Shauna (00:02):

Hello and welcome. I’m Shauna Hoffman. I am so excited to introduce you to my guest for today’s podcast. Not only is he one of the most resilient and prolific people I have ever known, but I am lucky to call him my friend or more like my soul brother. No wonder I wanted him as the first male guest on the podcast. Massimo Noja DeMarco. Let me tell you just a little bit about Massimo. He’s the founder of Kitchen United, the first ghost kitchen in the US. He served as Vice President of Operations for SBE Entertainment. If you know, LA you know, SBE is one of the biggest entertainment organizations in this town. Previously, he covered the same role at Wolfgang Puck. Yeah. I got to go hang with him at the big Academy Awards, Gala Dinner. Massimo owned and operated restaurants in New York City LA. And he was just nominated as one of the most influential restaurant CEOs in the country. Are you wondering why he’s so amazing in the hospitality business? Yeah. Well, he’s Italian. Massimo was raised in a seven-generation family in hospitality in Italy. Welcome, Massimo.

Massimo (01:20):

Thank you, Shauna. That was a big introduction there. You know, me, you’ve known me for a long time. You know, I’m the biggest goofball that you’ll ever meet. I am, uh, I am your soul brother. I remember meeting you many years ago and just seeing a total light. You have been a guiding light through my life. Just like, uh, all the influences that came across my life. But, you know, you mentioned my family, my family, you’re a bringing is really so incredibly important on who you are. You, you got to meet my mom, you get to meet my dad. You know, these incredible people that always were with me at any moment of big decisions that I made. Whether they were there in person or not, they were always in my mind. And I always thought, how would my mom and dad feel about this?

Massimo (02:11):

How would they judge me? How would they cheer me? And so that’s always been in the back of my mind every time I made a decision, whether it was about career or, or relationships and everything else. So I’m so thrilled to be here. Shauna, you know, I love being in presence of greatness. I am in presence of greatness today. And then, and I hope that there is a lot of great, amazing people on this podcast, which I know there’s going to be. Cause I’ve heard some of your previous ones and I was blown away at the last one. I listened to it twice in a row because it was so amazing.

Shauna (02:47):

Thank you so much. Well, I’m very blessed to have people like you in my life who not only believe in me, but Massimo you and I have talked about so many deep conversations and the

profound relationship that we have as a friend. That is what gives me so much strength. There’s always somebody for me to throw around my pain, with my confusion, with, to talk to you about business relationships. God knows. We kind of grew up together here as we got old. Well, so I go, what do we talk about? We’ve delved into so many conversations from work, from pain relationships, heartache. Talk to me, brother, what are we talking about today?

Massimo (03:37):

I think that a constant in life, you and I have had is a thing that happens in life, right? But things happen for everybody. I think that as you grow up, you don’t realize that. And when I say things might be not so pleasant, things that could happen to you don’t want to call them bad things. Cause there’s no such thing as bad. It’s, it’s all a learning experience. But I think that the earlier in life that you realize that things are going to happen to you. And the more you’re going to be prepared when these things happen to you, therefore you’re going to learn quicker, how to react to all these bad things. And you’ve watched me going through many, many years of successes and failures and, and losses and all kinds of things. And those are all part of life.

Massimo (04:34):

Nobody can escape them. And so when they happen, you, you have a decision to make, you really have to choose how you’re going to go forward. The human reaction is you’re going to sit, eat a lot of ice cream cry, scream, bargain, pray to God, pray and, and, and pray again because that’s what I’ve done. Growing up Catholic. I was bargaining. I was praying. I was, I was hoping I was crying. I was getting angry. And, and that happened throughout the course of my life. Every time that something bad happened. However, I learned that every time that these things happened, the best thing for me was to accept them, and accepting what happened was incredibly, um, revealing because it helped me move forward. You can have resentment, you can have hate, you can have anger and, and especially towards someone that does you wrong, if you, you know, that people have done me wrong, maybe I deserved it.

