Blog Post: 10 Career Lessons From a Celebrity Chef

Alex Guarnaschelli has her own television show on the Food Network and is the executive chef of Butter, a Manhattan restaurant frequented by celebrities like Paris Hilton and Tom Brady.  Alex provided the Pursue the Passion crew with a wildly entertaining interview, which has been narrowed down to ten themes and excerpts to help adjust your outlook on careers.

Lesson 1- Who cares if you’re the clown, as long as you can dance in the circus 

In my first job, I was a subject of amusement more than an actual cohesive member of a functioning team.  But, who cares if you’re the clown, as long as you can dance at the circus.  That’s pretty much the attitude I’ve had about my line of work my whole life.  

Lesson 2- It’s okay to be grimy 

I worked for free for like six or seven months in this two star Parisian restaurant called Guy Savoy.  At that point, I was staying with my friend.  I would cook for her and stuff, but I had no money.  I love when people say, “I have no money.”  I mean, I’m saying, I had no money.  

But what I learned is that sometimes you have to be super broke and ridiculously broke for awhile and go right out at what you love.  You can’t pretend to yourself that you’re going to do it on the side.  It never works.

Lesson 3- Starting Out 

It’s painful to start something that you aren’t necessarily good at. Because when you start, you think you can take over the world.  And you realize very quickly that the world is the boss of you.  Because you don’t know how to cut a pepper.  It’s kind of hard to grapple with.  

But when you’re human, that helps.  I think a mix of humanity and humility is a really good idea.  It takes your patience factor much higher.  Learning how to do anything takes a really long time.  It’s really annoying.  You have to have patience to make it through.  

Lesson 4- Go to the harp player’s house

You can do a million things.  It’s very confusing.  I think a lot of people, they’re like, “Well, I’ll just work here.  Until I figure out how I’m going to buy a loom and play the harp.”  You have to go to the harp player’s house and ask how to play a harp.  You have to, like, bleed until you figure it out.  That’s what you have to do.  

Lesson 5- Leave gender at the door 

I have to say this for anyone that reads or listens to my story.  You have to part gender at the door when you’re cooking.  You have to go with the social environment that you’re in.  You have to decide what your survival tactics are.  Because what you want to do is number one, survive in the environment with everyone.  And number two, learn.  Those two things are all you have to think about.  

Lesson 6- Say ‘so what’ to screw ups 

The stuff that I did, I mean, we got some snapper in one day and I didn’t know how to filet the snapper.  No idea how to filet this snapper!  No one could help me because it was really busy.  So I screwed it up, completely.  I made these mangled snapper hamburger patty things.  It was awful.  I knew that the minute it hit the pan that it was going to be nothing short of the crucifixion.  

You have to be able to say “so what?”  You know, so what.  And then go home and cry.  Drink a half a bottle of scotch and eat a pint of ice cream and go back.  Really, I had those days.  I would go buy a quart of ice cream and go home and cry.  But then I’d go back to work the next day.

So that kind of crazy passion…if you have that, I don’t know, the rest kind of falls into place.  

Lesson 7- Put on a costume and be it 

I would say that it’s a really bad idea to sit around and say, “I haven’t really figured out what I want to do.”  My advice is to put on a costume of some kind and pick something, and be it.  And if it doesn’t work out, take the costume off, pick something else that seems closer to what you love, and be that.  Just practice actually being one thing instead of…contemplating.  And not doing.  

Lesson 8- Live to your liking 

The piece of advice that I would give that’s sort of a joke but not really is if you haven’t really partied, and really gotten a lot of that out of your system, do it rapidly.  So when you hunker down and you pick something, and you’re really passionate about it, there’s no static on your mental radio.  Because you’ve lived a little bit to your own liking.  

Lesson 9- Know what you’re getting into 

I have a lot of friends at my twenty year high school reunion coming up, where there will be a routine line of people waiting to talk to me about whether they should quit their $450,000 job at AT&T to be a chef.  I say the same thing every time now.  “You know that barbeque you had a month or two ago for eight of your friends?  And how fun it was?  It’s not fun when it’s 800 people waiting who don’t care about you.  And they don’t know you.  It becomes a different thing.”

You have to actually experience what it’s like before you make that kind of decision to leave the job that’s supporting you.  Because the job might not be all that you cracked it up to be.

Lesson 10- Everyone has their own journey 

Everybody has their own journey and their own timeline.  I really don’t have any advice for anyone, other than to say, don’t sit at a desk and dream about something else.  Or, don’t do something else and dream about sitting at a desk.  What’s wrong with a desk job by the way?  Nothing wrong with that.  As long as you’re doing what you love, it doesn’t really matter what form it takes.  

Pursue the Passion invites you to comment on this column, view more interviews on their blog, www.pursuethepassion.com/interviews, and join them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2335089409.