Hello everybody, it's Sam from the Financial Samurai Podcast and in this special episode I have with me chef and entrepreneur Kathy Fang from Fang Restaurant. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you for having me. It's a big honor to be here. No, it's been great. I really enjoyed watching you.

Was it on the Food Network? Was it Chef Dynasty during COVID, was it during quarantine or we're getting out of COVID? And it was just awesome to see you, you know, be the woman boss and run the restaurant and interact with your dad who is so sweet. So thanks so much for coming on the show.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, the show Chef Dynasty, how's the Fang, actually aired last year, time flies, last year, January time frame, and it was very beneficial for us because it came out right after COVID and people were just starting to eat at restaurants again. Initially, people were doing takeout. And so it was just a really great way to get started, get back into it again with the show coming out.

No, that was great. It was so entertaining. Are you guys going to do another season or season one? That's it? No, there's nothing in the works yet. The concept itself, I don't know if you're like a big Food Network fan or watch a lot of their shows. This is the very first time they've ever done this type of format.

They call it docu-series, occupational series type of thing. They always do food competitions, bake shows, stand and stirs, which is teach people how to cook, but they've never done this sort of reality base where you're following someone's life and what restaurant life is like. And on top of that, they've never done something where it was an all Asian cast about a Chinese restaurant.

So there was a lot of new things within this show that we kind of had to try to figure out. For now, it's only one. We don't know if there'll be more seasons or whatnot, but for now, it takes a lot of work just to put that show together, to be quite honest.

Yeah, that whole process is almost two years. Two years? Wow. In the making. Yeah. We also can't share if anything were to happen. Ah, okay. So one episode, was it 30 minutes for one episode or is it 60 minutes? It's actually a 50 minute show. So how many hours of filming to produce 50 minutes?

So it was six episodes, 50 minutes each. That was one full season. It took, I would say back to back, it was six weeks full, five to six days a week, sometimes 10 hours, 11 hours a day of following us around. And then on top of that, they have to do backup scenes and things that they feel like they weren't able to cover the last time they were there.

And so in the aggregate of putting just six episodes together, 50 minutes each, I would say there's probably 12 to 14 weeks of shooting. Wow. 10 hours a day. It's a lot of shooting just to go into putting together six episodes. Right. It's crazy. And I'm sure some viewers or listeners will be wondering, is there compensation to be on that show or is the compensation the exposure and the marketing of the restaurant?

There is compensation, but it's nothing that's going to help make you get rich or anything like that. And that's the general trend anyhow. When you look at any of the reality show folks, like they don't make their money necessarily from the show until they hit it really big. Then they can get paid millions per episode and their time.

But in the beginning, you really get paid like peanuts, but it's the exposure, right? It's not comparable to what we would make at the restaurant, but being able to do something like that is a big deal. And there's a little backstory to this. When I opened Fang Restaurant, that was over 15 years ago, it was not very common to see a ton of female Asians on a food show.

And I had this dream of wanting to be essentially like the female version of Martin Yang or the female version or Asian version of Giada De Laurentiis. I wanted to have a cooking show, teach people how to cook. And a lot of the customers would come into our restaurant and talk to me.

And I'm a pretty social type of restaurateur and chef. A lot of chefs always hide back in the kitchen and I'm very interactive. I come out, I talk to people, I don't really wear the chef's jacket that much. And so people are saying, "Hey, have you ever thought about being on TV?" And that's kind of what sparked the idea of wanting to be on the food show.

But I had a lot of pushback during that timeframe. I want to say, I tried to pitch this idea of teaching people easy Asian cooking for over a decade. And it was always, "Nobody wants to learn Chinese food. It's too difficult. It's still considered too exotic. People from middle America are going to have trouble replicating these dishes.

They're not going to know what any of these pantry ingredients are." And then the other thing was that, "Oh, people just love tacos, burgers, and pizza." Chinese food just doesn't have that spark to it yet, believe it or not. And I'm like, "That's crazy because Chinese food is one of the most popular cuisines.

