The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Raptors Head Coach Nick Nurse, the Beal-Bazemore Beef, and Raising Cane’s Founder Todd Graves

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts on celebrity "beefs" as well as the online exchange between NBA players Bradley Beal and Kent Bazemore (2:00), before talking with NBA champion and head coach of the Toronto Raptors Nick Nurse about the 2020-21 NBA season, dealing with adversity, the Raptors' 2019 championship run, coaching Kawhi Leonard, Kyle Lowry, the Raptors' defensive schemes, and more (15:30). Then Ryen talks with founder and CEO of Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers Todd Graves about building the business right out of college, his new TV show 'Restaurant Recovery' on Discovery+, tips for growing a small business, and more (47:00). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:07:00). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Nick Nurse, Todd Graves Producer: Kyle Crichton Producer: Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was just kind of like, you know, I'd look at him saying, you know, let's go, man. It's, you know, nine and a half. It's time to, it's your time to roll. And he'd look at me and say, need about another minute and a half, coach. And I'd be like, Jesus Christ, I still hope we're in the game here. You know, another minute and a half. And then he'd go out there and he might even wait to, you know, he'd go up at a minute and a half. And the ball wouldn't go dead. And now we'd be down to six and know, he'd go up at a minute and a half and the ball wouldn't go dead.

And now we'd be down to six and a half. And man, would that six and a half be amazing. I mean, you know, it'd be like every stop, a key steal, an offensive rebound, a three, a bucket, you know, just like, like he knew exactly how hard he wanted to play at that moment and how much was in the tank to be able to do that. And he just would gauge that every now and then. And very, you know, what was going on.

That was Raptors head coach Nick Nurse talking about his time with Kawhi Leonard. We got like 30 plus minutes with him. Why does everybody have him as one of the best coaches in the NBA? Todd Graves, founder of Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers. An amazing story out of Baton Rouge. and an open monologue and life advice. We have a lot to get to on today's podcast, so I'll try to make this brief off the top. Never really works out with me, but who do you pick in a feud? All right.

We've had celebrity feuds for years. I was diving into those again, and I don't know that I want to bring up a ton of them because do I really want to pick some between Kanye West and Taylor Swift? Do I want to go like, no, I'm all the way team Taylor. I don't think I want to do that. Although defending Kanye recently doesn't seem to be all that great for anyone's career either. But that's the first thing that happens is you'll jump in and go, okay, what's happening. Let me assess the damage. And this is who I'm going to side with. And let's face it. Like most of us who we pick has more to do with whether or not we like that person or dislike the other person it probably has less to do with the point that they're actually trying to make why am I

bringing this up that's because we had one last night in the NBA that was pretty tame actually and Bazemore who plays the Warriors nice win by the Dubs against Jazz but again a lot of these responses where you're like oh man what's wrong with the jazz you know what's wrong with the jazz donovan mitchell isn't playing right now moving on to topic number two so baysmore said this about you know people trying to keep up with steph basically he's like a steph thing like scoring title what's going on with steph what's going on with steph and baysmore said this where he's basically hinting at bradley beal missing a couple games 49 points in 29 minutes though that, that's unreal. And we got guys hurting hamstrings trying to keep up.

Yeah, I got to do some research on that. Oh, you got me, Manny. Okay, so now we start with whose side do you want to take? Now, the way it played out a little bit was like, ah, Bazemore was just joking. That was, I think, a little bit more than a joke. I think it was taking a shot at Beal. Beal, who's not afraid to log on and share his thoughts, goes at Bazemore. I don't do the subliminals. A lot of exclamation points.

It's funny you say that because your man's admittedly checked my numbers before the game, but I'm chasing. Shut your ass up. Sorry, that was yo ass up, not your. And then we went with the old clown gift coming out from behind the curtains. Beal continued to keep tweeting like he was tweeting randos who would be like, man, never speak on another man's injury. And then, you know, I'm only concerned with Brad, all caps Brad. But we also know that Beal went at, what was it, Zach Lowe,

and then the wife was involved or something, and then they were mad that Lowe had left him off of all NBA, but I don't really know what to believe in all that stuff. So I'm not even taking sides with that point, but we know this. If you go at Beal or you disappoint Beal, Beal's going to come back at you. So when you're Bazemore scoring like five a game, check that, and you're Beal going for the scoring title, and Bazemore's kind of taking a shot at you, and it wasn't mean, but I think it was a little bit more than a joke, then I think Beal was within his rights to be pissed about it. Who are you, man? You're not even a top eight guy in a good team, and you're going to come at me and I might win the scoring title. Like, what are you talking about? So I kind of get that part of it, but then we do this because

there's nothing nasty when the people are like, just tweet through it, bro, just tweet through it. Cause they know how mad you actually are. Right. Or when you're not even mad. And then people say it's probably more infuriating, but in this case, Beal was going to tweet through it and he was going to keep doing it. So then you're like, wait a minute, do I want to sign? Like, do I want to sign with Beal in this deal? Because we also know this, growing up, there was a kid in your neighborhood, a guy you went to high school with, or one of your roommates, or maybe beyond that, because you're immature, no problem, no judging, where there's one guy out of the group where you're like, hey, you can't really mess with him. And then you're like, well, why can't I mess with

him? We all mess with each other. Be like, yeah, he's just not as good with it. Like, what do you mean? Like, he's probably going to fight you or he's going to go like whatever one to two to three increments are, he's going to go to a thousand and it's just going to suck for everybody. Right. And that's the other thing that I think is always frustrating is any of these public fights and how they break out is because, because people will be like, oh, just go ahead and take the high road. Now I would probably advise most of you like taking the high road for the most part is the right advice, but we don't always want to take the high road. Sometimes you're like, no, this person's wrong. Fuck him. I'm going to say something back to him. The problem with not taking the high road is,

is that when you're working somewhere and you don't take the high road, even if you're right and you start criticizing people publicly, but you're in some kind of industry where you might be changing jobs, but it's all still the same industry. It's a small world. And then everybody's kind of judging you, right? Your exit is your first part of the interview at the next place. But if you're Bradley Beal, you don't have to take the high road. You're getting max money no matter what.

And all other 29 teams would gladly take you. So if you're not going to take the high road, you better be really special at what you do. But I think about my industry sometimes where it's like, yeah, we had media fights. We used to have writer on writer stuff, but now writers, because that part of the industry is so much more challenging than it was when I was growing up. I think writers are incredibly supportive of each other. All right. You know, like I'll see a writer quote, tweet, some other writer's piece and be like, this is the best daredevil movie breakdown I've ever seen. Please read my friend's work. And you're like, is it, do I have to stop everything I'm doing to read a daredevil retrospective today? Maybe I will. That was quite the sell. It's more, if there are any media beefs, it happens

with people that are on the air in an opinion way, because look, any of us that are super opinionated, like we all get it, right? We're all like, I always kind of explain this to people and be like, Hey, do people like you? Do people not like you? I go, you know what? I don't know how much I'd like me. I don't know if I were like, Hey, you know what I like is that guy who's opinionated about everything for like 20 straight years. That's a lot. That's an aggressive place to kind of live. And if people don't like me, I'm almost like, yeah, okay, that's cool. Like, I get it.

Because there's other people that I like. I like the person, but there'll be just a portfolio of opinions and takes where I'm like, I don't even know if I want to be friendly with you because I think some of your NBA takes are such dog shit. Right? So sometimes those beefs can play out. And sometimes you're like, Hey, I'm just going to say something because I'm right. And that person is wrong. And when you feel wrong, that's a lot of fuel for you to do anything. And even when you want to play it out publicly, I mean, this isn't completely related, but it was really weird how this kind of took off. So Rudy, I don't know if you saw this, but this made it to the ESPN feed. We're talking like 30 million followers on that feed. This played out all over social media where a mom took a picture of her kid who, I don't know, was eight.

And it had a hat trick in a youth soccer game. And he's holding up the three. He's got that little sweat you get when you're eight. He looks like a heck of a kid. All right. And he's holding up the three. He's got that, that little sweat you get when you're eight. He looks like a heck of a kid. All right. And he's holding up three. He's got the hat trick and she quote tweets it. Like he was cut from his soccer travel team when he was five and never let them tell you who you can't be. And she's thinking like, look, it's your kid. He was upset when he was five because he was left off a team. And now you feel like that's the fuel for you to fight back with everybody else and basically like show up that coach and then then everybody

else is taking that and be like yup 100 like he was fucking five he got cut from a team like it happens congrats on the hat trick at eight but in that moment, the mom, because this is what parents do, you're protective. You feel like you're right. And you're going to take it to everybody. You're going to share it with everyone because you're going to get back at that. So as we bring this all full circle, the lesson out of all of this is that we probably don't really care who's right or wrong in these beefs. We probably don't really care who's right or wrong in these beefs. We probably don't even care about the point that's being made because some of you are going to look at Beal and say, hey, Beal's the better basketball player than Bazemore.

So Bazemore has to be wrong. Unless, of course, you're a Warriors fan. We're like, that's good because it's actually a vote for Steph and not Bazemore. So, Rudy, anything to add to that? No. I mean, first off, Kent Bazemore, seven points per game. So Rudy, anything to add to that? No, I mean, first off, Kent Baysmore,

seven points per game. So put some respect on his name. He, he quote tweeted a thing I did. So I think Bays and I are, you guys are boys. Yeah. Bays kind of seems like that a guy around the league that other guys in the league don't like though.

He just seems like kind of an, I don't know, an agitator type deal. I get it. He has Steph's back. And I think there's this other aspect of Beal too, where it's like, is Beal, Beal's been good, great stats, bad team guy, right? And I wonder if other guys in the league

kind of look at that and they're like, well, my boy Steph, you know, obviously he's won MVPs, he's won championships, like put some respect on his name too. I don't know. I just, I think Beal took it too far. Like, do you subscribe to the, you know, the lion shouldn't worry about the opinion of a sheep here? Because I kind of think Beal took it too far. Like, do you subscribe to the, you know, the lion shouldn't worry about the opinion of

a sheep here? Because I kind of think Beal looks a little weird for quote tweeting a bunch of people that are now taking his side. Like, I think that's too far. Maybe say one thing about it. But if you're quote tweeting a bunch of randoms about this, like, clearly, this is like way too far in your head for a guy who Beal is going to be probably an all NBA guy this year. Well, the best is when it's just a random who's going at the celebrity going,

hey, dog, I got your back. Just looking for a retweet. Right, right. But I still don't think that many people that are public figures would retweet the random coming to the rescue in the argument. So yeah, that part of it's real. I'm not all about Beal here on the,

yeah, handled it perfectly. But what I do know is that I'm less likely to be critical of somebody that's just kind of getting pissed at everybody on social media because I think those rules are completely unfair. Like everybody that's a public figure is just supposed to never go at anybody. And then it's also so hypocritical when it's the guy who's like, well, don't punch down. I never punched down. I don't do this. You're like, bullshit. Like you punched down.