Massimo (05:47):

Maybe I didn’t, I don’t want to go to, to that point. But the fact is that people have done me wrong. And I realized after many of these incidents that I needed to be able to forgive those people for what they had done to me, not forget. I’m not saying forget, because if you forget, then you don’t learn the lesson. But, but understanding that if you do not forgive someone that has done you wrong, you’re always going to replay that movie over and over and over into your head. And every time that you replay that movie, you are experiencing the same pain that, that you have experienced the moment that this has happened, this doesn’t do you any good? Doesn’t do you any good physically? Because you get sick, you get nauseous, you get you, and then you get upset. And then, and then mentally it doesn’t give you that peace.

Massimo (06:51):

I have learned that if I was able to forgive, I will get to peace a lot faster. You know, something happened a year ago. To me, that was devastating, absolutely devastating. And this was something that I never saw coming. However, this time I bargain and prayed and cried for only four days on the fifth day, I went on a hike and you remember, cause I called you, I went on a hike and I said, I’m going to let go. I’m going to forgive. I’m not going to forget, but I’m not going to play this over and over and over and get upset over and over and over every single time because it wouldn’t do me any good. And guess what amazing things started happening from that day on, right after that day, amazing things started to manifest into my life that, uh, that made me who I am right now, both in life and in business. So that’s one of the lessons that I’ve learned. I think there’s a lot, a lot more that I need to learn, but you know, that’s, that’s something that I am really happy that I learned about a year ago.

Shauna (08:06):

I think that’s really so profound. I always talk about the fact that when we hold onto a hurt, it’s like, it’s a thorn in our hand and we hold it tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter because we don’t want to let it go. And what is it doing to our hand? The thorn is in our hand and we’re the ones holding on so tight. And when we can finally open up our hand, take the thorn out. It can actually start healing. You don’t forget because you actually, you know, some scars are good. Some scars are there to remind us of the lessons that we have learned. And we don’t want to we’re, we’re going up this journey to awareness. We don’t want to let go of our lessons. We don’t want to pretend we never had them. We don’t want to forgive to the point where we go, Oh, it’s okay. And put it so far out of our minds that we don’t learn from the experience even ourselves and what we did in this situation to get to that point. So let’s talk about forgiveness of ourselves.

Massimo (09:10):

That’s probably the hardest one because we always tend to regret some of the bad choices that we have made. And those are harder to let go of because you’re always going to go back and say, why did I do that back then? Right. Sometimes I think, and I don’t know if this is true or not, but sometimes I think that I got maybe a little bit too cocky.

Shauna

Could it be you?

Massimo

Maybe I got a little bit Italian.

Maybe I don’t want to say arrogant because I’ve never been arrogant. I was taught better than that, but maybe it just got a little bit too comfortable with something and maybe thought that I was, uh, in a place where I couldn’t be any better that I could achieve any better because I’ve achieved so much. And I got to that point where I was like, wow, how, how am I going to top this? And, uh, and so I think the universe listens to you and it goes, Oh yeah, let me show you and knocks you right down.

Knocks you right down from your pedestal. Knocks you write down from your cushy job. Knocks you right out of your amazing friendship. That turns, turns out to be something, uh, painful. And so every time you’re knocked down, something happens to you. And as you were saying, you can look at the scar and admire the scar, but you can keep putting your finger on that scar and relieving that pain because that’s, that’s just not good.

Massimo (10:51):

And so for me, rebounding, after each of these experiences has become easier and easier because it happens so many times, right? So in a way I became, I’m not going to say I became a pro at rebounded, but you know, I’ve heard, I’ve heard people, my friends and, you know, they call me a number of names. You know, they say, Oh, you’re resilient. Uh, you know, you’re relentless, you bounce back. Uh, you’re like a cork. If they try to put you on their water, you chump right out. Um, and, and, and it’s so true. It’s really true. The more they pushed me down and the more I tend to react and say, you know what? I am here and I’m not going away. Try to put me down. I’m going to Excel so I can show you that I can Excel. I can show you that by doing the right thing, I can still Excel. And Shauna, I think I shared this with you the other day. I read a post somewhere from someone. I, I don’t even know who it is, but it hit me so hard. I think it’s one, it’s one of the most beautiful things I read in a long time. And it was a very, very short sentence. And it said they try to bury me, but they did not realize that I am a seed.