In fact, there's more Asian or Chinese restaurants than there are McDonald's." But none of those stats matter. And so after maybe pitching for several years, I decided that's fine, I'll go and do some other stuff. So I started competing on Food Network and did some other food shows just to get my face out there.

I was blogging at the time very consistently. I used to have a food blog called MyFangalicious, put over 600 recipes of mine on there. I don't have time to do that anymore. So I kind of stopped that. But just making sure I was always putting my name out there or putting something out there related to Fang and our family and see what happens, right?

Throw it out to the universe and see what happens. And a lot of different producers had reached out to me, I would say, over eight or nine years ago when I one-chopped, basically. After I one-chopped, a lot of people started coming and saying, "Hey, let's try to put a show together." It was never a stand and stir.

Everyone kind of just was like, "No, no, no, we don't want to do that." But a lot of people thought we could do a reality thing. And the ideas were different. One of them was following female entrepreneurs who are Asian in San Francisco. That didn't work. Nobody wanted to do that.

Too early. This is before Crazy Rich Asians. And so after multiple pitches, I think I started to kind of just... I don't want to say I gave up on it, but I gave it a rest. We stopped pitching. I also ended up becoming pregnant and having Ava and just started focusing on taking care of the baby and working.

I started a baby food company when I had Ava. So there are a lot of things going on. And sometimes it's like finding love, right? When you're not looking, it happens. And a producer ended up finding me online and was doing a bunch of research. He's always creating different shows for one of the biggest production companies.

And he randomly emailed me during COVID. This happened during COVID. I was not working. I just had Neo probably three months in. Everyone's quarantining at home. I'm like, "Sure, I'll talk to this guy. This is not going to go anywhere." And I had the best conversation with him. I really opened up to him maybe because I was home for like...

At this point, I was home for already close to six months. I was quarantining before I even had Neo, before the shutdown happened, because we had heard about COVID in China and I was pregnant. We have a lot of Chinese tourists who come to our restaurant. So we're like, "To be safe, you should just stay home." So I was already quarantining.

At that point, I was not talking to people for close to eight to nine months. So maybe that's why I was just like, "Yes, someone to really talk to heart to heart." And it was the best conversation ever. He really picked up on who I am, the restaurant, the family, the dynamic between my dad.

And he put together a pitch, a sizzle reel, this is what you put together. It's like a deck, right? Elevator pitch, essentially. Two minutes, just piecing together things that I've done in the past. He didn't shoot anything with me other than our interview via Zoom like this, and sold a show.

And when we were pitching, I was in Vietnam shooting things. We had people like another producer put together some footage and all this stuff. People were shooting and recording, all this stuff, none of that. None of that sold. What sold was just this guy finally kind of understanding what's interesting and piecing things together online and sold out of a two-minute sizzle reel.

And that's how we got Chef Dynasty. That's amazing. What I'm hearing is things actually just don't happen. You have to have a vision and go out there and actually try. You got to try, try. Usually things don't happen. Who knows, if you try long enough, maybe something good will happen.

Yeah, you got to put it out there. I could have easily said, "Hey, no one wants to do this Dandenster. Forget about it. I'm just going to keep working at the restaurant. The restaurant's amazing. I get to work with my dad. The place is successful. Just focus on that." In fact, I think in my culture, not I think, I know in my culture being Chinese, that's always been the way that you would focus on work.

Me saying, "I want to do food shows and all this stuff," for my dad, it's like, "Let's not think too much. Don't try to get your hands into too many things. Focus on this one thing, do an amazing job at it, and you'll be successful." And so I was always like, "Well, I feel like we could really do something more." And I'm like, "Okay.

Well, I'll just compete. I'll do whatever it is. Just put my name out there and see." If I hadn't done that, if I just gave up and said, "Well, nobody wants to see a Dandenster. Don't forget about it. I'll just keep working," then James, the producer, wouldn't have found me.

He found me because I had all this footage out there already and content. He found stuff that I had filmed in the past, the cooking competitions, the articles that I used to write for. And so he pieced all that together and said, "Okay, this is something interesting." Yeah. And the quality of the show was excellent.