So what's the point? Like I'm only supposed to go at cowherd bill simmons and and and who like so where am i on the like i can go at steven a i can go at kellerman i'm just trying to think of like who would have a higher like platform than me but if a guy in local news went at me i'm wrong forever going at that person like the rules don't mean... The rules are the rules by everybody else, not in the conflict. That's the point. And that's what drives me... Look, I'm exaggerating here because it doesn't drive me crazy. It doesn't revolve around my day. I don't do it. I think I've done it a couple of times ever in my entire life because

for the most part, it's always a waste of time. But if somebody decides, fuck it, I'm just going to go with somebody else. I don't know that any of us are right in telling that person to not go at anyone. It's not about any sense. No, it's for me. It's not about going at them. Like, I don't I think he has the right. It would be totally reasonable to if he just tweeted out the clown coming from behind the curtain thing.

I think that would have been funny. I would have probably been more likely to take Bradley Beal's side in this. But then retweeting all these people going on first take this morning all right man it wasn't that much of a diss to me like i you know yeah it was bathed more being kind of a dick sure but i don't know it wasn't it yeah you're right it wasn't that bad it is kind of like the roommate thing though where you're like hey if you mess with like hey let's pull a prank on on dave and you're like yeah don't don't pull a prank on dave and then you're like man dave isn't going to be we're not going to have as much fun with dave you're like look he's just

dave's wired a little differently like if you steal his shoes he's gonna he's gonna slash your tires and he's gonna think you're even uh getting back to by the way the five-year-old kid getting cut um i don't what i don't understand about that either is so she's saying the mom is saying hey you know you can be anything don't let anyone tell you you can't do something you can be anything you want to be he's eight he's not even anything yet he's not he's not even adult he's not even he's he'll he's basically just barely out of the toddler stage so what are we doing so i look at that and i just say that's the mom looking for retweets because she knows sports center is going to pick that thing up and run with it. She's going to get famous.

I can't believe you're right. I mean, she was looking for the attention off of it, but I never even believe anything's real ever anymore. That one is probably a little more likely to be real. So let's just say it's real. I just couldn't believe that other major outlets would be like, this is so dope. Humanity. So cool. Be anything you want. Like, are we going around checking in with eight, eight year olds being like, who's doubted you?

Where, where are you at now? You want to say anything to the haters? Be like, I'm, I'm eight. Maybe he wasn't good at five and he's good. There's a really good chance. Yeah. There's a really good chance. It's a really good, it's okay. Imagine if the coach came out and was like, look, he was slow. He picked his nose. He ran in the wrong direction. He fell down all the time. His shirt was never clean.

You know, one of those families that can never find the uniform day of the game. You know. Yeah, just didn't have his head in the game.

He wasn't locked in. He grew three inches and, you know, maybe he's a little better. I don't know. Yeah. You want me to tell you?

His legs got bigger. All right. Let's talk with Nick Nurse. We got Todd Graves and life advice at the end. Nick Nurse, head coach of the Raptors, with us on the podcast. Okay, we know this season has been tough for a lot of different people, but your franchise in particularly, you had a 16-15 record at one point. And I watch you guys quite a bit.

And then you're like, oh, okay, they've got games they've missed. Players are missing games. Staff is missing games. You guys are in Tampa. I know everybody can kind of look at certain elements of this season where it was challenging. But what happened to you guys, you think? Well, I think that there was a number of hurdles to jump right from the start with relocating everyone. A bit of a roster flip. We lost a couple of very experienced, very good pieces to free agency in Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka. agency and Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka. And then, and then, you know,

I think it was bumpy to get through. We got through, we started playing really well, Ryan. I think we won at Brooklyn. We won two at Milwaukee. We came back and beat Philly at home. And, and I think we, even with that 16 or 15 record or whatever it was, we were in fourth in the East and and and then we got wiped out by covid and the protocols i think uh seven players and seven staff and then a couple more players a little later and and that would took a lot longer than the 14 day kind of sit out you know we you

know we kind of started filtering some guys back in, but we just didn't feel quite right, myself included. And then it was just kind of we went, we just had a month that just was like almost wiped off from us, and we just never really recovered. Is it harder for a team, you know, you're a couple seasons now removed from a championship run. Some of the core guys are still there, but obviously the loss at the big positions was something you're going to have to get through this year. some of the core guys are still there but obviously the loss at the big positions was was something you're going to have to get through this year is it harder to keep a team motivated that has higher expectations for itself than maybe a team that doesn't have those expectations

yeah I mean I I would say um I think we were pretty motivated Ryan I think we also were used to winning a lot I think a couple of those losses in our, you know, we had a rough start, two and eight, I think, I think two and eight. And I think we led maybe seven or eight of those games by double digits at one time. I think we had the ball either go in or out at the buzzer, three of them, none of them in our favor, you know, so that we were playing some pretty good basketball, but we weren't, didn't have anything to show for it. You know, so that we were playing some pretty good basketball, but we weren't,

they didn't have anything to show for it. And I think, you know, with the expectations and kind of the winning that we've been used to, it was tough to deal with a little bit. But again, I think that, you know, I can sit here today and say to, you know, the last six to eight weeks have been pretty enjoyable. I mean, I know we're not in and we wanted to, we certainly had different visions of how this season would play out. But at some point when we kind of got over the COVID hangover, you know, and people kind of started feeling better and got in shape again. And we kind of just decided to kind of take a deep breath, back to work start enjoying practice a little bit and we look a lot more like ourselves even with a very depleted roster um a lot of guys out and all that stuff

like like a lot of teams have had so i'm not but but we were back to playing the way we want to play we were back to practicing we're back to preparing we just felt more like ourselves even even now you you know, where we went out on that West Coast road trip and went one and three, but we beat the Lakers and every one of those other games. Well, two of the three were tied with a minute to go, you know, against the best teams in the West, Utah and the Clippers. And, you know, so, you know, we're playing some good basketball. We're still missing a lot of guys. When you made your run two years ago, I remember just watching

because you guys were one of the main stories. And through the regular season into the playoffs, it just kind of dawned on me. It dawned on me later than I wish it had. But I go, there's something about this team where I felt like your top six or seven guys, like what I love is shot clock creators

because in the playoffs, it comes down to you guys can run all your stuff, you can do all those things, but you know somebody's going to get the ball like 30 feet away, six seconds left going. All right. Figure it out. And like those are the guys that make the money. I love those guys, too. Yeah. Make your life easier. But I'm serious. This is no exaggeration. Like I'm watching be like, you know what? I think they have six or seven guys that if they had to get their own shot off, they could.

Was that a conscious thing from the front office? Is it something that you discovered? Because I think that's actually a little bit more rare. I mean, hell, you go back just 10 years ago, maybe you'd be lucky to have two of those guys. I think that was one of the great things about your offense. Well, I think that I can sit here and think about situations. Certainly when you've got Kawhi and they're totally scheming against what are we going to do with him That I can sit here and think about situations and, you know, when, certainly when you got Kawhi and they're,

they're sort of totally scheming against what are we going to do with him and who's going to guard him and who can guard him and things like that. And Danny was just a veteran guy that would, you know, he might, you know, literally one game, I know he was like, Oh, for six. And I drew up a play for him and I said, we need you to make this bro. And he made it, you know, like, and you know, you could still do that with him because he'd been around the block so many times and and then and then again though to answer your question it got to the point where it wasn't so much that let's say we we had to go to kawaii but we didn't want to we we wanted to move draymond out of the equation or something. So it would be Fred and Pascal.

Everybody would think, well, they're going to come down and go Kyle and Kawhi, pick and roll or whatever, and we'd flip it to Pascal and Fred. And those guys were playing so good that we could buy three or four buckets before we'd have to go back to Kyle and Kawhi because, like you said, it's like you need long stretches of that kind of stuff deep in the playoffs. I was reading that story about one of the things you shared with Kawhi. So I don't know if I'm necessarily asking you to tell the story again. But the specific part of him where he knew kind of exactly what he needed.

And then he would go ahead and give it. Because I think a lot of us from the outside we still can't quite figure him out like yeah the best information i ever got in kawaii when he was deciding on what to do as a free agent was if someone tells you they have intel then don't talk to them anymore about kawaii because that's that's the only thing i can tell you and it ended up being the best information but you know you were with them you have this magical year what are some of those specific things about him that you learned about him that you had no idea about well that was the that was the well fun interesting part about it it wasn't like we sat down and had this discussion

you know like prior to the game he's like listen coach i'm gonna let you know in the fourth quarter you know when i'm exactly ready to go back in you know it was just kind of like you know i'd look at him saying you know let's go man it's you know nine and a half it's time to it's your time to roll and he'd look at me said need about another minute and a half coach and i'd be like jesus christ i still hope we're in the game here another minute and a half and then he'd go out there and he might even wait to you know he'd go up at a minute and a half and the ball wouldn't go dead and now we'd be be down to six and a half. And man, would that six and a half be amazing? I mean, you know, it'd be like every stop, a key steal, an offensive rebound, a three, a bucket, you know, just like, like he knew exactly how hard he wanted to play at that moment and how much was in the

tank to be able to do that. And he just would gauge that every now and then and, and very, you know, what was vary what was going on. I think a lot of us are always still kind of confused too about clearly he was upset about the medical part of it. You guys, I think, did everything you could do to make him feel comfortable and to just monitor it however you were going to use him. I mean, he actually missed a decent amount of games that season. It just didn't really seem like it mattered.

And because of how methodical he is, because it's, it's shoulders and it's wingspan and it's angles. And then there'll be a flash of like, oh, there it is again. Did you understand kind of week to week with him game to game of where he was physically like how did you figure that out because I think some of us I know I am at times or somebody who said he's still going to miss games because it's never going to go away you're never quite sure and then you'll have these moments with him where he looks like he's the best player in the league again yeah I think that goes back to your your other question I think in February you know he was cruising to getting 31 33 and and I was sitting there watching him

going, he's not even given a full effort here. Right. I mean, I was sitting there and you sit there and why he was just kind of getting what he needed to get. There was some, there was a lot of times too. He'd, he'd be just rolling, you know, and I might whisper to him and say, Hey man, go, you might go for 45 tonight. And he goes, nah, I'm good. And like 33, and he'd check him. He was never going to do that stuff. And I would kind of be like, man, this guy's interesting. And I thought that he had a playoff year, but I hadn't been with him.

