The Power of Positive Beliefs: Ari Weinzweig on Building Zingerman’s $80 Million Food Empire #2855 | Restaurants & Franchises Series

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Ari Weinzweig Ari is the co-founding partner of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, an iconic collaborative of food-focused businesses and in our Burn, Michigan. Zingerman’s began in 1982 as a small deli and has since grown into community of a dozen businesses focused on full-flavored and traditional food, along with exceptional service and creating positive experiences for their customers.

The organization overall has a staff of over 700, 275 who own a share in the business as well as 18 managing partners and will do over 80 million dollars in sales this year. Zingerman’s has received numerous accolades over the years and Ari has received a lifetime achievement award from Bon Appetit and recognition from the American Cheese Society for its dedication to quality. Ari holds a degree in Russian history and is an accomplished author having written 15 books and pamphlets, including a lapsed anarchist’s approach to building a great business which was the first of his many publications, the pamphlet A Revolution of Dignity in the 21st Century Workplace and the chat book Life Lessons I Learned from Being a Line Cook or some of his most recent releases. His insight out of the mainstream perspectives of leadership in life combined with a deep passion for exceptional food has helped the Zingerman’s community become a cherished brand for customers worldwide. Now before we get into all that good stuff today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdBak Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over 900 dollars per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the co-founder of Zingerman’s Ari. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Ari Weinzweig: My pleasure Anthony, good to see you.

Anthony Codispoti: All right let’s do it. So take us back to the humble beginnings. What was the inspiration for starting your first restaurant?

Ari Weinzweig: Well the writer Rebecca Solnit says that starting a story, deciding where a story begins is like dipping a cup in the ocean. So there’s a hundred different places we could start this but I’ll start it today with I came to, I mean you’re in the Midwest, I’m in the Midwest, I came from the Midwest so I grew up in Chicago. I came here to Ann Arbor to go to school at University of Michigan which many people will have seen on football weekends, on TV, sometimes playing Ohio State, and studied Russian history like you said and also studied anarchism quite a bit. University of Michigan has the largest anarchist collection in the country.

It’s not a well publicized promotional piece for them but it’s the truth, it’s a great collection in the grad library. Anyway after graduating with my history degree I had really no clue what I was going to do next. Visioning as you probably know is a huge piece of our work here. We write visions for pretty much everything we work on.

When I graduated I had no vision at all only what David White, W-H-Y-T-E, the poet and writer whose work I really admire and appreciate. He calls it the via negativa. This is where you’re completely clueless about where you would like to go but you’re very clear where you don’t want to go. I knew I didn’t want to go home and then we’re facilitate that financially. I needed a job and I had driven a taxi part time while I was in school which was fine but not particularly interesting.

One of my college roommates was waiting tables at a restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor and for those who’ve never been here the whole town’s only about 100,000 people so 15 minutes from one end to the other no matter where you are and so I thought all right I don’t know he likes his job I don’t know anything about restaurants or food or waiting tables but I got to do something so I went in and applied for that job and they said they’d call after an interview and I waited a couple of weeks and then called so my anxiety was starting to go up and so I went back and I reapplied as a busboy thinking you know if I do good work they’ll promote me and once again we had a nice interview once again they didn’t call so then another couple weeks went by rent was coming due I was getting really nervous I really didn’t want to move home so I went back and offered to do anything which I now know that third time we could call emotional resilience in the spirit of your podcast theme but but I didn’t know that at the time anyway they said great do you want to wash dishes and I said sure I’ll do anything I need to work and they said awesome can you start tomorrow and I did so that’s how I got going I really had no intention of doing anything other than paying rent but it turned out that I stumbled into work that I really love I still cook every night at home I work the floor at Zingerman’s Road House every night for an hour or two or whatever just to always it’s very grounding for me and then I get home and we eat like spaniards in our house like 11 o’clock at night but but anyway so I lucked out because I stumbled into work that I really love and then also great people so my business partner Paul Saginaw who’s been in this with me since the get-go he was the general manager and it was his first day as GM was my first day as dishwasher so that’s how we met I started prepping and then line cooking as per the chat book that you referenced in your very nice intro and I started to be a line cook and then manage kitchens and I worked for them for about four years total Paul left about halfway through that four-year stint and he opened a little fish market that’s here in town still called Monaghan’s one of the best in the country to this day and he and I stayed friends and fall of 1981 which is now ancient history closer to world war two than it is to today I decided I was you know I didn’t hate going to work but it was just less and less inspiring they didn’t write visions but I could see where they were headed was not where I really wanted to head so I thought you know what screw it it’s time to do something else so I gave two months notice November 181 I really had no clue what would be next it was just time to get out of there and in one of those nice life stories that actually worked out Paul called me like two days later and he said hey this building’s coming open near the fish market let’s go check it out and he had grown up in Detroit where he could get good deli food and in Chicago where I grew up you could get it you couldn’t really get it here and somehow within a week we decided we would open and somehow four and a half months later we had renovated the whole space redone the floors the walls written a menu costed a menu ordered product got the equipment in and we opened up March 15th 1982 with two employees in 1300 square feet

Anthony Codispoti: so you went from concept to opening up in four and a half months

Ari Weinzweig: yeah and where did the money it takes like four months to get a meeting set up yeah

Anthony Codispoti: where did the funds come from you guys were still pretty

Ari Weinzweig: young well there weren’t that many funds uh most people will not remember because they weren’t there but 1982 the economy was in very bad shape especially here in Michigan interest rates were about 18 percent and as I when I teach our new staff orientation which I’ll be doing Sunday again this week I remind them the 18 percent was to the bank not to the credit card company so in our current bout of inflation which seems incredibly small and minor and barely significant to us to people who you know grew up in the 90s and 2000s they never had inflation we for us it’s the norm it’s actually the absence of inflation that was the aberration but anyway we got $20,000 as a second mortgage on Paul’s house and then my grandmother lent us $2,000 no interest which with that interest rate was actually very nice and that was how we opened

Anthony Codispoti: wow and then so first days doors open and what was the result instant success

Ari Weinzweig: the result was in one day we went from two employees to 700 no uh you know we worked man I mean we made sandwiches we cleaned up we did some things well we made some mistakes and it sort of sums up what we’re still doing today it’s

Anthony Codispoti: just bigger what you studied in school you know Russian history anarchy how does this sort of tie into the restaurant influence or are they just sort of completely separate