It was just as good as any reality show out there that we've ever seen, I've ever seen. So kudos to you guys. Well, we got lucky because they brought on another producer who did reality shows. And so she had done a lot of shows for Bravo. She's done stuff for Housewives, Laguna Beach, I don't know if you like the orange OC.

There's a really popular show back in the day. We like watching Love is Blind. Yeah. So they do a lot of shows like that. And so the Food Network actually brought in someone who has a lot more experience in producing shows that are in that vein. And so we really lucked out on that aspect because I know nothing about putting together a reality show.

In fact, that wasn't my initial goal to do a reality show. My goal was, "Hey, teach people how to cook." Right, right. One thing you mentioned was that you've run your business for over 15 years. And I remember this because when I left in 2012, I had gone to your restaurant.

It was one of my favorite restaurants. I would go with my colleagues, I'd bring clients there. And I can't believe it's been that long and time has flown by so quickly. To be able to run a restaurant for that long seems to be a very difficult thing. What percentage do you think of restaurants last for over 10, 15 years?

And how do you keep it going? Well, the success rate of restaurants is actually quite low. I think the National Restaurant Association had put out data recently that only 20% of restaurants succeed. And during the first year, about 60% of them fail. Within five years, over 80% of those fail.

And I'm sure that's even worse in San Francisco. That's the national average, right? But I think San Francisco, especially as of late, those numbers are probably even more stark than that. And honestly, it's very difficult because there's so many different factors into running a restaurant. And when you think about being able to open one, it's very low barrier to entry, right?

Essentially anybody can open a restaurant as long as you have some sort of financial backing if somebody were to help invest or if you saved some money and you wanted to open a small mom and pop shop, right? Even my parents were able to open a place having immigrated from China with not a ton of money, but they were very good about saving.

You don't need a college degree or anything like that to do it. And because of this, I think you have so many different types of people trying to open a very complicated business. You need someone who has good financial sense, right? Good business mind, but also a chef. You need someone who knows how to manage people, someone who's an operations type of person.

And as a restaurateur or someone who owns a restaurant, oftentimes you are the person who has to do all of those things, right? Unless you have a ton of money behind you, then of course you hire the best person to do each category, but that's not how most restaurants run, right?

They're not huge conglomerates. They're not huge restaurant groups. They're usually like a mom and pop standalone startup. And that one person has to do all of those things very well. You can fail in one area and that would just kill your business. So let's say finance wise, you're not good at that.

And you're an incredible chef. If you don't keep track of your finances and your costs, then you don't make money, right? The margins are low when it comes to restaurants. Labor is incredibly expensive, especially in San Francisco. Food costs is about, I would say an average of 30%. Labor is probably up to 40 to 45%.

And then you've got overhead. You've got so much that you have to pay out before you make any money, any kind of profit off of the food that you're selling. And even within that, there's a lot of fluctuation that you have to manage, even from like inventory, something as simple as inventory.

It fluctuates almost on a weekly basis sometimes, right? People get something delivered to us and there's like sticker shock. They're like, "Wait, what happened?" The green beans were, I'm just going to throw that out, the random number, $3 a pound last week. Today it's $8 a pound. But there's, you know, like we're very involved owners.

It's pretty rare to see, say like my dad and I, not at the restaurant, especially my dad, right? Most owners, I feel like once the place is running and they see customers and they feel like they're smooth, then they're not as hands-on. There's no owners who are there basically every single day.

So then you need to hire, let's say a manager or someone who is keeping an eye on all of your inventory. And even then, like they may not notice every single little detail. It's just like having the right people. There's just so many pieces to making sure something will succeed.

The way that we've done it has ensured it because we're always there, but that's not the way that everybody does it. So it's either you delegate and find people who can do it, but that'll cost you money too or you do it yourself. Right. Right. Yeah. Are there economies of scale given your father runs House of Nanking?

No, there's no economies of scale based on the way that we're doing it. As far as if we want to expand the restaurant, right? Say we want to open another Fang or another House of Nanking. The way that we do it, it's not because we want to have our hands in everything.

