Grill to Glam: Balancing BBQ Empire & Nightlife Scene

Welcome to Vegas Circle podcast with your hosts, paki and Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success and culture, and this is our platform to showcase the people in our city who make it happen. On today's podcast, we're going to delve into a business woman's wisdom on customer development, sales, life and business and how her and her husband, brian, have built two successful restaurants. We have in the circle. Owner of Big B's Texas barbecue, ms Natalia Balajevo.

Balajevo, balajevo.

I have Balajevo by mind, so I'll best psych myself out, but Ms Natalia is in the circle with us, so happy to have you, thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so you got very interesting stories. So I want to kind of kick off with your background. We kind of talked a little bit about this before, but you originally moved from Russia, from my understanding, with $400 in your pocket, which is very, very hard to do. So can you talk a little bit about how you moved here to the States?

Pretty much. I moved when I was I wasn't even 20 yet, I was like 19 or 20, almost 20. And I moved my last year of college to, you know, v, and I wasn't really planning to stay here for a long term but really kind of fell in love with the city and kind of made my way around here and I mean, that wasn't really that long ago maybe 20 years ago but yeah.

I grew up in USSR and you know, back then it was all one day country. But you know, then they all split up. It was a little country called Estonia. Okay, it's still a great country.

Yeah.

But the weather is terrible.

Yeah, I can't even remember. We would just talk about that earlier.

Yeah, Because literally today's weather is straight up Estonia 99% of the time. Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's amazing. So how did you actually get connected? Because you've spent about 15 years currently with Wynn Resorts, right yeah, in customer development and everything how did you connect with Wynn?

Well, kind of some of my industry as a coxswater is many years ago at Tobu. Ultra Lounge, which was my first job almost in.

Vegas. I barely spoke any English. It was very broken. I didn't know much about alcohol or anything like that. So kind of was my first very sharp learning curve and it was a great job, amazing company to work for and great money. But I didn't want to get stuck in that position for a long time. Have a degree. I didn't want to be stuck in that position for a long time. So kind of took another step to a management position and from operations then moved on to VIP services and Wynn for almost 15 years now, which is quite some time, yeah.

So you handle all the customer development right. So what does that kind of consist of for our listeners? What are you responsible for?

So for in the nightlife company the customer development is sort of like highest level of the VIP services manager or a host. We handle the top customers, we make sure the venue is sold out every night, we make sure we bring the best customers to the table and make sure the venue is profitable. Of course that's the number one responsibility of our team and it's myself and two other gentlemen that are on that team and we've been with the company for many years.

Yeah, yeah, so that seems like a great business opportunity to kind of delve into business right, Because I think in this high-end casino like the Wynn the clients you're dealing with are usually pretty well off and people that are in business in general. How do you feel like that's helped you kind of grow as a person who wants to get into business or somebody who wants to learn how to network in business?

Yeah, honestly, I think the most important thing is just you kind of become more motivated. You are around people that are better off than you. You are around people that are doing more than you. They're more motivated, they have more, higher goals and I think, to me the main motivator to do more I love my job. It's amazing, it's great, but for the most part, working a nightlife is sort of a Peter Pan job.

You grow out of it.

I mean there's a couple of ways to like work till you retire in that position. But a lot of people that I think are successful start with a job. But then they figure out a business they can do on the site and once the business has flourishes they sort of tone down the nine to five job portion of it and put a little bit more effort on a business site, and to me that's kind of the winning formula when it comes to advancing in at least in our career.

Yeah, we've kind of talked to a couple of people that have this right. They have the nine to five and they're trying to branch off. Does wind, like, give you the flexibility to go into your own endeavors and then, you know, do you feel like you can manage both of those parts of your life?

I do. But I'm also sort of a natural workaholic. You know, everybody has their own biases to me. Like if I have nothing to do I feel, I feel horrible. Like, again, everybody has biases.