Ari Weinzweig: well at the time I would have said they were completely separate it was not on my mind nor was I really worried about it now I would say it’s actually enormously helpful and it’s proven to be a big part of what we do the Russian history part especially in recent years as I don’t want to get controversial but as conversations about autocracy you know most people in the US have heard a word that’s kind of like that but don’t even know what it means I’ve spent my whole adult life studying it either intensively or somewhat and I’m painfully aware of what happens in autocratic settings with the arbitrariness of application of rules and power consolidation etc and I would say also that that model of autocracy you know often much more benevolently than it was done and is done in Russia to this day is still the model that most businesses use interesting say more about that well most I mean not saying this as a criticism but most businesses are run you know essentially like monarchies I mean it’s off I have friends who do it it’s not a criticism excuse me but it’s typically you know they’re benevolent monarchs and they like the employees and they’re trying to do the right job the right thing but all the decisions are still mostly made by the owner and you know that’s how we started to I mean we have two employees that never occurred to us to really do much else but as we started to study you know what I would now call whatever organizational development or you know theory of leadership and stuff then we started to see there were other ways to do it that we’re not out of sync with our intuitive sense of what to do but that gave us a you know a lot more to think about in terms of those constructs and so two things I’ll add and then you know one is just what the you mentioned the dignity pamphlet which really started with the Russian invasion of Ukraine which is three years ago this month and my feeling of helplessness and despair and for whatever reasons it hit me very hard and you know in my despair I started to do really the only thing introverted history majors like me know how to do well which is read books and study and so I started to study Ukrainian history because I realized I knew a fair bit about Russian history but very little about Ukraine and despite Vladimir Putin’s belief or story that Ukraine doesn’t really exist it’s actually more likely that Russia came out of Ukraine than Ukraine came out of Russia interesting but anyway I started to study Ukrainian history and it’s not like I discovered anything that wasn’t commonly known to people who had done it I just hadn’t done it and long story short and I just felt so helpless because I didn’t like it felt like a school shooting for a country you know for no reason one day somebody just barged in and started killing people and anyway in 2014 or 2013 I’ll say all the details but people started to demonstrate against the Russian sponsored president of Ukraine and that culminated in February of 2014 with basically they threw out the Russian sponsored president and essentially claimed their independence spiritually they had legal independence since the fall of the Soviet Union and that event was called the revolution of dignity and when I read that I was like oh my god I know what to do like this is what I can do I can’t go to Ukraine I don’t know how to shoot a gun I’m not interested in learning but I can make dignity happen right here right now and so that really led me to both research dignity more and then to commit to just you know not that I was trying not to practice dignity but you know to really understand it at a much deeper level and then put it to work all day every day and in the belief that a in a in a country where dignity is the norm people like Vladimir Putin could never come to power because it’s antithetical to dignity and in a country like Russia we could not work the way we work because the way we work is antithetical to the way that country is structured and and then also that although revolution this is my history major as revolution is generally we’re taught that it’s like this event like July 4th 1770s you know or but it’s not it’s really more day to day living like those are political events that get into history books but really a revolution in an anarchist sense is how I treat you right now how I treat myself is what we do every day and so a revolution of dignity could be made to happen simply by all of us deciding to treat everybody we deal with with dignity

Anthony Codispoti: so what did that look like from a practical perspective how did you decide to bring to your life and

Ari Weinzweig: yeah so people around you so in 1994 so 12 years in we started Zing Train which is our training business and Maggie Bayless was the managing partner there she had worked in the restaurants with me and Paul as a cocktail waitress she was a German lit major from Oberlin College of three hours north of where you are in Ohio and but she she eventually went back to school at Michigan to get her MBA and long story short she fell in love with training and that became her passion so organizational training design is really her you know the same way I feel about food or now about leadership that’s how she is about training and from working with her excuse me for many years you know I’ve learned like there’s all these great words that everybody likes vision customer service but most places have no definition and no clarity so they just go give good service but nobody knows what they just throw the buzzwords around exactly excuse me but so I was like okay what does dignity really mean so I started doing homework and I ended up with six elements of dignity which I’m happy to walk through if that helps yeah let’s hear it so the first is to honor the humanity of everybody that we’re working with uh it doesn’t mean we need to be their therapist it’s just to acknowledge that everybody you me and anybody else that we meet you know everybody’s got hopes everybody’s got dreams everybody’s got fears we’re all struggling we all got insecurities we all got things that we’re having a hard time with and so just you know regardless of anybody’s position on the or chart or how long they’ve been there whether they’re doing a good job or a bad job they still have a life and they still matter as a human being and so just it could be as simple as instead of asking them you know about the football game yesterday is to ask them how their kid’s doing in school or what they’ve been reading or how their parents doing that you know has had elder that they’re having elder care you know challenges I mean it takes 60 seconds but just to honor who they are the second one is to be authentic but there’s a parenthetical component which is authentic authenticity but without acting out so you know dumping on somebody and then going I’m just telling you how I feel is not what I’m talking about this is about being true to who you are sorry I’m at the very tail end of a cold uh it’s being true to who you are and sharing your anxieties but it’s doing it in a way that’s respectful or treats the other person with dignity so there’s ways to say what our fears are that don’t just dump it on the other person so it’s not just blurting out whatever comes to your mind in a disrespectful way it’s saying I’m really you know when this happens it really pushes my buttons and I get very anxious let’s talk about it uh the third thing is that to give everybody a meaningful say and it doesn’t mean we need we use consensus a lot at the partner level but it doesn’t mean we run the whole organization by consensus of all 700 people but it’s gonna say that sounds like the definition of anarchy well anarch anarchism is not chaos that’s the misconception that people have been taught we can get into that in a minute but uh we use consensus we’ve been running the organization by consensus of our partners group for 30 years which started as summer six or seven people but is now like 22 and we’ve been doing that for 30 years wow but anyway it doesn’t mean we use consensus for all decisions that’s 700 people it just means that people have a way to voice their ideas thoughts cured cerns uh hopes and dreams in a way that’s constructively considered not just like yes honey that’s nice see you next year in a in a in a survey but more that you know so here and we have all our meetings are open we’re open book management we have a change process that we teach to everybody so those are just some of the ways that it can happen but voting certainly is one way that’s super relevant in our country but as I remind people they vote in russia too it just doesn’t really mean anything so voting alone doesn’t give you a meaningful say and I think when people have a meaningful say I either voice is heard and given serious consideration it makes a big difference

Anthony Codispoti: how do you let them know that their voice is heard

Ari Weinzweig: well as simple as what I just going to do with you right now which is that’s a good question anthony let’s you know and I I think that’s what we do I mean it’s it’s it’s really treating people with dignity so not creating some superficial you know there’s a lot of big corporate programs where they have like the superficial thing with the survey and the focus group and then HR reports on it but nothing really happens I mean this is where you know I I got an email from a nice guy who works at our mail order that I don’t I mean I know who he is I don’t see him that often the email to see if I would get together for coffee so it’s on my list to answer him tonight and do it like why not you know so

