Throughout my career, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to spend time with some of the best business minds in the world. During my time operating within World 50—the world’s premier, invitation-only community for senior executives from leading global companies—I had the privilege of sitting across the table from legendary thinkers, CEOs, and authors whose ideas have shaped entire industries.

One of the most impactful of them all—for me personally and for the work I’m doing now—was Jim Collins.

For the first few years of running our hospitality businesses, I’ll admit—profit wasn’t something we thought about very often. It wasn’t that we didn’t care about money. It’s just that we had more urgent problems.

Like a lot of small business owners, we opened our first location—For Crêpe Sake—with a dream and a lot of heart. Our focus was on creating a place people wanted to visit. A place that served delicious food, made people feel welcome, and gave our team a meaningful and enjoyable place to work. Then came the pandemic, and the goal narrowed even further: just keep the doors open.