I was just thinking that there's got to be a year. And man, was there ever. Was there ever. Oof. Was there ever. Yeah, I still think his hard dribble to one of the elbows pull up. You're not going to get close to him because of the wingspan and his size and his strength. Yeah, it's the shoulders, man. Yeah, he just gets them into you and he settles. A little part of one of his shoulders on you and you're, he's created the space and like,

he doesn't even feel, you know, and I'm feeling anybody. So this year, one of the other big things was, you know, Hey, what's the future Kyle Lowry.

You know, there's, there was a lot going on and then he stays. We know he's a free agent. You made the Trent deal because Powell was up. You've invested in Van Vliet. I don't expect you to say like, yeah, man, we can move on and hand the reins to somebody else

because Kyle means so much to this franchise. But what do you expect to happen with his future in Toronto? Well, I think, you know, you said a lot. I mean, first thing is Ryan, he's been incredible to work with. I think his, you know, ask me about moments or asked me about Kyle. One, I've never seen anybody play harder. Like there's some flurries in games where he can, four minutes where he can make a three, steal the ball, take a charge, drive in, knock three people over, lay it in, steal it again. I mean, just like, it's like, how does he like do this in a

flurry? And I just have never seen anybody play harder, really up close or in the stands or anywhere that I've been. So that's like the ultimate compliment I could give him. And then it was good to see him kind of break free in the playoffs too. You know, that was kind of a process for a few years. And then he had that monster start to game six in the finals that you can never really forget. To me, he's still the same guy. I mean, another year or two has ticked by. He still puts his body on the line. He still guards hard. He still scores. His numbers are good. His shooting percentages are good. And he's a tremendous talent. And, you know, I hope we keep him.

I mean, I think he's part of our core. Kyle Fred, OG Pascal are kind of our core guys. And we've got a couple other guys growing kind of on the wings, you know, with Boucher. And, you know, we brought in Trent. And Kem Birch has now kind of surfaced up to be a nice, nice big that we just brought in here late. And there's, you know, there's I've always liked Kem Birch. I got to tell you, I don't know. I don't know why I'm hanging on to that Kem Birch.

I just always liked him as a rotation big because I think he cares. I think he's tough. I think he he makes you feel him, you know, and however many minutes you're supposed to get out of that guy. So I always kind of like what you guys do with the roster. I'm always like, hey, that guy can play a little. I mean, every time you bring in somebody, I'm like, you know what? Those are guys outside of your rotation where when they got rotation minutes and somebody else was missing, it didn't feel like there was as much drop-off

where there's other teams where you can just tell at like 9, 10, maybe those guys wouldn't even be in an NBA game. Yeah, we've had to – we got a little practice for that. Like you mentioned before with Kawhi that year, he missed 22 games that year and we went 17 and five, you know, it was like, um, that's pretty good. You know, that's pretty good. And I think that's nuts. No, that, that little, um, you know, history or, or, um, history or whatever,

we were whatever, those games gave our guys confidence going into the next season when he left. I think that, you know, I think everybody thought we're going to have a huge drop off. Well, they didn't really watch us play much the year before without him. And I think it just kind of kept on rolling. And that's just, you know know guys that were dying for some opportunity

guys that were working hard every day waiting for it and here it was you know here it is for pascal to take a step or og to kind of come back in the fold or or freddie to take a few more opportunities you know so um i don't know you got to be ready these days because you got to be able to kind of roll out 12, 14 guys in a regular season now. Right. Your story is incredible. I mean, I could do 30 for 30 just on that because of all the travels. You're from Iowa. I've stated numerous times in this podcast. I think we start at Iowa. The people of Iowa are ranked number one. And then we just work our way down the next 49 states. I'm not, I'm not saying that because you're on the pod. I have, I have connections to the state and you just meet somebody and you're like, where's that guy from? And you'd be like, he's from Iowa.

And you're like, makes sense. Makes sense. So Northern Iowa, you shoot the lights out, you end up all over the place. And then, you know, you come back to Toronto, not come back, but you start in Toronto in 13 as an assistant. And I think to be nice, pro athletes aren't like you kind of start at zero with them if you didn't play. Okay. And that's why I think if you're lucky, you start at zero. So the buy-in is always a little tough. I would think because you were there with Dwayne Casey that there's obviously the relationship. Like, hey, he's this guy and you take over in 2018. But are there still moments where they don't know that you lit it up at Northern Iowa? Like, where they look at you as Nick Nurse, career assistant, now the head coach. And, you know, you still never were out there because I just think NBA guys, maybe more so than any of the pro athletes, will tune you out immediately. And that's why I think so many former players, high profile guys, are getting jobs immediately

with no coaching experience because there's still that relationship buy-in that you just can't, you can't have it if you don't have it. Yeah. I mean, first of all all i think you're right the very first time i probably got up in front of the team as an assistant to do my scout uh you know they're not like that secretive about you know you're here and who in the hell is this minor league guy you know you can you know it's not it's not it not, they're not kind of keeping it. They want you to hear it type of thing. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a, you know, I say this, I think that you're right.

Like they want to be coached, but they want to be coached really well. And if you're not going to coach them really well, you're not going to last very, you know, they're, they're gonna, they're going to give it to you and they're going to get off you pretty quick. I think so. I mean, listen, I was a head coach for about 20 years and put my own game plans together at a lot of places, nothing like the NBA, but you go up there and you work your butt off to get prepared and you work your butt off to practice exactly how it's going

to come out and your speed and all that. So, you know, you got to do a professional job. Goes from there. Listen, you know, in 18, I was, we were having a lot of success, as you know, and I was getting interviewed just by about every team that had a job open. So I thought, yeah, I'm going to have a really good chance of being a head coach next year. Toronto was the last place I thought it was going to be, but that's how it all ended up shaking out. And I had some good insider locker room knowledge. As an assistant, you spend a little more time with the guys at night at the gym shooting. And I think there was a lot of things

I knew they really liked. And there was a couple of things they thought we could improve on. And I kind of knew what those were. So it made it a pretty good transition for me. I mean, listen, Kyle, we brought him up already. He, listen, you know, Kyle, we brought him up already. He didn't, you know, like he just came, he came and told me like, okay, I know you as an assistant. I don't know you as a head coach. Now, you know, like he wanted to see what I was going to be like and how different I was going to be and stuff like that. But I think he always knew we had a pretty strong relationship from a play calling and a game plan deal. And that's what he, you know, he wanted. He wanted to be, he wanted good game plans and he wanted a chance to be successful.

So let's get to that and share with me what you can help me understand it. Because when I'll talk to other teams to be like, Hey, you know, who's doing something awesome is Nick Nurse, or someone will send me like an advanced guy, younger guy, send me a clip of something you did on help and how you close out jj reddit who when i went on with his pod like he would unprompted he just went oh man uh vucevic who i had on this year and he just was like oh yeah toronto toronto so what the hell is it what is it so that the basic basketball people all of us can kind of understand what it is and how you see concepts and defensive like what are the things that you're doing that get other people talking about it? Well, first of all, I want to, I want to kind

of say that that group that we had that won the title could do incredible things like on the fly. I mean, literally like things I'd never seen a team do before. Let's say we, uh, we wanted to double cousins in the post or something. You know, he was playing for Golden State. Why would you want to double Cousins? Well, just because he's big and he can score. I'm just messing. I'm sorry.

I'm screwing up the answer. I'm just giving you an example. And, you know, that he feels really a lot more comfortable turning one way than the other, let's say turning right or whatever. And so we'd say, well, let's not let him turn right and let's double him from below, right? And, well, the other coach is smart too. He sees what's going on.

So he says, okay, we'll put him on the other side, put him on the other block if they want to make him go that way. And then I'd tell the guys, now we got to send him middle. And they'd be like put them on the other block if they want to make him go that way and then i'd tell the guys now we get you know now we gotta send them middle and they'd be like doing it on the fly and and still that changes all the rotations and everything but they were so like in tune with each other they could do it like from one time out to the next or even at a free throw to the next like that's incredible to be able to do that stuff you know what i mean like on the fly i mean like the box in one we you know we didn't like practice that very much we just kind of you didn't practice that so like but talking about it right like that boston series was just a fun series and you guys go boxing one on on kemba

yep and you know it by that time we talked about it yeah that was part of the game plan going in there that night but i'm just saying like the first time we did it, I just kind of looked out there and said to Kyle, I said, here's what I think is going to work. We're going to have Freddie go nose to nose on Steph. And this is what the box is going to look like. And he said, I love it. And he went into the huddle and sold it to everybody else. And of course, you know, you need a lot of luck on those things.

And I think they turned it over the first two possessions. So your lucky roll of the dice comes up. Right. And then they have a little more open-mindedness to try some other stuff. That is really hard though, because the help part of it is the part where you can see, you're like, oh,

they don't even know what they're supposed to do on this. So then on the fly box and one, which these guys probably haven't done since like an AU tournament, if they even did it then. Steve Kerr said it was ninth grade was the last time he got Boxing won. But then it's the other four guys and be like, well, how am I helping? Am I helping off

of Steph? But I always think it screws people up when you drop some kind of zone. I love the zone out of a time out on an inbound. I love all that stuff. I think people are a little bit more aware of it. I feel like it completely derailed people before because then you just, a lot of teams just still don't understand. Like, I don't want to set any screens in the zone, but like on the help stuff and the closeouts, will you know a certain, like, I'll always think corners. Okay. So it used to be kind of like, oh, look at that's cool. They saw the help coming off

the corner and they skipped to the opposite. Now everybody knows it to the point where somebody will bait you into it and then dive back out. And there's all these different counters. But will you have everyone who would defend the corners understand who they're helping for? Like, hey, if this guy's in, you're helping off. But if this guy isn't, then you're staying there. Like, that's a really hard thing to do to make sure everybody remembers the help, every possession based on options, right? That's where it gets really tricky. You're making like a really good point here. Like, you know, there's kind of a foundational principle of help and rotations. You know, you can kind of say, you know, if it goes here, you go here,

go here. And then you say, well, wait a minute, that's Clay Thompson in the corner. We don't ever want him. We don't ever want to help on him. So now you're saying, okay, we're running this system, but we're not leaving Clay. So that's going to put this guy in, you know, so, so now he's got to, he's going to have to cover two somewhere, but, but Clay's not going to touch it. So you're, you know, you're, you're saying to him, listen, again, you're rolling the dice a little bit and you're saying, we got to take this guy out. We're going to live a little bit with this guy and they're going to make some. Let's not panic or hang our heads or question the coverage. They're going to make some, but over the course of several possessions here, we think this is the right thing to do. And I said, if they do make one, take it out and race

it down the other way and try to make one really fast back, and, oh, let's get back into it or whatever. So it's a lot of that stuff, and that, again, is the level, like I was telling you, that championship team could do, and then you start doing it. You know, you're like, okay, remember when we did this against Philly in game four and five? That's what we're doing again tonight against Millwall. You know, you're taking some of that. It's in your toolbox, and you're taking, you know, you're naming certain guys.

