Business Lessons from the NY Knicks Championship Run

Speaker A: Uh, if you can get everyone within your organization involved, invested, feeling a sense of ownership, and you're not interested in getting credit, but you're interested in success and outcome. And more than that, even you're interested in other people enjoying the experience and feeling good about the success of your business, that's going to be a tremendous legacy for you. It's going to be a tremendous way to grow your business. So I really respect that about Jalen Brunson. And as I was thinking about that, uh, it translates beautifully into business.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Profitable Table Fed by Woolco Foods, a podcast at the nexus of hospitality, business, culture and the mind. Now, here's your host, Wilco Foods CEO, um, Steven Toboroff.

Speaker A: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Profitable Table Fed by Wilco Foods. I am your host, Stephen Toberoff. And, and I'm recording this episode on June 15, Monday. And obviously for those of us who live in New York or the New York City area, those of us who are from New York born and raised, such as myself, people who are basketball fans, Saturday was an enormous weekend because the Knicks won their first championship in 53 years. And it was interesting because one of the trends on TikTok and, uh, Instagram that my kids told me about was to post pictures of yourself going to a Nick game when you were younger. And not only did I have several great memories of going to the Knick games with my two sons and my daughter, but I even have memories myself, unfortunately no photographs of being at the Garden when Bernard King scored 50 points with my father, and other great memories. So it was a great event. But as with everything in life, and certainly one of the things that philosophy teaches us, Epictetus, among others, is to try to learn from everything and have a sustaining fountain, if you will, of opportunities to enhance one's wisdom, one's insights, and make oneself more effective, formidable, aware, and what have you. And so as I was reflecting about the Nicks this weekend and this entire sort of dynamic, I. I realized there were a number of very valuable lessons that I learned both from watching the Knicks, but also very much from a macroeconomic standpoint and how the Knicks playoff and then championship run impacted the hospitality industry in New York. And so I want to do today, and what I'm going to do today is share with you lessons that I learned from the Knicks, which translate into business. And then in the second part of this podcast, I'm going to talk about some dynamics that occurred during this playoff and championship run that I think provide lasting lessons for those who own hotels, restaurants, caterers in the hospitality space, both of these are going to be of value, I think, for people not just in New York City, but everywhere. If you're in the hospitality business, you have a business or just in general. So I want to start with what I learned, you know, this next season. You know, I'm not. There's levels of fandom, right? But I'm somebody who's been watching Knicks basketball and been a fan for, I guess going on 40 years now. So I've seen a lot of different Knick teams. I had the privilege of being in Chicago as a student when the Bulls went on their championship run. The first one, uh, the first of their two, three peats. So I've watched a lot of basketball, I've seen a lot of basketball. And there are definitely things about this Knicks team that were very unique and really admirable that we can all utilize in our own business life and other parts of our life. The first is when you look at this Knick team, particularly in the playoff run. They came back from monstrous deficits in several rounds before the championship. They came back against Atlanta, they came back against Cleveland. They had the biggest comeback in the history of the NBA Finals against the Spurs. So an obvious lesson there is, well, they never give up, that's true. But the second thing is Coach Brown, Jalen Brunson and other players. If you watch closely, they're constantly making adjustments. So it's not just that they're not giving up and rolling over, which no team, no matter what sport you're in, nobody in business, nobody that has self respect, quits or rolls over. But it's not enough to just have that grit, although that's the biggest part of it. You want to be making adjustments, you want to be adapting. You want to be taking what the competition gives you and exploiting it. And so if we look at what the Knicks did, let's just take a very simple example, the San Antonio spurs and that 29 point comeback in game four. Well, yes, the spurs made some of the worst coaching decisions I've ever seen in my life. Chucking up three after three rather than just doing the obvious thing and get the ball in the paint, go to the basket and either you'll get two points or you'll get fouled and used up 20 to 22 seconds of the 24 clock. They were just shooting threes after 10 or 15 seconds. But the Knicks took advantage of this by making sure that they captured the defensive rebounds and pushed the ball up quickly. So the lesson that I derived from watching the Knicks and their many comebacks, including, of course, in game five, the championship game, is they never gave up. And they were constantly looking to exploit the opportunities created by their opponent or capitalize on opportunities that they created for themselves. And this, of course, translates very well into business because it's those times when we're facing challenges such as Covid and other things that were sort of