Chad Mackay:

Hi, my name is Chad McKay. I’m the CEO of Fire & Vine Hospitality. It started with my dad back in 1996 with the El Dacho in Seattle in Belltown.

My dad, when he shut down that one restaurant, did not go bankrupt but basically broke them. But he paid everybody off, every vendor. When dad was like, you know what, we can get through that, probably it’s okay to run the company now.

Is how do you become a people builder and have an organization that builds people? Incredible people, great culture. At the end of the day, yeah, you can build these beautiful restaurants, but if you don’t have the right people running them, working them, being in them.

My wife would ask me someday, she’s like, how do you get up? I said, honey, I got it because nobody else will. We’re going to use technology behind the scenes to inform us about people and make sure we know who’s coming in, who has anniversaries, but nothing is going to replace the human touch and the human experience because at the end of the day, that’s all we got.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Hi, welcome to Restrocast. Today my guest is Chad Mackay. He’s a CEO at Fire & Wine Hospitality. This was a great conversation because, you know, in the business of hospitality and especially restaurants, the world is ruthless. There’s a fight for margins, there’s a fight for sales, there’s a fight for survival. There’s restauranteurs, operators talking about automation processes, but very few in this world are, you know, still talking about people, people on both sides, people who work with them, who make those restaurants, who run those restaurants, as well as people who come in, the guests.

And what I believe Chad embodies, you know, in his peak as well as in his business is they really take care, that extra special care, what they have demonstrated for their guests over the years and for the people who have been with them for 10 to 25 years. That is quite inspiring and great to listen to. Do watch.

Welcome to Restrocast. So, Chad, welcome to Restrocast. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

When we were discussing this, you know, I talked about my thesis that people don’t, you know, enter restaurant industry, you know, unless they are insane. And that definitely don’t continue unless they love this insanity. What’s your story? How did you get into the restaurant space? And what were early years like?

 

Chad Mackay:

Well, I got into the restaurant space because my dad would manage restaurants all over town, some of the best restaurants in Seattle. And I would work at him as a busser, dishwasher. So I had early experiences. And then he had a restaurant out in a small suburb and it got flooded twice. And we got to deal with FEMA and flood insurance. And after the second time, he sold the restaurant, kind of wrapped that up, went back to work for somebody else. And at that point, I was like, I am never going to work in restaurants again. And so I left. I went to Seattle University, got my accounting degree.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What were you doing then? 

 

Chad Mackay:

So at that point, I was a sous chef. So I’d actually worked way up through the line, working sous chef. So that was really about till my 20s at 20. So really knew the back of the house very well, loved it, loved cooking, loved working hard. But seeing the destruction that can occur in wiping out a family, I was like, I am never going to work in a restaurant again. So then I ventured off, got an accounting degree. So I went to Seattle University, got my business degree, majored in accounting, had an opportunity to work at Arthur Anderson. Long ago, I’m aging myself now, 30 years ago, and got into the consulting practice. And so had a great… 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Your dad was still running the restaurant? 

 

Chad Mackay:

He was back working for others and running some great restaurants. And then eventually opened a restaurant in 96 called Flying Fish. It was just an absolute hit. And then the next one was El Gaucho. And I’ll come back and talk about involvement on those. And so I got my accounting degree, went for Arthur Anderson. I did ERP implementations, Lawson Financials, Oracle Manufacturing for aerospace companies, distribution, software packages.

Continued my journey, went off and took a couple startups. A couple I forget. They were like contract positions. It was the dot-com, crazy time. And then did a stint at Onyx Software on CRM. And then finally ended up in consulting sales. And my last project, we had about 140 consultants that built out one of the 5G building systems for one of the big wireless companies. So had a great time.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

5G billing systems for… Was it a global company?

