We want you to get the care you deserve.
It’s all about the journey.
I started washing dishes when I was 17. I worked at the Lane County Convention Fairgrounds. Got to work with a fantastic mentor, well, two, actually, Fred and Laurie. So had the opportunity to work conventions, concerts, banquets up to 3,000 people. So, that's really my first experience in the hospitality industry. I was down at U of O, spent three years there, realized that I still needed more credit to graduate. So went to Washington State's hospitality program at Seattle U, graduated from there.
Went to California. Went to work for a company called The Good Earth, which taught me all about best practices, systems and tools, and what really was a great practical application for all the theory that I learned at Washington State. I got to see that in practice and realized that it was very relevant. But I think part of the story was at U of O I had seven different majors. My last one was psychology. But I realized that I just didn't want to work with folks that were clinically ill. It's like I want to help people, but I knew in my heart at that time that I just wasn't strong enough to be able to do that without damaging myself.
And in my journey realized that even though I didn't choose that route, I think back then they didn't have positive psychology or the sports psychology where it's kind of positive and you're helping people improve and grow. So I don't know if you can weave that into that journey part, but that was important for me. And then so did Good Earth, then moved. And I'm just telling you stuff. I know that it doesn't all show up on the website. So Julie's dad died. We moved up to Salem, Oregon to help Mom. So I worked for The Ram, became a GM there. Understood that people that just want to focus on getting the most out of the person as a worker and not really care about the human is a terrible way to do business.
And from there, I went to work with Mick and Tim, so McHugh's and Jake O'Shaughnessy's, and really learned about hospitality and how fun it is to run a great restaurant and take care of the guests and the team. Then worked at Red Robin for 10 years. And again, I think the biggest thing there, learned that systems and tools are important, but they only are really meaningful if you use them to support people, and great systems and tools allow people to consistently volunteer their best effort as well as culture or the right culture. I started there as a bar manager, ended my career there as a senior regional manager. Started when they had less than 20 restaurants, left when they had over 100.