exogenous to our business but yet impacted it. And it forces us to look at things differently, make different decisions, have a different approach. And it's in those moments where when you combine grit, creativity, and a new form of thinking, you can get a great outcome. The second thing about the nics is if you look at the spurs series, but you could look at the series against Philly, you could look at the series against Atlanta, even against Cleveland. Jalen Brunson had a great quote. He said, it's almost like we start the game 30 minutes after everybody else. So one of the trends in this playoff run of the Knicks was they were almost always in a position where they were coming back, but they never collapsed, they never got dissuaded by that. And no matter how they started out, they changed, they adapted. They did what they had to do to achieve the ultimate outcome. You know, if you listen to Brunson, if you listen to Coach Brown, both of them and others said, look, it would have been optimal if we were not doing this. We didn't play our best basketball. You heard them say that a lot, particularly about game four. And yet they got the job done. And the lesson in that for all of us is if you're a results oriented operator and you have a clear set of objectives that you want to achieve, then that's your benchmark. Sometimes you have to win ugly, sometimes you don't start out the way you want to start out. Sometimes things are not going your way initially, but if you hit your your objective, you did it, and if you didn't, you didn't. And this was a Knicks team that won on the road at home. They always found a way to get the job done. Whether they started out hot or not, whether they played their best basketball or not. You know, it's really incredible. Another thing about the Knicks, and particularly Jalen Brunson, there's a few things that were really impressive. Jalen Brunson made a very unselfish decision to forego what I think, if I remember correctly, what would have been an extra hundred million dollars in salary over his most recent contract signing. So that There would be money available under the cap to build the necessary pieces around him. Now, a lot of people in professional sports would have taken a very short term approach. How can you give up that hundred million? This is a professional business that you're in. Your job is to make as much money, don't give the owners a break, et cetera. But Jalen Brunson and his family and the people around him are obviously extremely smart. And Jalen Brunson understood, hey, if I make this sacrifice, the reward is going to be so great. And it most assuredly was. Now, on the most important and basic level, Jalen Brunson is going to go down in history. His name is gonna ring out in New York history and basketball history. Is that worth 100 million to a guy who over the course of his life is gonna make a fortune? Um, yeah, it probably is. And that's exactly why he did it, and that's why it's admirable. But in addition to that, being the captain of the Knicks, who won their first championship in 53 years in New York City, he's going to have so many different ways to monetize this, that if he views the $100 million that he forego or did not take as an investment, he's going to do so much better. So this reminded me that in business a lot of times, if you make short term financial decisions, if you try to maximize profits at a time when things are great and you don't reinvest, even though it means you might make less money, or if everything's going well and you don't want to spend that money and time and stress and agitation and all of the other stuff to invest and learn new technologies, the long term pain for that is going to be a problem. But if you make the short term decision that looks like you're sacrificing and you are sacrificing, there was no guarantee the Knicks were going to win, obviously. But if you're willing to make those sacrifices in the moment in pursuit of something larger, you really set yourself up for excellence in business. And if you never make those sacrifices, if you're constantly looking at just short term maximization, no long term investment, it's far from being an optimal business person. And in the hospitality space, there's a constant need for reinvention, reinvestment, utilization of technology. It's an extremely important lesson. Another thing about Jalen Brunson that is so admirable is he, you can see by the way that he's the captain of this team. That this is truly a team. You can see that Jalen Brunson is a guy that loves to share the spotlight, that wants everyone else to be involved in the success of the team when they won the championship, when they won that cup in mid season. He's thanking his teammates, he's acknowledging guys who don't necessarily start or get the most minutes. He's a leader that is very happy to share credit with his teammates. There are other guys that were on the Knicks, I'm not gonna mention names cuz I don't wanna get people caught up in sort of a fan dispute. But there are guys that played for the Knicks and there are guys that have played in this league that have never won a championship and never would win a championship because they're selfish. They might be talented, they might, they might have immense, uh, skills. But basketball is a team sport. And this Knick team, whether it was og, whether it was Kat, whether it was Hart, everybody contributed and everybody felt ownership of that team. This was not the type of team where it was all about hyping a star and everybody else was an accessory. Kind of like the way the spurs hyped Wemby. This was a real team. And Jalen Brunson absolutely facilitated that in the