Shownotes
Get ready for a story of grit, giving back, and embracing opportunity, all served up with a side of cheeseburgers and community spirit.
On this episode of Empowering Entrepreneurs, we sit down with Ron Ladner, co-founder of Shaggy’s restaurants and a true embodiment of passion meeting purpose. Raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Ron Ladner shares his journey from humble beginnings, growing up in a small, crowded home, to building a thriving restaurant group known for its uplifting culture and commitment to putting both employees and guests first.
Throughout the conversation, Ron Ladner opens up about the pivotal moments that shaped his entrepreneurial path—including his realization that adversity, from economic downturns to hurricanes, can actually fuel opportunity and innovation. From lessons learned in the construction yard and on the sports field, to pioneering successful sales strategies and ultimately returning home to help rebuild his community after Hurricane Katrina, Ron Ladner offers listeners invaluable insights on resilience, leadership, and the importance of creating lasting impact.
Plus, you'll hear how his love for fishing became part of his business, the unique culture he’s built at Shaggy’s, and what truly drives him beyond profits.
Moments
00:00 "Ron: Business Meets Passion"
05:36 "Curiosity Drives Passion for Growth"
07:16 "Working Through School & Summer"
10:45 Switching Majors: Tech to Marketing
15:30 Informative Networking Secrets
20:16 "Life's Unexpected Journeys"
23:32 "Committed to People and Purpose"
25:10 Transforming Restaurant Employee Culture
30:27 Opportunity in Setbacks
34:54 From Cleanup to Business Partnership
37:47 Fishing Boat Intern to Captain
40:53 Holistic Employee Support Solutions
45:20 "Shaggy's Cheeseburger Story"
46:34 "Book Success and Audiobook Deal"
This episode is brought to you by PureTax, LLC. Tax preparation services without the pressure. When all you need is to get your tax return done, take the stress out of tax season by working with a firm that has simplified the process and the pricing. Find out more about how we started.
Here are our top three takeaways from the episode:
- People-First Culture Fuels Growth: Ron’s ethos of surrendering 100% to both his team and his guests has revolutionized what it means to be in the restaurant business. His team’s average tenure is four years, compared to an industry average of just 75 days. That is the true power of valuing your people.
- Turning Catastrophe into Opportunity: Ron’s journey is a masterclass in resilience. After Hurricane Katrina devastated his community, he prioritized rebuilding not just his business, but the heart of his town. Out of challenges, opportunity—and Shaggy’s—was born.
- Legacy Beyond Profit: True entrepreneurial success isn’t just about the bottom line; it’s about lifting others up. Ron’s dedication to mentoring his employees, helping them grow professionally and personally, shows that impact outlasts income.
Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.
Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.
Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for success
Our clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.
Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.
Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year.
An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.
Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast.
Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Copyright 2026 Glenn Harper
Transcripts
Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:Julie Smith.
Glenn Harper [:What's going on, Julie?
Julie Smith [:Well, you know, it's cold, so I can't wait to leave this state. Right.
Glenn Harper [:Well, it's cold, but it's gonna be like single digit cold in a day and a half here, so I don't know, but we're happy to be. First day of Christmas is not even a week. First day of winter is only a week away and still it feels like it's winter. But anyway, we've got the pleasure of having a great guest today and I'd like to introduce you to Ron Ladner, co founder of Shaggy's restaurants. He has decided to bring his motto on how to treat people to the Shaggies conglomerate. The motto of surrender ourselves 100% to our guests. Always put their needs before ours, make them feel special, appreciated, recognized, valued and most importantly, make their day. This has propelled him in six short years to have five restaurants on some sort of waterfront property.
Glenn Harper [:Ron has this ability to put his employees in a position where they're respected, earn great wages and perks, which enables the team to provide a company wide culture of making each guest feel like they're the most important person in the the world during their stay. Great food and drinks help, but we all know customer experience is what drives growth and long term success. Since he likes fishing so much as anyone who is from the Gulf coast can attest to, he decided to include charters from his restaurants, which as a CPA is a brilliant way to deduct one's passion as a business expense. Go fishing, catch the fish, clean the fish, cook the fish, eat the fish. The holy grail of every fisherman's dream. Was he satisfied with saltwater fishing and only four restaurants? No, he wanted to explore fresh. So he decided that the Ross and Barnett reservoir, the res was a logical choice. Ron is a living example of merging business and passion together to bring a result that everyone wins.
Glenn Harper [:I suspect if you surveyed his staff they would say he's the best team leader in the world. We can't wait to delve into his epiphany on how he started his journey with the mythology that he chose. Thanks Ron for being on our show.
Ron Ladner [:I'm happy to be here.