Remember how we played Embiid on this, on the mid-pick and roll? That's what we're doing with Lopez tonight or whatever it is. You know, I'm just throwing names out there. Do you think, though, that you game plan more with game-to-game than other staffs do? I do not know that, but I certainly believe in that. I think that it's not easy to do. Again, you have to have a level of IQ and focus and stuff to do it.

And time, sometimes. Sometimes you don't really get a chance. You've got back-to-backs and things like that and and um but we we try to we you know we got our foundational principles in and we got some other things that veer off that kind of severely at times now i also would think having adrian griffin on staff which long-time listeners of the podcast uh know my affinity for his game and i went up to him at the combine one year was like hey my name's ryan and he was like yeah i know who you are you know because i've been an espn for a while i was like i just want to let you know that you're one of my

all-time favorite nba players and he was like is there an open bar at the combine this year it is impossible to explain and you might might've been in Belgium at that point. He played like a hundred games of the Celtics and he's, I don't, I can't say he's the smartest NBA player I've ever seen, but there's a level of the way that he saw the game. It's impossible for me to explain to anybody unless you just watched him. And it wasn't like he had this amazing career.

He came into the league late. He's this journeyman. I know his son's committed to Duke. Who's who's a stud. I may just Just tell him I said, what's up? I'm the biggest Adrian Griffin fan ever. But there's just a way he saw the game, which I hope one day he gets to share as a head coach because it was so different than what you see from 99% of players. I'm serious about this. That's how special he saw the game. Yeah, and he went to work on the game when he got done playing.

He's put in his time as a coach, and he's been around a lot of really good coaches. He gets up in front of that group, and they're buying what he's selling, right? And he's also got command, too, if they're messing around or whatever. He'll just be like, hold on here. We're just trying to learn.

They're back in focus so he's he's uh as you know a great person um super hard worker he was a really good it's great to listen to him as talk about himself as a player you know he's a humble guy he doesn't i'm sure he downplays it because i mean he was a role guy so people will be listening they're gonna go look at his stats and think I'm an insane person. I'm like, no, I can't tell you unless you saw it. And you'd be like, how did he read that? Or like, oh, that's what he was doing. He just was advanced, man. But he says things like, man, I was doing everything I could to stay on the floor.

I was listening to what the coaches told me. I was playing as hard as I could. What a concept. Yeah, what a concept, right? And that's good to have these guys here. Of course, they don't even know where Northern Iowa is, and

they don't know A.G.'s playing career and all that stuff, but at least he's got that inside him, as you know, and he really conveys it well, and he's a great dude. I'm lucky to have him. All right. Five questions.

We don't do this. We say we're going to do it all the time. We don't do it all the time. It's a shout out to Craig Kilbourne as we finish up here. It's time for five questions. Okay. And all your travels. I didn't even get to this stuff in England and whatever.

So maybe some other time when you're bored. But who's the best player that you saw that was just never going to be in the NBA? But you're like, this guy, the legendary guy from all these international travels you saw just get buckets, but you knew he was never going to be in the league. Well, there's a couple, two, three of them. I'll give you Tony Dorsey, Birmingham Bullets, Nigel Lloyd, national team from Barbados played for me in England as well. I used to go back then when I was coaching.

I was so young. I was practicing. We had like nine guys on our team, so I had to get out there. I could never, ever stop them. Long arms, put the ball up, parachute. It could never stop them. Those two guys were awesome players and really high level for having, you know, Dorsey went on to play in like israel and a few places pretty high level nigel just continued to score 35 a night in

the british league for about 25 straight years and curtis stinson curtis stinson uh ryan was my point he came in like my last seven games of my first year at the Iowa Energy in the D League. And he played at Iowa State. So it was kind of a local pickup. And I watched him and I was like, man, in the season, I said, man, you got something, dude. I said, you come back here next year. I said, I'm gonna put the ball in your stomach. It's going to be your team to run. And what happened was Curtis played the next four years, something like 165 games. We were in first place for all 165 of them over that thing. And everybody changed around him, right?

Guys were coming and going every year. And he just, and I played him 48 minutes, like almost every game. Like he never came out and he ran the team. He got those late buckets and he just all he could do was win and and i just i was i really as it's like it he never got a call up i couldn't believe he got the mvp of the league when it could not get a 10 day and i just was like please somebody let this guy put a jersey on for 10 days and it never happened breaks breaks my heart because he was really and is a great a great player and a great dude and he's also got a young son coming that's going

to be a stud so that's that's my top of the list for that one okay you were after northern iowa by the way do you remember your three-point shooting career number at Northern Iowa? It's like 47 or 48, maybe. Yeah, 47%. That's a question. All right, so we have two more quick ones. Okay, when you go to, you're the player coach in 90-91 for the Derby Rams, aka the Derby Storm, aka the Derby Turbos. Did you ever call a play for you? Did you ever come out of timeout tied down one where you said, okay, I'm getting the ball? I used to say that all the time. I gave myself the total green light and I never subbed myself out. But I also played, there's another guy on the list. I also played with this incredible guy named Ernest Lee who led the nation division two

in scoring for two years, six, four big shoulders could just scoring machine i pretty much gave him the ball when it really mattered it didn't it didn't matter that much over there though ryan but when it did he got the ball okay last one because i'm not being um genuine if i don't ask this is there ever a time where kyle flops or just dribbles towards the hoop and falls down on purpose where he gets the call where you feel guilty? Um, probably. I was trying to think guilty is awful strong.

There's a many. What about in the film room when you guys are going through stuff and you see one of the, one of the, those things he gets away with, like you guys must start howling, laughing and seeing how mad the other guys is or when kyle doesn't get the call where it was so absurd and then he spends the next four possessions arguing his point there have to be some funny moments there you know there's some cringing moments when he does that

he doesn't get it and then laying it in at the other end or whatever and there's there's also some some you know i think i think that like the younger guys freddie you know those guys look at him and and just say like how does he know like how to do that or when to do it or you know if he goes up and does that and nobody catches him and there's no whistle and somehow he still gets a pass off like that's crazy right that's that's because he's on the ground it's not like he's in the air doing yeah once in a while right and he'll go up and there's nothing there and then he has nothing to do but fire a line shot at the rim and it'll go in a three you'll go in or something you know and you're like you know and i think some of it's pretty much you know well i don't know i think i think we

say to say you know hey their guy's flop flopping or their guys getting a million calls or whatever. We finally deserved one. Usually is what we probably say. Yeah. That's usually human nature. We're like, well, we were owed that one anyway.

So yeah, I know it's been a tough season. I really appreciate your time. Looking forward to you guys getting back to Toronto. You guys are staying in Florida for a while through the draft free agents, all that stuff. And I'm sure the whole crew can't wait to get back to a city that has so much support for you.

So thanks a lot. No problem. I love listening to your show, man. You're smart as they come and I dig it. So thank you for having me on. Well, I appreciate you saying that because there's some Toronto fans that

probably disagree with you a little bit, but that's all right. Well, 50, 50. That's, that's all you can hope for these days, right?

Todd Graves is the founder of Raising Cane's. I got to meet him, I don't know, the first year we met down in Baton Rouge. He is one of the big parts of my LSU experience over the last decade plus. So I'd like to consider him a friend. And I'm really happy for him, man. I'm happy for where Raising Cane's has gone. Over 500 franchises right now around the country. I hope I have that number right, right?

500 plus? Almost 600, yeah. Almost 600. Okay, cool. I didn't want to short you any. And he is part of a new show called Restaurant Recovery with Discovery+. Those have been out now for weeks. There's two more episodes coming out where celebrities come by,

where he stops by kind of local mom-and- pop shop, the backbone of kind of the restaurant industry. But I want to start with your start, because I'd heard about you when I met Brandon from Walk-Ons, and he's like, oh, you're going to meet Todd. This guy started Chicken Finger Place here on campus, and now there's this. I was like, wait, what? So give me the inception of the idea of you saying, I want to start a place that serves only chicken fingers. And now you've turned it into this. Yeah. You know, right.

It was a college dream. And I think that's why I resonate so much with college sports, right? It's like this started when I was in college and, uh, man just had a dream to start a chicken finger restaurant. Um, I'd seen that point that you were going from boneless chicken. This is back in the early nineties, right. And going to, to bone chicken to boneless chicken and then dipping sauces. Right. And there was concepts that were just starting to specialize in chicken strips or fingers. And I was like, man, this is a good trend and I like it, but I wanted to start the North gates of LSU because I was a college student and, you know, I wanted to just hire college

kids and serve college kids. So I wrote a business plan, ended up getting the worst grade in the class, just classic, right? It's kind of legendary around LSU. They say it was a failing grade and the teacher took the concept and competed. None of that's true. It was just a B minus. He was an easy grader, but I was actually glad he did because he said, hey, your plan's good. Because

I worked in college in restaurants and bars and things like that. So I wrote a good plan. He said, the concept serving just chicken finger meals, you didn't really do your homework because in QSR, quick service restaurants, McDonald's is adding variety. All of our variety. And that was the big deal then. And he said, so you're not really going to train your industry. So you get a, you know, you get a B minus. And, uh, but for me, in my mind, I was like, you know what? And this is where the concept of one love or he's in games, taking her one love, do one thing and do it better than any, anywhere else. I mean, do one thing, do it better than anybody else.

And so I just didn't let it discourage me, man. I went out and talked to the banks. They told me no to went out and worked in refineries and torrents and El Segundo and went and commercial fished in Alaska, raised up money to reconstruct an old dilapidated building, North Gates of LSU, and the rest is history. You went through that a little quick for me because I have to ask about some of that. I wrote a paper for a film course in 97 where you had to come up with a movie concept and then pitch it and i was like what you need to do is revitalize the marvel characters and you should start with spider-man and the audience is already there and whatever and i gotta see they were like it's too immature now granted yours worked out a little bit better than than mine did is this the marvel thing took

off but uh did the marvel thing take off man you had some good business yeah but it never i mean there's difference you went out and made chicken fingers i just was like all right i'm gonna i'm gonna buy another script program and a how-to book here and not do anything with it for a little while so when you were thinking of this were you thinking hey i want to start my own business i want to work for myself i love restaurants i'm trying to figure out this lane because there's i feel like there's some parts there that I need more depth on of you identifying a hole in the market. Because I have a couple of friends that have started restaurants, started bars, and I just know their mind works differently than most of ours.

