YouSaid · the spoken record

Sean Feeney

lines on the record
113
first
2025-09-05
most recent
2025-09-05
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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  1. “That inspired feeling when you go into a big space will overtake that financial diligence and understanding that a price per square foot you're agreeing to now it could severely impact you forever your business. And I thought it was crazy to me that everybody did this a certain way in New York City where you walk into a restaurant space and the person that walks you into it tells you this is going to be the price per square foot. And then you have to do this whole financial calculation on what's that going to cost me per month. And I was believing that can't we do this differently? Can't we say this is what I think we're going to do in sales and then we could pay a percentage of it because everybody that I was going to asking what should we pay in rent was telling me you shouldn't pay more than 8%.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “A 20% net income at the end of the year. I thought that was the easiest way to do it, to keep it extremely simple, just like the way she cooks. Keep it simple. I wanted to do that with the finances of restaurants because I think they are simple. And it was just getting her to feel comfortable around that management of expenses, especially variable. The fixed expenses, very important to make sure from the get-go, you make a great agreement. The first one you ever have to make is occupancy. And that's where a lot of restaurants in New York struggle. It's the most important decision you make. And it's the first one you make. And you sign ten, fifteen, twenty year leases. And a lot of people, I believe, go into spaces inspired because there's amazing spaces in New York City, depending on neighborhoods, foot traffic. And a lot of times.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Decided to be partners, we have already in those four months of her saying no to me every single night. We wrote our partnership agreement, we knew our roles. We also agreed to finding the balance between art and commerce. I was obsessed with 20% EBITDA net income for a restaurant. And the average profitability of restaurants at that time in New York City was 8%. She thought I was crazy, but she did say like, I want that. That would be awesome. In order to get that, it had to be a very strict financial formula. You have two sales mechanisms in restaurants. It's food and beverage. And then you have a bunch of expenses. Some are fixed, most are variable. And I thought if we had a certain amount of sales, attributing each expense a percentage of sales so that you could back into”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “There's got to be a way. And I had been making a lot of friends in the industry because I was dining at these restaurants all the time for 15 years. And I then just started going to the restaurants and asking different questions in those four months. How do you purchase beverages? How do you purchase food? How do you manage payroll? And I was getting a lot of great info and ways on how people did things. I found the best way to make the biggest impact on some of these bigger challenges in the industry was when I was asking questions and I would get back. Well, this is just the way it is. And to me, I loved hearing that because to me it was people stopped looking for better ideas. I remember Missy saying, okay, we're going to be partners. What do we do next? We're going to go start looking at spaces. And when we...”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Totally. I feel like I was excited about being partners with Missy because she was such an amazing creative and I could hopefully follow her expertise in creativeness and an expertise of financial management. And if we could marry those two and find the perfect balance between art and commerce, I really believe there could be magic there. And if we found that perfect balance, it would be how we treat others, the people that worked with us. If we really nailed it and that would create magic. And to me, I wanted to understand why people always said you couldn't make money in restaurants. I would tell some friends in finance that I was thinking about doing this with Missy. Those four months that she was saying no to me every night, most of them said, don't do it. We've invested in restaurants. We never make any money back. But I also had this feeling like there is a way.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “In complete control of my destiny, my future. I always had a feeling in finance that if the music stopped, they would take my seat. I lived in that fear. I felt like it was a job. I also always attributed success and measured success in that finance job as an end of your bonus, promotion, or somebody who's looking at me to bid me away from where I was currently working. When I joined finance, that's how I was going to measure success, wins and losses. But when I felt this other thing, when Lilia opened, I realized that what success was, it was doing something every single day for the rest of your life, happy to do it. That to me was success. And I couldn't feel that unless I'm. I was totally happy with who I was. And there is one inside of them”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And what comes so naturally? And I started thinking about people who I looked up to and understanding that what you do is not who you are. Who you are is understanding your greatest strengths, understanding what you're not so great at and feeling okay about that. For 15 years in finance, I knew what made me different than others. I knew what gave me an edge. That thing, making relationships genuinely, building on trust, it got me through all of my days, the hard days, the good days. I knew what made me different in finance. But the job that I did in finance as a trader, it didn't make me extraordinary at it. It didn't ever make me feel.