Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. Today, we are speaking with a New York local. Andy Gottlieb is the founder of Sandwell, a healthyish sandwich shop in New York City. Believing that the food you crave and the food that's good for you should be the same thing, Andy has opened three Sandwell locations where bread is baked in-house, dressings are made from scratch, and proteins are baked instead of fried. Originally from Baltimore, Andy studied finance and accounting at Georgetown and started his career in investment banking before going to New York City, where he attended New York City's French Culinary Institute. From there, his career touched nearly every corner of hospitality, from working in acclaimed kitchens and making old world charcuterie to financing restaurant openings, working in restaurant tech and real estate, and eventually becoming CFO and partner at Blackfoot Hospitality, operating some of the West Village's best known restaurants. Through all of it, Andy kept thinking about sandwiches and why sandwich shops weren't getting the same chef-driven attention as great restaurants. Eventually, he decided to build the place that he'd been looking for himself. This was a really fun conversation. All my conversations are fun, but this one was wonderful because it's local. I got to try out the sandwiches before we recorded, and got to go to my old stomping grounds of the Upper West Side. And Andy really generously talked about everything from the emotional roller coaster of being a founder and a startup to what was really important from an operations perspective, how he approached the feeling of his restaurants and not just the product that he was working on, how his dreams changed from being trying to be a Michelin star chef to being a restaurant owner, the joys of building and the importance of being a leader who welcomes and encourages feedback. We talk about communication. We talk about what he invested in early on and what he wished he hadn't invested in, and it's just a really great look as to what it takes to build what it takes to build in a very competitive industry of food and restaurants in New York City, which is extremely competitive. How AI is used to help their operations, and I had a wonderful time. And I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. Angie, thank you so much for joining me on If I'm Honest. Oh, thank you so much for having me on. It's great. How is your week going so far? It has been all right. Yeah, you know it's busy. It's back to back to school, back to fall, so New York comes back alive. Yeah, so it's very very fun, very exciting. Yeah, so I didn't think about that, but with sandwich shops, is there a busy season in general, or kind of it's always some clientele? There's always something. New York is New York, so there's always density. There's always people around, but there's definitely ebbs and flows, and there's always that ability for people to be in and out, you know. So with this, especially with at the end of the summer, everyone's out of town, and so it's it's always exciting. Everyone, the day after Labor Day is the busiest day of the year, I think, because everyone's ready to be back, ready to be back to work. Every vacation is probably two days too long, and they're ready to to be back at it. Nice. Well, you were very generous in inviting me and my siblings over to your Upper West Side location, which was super cool. And you're in this old brick building, and I grew up not too far from there, so it was like fun to see that. And I had the chicken parmesan sandwich, which was amazing with ricotta. Loved that. I think my brother had the what's the like wild things? Is the spicy one? Wild bird. Yeah. So he had that one, and then my sister had the turkey meatball. All amazing. So first, thank you for the generosity. Happy coming in. Appreciate that. And food was great. And as I mentioned in the intro, it's not only about food; it's also about hospitality, and that's something that you consider important. So, did you know how you wanted your shop to feel from the very beginning, or did it evolve? I think it's hospitality is always such a key element to me starting off in this business, and I think that was such a key part of what I envisioned of this is to have that be part of the DNA. I remember starting off as a young cook. I was super obsessed with technical details, and I'd be okay. This recipe would be great if I add a minute more to the recipe, or 10 grams more to the sauce, or whatever might be. And I was obsessed with making the perfect version of this, and I just couldn't understand why I go to some restaurants and they'd be packed, and I objectively didn't have the best version of this. It was not there, and I was so laser focused on the element of having this excellent product that it took me a minute to realize, well, it's because they're friendly. It's because people feel welcome going in there. It's because when you come with your kids, they make sure that you feel extra special, and it's there. And I, this was like this light bulb went off in my head of realizing, oh wow, it has to be the whole thing. Right. You can't just have a great product. It's having a great experience is a lot more. Right. Like in my mind, you come in for lunch and you leave having had an experience, where you say, what just happened? I heard this was a good sub, but now. I've had this great experience too, and that's really been a guiding part for me is to build long-term connectivity. It's why we're in neighborhoods like the Upper West Side. I live there, so that's part of this. I want I want this in my neighborhood, so I put one there. Yeah, and this is in going through it something that want to form a part of the neighborhood rather than just being a midtown transactional. Thanks for the money, he's your sandwich. It doesn't create a real long term relationship, and it doesn't allow you to do that. So that's a yeah. So this is from the very beginning having hospitality be the other side of the coin. Yeah, was part of how we envisioned this building and growing. Yeah. Now, did you start on the Upper West Side? That was the first one. And can you remind me the other neighborhoods? We're in Gramercy and in Soho. Okay. Cool. So once you opened the Upper West Side, did you kind of have a blueprint for then what those other locations would do in their opening, or did you feel that you had to fine tune because those are very different areas. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely I had a vision, and the vision changes over time, right? It's like when you start off with something, you have the best delayed plans, and sometimes they go well, and sometimes they go awry as as you go through this. Yeah, and that was really for me. I had a blueprint, and then we had to erase some stuff, erase some stuff and add a layer to it, whatever might be, so that we had building a system, right? So we knew. I know that I really like to be in neighborhoods that have this mix of a nexus of live, work, visit, and sometimes you know it's not a perfect triangle. Right. Sometimes it's different shapes, and sometimes it's different different angles to it. Yeah. But always having different parts of it where they're all present, we knew, you know, happens to be these are all places I've lived or worked in New York, so I know them well and know to the micro block which ones feel alive and which ones don't. So that really helped. So that way, each one could feel like a part of that and part of the neighborhood. Right. You know, a goal is it feels like it's you know we we use the nerdy term of a modern interpretation of old New York, so it feels like it's always been there, and so that part of that blueprint is finding out how to get there, what spaces can do that to him. You know, like you said, where you came to Upper West Side location, an old building. Yeah, there are some pros and there's some cons. Yeah, you know, you get character and you get you get leaks. You get problems. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I happened to visit on a day where there was a little hiccup, but I was really impressed by the calmness of the people, and especially being a racer and on the track and everything, like such a high pressure environment, right? And to succeed in racing, whether it's the driver or on the crew or whatever, like you need to do well under that kind of pressure. And it seemed like your people were also doing quite well under that pressure. But on top of that, there seemed to be like a vibe to the people who were helping, both like behind the cash register and creating the food and bringing it out, is there training for your people, or do you happen to find people who are of a similar vein? All the above, you know, and are you had so much fun when you were in there? It was a really busy day, and like we said, we did an old building, and there are power started in the old building, and both of our ovens in the front broke, and so they had to use all the ovens in the back and going through this and this all this part of it. And you made their day, so thank you. They were so happy about this because you were there and you were helping them, being supportive and helping cheering them on. And they would go through a big ticket and they'd high five each other, and you'd cheer with them as well. Yeah, and it's something that turned this what could have been a situation to a positive, right? It could have been it was it was a difficult time for them, right? Yeah. It was it wasn't like an easy walk in the park for that shift for that thing, but they got through it and actually felt better coming out the other side of this. It's resilience building almost, like exactly right. How you do it, and so we, you know, we hire for that. We really try to find people with innate hospitality who like to serve. So not people find this as a calling and not just as a a job. Yeah, it's it's a job. People have rent to pay and we're happy to to pay it. Yeah, but this is something who who enjoy it, who have that part of it, and it really helps create this sense of hospitality with each other that creates a vibe. And that's this. I think I've walked into countless restaurants and stores in my life, and people are there. They got their arms crossed. They don't. They might be on their phone. Yeah. They don't clearly don't care about each other. Yeah. And it feels sterile. It feels weird, and I've walked out of those as many times as I've maybe stayed. Yeah. And on the flip side, having this energy, having this, like exactly like you describe it, where they're they're supporting each other and the finding ways to help and and do that and build that camaraderie. Yeah. That on my you know my experience. Is able to have just a fun place to work. You know, we work a lot. We're in hospitality. We're building something and try to build something big and special. And if I'm going to work this much, I want to be. I want to enjoy it. You know, and be around great people. That's it. And I think I'm glad you said that because I think one, I feel like at work you can forget that other people are people, and like everyone's got stuff going on in their personal life, and anyone has what they're dealing with, both good and bad. And so recognizing that, but then also, I I feel like now people are so hungry for those warm in person interactions, whether it's because more people are working remote or because the world's a mess, like whatever it is, like finding that in those day to day moments. I think that's so right, and I think that there is this real desire after after COVID, after these things, where to have this warmth. And there's not a lot of it out there. There's a lot of people where it feels very transactional and feels, you know, everything's on a kiosk now. We've got screens, but it comes with also talking to a person, right? And it's it's through is always a often a translator day to day experience. Yeah, so having this be yeah there, I think that that really adds warmth. It might also be the only time that a person might be interacting with someone a day. And I think back to when I first graduated college, moved to Cornelius, North Carolina, which was you know I was a fish out of water, didn't have any friends, was just racing and stuff. But like, I would work from home, and I'd have stretches of days where I didn't leave the apartment complex, and then like I'd go grocery shopping, and the cashier was my like human interaction. And so you just never know what kind of impact you might have. So one of the other pillars of Sandwell is that you are healthy-ish, and that's important. But there are a lot of ways to make both the food and the establishment it's in healthier. So, how did you narrow down which healthish elements you incorporated into Sandwell? So, this comes deeply of personal experience, right? So, I think that there are a lot of things out there that are chasing a wellness fad that are saying, "Oh, here's what's popular now. Here's a thing we're seeing. Here is something that we think we might be able to catch in on or do right. And for me, this came from in searching for knowing that I love sandwiches and was part of this process and looking for what this concept might be. I've been looking for healthiest sandwiches for two, three decades. Yeah, you know, of going out there sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously, right? Where I really love sandwiches. I was almost a search to how often can I rationalize having sandwiches, right? How how can I? They're so great. How can I do this, right? And what makes me feel good, right? So again, it's a matter of personal taste through this, but it is. Even though I love a great burger, every time I don't feel great, right? Right? Is it fun and enjoy when things are smothered in cheese? For sure, 100% I don't feel great. You know, and and that's just sometimes the the juice is worth the squeeze, and you roll with it. Yeah, yeah. But there is a constant balance of looking for healthy-ish where I would enjoy it and feel good afterwards, and not good. What have I done, right? Yeah, and so that was really this part of it where I have probably been to every, definitely every major sandwich shop, but most delis in the tri-state area. Okay, going through and trying to, you know, I apologize for all the people I've asked for a custom sandwich to and said, hey, but can you put this on there and maybe some fried chicken for this and gone through it right to do this, and I really found that there was a lot of places that did really good, healthy versions of this, but they weren't that good, or they did healthy versions. They weren't that good, or they did really chef-driven versions, and they were not very healthy. Right, and so you know, I came to this through natural sense, and one of the things that I got great advice on from a friend early on was find your north star, what you believe in. Find your north star, what your your concept is, and you can follow that as you go. And so other things will change, other things will evolve. But for me, having healthyish be that there's no red meat, there's no pork, there's nothing fried, there's no cream, there's no butter. But that's what it. That's just what's not there. What it does stand for is a lot of flavor. It is using natural ingredients, not using preservatives, not using. You know, if you need a PhD to understand something on a label, I don't really like to have that in there. Yeah, you know, and that is what we do sound right, and having that BR version of healthy-ish, yeah. I found that if I have like a lettuce wrap or like a super healthy salad in like two hours, I'm gonna slice a pizza. I just wish it were different, but here we are. Yeah, and so I didn't want too healthy, but also the same way. Triple baconator is not like my Tuesday, right? And sorry, Wendy's. And so that is again finding this healthy-ish of what we want to be, this balance where we can work off of that, right? Where how do we accommodate different dietary preferences? How do we plant forward because I think it's delicious. Yeah, I love veggies. Yeah, but I don't love when things are a facsimile is something else. Yeah, you know, you know, like a chicken with with no C and apostrophe. Yeah, has always confused me. Yeah, I know it's not chicken, right? But what is it? What is it? And and it's a hydrogelized soy in a factory somewhere. Kind of freaks me out. Yeah. So having the sense of what are plants and having it be real food that's approachable and fresh and made every day made sense of how healthy is. And you know, you know, I think my I grew up. My dad was a cardiologist, and so I would be in the room. We'd talk. You know, take notes. We go through this process, and the advice of what you would give to help someone changed, right? Eggs were good for you, then bad for you, then again. You weren't supposed to drink wine, and now you should drink a moderate amount of wine. Whatever might be, and keeps changing. Yeah, keeps changing. And it's like, well, what feels good to you? What there's science behind a lot of this, but also what is a natural path to do these things? Yeah, that's that's great. Yeah. So then, when it comes to producing at scale, because that's what you're doing in three locations, and does that has that made it harder to find the ingredients that you want to use to be able to produce a larger amount of it actually? It actually