But, for somebody it's the drugs, alcohol, video games. To me it's work Like if I don't have something to do I don't know what to do with myself, and I always do best when I'm slightly overwhelmed, like if I put too much on my plate I feel like I'm going to get 95% of that done. But if I don't have enough on my plate I feel like I'm just going to procrastinate and don't get anything done. So I've been very fortunate with wind being very supportive of kind of getting me flexibility to have a business. But it also comes after years of me working my ass off to show my worth.

You know, right now I think I'm the only female in the industry in whole Vegas in the position that I'm in, and that didn't come easy. It came with a lot of work and I think with work it's not just about how many hours you put in. It's input versus output. If I put in 100 hours and my output is 1, I could put in 3 hours. My output is 100. So it's a little bit. It depends on how you spend your time working, not just the work.

And.

Wynn has been really flexible with me and they've been very supportive and I will always for a very big grateful, not leaving anytime soon.

I wanted to kind of dive into that too. Being in a kind of male dominated industry, do you think it's made you tougher Because business is so hard right? What would you say is the biggest thing you've taken away from that or the biggest lesson you've learned from working in that part?

With working with mostly men. I mean to me it's not a big deal. I think it's about how you're brought up.

You can't be sensitive, you have to have a thick skin and not taking things personally. To me, my work shows my worth. I don't have to defend myself in any other avenue. If you can outwork me, I'll have respect for you and to me. I've outworked pretty much everybody I worked with and to me I earn my respect. I don't demand it, I don't come in. Hey, this is my title respect me. I'm going to show my worth To me. That's the main reason that I've earned my badges.

I guess in the industry.

I don't demand respect. I just earn it Working with guys. I have no with men. Sorry, it's never been an issue To me. In my opinion, it's more easy for me to work with all men than working with all females, just because at least men are straight up and forward. They're not going to beat around the bush.

You sound like my wife. That's what I say all the time. If you don't like me, you're going to tell me you don't like me.

I'd rather do that than you're like hey, I love your hair or whatever. And then you go and talk behind my back. If you have a problem with me, just come straight to my face, and I feel like it's easier in a male company than it is in a female company. Again, that's not always the case, but it's just going to be more of a generalization.

How did you guys come up with this concept of wanting to get into the restaurant business? Because the restaurant industry is extremely hard with the pandemic and everything that you've dealt with over. I think it's been about the last eight years now. You had your first store and opened up the second store. What made you get into barbecue business?

Well, I've been with my husband for 18 years now.

He's always been the cook in the family.

I've never really cared about cooking. I know how to cook, but it's not my thing. What my thing is I know how to operate around business, how marketing works. That's kind of my forte For many years. We always talk like, hey, one day we're going to open a restaurant jokingly, because he just loves to cook. We were both in the industry for many years. He was actually a director of Light Group for many years in the entries.

Work for Richard Drake for several years. One day he was just done. He was like, okay, let's do it Again. Didn't have any experience running business, and definitely not a restaurant For me I dove into the business side of it we did a lot of research business plan with.

The business plan is very important. People don't give enough thought to it but when you calculate exactly how much you need to make per year, per month, per week, per day, to break even, to lose money and to make money, once you have that on paper, it's a lot easier to navigate that than going blindly. We didn't take any investors. It was straight up self-investment half on savings and half SBA loan. Sba loan is hard to get. Sba loan is governed back but it's very hard to get, especially for the restaurant because restaurant success rate is so low.

So when we came with the business plan they were really impressed and like this is very very thorough and I'm happy to say I paid my loan back after one year and my numbers were so on point.

It was scary but in one year.

Yes, but the thing is like it's like whenever you a lot of people jump in the business head first because it just looks good, it looks fancy like. Do your research, you know you were a lot better off like. I'm a numbers person, a hundred percent numbers person to me, if numbers don't make sense. I will not do anything so I would you know?

again, happy to help anybody if you need help with numbers, but to me it's important before jumping in head first to know exactly what, where you need to be to to make, to make profit and where did this like concept come from?

so, you know, jumping, the runners are so vast and you know, and it's a very competitive field to be in. You know, coming in the, you know barbecue in general is very, you know, heartfelt, right like I think people who love it, love it, and it's very hard to break into that like is your husband always been just a fantastic barbecue person, specifically.