way that he carried himself as a captain, in the way that he shared credit, in the way that he included everybody. And this is so important in business. If you can get everyone within your organization involved, invested, feeling a sense of ownership, being involved, feeling a contributor. And you're not interested in getting credit, but you're interested in success and outcome. And more than that, even you're interested in other people enjoying the experience and feeling good about the success of your business. That's going to be a tremendous, tremendous legacy for you. It's going to be a tremendous way to grow your business. So I really respect that about Jalen Brunson. And as I was thinking about that, it translates beautifully into business. And then finally something about the Knicks organization that's always come through as a Knick fan, but it really showed itself in this championship run. You know, basketball, it's a professional business. The Knicks are a corporation. The players are multimillion dollar athletes. But the Knicks have a saying, once a Knick, always a Knick. And a lot of people can have sayings. But if you look at the Knicks organization, they do two things that I think are so instrumental for building the immense love and loyalty and fandom that they've built in their fan base. The first is when you were watching the game you saw Starks, you saw Sprewell, you saw Ewan, you saw Marbury, you saw LJ. You saw so many former Knicks from those 90s that were just as invested in this team winning and as excited as the players themselves. And when they did, when you see Brunson took pictures with Pat Ewing holding the championship trophy, again, Brunson always including people. But the Knicks as an organization, respect the past, respect the people who contributed to their success along the way, and always make them feel part of the family. In addition to that, the Knicks have always, and I believe, continued to show immense respect for their fans. And part of the respect for the fan is if you were a Knick like me, you know, in the 90s, I remember those teams and those heartbreaks, and you remember Mace and Oak and all these guys. Well, by honoring that legacy, even though Oakley wasn't there, but having guys like Sprewell and Patrick Ewing and other people there honoring that fandom from the 90s, when you have Clyde Frazier and those guys participating in the celebration, you're honoring the fandom, um, from the 1973 and the 1970 team. So the Knicks organization always made a very clear and authentic effort to let all of their fans and all of their former players know that this is a community. And it's very rare that you do that in a professional sport. I've been watching basketball, football, baseball, a long time. I don't know of any sporting team that's done that as well as the Knicks. And I think it really showed in this particular series. Therefore, for those of you who own restaurants or own a bar or own a bakery or something in the hospitality space, you want to have that level of engagement with your customers, because the Knicks fans are customers at the end of the day, and they're customers who love engaging with the Knicks. They appreciate it. And so I think that when you reflect on that and you look at how the Knicks ran their organization, that's an immense and powerful lesson to learn. So those are some of the lessons that I learned from watching this particular Knicks run that I think spill over into business. Would love to hear from you via email, via Instagram, if there's other things that you learned from this Knicks team that translate well into business. You can reach me at stevenolcofoods.com or you can DM me at Wilco Foods, but that's what I learned there. Now, I want to get a little bit more direct and talk about what were the lessons learned or the opportunities that revealed themselves during this playoff and championship run by the Knicks for the hospitality business in general for New York City. But this translates into any market because there's always going to be outside events that can be leveraged to drive business. So the first is while there was massive excitement throughout the city for people who weren't in the city, I didn't go into the city for the games. Two of my three kids were there. But you've seen the videos on, um, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. The city was just celebrating like crazy. People in the streets. I couldn't believe the crowds in the West Village. We used to be located on Gansevoort Street. I used to live for many years on Horatio Street. My dad lived on Bleecker Street. And to see the West Village just completely into it like that was unbelievable. And so when you look at what went on in the city, you can see that everybody was engaged. But as a business owner, all you need to do is maximize engagement and involvement within the four walls of your restaurant. So when you look at what went on during the Nick game, yes, there was a tremendous citywide experience. But the real opportunity as a business person, and this has been demonstrated in numerous articles in the Post and elsewhere due to the Russian business, is you want to make sure that you're generating that level of excitement and engagement within your business, regardless of how busy it may or may not be outside. Don't use that as the metric. Use the metric of what can I do on this given night or this given series of nights to engage people that are coming into my restaurant, my bar, my bakery, using my catering services. And one of the things that was absolutely underscored, and I've spoken about this on so many episodes, starting with COVID through today. This