Ep 26 - Real-World Organization: Featuring Paul Arai - Part 1

 

I’m so happy to have one of my favorite people on the podcast today - my brother-in-law, Paul Arai. I’m going to let him introduce himself in a second, but before we do, I just want to say how excited I am for this conversation because we’re talking about organization in the real world - and why it matters. In this case, some of what we’re talking about can literally be a matter of life and death - so let’s just get right into it.

You can listen right here, on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or you can read the transcription below. Enjoy!

 
 
 
 

Carly: Welcome, welcome. I am so happy to have one of my favorite people in the whole wide world here today — my brother-in-law, Paul Arai, and I'm going to let him introduce himself in a second. But before we do I just want to say how excited I am for this conversation. Because we are talking about organization in the real world and why it matters.

And in this case, some of what we're talking about can literally be a matter of life and death — which is not ever the case in my job, literally ever. So, we're going to just jump on into it — and welcome to the show, Paul!

Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself, including what you do in the world and your career background? Because we're going to be digging into this in this conversation.

Paul: Sure. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it! This is so fun. It's my first podcast but like you said my name is Paul Arai. I'll tell you about myself, an intro. I'll just do my intro that I do for when I interview for fire departments. Yeah. So, father of three wonderful kids seven, six, and three. And they are rambunctious and crazy.

Carly: They are crazy. They're some of my, more of my favorite people in the whole world. Anyway, continue.

Paul: And I have a wonderful wife that is supportive and just great with the kids and so, so great with my career too.

So it's been she's a wonderful “fire wife.” I couldn't do it without her. I can't do it without her. And so I guess chronologically going back… I'm a firefighter for 16 years. Used to be a unit president six years prior, or two years ago. Two years ago, and at a different fire department.

And before that I was at the restaurant for basically all my life and my first steps as a baby, I think were in a restaurant. Because that's all I remember! So I've been in the business, the restaurant business or the service industry for a very long time. I still actually do that on the side, on occasion — catering and yeah, mainly sushi Japanese food.

That's my profession or my thing I'm good at. I guess I don’t, yeah I can make good pasta too. Sometimes! But yeah, so thank you for having me.

Carly: Yeah. I'm so excited to talk about this. I'm sorry that Gimli is trying to climb you like a tree. But we're rolling with it. Okay. So yeah, let's start at the beginning. Like you mentioned, you have your earliest memories in the restaurants, so how old would you say you were when you started working in restaurants?

Paul: Hmm. Yeah. Since I could walk. Yeah. I remember in the dish pit, I was trying to wash dishes, but I was too little to actually carry the tub into the dish pit. So I would have to like step on a bucket or to do dishes, things like that. So I think maybe I was five or four. I don't know. Yeah, I don't remember. Like, I mean my, I only did it a little bit. They didn’t want the dishes to pile up, so they fired me, quickly. Yeah. Got a family business, you know, you’re going to need results.

Carly: So how old were you, do you think, when you realized the importance of organization in a kitchen?

Paul: Oh yeah. That was a trial by fire thing. It was a very stressful time in my life. Organization was not something that was taught to me, like it wasn’t a family thing. It was definitely not a family thing, but we won't dive into that just yet.

But yeah, so my mom was — she’s pretty crazy, I would say, but in a good way. Like she is a black sheep of the family, I think is a proper way to put it. She beats to her own drum. Yeah. Beats her own drum. She's a beat to your own drum type of person. Yeah. You can't tell her no. Or if she gets something in her mind, she has to do it. So organizational though, that wasn't her strong suit. So I learned by basically watching her and going, “I don't want to do that.” Like, I don't want to follow those steps because they're very stressful. And so, not to get sad or anything, but when I was 17, my father was murdered all of a sudden. This is during our prime family business and things like that.

And I just graduated from high school and I started at a junior college. And I was in architecture. Really random thing that I'm looking back and looking at what I do now. I was like, oh yeah. But so, I had to take over the family business in order for family to survive. I have a younger sister, she was still in high school and so I took over. But my parents were not organized, so it was, it was just such a stressful time of going through paperwork, trying to figure out what's going on, what's what, and the filing system was just horrendous. Like it was just a mess. It was basically under like a blanket or under other things — just like important paperwork, everything, everywhere.

