. And it always hurts. And the it's you obviously have a very positive outlook on life, but for a lot of people, having 4 or 5 failures would be a death sentence for them. And they wouldn't continue, maybe not even after the first time. How have you been able to retain this confidence in yourself, even in the face of adversity, to keep pushing forward and, you know, eventually leading to this success that you've had? I truly love life, I love living, I love meeting new people. Now we're going to finish this podcast. We're going to go to tomorrow or we're going to have some drinks. We're going to laugh. I'm gonna introduce you to some people that are waiting for me over there. You're going to do some connections. We're going to do PR, I love I, I truly, genuinely love life. I love to live. I love to wake up and say, oh fuck again another day. Here we go. What's going to happen today? Sometimes I hate humans, but I love life. I gotta make this clear about the humans. And so I love living man. I think this life that's been given to me and then I've earned, is fun, man. It's a lot of fun. Like, I have a fun life. I really do. Of course I have my daughters. It can be bratty. My wife can be a bitch sometimes. I love you, babe. My mom can be like, my mom is going to call me. Tell me, dude, you look hammered in this video. What the fuck are you thinking? You got kids? I'm like, I'm sorry, mom, you know, but I love life, man, like, I don't, I love life. If you see someone on the side of the street, that's not necessarily having the best life, what would be the one piece of advice that they would you would give them to start embodying this very fulfilling lifestyle that you're living now? If somebody is really, like, just bomb and just like negative, negative, I won't try to change their mind. I would tell him, listen, dude, forget you lost it in this lifetime. Maybe the next time Sarah Trump, that's the system. That's your shit. That's not mine. That's you know, that's that's that's a genuine response that I would tell somebody. Okay. So then let me ask you this. You have a couple kids, right? How many kids do you have? Three kids. Three daughters. Yeah. Through your entire life journey, what is the biggest piece of advice that you leave for them? I've done many podcast and that's a very good question. So I have to think a little. Repeat the question again through your life journey, through all the lessons, the ups and downs that you have had, what is the one most important piece of information or important lesson that you take away from those experiences that you would share with your kids if you only had one thing to give them, okay. Beware of human beings. That's it. Beware of human beings is everything that happens to us. It's because of human beings. Beware of human beings. Well, what are you offering? Beware of human beings. Everything else you can manage. So how do you filter who is a good and who is not a good person? Somebody who's too nice to you all the time is. Listen, I have three kids, right? And I see people and I study humans. Not that I study them, but I deal with humans so much. Like we all who deal with humans, right? I wish we dealt with aliens. You can tell after some time in your life you can. You can literally tell who's fake and who's not by how they speak to you, but how they compliment you or not compliment you. And by when you say something that is really stupid because out of my mouth today in this podcast, I've said a lot of stupid things, but that's what I believe. And there will be people who say, man, that's stupid. That's somebody that's a two person, somebody who goes for the base, all a podcast and everything. You said two thumbs up. Like, no, it's impossible. It's a lot of stupid shit. I'm at. That's how you you notice and you start weeding now, and you, you know who you have your circle and you have your friends. You have your drinking friends, you have your talking friends. You have your business friends. And that's how you separate everything. So you think a person that is nice all the time is deep down inside a bad person? Yeah, I don't know. I, I can't speak for them, but I will tell you, go fuck yourself many times. I'm, I'm being fun right now because we're having a good time. But if you say something stupid, I don't be like, dude, that's fucking stupid. And you're going to be like, how can you say that? I'm like, no, you're stupid. That somebody who's always, yes, yes, everything's perfect, everything's fine. You're the best. No, no, no you don't. You don't want to surround yourself with people. Yes, people. And I've dealt with being that yes person in the past. Like when I was younger, my parents, it was kind of tumultuous growing up. And we bounced around to a lot of different schools and a lot of different towns. And so I had to learn how to. I guess it wasn't necessary, but in my head, I had to learn how to quickly fit in to these different spheres. And. I guess one of those tactics of surviving was to just be very un confrontational. And I can see I could see that there are there is a big group of people that aren't receptive to that way of communicating. They don't want you to just tell you, you know, you to tell them, exactly what they want to hear. And I think that that's been a very important lesson in my life is that when I do that, when I am that, yes man, it leads to a lot of misalignment within my life and incongruence because I, although I'm interfacing with anyone. My authentic self is an interfacing, and those people wouldn't be in my life if I was being authentic in the more that and it's, you know, I'm working on it every single day, but the more that I am authentic and true to myself and my communication, the more the right people for me start to attract to me and the people that didn't belong in my life in the first place start to leave. So that's exactly that. But that's exactly how life is. But now I want to ask you a question. You've met me now, for we've been speaking for about 35, 40 minutes. Right. 