 

Chad Mackay:

I mean, the 3G billing back then. Sorry. So 3G billing systems. And then I didn’t like the company I worked for. I loved the sales, I loved doing it all. But the culture was not what I wanted it to be. And I approached my dad, I’d been thinking about launching my own consulting firm. And he said, Hey, if you’ve ever thought of this business as a family business, we should talk because otherwise I’m going to launch a firm and then I’ll be down a pathway. And he said, I’ve always wanted one of you kids to be involved.

 

This is a tough business and I was never going to ask. And so I said, well, let’s talk. We had a business coach, a family business coach that my dad had worked with with Vistage.

And so we sat down together, we talked about what success looked like, but more importantly, what did failure look like? And how would we manage that failure if either I didn’t perform or he didn’t perform or the restaurants didn’t perform? And then we brought in our wives, because this is a family deal, we need them on board. And it was a great experience. So we, we decided we’d give each other each a year. And at the end of that year, we could, either us could say, this isn’t going to work. And there would be no hard feelings. I was still young, I could start up, do what I wanted to do. And it, I never looked back.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s a very, that’s a very interesting thing that family business coach dynamic. Does that happen often? Do you see people engaging that, somebody like that proactively even now?

 

Chad Mackay:

Because I hang out in groups like Vistage more so than maybe actually happens. Because I think it’s, at the end of the day, we’re like, we still want to have Thanksgiving together. So if it doesn’t work, how do we make sure that that happens? Because that’s more important than business.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But do you have that kind of, you know, wisdom, you know, you’re talking about back in 96, or?

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah, this, no, this was 2000, it was 2024, right? 2004. 2004. Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So you’re, you’re, what you’re saying is your accounting career and you’re up until you’ve come something was 93 to 2004? Yeah.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. So I think part of it was my dad always had a coach. And so he had been a longtime Vistage tech, tech member, and saw the value in learning from other people and getting, you know, surrounding yourself with a coach and getting better. And I continue to this day.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I’m going to circle back on that. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So you gave each other an ear.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yep.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And how did that go? So back to the restaurant business.

 

Chad Mackay:

It was fantastic. I mean, it was definitely kind of drinking from a water hose, like relearning stuff, seeing what we had understanding our business starting on the floor and doing a floor management, things like that to really understand the business. I kind of going back on both flying fish and the El Gaucho, when my dad had put together that was newly formed when they did that LLCs in Washington State. And so the limited, you know, private placement offering was a new deal.

So I built his spreadsheets, his financial models, so that he could he’s like, Okay, what do I need to do is build me a spreadsheet so that if I change counts or check averages or hours, yeah, like it’ll produce a five year summary and ROI stuff, right. So I built that, that spreadsheet for him. And then he used that for his investor packages. We still have that spreadsheet today. It’s actually was a pretty good one. So I was I was intimately involved in the financial side of just helping him as he was growing his business while I was working in in consulting.

And so yeah, the year went by and I was like, never look back. People ask me, you know, because I was, you know, traveling like crazy on the consulting route, all all these different, you know, fun places and companies. And I’m like, you know, the restaurant business is a fun business. It’s super complicated. Like we take all of these raw materials and we transform them in a day or two, right? Shoot it all back out.

We do it almost entirely with people, right? We have massive inventory turnovers and control systems and yet we can’t track at all. And so just I love the business is there’s enough complexity in the business to always keep you learning. And at the end of the day, I’m not selling something nobody wants. Right? Like, basically, my dad always said, people are generally coming in to have a good time. So just don’t get in their way.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, yeah. True that. Absolutely. It’s a it’s a business where people really want to spend spend with you. How did you divide your responsibilities with your dad?

 

Chad Mackay:

So originally, I was kind of put in charge of business operations or really took over the finance IT systems, just generally that side, like don’t mess up the restaurants, learn a little bit before you get in there. So that was pretty easy deal with the bankers. And so that started that process.