Yeah, everything everywhere in the office. There was just no system. And so, yeah, it was, it was learning all those things. Going like, wow, I can't find anything. I don't want to do that. I have to come up with something better. And so, through that journey, and I have been making sushi since I was 11 years old, officially. That was my summer job at the restaurant. I would work during the summer and that was my allowance. Yeah. Yeah. Technically my allowance. But so, but fast forward to high school, I never learned or was taught sushi like in a professional manner or at a traditional way. So that was another trial-by-fire that I had to learn in.

Once again, I had to organize my thoughts and organize my skills, because I didn't have that luxury of time at that time. Everything was — all of a sudden I had to take over. I had to fill in this big role, and now I'm trying to figure out how to not only grow up as a 17, 18 year old who's grieving. Yeah. Who's grieving, and now I have to run a business and I have to take care of my family and all that stuff. So there was really no time to like learn things slow, if you will, like, take my time. And so it was rapid fire, and the only way I could survive that, or survived it now that I look back, is that I started organizing a lot.

And so I started reading books, business books in a little spare time, like in between like, lunch and dinner service and things like that. Sitting on a bucket, trying to read a book and trying to figure out like, what can I do better? And one of the things that stuck out was, this is a mom and pop shop, we don't have the technology, we don't have the luxury of a consultant coming in or anything like that, right? It was just a mom and pop shop. We learned basically trial-by-fire, and my parents were immigrants. I was first generation born here, so there was also the language barrier for them. Even though my father was a college graduate, master's degree at San Jose State, it was still culturally just difficult to, you don't know the culture unless you've been in it, right? And what I found out, what I found in my own observations that usually for immigrant families, it takes a generation to really get immersed in the culture. So that would be me, the immersion in the culture of learning the “American Way” and things like that. And then being the bridge between the Japanese way and the American way for my parents at the time.

But yeah, so the thing that I was really sticking to me is like, how can these fast food places or these restaurants that don't have like a heart and soul of that love in the food — how are they so busy and so successful? Like, what are we doing wrong? That they're doing right? I needed that answer. Like that really stuck with me. And so through my research, through searching, it became a consistency thing. I realized it was consistency. So even though the food's bad, if it's consistent, people go because they know what they're going to get. They know what they're paying for. There's no surprises. And when they have that craving, they're like, “Hey, you know what I want? I want that." And they get it. They get exactly what they want. Yeah. And that's, that's satisfying and yeah.

Wow. Like that blew me away when I realized that. I was like, that's, that's it. That's the answer. So I need to be the same with the food that I serve at the restaurant, we need to be consistent. And so we didn't cut any corners, but I started researching and watching shows. I watched a lot of shows and read a lot of books, but on cooking and how recipes and how commercial kitchens run. And fortunately had a hired a manager and then he came from the fast food restaurant type stuff. So like Macaroni Grill or Chili's, like those type of level where it's a sit down. And so he was showing me how they do fast service. And I was like, oh, okay. So that really sparked the, “Oh, let's get this going. Let's put it together.” And so through that journey, I realized like, wow. Efficiency is key. Right? Everything we do has to have a purpose and no wasted motion and don't do the same thing twice if you can avoid it.

And so I started rearranging the kitchen. I started rearranging and counting the steps actually, to see how far it takes or how long it takes or how many steps it takes to get certain things for a recipe or whatnot. And then I started going, okay. Should I, how do I make the steps less? How do I make the timeframe less? How, what can I do to speed up this whole process? And so we went from slow service to decent service. And man, the IT economy was doing great at that time too, but we were, it just started taking off. It started exploding. I look back at it now, I'm going like, what was I…? It was so busy and so we were putting up temporary stations in the restaurant just so we could cook more food faster, because we were just that busy. Like we just ran out of space to do everything, because everything was at the max of efficiency. Yeah. And we just didn't have any more space. So it's like, what do we do?