helps us. Okay. So at but doing at scale, again, we're trying to find ingredients that are natural out there. So it is when you're buying a little bit of it, you're a little fish. True, right? But as we're saying, look, we have a limited menu. We have a handful of things. I'm gonna need 1000 pounds of chicken from you this week. Yeah, it helps us get great quality stuff. It helps us get a. If we're trying to find again certain ingredients, having volume behind it really helps us with that because a purveyor will work with us and say, "Great, we can form this relationship and and build this out, and they'll help us find a great person to work with or whatever might be. That makes sense. Yeah, because again, we don't have 1000 things on the menu. We've got 12. You know. Well, and that segues into my next question. So perfect, perfect tea up there because you have 12 regular sandwiches. And keep me honest here: 12 regular sandwiches, one special, five salads, and then sides and drinks. But I read that you originally had 37 items that you were kind of like those were your final items. You had to wither it down. So, how how did you think about how you were developing this menu, making it balance, and then does it evolve over time? Yeah. So we, as I was like, okay, well, I want to open a sandwich shop. I want to do these things. Let me write down. I have a whiteboard in my apartment on a wall, and I was like, "Okay, let me write down my favorite sandwiches. And I didn't really think about it. I just started writing down my favorite sandwiches, the ones I wanted to do, whatever might be. And I looked up, and there was 37 named items on the board. I was like, "Oh man, I like sandwiches. That's good. That's good. But I can't do all of these at once, right? And so it was hard. It was like a like a NCAA bracket style, trying to go through and trying to get through into our final our final menu. But the important thing as we're trying to winnow it down is how do you have something earnest place and how to be fantastic rather than just a thing. If I sometimes I walk into a store and they've got a menu the size of this entire wall, yeah, and they say, "Hey, hey, get the number 24 as the best. That's overwhelming. There's so much decision fatigue and paralysis that goes into this. And you know, I was thinking of this. I think it's like a throwaway line in Parks and Recreation where they ask him as he's unsorry what he, how he picks with music on the iPad. He goes, everyone has to be a banger, and I think it was just like throwing it on the middle of a season, and it has stuck with me. Yeah, of this menu thing, where it is this idea that if it's on the menu, it should be fantastic. Yeah, it should not be this thing like I heard people like tomatoes. Yeah, I heard people like this. Right, like people who can build their own sandwich and build their own version of that if they'd like to. But if we're going to put on the menu, which would be awesome and something we're really, really excited about. We're doing excellently, and with a small team and a small space and paying New York rents, you can't have a massive space. Yeah, I'd rather do a few things superlatively, rather a bunch of stuff pretty well, and so that was our focus. You know, we've the biggest part since then has been finding out what to selectively add to the menu. It's an it's a organic being for this menu, right, and what to take. Away, yeah. So, what is when you strip away? You know, it's almost like a I think like a block of granite where a sculptor. I see a block of granite, a sculptor sees a statue. Yeah, yeah. Right. I looked at these 37 sandwiches. I saw a menu that's there, and we're slowly polishing away these last parts to get to what it will be. But does it, you know, earn its place? Is it exciting still? Is it something we can do well? And that's our-that's kind of how we add and subtract to the menu-is doing that. It's also listen to customers. So we started off without the chicken parm on our menu, okay, and with just an eggplant parm, and our staff was making it for themselves all the time because we had chicken cutlet for buffalo chicken, and they were making themselves all the time, and they were making for customers who saw them eating it. It's like the secret. They're like, "What is that? Like, oh chicken parm? Let me get one. And I started looking. I was like, "Are we selling like a lot of chicken parm sandwiches? Like, yeah, like organically, we're just selling a ton of them to customers or eating them ourselves. I was like, well, it seems like a pretty strong green light to put that on the menu, and it's been one of our top sellers since. Oh, I mean, it was great. It was different. It like I think the ricotta because that's not normally in a risotto. No, it's usually. I think so. It's a a mix of like a whipped burrata, okay, on there, and it's like a little schmear on top, and so that way, instead of having this like avalanche of sauce and mozzarella, it is like a good combination of all the things without being overwhelming. And there's almost like a really good acidity to it. Like instead of the heaviest, now my husband is French. We consume our fair share of cream and butter and everything. But this, it had it. It had that fresh, even though you have this hoagie style bread that's on there. But yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back. We are back on If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. So you mentioned obviously there's these organic ways that you might reevaluate the menu, but otherwise, do you have like an auditing schedule for how often you revisit the menu? It is quarterly. I try to do like a deep dive into all of our systems, what we do, and have this be, you know, what jumps out, what needs to really get into, and that's kind of across the board of what we do. So once a quarter, I'll jump into it and take a look at different parts of our business and operations and check into it, and have that be there. And sometimes the menu gets no changes. Sometimes we're about to go into a deep dive shortly, based on what's coming up, and yeah, that's that's it's it's an evolving element. So we we try to structure it in so that doesn't just you know I think you have to create your own luck sometimes and create your own ways to be have this by making sure you're finding the time, because sometimes otherwise you wake up and a year's going by and go, "What just happened? Yeah, yeah. Where'd that go? Yeah. No, totally. Well, that's that's. It's nice too that you kind of get that mix of organic and set and like kind of forced creativity almost if you get to that point. So, can you remind me when you launched? Was it 2020 or 2022? 2023. 2023. Sorry about that. Two years ago, as of two weeks from now. Oh my goodness! Congratulations! Happy birthday! So you you obviously have a long history in hospitality and restaurants, and there's like the culinary world is challenging, and obviously just like racing, just like anything, funding super important. How did you approach getting this business off the ground? And I don't know exactly how restaurants work, but like, how did that work for you? I think it's like anybody. You know, like it's it's not so different from any other startup. And as you get going into it, and I think it really started with checking in with the people who are I trust in my life and important friends and family and advisors out there going through this process and saying is this a good idea how do we go through this let's workshop this and for the first round I wanted to be stuff that either we could fund our advisors ourselves or with close friends and close family so I felt like there was the ultimate circle of people who would not be yes people, yeah, who would give real feedback, who knew me well enough to give a strong critique and help in that way, rather than just being you know raising a bunch of money and have a bunch of people saying you're doing a great job, right? Sure, but that's not what I need to hear. I know when we're doing well. I need to hear this feedback, and I think in the restaurant business, especially, it's something that I've seen other people perhaps have issues very early with, is not is having echo chamber instead of a feedback. Area right instead of people who are helping them figure out how to do stuff rather than just saying oh that's a great thing on the menu right and that was my that's why in my head when I was starting I said I really want that so that has to be whatever I'm doing I have to that's kind of the the cap on that yeah is is what we can do in this realm, and that helped shape some of our budget decisions. Helped shape some of what we're doing as we're going through it, because