The Place: Starbucks

The Cup: Doug was already on his second or maybe third meeting of the morning, so I’m not sure what he was drinking. I enjoyed a Chai Latte with a shot of espresso – also known as a Dirty Chai. Yum!

The Background: My dear friend Olga told me about a friend of hers she knew from EO – Entrepreneurs’ Organization. She said he was a great guy and that he’d be perfect for the project. Wonderful! I truly love when friends think of other friends I need to know and interview. She tells me his name and asks if I know about Bikini’s Sports Bar and Grill. I’ve heard of it, of course, but had never been there. I can’t imagine why she’s asking this. Then she tells me, “Doug is the owner.” Oh! Interesting.

To say I didn’t have a few ideas about what this Doug guy was going to be like, would be a lie. I mean come on, he’s the owner of a “breastaurant”, (a term, admittedly, that was not in my vernacular prior to meeting Doug). Of course, I had a few thoughts and expectations. As is most often the case with pre-judging someone, I was completely wrong!

Before we get into Doug’s story, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s a food you can’t live without?  Pizza
2. What’s your guilty pleasure? Massage
3. How did you make your first buck? Picking up dog crap. I was the neighborhood pooper scooper.
4. What was the last thing you fixed? Cabinet in my kitchen. Which is going to break again very soon. It’s completely rigged.
5. What is the best gift you ever got? I love getting gifts that have a lot of thought behind them. My brother’s wife gave me a picture album with pictures of me with all my siblings and nieces and nephews. It has little quotes in it. It’s so cool!
6. What’s the best place to eat in Austin? Eddie V’s. I have never had bad service or bad food. We were just there and we had an incredible server.
7. What’s the most impactful book you’ve read? Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Doug’s midwestern childhood was set in Ohio, where he was one of five kids. His parents taught Doug and his siblings the value of hard work. He tells me, “We had a solid upbringing. Nothing was just given to us. We learned that if you want it, you need to go get it.” Which is how, after his poop scooping gig, he and his siblings went on to have the largest paper route in the area, then graduated to the largest lawn service in town. It’s no surprise that Doug would eventually start his own business. He’d been an entrepreneur nearly his whole life.

Villanova University, in the City of Brotherly Love – Philadelphia – is where Doug earned a degree in Finance. After graduation, he stayed on the east coast and in 1996, when the dot com thing was going strong, he was working as a high end technology recruiter in New York. “One day”, he tells me, “I was sitting on a call with Jeff Bezos…” Wait, who? “Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.” He clarifies. So I did hear him right. Wow! He adds, “This was back in the day – when it was just the world’s biggest bookstore.” OK, I’m still impressed! Anyway, something about being on that call made Doug decide he wanted to get in the game. He wanted to find an industry that he could use the powers of the internet to disrupt.

Inspired by what James McCann had done with 1-800-Flowers – taking a fragmented industry and consolidating it – Doug decided he’d do the same thing. With pizza. He explains, “It was a $30 billion market and at the time, people were combing the yellow pages for deals, and clipping coupons.” Doug would spend the next year and a half trying to bring pizza to the people – in a new and better way. Unfortunately for him, and perhaps, all of humanity, the idea didn’t work out. He walked away with more lessons than he cared to know. But like all great entrepreneurs, he’d find a way to turn those lessons to gold, eventually.

Two of the biggest lessons he learned would turn into two rules going forward. #1 – No outside capital. #2 – No partners.

Rule #1 meant that Doug would spend the next six or seven years working and saving money so he’d be ready when the next big idea hit him.

Doug, like I assume many entrepreneurs are (real ones and couch entrepreneurs like myself), was armed with a list of business ideas. He knew he wanted a business that was somewhat recession-resilient. He recalled Lee Iacocca saying something to the effect of, if he hadn’t gotten into the automobile industry, he would have gone into restaurants. People have to eat.

Further examination into recession- and bubble-proof industries left Doug with a list of four things. Food, booze, sex and sports. And this is how, in 2006, Doug started his first restaurant – Bikinis Sports Bar and Grill, where bikini-clad beauties serve up food and drinks to crowds of sports watching patrons. Brilliant, really.