Well, by my accent you can tell I'm not a Texan, but he is from Texas and that's kind of like. Honestly, he always felt like in this town there was, there was a few barbecue restaurants but it was in a low Texas, specific Texas style restaurant. And what makes Texas barbecue different? You know, barbecue is one of those things that you can't really discuss in the mixed company, because everybody will have a different opinion. What? Good barbecue is depending where they grew up, where they from?

where?

they used to. What makes Texas barbecue specifically different? It's considered purest barbecue. What I mean by that is you do not cover it with sauce, you do not cover, inject it. It's very. It's clean protein meat, mostly beef, with very primitive rub, usually salt and pepper, and then every pit master would add a little bit of twist to it of some kind of other spice and smoke, low and slow smoke, and in Texas they usually use a mixture of miscete or oak. We use miscete because it has more flavor and a lot, of, a lot of times, you know just, you have to start with the superior product because you're not covering but anything like. If you go to Texas barbecue restaurant and it's covered with sauce, they they fuck something up because, because you're not.

You're not supposed to cover it with sauce, you have to. The meat has to shine the sauce is there.

That's a new for me.

I'm glad you said it. You educate us.

That's great, yeah but that's like we also like been very popular with actually bodybuilders. People work out a lot because on our meat there's zero sodium, there's zero sugar, it's just it's very clean meat. So if you are not going to order, you know, a quart of mac and cheese, you can actually do it very healthy. You have body builders come in. They get like a panna, tri-tip panna, turkey, and that's a meal prep because it's very tasty protein with literally nothing on it. The smoke which gives it the taste okay and um yeah, so that's what.

Basically, texas barbecue is sort of a more of a traditional, old-school cooking way. You don't inject anything in it, you're not covering with the sauce, it's just meat and smoke.

So so, yeah, being cut, that's what you decided on, because the barbecue was kind of the most important part of you know, your husband's upbringing. Is that kind of really what? Yeah?

that's what he wanted to do and and to us to like, stay very as authentic as possible. We we also bring the wood from Texas.

We actually truck it in Mesquite from hill country in Texas by the truck. So it's like it's not. It's as authentic as you can get. Again, you are not in Texas, so in Texas they have different rules here. Health department is very strange. It's what we can and cannot do, smokers being indoors, outdoors, out of elements. So you can't get exactly to the point as Texas does it, but we can get as close as possible yeah, so is that what the name actually comes from?

big bees, is that Brian? That's okay, that's all I was trying to figure out. So that's his name on it, but you want to put?

the Texas. But we put big bees in small letters and then Texas barbecue got it so yeah, that's where the name comes from yeah, so this is privately owned.

It's not franchising anything like that. So you guys have a location in Henderson and also in southwest Las Vegas.

Yeah, okay yeah, working on the third one, hopefully medium this year, so we don't know yet the exact details, but hopefully we'll have another one probably should do either Summallon or Centennial Hills. I keep hearing those because, yeah, you name one of those.

Yeah that's good, okay, some keep tabs on that. So you your background numbers wise right so, especially with business. So were you an international economics major, was my understanding yeah. Finance and international marketing yeah okay, I've been reading so much about finance and economics specifically with being a small business owner. Do you feel like that's helped you or do you feel like really just you and Brian building the business and figuring it out as you go, or do you feel like, kind of, the book smarts helps you too?

um, I think it definitely helped me. You know, um, honestly, just going to college itself um in the this day and age is not really a huge difference maker yeah except for the um great connections you make you know, sometimes those connections last three years and they're more helpful than anything you can learn.

But they actually go into college and having the structure of like I learn, I go home, you kind of move away from home, you start living on your own. To me, college was kind of essential. Um, again, I don't know what I didn't if I didn't go, how it would turn out. Maybe definitely maybe not. But um, being numbers person didn't quite come from college. I think I went to college with that degree because I was a numbers person you know, to me it's like not really care about painting a beautiful thing.

