The greatest gift of leadership is a boss who wants you to be successful.

The simple things can be really powerful.

Pushing for excellence is a fight. You have to fight to hire the right employees, fight to get the supplies you need, to move line items around. Being a great manager means pushing to get those few extra inches every day. It's almost like a football game - the team that wins sometimes wins by just inches.

I think success is a relative term. If you're a caveman, success is capturing an elephant. Success is achieving better than the norm. Success is being exceptional. It's exceptional reputation, exceptional income, and exceptional respect.

Failure is an awful thing, and when I look at the common denominator of failure, it seems to always be the same thing: excuses.

The word 'mixology' adds $3 to the price of any drink.

You ever see a bar with 200 beautiful women go broke? But I've seen a lot of bars with great DJs go broke.

When you're on-stage, you're expected to perform in the bar business. You shake hands. You smile. You're all positive energy: you add to your environment. When you walk in the door to the back of the house, that's like a stage door. You're off-stage now.

When I was running the Troubadour, there was this transition from the classic singer/songwriter Jackson Browne types to bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Fear. Those are just some that come to mind. Oh, and Adam Ant! The Fear fans wanted to 'crush' the Ants. These guys hated each other.