Anthony Codispoti: so you get over 700 employees yeah who works in your mail order can email you and set up an appointment with you

Ari Weinzweig: yeah yeah I mean but then you know all like I said all the meetings are open so next Thursday it’ll be our zingerman’s wide huddle so it’s essentially where we run the organization I mean in a sense it’s it’s figuratively a little bit like the board of directors meeting but the meetings are open so they’ll be I don’t know 40 50 people 60 people in the room uh 16 18 will be partners but the rest will be from all over the organization and then as a carryover from the pandemic there’ll be a zoom link and there’ll be I don’t know 40 people on there you know so it’s just and if you raise your hand and you talk I mean you know it doesn’t mean people are going to do what you want necessarily but they don’t do what I want necessarily either so and then there’s a change process so instead of you making a suggestion and I consider it and I act like King Solomon and decide it’s teaching you how to lead so that you begin the process and my job is to coach you on it even if you’re not the decision maker you can still lead change so those are just a couple examples and then culturally like I said it’s just if you’re really treating people with dignity and listening and not being dismissive like they’re six years old and they don’t know what they’re talking about uh and not being patronizing in it then I think it it works it comes across as

Anthony Codispoti: authentic which is part of

Ari Weinzweig: the six elements because it is because it is yeah uh the fourth one is to be to choose positive beliefs to begin with positive beliefs so I wrote a the new chat book is a little tiny you know it’s what poetry gets published in a lot so that’s like 50 little pages but I wrote a 600 page book on beliefs which is the opposite end of the publishing continuum but uh so it’s a longer conversation but uh metaphorically I began as I was working on that book 10 years ago to look at beliefs like the root system of our lives because I started to understand what I had never understood which is that every action you and I take is based on what we believe other than instinct if it’s you know somebody throws a ball at us we’re going to duck but other than that it’s all you know me choosing to be here you choosing to interview me is based on our beliefs even if we didn’t think about it that way it’s the reality and so I like simple models that honor complexity gives us ways to process that’s what the six elements of dignity are it’s what uh the writer Carol Sanford would call a framework so it doesn’t tell you what to do but it gives you a frame within which to process and use your own ability so three types of beliefs I started to look at negative beliefs neutral beliefs positive beliefs so if beliefs are the root system and all the actions come from the beliefs you don’t need to be a farmer or a philosopher to figure out that negative beliefs will always create negative outcomes neutral beliefs don’t do much positive beliefs create positive outcomes that’s not Pollyanna and it’s not false positivity it’s not just say there’s no problems but you can have negative beliefs about a problem which is it’s their fault it’s his fault it’s her fault we’re screwed we’re victims or you could have positive beliefs about a problem which is this is bad let’s get to work

Anthony Codispoti: yeah you know I’ve got two young boys who are eight and ten and something that I try to remind myself of as well as them is that there’s always good things there’s always bad things yeah where do you want to put your attention what do you want to focus on I can pick the happiest day of my life and I really think about it I can find something wrong with that and I can zero in on it and I can make myself unhappy and miserable and so I like I love what you’re saying like you think you talk about it in terms of a farming uh metaphor yeah if if you plant seeds of happy thoughts that’s what you’re gonna get if you plant seeds of miserable thoughts you’re gonna get

Ari Weinzweig: yeah and it’s not to be Pollyanna I mean there’s many challenges it’s just choosing to believe that people are doing the best they can with what they got even if I really don’t like what they’re doing and that my role matters and that I can choose to get involved and to try to make a difference not just stand on the side and critique so it means you know rather than wasting my energy was now how I would see it you know telling stories about how bad you are it’s just you know to just whatever I didn’t I might not have liked what you did which in this case isn’t true but I might not have liked what somebody else did but I just choose to believe whatever they got something else going on or they have limited information or misguided beliefs but I don’t need to waste my time thinking negative thoughts about them we could just have a peer-to-peer conversation so it doesn’t mean I don’t confront in a healthy way it doesn’t mean I don’t bring up concerns it just means that I’m not making up conspiracy stories about why something went wrong the fifth one is to help everybody in the organization get to greatness and and that’s my commitment you know and greatness is in their terms not mine although it’s framed by our vision and our values so if they come and say you know I want I heard you want to help us get to greatness I want to start the Zingerman’s Nazi party chapter that’s outside our values so I could still treat them with dignity while I tell them that we’re not going to do that but within our values and vision there’s a huge range of opportunity so some people we hire want to be managing partners here some want to just come in and work and someone you know they’re here for the summer and their bus and tables and they’re 17 and they’re going to go away to college so all of those are good options for greatness that they can define it just needs to be within our frame so employees aren’t just you know interchangeable machine parts they’re people that we really care about and it’s it’s sort of obvious once you choose this belief I mean if 600 of the 700 people who work here feel awesome and are getting to greatness by their own terms I’m doing wonderful and then the last one is probably I think the hardest and that’s to have some modicum reasonable modicum of equity through the organization so you know as I tell the new staff orientation it’s not you know going to blow them out of their their minds that I make more money than they do like I think everybody knows that but if I were to be making as much more money as some of what they read about in the news it’s ridiculous in my belief and you know it’s unhealthy and this is where you could see it in Russia if you want to use my Russian history degree Russia has the highest economic inequity in the world the US I believe is second it doesn’t make for healthy ecosystems if there’s that much inequity so inevitably there’s some I’m not saying everybody I should make the same $15 an hour or whatever but you know trying to do it in a reasonable way and then it’s not just equity of money but equity of resources for learning equity of resources for help equity of support you know all of that and and it’s hard I’m not saying we’re there I mean it’s just trying to work on it so these six things it it’s a they apply I challenge myself every day to do them with everybody that I work with and then I try to do I need to do them for myself too so I need to be honor my own humanity and imperfection honor my authenticity so what’s true for me and what’s right for me give myself a meaningful say in my own life which a lot of people no one’s going to say they don’t but we often give away our own values to try to please other people to choose positive beliefs about myself so not to be the super critical voice that I was raised with and you know berate myself to go for greatness whether whatever that means for for me as an individual and then to create some kind of equity in my life you know which I get to decide what it is but you know that things are working out well so after this I’m going to go run I run every day I train myself to you know like the people have little kids it’s appropriate that they’re going to say I can’t meet at that time I need to pick up my kid at daycare or school nobody argues if you say you’re going to go run you can’t meet they’re like come on just don’t run like whatever you know and I’m like no I don’t have it’s non-negotiable for me this yeah because it keeps my sanity and it keeps my mental health and what’s the difference you know it’s it’s like me saying whatever your kid will be fine it’s not that cold out pick them up an hour late you know so it was really understanding that for me I’m not saying that’s true for everybody but for me that running time really helps me to stay balanced and grounded and and then really it’s to remember to do dignity with our purveyors with our community with the planet all the way around