And then how do we do standardization and additional training and things like that. So just worked way in. And then as we opened a couple of places got to learn the architecture, the iterative design process, the design build, which you could do back then and not have everything engineered prior. But anyway, that’s another another deal.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So give me a give me a view of the business today. And then we will come back on this.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. So today, we basically have 11 operations. We operate in Washington, Oregon. We have our flagship is El Gaucho. So it’s a high end steakhouse. We do table side service, kind of old school. So Caesar salad, Chateaubriand, Bananas Foster, kind of fun, right? Makes it exciting. We have Aqua by El Gaucho, which is our seafood concept out on the water, Heirloom, which is a farm to table concept. And then we have Wall Wall Steak Company in Wall Wall and Wood Mill, which is more blue jean steakhouse, a little more approachable, but still high quality, great service, nice touches, and then Witness Tree Lounge, which is a rooftop bar at the Indigo Hotel. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So all 11 are different concepts? 

 

Chad Mackay:

Five are the same of El Gaucho, two are steakhouse, and then everything else is individual.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And, you know, this is from 2004 to 2025. So the last 21 years. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yep.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And these are all all company owned?

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah, then we have some investor mix. Oh, and then we do we actually are part of a project called Yellowhawk Resort, which is an 83 acre winery and resort that we’re developing or part of the development on that we should start breaking ground this year on the hospitality. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But when you have investors, you’re still operating the restaurants?

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. So it’s primarily family owned and family driven.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And how did the so you know, back to your 2004, from 2004 to I saw that in 2013, you took over as the CEO? Yep. And what did that mean? And what what was your journey from 2004 to 2023?

 

Chad Mackay:

So my journey, we, you know, you don’t have success without some failures. And we had a couple of restaurants that we opened and had to close, as we tried different concepts and things. And so I think but as my wife reminds me, she goes, you remember what you said?

He said, honey, with a deal this good, we can’t lose. That was an Italian restaurant. And we did lose. But we have the you know, the, the courage to finally shut it down and go, all right, that didn’t work. And then we have one in Tacoma that didn’t work called Sea Grill. But then we started to say, hey, let’s just really build on what we do well.

So let’s let’s go back, we relook at make sure we’re executing on El Gaucho, creating opportunities, we had an opportunity to open in Bellevue, Washington, which is kind of home of a lot of the tech companies, a lot of financial companies. And so so that was a big project. That was a 14,000 square foot restaurant with mezzanine, some outdoor. And that was fully mine to get designed with the architect, construct it, everything. And a couple little things happened, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and kind of the financial markets went into an uproar. Our business overall dropped 40%.

I’m in the middle of building out a restaurant, my bank cuts our line. And we have to go into a crisis mode of how do we get this thing finished while still owing people and our business being gutted. And so we spent a lot of time on cash flow management on kind of breaking out the my old playbooks that I had seen from Arthur days. And we weathered through that storm. We actually our contractor finished the project, even though we didn’t have the cash. We got the cash.

We did a couple of backflips and tricks and had a had a guy that really wanted to be an investor in our Portland restaurant. So we flipped him a unit, he provided his signature guarantee. Everybody walked away fully whole and clean. So we gained a lot of respect in the industry when other people’s got stiffed. And that’s a that’s a lifelong lesson. My dad, when he shut down that one restaurant, after those floodings, did not go bankrupt, but basically broke them.

But he paid everybody off every vendor. And the largest one of the largest seafood companies in the world was out of Seattle called Pacific Seafood. And Ike Alhadeff to this, he’s passed away now, but said, you know, your dad paid everybody. And that goes a long way in this industry, like forever. You guys have credit. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow, that’s.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. So. So after that, oh, eight or nine cycle, I think that was when dad was like, you know, if we can get through that, probably it’s OK to run the company now. So he moved to Walla Walla, built himself a beautiful home there on 80 acres up on the hills.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, wow.