We don't trust being able to hand this over to somebody else to do it quite like we do it in every aspect. And that's okay because we actually, we really enjoy being there and talking to customers and seeing the reactions and making connections with the people there and creating.

One of my favorite things to do is talking to customers and making a dish that's not on the menu, just creating it on the spot. But it would feel less authentic to the way that we want to do things. If let's say I had like three other locations, but I'm like never there and same thing for my dad.

Now there are other ways that I've been thinking about expanding and that's more like consumer goods where you can do sauces or package noodles or frozen goods and things like that, where you can expand and share your food in places where you're not physically at, but it's through a distribution channel where it's not you needing to be at a restaurant and running the place, but it's producing a product that can be distributed through channels of say a grocery store or via direct to consumer via online.

It sounds like a no brainer idea because you've been established for 15 plus years. Food is great, one of the best in San Francisco, if not the best Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you. And you've done it. So what about that model of creating that consumer product or I think, I mean Martin Yang, did he come up with cooking ware and stuff?

Yes. Is that a model that's hard to leverage? Because if it is done right, it could be highly scalable. Yes. So that's something that's really been more of a recent exploration for me. My dad's kind of at the point where he's 74. My dad is very happy with where he's at.

He's not looking to expand, start anything else. He just wants to go to work every single day and complete his routine. For me, it's different, right? I am at this point, I'm in my forties and I still have a couple of years where I'm still quite hungry to want to do more.

And so number one, we're going to work on a cookbook together, a father-daughter cookbook, which has always been a passion of mine. And that's one project that I need to like check off my bucket list. And the other thing is really like trying to explore this idea of packaged products.

I think this is really the way to extend our legacy is if we want to grow from these two restaurants, what's that next step? It's definitely not open more restaurants. It's creating packaged goods. But from the research that I've done so far, it is not as easy as one would think.

It's highly costly upfront to try to do it yourself because not only do you have to put in the money to create all the products, you work with various vendors to package, to delivery, to warehouse, storage, logistics. There's a lot involved with even something as basic as say making oatmeal or something like that.

And so I know a lot of people and friends who are in that space and I see like it is very, very difficult to make money off of that. And so now I'm thinking more in terms of are there ways to do this in a collaborative space where you're doing these co-labs with other established brands and companies in specific fields, whether that's like a beverage company or a frozen goods company where, "Hey, what we want to do is give you our recipe and our branding.

The product is actually yours. You are producing and manufacturing and doing all of that. And we simply take a small percentage off of the sales versus us making all of it and we sell it and make the majority of the profit ourself." We're saying, "We don't need the majority of it.

We don't need to do all that. We just give you the name and the recipe." Right. No, I mean, that sounds good. You add it to your current product line, right? Yeah. So we're basically adding on to their product line. We're not creating a product line of our own from ground zero.

Right. What about, I mean, fang is such a great word as well. I mean, it seems like such a great way to brand it because it has multiple meanings as well. I mean, what about the fang knife, the ultimate life for the connoisseur cook or something like that? Oh, yeah.

So, I mean, there's many different angles of going about this. When I first started thinking about doing this stand and stir, teach people how to cook, there was also this whole idea of being the Asian version of Martha Stewart, right? Creating a whole lifestyle cookware line where when you think about entertaining through an Asian sort of perspective, then you can say go to Williams and Sonoma or go to Macy's and find Asian inspired cookware, linens, tableware, and things like that.

That's actually from an Asian chef, not from Martha Stewart, right? That's one thing that's still, I think, very disappointing is that let's say you do go to a Williams Sonoma. I do see a lot of Asian motif decor, but it's from some Western person, right? Why is it not an Asian person who gets to represent the Asian motif cookware or the Asian motif vases?

I remember two years ago, I was walking in there for Lunar New Year, and they had this candy tray and this cocktail tray, and it had this beautiful Ming Dynasty decor on it, but it was like Kathy Ireland or something like that. I'm like, "What, really? You can't pick a notable Chinese person who's in the food space to represent that or design it?" It's kind of mind-blowing to me.