that was such an intense period of growth and taking something out of nothing and turning into something. Yeah. Right. And that time, that's how looking at funding in that realm was who can be truly a part of a team and is something there that we can figure it out together, right? And everyone in there really helped me so much in ways big and small. You know, they weren't making sandwiches, right? But they were helping advising on all all parts of this stuff, so that when you know, I think starting something is so hard, yeah, because there's so many decisions to make, and they're all at once, yeah, and they all interrelate, and you've had a you have a vision, and then something happens, and something else happens, and here you are, and how do you stay true to that, and how do you go through this process and not be exhausted by that, in addition to everything else, and having people can help you say, "Oh, what do you mean you put that? You know, put that there. What's going on? Yeah, and not taking that personally and saying, 'Oh, thank you. Yeah, you have saved me. This is great. Yeah, and have that process. So that was when we first getting started. That was our process, and now as we grow, kind of the circle grows, right? So that as we grow further and try to expand more, who else can we incorporate into the circle and become friends, become people like this? But that's really the strongest test: is that can you and willing to provide real feedback, yeah, because not everyone's a restaurant, you know, not everyone in our team is as a restaurant background, yeah. But most have been successful in their lives, or most have these incredible experiences they've gone through in their lives that are incredibly valuable, and even just a really, really opinionated consumer who's got super hot takes on what it should be, right? Which is very helpful to go through, and we've turned down decent amount checks because there wasn't that value add. Yeah, there wasn't this, you know, there wasn't desire. You know, I'm not again. I'm asking someone to put on an apron and we're busy and come up with that catering, right? But asking that, hey, you've got this incredible wealth of experience in what you do. I need to be able to call you sometimes and say, "Hey, what do you think about this? Yeah, and help with that. Yeah, like the ad has to be greater than the sum of the parts, right? Exactly. And when you were talking about that, like sometimes giving feedback, and I don't know exactly what your team looked like in the beginning. I'd be curious about that, but like, do you did you think about it from like a leadership perspective in making sure from the get go that you were facilitating that and like I don't know it's your vision and so as a founder like it's yours but you need all your people to believe in it too so like from a leadership perspective was there oh yeah it that is probably one of the hardest parts of doing this, at least I found for this, is is making sure that's part of our culture and that's what we do, and that's built into deep into how we as a as a company behave, right? Is that feedback is real and you can do it kindly. You need to do it kindly, yeah. But you can't be excellent without feedback. You can be pretty good, and there's you can have a pretty decent floor by doing by just being pretty good and having moderate feedback. But there's a ceiling; it's right above that floor. It's a narrow band of where you can exist. But being able to kindly give feedback and say this is where you're doing well, this is where we need to improve, and it's not you; it's us. How do we do this as a company? How does Samwell do this as a company? Not like Andy, what you doing, man? Yeah, and it was instilling that culture of values. It people can't read your brain. Learn that the hard way every day. Where I assume someone knows this, and I have to. Okay, no, they don't know exactly how I'm thinking about this. How do I walk them through this? How do I explain this? How do I instill this into what we do? Yeah. You know, probably one of the biggest mistakes I made up front was hiring two seasoned people to run, help me run the business from the get go, and like the front and like the the kitchen and the service, and they had they're great people, very nice. They had their own very specific ways they wanted to do it, and they were like, "We are hiring a season person. Like, what do you want from me? This is what we do. And they weren't wrong. Yeah, but it was like, "Well, no, like I'm trying to explain why something different. I want something my. I want this way. I have this vision of how do I have this hospitality and the food and all these things, and the friction. And and it ended up being pretty quickly they transitioned out and you know hired them from the start and had them all this money, these salaries. And I realized that again, not through any of their fault, but through this process, it needed to be my culture. It needed to be what those values were, so we could give feedback, and everyone knew that I was on the same side of it. Yeah. So now our staff, you know, I'll go if I'm making a sandwich next to someone who does 1000 times more than I do, because I'm not not online as much as I'm running three businesses. They are they'll correct me. Yeah. And sometimes, and I'm thrilled with it. I'm like, thank you so much, and everyone looks around like, what just happened? Yes, this is exactly what I want. I could not be more excited that you helped me get this right because the customer is gonna be happy. Yeah, because they get exactly what they're supposed to, and I'm, I'm so happy that you feel comfortable doing that, even with the boss. Yeah, like I'm the opposite of mad at you right now. Yeah, no, that's really great, and you touched on two things that I think are very different but important. So, on the one hand, with the specialist, right? I think that's as I've hired more people, whether it's video editors or architects or designers, like you hire people, and to your point, like they have their subject matter expertise. But if you're the one kind of responsible for the final product, and you want a certain way, that balance is so tough. And I think about as a speaker, it's like I have a style of speaking, and if someone wants to, if someone asks me or a client, potential client asks me to change up how I do, it's like, well, that's not my specialty, and like that's not then don't hire me, hire someone else. But then you also want the business, so you're like, okay, well, where's that balance? A little bit, but it is a tough balance. And the second thing that is so critical, and I think one of the most important lessons that young professionals or people can realize is, to your point, that no one can read your brain, and that we can't assume that anyone has the same context that we have, whether it's the vision that you're having, or just you know, just information. Like I'm in corporate now, and I've been in corporate for three years, and I'm constantly reminded that like leadership has different context than the VPs and the directors, and erring on the side of over communicating becomes really important. So I am married to a psychologist. Oh, okay. So you all, I am well versed in this. We probably talk about wants, needs, and desires and feelings more than most at our at our company. Hey, only a good thing. And I think in a in a because I totally agree with over communicating. I'd rather it be someone be annoyed to hear for the fifth time than annoy they were given no direction, right? And have this be something where if you're constantly updating and providing expectations, and you're you're clearly communicating what success looks like, what what someone's individual success looks like, what someone how the team does well, then there's no when you're doing well, high fives all around. It's a great job. We talked about this. We we envisioned this, and here we are. Right. Yeah. And when it doesn't go, it's what we talked about. This here's what happened. Here here are clear paths to these things, right? And I think that's something that being like being able to over communicate and go through it. I think it helps you helps me learn a lot. It helps and where to go, and it helps other people see. Oh, I have this narrow tunnel of what's happening, but because you're also negotiating with other vendor, that's why we're getting this thing here. And got it. Yeah. Now I can piece together why this is happening on my job, and I can help that person too. Totally. And it's yeah, it's it's communication so powerful on this, and I spend way more of my day than I probably ever thought I would talk to people and making sure that they understand