So they'd be driving through a strip mall area and there'd be an empty spot and they'll go, what is missing in this neighborhood? You know what I mean? So sometimes it's not even that they're passionate about the product. They're passionate about filling some kind of void. Yeah. Well, that's what entrepreneurs do, man. They find a need or they recognize a need, they fill it. That is the definition I use for an entrepreneur. And so for me, growing up, I was a kid that had the lemonade stand in the neighborhood. I asked my parents if I could borrow the lawnmower and the edger and weed eater to go cut grass for $10 a lawn. And then I actually hired my friends later and we made flyers and I created a business.

I'm 10 years old at this time. I was always entrepreneurial, but I loved the food business in high school and college. I worked in it. I like food. I like working with people, cooking and serving people. I like serving people. I like working with people, cooking and serving people. I like serving people. I like working drive-thrus. So I just graduated from college. I'm like, I knew I wanted to start my own business, be an entrepreneurial, but I knew I loved the food business. And I knew that this

concept would be great for college students because I was one. Now, when the banks turn it down, I mean, the paper part, I'd heard that story years and years ago. Who knows? You might have just been horrible at writing. Maybe that hurt the grade more than anything else. But when you decide to move out west, everything is single-minded. Raise enough capital. You're catching fish in Alaska. You're working out here as a boilermaker. What was that experience like? Because that's tough work. I mean, I know you work hard, but is it waking up every day knowing, okay, all of this is because of the next step? Yeah. And I'm real fortunate. I mean, the greatest thing that happened to me throughout my whole venture on the chicken finger life I've lived is the fact that it was so hard to start it, right? Because I had to work so hard for it that I always appreciate things. And I still appreciate every restaurant opening, all the crew I hire. I appreciate the communities we do business in. And so I was just on this... I had this dream.

And so doing things like become a bowler maker and go work in refineries. And it was really hard work. We worked 90 to 100-hour weeks, sometimes up to 100, 120 a week. But you could make some really good money in a short period of time learning to do things that I've never done before, right? Like going into towers in the refineries and guiding in large vessels of things

or putting onto these stacks and columns with these huge cranes. And so that was pretty exciting. And actually those bowler makers were more encouraging to me than anybody else. They're like, you're here to start a chicken finger restaurant, man. You're going to do it. They saw how hard I was working. They were the most encouraging group. Same with the group in Alaska, man. These are a bunch of hardworking people.

And you talk about insane work. We got about four hours of sleep in a 24-hour period and not even contiguous during the peak of the season. It's like, go grab a nap for an hour, go grab a nap. That's why so many people get injured too, because when it's the peak of the season, you're just tired. You're working around, boats are slamming into you. You got high waves, you got all this stuff. People got hurt because they got tired, but it just fueled that dream and it solidified it. It was like, you're not going to stop. You're never, ever going to give up because you put so much into this. So you open up the first one on the gates there, the campus. What is the value in being connected to an LSU brand? Like my friends now, when they see them pop up, you know, my buddies that you met that are from Denver, they're like, Hey, we got a

Raising Cane's here. Like, Oh my God, like we got one. They'd be like, that's the LSU place. And I mean, look, there's not an LSU logo on it but starting it locally and and being connected to a really successful brand as well what is that relationship like for you yeah it's a great question yeah it's it's nostalgia more than anything right it's you know this college student that starts and then starts feeding college students but you know opened, opened up in 1996, uh, August for football season. So that's when we got our first volumes was before and after the game and people had these great memories with it. Right. And they came in and they associated that with LSU football.

Then they associated with LSU basketball because they would see me sneak out from the restaurant when a game started. And I was talking to everybody, come to Kane's afterwards. Then I'd be there frying their chicken through late night. Same with the basketball games. We did things like Cane's Challenge. If the team scored 70 points, you got half off Cane's. They came and they had those memories.

Same with baseball, girls' gymnastics. And we just tied in with the school so much. And I would go speak to classes. I was just out of school. I'd be speaking to business classes. Hey, here's how you can achieve your dreams, things like that. And then when we got some dollars, we started sponsoring at LSU and doing those things and to really tie ourselves into the community. And so many of those grads... College is just great years for people. And when you have that nostalgic feeling about a place,

then you become evangelical about it. You tell everybody and then word spreads. So it had a lot to do with our success. I think that's why I give so much back to the LSU community and then Baton Rouge in general. How come they're so good? And this isn't an ad. And obviously you've done reads here.

And I was thrilled to just have the relationship with you here. But I mean, it is that good. It's that good. I was somewhere in Louisiana where I was trying to find the closest canes and it was so far away. I just took an Uber and I was at a food court mall and a guy recognized me. He's like, what the hell are you doing? It wasn't like I was on Hammond or something or a little boosh, but he was like, what are you doing here? And I go, I wanted some canes, man. And I don't know. There had to have been a lot of times where I think with food, you're trying, you're trying, you're trying to get it right.

How did that process work? Yeah. So this is just what I believe in. I believe that you should do what you're good at and what you can consistently stay good at, right? And so that's where the whole Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers One Love comes from. And so since I concentrate on that quality chicken finger meal,

it's just like from that first restaurant, right? Where I made sure we had the exact chicken that I wanted, right? I mean, down to the... At that point, chicken was a little smaller. It was about 1.2 ounce average. We're about 1.8, 1.9 average. And so that goes down to the exact bird, the bird breed, the bird weight, the bird processing, the freshness coming in. It's those details down on those things that make it.

It's the marinade, right? Some people call it brining. We brine for 24 hours. I do not compromise that, right? It goes in. It's the egg wash. I mean, look, there's quality of milk and there's quality of eggs, right? I mean, it goes down to having that. There's cuts of flour and the seasoning I use, right? And so you have to constantly try the seasoning because it's different parts of the country and you have different things that affect that flavor, right? All the way down to what we put in the sauce and we bake it in-house every day. Look, I picked out the tea. Just doing tea was a two-year process, right?

Because it comes from four different countries from around the world to make sure that tea is the best. But since I concentrate on that, I can do that. It's really kind of obsessive-compulsive feeling towards quality. And as we've grown, I've never lost that, right? I never compromised. I never used less than quality ingredients. Like I've never gone down on that. Right. And so all that, some of the experts are like, man, you realize if you saved, if you just cut back 10%, people wouldn't notice and you'd make this much more money. I'm like, yeah, they would, you know, it's called a death by a thousand cuts. And so with,

with growing the way we all rock in 30 states and we're also in the Middle East, the sourcing becomes pretty vast. So I spend a lot of my time working with my expert group on supply chain, making sure in all of our regions, all the stuff we get is good. And it's one of the things that we do. And look, I really believe it's a competitive advantage. If you're obsessive compulsive about that, it's going to be tough to beat that quality. Has there been time? I'm sure there's, there's answers. I don't know how much you can share with us.

Is there one go-to story that you have about something you had to turn down an opportunity you had to turn down, even though it would have meant life-changing money for you at the time, because somebody else wanted to compromise what you're doing supply wise, maybe internationally or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's another great question. Yes, absolutely. Look, so I have just about all

of our restaurants are company-owned. I own them now. And we started off franchising in different areas. Yeah, we bought back the franchise we had. And that's because of my obsessive compulsism, right? We had great franchisees, but let's say if we're operating out of a 95 out of 100, like company-wise, they might be operating at 85, which is like way better than any other franchise group out there or whatever deal is. It just drives me crazy. And so it's that controlling deal. I'd rather partner personally with our internal restaurant partners. We call them restaurant partners.

They're part of our group. And I partner with them because, look, they're the ones with the sweater on their brow. He or she, you know, every night going through doing what they have to do and do and being the Todd graves of their community. You know, that's the people I'd rather partner with. But anyway,

we're going to franchise international, but in the United States, I think we can operate them best, uh, better than anybody else. So anyway, what were we talking about? I got off on that.

No, no, that's, that was actually really insightful. Cause I didn't know. Cause I think a lot of times people will be like, hey, did you start this going, well, I want to franchise this out.

Were you always thinking that way? Yeah, yes, I was because I thought we'd grow a big company base, but I actually thought franchisees could do a better job than we could company-wise in their markets, right? And they did a good job, but not as good as us, right?

Because we live it every day and we know our business better than anybody else. So that was the choice. And so, yeah, getting back to what you said, which I think was a really good question is, if I would have sold out... Turning down opportunities. Right, right. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Well, if I would have sold out early and thought about going for money is I could have sold franchises to the entire country. Once we were doing well, I could have just made it in this car bomb, the United States grown and our quality wouldn't have been there. The fanaticism wouldn't have been there. We would have grown too quickly internationally. Same way. We have serious interest all over the world and we could have

disfranchised out, hey, let's get our money and look, do this. We'll support you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we would have ruined the concept because we would have grown too quickly and without the right partners. And eventually we wouldn't be a long-term restaurant company, which I want to do. I want to grow old with it. Okay, Restaurant Recovery, Discovery Plus. It started April 15th, so the episodes are up.

I was checking them out this morning. And I think the motivation behind this, for people who have to understand where Todd's head is at all the time is that is awful. I don't want to phrase this the right way. COVID was awful for so many restaurants and small businesses. It actually, your numbers were up because of drive-thru, correct? Right, right. So because of that, that motivated you to do what? So because of that, that motivated you to do what? Go help out those people we were taking the business from, basically, right? You know, we're up 10%. Wow, you're crushing it, right? But then you're seeing all these independent family-owned restaurants that are struggling and in some closing, right?

And if you love the food business and you love restaurants, you understand how important neighborhood, family-owned, independent restaurants are, man. They have culture. They have character. They're special. And when they go away, they're gone forever. They're usually placed by a high-rise or a chain and we don't need any more of those. And so I decided to go create a show called Restaurant Recovery. I understood the power of television because I've done it before. And literally hired... Going back to entrepreneurial roots, hired a production company and said, Hey, we need to do a show showcasing what these people go through, how important their small business, these are restaurants, uh, that are to them.

So people understand and go out and support small business in general, especially restaurants. How many millions did you spend on this project? All in about 4.5. And that was out of your pocket. So for, at first you're thinking, Oh, this guy's going to promote this new show. He's building the brand. He's building the brand shirt. Certainly there brand awareness value to this, but you paid for all of the episodes to be made and then paid for what? It's, you know, they're going to buy a show. It doesn't cover what, you know, a first season is, right?