Anthony Codispoti: so you’re part restaurateur part author philosopher and all of these things sort of intersect to support what you’re

Ari Weinzweig: doing I guess I mean everybody’s a lot more than one thing nobody’s one thing

Anthony Codispoti: fair enough but uh

Ari Weinzweig: there’s your your podcaster a business owner a father and a nice guy and of calabrian heritage I already know all that

Anthony Codispoti: wow you you created quite a list there pretty shortly so let’s go back a little bit further why russian history why did it start there

Ari Weinzweig: oh I don’t know I like it no well I mean I’m russian-jewish background but russian-jews are not bonded to russian history they weren’t allowed to be part of it for the most part so that’s not really why I just I liked it and they didn’t have general studies in those days so I needed to declare a major when I got to junior year and I picked that I’ve always been interested in the people and the periphery so not like inspired by the czars or the soviet rulers but more the people on the edge so soviet dissidents the anarchists you know the the 1905 revolution where they tried to install a democratic system and failed etc so it’s it’s the people who were pushed out to the edge and treated in the in the context of our previous conversation without dignity

Anthony Codispoti: so okay let’s go back to the restaurants now so you started the this first restaurant back in the early 80s with your your friend and your partner who’s a deli took quite a bit of work to get off the ground when we when did you get to the point where you’re like we’re on to something here we can build on this

Ari Weinzweig: well it’s still a lot of work everything’s a lot of work I think to do well whether it’s podcasting or parenting or writing poetry or running a business there’s nothing easy about any of it I don’t think I mean you have a moment here and there for feels easy but it’s the exception not to rule I think but anyway it didn’t really work like that it was in 1993 so we were 11 years in we expanded the building twice it was only 1300 square feet so we had added on twice we’re in historic district so it’s not that easy to make changes and one summer day so the opposite end of the calendar from where you and I are right now it was much it’s sunny here in Ann Arbor today but it was a lot warmer than and there’s a little bench out front of the deli building and Paul grabbed me about 10 in the morning which is anybody who’s worked in food that’s when I should have been inside getting the sandwich line ready for the lunch rush and he sits me down out front on the bench and he looks at me and he’s like okay in 10 years what are we doing I’m like I don’t know what we’re doing in 10 years that little question turned into in the moment you know kind of like why are you bothering me and you know he was like no this is our work what are we doing so when we opened the deli in 1982 we did not write a vision the way we now do it all the time not because we thought it was a bad idea or had negative beliefs about it but just we didn’t know you could write a vision most people don’t but in in hindsight we had one in our heads which is quite common most everybody who’s getting the greatness of their choosing whether it’s in your marketing work or in parenting whatever you you’ve all everybody’s imagined this positive future that they’re going towards so in our heads we knew from the beginning we wanted something really special we didn’t want to be a copy of New York or Chicago or Detroit we knew we wanted great food and great service and a great place for people to work and we knew we wanted to do it in a very down-to-earth way which doesn’t seem that radical in 2025 but in 1982 to get really amazing food you really had to get dressed up most of the time and that wasn’t what we wanted and from the beginning we knew we only wanted one no disrespect to those who open chains it’s just not my thing for me it’s boring I mean I’m not saying other people shouldn’t do it but I am not drawn to that I’m drawn to the places where 20 years later you still remember going there because it was so amazing sort of like your dad’s family village like if there were 20 of them dotted across the United States it wouldn’t be such a special experience to go back and visit so that’s really what we wanted and that’s really what Paul was you know he goes well we’ve turned down offers from other cities because we’re only open in one and people are open and on campus because we won’t open other spots over there and you know what are we doing I was like Paul I got work to do and he’s like no this is our work so on hindsight I would say he was asking me what’s your vision we just didn’t have that language I don’t think he had one he I know I didn’t have one it’s not like we were satisfied because we’ve always been about continuous improvement long before there was a Toyota way but there’s a difference big difference between improving what you have and going after an inspiring vision of the future so anyway his question started a year-long argument eye rolls lots of swear words and frustration but as we still do today we just keep coming back to the table until we figure it out and we had a lot of conversations and during that year we got to know a guy named Stasz Kazmirski and Stasz passed away I think it’s seven years ago this May which is very sad for us but he taught us the process that we now call visioning and he had learned it from a guy named Ron Lippitt who was at the Institute of Social Research here at University of Michigan in the late 50s 60s 70s and early 80s and Ron called it preferred futuring that’s how Stasz who was one of the many people who learned it from Ron taught it to us and then we’ve adapted it to be what we do now but out of that learning we wrote our first vision and it was called Zingerman’s 2009 so if you’re quick at math you realize we went 15 years in the future not 10 And that vision was the first time we ever wrote one, and it basically described that we would create a community of businesses so we could grow, but keep the DELLA unique. We would open other Zingerman’s businesses with different specialties. So it would all be one organization so we could provide opportunity and create synergy across the organization, but we wouldn’t do what everybody else did, which is open 23 more DELLAs. And that there would be managing partners in each business, which you referenced in the intro, because our experience was we liked working as partners. You know, even though we have our days of disagreement that we both felt a lot better being in it with somebody than being alone. And that this is a generalization, which I don’t really like to do normally, but in general, in restaurant world, when the owner’s on site, it’s a different energy than when you’re in unit number 12.

And the manager means well, but it’s not the same. And I never liked that. And that’s what we didn’t want. So that’s what we wrote in that vision.

And that’s where the growth came from. So it wasn’t like knowing that we were ready, because I don’t think you’re ever ready. It’s just deciding that that was what we were going to create for all those reasons.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s really interesting. And so what was the second? It’s just to understand you didn’t want to open up 10 of the same thing because it’s just boring to you. Correct. Even though that there would be scales of efficiency there, because you can replicate sort of the same footprint, the same model, the same food ordering. Yeah. I don’t care about that. Like I want to be more creative. I want to use my energy in a different way.

Ari Weinzweig: Yeah, and it’s just it’s not like from a customer’s. I mean, no disrespect because I have friends who do it. But like, I don’t nobody goes to the ex restaurant that started downtown and now is in the suburbs. It’s way more convenient and you’re happy because you got two kids like you do and you don’t want to drive downtown and it’s still pretty good.

But like nobody goes in there and it’s like, this is awesome. Like, you know, it’s convenient and you like convenience and I’m not down on convenience, but I’m much more interested in creating unique things that are really compelling and special that people want to talk about because they’re really not the same as everything else.