To me, everything that I learned had to make sense, and to me numbers makes the most sense because, there is no. There's no cheating with numbers, there's just it makes sense, it doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that you know to me like I look at the room, I can tell you roughly how many square foot it is.

I don't know it's just something in my mind. Yes, yeah.

So it doesn't. I didn't learn that in college, it kind of came natural, I think.

Yeah, when you have, like this economics degree and you try to transition into the restaurant, you know there's a lot of different elements to it, right? You know developing even something as simple, as you said, you know building smokers inside of a restaurant is a challenge you have to learn to overcome. Like, how did you figure out how to navigate just building out your restaurant to accommodate all the needs of the vision that you had?

Um, yeah, that came definitely. We learned a lot. But the first restaurant there was a huge learning curve and, you know, just taking a chance on it, like I said, building a business plan of numbers helps you a lot just to know where you're supposed to be with your numbers. You know, like, if you're opening a restaurant I had a couple of friends at own restaurant before that helped me with a little bit of advice and that was also very, very important. It's. It's hard to just jump into it at first, but you're running a restaurant, you, you understand if your rent should be 10% or less of your total sales and it gives you a little bit of like okay, if my rent is 12% this month.

I need to step up, I need to step up your labor costs.

It supposed to be 25% or less, you know. And again, if it's too high, you understand it, you're going to lose money this month or you're going to have to cut the labor. Now, the product costs or whatever you're selling, that can vary. You know, with barbecue is pretty expensive because nothing is frozen, everything is fresh, everything is like one brisket goes bad. You're already jumping up a percent. So, but you know that that's a lot of learning. You know that I honestly you didn't teach that in college.

There's no school for that. Hey, this is how you open restaurants step by step. You kind of figure it out as you go. I think working in the casino industry helped me a lot. Just you know processes, reading the employee workbooks, just knowing what the labor laws are, stuff like that just coming from the background of working for casino for so many years Huge, huge help. You can't just you know work off the street and open the restaurant. But again, we learn our mistakes a lot and those mistakes, if you have people that are doing something, doing something that you are planning to do, they're your friends. Always reach out because most of the time, 99% of the time they'll help you and even the smallest advice can avert a huge, expensive mistake.

And yeah, that makes a lot of sense it makes complete sense.

How do you guys market? Do you guys, like you know, traditional advertising to get your name out there, and things like that.

I think the most of marketing these days is mostly social media. And you know, when I just moved to this town, you know, 15, 20 years ago it was all print marketing. Everything was by. Everybody was buying radio ads, print advertisement. It just doesn't really work anymore, even just like clubs. Okay. So you go on vacation, whatever you go, you know Hawaii, I don't know. Are you going to go pick up a newspaper and read? Where to go tonight?

No no.

To me, the most powerful way of advertising is social media and word of mouth. You, know, what I would do is, if I go, if I go to a vacation in Miami or anywhere, like I'll ask, I'll ask my waiter hey, we should go tonight. What's your favorite place? So I think educating locals on your product is very important. And social media, because everybody's, you know, even in the nightclub, everybody's on their phone, of course.

Looking at the pictures videos so but if you're on this trip, I think educating, if we're not on this trip, we're more for local customers. But if you are a product that's more for tourists, educating locals and kind of making locals your friend is the most integral part of your marketing structure, In my opinion.

No, I want to say you guys do a lot of catering. I think that's how I got found out about you guys, first on the Southwest setup. But what would you say is because it's extremely hard to find. I don't want to say help because of people that are partnering with you, that are employees, right?

Yeah.

But how do you deal with like the theft, right, because that happens a lot with giving food away and things like that, or throwing food away, like you were saying? Things are, are, is there? Is there policies and things like that that you guys put in place to kind of, you know, modify that.

You kind of have to expect some kind of acceptable loss and because that's going to happen.

Yeah.

Um, we're fortunate enough that a lot of people that work with us have been with us for many years and it's always um a factor of trust. You know like first, I'm going to trust you 100%.

Sure.

You mess up. Once I mess up, I mean still my trust is probably going to diminish yeah.