Even now, you would still struggle to find stuff like that represented within that culture in Target or anywhere or Macy's. I mean, that has to change. Well, it sounds like you've got to fill that hole, Kathy. Well, I mean, one thing at a time, I'd love to do that, but there's so many different things and now I have two kids, so.

Right. Well, speaking of kids, because I also have two kids and our kids go to the same school, it is tough being a parent. Would you agree? Yes. It is way tougher than running a restaurant for me. And I agree. I've said this on Financial Samurai before, a day job is easy compared to raising kids, at least in the first five years of life.

If I'm trying to understand how do you run a restaurant, because the hours are not your normal corporate job hours, and how do you have the energy to take care of your kids as well? How does that day go about for you? I have to say I'm very lucky and fortunate that I have a lot of help.

I have a nanny, I have an assistant, I've got my parents, although they work just as much as I do, they're always able to step in and say something, like let's say the kids are sick, right? And the nanny can't help, and my husband also works a ton, and none of us can stay home because I can't remote work this, like I need to actually be at the restaurant, my mom can always help chip in and whatnot.

So it really does take a village. I honestly don't know how a restaurant or a chef who's a mom can actually do it without the help because the hours are not conducive for being a parent, right? Although my mornings are free, and that's why I take my kids to school every morning, and I make their breakfast and lunch, and I love that time, although it's really crazy and frustrating, I make sure that I do that with them.

And I also try to make sure I can pick them up from school, right? With restaurants, my hours are generally about, I start doing emails and work around 10, and then I have to go to the restaurant, I finish about 1.30 or 2, then I grab a really quick lunch, do some more emails, take calls, and then I go pick up my kids so I can spend a little time with them before I head back to work.

And when I head back to work, that's usually around 5.30, and then I don't get back until it can vary between 8.30 to 10 p.m. So sometimes I miss my kids' bedtime, right? I try to get back by 8.30 to see them before they go to sleep so I can say goodnight, but if I miss that mark, then I don't see them.

So it is quite hard, but energy-wise, I would say a lot of times I don't feel like I have the energy to deal with both, but you just kind of do it, right? You muster it up, and when I see my kids, I do get very excited. They're draining, but it provides you this sort of happiness, right?

It's like the change of scenery, the change of pace. I'm working. I'm dealing with a lot of drama that's going on there, then I switch gears. I switch mode. I pick up my kids. Totally different kind of vibe, and then when the kids are a bit much, I can leave, right?

Then I go back to the restaurant, then it's a totally different vibe. There's a benefit to it, right? If you're remote and you're home, it's always there. If your kids are having a meltdown, they're having a really bad day, going into your office is not enough sometimes. You're banging on that door and you're just like, "I just need 10 minutes." Oh my gosh, you bring up an amazing point because I just read an article about whether to rent out my old house or sell it or create a wellness center out of it, and the idea was I escaped to that house just for one day, being totally unproductive, sitting in silent, writing, and it was so healing because I don't have a day job and I don't have anywhere kind of to go to escape the chaos that is parenthood sometimes.

So that actually is pretty good. You have like two centers there you can go to, but then sometimes it can be chaos on both sides, right? Getting back so late, I guess has your body become accustomed to these hours after so many years, 15 plus years? Yes. My body at this point is, it's been trained.

It's been trained for these types of hours. I actually don't really mind it, minus having the kids. If I didn't have kids, I could do this forever, but with kids, I've definitely noticed my energy is different, right? In the morning, I'm more sluggish because I've got to deal with so much more.

I feel like by the time I drop off my kids, a full day's already happened. They can be draining just trying to get them out the door. And then I have to do work, right? Work at the restaurant is not only mentally tiring, but also physically. I think sometimes people don't realize the physical aspect of it.

You're on your feet a lot of times, 10 to 12 hours a day. My restaurant is three stories, so I'm always going up and down the stairs, you're lifting heavy things, you're in a very hot environment, steam, fires, you can get hurt. There's just so much movement. So like if we have a conference week, everybody by that end of the week, you're sore.

You feel like you've run a marathon or have been working out every single day. So it's physically exhausting, it's mentally exhausting. I mean, I can't stand honestly for more than an hour and I don't understand how you can stand for 10 hours. I mean, you must have like super legs or super feet where you're just like, you know.