Since 2006, the chain has grown to 14 locations. Want one in a city near you? You’re in luck! You can now own your very own franchise. In other exciting Bikinis related news, Doug, rather infamously, bought a small Texas town and renamed it Bikinis, Texas. Also, Doug trademarked the term “breastaurant” and now, “Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill is America’s ONLY breastaurant”.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, ATX Brands, LLC., the Austin-based hospitality company owned by Doug, specializes in Restaurants, Bars & Live Music Venues. ATX Brands owns Pelóns Tex-Mex Restaurant, 508 Tequila Bar, Historic Scoot Inn, Parish, Parish Underground and Chicago House. Add to that list Upstairs on Trinity and Vinyl.

Seriously, how does the man have time for coffee, or anything else for that matter?

Doug says, “If you surround yourself with great people, and we have a real solid core team, you can make a whole lot of mistakes and still recover from them.” He goes on to tell me, “When I first started the restaurant, I didn’t know my ass from my elbow.” Obviously, he got his anatomy lessons all squared away because today, business is going exceptionally well.

Talking about his competition, Doug tells me, “Obviously, there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room.” (Or owl, as the case may be – speaking of Hooter’s). “If they’re Microsoft, we’re Apple. We try harder.” How? With a very solid game plan.

Doug shares with me the five “P’s” they focus on daily – people, profit, product, promotions and physical (i.e. is the place welcoming? bathrooms clean?). “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, we just tweak things a bit and make them better,” he says. At Bikinis, they don’t have managers, they have coaches. They play two games a day – lunch and dinner. They don’t have meetings, they have huddles and to prepare for the huddle, they follow a playbook. At first glance, maybe that seems a bit silly, or cliche. But as Doug points out, the term “manager” doesn’t equate to a good feeling. A coach, on the other hand, motivates, inspires and holds you accountable. Can’t argue with that logic.

Doug has managed to hold true to his first rule of no outside investors. Rule #2, no partners, has also worked out well for him.

Doug is a huge fan of EO – Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and says the people in the group have essentially served as his board of directors. He says, “Everyone has great ideas and there are so many resources. People are willing to give. Just ask and they will tell you all you need to know.” Another facet of EO that Doug finds appealing is the approach to feedback that is unique to the group. They follow Gestalt protocol. Gestalt is a method in which an individual never gives advice to someone else, but offers what is known as “experience sharing”. Instead of “You really need to X”, you might instead say, “In my experience, when this happened to me, I found X to be helpful…” That’s a very over-simplified example, but you get the idea. Doug shares, “As someone who is very prideful, I like the way the feedback comes to me.”

In the last 30 days, Doug says the most significant thing that’s happened to him was Operation Turkey  this Thanksgiving. The organization is founded on the idea that “everyone deserves a hot meal on Thanksgiving.” Bikinis has been a sponsor of the event for seven years. Last year, they gave out 5,000 meals to the homeless and less fortunate in Austin and the surrounding areas. This year, Doug was very proud to tell me, they fed 12,000 hot meals to people in need. That’s incredible and quite significant.

I ask Doug what he thinks people might be surprised to learn about him. He tells me he’s a big family guy, and that’s probably not people’s first assumption. He says, “The “B” word is very polarizing. You hear it and you assume a lot; about the owner and his intentions. Nine times out of 10, the story is already made up before they meet me.” Oh geez. This is the part of the interview where I start to feel bad. I wish I was that one in ten who didn’t have the story made up, but I admit Doug was nothing like I expected the de-facto Mayor of Bikinis, TX to be. He says, “I’m a midwestern family guy with four siblings and 15 nieces and nephews. I love my role as ‘Uncle Doug’. My whole family gets involved in the business and I love it! Once you peel back the layers with me, you’ll see there’s more substance there.” I’m hopeful this is the last time I have to learn this lesson.