Yes, I'm not going to immediately let you go, but I'm going to watch you and if that happens again, um, you know, just like in in relationship, trust trust kind of easy to lose and really hard to gain back. So, um, I think we've been fortunate that a lot of times I can trust my, my crew of 100%. But at the same time, in eight years we've been open, it's hard for us to both go out of town together, Like I can't even imagine. I go on vacation and then he goes on vacation.

Yeah.

And, uh, for like maybe once a year we managed to like go together some more for like five or seven days, but it's still like, no matter how good your crew is, it's still not you.

You know, nobody's going to care about your business as much as you care. No matter how much you pay them, no matter what percentage of revenue they get, it's still not there. So you kind of have to understand that and you know there's going to be some loss, whether you want it or not. Yeah, it's like, as long as you can manage it, to not diminish your bottom line.

It should still be okay. Yeah, I learned the tip years ago when we interviewed remember, john Simmons that on like. Fireflies and all those different restaurants. He was saying that, um, one thing he put kind of his business plan was trying to hire, like the, you know, the GMs of the place to be part owners of the of the actual restaurant. You know what I mean.

A way to get around it so they're invested, you know in it so he would have long-term you know, managers which I thought was excellent, excellent business plan. That's hard to do because it's expensive.

Yeah, I mean that's what we kind of moving forward to. We, since you know our every single person that's a manager of the restaurants right now started at the bottom. We didn't. We hired a couple of managers as the managers and it never works out. So every single time that every single manager we have on right now started from the bottom, One of the guys who's like second in charge now starts as a dishwasher seven years ago.

Oh, wow, but again he learned the business from grounds up. He knows every single policy procedure, how what works. So I trust him a lot more than somebody that just comes off the street and is like hey, there's the mic, credentials, I'll manage your team. And it's not just from the perspective of knowing the business, but also from the perspective of team respecting the person. Like hey, I started as a dishwasher, I'm going to show you this is how it's done. And people respect that um, that come on board like hey, not just respect, but they also like hey, this guy was a dishwasher five years ago. Now he's a GM.

Maybe there is something for me to grow, and and um.

It kind of helps it from both sides, um, I think, and it's proven to be very effective for us because it gives other team members kind of uh road map to success, yep and um, and they also appreciate having you know opportunities to grow.

Yeah, and as you kind of continue to grow right and move in, develop and add more locations and do things along those lines, how do you feel like you're going to be able to implement those same standards, the same oversight, the same you know expectations?

And.

I know it's. Growing the people from within does take a little bit of time right to develop them and get them to your where you want them to be. As you continue to expand, you get less visibility. How do you first see that being an issue or how are you going to navigate that?

Yeah, I mean that's a good question. Um, that's why you know it comes to the point. Like you know, I still have my two restaurants, my job, full time other stuff that's going on, that I work with, but, um, like you can't really clone yourself, you know you're going to have to trust people at some point. So when we opened the, the second store, we moved to the, the top um manager from the first or the second store to kind of implement that team and um, we're going to do a third store.

Well, like you were saying, we could probably going to give that person um an ownership portfolio. So you know, um again, you know, if you want to grow faster, you kind of have to give uh, give away some of um of oversight, you know we are. I'm so hands on that I feel like if I'm taking another store, uh, something's got to give. You know, like I'm already working at a hundred percent capacity, it's not uh feasible to add three, four more stores and still, um, you know keep the sanity Right.

No matter how much I like to work, there is also a limit to that. So, um, uh, I think that starting a third store, we're going to start, uh, start giving just part of ownership to um, I don't, we want to take on partners because it's not necessary. It's just like when you have a partner, it's like I have, I have a job all over again. So, um, uh, I think that's what we're going to start with, uh, moving forward. Yeah, that's going to be exciting, yeah.

That's going to be super exciting With us being Vegas circle. Who who's in your circle, that's, you know, spoken to your life or maybe mentored you or kind of helped you with um, whether it's when or building this you know the restaurant business. Can you kind of share some of the impact that they've had on you, on your life?