And so we wanted to do high quality production. So things cost money. And then the budget was a million dollars, a hundred thousand for all 10 of the restaurants helping, but I blew that budget. So probably went about a million five on that. And so all of it together came in at that amount of money. And, you know, we get great brand recognition. People see, they see it's genuine.

And of course we have great goodwill that you get from Cane's, but it's legit. And I could have put those dollars towards other massive marketing efforts and got actually more exposure for other things and just did a donation to these restaurants. What's important is when you watch these episodes and what people do, then they start... They understand what small business goes through. And then I think when they think, hey, look, I went to Cane's. You know what? And I want them to to go to Kane's, but I want them to the next time they're hungry, say, Oh, I need to go support that local, that local restaurant. What was the best part of putting these shows together and saving these restaurants? Man, I mean, look, when you, when you give, you get more back and that's just so true. Right. And so it just felt good to be in a good

position with me and my team to be able to help these people and to have them, you know, appreciative and understand that what we did for them really helped them through a rough patch. That felt good to be able to help out good people. Last thought here, how much of the success of a, I think when it's a service, small business, you know, yours started off small, it's not now. But how much of it is the person versus the product? I think it's the people, man. If you think about Raising Cane's, we have a very focused menu. You can go out and copy that. It's not that hard to copy that. But what makes it better is that somebody cares. There's a founder that lives and breathes it every day. It's part of my DNA. somebody cares. There's a founder that lives and breathes it every day. It's part of my DNA.

And then my team, we care. And I care about my crew, who then cares about my customers and the communities they do business in. So if we all weren't driving that, a product's a product, but you want everything else to go around it that makes it so special. People come to Raising Cane's. Our frequency is as high as any other quick service restaurant out there. As high as any of them. And we serve one thing, right? And so you think about all that variety and all those things everybody else has to catch all those occasions. Well, they come back. Well, they come back because the food's good and it's craveable. But they also come back because it's the people.

This restaurant means something. It's all those great things. I'm really happy for you, man. And I'm thrilled going back to, I don't know, I think it was like 08 or something. And they were like, yeah, you're going to meet Todd. He's a chicken finger guy. And I was like, all right, I got to meet him. And then next thing you know, my bill was paid for.

And I was like, how'd that happen? They're like, no, he's doing pretty well. We're doing good, man. I've enjoyed the friendship too. So I'm coming out to LA this summer. I'll definitely be there in the fall for the UCLA game, LSU. We've got to hang out, party a little bit, go to the game. Yeah, sounds good.

And congrats on everything, man. We'll talk again. Right. Appreciate it, buddy. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up?

I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Lifeadvice, rr at gmail dot com. I appreciate all the great feedback we got on having Josh on last week. Investment-wise, I know that whenever it comes to that kind of stuff,

there's going to be differences of opinion, philosophies, um, you know, whatever. I, you know, I always hope people have an open mind about it, realizing like it doesn't mean, you know, I've, I've watched him on TV a bunch. I've disagreed. And I know that I'm armed with far less information and insight and experience in the business, uh, about that. So I think that's kind of cool that almost all the feedback I got, even if some people had some issues about some other things, just some of the different things that we're going to try to do from time to time. And I probably don't do it enough, but I'm always trying to find like the right person. The right person I think is both a good guest for just the podcast in general. You know, there are plenty of

educated people out there that I'll just go, I don't really have any relationship with a person or if I'm not a hundred percent sure how they're going to be on the air. You got to remember that's also part of what we're doing here too. But I just thought he was really energetic and the advice about the kid going, I'm getting so-and-so's book of business was amazing because other guys reach out to me too and they were just dying laughing being like, that's so true. So there you go. Anyway, so we'll get back to what we're good at here. By the way, we're dream night. I don't, I have a couple of friends that have rules about sharing dreams because this is really stupid why this is coming up. So allow me to derail this for a second, but guys have had an argument in my

friend group of college for years about what would be worse being in jail or being at war. of college for years about what would be worse being in jail or being at war. And I'm like, give me war a hundred out of a hundred times. And guys are trying to tell me like, no, not at all. And then I had one of those weird dreams where I was in jail in and out of it all night. I think it's because I got taping done taping Kyle so late. Like I finished with bill almost 10 hours ago. So I ate really late after that podcast. And then I went to bed. It was one of those deals where you're in bed and I remember the dream perfectly. And then I would wake up and be like, that sucks. I'm in jail. And then you're like, oh, wait, I'm not. That was a dream. And then I go right back to sleep. And it was like

going back to jail. And it was just so weird, sleep, and it was like right going back to jail. And it was just so weird, Kyle, because jail was like, it's not that bad. Trust us. We get a bad rap. You'll like it here. I was like, I don't think I'm going to like it. Was it like longest yard jail? It was kind of like the in-between part before the real part. But the in-between part, everybody's like, you know, a lot of that's just social media.

It's not that bad you're gonna like it i was like i'm not gonna like it i'm not gonna like it here and then i would wake up and be like oh all right and then i'd fall back asleep and then it was one of those deals where i knew the whole time i'm like none of this is real you're just asleep again it was weird that is weird i don't know if i should even be sharing any of that kind of stuff that's right it's not like you're trying to figure out what it meant i just i know what you're talking about you're falling in and out of a dream and it's like oh shit i'm back in this one it's like i've been trying so hard to get back into dreams that i like before and now i can't fucking escape this one it's

strange wait you try to control your dreams maybe we won't do any life advice no no i don't want to do a rabbit hole thing but no like sometimes there's a dream that's like awesome and like you know like i said like i used to have a dream where i was like a football like i i got like superpowers and i was like a football player and like i just didn't tell anyone and i'd be like damn i'd love to be able to go back to that dream but now you the only dream you go back to is jail that sucks i mean there's other stuff to it but i'm not gonna bore everyone to death with it. I don't think it meant anything other than I ate food really, really late. And I also watched The Wire when I fell asleep. I was watching the Amsterdam episodes again. So maybe that's all part of the programming, but it was just so annoying because I go, this isn't real. Like none of this is real. And then guys just

telling me over and over and over again, like, it. I'm like, no, it's not cool. Anyway, I would still take war over jail just for the gear alone. Okay, life advice. I'm not going to use any names here. I need your advice. I'm a 22-year-old 5'10 black guy in a white city, which helps my odds with both black and white girls in a medium-sized white city.

You know what? My man here is absolutely right about that. I've heard this and I've seen it. And my man is using the stats to his advantage. I'm a handsome dude. I'm young and I work for, don't say that. Okay, we'll leave it out. Just started a gig where he's in management, 75 grand a year. Easy check. Great salary, especially for my age. Yeah, you're doing great, man, 22.

I feel like I'm rolling in money. We'll start putting some of that away and listen to the Josh Brown episode. I've always been good with women and attracted dimes, TBH. Wow. I can see why this guy's in management. Confidence is through the roof. I've settled down with a great girl, and I'm so happy. I'm going to leave this out.

She's got a good job. She's intelligent. She's nurturing. She's also a few years older than our guy here. He said she's hella mature, and she's beautiful. He even attached a pic. Yeah, she's gorgeous, man. And then he asked the question, my life is awesome, right? Here's my problem, bro. I go to a great gym every day at noon. It's right before I have to work during the weekdays. And I don't know, it's my routine at this point. There's a girl named, which we're going to leave out at my gym, who's an absolute smoke show. He attached a picture of the girl from the gym as well. And yes, she is also attractive. Um, Ryan, she is so bad. That means good folks. She constantly asked me to spot her on squats. Like, come on, bro. Yeah, that was always awkward. Whenever I was asked to squat, spot somebody I didn't know, male or female,

I'd just be like, getting in there. And even it suggested we become workout buddies and lift at the same time. What do I do, man? I love my gym, and I don't want to switch, but if I stay around her, I'm eventually going to slip up. I love my girl, but this girl is a stallion please help where do i go from here i tried talking to her but she straight up said she doesn't care if i'm in a relationship help i love my girl and i hate that i'm considering this and i'm really just worried

i'm gonna slip okay man well the first thing i would do is delete this fucking email. Delete this from the sent file. You just said it yourself. You said you're so happy. You said you're so happy, right? You get all these things that are working out. When there's a lot of people, you'll have this lane's working out, this lane's working out, this one isn't. It sounds like you get a lot of lanes checked off here.

You have good perspective around you. You obviously know if this female at the gym was telling you like she doesn't even care about your relationship. She's telling you it's on. And I think the fact that you're even worried about the gym part, like my prediction, I would bet money that you're going to slip up here because I know what it's like to be a guy. And I know the rules that you'll kind of apply to yourself when it comes to stuff like this. And then ultimately,

I, you know, I don't want to go too deep in the weeds in there, but it's kind of like the guy that is a serial cheater. Right. And he'll say like, well, if it's not in the same town,

okay, that's a qualifier. So now he's mentally conditioned himself to think that he's not, it's kind of a, it's not a lie. If you believe it, it's well, if we're not in the same town, okay, that's a qualifier. So now he's mentally conditioned himself to think that he's not, it's kind of a, it's not a lie if you believe it. It's well, if we're not in the same town, you know, when kids were younger guys be like, man, different area code doesn't, doesn't count, you know, and that kind of stuff, which is all ridiculous, but it's immature. And people say stuff like that. And then it'll be somebody's with somebody serious, but they're still doing something and they go, well, you know, we're not engaged yet. And then they're engaged. And then it's like, well, we're not married. And then it's, they're

married. And it's like, well, I'm not going to do anything once we have kids. And you just, you just keep pushing. It's not even the goalposts in this case, it's pushing the standard of, of what you think you morally have to address. You're just putting that off more and more and more. So the fact that you're like, I love my gym. Well, what do you love more? You love the girl that you're currently with or your gym? And if the answer is your gym, then maybe you don't like the girl that you're with now as much as you thought. You can't just go at a different time. I mean, it's the only time that you can go, but here's the problem. And I know mean, it's the only time that you can go.

But here's the problem. And I know this. And most of us men are wired this way. Even if we're in a relationship where we know we're not going to screw up, we like that attention. You know, we like if you're the guy in the gym that the hottest girl in the gym is talking to, you like that. It's an ego boost. It makes you feel better about yourself. And it's all temporary and it's all bullshit. But in the moment, it just feels great. And you clearly still need that.

But what you're trying to do is you're trying to serve two different parts of your ego at the exact same time. Because if you're telling me that the main girl that you're with is smart, nurturing, you just said, I've settled down with a great girl, man, and I'm so happy. Three sentences later, you're talking about the chances of you cheating on her with a girl at the gym who asked you to help her in the squat rack. I think I already know where you're going with this. At 22, I could say you're probably too young to really realize what it means to have somebody great in your life and be so happy. But that's not fair either.