where I'm coming from. I hear where they're coming from. I'm learning about them and what how they see things, right, and helping to kind of build this collaborative element so that we're all going there. But I feel like the pie chart of how I envision spending my day-that is a much bigger slice of pie, and and it's a very rewarding one. I enjoy that part a lot because you get to talk to people. Yeah, but yeah, it's it's definitely it's different than expected. Yeah, exactly. And I think that like over communicating doesn't necessarily mean micromanaging, right? Like there's very, I think it's it's really different. And so having that balance then is critical, obviously, because I don't think anyone likes a micromanager, but but it's so important. So very cool. Yeah, yeah. Now, is this brought to you by Saratoga, or is this a time? No, I've pitched a bunch of different waters. I just like the water. It's a little bougie. I like it's my favorite one. It's it's a little bougie. I think it looks really nice on the screen against the screen too. Like we have the little at all the restaurants I've been partners with, we have these. Yeah, for for the it's the taste the best and it. I know we're not plugging Saratoga. But Saratoga wants to sponsor. I've reached out before, so no, yeah, being hitting the socioeconomic level where I was comfortable buying glass water bottles instead of plastic water bottles was a really big milestone for me. So, so you just mentioned that you didn't expect how much you'd be talking with people and what a big part of the pie that would be for your day to day, and especially given your background in operations and finance, what else has been particularly surprising as a founder, but then also specifically like a sandwich shop owner. There has been so much. I feel like people tell you to to prepare, and it's different, and I could have been more prepared going and having a background in what I did and what I do, and it was different, right? I feel like it is. There's a couple things in life that's felt this way, where it's like the difference between being married and not married. I met my I met my wife the first day of college, and we've been married 11 plus years now. And the day, first day we were married, it felt different. It's different. You woke up and we're like, "This is cool. We're married. This is awesome. This is different. Like we've known each other forever, and here we are. Yeah. You know, I have a six-year-old daughter, and the same thing. That first moment is different. Yeah. And life changes, right? And I feel like, and again, it's related to this. These are those are big seismic events, and running a company and trying to do it well is different. And you can tell you all you want. You can prepare all I want. And I was so thought confident. I was prepared, and I was. It was different. Yeah. And so it is something that, for me, like in going through this, the weight of that is both pressure and exciting. Yeah. Right. So you know this thrill of being there and having it there. It's like, oh no, my I can really do well or not. It's me. Right. There's people helping me. There's other parts of this, but it's my direction is this, right? Yeah. And the risk is there, but the reward is there. And I think in any situation in my life, I've wanted to be the one with the ball in my hand, not because I've been the best shooter, not because I've been the best at other parts of this. Yeah. You know, I was an enthusiastic athlete, not the most talented, right? And but also the captain's all the team, right? Because I was excited about doing these things well and want the ball here. Yeah, and here it's the same thing where I think that's there's days when it's a lot, and there's days when being a founder and going through this and having the burden of this is hard because you're having to see the totality in everything, and it's you got to see the trees, you guys see the forest, you guys see the little things in the brush underneath, and go through it. But it's also exhilarating to be able to do this and to be able to have a team and employ people and have this be a growing family that I love to have with with our company, right? It's really empowering to see our stores on the streets and and to say we created this, right, and had this there, and that is something that I don't think I was ready for that either. On that feeling of price, I've been very operations focused. I'm not a. I'm not a super self-promoting focused person. You know, I'm just like I just like running restaurants. I like serving people. I like people to have fun, enjoy. But it's not like I got into this because I was fluent with Instagram. Right. You know, like I don't know. Like it's not. It's not. It's not much August, so how much I, how much the pressure felt different as a founder was real, and of how to account for that extra weight on your shoulders. You went through it, but also how much I I felt so proud of having it when it did go well. Right, there's days we did not. Yeah, yeah, still doesn't. But there, in general, that positivity is exciting too. Yeah, and like, I love the emotional roller coaster, and like, I have corporate job now, but my entire 20s were being an entrepreneur, freelance, however you want to call it. And the the highs are so intoxicating, and then the lows are really a bummer. But then you really don't like being in the bummer zone, so you try to get really hard to get bigger. I feel like if you're racing a car around a track, there's it's all there in the moment for you. Yeah, yeah, and then you hit the wall and it's awful, so you got to get through that. But I I don't know how old you are, but I'm going to assume you're not in your 20s. Do you feel like you could have started Sandwell at that age, like in your late 20s, versus now. Because like I think there's so much pressure, especially with Instagram or Forbes 30 or 30, all that stuff. Like so much pressure to get everything accomplished early on, and I'm finding that my 30s are like I'm so much more competent and knowledge. I think that is when I think I've been trying to start businesses since I was like 20 years old, and in food, right. And part of the reasons I I love food for many reasons, but one of them was that they have the ability to be let success be determination of whether you can open a business and do this right. You could be just a super talented chef, and people say, "Great, open a restaurant, and that was exciting to me. And I was thinking about going into it and going through it, and I'm so happy I didn't open a business then because you look back and it's like so it's cringeworthy sometimes of like what I thought was great at 24. I was like, "Oh, oh, buddy, this is you haven't done the world yet. This is this is not great, and of I think being confident, being competent, but also being confident, right? And so not really, I'm not really worried if other people think healthyish is their definition of that or good for them. I I feel I think this is great, right? And and I think people like it. And you open the doors, and you open a restaurant. There's nothing more nerve-wracking than first four customers and hoping it goes well. Yeah, sure. But it feels so much different now than it could have then. Yeah. And I think of how much extra stuff I did there. You know, when I was a young chef, I was obsessed with becoming like this Michelin star chef, and I started these technical details, and my my dream was to start these long tasting menus and these elaborate things, and draped in whatever it might be. And every year, as I've gotten older, that gets stripped away, and I think in a positive way, where it's like, okay, how do we get rid of the excess, get rid of these things that don't matter, yeah, and focus on just an excellent version of something. Yeah, and it can seem simple, and have just a inordinate amount of preparation and a lifetime of experience making it better, right? Yeah, and we care about how we prepared it might be, but it doesn't need to be this thing, you know. Versus having it be now as I've gotten older, I'm 40 now, but I appreciate not not 20s is real, and this sense of being able to just feel like what we're doing is right, right. And there's so much FOMO out there. There's Instagram having and what's out there of these lists and these people being successful, I don't begrudge them their success. I'm excited for them, right? But you can't help but feel a little bit like I should be doing more. Yeah, 100% You know, I'm sleeping this many hours to less. Yeah, and I can do this, but it's. I don't think I could have opened Samwell there because I think it requires a informed restraint to do it, and to be a leader, and to go through