So we were like almost bumping into each other and trying to make sushi. And then the kitchen was doing the same thing and I had to hire like, I think 26 plus employees that I had. And we were, we would do dinner service plus do like a hundred people catering or like catering or like banquet style service? At the back, at the same time. Oh, at dinner service. Like primetime. Six, seven o'clock. That's really intense. Yeah. And so we would prep like crazy and it was just, yeah, there was a lot of preparation and so that's one of the things that I learned is that it's not for work now that I do as a firefighter, I would call it preventative thinking that way, but back then it was more of preparation for the battle for what I have to do. So there's a lot of preparation involved, but because of that preparation, it was less stressful. Yeah. And that was my number one goal in all of that, was there was so much stress already involved. I was like, how can I make my life less stressful?

I wore like many hats, like I was doing, ugh, like marketing, to finance stuff to accounting, partial accounting stuff. Luckily I have a cousin who was helping me out with all that. She was good with numbers and so she was doing a majority of it, but I had to still budget and figure those things out. And logistics operations, like recipes and like hiring, HR stuff. I was researching and actually implemented retirement and medical for employees. And this was in 2004. So it wasn't even a thing that businesses were doing. Yeah. Especially part-time employees. Yeah. And today it's like, well, you have to do it, right? It's forced. But back then I was like, no, I want to build a company that appreciated the employees. Because we did feel like every one of those employees were family and they meant the world to us because that's how our success was based, you know? So that was my goal, in that time of my life, which was a long, big chunk.

Carly: Yeah. Okay. I feel like that explains so much for later. Can I tell the story about your wedding? And catering. Yeah. So Paul's an amazing chef and you also need to know that we live in the same neighborhood. So I would be lying if I said I didn't benefit greatly from Paul's skills as a chef, because that would be a flat out lie — I'd do. Especially when we first moved to Sacramento and we were like getting back on our feet just starting over here. They were especially nice to us having us over for dinner and stuff, and we really appreciate it. But Paul's the only person that I know ever who has essentially catered his own wedding. I feel like we helped like a little bit.

Paul: Oh, it helped a lot.

Carly: Everyone helped so much, but it was so much like, it was like that prep. So then the day of, he wasn't cooking the day of, he was busy the day of. Rachel was like, no, you have a different job that day!

Paul: Well, and, and if it wasn't for my buddy — he's a chef. He helped me out tremendously and he was doing the finishing touches and everything at the wedding day. So without that I couldn't, I didn't do it completely by myself or anything like that.

Carly: No, but you did a lot of it. You executed, it was this beautiful, beautiful winery wedding and just, and it was the first wedding at that location. Like, I will never not be in awe at that because Lord knows I didn't cater anything from mine. Like we skipped a lot of wedding stuff and had everyone else do it. We got married within like two months of each other, us two couples. Anyway oh my gosh, okay. I'm loving all of this and I feel like that just really just illustrates the power of organization.

Paul: Yes. And, and, and so to relate that to my career field today, which I'm a firefighter…

Carly: Oh wait. I actually, I want to press pause really quick. Because I have, I have more questions about this before we dive into second part, and I so many questions about each, but the first thing that, and I'm sorry to interrupt — the first thing that really struck me that I just wanted to dive into it for a second, is that you were really talking about — how can I reduce my stress? Yep. And that the organization really helped with that, which I’ve got to say is basically why I have my career now. Yep. Because I am not an organized person at all. All of this is learned, and it literally changed my life.

Paul: Yeah, a hundred percent. I agree.

Carly: In such a prolific way that I'm like, I need to spread the news. I'm like a missionary for organization. Like, have you heard the good news? Here's a bin, let's declutter. But yeah, it's it like, it can change everything. Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. And, and to add to that organization, to me is a little, is very personal. Yeah. So like when I was doing the the restaurant stuff, I would, I remember the Palm Pilot things. Oh yeah. That just did not work for me. I couldn't live by the Palm Pilot. Palm Pilot. And a lot of people are like, oh yeah, you got to get this.

And I was like, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't live by a calendar. There's just certain things that I just couldn't, I'd do it now today, like the iPhone has been wonderful for organization in that sense. Because it, yeah, will send you an alert or if you, you do a reminder when you leave, you know, remind me of this and it automatically reminds you. So yeah. So those type of things were great. Now, but back then, just pen and paper or like post-it notes, just stuff like that.

