The WAY to WOW Shows
Season 1 Finale: Never Work Again, Well Maybe
May 11, 2021
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:00] and for for people who who don't stay and read the credits each week [Laughter] um the the wonderful wow tenders which is the word you came up with all come to us via your efforts and and through the cocktail collection and we're happy to serve for you guys today i've made something super special uh i've decided to make you a lovely vodka cocktail made from our los angeles vodka something that's made right here in the heart of l.a cheers yeah this is my kind of cafe correcto oh yeah oh yeah who are you

[0:37] and where are you going [Music] what do you want together we'll find the ideal path on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel the realm of play is an integral part of the way to wow show among others it's why we have a guest bartender or wow tender on each episode for the final show of our first season my guest is philip dobard who epitomizes the idea of do what you

[1:12] love and you'll never work another day in your life he's going to explain to us how to turn work into play but first will cuttings going to mix up a cocktail yeah kevin thank you so much i really appreciate it as always it's such a pleasure to be here um for you guys today i've made something super special uh i've decided to make you a lovely vodka cocktail made from our los angeles vodka something that's made right here in the heart of la and i thought it was the most appropriate so for myself i cannot stand rush hour like most people and

[1:47] i stopped instead of going all the way home once i had an opportunity to stop this little cafe and they served me an espresso and tonic and i was just blown away by this flavor combination i never had that before and i'm like i'm gonna take this and i'm gonna make it my own so i did so i took the espresso and the tonic and i've added some vodka i've added um a little bit of an aromatic tonic and then some cold brew coffee as well and it's just something that's nice to sip on instead of sitting down in rush hour traffic so okay um again i love to start with some of the cheaper ingredients and i'm gonna double this up because we're making two cocktails so typically you would have a half an

[2:23] ounce but i'm gonna do a full ounce of fresh squeezed lemon juice oh almost got there not quite a little bit more beautiful i love that smell as soon as the aromatics just start popping off of that fruit i just know we're getting closer to cocktail time so so full ounce again two cocktails for that we're gonna do one ounce of simple syrup mixed at equal parts sugar to water so we did a full ounce for two cocktails

[2:58] and then it's gonna get a healthy dose of cold brew so we're gonna do actually four ounces so if you're making a single cocktail again that would be two ounces of cold brew coffee and you can use your favorite of choice i use starbucks for this one because it's just nice and bitter and has a really full flavor to it and it's unsweetened as well uh and then we're gonna go with my favorite thing i love that sound every time just makes me happy uh and the way the with the the citrus and the coffee are gonna react to each other it's gonna make a beautiful froth that's gonna have a lot of aromatic and flavorful qualities to that we're going with an

[3:33] ounce and a half of vodka per cocktail so i just put in three ounces of of uh spirit altogether and then we're gonna give that a nice shake and it's gonna have a really beautiful frothy oh yeah beautiful all right so i had two glasses chilling here we're just gonna fill those up and leave just a little bit of room and bring that up with the tonic pouring it a little bit slowly because it is quite a frothy and foamy drink

[4:10] so we want to get a lot of that spirit in there not just the froth of it as well and looking absolutely wonderful so i'm gonna put this aromatic tonic that's in there and an aromatic tonic tends to be a little bit more bitter a little bit more floral than your typical tonic so it mixes together with the coffee and the lemon and everything just comes together so nicely and then i'm going to give it just a little bit of spritz of lemon because i want to max out the oilful factor and get that smelling as lovely as possible so

[4:47] there's one there's two and it'll be your nice little alternative to rush hour oh beautiful thank you sir enjoy cheers pleasure [Music] so will made this for us oh very good cheers yeah this is my kind of cafe corretto oh yeah oh yeah because it starts out and then it

[5:23] goes to the next flavor and the next flavor and uh-huh okay wow this is this is amazing yeah i'm in yeah i mean i love coffee the taste of coffee but yeah this is oh wow wow wow wow hello hi how have you been um i've been good busy busy busy busy it's nice to be able to at the end of a long season you know sit down with a friend

[5:59] who uh in in many ways is as responsible for this happening as um as other people who have helped along the way only too happy to serve thank you you've been you've been a great friend of the enterprise and a uh a great friend of mine likewise likewise so i'm gonna i you know this will probably embarrass you a little bit but um that's uh you'll have to work really hard at that oh okay i'm gonna i'm gonna take just a minute or two to to read your bio there's so much i i

[6:36] condensed it down because i think we'll probably end up talking about some of the aspects of it everyone needs an editor yeah right so something i did know about you is you started out professionally in lyric theater right as a performer although i did learn just today you were an opera singer very impressive you were a professor um you were also an administrator you were the general director of both the opera columbus and the pensacola opera indeed you studied film at ucla and produced the series dead time stories for nickelodeon and

