Nick Kokonas - Know What You Are Selling – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP.8]

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Founder's Field Guide. Founder's Field Guide is a series of conversations with founders, CEOs and operators building great businesses. I believe we are all builders in our own way, and this series is dedicated to stories and lessons from builders of all types. You can find more episodes at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:54)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:17)
My guest today is Nick Kokonas, the co-founder of three of the best restaurants and bars in America and the world, Alinea, Next, and The Aviary, as well as the co-founder and CEO of Tock, a comprehensive booking system for restaurants. This was one of my favorite conversations in the history of the show. Nick is a philosophy major turned derivatives trader and now one of the most well-known and respected names in the restaurant and hospitality industries. We cover so many topics I can't list them here, but I'll remember it for why it's so important for a business to really know what it's selling and then actually sell it.
Nick also pulls back the curtain on why restaurants and even book publishers can be great businesses if you do them the right way. I felt like this conversation could have gone on for hours and I hope you enjoy it.
Nick, I thought a neat place to begin our conversation today is with a quote of yours that I found that has three parts. I'm going to read the quote and then I'd love to walk through each of the three parts. What you said was own something, make lots of decisions that have outcomes, try to be right 51% of the time, do that often and repeat. I love this quote and maybe we'll start with own something. What do you mean by that in as much detail as you can provide and welcome?

**Nick Kokonas** (3:27)
Thank you. My thing is I grew up with a dad who he would say he was an entrepreneur by necessity, no one would hire him.
I looked around at some of the immigrants and his cousins and people in our family who were immigrants and the way to create wealth in America was different for different populations and for the Greeks, half of my family that's Greek, it was own something. It wasn't go to college and become a lawyer or doctor or something like that. It was, hey, if you own it and you grow, you make more money. I grew up in that environment and then also just by studying wealth creation, it's actually really rare that you can, sure, you can become a C-level, C-suite, publicly traded company executive or something like that, that's going to take you 30 years and a lot of education and all of that.