Shauna (12:10):

I love that so much. Massimo. There’s something else about you though. You are resilient. You do bounce back. I’ve always loved about you your hope. You always kept a level of hope and dreams. You know, we used to joke around when we were young, Oh, there’s my Massimo dreaming again. And yet I watch you make your dreams come true. How for you hope is a part of who Massimo is. And that’s what I’ve always known about who you are.

Massimo (12:43):

But hope is not, it’s not enough, right? Dream is not enough. Dream is beautiful because dreaming, you can, you can come up with something, something new, something beautiful, something interesting, something helpful, something that, that fills a void and a necessity in this world. But unless you act nothing is going to happen and you can act in many different ways. And a lot of people act upon their dreams and their ideas, but they’re not successful. In order for you to act on something that you want to manifest or something that you want to make happen, whether it’s a business, or generally for me, has been mostly for business, uh, having these great ideas, but then put it into practice became very, very, very hard. And I, and I boil it down to just one word for me, discipline. If you don’t have that discipline to go through and analyze every part of your business, what can go, right?

Massimo (13:44):

What can go wrong? How am I going to go, right? How am I going to go wrong? And, and habit clear plan. And then clearly the plans many times get thrown. You know, they blow up, they blow up, but then you need to learn how to pivot. How do you pivot again? You have to have that discipline to stay put because if you know that if you have to get up every morning at five o’clock to start working on your business before you get older, the meetings lined up, you have to do that. It’s like working out. I mean, I’m not going to go and throw out too many sports, um, you know, stories, but, but look at Tiger Woods. Come on. One of the most talented people and his whole entire life is still hitting balls, uh, at a driving range all day long. It is discipline. It is so important. You go back to basic every single time, train retrain yourself, retrain your mind, rewire those bad thoughts that you have as you’re going through and thinking, Oh, this is, this is bad. This is bad. No, no, no, no. Just forget about what’s bad focus on what’s good. And if you have to go to point A and point B, and there is something in between, well, go around it, you know, rewire your brain in that way.

Shauna (15:02):

And what I want our listeners, our listeners to think about is to take everything that you’ve just said and apply it to their own growth, their own. You’re talking about business, but I also know that this is who you are. This is exactly how you take on any challenge. You figure it out, you look at it, you go around it. There’s another really great story I try to remember. It was a really simple Buddhist story. And it was a man and he’s walking down the road and there’s a giant boulder in the center of the road. And he says, you know, Buddha Buddha help me. I can’t, I don’t know what to do. I need to get to the other side. I don’t know how to get there. And Buddha says we’ll just walk around it. We do that. We see a Boulder. We see something that stops us.

And we don’t realize how many different paths we have to get to the other side. So whether it’s a relationship, whether it’s a loss of a job, whether it’s a loss of a love, whether it’s just trying to find out who we redefine ourselves, there are so many ways to get around. Sometimes we have to look for help. Sometimes we have to look for another way. You once said something to me. Then I’m gonna throw out here that when you were younger, you really would wake up every morning and tell yourself a list of things. What were those things? Do you remember?

Massimo (16:46):

No. Um, it, it depends. It depends on what, at what age, but I just remember that. Well, first of all, let me just go back a little further. So when I was a child and experiencing the world through the eyes of my grandfather, who was an amazing human being and, you know, I grew up telling my father that I wanted to be like, Lorenzo. I wanted to be like his father because this, this man just, you know, look, I have goosebumps just as soon as I say his name, right. Uh, you know that my story is called “a constant state of goosebumps” because that’s when great things happen, right. When you get goosebumps is because great things happen. And so I’m going back to the experience of how my grandfather will start a day. When I spent the night at my grandparents, I would hear my grandfather when he got up in the morning, because there’s an old Italian man.

