Lesson #4: Find Your Raison d’Etre

When Puck was asked once by a reporter what the best part of his job was, he replied, “The opportunity to work in the kitchen every day.”

Despite being one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the American food industry, Puck never considered himself much of a businessman. He always felt more comfortable in the kitchen than he did in the boardroom and no matter how large his company got, Puck always found time to spend in the backrooms of his restaurants, preparing anything from a simple omelet for someone to a gourmet smoked salmon pizza. Initially, in fact, Puck wanted little to do with starting a chain of restaurants. “If I ever have to just attend board meetings and try to find new locations and meet with developers,” he once said, “I might as well go back to Austria.”

Indeed, he does attend board meetings now but he has not gone back to Austria. Instead, he simply finds the time to prioritize cooking. He estimates that he still spends about half his working hours in the kitchen at Spago, arriving at the restaurant before 9 am and working on recipes or cookbook ideas until the lunch crowd begins to arrive. “Somehow the process of cooking relaxes me,” he says. “If I have a fight with [my wife], I go back to the restaurant and an hour later I’m completely immersed in that. Cooking for me is almost like therapy.”

It is the passion and excitement that Puck has for cooking that has driven him to become such a huge success. He dedicated himself 100% from the time he was 14 to developing his skills and learning as much as he could about cooking, and he never once doubted that a life in the culinary arts was for him. Were it not for the passion he felt for cooking, Puck never would have had the intense need to learn, to improve, to perfect his talents, to become the best.

“I love to make people happy,” Puck says. It is this desire and energy, he believes, that is lacking in so many of the up and coming new chefs. The celebrity status Puck has achieved in his career is inspiring a new sort of person to want to become a chef, one who is passionate about the fame and the money as opposed to the food. “Young people want to be famous before they know how to cook, before they know how to treat people, before they know what hospitality means,” he says. “I stayed in France for seven years and Austria for three, so before I was a chef anywhere I was already cooking for 10 years.”

Puck put the time into his career because he loved being there, he loved working in the kitchen, playing with the ingredients, and creating innovative new recipes. It was his passion for his work that not only pushed him to the top but also allowed him to maintain his position at the forefront of the industry for over 25 years. “Cooking still gives me the most satisfaction, for sure,” Puck says. “It brings me immense pleasure to see people in the restaurant and to see that they're happy when they leave.”

Lesson #4: Find Your Raison d’Etre

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