Spotting the cracks and dare to venture into it
- Mar 28, 2023
- 8 min read
The story of Youngsusan
On March 28th Youn Young Kim - a skilled entrepreneur gave a presentation on entrepreneurship for the professional network The Gallery in Seoul. This article shares her inspirational story on how she built a restaurant conglomerate, and the key advice she gave to others who wish to start their own company but also expat spouses trying to make the best of their time abroad. In summation the important notes are:
Spot the cracks. As you observe and engage in the world you may wonder: Why is there not a baker on this corner? Why are they not doing X and Y? Why is it impossible to get a…? These are the cracks of opportunity
Do something you are good at, and that you like to do. If you are not good at it, then someone else will do it better. And if you don’t like it you most likely won’t be good and it certainly won’t last
Know who you are serving. Ensuring that the quality is superb and continues to be good is key to growing a successful business. Don’t assume you need to talk to your customers
Don’t be afraid of failure unless it kills you. When venturing a business adventure mistakes will be made, and maybe you will lose a lot of money. Don’t let that stop you, but learn from it and try again. Because you might also succeed.
But at the same time don't be afraid to cut your losses. Sometimes the timing is wrong, you don’t have the skills or times have changed. Pull out with dignity while you can
Trust and respect is a two-way street. If you want people to listen, you have to listen to them. And if you manage to connect people's own success to the company's success they will take pride in their work and give it their best effort everyday
Look at your life’s portfolio. During a lifetime you learn different skills - each contributes to your life's portfolio and might just be things enabling you to spot the next crack of opportunity
In the following we will unfold the story of Youngsusan: From Copenhagen to Seoul
Youn Young was born in the city of Gaeseong (which today is actually a part of North Korea) and later grew up in Seoul near Changdok Palace. As a young girl she took a chance and followed her diplomat uncle to Europe. Here she stayed because going back to Korea held little promise of adventure being a woman and Korea recovering from war. Instead of coming back home she moved to Denmark. Here she worked, studied and married. She started working as a teacher - thinking that teaching would be a good job to combine with motherhood and family. However, it should turn out that Youn Young’s life would develop in a very different direction.
Youn Young’s husband had a wanderlust so together they travelled the world as expats - during those years Youn Young had a child. When her husband got posted in Iran she once again felt a lack of possibilities for her and decided to go back to Korea finding her roots, but remained changed with the international experience. She stayed married but living apart. Here she returned to the small family restaurant in Seoul serving food from her birth province - the royal food of Chosung Dynasty.
The revolution of royal cuisine
Coming back to Seoul in the 80's the Korean economy was roaring and the business scene was developing rapidly. Joining the small family restaurant, Youn Young wondered whether the traditional Korean serving style - where everything is served at once family style - was the best way for royal cuisine because in Europe she had grown fond of the fine dining experience where dishes are served one-by-one. So, they changed the concept of the restaurant. Now the dishes were served one-by-one. At the time, it was the only Korean restaurant in Seoul to do this. But it quickly got popular because it resonated with the upcoming business scene of Seoul. It created the perfect setting for a relaxed and luxurious business dinner. And as she says of course the food was good!
It was a food revolution and Youn Young, her sister and mother started it.
A completely new business model with trust as the foundation
It sounds simple to merely change the order of serving but in reality this implies a completely new business model. Serving the dishes one-by-one instead of all at once required much more staff which meant a) a new need for recruitment b) a higher price for the dining experience. The latter was the least concern as Youn Young was catering to the business segment so the sensibility to price was lesser as long as quality met the standard. However, recruiting required a different approach.
What Youn Young did was to rent a big house where all of their staff could live. That made it possible to recruit young people from the countryside eager to work and live in Seoul. Then they started bringing people in. And more people were needed as they started to expand to new locations all over Seoul, Korea and eventually internationally.
Having lived and worked for many years in Denmark, Youn Young had some strong values about trust and respect that she implemented as the foundation of her leadership. She took pride in letting her staff grow as she trusted them and praised them for their good work. She never asserted herself towards the staff but talked to them as equals. This was also new in Korea - where even today a very hierarchical approach to leadership is dominant. Of course there was still hierarchy with managers, chefs, servants and helping staff but everyone should be treated with respect and treat each other respectfully. Youn Young explained: “This meant I had to listen to their concerns and ideas, because it is a two-way street. So, if I do not listen, why should they listen to me?”This also meant she never scolded in public. “Embarrassing your staff is the opposite of respect, so I would always deliver critique in private. However, I would very publicly give praise to the practices I wanted to see.” In that way her staff lived and worked together in a more familiar style and to this day she still gets messages from her staff.