Glenn Harper [:Well, great. Well, we love stalking our guests to find obscure facts and controversy and we start off that way to make things easy. And you know the first thing it says that you grew up in Kiln, Mississippi and wanted to be an astronaut since the days as a young boy. You Would sneak into John C. Stennis space Center. Is that true?
Ron Ladner [:No, no.
Glenn Harper [:Internet.
Julie Smith [:His research.
Glenn Harper [:Dang it.
Ron Ladner [:I know what that is. That sounds more like Brett Favre. That's where Brett Favre was born.
Glenn Harper [:Gotcha. We just made that. Where are you born at?
Ron Ladner [:In a little town called Long beach, which is right in the center of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Glenn Harper [:All right. And if you always lived in, in on Long beach, then is. Is that where you've been as a kid? You guys move around a lot or you. That was home and parents lived there and.
Ron Ladner [:No, that was home. I was born in Gulfport, which was the next city over, and we moved to Long beach when I was in kindergarten and my dad had that house, you know, up until I was 30 years old. So it was home. A small home, but home.
Glenn Harper [:It doesn't matter. Right. As long as it feels like home.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah.
Glenn Harper [:Did you have any siblings?
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, I had two brothers and sister and we grew up. I think I pulled it up on Zillow. I think the house was like 1300 square feet and there was four kids and one full bath. And that's just. You learn to kind of cope and to handle it.
Glenn Harper [:You know, what's funny with that is it's all perspective. How grateful one is about their circumstances. A hundred years earlier in a 300 square foot cabin with 15 kids growing up on a frontier somewhere, they thought they were in high cotton. And it just keeps graduating to like today, if. If you don't have a 5,000 square foot house, you're just. You're nobody. It's the damnedest thing.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah. You know, and I. I look back and just. I thought we were the poorest people in the world. And as an adult, I travel more. I spend time in Nairobi and you get to see the shanties where the kids grow up with no running water and 10 huts. And I've been to Mumbai and India. When you get to see these things firsthand, you kind of look back and say, you know, we actually had it a lot better than others.
Glenn Harper [:You know, that's it. Were your parents entrepreneurs or were they worked for a company?
Ron Ladner [:No, no. My dad was union electrician. Seems like in those days and times in the 80s, 70s and 80s, he was out of work more than he was working. So we typically struggled financially as a family, but my mother was a Catholic saint and she was kind of the anchor of our family that kept us together and kept us inspired and happy.
Glenn Harper [:You know, it's funny when you see somebody do the entrepreneurial journey, we try to backtrack that to see when did that really start? So when you were a kid, were you doing newspapers or you were Julia State painting rocks? What were you doing out there to hustle and make some money? Were you doing that?
Ron Ladner [:No, I was just trying to figure out why are we so poor? Okay. And I'm not gonna live like this. You know, I'm gonna figure out a way. And it was just. It was just more of a curiosity of kind of studying society and understand. I understand how doctors become high earners. I understand why maybe electricians are not high earners. But how do we.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, I'm just very curious to how. Why are we so poor and other people are doing so well? It was more of a curiosity that led to studying. Right. It's understanding and having this drive to come out of it. Yeah. I didn't have that person, and that's why I'm so passionate about it now with especially kids and younger folks. I didn't have, you know, someone in my life as a youngster coaching me on the business side. I got a lot of coaching from the sports side.
Ron Ladner [:You know, my dad, I just released a book, and I talk about how he instilled the competitive drive in me and the understanding of preparation and practice and execution. And I think that is what in my childhood, I can map back to my success as an entrepreneur and a business leader.
Glenn Harper [:So that would be the athletics. What sports did you play? I played all three, you know, chess, swimming, and lacrosse. I'm kidding.
Ron Ladner [:Cricket?
Glenn Harper [:Yes. I thought it's a big. Down there. It's big.
Ron Ladner [:Hockey, you know?
Glenn Harper [:Yes.
Ron Ladner [:We only had three. It was basketball, football, and baseball. That was it.
Glenn Harper [:So instead of you working for a job making money, you were immersed in athletics, and that's where you got kind of got your discipline right?
Ron Ladner [:You know, actually, I did both. And I look at the. The kids today, and they're going. We didn't go to camps. We didn't take vacations. The day I got out of school in the summer, I had a job, and so I was doing both. And a lot of times during school, I had a job doing something. I'd go to work after school.
Ron Ladner [:So, you know, we had to contribute to the pot. Our parents pot to feed us and clothes clothed us and. But we didn't do vacations if we weren't at school. We were working somewhere. We had to find a job.
Glenn Harper [:That's awesome.
Julie Smith [:What did you do? What did you do for work?
Ron Ladner [:Mostly construction or. I worked at a lumber yard for years in the summer. But it was all manual labor type stuff.