is a theme that's been going on for six years on this podcast with many guests that I've had. Community. Something happened in New York after Covid where the level of engagement between the restaurant space and the customers, it became a much, in my view, and I've been doing this for a long time, an incredibly meaningful and connected community that's developed. And when you look at what went on in New York City with people watching the games outside or cramming into bars to do it, people wanted to be with other people to share the experience of this event. Okay. And more and more people view restaurants, bars, coffee shops, what have you as third spaces. And you really need to understand that and embrace that. I think maybe there's a few concepts that are very successful out there where you don't have to, but the vast majority are not like that. Meaning for the vast majority of hospitality concepts out there, you have to really embrace the notion that your business is not just serving food or drinks or pastries or what have you. It. It's a third space for the community. And if you can do that, if you can really lean into that, not only, in my opinion, will you have an increase in revenue, but you'll have an increase in longevity and you'll have an increase in engagement, you'll have an increase in referrals. It'll do everything and anything for your business. So what that means specifically is you must know your community, your customers, who's coming to your space. For some of you, you're gonna be able to lean into nerd culture. I love comic books. Comic Con is coming up. I'm buying my tickets today. I was supposed to get them yesterday. I never got the link for the presale. There's people who love that. There are people who love game shows. I've seen phenomenal restaurants that we have that have sitcom night where they have a competition almost like the Final Four, which is the best sitcom. And it doesn't really matter what it is. Obviously sports bars have sports, there's political debates, there's events that happen. But if you can sort of set the goal once a week or at the latest every other week to try to have some event either linking to something that's going on outside of you, or generating something that you know is going to appeal to your customer base and make that a community oriented event, I think it's extremely important. I think it's extremely valuable, and it's something I really invite you to consider and be open minded about. I guarantee you, if there were places near Comic Con that were having Daredevil or Punisher nights and I was there after the event, I would probably go. For people that are really into collecting baseball cards or sports cards. That's a big thing now for people that are really into fashion, people that are into the. It doesn't matter. Not every time is it gonna be an outside event that you can sort of lean into. You have to generate that excitement and understand that your business, uh, is a third space and be creative, okay? And make the most of it. Now, for me, as I said, I was born. I was born and raised in New York City. I am born and raised in New York City and lived in New York most of my life. Now I live 20 minutes from New York in the suburbs, but still part of New York. And I'm really thinking back throughout, uh, my entire time in New York, I don't know of a time when the city has been this lit, this excited, this engaged from a community perspective. I can't remember the last time that it's been the case. And there's an enormous amount of FOMO outside of New York for people that want to come to New York because they've seen the videos of the Knicks, of the celebrating, of all of that stuff. So New York City is back on top as the place to be in America or the world. And it's really achieved that status amongst young people, amongst people that want to be out go out, amongst people that want to be involved in the nightlife scene, the hospitality scene. And that's not always the case in New York. There have been periods of time when New York has not been like that, and it's been the exact opposite. And thank God it's not the case right now. And so what that means for you is any amount of time that you spend marketing on Instagram, on TikTok, on other tools that you may have that are available to. To sort of convey to the world what makes your space a great community space for a great New York experience. I'm predicting that the remainder of this year, and certainly Q4, we're going to see a substantial increase in tourism over last year. Last year, and this has been well reported in the papers, was a very difficult year in New York City for tourism. The Canadians stayed away, a lot of people stayed away because of decisions that were made, um, at the political level. Just call it what it is. I believe that that is reverse now, and people really want to come to New York. And so I believe that this event that we just enjoyed of the Knicks winning a championship is going to persist. We're in the World cup, we're heading in. We're a week away from the Pride Parade. There's a lot of things going on. But I think as we go into Q4, tourism's going to be up. And therefore, I think it's really incumbent upon every restaurant, every hospitality business to do what they can to convey to the outside markets that this is what you will get if you come to our restaurant. It's not just about the food, it's not just about the cocktails. It's about the true hospitality of it. And the hospitality you're gonna experience is real New York hospitality. And I think if you do that, there's gonna be tremendous benefits to that. Something else that I saw as a statistic, and maybe this isn't as