Anthony Codispoti: And so this managing partner model, obviously you’re giving up some equity, but you think the trade off is worth it because you’re getting somebody who’s a lot more invested. Yeah, this is their baby and they’re just they’re going to be sort of fine tuning the details more so than a manager would correct.

Ari Weinzweig: And that’s it. That’s obviously there can be people who are owners that don’t do a good job and there’s some awesome managers in the world. So it’s a generalization. But but yeah, I mean, you know, here’s the pattern that’s very common. You know, we bring you in to be the general manager of the new restaurant. We’re starting it’s Calabrian food. You’re excited.

You know, we give you a bonus on profit. You love it. But then two years later, you’re like, you know, I got this other offer to go to New York and that, you know, and now you’re gone. And now I got your work. And it’s like, I was already working full time.

I don’t need your work. You know, I would have been fine with what we had. So again, there’s no guarantees, but it’s really different when it’s their passion and their dream and where it fits with our dream and we can work together. It’s a whole lot different.

Anthony Codispoti: And so are you coming up with the new idea and then looking for a partner to step in? Are you are people bringing the concepts to you?

Ari Weinzweig: Yeah, it’s it sounds good to say we have the idea and we look, but it’s never really worked. I got a lot of ideas. Ideas are very inexpensive. The hard parts finding who wants to do it for 20 years. And so it’s it’s played out that it really works better when it’s their idea and it fits with our vision and our values.

Anthony Codispoti: And so then what did they get by becoming a part of the Zingerman’s family? Why not just they’ve got this idea going and starting them?

Ari Weinzweig: Well, for some people, it makes sense. I mean, it’s it’s up to them. You know, it’s there’s an essay in part one of the business book, Building a Great Business, which you referenced in the intro that’s called 12 Natural Laws of Business. Really, I learned later 12 Natural Laws of Living a Great Life.

But basically, they’re like gravity. Everybody who’s getting to greatness of I don’t mean making the most money, but getting to greatness of their own choosing is essentially living those natural laws. So whether it’s a basketball team or a symphony orchestra or a small business or a big business or a country or a community, for that matter, they’re living those natural laws. One of them is Strengths Lead to Weaknesses. And one of them is that success means you get better problems.

So if you open multiple units of the same thing, then you you described what some of the strengths are. But then the problem is it’s not interesting. If you choose to open different things, then you get that problem, you know, which is you have to learn a new industry every time. But we chose that problem. So for us, it worked out. And what did they get? What did they get? So they get to be if they want to work on their own, that’s the problem they’re choosing.

That’s where I was headed. If they want to be part of a collective with partners, they get to have that. So yeah, if they want to do it on their own, go for it.

I would never try to talk them out of it. If you want to work as part of something bigger than yourself, then this is a great place to do it. So they get the support of the organization. They get all these cool people to work with. They get, you know, now, like our name is tied to it.

So whatever the business school would call it brand equity that we’ve built up over 43 years becomes part of their business equation. And then they’re not alone, you know, which I mean, I would say from having trained, talked to and having friends who own businesses and have no partners is lonely, man. I mean, it’s lonely enough when you have partners.

And, you know, most people’s spouse gets sick of hearing about it. So, you know, who do you talk to, right? And some people are lucky and they got a good friend that they talked to about all the time, but a lot of people have nobody. And so this is where, you know, I choose, we choose to work collaboratively, which has its issues too, but they’re the issues we choose.

Anthony Codispoti: So from a practical standpoint, they’re going to get maybe some financial support.

Ari Weinzweig: Yeah, they own. Well, they own a share. Administrative support, payroll benefits, things like that. Yeah, and they pay in for that. I mean, it’s not free. But and then we make decisions by consensus. So, you know, whether they own 10% or 90%, we still make partner level decisions by consensus. So it doesn’t, as Maggie always would say, it’s implicit consensus. It doesn’t mean she’s calling me and Paul every time she wants to change the size of the glass, you know, but as she describes it, if she’s in her gut, she knows we’re not going to like it. Or she’s concerned we might not like it.

She knows she really should pick up the phone and call. And then they participate in running the whole organization. That’s how we set it up from the beginning. So if your marketing business was in what we call the Z cab or Zingerman’s community of businesses, you would be the partner in there and you’re a partner running the whole organization as part of that partners group.

Anthony Codispoti: And so how is it that what was the number over 200?

Ari Weinzweig: So then we have another thing that’s where they it’s called we call it community shares. So it’s a way to an imperfect but meaningful way to create employee ownership. And those shares are different. So that’s not being the managing partner.

It’s owning a share in the brand. We spent five years trying to figure out how to do it. It’s not easy here because we have, you know, whatever 15 different companies that are different ownership in each one. But it was a way to create a chance like if you came to work here as a baker or a barista at the coffee house or, you know, whatever, you could own a share.

And like, where else are you going to make coffee drinks in Ann Arbor that you’re going to be an owner in the business? And so it’s $1,000 a share. They can only keep the share while they work. It’s like a co-op. So I own one, you know, whatever, 275 other people own one. And, you know, they get, again, the psychic value of being an owner, which for me is more important than the money.

But others are different. They get a dividend based on the profit of the whole organization. And they also get a little coupon book with cool stuff. And then if they leave, they need to give them the thousand, they get the $1,000 back.

Anthony Codispoti: So the share is always worth $1,000. They just get the dividend and some of the other benefits.

Ari Weinzweig: Yeah, because we’re not selling the business. So there’s no, there’s no, you know, it’s not Google. Like you have stock options. One day you’re going to be a billionaire if you just hold on long enough. Yeah. That’s another conversation. We have a perpetual purpose trust, but. What is that? What is it? We need to do like 10 podcast episodes to get all this.

Anthony Codispoti: We’re not going to get to any of my questions here, but that’s all right.

Ari Weinzweig: We’re talking about a lot of good stuff today. It’s a perpetual purpose trust. There’s about 45 or 50 in the US. There’s going to be a lot more in the years to come. Again, not saying this judgmentally, the typical business model is whatever you and I have, you know, start Anthony’s pizza. We build it up. We open a few spots.

We get to be my age. We sell it. We retire. We take the money. We move to, I don’t know, wherever people want to move to and on it goes.

Usually the sale goes to a bigger company who goes, oh, Anthony’s pizza that could have spoke the guy. I love it. We’re going to go national with it. And they, you know, generally it doesn’t go that great in my experience. This is the other way. So instead of we plant the forest, we clear cut the forest and take the money.