Massimo (17:38):

He smoked a pipe. So every morning when he got out of the house, he would clear his throat, you know, making that not so not so cute sound. But I woke up and I ran and I watched him and he was already standing out there with this cafe latte, with the little coffee cup that he held with both hands, because he always held it with both hands and, and brought it to his mouth with the two hands because he said that the warm of the cup warmed his soul, warmed his heart and all of that. Right. But the most beautiful part he would walk. And I would walk right behind him with my little cup of coffee latte, because, you know, couldn’t have a big one like him, but I would follow him. And I would watch him go over into his garden and go over to a plant or a tree and, and talk to the plant and talk to the tree and, and saying grace and thanking the universe and thanking God for giving him such a beautiful garden.

Massimo (18:34):

He would go to the tomato plants as soon as they started popping out. And I don’t know if you know, but in Italy, uh, Pomo D’oro, which is tomato is, is, is the golden Apple. It translates to golden Apple. So these golden apples that were coming out in his garden and all these fruits, he would go over and, and, and caress the leaves and, and saying grace and being so incredibly grateful for what you had right in front of him. And I think that that’s a lesson that I carried around. I was always very grateful for the small things. Uh, you know, I like to grow my produce as well. I think it’s because of grandfather, but, but just watching the produce, growing in your garden gives me that, that kind of kind of thing. And if you think about it, it’s not just, you know, you applied into everything, you can apply to your business because you are going out every single day and you’re going to interact with your teams and the people that you’ve hired.

Massimo (19:31):

And if you’ve hired some people you’ve, you saw something good in them, right? So these are my little Pomo d’oro my little golden apples that I want to go out and thank every single day. And I want to say grace, and I want to be grateful for having these talented people in my life, making this day, being a beautiful experience and making my company be a great success, whether it’s making money or, or, or, or other purposes in life is just having someone in your team that understands what you’re looking for in them. And you can appreciate them so that when they come to work, they know that they are appreciated. They know that you’re grateful for them. Therefore, when they understand that you have their best interest at heart, they’re going to be more loyal employees. They’re going to be more loyal friends.

Massimo (20:23):

And my hope has always been that they would take that message home with them. And as a result, become not just better employees, but become better fathers, better mothers, better husbands, better, better, better friends, better everything. Cause, you know, as you care for someone, you want to show them. So if you can show someone that you are grateful when you’re coming from work and in your, your wife just goes and opens a bottle of wine, it doesn’t matter. It brings it to you, right? It’s not that the woman needs to do that. Or the men needs to do that because it’s just a sign of caring and appreciation. Look, I don’t think I’ve ever had a date in my life that came over. You know, I love to cook. Right. And, and I love wine and all that, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a date that came over to my house.

Massimo (21:14):

And, and I didn’t say let’s go in the kitchen and make something beautiful, food-wise, um, to be precise that I didn’t want to get too inappropriate, but let’s, let’s go, let’s go and do something. Let’s go and, and get to know each other through a very creative way. You know, how we, not just how we cook it, but how we present it and how appreciative we can be when we finally bought into, uh, this beautiful dish, you know, and not just the flavors, but the look and so on. And so it’s all about putting in the work and putting that discipline into that as well. Right? It’s always about discipline doing a thing, half hat, right? I think you guys say this in America half that But if you do things half hat, you always have, you know, half hat relationships. If you start at half at business, you always have a hat, half hat business.

Massimo (22:06):

So put in what you got to put in 110%. I know that doesn’t exist, but, but, but put all in, when I used to go out and play, uh, soccer or, or, or any sports I used to put, give everything I got onto the field, I would leave everything I had on the field. Cause otherwise I would come out of the, and if we lost, if we won, I would have come out and started going, why didn’t I do that? Why don’t I do that? And guess what? We’re back to the beginning of our conversation. Why didn’t I do that? Why am I going back and replaying that bad experience and replaying that bad feeling that I had? No, let go of that. But in order for you to let go of that, it’s a lot easier to go. And you know, full-steam, don’t leave anything on the field. I mean, leave everything on the field. Don’t bring anything back. You’ll get your energy back. You’ll get your strength back.

Shauna (22:55):

I always say, it’s okay to go back and look at a situation and figure out what you could have done differently, but not stay in it. Like you’re talking about not staying in that moment, using that moment to take you into the next, to propel you, to move you forward to jumpstart the next scenarios. Yeah.

