“How Healthy & Free Style Cooking Can Improve Both Business & Life” w/ German Lam of Glam Foods LLC

Jeffrey (1s):
Don’t forget to tell us some good stories. Okay, here we go. Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to Radio Entrepreneurs. I don’t know if you remember my face. This is Jeffrey Davis. I am the host of Radio Entrepreneurs that have been off a little bit as I’ve been relocating my studio presence. And our next guest extended to say is German Lam, CEO of Glam Foods, LLC. Welcome.

German (28s):
Good morning. Hello.

Jeffrey (30s):
You know, I’ve read through your whole background. It’s really quite formidable. So I was wondering if you could start by giving us a little history of your background in the food industry, cause you don’t meet a lot of people around here with your kind of background.

German (46s):
Well, I went to Newbury college, graduated, worked at the Ritz Boston, 1986. And you know, that was my MBA, my PhD. I had a great mentors who taught me what it took to be a professional chef. You know, worked at the Harbor club. Boston worked at chatter bars in, you know, had kids. And guess what, you know, you look at what’s important in life and being in the hospitality world, it’s really challenging to have a balanced life with your kids. So I had to kind of, you know, make a sacrifice, you know, meaning I wanted to mentor my kids and I have two boys and I’m glad I did because you know, the job’s always there, but your kids 18 years, it’s going to go by like that.

German (1m 35s):
And once you miss that window, you can’t, you know, you can’t bring it back. So in one way, you know, my journey in life as entrepreneur has really changed. And also guess what? I had a midlife crisis four years ago, cancer came into my world and guess what? I wrote a book, the book is called the dragon turns to water shift, German lamp fights cancer for freestyle lifestyle. And it really changed my whole perspective of what I started and where I am right now. And think about this. You know, you have to have a purpose of life. And once you have a purpose in life, your journey is beautiful. And the four pillars that you need as an entrepreneur are the body, mind, spirit and food, no matter what age you are, all of these pillars have to be a plus because if you don’t guess what happens, things start to break down.

Jeffrey (2m 33s):
So your train is, I have so many questions. I mean, you’re going into a family business. I do a lot of work where they were also the family business association, radio show. I’m president of the family business association. And, but you know, what’s intrigued me is the, this sort of shift due to the cancer, has it changed your cooking habits and how you look at preparation and what people should be eating and what you should be serving would say, yes,

German (2m 60s):
It’s simplified my whole process of preparation techniques and methods. And for me, you want the simple in and out. And sometimes you look at the ingredients and the ingredients were actually tell you, what do you want to do with the vegetable? What do you want to do with the protein? What do you want to do with the grain? And once you have a game plan, everything falls into place. You know, and I believe in cooking, it’s all about mistakes. And think about entrepreneur. There is no recipe to be successful as an entrepreneur, you have to kind of find and make a lot of mistakes. And hopefully you meet some great people along the way, and we’ll give you some tips. So I became successful in the chef world because I had great mentors at the Ritz.

German (3m 45s):
And that’s something that I’m blessed. And also I have a friend of mine, who’s a chef, and right now he’s going through cancer. And the funny thing about it was he taught me how to become a professional chef. But now I’m teaching him how to live and survive through a cancer.

Jeffrey (4m 3s):
Is this related to what I guess the term freestyle cooking that you do?

German (4m 8s):
Absolutely. Because freestyle is about, you know, openness is about you being vulnerable and when you’re not vulnerable, you become tense like in business, you know, you want to close that deal no matter what. Well, that’s not good. It has to be a win-win situation, right? It has to be fluid. And this is something that I created my style that it’s beautiful. You could use this in your career, in your family, in life, and it makes you successful and think about COVID-19 right now, how can you become your personal best eight plus, a lot of people can’t, you know, they’re struggling with mental issues, eating disorder addiction, because of guess what?

German (4m 50s):
They forgot that they have to take care of themselves. So for me, I have this business right now that I can say I’m very proud of because we change families and we help people. And it comes to eating. A lot of people don’t know how to eat. And that’s something that I realize is painful because if you don’t have parents that teach you what love is, you’ll never know what love is. So how can you really, you know, nourish your family would love where you never got exposed to. So I think

Jeffrey (5m 21s):
I, I, you know, I really liked the fact that you drew a parallel to growing up in a home and learning how to eat properly, to growing up in a home and learning how to love. I think that those really are good principles from the body to the soul that you’re talking about. And very interesting. But who are your clients? Who are you trying to service with your business?