Um, yeah, you know you. Um, I usually try to, you know. Surround yourself with people that know more than me, do more than me. It just helps you stay more motivated. So, um, there's a lot of people that I work at At the wind that that are very motivating. You know there is um from a Ryan and Polly that are, you know, at the helm of when night life. Yeah, um, I like. There's a lot of other restaurant owners that kind of help me with advice. Uh, Greg J for greens and greens and proteins.

He actually kind of when I was just thinking about opening a restaurant. He's like, hey, come see me. Like. He's like he gave me a full hour's time, like took my band, like write, write this down. He gave me a huge, uh huge guidance to just getting started. And some of those things probably were not really important, like here's where you contact to get your paper goods. Here's your contact to get to meet.

Here's a good contact for contractor.

Um, you know kind of help you help you with. To him was an hour of his time to me. That was probably saved me months, weeks and months of of my time researching all that on my own. And um, you know, um, like you were saying in the beginning, you know, being a nightlife industry at the wind, you know, having so many, I have so many good customers, that kind of like they may not reach out to them? Yes, it's like for any help financially, but if.

I need advice. They will always answer my phone call. It's like hey here's what we should do Um and uh, having a lot of people to look up to. Plus, I love listening podcasts you know, like Alex Hermosi's podcast all the time.

Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, I listened to a few of your yours too, appreciate the support.

Yeah yeah, you learn so much. I mean that's what Chris and I had started. This is obviously what we do. Our intro in the beginning is um, you learn so much from people at least I listen and kind of learn that way. But the biggest thing I mean, you know, in Vegas is it's networking right.

It's knowing the right people and knowing who's in the right rooms and, uh, who can introduce you to. You know the right people, um, which has been great. But for business advice, um, we always ask everybody about you know, just dropping a gym. What would you tell somebody that you know? Maybe they're in the corporate space and they're trying to figure out. They've got a dream and they want to either build a side hustle or maybe they want to be their own small business owner. What would you share with them?

Um, I think important thing is is, if you decided to do something, uh, stop procrastinating and just do it. There are so many people that have great ideas and they just never get the courage to take that first step. Because that's literally you can have the best idea in the world, if you do not take the first step, you will never get there. And, uh, a lot of times people think, okay, measure seven times before you cut, once To be, take that first step, don't just just go for it and figure it out later, because a lot of.

There are so many great ideas I see and they're they mull it over, they think about it, they, and it just never comes to fruition and um, kind of it's kind of a shame, because a lot of people kind of miss out on reaching their full potential.

And you sound like you in my room last. This is literally our conversation. Last night, my wife and I was inspired on our call that's 100% right, yeah, 100% right, yeah, cause you waste so much time.

Yeah, you're wasting so much time and somebody's gonna get ahead of you and get it done.

And um yeah, Honestly, like I give a huge credit to my, to my husband. He's like, I believe, I believe that this is what I want to do. And then you know, um, I'm the CFO in relationship. Uh, I'm very good with money. He's not for me. I, I stood behind him. I was like I took a chance on the board, something that he thought he could do, and, uh, if, if I didn't, I'd still just be an employee and nothing's wrong with just being an employee.

Yeah, nothing's wrong, but the fact that we took that step together. It's a huge risk, you know, doing your life savings and taking a huge loan on on something that may or may not work. We've never done together before, or ever so. I think just taking that first step and and yeah, you do need to do some background work- and figure out, make sure it works.

Yeah.

But there's so many people that I know personally that just like they do the work, they think about it and just never take the step, and it kills so many dreams just not taking the first step.

It's funny you say that, cause we were. We were starting this podcast we've had for about five years now. We started in 2018, but it was two or three years before that. My wife was was saying like let's stop doing, like let's just do it. You know what I mean? Cause you keep. You just got to put it to play.

Yeah, you really, you really got to put it to play and um, but I mean, I applaud you guys because the restaurant business we've had a lot of business owners on that have owned restaurants and, hands down, I was one of the hardest and you guys are eight years. That's amazing. One quick question to us as far as restaurants in general where do you eat? Cause I know you a foodie, so could you give us a restaurant that you recommend, that maybe not yours, but that you recommend? Uh, whether it's on the strip or off the strip is a good restaurant that people from Vegas can check out.