Your body gets used to it. But then see, the problem is I can't sit for very long. So because my body has acclimated to standing so much that I actually prefer standing. There's a lot of circumstances where we're with people or with friends and they'll be like, "Oh, sit." I'm like, "No, I prefer to stand." Because that's my natural state.

If I sit for too long, my back starts to hurt. So I actually think when people do office jobs and have to sit and hover and type, my back, my shoulder, like everything starts to hurt. It just takes like about two hours and I'm like, "Oh, how do people do this?" So grass is always greener on the other side.

I don't know. Well, no. For this, that term wouldn't work. It would just be like, yeah, we think that the other is more difficult, but... That's so funny. No, I mean, yeah. 10, 12 hours. I mean, I guess that's good for fitness then. Yes, I clock in a lot of steps.

I don't know what will happen if I stop working and moving around. If I clock in 15,000, 20,000 steps a day, and I go from, "Oh, I don't have to work anymore," and I sit all the time, how do I make up for all of that? Well, maybe it'll be good because you won't be surrounded by food so much.

Because I'm assuming you're always tasting your food too. Or is there a point where you're just like... I am tasting. You're like, okay. You're not overeating just because food is everywhere because... I don't overeat, but I do taste. Right. Yeah. So there's a lot of meals there where it becomes, "Oh, yeah." Right, right.

No, actually, I have experience standing in front of a hot stove because I used to work at McDonald's flipping the burgers, quarter pounders, McMuffins. I would drop some patties on the ground sometimes, and then I put it back into the heater. Sorry, guys, from 25 years ago or 30 years ago.

But it's a lot. The oil is splattering. People are yelling at you. And so I really respect the physical, intense nature of getting great dishes out in a timely manner too. And the pressure is always on. Yeah. I mean, it is. Now I want to know, can you make all of that at home for your kids?

You'd be like, "Listen, Dad can make an egg McMuffin just like McDonald's, but even better." Sure. Why not? I mean, I can. I do a mean scrambled egg and stuff like that. But you know, the thing about cooking for me is I play a lot of tennis and pickleball.

So I have cut my fingers and had oil splattered on me many times before. And then as soon as I do that, I can't play my love of my life, these games that make me happy. And so I decided I just don't have the skills to chop without injuring myself one out of 10 times.

And so I stopped. I mean, have your injuries, do you get injured cooking? I do. I would say I probably get injured a little less than most chefs because I actually spend a lot of my time outside of the kitchen these days. I'm always interacting with people, but I'd say I probably cook 30% of my time at the restaurant.

And it's usually when we're really busy and we call it in the weeds, right? Like the chefs are swamped, they can't keep up with the tickets. Then I go in and I cook and I help try to pound out as many dishes or I make things that are off menu.

Someone has a very specific diet, I'll do that. So under those circumstances, I'll get injured here and there, but probably not as often as most chefs do. I mean, you always get burned, you get cuts. Those happen here and there, but there's some gnarly, gnarly accidents that I know that other chefs get, and it's not pretty, but my worst is probably I had a large pot of soup spill onto my legs and it went into my shoe and got trapped in my shoe.

It was like boiling that came right off the stove. So by the time I took off my shoe and my sock, I had like a pretty serious burn on it, went to like the emergency room. And my foot, I couldn't wear a shoe for a week because the blister on the foot was like huge.

Oh my goodness. Things like that are pretty common. Some people get them on their hands. Right, right, right, right. So your dad is 74, you said, and you said you have several more years into you. Are you sure you don't have like 30 more years like your dad into grinding?

Oh my God, I don't want to do that. It's like different mentality, I think. For my parents, you know, they're immigrants, and so that's all they know how to do. There's no such thing as balance, right? My parents also never really took care of me. They were always working on the restaurant, and so they benefited from having brothers and sisters all take turns taking care of me.

They don't know what to do if they were not to work. And I used to be pretty frustrated and say, "Why are you guys working so hard? You don't even need to work anymore, retire, live a good life." And then when COVID happened, I realized that it was bad for their health to actually retire because they were forced into retirement for about a year and a half.