30, 30. Right. You've done all these podcasts I saw I saw a couple of them. Five minutes here, four minutes there, three minutes there. I'm not going to sit here and be like, oh, I saw them all. You're fucking amazing. I'm. But there were some really good questions that you asked people, and there are some really good answers now that you've made me for 30 minutes and everybody that you've spoken with and everything that you've listened, what advice would you give me as an entrepreneur, knowing who I am for 30 minutes, the type of person that I am. What advice can you give me? A life advice to a human, Philippe? Da da da da da da da da da. But for me, not for them. Fuck that. For me. I gotta use this moment, right? This. This guy's interviewed a lot of people. What advice would you give me? And not. Not. Fuck you. I love you guys, you know. So when you originally asking the question in my head, I was thinking like it. It's going to be difficult to answer this question because I don't really know you that well. But if I look back, there was one thing that stood out. Out of all questions, that for me was like something that that I disagree with and and not disagree with. But I think that I have found when you say beware with people, I am a person that gives people a lot of slack. And because of it, I've been burned many, many times. But that led me to start becoming a colder person. And and I think that. That response that I had to people burning me didn't get me out of that situation. Like, okay, because of that, I started just attracting colder people. And I think that if there's one universal truth that I have found in reality, it's that love is the answer. And I think that the more that we can push out that positive energy and give people a chance, that doesn't mean you have to like, let people take your energy and you have to let negative people in your life. But I think that leading with and giving people a chance and not starting to be wary with them, okay, but leading by. Not judging them, but giving them a chance. Because I think that every person deep down inside has love within them. But people are just a product of their experience, and there's a lot of people out there that I think people that you would perceive to be a bad person, that when given the chance, when given the trust, they will rise to the occasion. But they've just had this compounding experience and you don't know what their childhood was like. Growing up or whatever. And that survival mechanism and those patterns that they've put in have turned them into the person that they are today. And I think that if we want to convert those people that appear to be really bad and to people that are good people, the only way to do it is through compassion and empathy and love. So that would be the one thing that I could say, and that's small, this small conversation that we've no but it was great where you just said, I don't I don't fucking know what people go through. But yeah, you're right. That's a great advice. Yeah. Thank you, thank you. What an and vise versa. Like you know I'm aware that that that mindset has gotten me in trouble as well. So with every there's two sides to every coin. And it's hard to say what is the perfect balance. There's really three. But there is their story their other story in the middle. Exactly. You could say I'm an ass so I can say you're an asshole. That's your story. There's my story and there's a truth. And that's, And I could probably benefit from coming more to your side of the pendulum, and it would lead me to get burned less. But I think that there is like you said, that third side is the best side is that conquers that, that common ground. My final question to you, though, is what is your definition of success? Another great question, man. Wow. My definition of success is, to own your own time. What I mean by that is right now, of course, me as a father, I'm not going to see my success until I see what my kids become. Let's put that to a side. That's a family success as a person. To me, money means nothing. Only somebody who has it says it. It's not about the money. It's about your time. What do I mean by this? We're going to finish this podcast, and we're going to go to one of our restaurants, and we're going to have drinks and we're going to eat. And I can do that because there's nobody calling me to tell me, hey, do you have this? We did it. No. If I want to wake up tomorrow at 12 because I got hammered, or I just want to wake up at 12, or I want to go wake up at eight and do 50km on the bike and go home, eat 14 eggs and go to sleep. I can been to the temple being the owner of your time. That is success to me because life is this. And when you own your time to somebody, you own your time to somebody. But when you own your own fucking time, that's freedom. It's beauty. Right now I'm here so I us beer, we can grab an Uber. We're gonna go to my restaurant. We're going to have drinks. Now, if I want to liberate, I liberate. If I want any one in the morning, one and morning. And tomorrow I want to just sit and watch Netflix all day and wait for my kids to come home from school. I can do it. That is success. Freedom of your own fucking time. I think a lot of people are chasing after that lifestyle, and you are a testament that it is possible that you can do exactly. You have the choice to do exactly what you want every single day. If people want to connect with you or they want to check out your businesses, your restaurant, where can they find you? Chef Milanes That's my Instagram, my TikTok, my YouTube, my, everything chef ad, chef Milanes. And if you write to me, dude, you write to me. I answer. I always answer to everybody. Unless you have a stupid question, I'll give you a stupid answer. I'm lucky, but yeah. Chef Milanes TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Myspace, everything. You remember Myspace? Yeah. Of course, some people sometimes don't get that joke on there. Too young. You log in and you'd hear 50 cent playing on my Myspace page. Here's my background. Yeah, I remember. All right, Manuel, I appreciate you coming on. It's been an absolute thank you for inviting me, brother. I'm always down to speak to humans and let's go in. Thank you. Bro.