 

Chad Mackay:

And then and then he ended up buying a couple of buildings. And we started a couple more steakhouses.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

I think I think one of the things that he said is quite underrated. And I see that in the business, not only the restaurant, I think almost every possible business, which is as an entrepreneur, you really are chasing this item. You want to do new projects, you know, groundbreaking stuff, something that you haven’t done before, because that’s your dope. But at the same time, you know, it’s really underrated that just repeating what you know really well, you know, might sound boring, but that’s that’s purely like that. That’s one of the hardest lessons that I’ve seen in the business, you know, watching others and my own experience that, you know, boring is good. Boring is great. Excitement is dangerous. You know, you should have 

 

Chad Mackay:

A little injection. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Yes, exactly. Right.

So if business is not all excitement, if you’re chasing excitement, well, you’re high chances you can wrecked 

 

Chad Mackay:

and you can redirect that excitement into something that’s even more fantastic and actually has a bigger impact. And that is how do you become a people builder and have an organization that builds people? Incredible people, great culture, because that is at the end of the day.

Yeah, you can build these beautiful restaurants, but if you don’t have the right people running them, working them, being in them and and I’ll say this when my dad retired or kind of, you know, people would ask him, are you you know, do you miss the restaurants? Do you miss all the customers, the action? He’s like, no, I did that for 50 years because, you know, I miss I miss our people. I miss getting to see them have kids and buy homes. And there’s a there’s a great pleasure in knowing, like, look at all these people you’ve impacted. So you don’t have to build everything new. You don’t have to chase exciting new things. Maybe exciting enough is building incredible new people.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But, you know, on that on that repeatability today, what like do you are you conscious about that? You know, what part of the business you actually want it to be repeatable? And are you the guy who continues to do that or you hand it over to somebody who’s good at reputation and you are the disruptor?

 

Chad Mackay:

Like, what’s your role? So, yeah, my role. So I’m really have been spending time with the president of my company, Cooper Mills, and he has been with us 17 years. So he’s ran different restaurants, open stuff for us. And what I’m doing, I’ve been doing now, last three years is teaching him everything I know, like my dad taught me about everything that he didn’t get to see. So everything from like, we got to look at 100 opportunities to find one good one, right?

Like, what does that look like in my day, you know, going through those things and going seeing sites and talking about how do we put deals together? And so he’s been going through that process. So we’re just finishing one for an expansion into a new market. It’s not done yet. So I can’t, I don’t know when this is coming out. So and so my role is really to help develop him round out that side, continue to push the company.

But we’ve got awesome operations teams, we’ve got just a great culture, operations person as well. So we’ve got the fix it person, we’ve got the culture person when things, you know, just need that extra little soft touch, and just she’s just so good at accelerating the teams. Got an awesome sales strategy director, like, how do you go?

And how do we pump? You know, and get like, we just she sent me a text this morning, we’ve got a hundred person buyout on July 7, at one of our restaurants, like, fantastic. Fourth of July, great, like, yeah, that’s, you know, $100,000 piece of business is like, so we just I’m surrounded by incredible people, I just try to stay out of their way.

I tell them I need to find make sure we’ve got the finances to make sure we can continue to run these restaurants and grow. And then let’s go find a couple of opportunities every now and then. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What was the most difficult or scary part of taking grants from your father in 2020?

 

Chad Mackay:

At that point, I the the fear was not there. The fear was, in 2008, talk about fear of having bank, your bank cut off your financing. No, nobody’s gonna lend you money, your businesses tanked. I still I was 30, 35 or something. So I could start over pretty easy. But my dad’s now 82. And so having him start over at 70. Not an option. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, my wife would ask me someday, she’s like, how do you get up? I said, honey, I got because nobody else will. Right. And we I cannot have my dad start over. I saw what that looked like.