This is to make an old growth for us. So in a very simplistic sense, it’s me and Paul gifting the brand to itself. So it can never be sold. So it creates a trust that owns a share of the trust as a veto so that it’s not really running the organization that’s already being done elsewhere, but that it precludes the brand from being sold to whoever for $100 million. So that Zingerman stays here in the community if we do our work well for 50, 100, 150 years.

Anthony Codispoti: So instead of it basically puts a mechanism in place that prevents it from being sold to the PE firm or wherever else.

Ari Weinzweig: Instead of what happens to all, almost all of those companies, which is like, you know, these two cool guys started this business in Ann Arbor and it’s an Ann Arbor institution. And then we sell it. And now there’s somebody, you know, no disrespect sitting on the 18th floor of a Manhattan office building deciding what the price of corned beef should be or somebody in, you know, Dubai or Denver or whatever that’s, you know, taking home the profit. It’s keeping the decision making power and the money, most all of it in the community so that, you know, because of an organization like ours, it’s not just about the sales and the jobs.

It’s the quality. Like a job in a bad workplace is not the same as a job in a healthy workplace. 43 years later, we have people who met in our business. We have people that met working in our business.

We have people who grew up eating in our business, you know, the amount of contributions to the community. Like it’s not just this plug and play thing that you pull up and drop down somewhere else. It’s got roots and interconnectivity.

And if you study forests, you know, the enrichment to the ecosystem from an old growth forest, far exceeds what the same number of trees would be in an industrial forest planted five miles away.

Anthony Codispoti: So what happens to your shares upon your passing?

Ari Weinzweig: Well, our shares are slowly moving more and more to the employees that own a share. So that’s an LLC that they own in. So we’ve already moved 10% in the first few years and we’ll move another 5% each year probably till we get to 50, 55% will be owned by the employees. And then, I mean, there’s some other pieces and Paul and I keep, I don’t know what I don’t even remember five or 10% goes to our heirs. But they have no decision making say they just, you know, have the equity state.

Anthony Codispoti: So we’ve talked a lot about several books, pamphlets, chapter books that you’ve written. Yeah, where can people find these? Are you like this barns and noble like Amazon.com?

Ari Weinzweig: Code to spot the dot com. No. So yes, good question. Probably won’t be surprising after the first hour of our conversation that we’re not following the more typical models. So I didn’t love the big publishing world, which I did a book with many years ago. And then we just I decided, you know, let’s just do it ourselves. We were already doing a lot of design.

You can see over my shoulder the part of a Zingerman’s poster. And so we went back to doing our own. So we’re sort of the farm to table version of books. We do all the everything design layout. They’re printed locally here in town.

We stay off of Amazon in the belief that it’s not values aligned with the way we work. And the more one works in ways that are values aligned, the better ones life is. And so that’s what we do. So Zingerman’s press dot com or Zing train dot com. Or if they’re in town, they’re in the deli or the roadhouse or the coffee company or whatever.

Anthony Codispoti: So what didn’t you like that you did the one book with traditional publishing? What went wrong there?

Ari Weinzweig: There were a number of things. And again, I choose positive beliefs. So I’m not believing people are trying to mess me up. It’s just I think the communication styles were not really that values aligned, which made it painful because they were talking to people who worked here in ways that we don’t talk to each other here. And then, you know, they, I don’t like the quality of I didn’t like the quality of paper that they chose for the book, but it’s their book at that point. You don’t really own, you know, and so it’s, it’s what I am not a musician, but I’ve listened to a lot of music and I read a lot of stuff on music and I would always read these interviews with bands and they would say like, yeah, we lost control of the music to the label and that, you know, it’s over produced. It’s this, it’s that.

Why? Because when you sign a deal with a record label, it’s not your record. It has your name on it, but it’s the labels record. They own it and they get to make the decisions, you know, unless you’re Taylor Swift or whatever, and you get to some point where you can have, you know, artistic and quotes control and this was the same thing.

It’s like becomes their version of your book, not your book for many people. That’s fine. It’s just, I care where the line breaks go. And I care the quality of the paper and they were focused on hitting a price point. So they wanted lower quality paper and I’m like, our customers don’t care. They’d rather have a nicer book and pay more. That’s what we sell.

Like it’s, it’s in Congress, you know, to sell a cheaper book to get a price point when what we do is find the best quality food that we can get and charge whatever we need to charge. It doesn’t make sense. And one of the anarchist beliefs that really has informed my life is the belief that the means that you use. So how you go about doing something needs to be aligned with the ends that you’re trying to achieve or congruent with the ends you’re trying to achieve.

So in a leadership standpoint, that would be the common but unfortunate thing where the boss yells at the employees for giving bad service is in Congress. So this is like having a moderately priced Zingerman’s book to reach more people when our whole focus for at that time 25 years was to get, don’t worry about hitting the mainstream, find the amazing olive oil, the amazing cheese and just charge what you need to charge. So it was just frustrating. And then I was like, you know, I don’t live on the books, so I’d rather sell less books and feel good about it than sell more books and get more money and not like it.

Anthony Codispoti: And so why write the books? Is this? Well, I started writing.

Ari Weinzweig: No, I started writing. I never aspired to write. I’m a history major, so I kind of knew how to write papers, history papers, but that’s not a claim to fame.

Unless you’re a professor, which I’m not. When we started the deli in 82, right from the beginning, we had like a little print on paper newsletter. Just in the belief, which we still have now, which is if we can’t tell you why our products are special, why would you want to buy them? And, and, you know, that went pretty well. I was never really thrilled. It sounds like it was bad, but I was always a little frustrated with the way the stuff was written or whatever. And in hindsight, that was my fault, not there, the people who were doing it.

But anyway, one of them moved out of town and I just was like, screw it. I’m going to do it myself. And then I started to try to write. And at the time, this is still before computers were commonly used, you know, as ripping up paper and my perfectionism, making it painful. And, you know, you got it out of the, but I plowed ahead and I started to get nice comments. And, you know, I was like, well, whatever. And then I got more nice comments and then people started going, you need to do a book. And I was like, I don’t know about doing a book and more people were saying it and they naively said, oh, you already have the whole thing because you’ve written all these newsletters, which is completely not true.

But it sounds good when you’re not the one doing it. But anyway, so then at some point, which is probably 20, almost 30 years ago now, you know, I was like, well, I’m going to do it. Well, if I’m going to do this, I really actually, I really don’t know anything about writing. I better go learn some. So I got in a writing group that somebody told me about and I did that for, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years, which was hugely helpful. And I started reading books about writing and I just kept working at it.

And so here we are. Why do it? It’s it’s kind of like running for my mind. It makes me get clarity on what I’m thinking.