this with compassion, and to have understanding of having lived a little bit of life, to understand what other people might be going through, or how much I don't know. Yeah, you know, I thought I knew a lot when I was younger, and every year I try to learn more, but I realize there's more I don't know. Yeah, which can be humbling, but really grounding too. You know, curious soul. So it's good to learn every day, and you could work in this 1000 years and still learn something. But it's that, yeah. I think it's totally spot on. Of having done it now, it's like, oh man, there. I don't having the that that burden of growing up, while also doing that-that's a good way of phrasing it. God bless people who were able to do it. Yeah, I couldn't have. We're gonna take a quick break, and we'll be right back. We're back on If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. Was it at all jarring for you to realize that your dreams were changing? Um, you know, it's like the the beach doesn't erode in a day. Yeah, you know. Yeah. Um, I think that there are times we look and say, "Hey, what's that's different? How you know? Like, but I think almost like there's like moments of clarity. We're like, "Okay, do I really like that, or is that something I think I like? Right? Do is that is that something that's really surface level, or is that something that I'm really excited by? Because if you got it, would I be excited, or would it be like? Well, now I have this thing, I guess. Yeah, but yeah. So I think it's a sense of reflection and going through it and and doing there. But I think it is being excited about it for its own sake has help helps I think for me, and it makes it very exciting to be into it for the reasons I'm, I think are great, right? Yeah. Because I think values stay the same, but how it's interpreted and evolves. Yeah. You know, yeah. So I so I had this dream of being Michelin chef, right? I went through it, and at 26, 27, 26, I found out that I need to have reconstructive footsteps. Both my feet. I had inherited some some craziness with my feet, and then I played rugby and had two brothers, and I broke all my toes on my feet. Oh, and so I went to the doctor one day, and they said, "Oh, you're working your feet 18 hours a day in the kitchen. This is bad. Like you need to see a sports you did you did see a sports podiatrist and like get this fixed, and so they took apart both my feet one and then the other after six months and put them back together, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I blame it and I expect that to be the case, but because I was forced to get out of the kitchen for a year, you can't work on like a yeah whatever It is, and I had this dream that was un unyielding that I was going to be the chef who does this, and most of our friends who are still doing that are either really good at what they do, or they're pretty unhappy in the other side of this personal life. You know what's happening, and it's a hard, just the nature of that demands of being a that level of torture artist, yeah, and into that, yeah, and it's something that having that dream change was the best thing that could have happened because I worked in it. I ended up working for a friend who was building seven restaurants at once, and was like, I could use a hand doing this, and I had finance background. I had culinary background. Perfect candidate. And he was like, "I need help. I need to get management financing, construction. Can you help me with this? And I loved building restaurants. I never, I never thought one minute about building a restaurant. Yeah, I'd only thought about cooking in a restaurant. Yeah, right. That was like the sole laser focus of my life. And I was like, "Ooh, this is fun. You got to figure out design. You get to figure out the colors. You get to figure out how it goes. You get to figure out how all the logistics work. And I was like, oh, maybe there could be more to this than just being this tech, whatever might be. And it was a dream that changed, but it wasn't, you know, didn't didn't feel unnatural or sad, you know, like like I don't look at that, but man, I don't go to a stair and go, man, I wish I was that guy. Yeah, yeah, happy that they're doing what they're doing. Yeah, I enjoy that meal. Yeah, that's so cool. You're getting to do all the building because I also think building is so much fun. And when like when it starts to click, you're like, this is so cool. I need more of it. Exactly. So when you like when you were getting started, what were any like non-negotiable tools that you knew you needed to get Sandwell off the ground? And this can be like interpret that however you want, but that's a good question. You know, I think that when we were opening it, I knew that I needed to focus on the product and the service as much as possible. So I needed to find and develop tools to help us do all the other stuff, and it's something that is was really hard at the time. You know, to try to figure out as we're going through it, I knew okay, these are the cooking utensils I need. These are the specific ovens I need. This is the electric I need. Like this is the square footage that I all figured out, and that was our requirements for construction, whatever might be. But I realized to do this, it was important for me to do it with affordable. I don't want to charge $30 for a sandwich. I want to charge $14, and to do that, I had to build in a ton of back office tools to do this stuff, and that was like the non-negotiable. How do I figure out how to do all these things well and efficiently and go through it? You know, the past three years, I've become much more versed in AI age than I thought I would in my entire life. Yeah, it's great for small businesses and like solopreneurs or like people like this this element because we're able to do these things so I can focus on this and do it well, you know. And so there's so many moving parts of a small business. There's so many of a startup, and we just didn't have the overhead for it. Yeah, we still don't, you know, and and to have that support elsewhere and to be constantly focused on how do we build this and how do we have this there is something that I knew from the very beginning we needed to do so that I wasn't just like entering invoices at four a.m. every day. Yeah, whatever it might be, and going through it. So I think that's been a big part of what we've been able to do. Yeah. Really. So I don't know if that's the right answer. It is a great answer. The tool you're looking for, but that is the. I totally been one of our driving factors has been to have outsoar outsized support on these things that are help us sell, help us manage, help us run things that I just could not do on my own and haven't previously been able to do another job because this didn't exist until now. Yeah. So, was there anything that you invested in early on that you wish you hadn't when it comes to operations or or just your growth and getting off the ground? There are in any construction project. I enjoy restaurant construction. It's it's probably deeply masochistic, but I was going to say someone going through personal construction. It's horrible. It's hard to, but it's a puzzle, right? Yeah. And if you know your constraints and you know what you're trying to get to, and you can figure out how to get there, it's exciting, right? You just there. There's a way to unlock it. It's like a Rubik's cube. It's like there is a there is a key. You sometimes got to work really hard for it. Sometimes sometimes it's there, and so in there, I feel like if you get 90% right, you've done a lot, and you have it. And I feel pretty good about it, right? And so with any of these construction products and these operations that we've done, that that's been about right, 90% right, and that doesn't let the what's it saying the good be the enemy of the great, right? So we're constantly moving forward and saying we have these ideas, but we are still leaving room for creativity, still leaving room like every space is a is a living space, right? So I generally know where it's supposed to go, and you get in there, go. The chair should be over here. I don't know how we didn't see it before, right? And if you're over designing, over going through it, and you don't leave room for that, you've then fully built out. Like I've seen friends build a custom restaurants and custom banquets go. I put the tables in the wrong place, and it's like, oh shit, man! Like you didn't need to do that, right? And that, and and that's part of this as we go, where you know, accepting that there's going to be some things, accepting that there's going to be some failure, accepting that there's going to be things I shot and missed on, yeah. But