[7:13] grave secrets which had its world premiere at the san diego film festival so for 10 years you were the vice president at the national food and beverage museum and director of the museum of the american cocktail that's what you were doing when we met indeed um and you were still doing it now just uh we've rebranded it yes yes yeah and i was going to say and that was really kind of the predecessor to the center for culinary culture right here in california here in los angeles and um the cocktail collection indeed yes um in your name yeah and for for people who who don't stay and read the credits each

[7:49] week [Laughter] the the wonderful wow tenders which is the word you came up with all come to us via your efforts and and through the cocktail collection and we're happy to serve we're really um pleased to be able to highlight that each week um and you know over the last you know whatever it's been 12 months 14 months um you and and the the folks associated with the center for culinary culture have really been at the forefront of figuring out

[8:24] how do we deliver programming on food and spirits and wine without being able to be face to face right i mean it's it's a very high touch affair and uh under current conditions no touch yeah so we had to pivot absolutely so um i think you know we're going to talk about all of these as as i mentioned when i invited you be a guest in this context of um play but but you've made playing your work and and i i i mean it's something i

[9:00] aspire to my whole life um i think i've got it now um but but you between you know being in the entertainment business and now being in in you know food and wine and spirit still very much in the entertainment business well that that's true but still very much playing oh yeah for your work so um i guess my first question is and maybe you've already answered this you moved from really opera right to food and wine and spirits so what what prompted that move how did that happen

[9:35] how does one make that seems like because you didn't become a waiter no no no no no no though although i did i did pay dues in hospitality way back way back when but um no i actually grew up in food and drink my parents uh uh were seemingly the only members of my family that were not my father was an accountant my mother was a bank manager um but there were many members of my family who were who did work in food intrigue i had one uncle who was a brewmaster at jackson

[10:10] brewing company in new orleans uh another uncle um by marriage who was a fisherman and hunter so whatever was in season he was hunting or harvesting it wasn't until uh my twenties and living on my own that i knew what it was to have to pay for seafood because our freezer was always filled with his bycatch his wife my godmother uh my my mother sister uh farmed soft shell crabs full time you know how deer soft joe crabs are at the market uh the freezer was always full of them frogs like you name it it was

[10:45] it was uh yeah it was good my mother grew up on a farm um on and on my grandmother grew up on a sugar plantation in acadiana um yeah so it runs deep that and the fact that i'm a native of new orleans where food and drink is you know it's sort of it's in the dna it's in the cultural dna you're the perfect guest for the final episode of the season because we're talking about play we're talking about work we're talking about relationships right all of how all of these things play into our lives right um and and in unexpected ways so what are the what are the specific

[11:22] skills that that you develop that that you feel allow you to basically play for your work well first off the last time i did something i didn't love was my first job working as a bag as a bag boy at pap's supermarket in new orleans uh that was the first and last time um um it was then that i said okay you know do what you love when you never work another day in your life right so since then i've been doing what i love uh whether it's what i was studying in school or what i was making money

[11:57] doing now unless you're working in a handful of fields unless your passion is is one of a handful of fields medicine law hedge fund management you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna spend your life working without a net if you're always doing what you love so you have to have a high risk tolerance high tolerance for risk because sometimes you know depending on the enterprise you're leading you don't know where your next paycheck is coming from um so i developed that tolerance early on so

[12:32] whether you call that a skill i don't know um but people skills paramount people skills relationship skills over everything else people often say when they learn i'm a producer they say well what does that mean what does a producer do well some years ago i got tired of fishing for for a convincing answer to that so i so i so i created one a producer marshals the scarce resources that are people money and time in the service of storytelling that's the skill set yeah absolutely and

[13:07] that applies to just about any enterprise if you think of that enterprise as more than anything else storytelling you know this idea of of the producer and by the way i i i love that definition i wish i had known it you know 20 years ago or more but you could also apply that to even the producer of a product absolutely right especially like you you talk about spirits these days and the the marketing of spirits is

[13:42] really the telling of a story like i remember when the the fellow from um um alabama whiskey clyde wide maze kaneki ridge alabama whiskey right right so he basically told a great story and after that i don't i don't think it was possible not to love the whiskey yeah and it's great whiskey right yeah taboo right yes sales is storytelling period you have to tell a story to um you know what did they say facts tell stories sell yeah absolutely so so you

[14:19] you've you took this ability to work without a net as you put it to work without the security of a tolerance for it a tolerance okay for it fair enough because i would say it never gets you know it gets only so easy it never gets easy yeah yeah yeah okay yeah so so you you you you built your tolerance for not having you know a weekly or a bi-weekly paycheck you honed your people's skills then how did you