Well, I'll really like a pine. Uh yeah, Shout out to.

Jay shot. Yeah, shout out to Jay shot. That's really a good restaurant.

Yeah, it's a great spot. Um, it's a Mediterranean sort of uh, yeah, and you check out.

Yeah, I forgot. Yeah, he's middle eastern. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, there's a lot of great restaurants on the strip too. There is there I enjoy. Um, um, honestly, I'm not a huge hoodie.

to be honest, I'm not okay, okay yeah, but I see your social media. If you always at restaurants, I love, love seeing that.

So yeah, yeah, to me it's like like I work so much. It's just like to me food is just uh, I'll just get through the moment.

Get, just get by it. Yeah, nobody's mentioned pine and I agree with you. I like pine is actually very good, Very. We've been in a couple of times, but it's not too far off the strip.

It's a great local spot. Um they have great food, great cocktail menu. Um, definitely recommend. Uh, check it out.

Yeah, shout out to Jay Shahan and Lowe Um, their whole team over there. The hospitality company is great and uh so that that place is all right off of cactus and, uh, the 15. So good spot. Um, what else are you focused on for this year? Or action assets one 2024. Is that location, at their location, something that might happen this year or maybe next year, or what was kind of the plan?

Uh, looking for spot. You know it's just like you kind of. You know you're going to have to be very strategic when you're opening a restaurant. You know it's something uh, with the first one, you know, we, kind of driving by slow, saw this open spot yeah, be some kind of sandwich shop. And it was in drive to right next to it.

Yeah.

Remarketing, sort of um, and that you know that spot eight years ago, st Rose Parkway wasn't nearly what it is right now it was like there's nothing there was nothing there. So we kind of grew into that spot and now we've become a destination. So, um, I think Centennial is a great area now, just because it's underdeveloped and there's still not enough um infrastructure to support the growth.

Sure.

Um summerlin's great too, but I think sort of the one in uh on Fort Apache is sort of someone adjacent so it's not quite summerlin, but also not not summerlin, so um, kind of want to spread it out a little bit. Um, but you know, when you're the three restaurants, like I said, we need more help.

Yeah, for sure that makes these high right people, like you said, trying to load those strategies, um anything else that we forgot to ask you, that you want to leave us out on two other than that?

No, I think um whatever industry you work in if you want to be productive yeah what I would say you need to take care of yourself first. It's like um, to me, you know, for me, mine, you know, non-negotiable is like I need my seven, eight hours of sleep, non-negotiable.

Yeah.

And then the hour of day to work out, to keep myself in check. So, um it's. You know, I feel like if you don't get enough rest and recharge your body, you're not going to perform with a hundred percent capacity. So let's see if I work, if I slept three hours, my brain capacity, my actual output, is 50%, so I work eight hours. I definitely only did four hours. Enough of work If I slept my normal eight hours. I feel like a hundred percent my six hours. I made enough work for 12 hours.

My output is a lot better, it's a lot higher. So I see a lot of people kind of on the grind and working, working, working and just like if you don't rest enough, you are just literally spinning your wheels and not getting enough out of your own output. So I agree, yeah.

I got to work on that yeah.

I got to sleep. Okay, I'm horrible asleep. I'm so bad.

We were just talking about it before he was telling us some stuff to take. So I go to sleep better, but but I have no.

If I lay down, I fall asleep within two seconds. Yeah, okay, I'm the same way talking more about that.

That's good stuff yeah. No, you dropped a lot of gyms. And Natalia, it was great, it's literally great to sit down with you. We support you and hope that the third business opens up and more more to come and shout out to Brian also. And what's the social handles that people can reach out to you on your personal and the business one?

My Instagram is literally my first name, my last name, without any dots Natalia Bajio and barbecue restaurant at big BZ.

Bbq. Awesome. Well, tali, after the pleasure, you can check us out at the Vegas circuitcom and definitely subscribe with us. So appreciate your time, Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, I was great.

Yeah.