And that was, you know, 30 years prior. So that I mean, after that, even the COVID thing, I was like, all right, you know, like, okay, this sucks, but we’re gonna, you know, reinvent and do things. So I don’t have I don’t have a lot of fears like that anymore. I mean, doesn’t mean I’m not scared doesn’t mean I don’t lose sleep. That been through enough that it’s like, all right, we’ll get through this. Let’s, let’s go back to first principles. Let’s go back to what makes us successful. Let’s not lose sight on those things. And we’ll just drive forward and work our way out of it.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

There’s a lot of there’s a lot of talk in the world. And it has always been there about, you know, I’m going to, you know, flirt a little bit with technology piece as well here, that, you know, guest experience needs to be improved and guest experience needs to be a certain way. And, you know, at times people trivialize it by saying, okay, let’s get a good loyalty program or just let’s, let’s get a good feedback system, etc, which are technically just the tools and not really, you know, how the guest experience is going to improve.

And given that you’re running these 11 different concepts, or 11 concepts, which are all fine, nine high end, yeah, customer service, guest experience is the is at the core at the heart of what you’re doing. Only second to food, or I don’t know if you call it even, you know, higher than food. What’s your, what’s the mantra? What’s, what’s your, how do you guys do that?

 

Chad Mackay:

So we, we have something we call our credo. And it starts with our purpose, which is we revel in celebrating life. And so like, that’s just right out of the gate. We are about that. And so you start there, we have some decision criteria that we use. Is it great for the guest? Is it great for our team? And is it financially sustainable? And using those decision criteria, if it’s yes to all of them, you probably just got a green light to go.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

How do you imbibe the first one in like, in your, in your team? Who’s guest facing? I mean, it’s how are they? How are they? You know, how’s the guest experiencing?

 

Chad Mackay:

You know, that’s something like that. So let’s say down our Tacoma location, we’re by JBLM. So it’s a big Air Force and Army base. Marines are out of there as well. So somebody comes in, we find out somebody’s shipping out, right? They’re having their last dinner together. Server’s talking with them. They’ll come up to one of the captains and go, these guys are shipping out. We need to buy their dinner. And that’s it. They don’t have to call anybody. They don’t have to go, not to justify. They don’t have to worry. They’re going to get yelled at. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow.

 

Chad Mackay:

They do something incredible. It’s memorable. And it’s, it’s personal and touching for everybody. Like the staff loves to be able to do that kind of stuff. You know, so that’d be just like a little example of taking care of something and being able to, to celebrate somebody’s life. We love engagements. Like we get all involved in the engagement and we’re even, I don’t even know how we got these things, but we own a bunch of cricket machines and they’re these printing machines that have high, really intricate laser cutting or cutting. And so we personalize glasses. We print menus. We make baby onesies, right? So if we find out somebody’s going to have a baby, one of our customers will make little baby onesies. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

How are these things in-house?

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Nice. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. So it’s like, you know, I, and this totally stolen from Will Gandara, right? The dream catcher or whatever. We’re like, well, that’s a great idea. One of our, so one of our captains in every location, their old job is, you know, to pick a couple of people out and do some wows. So we had the new, we had a new police chief that came in and the old police chiefs brought him in and we had his picture and the announcement embedded in the menu, kind of in a 3D deal. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Whose job is that? I mean, this is great, right? And I think it’s, you know, providing that sort of agency to your people to not only find out, but do something about it. And I’m sure there’s a method to the madness, given that you have these machines and you’re serious about it, right? So of course they’d know, but how do you, how do you imbibe that? How do you, how do you bring that sort of agency to your people?

 

Chad Mackay:

So I think, first of all, it starts, the restaurant itself is the P&L, it’s the generator of business, right? So corporate is not the generator of business. And so the restaurants are structured in a way that GM and chef are working together to drive revenue and profitability. They’re assembling teams, developing teams, and they have P&L authority and responsibility for almost everything. So if they need to make an adjustment, they don’t have to run our labor model because their restaurant might be a little bit different. They’ll run a labor model. In this instance, with the captains basically that are making memories happen, there’s one person assigned and that’s their job. So they’re not running the wine program. They’re actually running and your job is to make tables feel really special. You can’t do every single one, but we could do a lot of them. And that’s part of their job. We pay them for it.