[14:54] how did you use those to pivot the museum from really successful you know in person live programs now you've got to pivot into this domain right all video and media and all that which which really hadn't been a part of of what you were doing you know 14 months ago um certainly not not in the way that i you know i've done film and television for some time but it was it was a small part of my

[15:29] portfolio right now it's pretty much everything everything again um well first it wasn't easy second people skills relationship skills i had literally had to go back and look at the rolodex uh and to see who i know where um because you know i knew that that whatever i mean clearly whatever media i would be doing would be in food and drink because that is what the center for culinary culture does right so i had to maintain the contacts that i had with people like

[16:04] will cutting for instance and all of the wow tenders who have who have served on this should have appeared on this show um but i also had to redevelop or intensify relationships that i enjoyed with people who work in non-culinary film and television and sort of marshal them okay around the cause because again we're a non-profit organization so every penny is precious you as one of our board members know that better than most people yeah i mean it's

[16:41] look i mean in in any non-profit right whatever money you spend has to really get paying for the buck that's right that's right so uh we have managed to grow a core of um variously talented people um um who are likewise passionate about the cause so especially during this transition period was it fun yeah it was yeah yeah i love a challenge i like you know i

[17:18] this might not sound right it might sound funny but i'm i'm i'm an empire builder i i don't i haven't built an empire or anything yet i i don't think i would you know nothing with dollar signs attached no one nothing anyone would recognize an empire as an empire but um you know make no little plans right daniel burnham's daniel burnham's uh saying uh may i heard this make no little plans because little plans do not inspire big plans do yeah most of them won't be realized but no little plants will ever be realized

[17:54] because they lack the power to inspire so i this is counter-intuitive right because going through all of the anxiety the stress the pressure whatever of making this pivot it doesn't sound like play ha well that's just it i love what i do i absolutely love what i do so while it can have every appearance of a lot of work and indeed it is a lot of work it does not feel like a lot of work

[18:32] does that does that make sense it is a lot of work i mean it's very time consuming i regularly put in 16 18-hour days but it just doesn't feel that way yeah it doesn't feel that way yeah there's a burnout factor sure you reach a you reach a wall you gotta rest but it does not feel that way when you're in the midst of it and and and even even at that that that that sort of darkest point you're able to are you able to see sort of the light at the end of the tunnel the the the sparkle of the big plans

[19:07] at least partially not all of the time sometimes they're you know there are dark hours where and often they occur at three or four in the morning when one wakes up with you know in the midst of anxiety and how do you deal with those literally how do i deal with those hours yeah i divert my attention i do something else i'm a great believer in first sleep second sleep if i wake in the middle of the night i do something until i'm tired again well you could have been talking to the sleeper expert we had on earlier in the

[19:43] show right that's what he said he said don't sit there and toss and drink get up and do something yeah and then go back to sleep i get some of my best work done between the hours of three and six if i happen to be awake at that time i'll work fascinated and then i'll go back to sleep so it it it it really it really turns out that it's it is all play not going to argue with that i love what i have i have a great deal of fun forget about loving what i do i have a great feel of fun what i do uh what i do amuses me in in in in an edifying way i imagine

[20:20] part of it too is the people you get to work oh yes i get to work with some of the greatest people in the world i already mentioned will cutting right there's you and i mean that um but you know a lot of them now you know a lot of the people i know you you have an idea of the the quality of person uh i get to work with right yeah across across the organizational functions including our patrons the people who are passionate about what we do yeah and they're passionate about what we do because they're also passionate about food and drink and when when they discover that we're

[20:55] attempting to that our mission is to tell the story of food and drink some of them that that's the hook i want to know more let's learn together yeah so you're basically walking this this this storytelling path together yes all right well i got that you have to wrap it up so i don't want to get in trouble because we could go on so you have a thing for us right i have a thing for you and there's there's there's a story behind this there is as i understand there is so uh anti-mame proclaims the world is a banquet

[21:31] and most poor suckers are starving to death the fact is the world is an abundant place now there are circumstances that make it less so for some but most people just avoid that abundance and so i present you with this cup thank you drink of it may it always overflow i'm gonna put it right there this is uh pride of place right next to high life this is the blessing for our house i played laser wolf in conservatory

[22:07] we're gonna have to have you back on again i want to hear about that we're out of time my friend a delight that's our show for this week and indeed that's a wrap for our first season thinking about what phillip said to turn work into play we need to do two things one is increase our tolerance for not having that weekly paycheck and the second is to really dig in and and build our our people skills how create relationships how to relate

[22:42] to people how to work together with other people to make our big plans come true when we can all do it we just have to try have a little faith thank you so much for watching episodes in our first season i hope you'll check in again for season two courage at all times my friends belle you are still my marine i can't believe i messed that up

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