And it's also there's plenty of guys that are 40 that say the same shit and then still screw up. So if the person that you're with is something that makes you happy long term and around the clock and good times, bad times, right? As cliche as that sounds, whatever satisfaction you're going to have from going astray here, it doesn't really add up to what you have now. But most of our minds won't really work that way. In the moment, you're not going, well, geez, this is all really cool in the moment but this won't mean anything because then there's also the other side of it and it's impossible to kind of put yourself in that position is obviously what if she did this to you you would

freak out um and what happens if she found out and she's like all right later man she's older than you she's mature she's got a good career she can meet somebody else and she tells you like see you later you slipped up you know i'm not doing this and the fact that you're gonna have to deal with the guilt of hiding it or figuring it out and all that kind of stuff and being younger and changing your bed sheets all the time because you're afraid of a stray strand of hair you know what i mean like shit gets old but you're 22 so it's not old to you yet kyle um yeah that's that sucks but i think um you could decide that you know everybody makes mistakes and you could decide that like you're the age like with life advice and stuff a lot

of the stuff that i like people enjoy for me is like the mistakes I made. I'm to the point now where I can say like, yeah, I wouldn't do that now. So not that it would be an awesome story to tell how you cheated on your girlfriend with this hot girl at the gym. But you can sort of decide right now if you're the if you're at the age where you're not going to be making those quote unquote mistakes. So you know, you're in control of your own destiny. And you know, I'm in control of not stealing GPS at the age of 27. You can totally feel good about yourself here if you take a certain

path. That's all I'll say. You're not out of control of this. No, you're in control, but you're not. You're right. It's really, really easy for everybody to say, hey, here's what you should do and here's what you shouldn't do. And if everybody just followed that, we'd all be a little bit better off.

But we just. I mean, there's a reason why when you walk into a bookstore, there's a million books to help you. And they just keep selling over and over and over again. And they're all saying the same stuff. So there's nothing like the power of buying a book being like tomorrow day one of the rest of my life life advice book series next summer no I'm actually in the middle of something yeah it has nothing has nothing it's not uh you know that would be the worst if I were doing all of these and just putting them chapters publish all these emails yeah and then be like I didn't have to

write anything that'd be incredible that's like a good second book idea you're like yeah i'm kind of out of i'm kind of out of ideas um all right here we go another one no name no shit stats are unimpressive 34 way past my physical prime stay in shape do well enough with the ladies wow we got some real swingers on the pod today i have the dating equivalent of the old man hoops game where there's nothing flashy about it but i can still knock down some proverbial buckets as I know the dating game so well at this point. All right. Recently, I've been dating a girl I really like and everything's going great. Problem is we're getting to the point of meeting friends and I'm not sure whether I should be proactive about telling her of a past fling who's still sort of around. She's one of my fringe

friends, not core, but still around from time to time. She and I hung out for a while last year, was basically, hey, it's quarantine and this is easy, convenient sort of thing. No one's judging. I called it off at the end of 2020, no hard feelings. Now I'm wondering whether I need to tell the new girl at all of this proactively or whether I don't tell her and hope she never finds out. But then if she does, she might think I was trying to keep it from her. The other girl isn't going to be at small dinner party size group stuff when it comes time for the 4th of July type larger gatherings. She's enough of the group to get that kind of invite. Thoughts on letting sleeping dogs lie are proactively telling her something she

may never have learned. All right. The first thing is you didn't do anything wrong. All right. Everyone has a history and you're going to have a history at 34. So you have to, you know, judge, because this is another thing men do and be like, oh, 34. So you have to, you know, judge. Because this is another thing men do. They're like, oh, I don't know about her. You know, history, history, history. And then it's like, yeah, what about yours? You ever look in the mirror?

So everybody has a history to a certain point. And I don't think it's something that you should. I think you're a little too worried about this than you should be, to be honest with you. Now, I think it's cool that you're kind of concerned. So that shows a good side of you that you're caring, you know, you're aware of people's feelings and all that kind of stuff. Right. But what I think is impossible to predict here is, I mean, how well do you know the girl that you're with? Because this can go a bunch of different ways and they could be good or they could be bad. Because if you tell her, she could say, well, is he telling me because he cares about her still? Right?

Or she'll go, oh, who cares? Like, I've hooked up with this guy and this guy. And you're like, oh, okay. What do you owe the person that you just started dating? Do you owe the person that you just started dating? Do you owe the person beyond dating? Like if you were to marry somebody, oh, hey, by the way, and then it could be too late, right?

Like, I can't believe you never told me this, especially if it's somebody significant, but it doesn't sound like this girl, the previous, let's call her the COVID girlfriend. It doesn't seem like she's enough of the group that it's ever really going to matter that these two, the girl you're dating now and the other girl have any history together whatsoever.

So yes, trust me. Nobody wants to be the guy at, let's say, a couple solo cup barbecue deal, and you're kind of the new guy on the scene, and you're dating a girl, and then she's showing you around, and there's that one guy named Steve who's looking at you a little sideways like, oh, hey, and you're just in your head going, all right, something's going on here. You know, like that part sucks. But I don't know if the COVID girlfriend

is going to be like that, if she's going to care. And I don't know if the new girl is going to care because the other part of it, she could just say, what are you talking about? Like, I don't care. We didn't know each other then.

Why are you even telling me this? Right? And then that backfires. But then if you do tell her, she could maybe be really upset about it, even though it wouldn't be fair for her to be upset about it. So I'm leaning towards, don't worry about this that much. You're overthinking it. You know, if it comes time where you become really, really serious with the new girlfriend i mean really calculate how many other times you're going to run into this person because you're in a town like i think of

a town uh i don't know i you know if you were to you could be any major city but whatever your social circle is if you're going to run into somebody from time to time like i don't know that you have to go over everything historically with somebody that you're with especially if there's no overlap at all so i would, I would not do anything on that one. Word say nothing unless she's the type that's going to like drunk dial you or show up to your house at midnight with a boom box. Like you're never going to have to worry about this. Just leave it alone. You have the right thought. What's that in reference to? Was that a John Cusack thing? It was, didn't he show up with a boom box outside somebody's window?

Say anything. I just couldn't believe the reference. It's probably just a meme reference for you, though. You've never seen the movie. God, I hate that you're fucking right about that, honestly. I mean, I think I've seen a clip on Fandango or something. Oh, well, then you nailed it. See it.

Watch it with your girl. You'll like it. It's one of the first. It was a very weird thing for when it came out because it was the first kind of rom-com that guys liked. It's one of my favorite movies ever. I love it. Yeah.

Really? I love that movie. Yeah. They did a rewatchables with Apatow on it, didn't they? I know that. I mean, I don't watch every rewatchable movie, you know, but yeah. I'm telling you, you'll like the movie. All right.

Good to know. I'll put it on the list. Now, like a lot of millennials, you're probably. Do we have Cerruti with us yet or no? What up? Have you seen Say Anything? No. No, I mean, I get the reference, but you know me, I kind of have that

policy that nothing holds up. Yeah, Cerruti hates anything historically in film because he just is like, wait, landlines? This movie sucks. You think nothing holds up, so he hates all movies well that was also in the that was also in the 80s right that was an 80s flick right yeah i also have the anti-80s thing going so there's really a lot of things going against me watching that movie where are

you on cusack uh i don't i kind of like nothing cusack like he doesn't really he doesn't really move the needle for me but i don't dislike You know, I know my dad really liked that movie where he thought he was an alien. What the hell was that? What was it called? I forget. I don't know. It was some movie where Cusack, that was my first Cusack movie I ever remember.

And he just thought he was an alien. Um, I gotta tell you, you're stumping me here a little bit here. Um, Martian child. No, John Cususack alien movie i must have missed this one you're telling me this was an 80s movie no it was like newer oh the kid he adopts a kid who thinks he's from mars 2007 what was that called martian child

that's i think that's it yeah that's what we called it two minutes ago. That's the reason my dad liked that movie. That's my memory of John Cusack. Well, I'm going to go ahead and tell you that might be why I didn't take for you. All right? A movie where he adopts... Not his best work.

Right. He adopts... We get a 35 on Rotten Tomatoes on that one. I had never even heard of it, and I'm a big... But I knew that would have been one. I don't even remember not being interested about it 14 years ago. The funny thing is Cusack would have been your guy if you were in the 80s. Knowing you the way I do, Cerruti, that would have been your kind of guy.

You would have been like, oh, yeah, Cusack's in it? Done. First night. Who's the Cusack comp to 2021 then? I'm not going to say he's at Tom Hardy's level, but you would have defended Tom. I'm telling you, Tom Hardy's a different seating for you, but you would have really liked him.

You'd be like, oh, better off dead? In. Saw it twice. That's a huge compliment to Cusack. Wow. You know I love Hardy. that's a huge compliment to Cusack wow I love you know I love Hardy I yeah but I I can't really I can't really compare anything to Hardy so that that might have been a mistake I'm trying

to think of like a a secondary movie person was he like a heartthrob is he like a got like a like a Ryan Gosling kind of type was he like the good looking dude who was in all those movies I think he's like a between because it wasn't like Gosling kind of type? Was he like the good looking dude who was in all those movies? I think he's like a between because it wasn't like Gosling.

I can't figure out Gosling for the life of me. If this guy's like really who he is, he might be the coolest guy of all time. I mean, Hardy, I don't know. I'd be afraid of where that was going to go that night if you were hanging out with him. And I think Hardy would be incredibly unimpressed with everyone around him, where I think

Gosling would give you a chance to see where it went. Where Cusack... Are you a big Paul Rudd guy? Yes and no. It depends on the movie. Yeah, I think Paul Rudd's a better comp for Cusack. It's not Hardy. That's a good comp. That's

a big deal. I get that. When I say Hardy, I don't want to catch any shit saying Russillo compares Cusack to Hardy. I'm simply saying how much I know I love Cerruti, loves Hardy, and defends him at all costs.

It is true. And I think that, I think if you were around eras ago, you'd be just saying like, yeah, are you kidding me? $2. I'd be at parties talking to Cusack. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. You'd be like, look, I think he's, you'd be saying saying like, yeah, are you kidding me? $2. I'd be a party. Talking to Cusack. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. You'd be like, look, I think he's, you'd be saying between gross point blank, better off dead. Say anything.

You'd be like, the guy's, the guy's really versatile. That's all I'm saying. Right. Could not see Cusack playing Bane or any villain in a bad. No, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, a little bit, a little bit, a little Point Blank. That one still probably holds up a little bit. A little bit.