That is awesome, man. And then we share the stories. And then, I mean, it’s contagious because once you start doing that kind of stuff, people are like crying and they’re like, Oh my God, this is so great. You’re like, Oh my God, how easy was that? So yeah, we’re old school in the sense of we’re going to use technology behind the scenes to inform us about people and make sure we know who’s coming in and who has anniversaries. But nothing is going to replace the human touch and the human experience because at the end of the day, that’s all we got.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Let’s go deeper on the tech piece. You know, still tech is kind of taking, you know, tech is kind of taking center stage in the restaurant business. Not as much in fine dining yet, but I think it’s the pressure is there continuously building systems are changing. And you, you know, got to invest in some of this tech you know, early, you talked about that, you know. So what’s, I know that you’re pro-tech. What’s your current take on technology in the restaurants? What are you looking at?

 

Chad Mackay:

So yeah, for us, our approach is we want to be very tech savvy and tech enabled while not pushing it in front of the guest. So we want that to be when it’s time. So you’re not going to see robots, you know, clearing stuff. You’re not going to see a wine list on a pad, right? Like I’m not there. Right. And maybe there’ll be a time when everybody’s there and they don’t want any humans. And then I’m out of this business.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Is that true? Or is it just the sentiment right now?

 

Chad Mackay:

For me? Yeah. Oh, no. I know. Why would we want to be in a business that didn’t have people and, you know, experiences and listen, eating is something everybody has to do every day. There’s perfunctory eating because you just need to eat something. And then there’s going out to a restaurant. And if the restaurants don’t deliver experiences that are great and memorable and valuable for what you pay, then you’re not going to go out. So our job is to make sure we create memories, create exceptional experiences, so people will come and pay for it, instead of staying home. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

How are you as a leader? What’s the cheat sheet or what do you tell people who work with you, report to you? How do you come across as a leader according to you? 

 

Chad Mackay:

I think our general is to only be directive when it’s a (bsolutely necessary. The rest of the time, it’s really a servant based leadership, a consultant based leadership. I care very much about outcomes. I don’t need to micromanage every little detail of what is happening. I want people to, we use traction. So I want one-to-ones and rocks and those types of things. So we have action and accountability, move it forward, just move it forward. Right. I think I’m fairly hands-off on those things, but we’ll jump in on some details if I see stuff that got missed. I care exceptionally about our people. And I think that that would, I think that they would say that.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And what has changed? What has evolved over the last 10 years, let’s say for you? What are three things that you feel that you, there were different 10 years back?

 

Chad Mackay:

I think I was more, I had to do it, right? I mean, this is the evolution of, well, hopefully of adults, right? You think you have to do everything. And then you’re like, you’re too much. And you’re, you’re actually the problem that why stuff’s not getting done. So I would spread myself too far and then end up being the impediment to actually getting this stuff done. And so really started to look at that more and go, okay, who’s my key employee? Who do I need to develop? When I, when I promoted up Cooper to be president, that was a big shift to go, okay, I’m going to coach him. I’m going to give him direct observation and feedback so that he can work with the teams so that I’m not just, you know, injecting myself at every level. So even though I think I’m a nice person, sometimes I, apparently I scare some of the employees, you know, that are new and, you know, haven’t experienced me. Um, and I, I feel much more relaxed in the, the ability to continue to grow the group and let the next level of leadership really blossom and develop. And then we got a whole nother leadership level that’s percolating in the restaurants that is exceptional. I’m like, because we, we had to go down and hire younger and man, have they delivered.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I’m really excited about it. What’s, what’s the tenure, you know, like for these people who you’re talking about?

 

Chad Mackay:

Um, so I mean, most are, a lot of our team is 10 to 25 years.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Beautiful.

 

Chad Mackay:

So, um, my chef in Goucho Tacoma, which actually now one of our biggest producers, volume of both revenue and profitability. Uh, he started as a dishwasher, uh, 20, almost 20 years ago. Oh, my dad. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah. Wow. And he’s the, he’s the, he’s the head chef.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yep. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow. 