German (5m 43s):
Well, I have professionals. I work with doctors. I work with companies, meaning think about health and wellness, and everybody wants a recipe to learn how to cook. But the way I teach it is it’s more like it’s like art, dancing and music and sports. You have to feel it. You know, your body has to be in the moment. And it’s not about writing procedures. Baking is beautiful. You follow that from one to 10, it comes out perfect when cooking there’s so many variation that because I don’t know what you like. Like a lot of people come to eating. They don’t like this. They don’t like this. I’m like, well, why am I creating a recipe for you? Instead of creating a recipe for you, let’s teach about eating.

German (6m 27s):
These are the five food groups learn about the essence, the power, the energy, and what it does for you. And now once you understand this, it’s like science and then freestyle comes in play because food is really about mistakes. And think about food around the world. When I became a chef, I studied every cuisine out there. Why? Because I wanted to be great. If I was one to mention, that’s it I’m one dimension. But for me, I am global international. So like in my business, the same problem here or the same problem in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, same problems.

German (7m 8s):
So the solutions are really simple. And the best thing about what I do is I teach you and that’s so beautiful because that’s what we need as humans. You know, you need to, you can’t learn online from a book it’s like teach how to feel, how to sense. Why, what is your heart telling you? And I think the way I came up with this was from my cancer journey is that you have to open to this darkness. And if you don’t, it makes you scared and cooking. People are scared because they make a lot of mistakes and they don’t like to make mistakes. You know, they don’t like to fail. And failure is a beautiful success story.

German (7m 51s):
So, you know,

Jeffrey (7m 53s):
Maybe that was my entrepreneurial training. My mother threw me in a kitchen when I was about seven years old. And she said, do you see this room? You better learn your way around here, or you’re going to starve to death. Cause she was not a cook. She was not domestic in that way. But I’m wondering, you know, I hear about your personal clients and the corporate clients. Is it more educational or are you all, are you, is it educational and preparation? Are you preparing food for them educating them or both? One of the other, I’m trying to figure it out.

German (8m 22s):
I do not care. So it’s not like I make meals for you instead. I teach you. I teach you how to think, because right now, if you think about cooking, you could go on YouTube and you can find amazing professional or you know, homemakers or a teenager. And they would come up with this. Well, they’re not teaching you about the body, mind, spirit food. They’re not teaching you about being a plus. So what I’m teaching you is like, if you met me right now and you go, I can’t believe you look like that. I said, well, I work out. I condition, you know, I do martial, you know, I do sports. I do a lot of skills to develop you. So for me, it’s teaching a way that most people don’t know how to teach the way I do the way people teach us is a recipe, book, follow directions.

German (9m 10s):
And then you go, but then you never think, you know, so for me, I consider myself a human engineer because I wanted to be a lectron to engineer. And think about what engineers do. We create solutions for problems that people can’t figure it out. So for the clients that I work with and they tell me, thank you for the confidence self esteem, my son, he graduate from college and he loves cooking. And he has this confidence that you can take anything and make it any, and this person is vegan. So I said to the mom, how many parents will actually hire a food coach to help their kids?

German (9m 55s):
You had a math coach, an English coach, a sports coach. Why not eat a food coach? Because that’s the most important element, you know, because if you can’t eat well, you can’t study well and you can’t perform well. Correct.

Jeffrey (10m 10s):
We’ve been speaking with German lamb of a glam foods, a German. If somebody was looking for you wanted to understand your services and how you might be able to help them educate them, service them, how would they find you?

German (10m 22s):
Well, my website is G L a M F O O D S L O c.com. And also they could Google my name, German lamb on LinkedIn and right there, all the information for you to, to review.

Jeffrey (10m 41s):
Well, I want to thank you for being on radio entrepreneurs today. We hope you join our network so that people can stay connected with you and you know, continued success in your endeavor to educate and help people to eat and live better. Thank you.

German (10m 55s):
I appreciate the opportunity to tell my story. Thank you, right?

Jeffrey (10m 58s):
Remind everybody. This is radio entrepreneurs. We will be following up with more stories after this break.