But I really liked it when it came out. So I've seen it multiple times. I think that was a solo theater experience while I was still in college or the year after. I'm not sure. All right. Really interesting dialogue here. Our man is from Iowa City. Home of Ryan's 12 and 1.

Excuse me. 12 and0 Hawkeyes. 6'6", 190, lean. Bench 195, five reps, five sets. Good for you. I would start trying to find a way, if those five reps are clean for those five sets, I would add, I would rather get you to like 205, five reps, I would, I would rather get you to like 205, five reps, three sets, and then see how many

you can do on sets four and five, and then hope you can get 205, 505. Let's keep going. 312 marathon. All right. I'm not going to talk to you about fitness anymore. Jesus. That's amazing. Decent in hoops. I would hope so. All right. So this guy's doing well. My wife and I have a six month old daughter. She's incredible. Kind of weak on the bench. That's not me. But we were struggling to find time to work out the way we used to. While I can sneak in a jog or take my daughter out in a running stroller, I cannot get to the gym for lat back by tri-day.

Don't get me started on missing the squat rack. As an ectomorph, I'm one missed lift from looking like a string bean. Between my career and family, I could just not justify the gym commute. Last March, a couple with a one-year-old son moved in across the street. We have a lot in common, get along very well. We have had each other over for dinner. I helped the husband install cabinets. I even let them borrow my snowblower and power washer. There are talks of a lake house weekend getaway this summer. You know it's real if you're talking weekend lake house together. Last month, we were in their basement, and I saw the Holy Grail, a rogue squat rack, barbell, and bench.

They even had a nice rubber floor tile set up for deadlifts. I commented on how jealous I was that we didn't have any space for a home gym. The husband said I could come over anytime to use it. The offer was nice, but did he really want me in the basement working out at 5.30 a.m. before work? No. Where's this going? Last week, I took him up on the offer, and I excitedly went over,

and my daughter fell asleep. Oh, so he did invite him over. See, I thought this was going to be, should I ask him if I can lift at his house? Because I was going to say, if you're this kind of fitness guy and you're doing a lake house, and he hasn't offered you to come over, like, hey, you can come over and use this whenever you want. Because that's a weird setup. Like I'm close to somebody in my neighborhood and I want to be able to say like, hey, you can work out in my garage whenever you want.

But then I also realized with my taping schedule, that might be something that I don't want to do. So I didn't offer. Now I feel like a jerk and hopefully they won't hear this on the podcast. So he goes over. He goes, I excitedly went over after my daughter fell asleep on arrival. My fantasy was quickly shattered. He only had a set of 25, 10, and five pound plates altogether. He had 125 pounds. I can do, I can do it light, do it right for only so long after the workout, the dad said, come over anytime, but now I'm not sure that I want to. So he has a rogue rack with bench and barbell,

and it only goes to 25, 10 and five. After the workout, the dad said, all right, we already said that part. Here's my question. Is it weird if I buy a set of plates to bring over and start using their home gym set up on the reg? Am I gym shaming him? Could I gift him 45-pound plates knowing that it's for me? As previously mentioned, I have helped a decent amount with projects and freely lent my tools. I would like to think you could just buy the 45-pound plates and say, these are yours. These are my gift to you,

but also to me. If you guys are talking lake house, I think that's acceptable. Now we all know that we're all different and any of these circumstances that anything could go in a number of different ways, where if you bring over the 45 pound plates, then he says to his wife, he's like, you know, I used to like them, but that was weird. And you're like, what's weird about it? Because if this, here's what's crazy about all of us is the one thing could happen and we could describe it in completely different ways if we want to, because if they wanted to be offended by it, they could, even though you're gifting him something that usually costs, you know, if they're decent, a couple hundred bucks here. And you'd have to think that at some point, if he has a rogue rack, that he would want more weight,

but clearly he doesn't want more weight. So now that's difficult. So yeah, it's kind of selfish, but it's also a gift. So there's a lot of different things at work here. I personally would say, hey, here's some 45s. I'm going to use these. But again, if you're going over there and working out like crazy

all the time, that might get old too, because it sounds like you're really into it. Uh, I would, I would try buying the plates. I think a lot of people are going to disagree with my advice on this one. I would try buying the plates. They're his, by the way, but I wouldn't over extend my welcome on how often I went over there. All right. Um, and maybe there's a way where you could say you're training for something. Ooh, there you go. So look, you've done marathons, you got a good marathon numbers. You'd be like, look, because of everything that's going on, I just want to throw a little more weight around because I'm training for this thing. So now you have kind of a built-in excuse for why you are, you're not really gym shaming him,

but that's, that's just not a lot of weight. That's, that's really weird. Um, that's really weird that you have this nice setup and pay for this kind of stuff, but not want a little bit more weight. So, um, good luck. But you know what? There was another part of this that kind of got me thinking as all my friends have now gone through the kid deal decade plus every couple falls into like two categories. The couple that has kids that thinks they can never do anything. And the couple that has kids that find a way to still do stuff. And I know not all kids are created equal as far as how difficult they can be. But I feel like there's couples that I'm very close with that want to be just shut down forever. Like, oh, we got kids. We can't do anything. So, you know,

your wife, six-month-old daughter, you want to pitch in. That's great. I don't know what the breakdown is. I would tend to believe at this stage at six months, the daughter's more connected to the mom. That's just science. But you just can't go to the gym now you just can't go to the gym there's other people at the gym that have children i believe i could do a polling of this but maybe this sounds like a non-parent but I'm just always surprised how often I could tell like, wait a minute, they go to Mexico and they go nowhere and they both have a one-year-old. And the one couple that goes nowhere is like, ah, you know, we can't go anywhere. And the other couple's like, no, just figure it out. We're not going to just shut down our lives.

So yes to the 45-pound plates, but maybe yes to the gym membership again. Lifeadvicerr at gmail.com so rudy where are you on the kid stage is that a bad question uh tbd i guess i don't know yeah pandemic probably retract that off a little bit but yeah uh you know at some point in the future i don't know none of my friends have, so I don't want to be the first friend to have a kid. Why? Is that weird? I don't know. I just feel like it's weird. Like, none of my close group of guys.

Like, I have friends that are girls that have kids, but it's different. Like, I have a core group of, like, four or five guys, and I don't want to be the first. I don't know. It's just weird. I'm in my own head about it. That seems like a dumb reason. Really? I feel like you'd align with me on that.

Okay. Why would I care about being the Really? I feel like you'd align with me on that. Okay. Why would I not? Why would I care about being the first? I don't, I don't know. Cause then like, Oh, it's like,

Oh, like Sturdy's not gonna be able to, this isn't a water slide. Cause then I'm, I'm not going to be on the Xbox as much. I'm probably going to get judged. Like it's, you know,

it becomes a thing that I'm like, then I'm like kid guy and I'm not as cool. And like, I stopped being asked to hang out with people. I don't know. I'm just, it's all, I'm all in my head on this.

Obviously. You've really thought about this. I have not. Wow. I don't know. I'm just, it's all, I'm all in my head on this. Obviously you've really thought about this. I have not. Wow. I'm not joking. You think guys, you're just going to stop texting you all of a sudden. Yeah.

Or they'll just, you know, they'll do something cool and they'll be like, ah, he's probably got a kid. He's probably out. Even though maybe they could ask you. Yeah.

Why can't they, why don't you send a preemptive kid tax to be like, Hey, just in case I have a kid before anyone else, I don't want to be. D threaded. Maybe this is more about, just in case I have a kid before anyone else, I don't want to be de-threaded. Maybe this is more about, this is all, I'm clearly in my own head because I don't think my friends would actually do that, but it's just, I don't know.

It's just, that's what I've thought of for the last couple of years. Can one of my kids, can one of my friends have a kid first so then I could have a kid? Your stuff is always so good. This kind of blows my mind how insane this is. This is ridiculous. Imagine your buddies just having a couple, couple pops around

the old campfire and they're like, you hear about Cerruti? You'd be like, yeah. Had a kid. You'd be like, yeah.

Not invite him to this anymore. Lose his number. You hear what Cerruti went and did? Yeah. He had a kid. Is that why no one's calling him? You figured it out. Yeah.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm not telling you to go ahead and now have one next week or something, but of all the concerns that you'll have, the stresses of, of being a parent, that should not be one that's high on the list. How about you,

Kyle? You don't have a kid. In a word. No, no. I do think that it's funny that saruti's been to a million weddings and has no friends with kids and i've been to no weddings and all my friends have kids who's doing it wrong it's it's not that it's not that i don't have friends with kids it's the

close group of guys the guys that i play call of duty with the guys that i play fifa with like things would change if i had a kid yeah we're on the same page i got it yeah it's just i don't know i clearly clearly i'm wrong on this one and i'm way too in my own head but you see what i mean like i'll have friends that'll be like oh i can't play fifa like why like i have a kid now and i'm like you can't you can't play a video game for 30 minutes because there's a child there like i understand look i i'm the oldest of five i'm not an idiot when it comes to the constant demand. Like nothing is funnier than when you show up to somebody's house and it's a

mess and they're like, sorry. And you're like, what are you talking about? Sorry. You have kids. They don't, they're not worried about the decorative stuff going on here. And that's why I also think some people that like do like home furnishing and all that kind of stuff. And then it's like, okay, but you're, I have're i have i have kids running around like this none of this is that none of this works i thought about it the opposite way too though that if i did have a kid because i'd be up at like weird hours and stuff and probably wouldn't be sleeping as much i might actually have more time to play call of duty but it would be like at 3 a.m and my friends wouldn't be up so then it's like i'm solo i'm playing solo west coast california friends are out that's true i'll call kyle play i'll tell you that much right like at 3 a.m. and my friends wouldn't be up. So then it's like I'm solo. I'm playing solo. West Coast Kyle.

California friends are up. That's true. I'll call Kyle. I'll play him in that much right now. Just think how good your your hip flexors would get because you'd have have the kids sleeping in one of those weird wheeled strollers that just smashes into stuff and you'd be playing FIFA and then you just be switching

legs back and forth as you just rock it back and forth. Yeah, my KDR in duty would be the best it's ever been. There you go. All right. I think we covered it a lot today. I think we're good. That is a podcast and I'm every Sunday with Bill. So check out the Bill and Ryan

deal on Sunday night and then we're going to be Tuesday, Thursday now probably through NBA free agency that takes us into July. So that is the new schedule instead of every other week jumping around. So again, subscribe, spread the word. Brian Russo podcast. Big shouts.

Steve Cerruti, Kyle Crichton. Couldn't do this without you. Impossible for this production to happen. Thank you.