 

Chad Mackay:

At Tacoma, you know, little $8 million, five night a week restaurant. He kills it. He does awesome. Yeah. And he’s had an incredible life, incredible family. And we’ve been a part of that. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That is awesome.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What do you do for enrichment? How do you, how do you keep yourself, you know, enriched or what, what do you do?

 

Chad Mackay:

I’ve got, I’ve got an amazing wife, my wife, Jennifer, Jenny. Um, we’ve been married. See, we are coming on 28, 27 years. Um, the other 30, we have two kids. One’s a, uh, Elliot is a sophomore at Boise state. And then my youngest Owen is a junior at a little Catholic high school in Seattle. Um, so, you know, kids kind of keep you grounded and a wife that kind of make sure that stuff gets prioritized. Um, I do, I do have a story about our first child and my wife. Uh, I was down in Goucho Tacoma running it.

We had to change over into GM and I needed to be down there. So I was running it and I came home one night and, uh, she’s like, Hey, you know, it’d really be great if you were here for, you know, when I get birth. And she’s like, but you know what, that’s okay. I can just be a well-financed single mom. And I was like, Oh my God, you’re, I mean, it just hit me. And then like, that was it. I figured out like, okay, let’s get the GM and I don’t need to save this thing. It’s actually saving itself already. Um, and so she’s helped create great priority. Uh, and she’s wicked, wicked smart. She’s got her, uh, she’s a philosophy major. She’s got her JD and then she has a master’s in tax law. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh wow. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yep. And she’s even got a bartender degree too.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Perfect. 

 

Chad Mackay:

When she was in college, bartending academy. So she just made sure that all, all living aspects of your life, she, she knows all of them so that you can’t really, you know, play all know it all.

 

Chad Mackay: 

Yeah, no, it’s, we’ve had a great, great love affair and relationship and yeah, that’s been awesome. I met her, uh, through my cousin and her brother were dating and we met a couple of different trips. And then one, one time we’re both single. I asked her out for a date. She said, I’m busy. I asked her out again. She said, I’m busy. I asked her out again. She said, I’m busy. And I’m like, are you ever going to go out on a date with me? I was what? 23. I thought it was pretty, pretty hot. And she’s like, are you ever going to ask me on a date? Apparently I was asking her to go river rafting with a bunch of friends. And I said, touche, we went out for dinner anyway.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s yeah, that’s perfect.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. So we do a lot of hiking. We’ve, uh, her family has property up in the San Juan islands, which is a beautiful area North of Seattle up by Canada. Uh, so we spent a lot of time out there with yurts and beautiful beach, just hanging out, uh, private pilot got my license in, uh, 2001. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Awesome. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Uh, so I’ve been flying since 2001 and, uh, we do a lot of back country.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s on my, that’s on my list. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

It’s, I want to do a PPO.

 

Chad Mackay:

I love it. It’s, uh, it’s such a great, because you’re so concentrated on it. It actually flushes your mind of all the noise. It’s just you and the plane and navigation and radio, and then this beautiful view out there. And so it’s a very calming. I just love it because it really does just dumps all that extra noise that you got going on all the time.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What are you flying? 

 

Chad Mackay:

I fly a, uh, it’s called a, um, uh, bush hawk. So it’s, uh, a five seater tailwill, uh, bush plane. Um, so it, it’s, it’s quite the hardy little thing. It’s like a SUV of the sky, like a packet up with firewood and cooking gear. And we’ll go out camping out on the ocean. There’s some campgrounds or fly up into Idaho as a back country camp. And that’s awesome. And it’s just beautiful.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That sounds amazing. 

 

Chad Mackay:

And it’s just a, and it’s a, it’s a whole nother knowledge set to get your mind activated a whole different level. So like reading the maps, they’re all 3d, but they’re 2d. Right. So it’s like, it’s just cool. I don’t know. I’ve always loved it.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah. You’re doing that since 2001. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So you started when you were still in your consulting career.