if the rest of it was good, we can open with that. We can have the like. Hopefully, 10% isn't stuff like you know where the plumbing goes. Not the really critical stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think I've opened like 15 concepts over the past so many years, and every single one has had the thing I didn't see. Yeah. Right. And it's you know at a certain point, hopefully, I run out of things to To not think about during construction, right, and to have the thing I didn't see, but I've learned from each of them, yeah. And it's like, okay, where to look for AC based on your needs and the size of the windows and the in the oven. Sometimes it's where does some of the stuff that aren't in the space go because that might affect your infrastructure sometime, whatever it might be, right? And that's really been a part of it. So, yeah, I think there there's budget I have spent differently on. In general, okay with most of it, and I think where I haven't, where I've overspent is is not trusting myself. So trusting a designer to say you needed this and you can't live without that. I'm like, oh, I can't live without that custom floor. Yeah. And now I realize I can't. Right. I'd be totally fine without a custom floor. Right. Like I would be totally fine without spending the money on that. Right. Yeah. And realizing how, okay, what is our values? What is what is important to me? What is a need versus a want? Right. What is in the budget? What's not? And being just ruthless about that, and saying, "Okay, well, I get that you want that. That's cool. What do I want? What does a concept need? And being just listening stronger to that because I think every time I've done that, that's gone well. Because it's like, okay, I don't, I don't, I'm, I feel better about that because at least it's something I felt it was a need rather than just like acquiescing because I thought they were might be interesting. And you're building your intuition, like especially if you recognize maybe I wish I had answered or reacted differently. Like you build just like resilience, you build up like intuition, you build up to stand up for yourself more. And like you know, up to this point, I've only built individual restaurants, right? And every restaurant is unique. So if you're trying to build a restaurant, especially in New York, where there's so much competition out there, every restaurant has this soul, and you have to nurture it, and you have to, you have to, yeah, you have to find what you think it might be, and then you see how it grows, right? And you're, and it sometimes is exactly close to what you thought. Sometimes it takes on a life of its own that you can help help develop. Yeah, but it's this enormous labor of love, and you and what you thought one thing might be right might be totally different. That mural that you thought was perfect might be a collapsing ways away, or it might be the thing that made the whole thing go right. And sometimes it's hard to do. This it gets so much easier with each one because I know that I've done this work. The first one was so hard for this purpose, and I got some things really right, and I got some things kind of wrong. Yeah, of what it need to be in design and construction. But now, you know, the soaking the third one, I was like, well, that's where that goes. That's where that goes. I already know where I'm moving, so that I know this will match to that mirror panel over there, and we're okay. So it made it so much easier to do that because I'd already gone through that specific one. Yeah. So I'm excited. You know, I'm a little embarrassed. I spent the first 20 years of my career doing individual restaurants, and it was so hard. And now I now I know. But if you hadn't done that, you might not be in the. Position to adjust and adapt to what you're doing now. So I'm a big believer, and maybe it's just trying to make myself feel better. But a big believer that had I not done everything else, that's right, I wouldn't be right here right now. That's right. Maybe I would be better off. Maybe I wouldn't be. But everything adds up to where we are now. Sorry. No, I think it's a process oriented. If you feel good about the process you went through, sometimes you swing, sometimes you miss. Exactly. But if you, you know, following the process made the best decision you could at the time, it's hard to second guess that. You know, and I think, and that's something. A you know, resilience is one of the biggest things and biggest parts of my life and biggest I try to impart to my team, my child, like this. Like, how do you get back up? How do you deal with this? And totally, you gotta be okay with it. Sometimes you gotta be make a decision, be okay with what happens next. Yeah. As long as you had the right process going into that decision. Exactly. Whimsically being like, I don't know. I guess I'm gonna live here. Good luck. Yeah. You know, God bless. But thinking about it and making a choice, it might be right, it might be wrong. But if you go into and with intentionality, yeah, and using the information and tools that you have, right, exactly, no, completely. So I have two more questions I want to get to quickly before we get into the rapid fire. If you're honest, so you mentioned that New York is such a big city with so much food. How do you go about like getting discovered and general discoverability, when there is so much competition, there is a ton of competition in New York, and it's crazy, but there's not a ton of. How do I put this? Excellent competition. Okay, so there is a lot of really there's there's the you know there's like 10,000 restaurants, whatever, and that number changes over the years and has evolved, especially the past few years. Yeah, but there's so many things out there, right? And there's a lot of places that just exist, and there's a lot of places that are great in their own field, right? We're just not competing against them in that realm, whatever might be. So I think the the first thing you do is be excellent, right? And I think that's the the starting point with this, where we're not like a hype machine. We're be great. You show go up to work every day, trying to be the best we can do. Had the best possible experience, the best possible sandwiches, everything there, right? And it starts with that because that's the best discoverability is being great, right? Because the most organic means of of finding that is someone going, I just had a ridiculous meatball sub. You got to go there, right? And we found, you know, again, we opened in Soho about a month ago. That's been our biggest word of mouth. It was someone coming in, and the next day, eight people from the office saying this person brought the sandwich back. It smelled so good; they were raving about it. We're all here, yeah, right. So I think that's that's like the first 123, of competition for us is doing that, yeah. And then beyond that is having a very intentional online presence and aspect of this, where we really try to be presentable and discoverable across a wide array of things, right? So, just knowing to be how different things search and how people search, right? So it's different now. The amount of people that use an AI search versus Google from now on five years ago is night and day. The SEO AEO difference now, and you're like, "Well, shit! I just put all this work into optimizing my SEO. So how do I? Yeah, and so it's how do you become discoverable, right? How do you put make sure that this is your information is out there, and you can't be something you're not, yeah, right? If we put up there that we are the best steakhouse in New York City, it's probably not going to go well for us, yeah, right? Super real misaligned with expectation and reality, right? But of being able to tell our story in a way that online that is discoverable, right? And so people are looking for us. We try to be there, right? In all different ways that information information is drawn from. Yeah. It you know to say understood the Google algorithm, that would not be true, right? But there was some version of like, hey, if you were high enough ranked and you did these things, it made sense. And experimenting, and but yeah, you know, where people looking, there's a lot of different map systems that pull from people's cars, for instance, and that if you know how to be on that one, then you can be integrated with other things as well, right? And same for reviews. Certain certain platforms pull from Yelp or Google or whatever might be, and have that be part of the discoverability process. And so that's a big other element of it. Is like, okay, how do we make ourselves findable on these things, so we can do so. Yeah, you know, I wish I was an Instagram