How about a bucket list? For Doug, he’s says, “I keep doing stuff I’ve never done. And I’m an adrenaline junkie. You only have one life to live, so I say, ‘go for it!’ Sometimes I think, ‘I haven’t talked to or met this person’, so I send them an email. Last year, that was Michael Dell. I sent him an email and asked for a lunch meeting.” Doug got that meeting. In fact, it was supposed to be a 20 minute meeting and when Doug came out of Michael’s office after an hour, his assistant remarked, “Wow, Michael values three things and you just got more of #3. He values family, Dell and his time. You managed to get three times what you were scheduled for.” That’s quite a compliment.

I ask Doug how he’d make his living if happiness were the national currency. He says, “I am happiest when I’m with family and when I’m traveling, so it would be a combination of the two.” A few years ago, Doug and his family traveled to Ireland to run a marathon together. This year, they’re off to Scotland to play St. Andrews and to tour Scotch distilleries in the Highlands.

Doug also a has a month-long solo trip planned for this year that will take him to Southeast Asia – specifically, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. Solo travel is not a new adventure for Doug. About 10 years ago, he took six months off and hitch-hiked through Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. I am so impressed and if I’m being honest, a bit envious. I suddenly wish we had another hour, just to talk about this trip. We don’t, but Doug does tell me that he learned a lot about himself on the adventure. He adds, “Every experience you have is because of a decision you just made. When you open yourself up and take risks, it leads you to so many amazing things.”

What’s the biggest issue facing society today? According to Doug, “Everyone wants instant gratification. I say, try to focus on the conversation and not let this guy (holds up his smartphone) rule your life. Tone it down a little and make sure you’re not hustling the whole time. You know everyone you need to know. Everyone you know is connected to a lot of people. Everyone’s always looking for the next big thing. A lot of times, it’s right in front of you.”

The best advice Doug ever got came from his grandfather, who passed away just a few months ago. Doug tells me, “He was my mentor. Everyday was the best day for him. He was so positive. When I’d visit him, I’d ask where he wanted to go to eat. He’d say, ‘Pancake House’. We’d eat there at the counter and he’d pull the waitress aside and say, “Tell the chef this is the best pancake I’ve ever had!”  That’s the kind of guy he was.

The advice Doug got was,”Take risks. You’re a smart kid. Go do it. It will all turn out.” He also gave Doug a book in 8th grade, The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino. Doug tells me it’s a book he reads twice a year. About his grandfather, Doug adds, “He taught me to live life with no regrets.”

If Doug had 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, this is his message: “Take risks, but make sure you are taking into account people – and investing in people. One of my favorite books was Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty by Harvey Mackay. Create your network now. You can’t expect to go to people when you’re thirsty if you haven’t nurtured that relationship. Get involved with people. Investing in people always will come back to you tenfold.”

Living life without regrets. A noble goal. A goal I presume most everyone shares. How do you do that? How do you live a life without regrets?

Doug’s story offers a few clues. You’ve got to get involved and give back. Being a part of a community means you care for and about the people who share it with you. Maybe handing out hot meals to the homeless isn’t your thing, but there are plenty of other ways to give back. Figure out what you love to do and then share it with someone who could use what you’re giving out.

People are always a good investment, as Doug pointed out. Find a way to make meaningful connections and then deepen the relationships you already have. That way, should your well ever run dry, you’ll have people there eager to share their water.

Take chances. You won’t always win, but if you’re wise, and pay attention to the lessons, you’ll walk away a winner no matter what the scoreboard says.

Finally, you can never possibly know someone, until you know them. People’s stories are their own and they are their’s to tell. It’s so easy to make assumptions, draw conclusions, and decide we’ve got someone figured out. But the fact is, one can never know. Doug is one of the kindest, most genuine, family-adoring people I’ve ever met. Nearly a 180 from the “Doug” I imagined he’d be. So today, I am officially done! Done with preconceived notions about anyone. What’s Oprah like? No clue! What would it be like to be Miley Cyrus? I haven’t the foggiest! Let’s all strive, in the new year, to give everyone a fair shake. It’s might not happen overnight and it might not be easy. But based on my experience, it will certainly be worth it. And you won’t regret it.