You Don't Know What You Don't Know

There's a version of confidence that only exists before experience corrects it.

I was maybe a year out of culinary school. I'd picked up enough working for someone else to think I understood the business. When the opportunity came to cater a wedding on my own, I didn't hesitate. I saw the opportunity, I said yes, and then I underbid it. Not because the math was hard, because I was afraid they'd say no. So I came in low, told myself I'd make it work, and started planning. Or what I thought was planning.

What followed was one of the most expensive educations I've ever paid for.

The underpreparing started before I even arrived. The execution was a fight from the first hour. Every curveball that came, and they came, I was handling in real time with no system underneath me, just instinct and survival mode. I got through it. Barely. Woke up the next morning thinking the worst was over.

It wasn't. I'd broken venue rules I didn't know existed. What was left of the profit went toward fixing it. Some of it I never recovered.

I don't tell that story to be dramatic. I tell it because it was the moment I learned the difference between what I knew and what I thought I knew, and how dangerous it is to confuse the two.

That lesson has shaped every engagement I've taken on since. It's why I ask certain questions before I agree to anything. It's why I move carefully in a new kitchen. It's why I've spent 25 years building a practice around what I actually know how to do, not what sounds good in the room.

You can walk in with the best game plan you've ever written. You can feel prepared, capable, ready. And you might be. But until you've been humbled by the real thing, until you've spent enough time with your hand near the fire knowing how to not get burned, there's a ceiling on what you can actually know.

This week in The Pass I'm going into five things I wish someone had told me earlier in this industry. The things you only learn the hard way, or if you're lucky, from someone who already did.

If you're not subscribed yet, Friday's the issue you don't want to miss.

Subscribe at the link below.