Interesting. As it occurred to me, just based on overall statistics, but I saw that it said 69% of people in New York right now were not alive when the Knicks won their last championship. I don't know if that statistic is correct. It was on the news. But assuming it is correct, that shows a demographic in New York City that really skews younger. Right. And that maybe shouldn't be surprising. But what's phenomenal about that is the more young people that want to come to New York City, the more businesses are going to have to stay in New York and expand in New York so that they can recruit the most talented workers, et cetera, et cetera. So as you develop your concepts as a restaurant, as a bar, as a whatever, you just want to be mindful of that. Now, there's a reverse way to play this, of course, as well, because if 69% were not born, the other 31% were, and you want to have a niche space for them. So there's opportunities here to sort of play it both ways. But the point that I'm trying to make is as you develop your concepts, as you leverage the concepts that you already have, just be mindful of who the target customer base could be and at least devote some time and energy to appealing to that, because essentially, that's what the numbers show. And, you know, as business. I had a great interview last week with Allison Arevalo from Pasta Louise. And one of the things she did, and I really sort of latched onto this because I had such respect for it, is before she opened her restaurant, she spent a lot of time in the neighborhood, and she would sit on a street corner there at different times of the day to get a real feel of who the potential clientele and who the neighborhood was. Well, this is giving us a clear data point that New York skews a little bit younger, or at least from a majority standpoint, that's relevant in terms of how you position your brand, your restaurant, your cafe, your bar. But then again, there is the flip side to that as well, which can also be leveraged. So I guess what I would say, sort of to wrap up this entire podcast from the perspective of business people within the hospitality space, is if you own a restaurant or a bar, hotel, caterer, right now you are the recipient of what is probably hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing money, paid and unpaid. How much money would, I don't know, your restaurant have to pay to leverage? Taylor Swift going to Madison Square Garden with Timothee Chalamet and the Knicks winning and Wu Tang Clan playing during halftime, it would be millions of dollars. And yet those of us in this space get to be the recipients of that without having to invest any money in it. So we're at a moment in time where there's an enormous amount of attention and money being spent to really hype New York at the very same moment when its vibrancy, its community, the unique attributes that make New York such a great city are coming back. So you have to view yourself, view your business, view your athlete, view your team as the home team. Business is a sport. Basketball is a sport. Football is a sport, baseball, et cetera, et cetera. But basketball is its own sport. And we're all competing. It's a competitive sport. And we're competing in the New York City market, where I am, Jersey City, Hudson County, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island. And in that competition, there's a lot of advertising hyping it up that we're not paying for, but we do have the opportunity to make the most of. And so I'm going to just encourage myself and encourage everyone who's listening to really take this Knicks experience that we waited 53 years for. I mean, it's crazy. I remember that night when I, when Bernard King put up 50 and I was with my dad and everybody was so pumped for that. And the Knicks, they didn't win a championship that year. And those teams in the 90s, I remember that and linsanity and just everything. And yet every night there was something about the Knicks where there was that level of engagement, excitement, competition, never quitting, pursuing a goal and pursuing it joyously, not with bitterness. You know, I mean, I never felt bitter as a Knicks fan. I never felt like this organization let me down. I always felt like, we'll get them next year, we're going to stick with it. We'll get them next year. It's all good. We're not quitting. We're in New York. So I'm encouraging myself and I'm encouraging everyone else to really take this championship win and instead of just being on the sidelines applauding, use it to inspire us to run our business better, to be smarter, to push harder, to push smarter, and to really get to the next level that we want to get to wherever we've been now. Because, as I say, as a philosopher, we seek to learn from everything. And as a Knicks fan, this was fucking awesome. So I hope everybody enjoyed this podcast. If you enjoyed this content, I would love it. If you would share it with other people. If you'd love to share some ideas about things that you learned from watching the Knicks that are going to translate into your business life or just your personal life. Would love to hear from you. Stephenolcofoods.com Orlco Foods on Instagram really helps if you rate the podcast, if you like it, if you comment. All of those things are much appreciated. But other than that, it's a great day. It's an exciting day and I just wish everybody that they have an awesome, awesome day.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the profitable table fed by Woolco Foods. Please be sure to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. And to learn more about Woolco Foods or Stephen Tobaroff, please visit us@ahwoolcofoods.net.