It pushes me. So now I do this eNews every week, which is not a small venture or adventure. It’s a lot of work, but I like it a lot. It’s like running a marathon every week. But every week I learn new things because I’m like studying new, you know, it’s not a six line, you know, two paragraph, you know, here’s what we, you know, come to our training session. It’s not unhelpful, but this is really pushing myself to think about current events, talk about how I’m feeling, you know, what and then provide something useful for the reader that actually helps their life. So the writing, and then, you know, as we get older, also, it’s it’s very good succession work because stuff is written down. It places us. I didn’t do it to place us in the marketplace, but I think it does place us in the marketplace because we’re not just one more company with superficial slick ads. No, it was kind of judgment, but I didn’t mean it anybody in particular. But I mean, it’s actually subs substantive in its in its thoughtfulness.

Anthony Codispoti: Tell us more about the eNews. What kind of contents in there and how.

Ari Weinzweig: Yeah, so it’s it’s five items every week. I started it on the Veloc Tract seven years ago, in part because I realized like as we grew organizationally, in a good way, like each of our businesses had their own marketing going and that was great. But then one day I was like, you know, other than this print newsletter that has grown and that we’ve been doing for whatever at the time, you know, 35 years. There was really no single place that you would learn about our different businesses in one spot, you know.

So if you knew about him, it was great, but you could easily be a customer at the deli for years and not know we had food tours or you could be a zing train client for leadership training but not realize that we had Miss Kim this awesome regional Korean food restaurant. And so I thought, you know, I’m going to do one thing where I can mix it up. So when we, you know, five things, it could be something from Miss Kim, it could be an olive oil, it could be a book, it could be whatever. And then sometimes I would write about leadership as one of the five things. And then when the pandemic hit, I moved that leadership piece more to the top and I started to get like I’d already been writing business books, but people, people started to respond a lot more to it, that it was giving them hope in difficult times and etc. So I just sort of ran with that and the leadership piece got longer and became more evolved and it stayed at the top.

So it’s one piece about leadership. This current week that we’re in right now, I wrote about reflection as a way, as a tool, not it’s not a new subject for me, but the sort of realization through other people’s conversations about getting through the turbulent times that we’re in and that how important it is to stay grounded through them. And that if you don’t have a, like I journal every morning, but if you don’t have some method to stay grounded, it’s hard enough anyway, let alone now.

So it was just reflecting, you know, I really write it real time so it can quote people like Timothy Snyder, who’s from Southern Ohio, the historian of Ukraine, you know, but it can be from like somebody’s podcast from Saturday, might be in next week’s E News. And so it had that piece on reflection and then I’m going from memory, but it had, we do it fundraiser every February in memory of my Corgi jelly bean who died 10 years ago this spring and we do it for the women’s shelter. It’s called Jelly Bean Jump Up and the Bakehouse makes Corgi decorated cookies that look like Corgis. So it was about the Corgi cookies and then I wrote about the fresh mullet, which is amazing fish that we get from North Carolina Coast that’s at the Roadhouse. And then it was, let’s see what else was in there and drawing a blank. I don’t know, two more foods I can lick it up, but I’m already on to next week.

Anthony Codispoti: I’m so glad that you mentioned Ms. Kim. She was a guest on this show. If you were back folks listening to this one, you should go back and listen. It’ll give you just a slightly different perspective on some of the same concepts and philosophies that Ari’s been sharing with us here today. Is there a particular restaurant concept that you would be eager to do that you’re like, man, I wish somebody would come to me with something in this.

Ari Weinzweig: I’d love to do Calabrian food if you want to move up here. Let’s get going. I mean it. It’s awesome, man. I mean, there’s a lot of things I would like to do, but yeah, I guess maybe somebody’s listening, but I’ve long wanted to do Tunisian food. A good regional Italian, really any region would be great. I’m a big fan of Italy and Italian cooking. You know, there’s so many Cattalon food. I mean, and then there’s tons that I don’t even know anything about, you know, that would be wonderful too.

Anthony Codispoti: You talked a lot about sort of the quality of the book and the paper and the pages and taking sort of that same meticulous approach to finding good quality food. Say more about how you go about sourcing your food items.

Ari Weinzweig: So in the early 90s, 1991 to be exact. So we were nine years into business. We, you know, had grown from two employees to, I don’t know, a hundred and something. And we, you know, from reading leadership books, there were no podcasts then. We realized we should really, you know, would benefit from writing down a mission, which I had been super skeptical about mission statements.

They mostly seem like mediocre poetry that was hung by customer bathrooms and serve no practical purpose in the world. But something I read changed my belief. So we did the work to do that. And at the same time we embarked on the work to write our guiding principles.

So basically it was to try to take the unwritten values that Paul and I had held in our heads and our hearts from the beginning and then say, like, okay, well, what are they like as we grow? It’s more and more important that it’s not just, you know, when you have two employees, you’re standing there all day, whatever, you know, you’re managing almost everything. But when you have 120 employees, you’re mostly not next to most of them, most of the time.

And if you don’t have clear organizational values, they’re just using the values that they came with, which may or may not be aligned. And so we started the work to do that. And then the first one on the list was about food.

And then we realized that we needed to get clarity back to, you know, what you’re asking about dignity. What is quality? So everybody says they have quality. And I’m just a history major, not an English major, but I learned, we learned that quality is what is known as a subjective word, not an objective word. And hence, if you don’t define it, it doesn’t really mean anything. So it’s fair to say that everybody has high quality if they’re working to their own standard, but our standard is not the same as a fast food chain. Not that one’s better and one’s worse.

It’s just they’re defining it in a different way. So after many conversations, we settled on full flavor, which we defined further to mean complexity, balance and finish. And then we decided as the second thing is traditional food is always what we do. I mean, there’s a few exceptions, but almost everything we work on is to go back to the old ways of doing it. Certainly there’s areas like coffee, olive oil, wine where technology has been hugely helpful. But in the 20th century, most technology and food was used to make it cheaper, more consistent and eliminate the variability, which was inherent in the old way of doing it. So it’s not like we’re, you know, lead-age that are opposed to technology, but it’s just going back to the old way. Often using technology to do that is what we’re always pushing. So how do we find products?

We look for full flavor, traditional foods. And because we also believe that everything can be made better, we’re never done. So no matter how good something is today, we know we can work on making it better and we’re just always pushing ourselves. Can we find a better raw material? Can we improve the technique? Can we change the timing? You know, what can we do to make it even better still? So those two things are what we’re doing. So it’s just studying.

Anthony Codispoti: So at your scale, does it make sense for you guys? Are you traveling internationally to visit, you know, sort of the birthplace of some of these foods to try to find new suppliers?

