Wolfgang Puck: Knowing Your Calling Is Step One. Following It Is Step Two [From the Archive]

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This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.

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Presenting The Archive, classic episodes that remain timeless. The raw, unfiltered conversations from the early days in which people shared their failures and showed us exactly how they rebuilt everything from the ground up.

Wolfgang Puck (1:58)

Sometimes, you know, when you don't have the happiest childhood, maybe you have to work harder to become successful and show to your... Me, it was my stepfather who was totally crazy. I left my home and my father told me always, my stepfather said, Oh, you're good for nothing. You're going to come back home anyway. And I said, I will never come home again. At the end of service, the chef called me over and said, You're fired, you know, you ran out of potatoes. And I said, I didn't know how much potatoes we need. I just started a month ago.

And then I said, I'm not going home. It was really crazy. And so I said, I'm going to kill myself. I'm not going home. Well, I really believe if you have a passion for something, if you love theater, if you love radio, if you like TV, if you like to paint or if you like to sing, whatever it is, I think you should work on that really. And if you're passionate about something, you will spend a lot of hours doing it, and then you actually can get pretty good.

James Altucher (3:04)

Wolfgang Puck, I almost don't know how to introduce you because it feels like too small to say the first celebrity chef that's like very Hollywoodish way to introduce you.

You're an inspiration for defining success, not by the business empire you clearly run or the brand around your name, but your just love and passion for cooking since the age of 14 or earlier and how you just single-mindedly pursued and expanded that interest in every way. Going from apprentice to chef at Indianapolis to LA to starting restaurants, to expanding those restaurants, to expanding your name into other brands, to build the fastest growing catering empire. You cater the Oscars, you won all these Michelin Awards. You're doing a master class right now on cooking which interweaves, as we were just saying, cooking, recipes, business philosophy and how they're all interconnected. But let's start off, let's get you down to little Wolfgang Puck at the age of 14

Wolfgang Puck (4:04)

You know what's very interesting? Sometimes, you know, when you don't have the happiest childhood, maybe you have to work harder to become successful and show to your... Me, it was my stepfather who was totally crazy. I called him a terrorist really for the family.

And so I could not wait to get out of the house. Like he always told me I was good for nothing because I didn't want to become a carpenter or a mechanic or whatever. And I loved cooking as a kid already because my mother was a chef too. So I cooked with her.

James Altucher (4:33)

What did you love cooking at the age of 14?

Wolfgang Puck (4:35)

I think I loved the sweets mostly, more so. But I liked the fried chicken, the Wienerschnitzel and things like that, what we made at home. But desserts was really my favorite thing to do.

James Altucher (4:45)