“Respect is earned on your merits”, she says. “If your staff know that you are good - even better than them - they will naturally respect you”. That was also the case being a female entrepreneur in a patriarchal country in a male-dominated industry. “I was good at what I did, I spoke multiple languages and when they saw that, I earned their respect”. Here she says it is important to distinguish having self esteem and bragging. The trick is to be humble yet confident.
Always pay your employees and suppliers on time
Building on that, she created a talent program where her staff would get promoted gradually based on skill and eventually would be able to be manager of one of the restaurants. This motivated the staff to do well and deliver a high quality product. Further it solved an important component of growth - recruitment of talented people who would live up to the quality and values of the brand. This was particularly important because the Youngsusan restaurant was, at the time, doing business in a different manner than traditional Korean. Thus she could not necessarily recruit people and especially managers with experience of the street who would understand the business model. Thus, “growing” them herself was both practical and a quality insurance.
All along the quality of both food and service was the lodestar that made it possible. With her leadership style she made the staff understand that if they did well, the restaurant received a good reputation which eventually improved their resume. And the staff felt it as the brand grew and other restaurants all of a sudden wanted to recruit her people - many of them people who had moved from the countryside to work at Youngsusan. Creating this connection of personal interest and the company’s interest enhanced the familiar feeling and enabled everyone who worked there to take pride in their work doing their best everyday. A model she also transferred to her suppliers who once a year was invited to a grand dinner tasting how their produce was transformed into amazing food. It made them proud too and slowly as reputation grew for Youngsusan, suppliers took pride in telling: It is my pork they use at Youngsusan. Keeping her suppliers close like that, she always knew she would get the best. This leadership model of ownership and pride, she noted, was also used now on the Danish Michelin restaurant Noma - who has been elected World's Best Restaurant for several years in the last 10 years.
Give them what they are missing
For Youn Young she says it is all about spotting the cracks of opportunity in what is already there, and then giving people what they are missing. Coming home from Europe she had a unique opportunity to spot that the roaring business scene of Seoul needed a new concept for conducting business dinners and then she gave it to them. Thus the adventure took off because the timing was right. But also because Youn Young and her family knew good food. Meaning that you need to do something you are really good at and something you like a lot. Otherwise someone else will do it better than you. If the food and service had been bad, Youngsusan would have failed.
Ensuring that the quality is good and that you continue to deliver what is needed entails a close contact with your customers as you watch the project grow. Because it does not happen overnight. Youn Young was inspired by the founder of IKEA who started to create a chair in his garage fuelled by the fact that he saw a need for cheaper furniture for the masses.
Having an eye on quality also means to know when to stop and cut your losses. For Youn Young she decided to end the restaurant adventure as the restaurant scene in Korea started to change. Today, you can get everything to eat from all over the world in Seoul and the concept of Yuongsusan was no longer unique. Then the choice is simple, modify or close. For Youn Young being a mature lady chose to close down, sell off and help the staff move on in a good manner. And this is a final important part of running a successful business knowing when to let go while you are ahead.
You need to dare to try, it will always be a mixture of luck and skill and foremost the will to try and act on the cracks of opportunity you spot. Youn Young says she was never afraid to fail - maybe because she has tried to live alone and abroad, maybe because she can’t help it. Youn Young asked herself: “Will I die? If not, let me try. If I fail, and there have of course been bumps, I take a short rest but then pick up one experience smarter and try again.”
The portfolio of life enables you to spot the cracks
Youn Young was 36 years old when she joined the family restaurant. Before that she had a normal life as a teacher in Denmark and an international life as an expat. She was a parent and finally she became a skilled entrepreneur. Being a woman at 75 she now looks at her portfolio of life and sees how it has enabled each other. Therefore her final encouragement was to allow yourself to enjoy the different phases.
Being an expat spouse is often combined with a loss of professional identity for a while. But giving yourself the opportunity to enjoy and learn the cultural sides of a country might be how you all of a sudden discover the cracks that become the beginning of a business adventure.
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