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It was September 28th, 2012, opening night of the Berkeley Center, Jay-Z. And I'll never forget this moment where he looks out into the crowd. It's at everybody has a genius and started calling people out in the crowd, you with the yellow hat. I see you. You've got a genius. You are a genius. And I just thought it was so cool at that time. That was 2012. Then when Lilia opened and I felt something different in me. I thought back to that time where I heard him say everybody has a genius level talent. And I started thinking about that. And I started looking at other people who have felt a certain way about what they do. And for me, it was feeling comfortable with who I was and what makes me jump out of bed.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “She deserved. And it wasn't even like we were saving her, but I just believed so deeply in someone that I was willing to do something that I never thought I could do, which was being entrepreneur or think anything other than being an employee.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “But she didn't even read it. She read like the first page of it and just looked at me and said, no. And I was like, don't say no so fast. Just take 48 hours and like look this over. Let's have another conversation. She said, I love you. And I love Maria, but I'm not going to do this with you. This is the biggest decision of my life. And you've never done anything like this in your life. I need somebody who's done it before. That's my partner. And I was like, well, don't say no so quickly, but I understand. And I went upstairs. Maria looked at me. She was standing at the end. We had eight stairs up to our apartment and she was standing at the door listening. She's like, what are you going to do? And I said, we're going to be partners with Missy. And for four months, every single night I came home from Anchorage with something to talk to Missy about on why we should be partners. It was a belief that I had a human that I knew.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “And it was then that it hit me to do it with her. And I remember telling my wife Maria, we should do this with Missy. Maria saying to me, what are you crazy? Like you've worked so hard to get this job at Anchorage for 15 years and like you can't just leave it. And I said, I'm not leaving it. I'm going to help Missy, support her in any way she needs. She certainly doesn't need me on the floor. in terms of financial help and operational support. I'm sure we could figure this out. It will give her ownership on day one. So my wife basically said in 10 minutes of that conversation, well, as long as you're not going to be an absent dad or husband, let's go. And that night I wrote a business plan, gave it to Missy the next day. It was nine pages long, and I've never done that before in my life. And it was terrible business plan.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “That I would fill that restaurant up every single night. A couple weeks later, that support meant taking care of her because she felt like the one person she wanted to work with didn't need an Italian chef. And I supported her that night by telling her, go get another offer, which she did pretty quickly with an extremely great restaurateur. But that didn't mean she was an owner, and I believe that she deserved it, and you should maybe get another offer. And she did. I remember her coming to me and saying, I told you it's the same, it's the best I can get. I was like, well, even though I'm not extraordinary at my job as a high old bond trader investor, I do know if I have a bond that somebody really wants, especially if two people really want it. Maybe I could get them to pay the price. And we just started talking about how to negotiate between two people.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Towards the end of 2013, I could sense that she was a little nervous about whatever. And I blurted out one night with my wife in our apartment. We love you and we all support you. And whatever you need, we've got you. And I believed when I said that that night, it meant when you opened your own restaurant, we'll be there every night. We will fill it up. That's all I could offer and support at that time. And I was confident that I could do that because I was doing that for 15 years in finance. People would come up to me and ask me, what restaurant should I go to for a date? What should I go to in midtown for a business dinner? What's the best private dining room in Chelsea? And I knew the restaurant immediately. I would make the reservation. I would text these people what they were going to order, tell the story of the restaurant. It was like what I loved. And I knew that if she opened her own restaurant, I believed in her so much.”

    2025-09-05 · Invest Like the Best · Sean Feeney - Reinventing the Restaurant Business - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source