Carly: That's how I felt in my corporate job about Evernote. People love Evernote. You ever used it? Yeah. I'm, I know people who swear by it, it changes their life. It's so good. I had to use it for work because it was like the thing, my boss wanted me to use it, but it never really worked for my brain. And you’ve got to find the things that work for you. Specifically, even if other people are like, no, I'm telling you, it's the best. And he, and I said it to my clients too, like as we're going through this process, if anything I'm saying doesn't feel good? It's really like a feeling. It doesn't feel good, just tell me.

Paul: Yeah. And it won't stick if it doesn't feel right.

Carly: Exactly. And like, I don't live at your house.

Paul: And I think that too is one of the trials by fire or trial by error. It's where you try it out to see what you like about or what you don’t. So that, for my personality today is I'm willing to try those things just to see, I know I'm not going to like it, or whatever it is, but I'm going to try it to see what I like about it or what I don't like. Yeah. So that way I know later like, yeah I didn't like it like this, or I like that part of it. And then I might find something like, oh, that's what I was looking for all my life. Yep. And it's like bing — light bulb. So that's where… Man, I can't tell you how many times I failed in the restaurant. It was so much.

Carly: Well, ditto. I mean, there are some things in that I was doing years ago where I'm like, “Ugh, that's not really my jam anymore.” Yeah. And that's fine because you just, you learn and grow.

Paul: You're evolving. Yeah. And that's okay too. And that, and that was one of the things I wanted to mention was, so kaizen, I don't know if you've ever heard of it. The Japanese saying, in a nutshell, it's small improvements to better yourself.

But it's a constant, it's a consistency thing where you always are improving a little bit. And that, that is, I didn't know at the time, but I realized that that's what I was still. Yes. And that's really the success that I had in the restaurant, and we were able to sell it for pretty good money and it was very financially blessing for the family.

And so that, that was the wonderful thing about the restaurant that provided for us in that way. Yeah. And, and so yeah, it's the small improvements. It's a long journey and it's not a sprint, that's for sure. It’s baby steps. The baby steps all matter.

Carly: Yes. Sorry, Gimli is such a little, he's a climber today. He just wants to be in the lap. It's not happening bud. Yeah, it really is all about the baby steps. We talk about that a lot in my community that it really is about the baby steps and it's about celebrating every little win. And it's about these small actions that you do. It's not about, let's set five days aside, go through your whole house. Like, no, you're going to get burnt out. It's just little improvements.

Okay, so speaking of little improvements, one thing you touched on was that you rearranged the kitchen when you first started getting organized in the restaurant, and that it made a huge difference, and that struck a chord because I talk with people all about this, like all the time.

I have something I call the real estate rule, which is giving the prime real estate to the things that you use constantly. And organizing from a standpoint of, how often do I use this? And that's, that's really huge. And like rearranging the flow of your kitchen. I can't tell you. Sometimes it saves people from a remodel. Because they're like, this kitchen’s so crappy it doesn't work for me at all. But if things were just in different areas it might, it feels better too.

Paul: Yes. Yeah. Less stress once again.

Carly: Yes. Yes, a hundred percent.

Paul: Well, so with that being said, the thing that struck a chord or like stood out to me during that time about prioritizing what I need and the remodel, or not needing a remodel. I didn't have a choice with that because we didn't have a budget. Right? Yeah. So even though my dream was to extend, expand all this stuff and saying like, oh, if we only had space here, we can do it that way. I made the space work. And it was hard and that made an ongoing, like ever-changing thing. I always, I had to change the system many times. It wasn't just one, one time. It only that one time worked for now, and I was like, you know what? It works, but it doesn't work, if that makes sense. You're just like, no, it's, it can be better. And so there was a constant changing, unfortunately, but fortunately because at the end it became a good model.

Yeah. And so I knew where to invest the money and energy. So that's when it was, before I purchased major things to change the flow. So I started working on the flow and I realized like, oh, you know what, we can save steps if instead of going to the refrigerator, that's like 30 steps away, why don't I bring the refrigerator closer? But I can't bring a giant refrigerator. So I went with drawers, the refrigeration drawers, even though they're not as efficient, you can't have too much space, but you don't have to move. Right? You could, you're cooking and all you have to do is open the drawer, take whatever that is pre-measured out that we prepped. Preparation, and then boom, you drop it in and that's it. Yeah. So went from a minute process to seconds. Yeah. Right. And so, that investment paid in like tenfold, because of that. And so then our prepping from there,it is like working backwards. It's like, we got this, now what do we prepare in the big main refrigerator, right?