native and like was able to do these these natural things, right? And going through it because that's a great means of discoverability. Now that is, I think there's a myth that it's free because it's not. There's so much work that goes into it, and so much thought that goes. Into it and of people doing all these different levels of content is enormously difficult. Yeah, you know, so it's not free, but it's this idea that you can it's democratized, right? You're not the old school used to be you try to do a good job, you lobby the New York Times, yeah, you either pay for ads or get the reviews. You get in there, and now it's a lot more of okay. How do you focus on being able for people to find you in these different ways? Well, and you can, and to your point, I don't know if like you kind of used AI to figure out how to do this. Like that's what I've done. It's like all right, like how how do I increase SEO? Like what and like how does that apply to what I'm posting, where I'm posting, how I'm writing more versus not, and like being image based, and it's it's so much work, and it's something that we review monthly. So other stuff we do quarterly, but because it changes so fast now, what was gospel last month is not this month. Yeah, and that is, but we very much I use AI to tell me about AI and go through and and help me build this so that I can do something in real life, right? And so, I'm not building a software tool. I'm not building this thing, but we have an in-house set of programs that we use, and like a AI build suite that helps us proactively surface ways you could do better. Say, here's this week you were less discoverable. This week you were more. How do we help get there? How do you build this thing out? And it goes through it because again, what's our focus is on the in person, right? Our focus is on this tangible real life experience that it might be the only one in someone's day, right? And how do we execute this and do it well? And yeah, this this balancing of the two into that is is you know takes a lot to compartmentalize and manage. Yeah, but the data is all there, and it's a tool. So real quick, are you able to share anything that you're planning for the future? Want to do like what is what's the next iteration for you guys. So our goal from the beginning was to turn this into a company, right, and to go from a small little startup into a company as we grow, right, and to balance that with appreciating where we are, right, appreciating the moment, enjoying that process, but also having this ambition for growth and to again build a company and have that be something where we're able to expand and grow. So we opened our third store last month. We're now you know we're currently fundraising to get to the next two stores in the next couple months. Great. So that way we're able to have this you know think of five stores. We've reached a scale enough where we can really have a tipping point, yeah. And so you know, our long term goals, we want 60 or 100 of these, and to build them out, and to be you know, right now we're in the neighborhoods I used to live and work in. We'll go to the cities I used to live and work in, and go to this one part of it where it's something that is is part of this growth where it feels natural, yeah, and able to expand and kind of just share sandwiches, but have this be the process. And so, you know, we're excited to get to the next step. Or there's, you know, sometimes people get excited and they they draw plans for all these other things. And we've got a great 10 year plan, but I also need to open two more restaurants the next few months to get there. Right, right, right. And so that's part of our real growth structure and plans is to do that because ideally we then grow organically, right, and take this next step from from those stores into growing and not you know there's a real trend now with a lot of companies in the backlash kind of against private equity backed and all these different things and those there and you know I both understand and don't some of it of this idea of someone wants to grow. It's great, right? And how it's there, and it does sometimes impact quality, and sometimes doesn't because that's what they do. But for us to have, for me to be able to grow and to have this be something like a continue this ride with the people I've worked with, and like you know these investors we have and these partners I have that I lean on all the time. We talk about and we grow this thing. I want to try to do that together. That's great. Yeah. So I like to ask each of my guests to complete the sentence if I'm honest. And as listeners will know, it's meant to be parting wisdom for the listeners. So how would you complete the sentence if I'm honest? If I'm honest, starting something and building something is both harder than you'll ever imagine, and at the same time can have the most incredible feeling of satisfaction and growth as you go through it. And no one can prepare you for it. So this might be more words about being honest than you asked for, but if I'm honest, we're over communicating. There we go. There we go. There we go. But yeah, if I'm honest, it is prepared to be unprepared, and that'll be difficult and communicate about that with everyone around you because once you're in it, it's real. But it's a pretty awesome ride too. That's awesome. I I love that, and I might get. Energized by the energy that I have felt from my own, you know, building journey, and like can feel you radiate. So thank you for that. Real quick, rapid fire. If you're honest, what's your current favorite Sandwell sandwich? Ooh, the Wild Bird. Okay, Wild Bird, love that. What's a restaurant you really want to try out in New York? Ooh, man, I wish I had enough free time to go to a lot of restaurants. Yeah, so most. Okay, that works. There you go. Yeah, perfect. What's a great show you've watched recently? Although, given your answer, I'm not sure you have time to watch shows very much. Not a ton of shows recently. It's the same, and most of the stuff we do is I watch reruns of like old comedy stuff because it's like it's like an old friend hanging out with me as we go through it. So there's not yeah. I get wish there was more TV other than shoot Gabby's Dollhouse. Watch a lot of Gabby's Dollhouse. My daughter. Very cool. I don't have kids, so I don't know any of the children's programming right now. But that sounds fun. Yeah. When are you most productive? I am most productive at the middle of the afternoon evening. So there's like a four to nine tranche where my brain's on fire. Nice. And I'm super excited to work and do these things. It's also this great time when I like come home and hang out. So that's like this. It used to be great when I worked in a restaurant at night. Yeah, because that's the time we were doing dinner service. Yeah. So my brain would be on fire. I'd be making food. It was all right. Yeah. So now it's a most productive that time, and that's try to balance all those things. Yeah. Last, if you're honest, what's something that you're grateful for right now? I am really grateful for my family, my wife, my brother, my daughter, my dad, family, people who are friends who become family over the years. This is such a difficult process. Building something to be a lonely process when you feel like you're doing this and it's there, and I think the burden of that is something that's hard to know that it shifts other people, right? Where even inadvertently, people taking on taking on my emotional burden, taking on these things, and I am just incredibly grateful for the family who support me and go through this because it's that could be difficult, and I know it's not easy, and so I'm grateful for it. That's beautiful, and it's great. It's great that you have that because not everyone does, and so to really lean into that, Andy, thank you so much for coming by. This was such a fun discussion, and we will link Sandwell and and the social media. But is there anywhere else that you'd like people to find you? Find us at Sandwell. We got three in New York. We got more coming. Amazing! Thank you so much for joining me on If I'm Honest. Thank you so much, Julia. Team, thank you for joining us on If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you enjoyed listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed recording it with our guest. And if you like the episode, please subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform to get new episodes when they drop. It would also be a huge help if you can leave a rating on that page, write a comment, and share the episode with someone who you think might enjoy it. As always, thank you for letting us be honest with you, and I'll see you next week.