 

Chad Mackay:

In my sales, not the consulting when I was in sales. Cause I had more time.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah.

 

Chad Mackay:

I was doing very well in sales.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

How’s that? What is one thing that you would want to change about you or you’re working on changing, uh, about how you think or what you do?

 

Chad Mackay:

Um, trying to be way more present for the family when I’m with family. No, that’s trying to get off of devices, get off of, um, emails, just trying to have a lot more room. We’ve, we’ve spent a lot of time doing traveling and stuff, but I also need on the day-to-day to, to be more present.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And beside this, you know, I feel at times that, you know, people in the family, you know, everybody else in their own way is also dealing with exactly the same thing, right? They’re also not present. They’re also on their, they’re also on their phones.

 

Chad Mackay:

Oh yeah. Well, having a 17 year old boy. Yeah. The device is definitely like, pay attention to us. So we take them out for breakfast.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What do you want your kids to join in our Venus front tours someday?

 

Chad Mackay:

I think I’m not just, no, I think just like, um, my dad, if they have interest, my older son does, he, he does like the business and he’s interned with us in events and sales. Um, and he’ll do more. Uh, it, you know, he grew up in a family that you learned about all that stuff. Um, it’s still a hard business, right? There’s no easy, uh, but there’s no easy anything unless you can help me out. I’ll, I’ll take easy to, uh, my youngest son, I think he’ll be on a totally different path. He’s like, yeah, I’m not a restaurant. It’s not his deal. He wants to build stuff. So I don’t know if he’s, he’s, he’s got the mind for engineer, but he also wants to build. So we’re trying to see what kind of school that he might want to go to where he can do both. And, uh, so we’ll see.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You read?

 

Chad Mackay:

I do. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What are you reading? 

 

Chad Mackay:

Oh, what have I got right now? Um, I’ve been working on, uh, basically the Winston Churchill books going back on leadership. So, finished world war one now doing world war two. So that’s, it’s, it’s a lot.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah. I got a, I got a set of books, which is, which are just playing, uh, you know, Winston Churchill courts. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I think that guy was, I think he said things was just portable.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You know, all along.

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah. So, um, yeah, I’m very, I love history. Um, I think there’s, there’s so much for us to gain insight. Like we, we somehow think that, you know, we’re so advanced and everything, but it’s like you guys, we’ve been running the same operating system for 5,000 years. There’s been no upgrade. We’re on 1.0.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

One book, one book that I, that I would recommend and I would love to, you know, in fact, give that to you is a book called small giants. Okay.

 

Chad Mackay:

I’ve heard of that, but I have not read it. Yeah. So you got the little goldfish on it. Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah. I’m saying whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Bow bowling. Yeah.

 

Chad Mackay:

Okay. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Um, you know, that book, um, you know, you, you totally dig because, uh, that really talks about having business with purpose and mission and something that grows, you know, slow and fast, big and small is relative, but it’s something that grows well and, you know, sustainably and profitably. And, you know, there’s a lot of love and purpose in that.

 

Chad Mackay:

And I love that, 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You know, feel good. And then it has stories of some of the most iconic businesses and brands, uh, which, you know, I actually, while reading it discovered that some of the brands that I used to admire, you know, just subconsciously and turned out to be, you know, when I read the story, I was like, Whoa, I, I did not know that. For example, for me, like one big thing was, you know, Denny Meyer, uh, you know, how, so I actually discovered, I did not know before reading that book that Shake Shack came out of union square hospitality and how it came out of union square. So I actually discovered it there. And I was like, I was quite mind blown because I used to admire Shake Shack. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You know, a lot. Um, 

 

Chad Mackay:

Oh, that’s cool. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Chad, this was, this was great. Thank you for doing this. 

 

Chad Mackay:

Absolutely. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Absolutely inspired. I’m sure whoever is going to watch this will feel the same.

 

Chad Mackay:

Thank you. Appreciate it.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Thank you.