Massimo (23:13):

I agree with you a hundred percent, that that moment becomes so special. And I’m going to tell you that the moment that, that you cross over from that state of anger and this belief, and you know, my fourth to the fifth day, right? Remember my story. But last year, my fourth to the fifth day, the moment that you have crossed over, you have a rush of emotions that come over you, those goosebumps are present constantly. You get teary-eyed eyes, but you get teary. You’ve crying maybe for four days before now, your, your tears are a different kind of tears. They’re tears of joy. They’re tears of energy. They are tears of motivation. They tear of let’s go out and take the bull by the horn and just, you know, let’s say, okay, it’s time to move on. Forget about what happened in the last four days, the last week, the last month.

Massimo (24:08):

Now that moment living in that moment, being in that moment in those days is the most important part because that’s when you’re going to rebuild, right? And it might not take a day or two or three or five to rebuild. It might take a lot longer, but you want to stay in that moment where you are just feeling those emotions. If you’re going on a hike like me, those moments are the moments that are changing moments. And I always say the changing moment never comes without a good cry. And, and so I’ve gone on hikes where I was so excited about something, every realization that I just had to put something behind me and looking at something that I was going towards that were going not to walk towards, but run towards and having this, this incredible amount of emotions come into you and have a good cry and say, you know what?

Massimo (25:03):

I’m going to climb that, that Hill a lot faster while I’m crying, I might even be singing or screaming, whatever it might be. But I know that I am present in that moment. That is a creative moment where you are going to come up with something in your head. There’s going to be your next business is going to be your next idea. It’s not going to, it’s going to be the next, I don’t know, the desire of doing something for the world that makes this world a better place, right? I’m gonna, I’m gonna say one more thing very quickly. This I learned a few years ago, I was at a party and I ran into a very famous person that asked me, um, what are you happy about? What you do? What do you think when I, when you go to bed at night and I, and I said, well, the two phone numbers that I collected this afternoon from these two hot girls, I swear, I swear.

Massimo (25:51):

That’s what I said to him. And, and he goes, no, no, let’s be serious. And I say, listen, I don’t know. I think about a million different things, right? You asked me the question. That means that you have an answer for me. And now so curious, I want to know. And this man says to me, you know, I go to bed every night. And when I put my head down on my pillow, I think what have I done today to make my world a better place? And he says, my little world, it doesn’t have to be the entire world. I can’t impact the entire world. Even though people know me, but that’s not important. If I can make my world, my little world, my, my, my friends, my, my, my, my relatives, and everyone that revolves around me. If I can make a better world for them, I go to bed with a smile.

Shauna (26:36):

Massimo. That is why I have had such a profound connection to you because you such a pure spirit for everyone that’s in your life. Whether it’s somebody who’s working for you, whether it’s somebody who’s working with you, whether it’s a friend, whether it’s an ex-wife, whatever it is, you have, you come with so much love and non-judgment that it gives them a place to truly be themselves. And when we have an opportunity to truly be ourselves, then what was the line that you said, about the goosebumps? Because that’s what we’re going to call this episode.

Massimo (27:17):

A Constant State of Goosebumps.

Shauna (27:19):

When we can have that kind of relationship with ourselves, someone else, and the world we live in, we are in a constant state of goosebumps. Massimo, thank you so much for being on this episode. I am so blessed to have you in my life. And I thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Massimo (27:41):

Thank you for having me, Shauna. You know that our conversations are always filled with those goosebumps, right? They’re all, they always feel with some tears as well. But, but again, and they’re tears of joy. They’re tears of happiness, a tear of sadness, but it all comes down to something that we are both, uh, very familiar with… being grateful for, for where we are, the people that are around us. So thank you, my sister.

Shauna (28:06):

Thank you, my soul brother. Oh, everyone. I hope that you walk away from this podcast with a constant state of goosebumps. I hope you take very, very, very good care of yourself. Surround yourself with loving kind beings. Go out there, share that, share those goosebumps. Thank you for letting me into your lives this week. And I look forward to popping back in again next week.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT DISCUSSED…

• A Journey to Awareness Podcast: All Episodes
• Shauna’s website: https://www.workingonme.com

WHEN DOES IT AIR…
March 20, 2021