Ari Weinzweig: Yeah, we are. I mean, in the beginning it was me, but now it’s lots of people and we don’t have, you know, people from the outside often fantasize that there’s this job where that’s all you do, but it’s not. You have a job and then you also might do some of that. And then it’s food, not, you know, something, whatever. There’s food everywhere. So if you go on vacation with your kids, there’s food. So you’re always learning. But yeah, I still have the strong belief that it’s really hard to understand a product until we really go to where it came from. Because usually in training, Maggie would say the people who live in the community where the food dish or whatever came from are unconsciously competent in how to eat it.

In other words, they don’t pay a lot of it. Like the way your grandmother makes it, like you don’t even think about it. It’s just you go over there until she gets older and maybe she’s gone and then you’re like, wow, what did she do? Right. But when you come from the outside, then, you know, we’re paying a lot more attention. And so the things that people, you know, in Calabria or whatever would assume Americans didn’t care about, we cared about. So, you know, they’d be like, well, you won’t like this. It’s too blah. And we go, no, what are you eating? They’re like, well, we eat this, but you won’t like it.

And I was like, no, that’s what we want. And so it was really just getting into it in a way that gives a much deeper understanding of the food, how it matters. You know, so like we’re in the upper Midwest where wild rice is a huge piece of the Ojibwe tradition in this part of the world. Well, I didn’t grow up on wild rice.

I mean, I wouldn’t have known anything about it. But then by going to the Ojibwe communities and starting to study and understand like in those communities, wild rice is religion. It’s economics. It’s spirituality.

It’s every it’s huge. And then understanding from studying that like 90% of what’s sold in the U.S. is not really wild rice anymore. It’s cultivated wild rice. They taste completely different.

You can guess that the cultivated one is not better. And then doing the work. So to honor the tradition from whence it came, honor why it matters in Ojibwe culture and then to source it in ways that get us this really amazing wild rice that we can treat. With dignity and respect. It costs way more. It tastes way better and then teach people what it is.

Anthony Codispoti: All right, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everyone listening today. I know that you love today’s episode because Ari has been a very insightful and philosophical guest. Please hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app so you get more of this great content. Ari, I also want to let people know the best way either to get in touch with you or to continue to follow your story.

Ari Weinzweig: Yeah, the best way is super simple. Just email me, Ari, at zingermans.com, A-R-I, and I’ll answer you. Great.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s the easiest way. Great. Last question for you. As you look to the future of Zingermans, what’s one thing that you’re most excited about that’s coming up?

Ari Weinzweig: Well, there’s a lot. I mean, because we have visioning work that we do, we have a vision for 2032. So it actually describes what our organization will be like, whatever we’re in now, seven years from now. You know, I think for me, it’s just making the organization continue to be healthy. We’ll always be imperfect.

We mess up daily. But, you know, if we can get 80% of what we wrote in that vision to happen, and we’re still here and we’re still functioning and creating great meals and great food and great service and a great place for people to work, which is also where we started in 82. That’d be awesome.

Anthony Codispoti: Is there a specific thing on that 2032 vision that…

Ari Weinzweig: There’s a lot that I like. I mean, it’s, you know, one is the idea of working with young people, so not hiring young people, which we also do. But this is work that we’ve now begun because this was written in 2020. But it’s like teaching what I’m talking about here to eight years, you know, teaching beliefs to nine year olds, teaching visioning to 10 year olds. Because they’re really life skills and they’re not taught in schools. They’re not taught in most families. And yet, dude, I mean, I wish I would have known it at nine.

It would have saved me a lot of stress and a lot of therapy and my life would have been less challenging. We still have problems. But anyway, so that’s in there. You know, certainly the work, the last section is about love and actively putting love into everything we do and actually saying it overtly. Also super important. And so, you know, and then just making the food better, the service better, the succession work that we’re doing, which is in part the perpetual purpose trust that I talked about, like just seeing, you know, to pull off succession in a healthy way is no small thing.

Anthony Codispoti: Is there something that you can hand to me today to help teach some of those skills to my eight and 10 year old boys? Yeah.

Ari Weinzweig: All those books, man. You don’t, I mean, they’re not going to read the book as it is, but you could teach it to them and people who work here do. I mean, you know, I still remember one of our, she’s been, she left for another job probably eight or 10 years ago, but one of our designers one day when the Beliefs book came out. And, you know, the next year she’s like, yeah, I taught to, there’s a beliefs, a self fulfilling cycle that’s sort of the core of the book, which I learned from Bob and Judith Wright’s book, Transform. But anyway, she goes, last night I taught my, the belief cycle to my son, who’s like the age of your kids.

And, you know, I was like, what’s, what happened? She goes, well, he came home from school and he’s like, I suck at math. I’m terrible at math.

And she, you know, she goes, so I showed him like, if you start with that negative belief, it’s not, it’s, it’s self fulfilling, you know, because you’ll freak out every time you have to do math. You’ll freeze. You’ll never really do the homework. And then you’ll find a way to get through life being bad at math.

But if you believe that it’s just a little harder for you than some of the other kids, but you can do it, you’ll completely alter your course. People teach visioning. We end every meeting with appreciations, which is a wonderful technique that I learned from my friend Lex Alexander in North Carolina 35 years ago. People do it at the dining room table, you know, so it really, this is the thing that people, one of the things that I think few people understand about business or organizations or work. Is it’s not like the work stops when you leave, you know, and so many people leave work angry right now in the country.

We got a lot of people terrified about their future or whether they’ll have a job. Like there’s no way that’s not causing severe mental damage to the children at home. Like unless the parent is incredibly grounded.

And even then, like how can that stress not pass through? Conversely, if you feel good about yourself because you’ve been treated with dignity, you understand that negative beliefs about your child are unhelpful. You’ve learned energy management, which we teach to everybody, etc. It’s going to change your kids life too, you know, and there’s no guarantees. But once you’re at, you know, I wish I would have learned how to write a vision. I don’t know how they let me into University of Michigan without writing one.

Anthony Codispoti: Ari, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Ari Weinzweig: We could do it again. Happy to help. And again, if people want to reach out, ariadsingermans.com. The books are Zingerman’s Press or Zing Train is also our training business. So we do seminars on all this stuff. And if they want to go eat food, they could come visit. In Zingerman’s food tours, we take them to the producing places. There’s one going on this weekend, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Anthony Codispoti: And where do they find out about the food tours?

Ari Weinzweig: Zingerman’sfoodtours.com. There you go. He makes it easy. All the URLs are easy to remember.

Ari Weinzweig: If anybody missed it, email me and I’ll help you. There you go. And if anybody missed them, we’ll have them in the show notes. Yeah. And if they want to get on the eNews, just email me. I’ll send it back and they can sign up. Perfect.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. Thank you.