And health-wise, they deteriorated very quickly. Was it like a mental? Blood pressure. Oh, physical too? No, it's like, yeah, physical, blood pressure, diabetes, everything was going through the roof because when you're at home, nothing else to do but eat. And so they were like cooking and eating and, you know, you get bored.

And so, and they were not exercising like they normally are where they're always walking and moving and using their brains. They were just sitting. They're sitting, they lost strength in their legs to walk. My dad lost his voice because he wasn't using his vocal cords and they were sleeping so much that their memory was getting foggy.

And that just happened within a year of retirement. So now we've all realized that as long as they're not stressed out and they're just working because they need a purpose, right? They need an activity, something to keep them busy. My dad always wants to do this handiworks and projects, even though the restaurant's already busy.

He's like, "Oh, I want to fix this lantern." I'm like, "Hire somebody, it's like a waste of your time." But what I realized is like my dad likes it. It's like a challenge for him. And then it's like, he's like thinking he has to use his hands, he has to try to be nimble.

So he fixed a lantern. He does all these little weird projects and now I don't get upset anymore. I used to get frustrated. I'm like, "Spend the money and hire somebody to do it. Stop doing it yourself." Now I'm like, "Wonderful, found another hobby and another little project to do." So yeah, like that's my dad, but we come from a different generation, right?

Now a lot of what we grew up from is about balance, finding balance in your life. And so I don't want to work that way. I don't want to be walking to work and doing the same thing when I'm 70. In fact, I think I'm ready in maybe five to seven years to really take it easy and spend more time being a parent, spending more time with my kids.

I think that's great. And the thing is, you've done it, you're a restaurateur, you've done it for 15 plus years. Our kids are only going to be with us for so long and then they're gone, right? 18, 19 years old, the see you later parents. And maybe what's the statistic that says something like only 10% of the remaining time we spend with our children is after they are 18, 19 years old.

So sad. I know. I mean, that's the thing that I am starting to struggle with is that right now it seems okay because my kids want to spend time with me, but they're also kind of used to, "Oh, okay. Well, mommy's not here at night and whatnot." But what I'm also seeing is the independence that's happening, especially with my first child, right?

She wants to do things herself and all that and I'm seeing the big change already. And I really don't want to miss out on all of that. And it goes by so quickly. And like you said, once they hit 18 and they're out the door, but a lot of parents are saying their kids at 12 and 13 already don't want to spend time with their parents.

That window is so small. If I miss out on that window, then that's something money can't buy back. And I can put a pause to what I'm doing if I wanted to. I feel like I'm at that point where I'm very happy with what I've been able to accomplish and everything is quite stable.

So if I wanted to step away and let's say not be as hands-on, things will still be okay. FANG will still be around. House of Nanking will still be around. But the benefit is I can actually really hone in on that time with my kids before they say, "I don't want you in my room," which I hope that will not happen.

But that's just sometimes I'm very envious, I think, of parents who've already started on that path where they're already just home, spending time with their kids. Because that's really something, like I said, money can't buy that time back for you. Right. Well, I have to say, I feel what you are doing is very admirable.

It's so much work to be an entrepreneur, to be a restauranteur, and I really want to thank you for your time and just keep it up. I've been going to a restaurant for 15 years. It's the best Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. And I hope all listeners, when they go to San Francisco, go visit Fang Restaurant as well.

For listeners who want to see what you're up to or keep in touch, where should they find you? They can go to Chef Kathy Fang. That's my Instagram handle, or they can go to KathyFang.com, which is my website. All right, Kathy. Well, I hope you have a good rest of the day and pickup goes well and smoothly for you.

And I'll see you around. Thank you. Yes. Have a great day. It was fun chatting with you. Yeah, good chatting. All right, everyone. If you enjoyed this podcast, I'd love a share, subscribe, and a positive review. It helps keep me going. Every single episode takes hours and hours to produce.

If you want to keep in touch, check out the Financial Samurai newsletter at FinancialSamurai.com/news. Talk to you all later. (explosion)