So we went from preparing servings to fit into that. And so like, everything started to flow and started to change, but that became a great product in the end. So, and that's the journey, right? That's the big journey. And organization is figuring that out. It's feeling good. Oh, but I got to tweak here. And then it just comes together. You know, what the next step is versus, yeah, being lost. Like, that was my initial — like I was just pacing, walking around. And this was like before anyone showed up like two hours before. And actually it was in Japan training. And then I came back and so I was jet lagged anyway, so I was just, so, I was up at four in the morning.

So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to go and try to like apply what I learned or what I thought about. And all these notes that I was taking at the time. And so I was just walking around pacing and counting and going like, man, what can I do here? What can I do there? And then it just started to like flow from there.

Carly: Yeah, you just got to take like a little bit of action and then it can snowball from there.

Paul: That’s not being so upfront like you're saying, like, why isn't it working? And that stress — you don't have to feel that way. It's a process. It's a beautiful process. And you just have to keep at it. And those little steps at a time will come, and you don't have to put so much pressure on yourself that it has to work. You know, you're going to have to let that go and go, you know what? I have to figure in my identity in this, my process in this, how it works for me, how I like it.

But with that being said though, if you have a family, then it can be difficult and challenging because obviously everyone's different, you know? Someone's organization is different from the others, things like that. And for me right now, I'm also at the mindset. Well, I want independence for my children, but not that much independence, so what can I put in within their reach that they can do. But, it's not my system in a way, like I don't like it there, so it's adjustments, little adjustments here and there, in evolution, in life.

Carly: Totally. We talked a lot about restaurant and organization and how it's helpful, and I know we've talked about how we can bring that to our home kitchen too. But let's talk about — I know we have a little more to say on some key functions of a well-organized kitchen and how we can bring the principles of the restaurant to home.

Paul: Yes. One of the things that I do and I see myself, or I should say, what stresses me out about cooking, is not having certain things within reach or having to move around too much and I have to turn my back or this type of stuff. And it really like stresses me out when I cook. So I like to have things within reach. A lot of it has to do with a lot of preparation, being prepared, having these small dishes if you need them, you know? Yeah. Or a big dish to carry multiple ingredients or things like that, but close by so you don't have to chop and then saute and then sauce or whatever, that the recipe calls for.

So, and another thing is don't stress. If you're looking at a recipe and they talk about prep time and it's only 20 minutes and it's taking you that long just to read the recipe, because it's so complicated, like, don’t follow that time. That is so general, and I could still tell you from personal experience of trying to write a recipe and sharing it, I can prep fast because I'm used to it. I've cut thousands of pounds of onions and filleted thousands of pounds of chicken. So to me that was just the wedding. Yeah, exactly. That was just Friday. And so that to me is fast and easy, but to people who don't do this on the regular, it's time consuming. And so don't you know, that's the whole get the stress out, leave that stress somewhere else where you don't have to worry about that.

Just enjoy the journey of cooking. Like for me, it's a passion. It's like you're passionate about what you're making. I love it because I get to serve something that people enjoy. It brings joy to their hearts. And it doesn't matter who you are. Doesn't matter your social economic standard or where you came from, your background. If it's good food, it's good food, and you're going to have a good time. Feeds the soul, Yeah.

Carly: Well, as someone who regularly benefits from your amazing cooking — I appreciate it.

Paul: You're very welcome!

 We were having so much fun recording this conversation that we decided to not worry about how long it was gonna take and make it a two-parter. So the second half of this conversation is gonna drop next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you'll always have access to the latest episode. We would also love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to tag us at Tidy Revival on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.

The Tidy Revival podcast is written and hosted by me, Carly Adams, and edited by Brittany McLean. Title Song Maverick is by Dresden The Flamingo.

And until next time, remember that…


 
 
 

Links mentioned in this episode

 
 
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