Thank you for taking a peak at my blog.  My name is Jason Kveton and I live in Phoenix, AZ with my wife and 3 amazing children.  I have been in the restaurant business for about 25 years, it has been a wild ride full of many ups and downs.  I was trained in a classic European style restaurant similar to “Hell’s Kitchen”.  My friends and family know that bosses like that really do exist, they couldn’t wait to hear some of my stories when I got home from work.  Being young and impressionable this was my first real lesson in leadership so as I went to my next job I adopted some of those crazy antics.  Throughout my 20’s I felt that the food was the star and everything else was secondary.  When I was in my late 20’s I opened up a new chain of restaurants with a business partner / investor that believed in my work ethic.  We opened 2 locations with dreams of many more on the horizon.  As I mentioned, I believed in the food and put 100% of my effort into the quality of the food, ignoring everything else.  Needless to say after a huge opening sales fell flat and within 5 years we were just another statistic of a business that didn’t make it.  We closed the doors to the restaurants and lost over $1,000,000.  This venture did lead to a niche wholesale business where again we had the best tasting product in its category.  Going from retail to wholesale was quite a change as this led to having booths at trade shows and beginning to understand the importance of the relationship side of the business.  I partnered with the most amazing sales person I had ever met to help me learn how to build those types of connections.  Long story short, he focused on his strength which was relationships and sales and I focused on mine which was systems and production.  This time period really opened my eyes to the fact that the key is not what you sell, it is really what you have to offer.  This led me to start attending “automobile university” as Zig Ziglar liked to call it.  I spent every extra minute I had, listening to tapes and CD’s about leadership and sales.  The business was doing good but there just wasn’t enough margin to comfortably support two families.  I took what I had learned and made a contact in the world of “Culver’s” restaurant.  Within the first week it hit me like a ton of bricks, yes you have to have good food but at the end of the day it’s all about the people.  This led me to crave more and more content focused on servant leadership.  I wanted to help others achieve their dreams and goals as much as I wanted to achieve them for myself.  With a renewed inner spirit, I was able to connect with an amazing business partner (an experienced Culver’s owner) and in 2010 and we opened our first location together in Chandler, AZ.  Focusing on the team and the guests first, I have since been able to be a partner in a second and even a third store.  My main focus every day is on our content, systems, & training and how that directly impacts our people development.  One of my greatest achievements to date is that one of our managers that helped us open the Chandler location actually became a partner in our newest location.  I believe in the rule of “abundance thinking” and feel that you can achieve everything you had ever dreamed of as you help others achieve their dreams along the way.  Anyways, hopefully this not so brief snapshot into my background gives you a peak behind the curtain into how my business philosophy has been shaped to this point.