Glenn Harper [:That's not that hard when it's in the Mississippi in the summertime. I don't know why that would be difficult. I'm totally kidding. I mean, that's brutal.
Ron Ladner [:I mean, easy one is 100 degrees.
Glenn Harper [:Yes. I grew up on a farm, so it's the craziest thing. You do what you got to do, but you don't even realize it because you don't know any better. I mean, you didn't have air conditioning. I'm sure. And it just was what it was, right?
Ron Ladner [:Yeah. It's just what you're accustomed to. It was always hot, and we just got used to it. We managed to deal with it.
Glenn Harper [:So you had. Again, I'm trying to piece this together. So you're living where you're living. Parents do what they do. You guys doing what you do. You're trying to do athletics. You got to contribute to the household. And at some point, about how old were you? Like, this just doesn't.
Glenn Harper [:There's got to be something more out there. Why are we struggling so much? Why are other people not? What age you think that was? And what was, like, that thing that hit you in the head saying, what's going on? Made you question it.
Ron Ladner [:I think it's when I went to college and I didn't finish college, I was. I prioritized the fraternity over the academics.
Glenn Harper [:Smart. It worked out well for you.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah. And I. Again, the curiosity got me. I. I really thought the college curriculum, the academic stuff was just dumb.
Glenn Harper [:Yep.
Ron Ladner [:I just couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't engage like I should and apply myself like I was capable. And that was my first time to be around folks from, like, other part of the state culturally different than me, who grew up in different types of families. And I started seeing the difference. It's like, you know, there are. There. There is a chance.
Ron Ladner [:Right. There's other people who have made it in this world. And I got. Became real disconnected with the college courses, and I started. That's when I started really researching my own. A path out of here. Right. And I landed in sales.
Ron Ladner [:I know I can sell, and I know people who can sell can make money. And that's kind of where I planted my roots, was I'm going to become a salesperson, and I'm going to be the best there is. And that's kind of the path I took.
Glenn Harper [:What did you start off in college wanting to be when you grew up?
Ron Ladner [:Well, I was actually in the computer science program. And, yeah, I did okay. I was just fascinated with technology, and all of my buddies were in marketing classes. And so I said, you know, this is just too hard. So I went to the head of marketing who just recently passed away, and I said, look, I want to change my major from computer science to marketing, because this is more of me, right? He said, you know, you already have the gift to communicate with people and to sell, right? I can't teach you that. These other guys over here, I am teaching them to become better communicators, better salespeople. Think about it this way. If you stick with your computer science program and you have that natural gift to sell when it's time to get a job, people like IBM and Microsoft, they have Microsoft at the time, people like IBM are going to be much more attracted to your skills because you understand the technology side of it.
Ron Ladner [:And I believe you're going to be much more valuable. And that's what I did. I stuck with it. I didn't make it, but my first job was selling software in Dallas.
Glenn Harper [:That sounds horrible. Did you like it?
Ron Ladner [:Loved it. Did you?
Glenn Harper [:Just because you're talking to the people, it didn't matter what you're selling. You just like getting out and talking to people, right?
Ron Ladner [:Yeah. And I love going to the big city and the opportunity, and it was a great experience for me.
Julie Smith [:I'm curious, where did your siblings land?
Ron Ladner [:Kind of all over. My sister in Atlanta, my brother in California, and my youngest brother stayed and followed my dad's footsteps.
Glenn Harper [:Were you the only one that became an entrepreneur?
Ron Ladner [:Yes. Yes.
Glenn Harper [:Are you the oldest?
Ron Ladner [:Yes, I am.
Glenn Harper [:There you go. Well, you got to be the trailblazer. Well, you know, it's always interesting to see how people got where they got. And again, some people are just born entrepreneurs, and when an opportunity provides, they jump on it. Some people, you know, they needed something to, like, hit them to go do it. And some people just, they. They fall into it somehow. And in your case, you just ground, ground, ground.
Glenn Harper [:And all of a sudden you're like, this is what I want to do. And, like, you're selling software. How'd you decide on restaurants? That's a big job.
Julie Smith [:Oh, wait. Take us through the journey, though. So how long did you sell software?
Glenn Harper [:A year.
Ron Ladner [:I know. I want to go back. And you said, what moment did you decide that you. And we're talking about Ole Miss earlier. And I learned, like, late in high school and early in college that the pretty girls always ended up with guys with money. And I was like, you know what? I want a Shot at that. You know, you can do all you want and be as charming and look as good as you can, but you didn't have the total package. You didn't have a shot.
Ron Ladner [:But I, I went to work with a company called. It's a software consulting company called Cat Gemini. And I started out as like a programmer with those guys and worked my way to that sales position. And I real. I, I think I excelled better than I expected. And I studied a lot, I listened to tapes, and I did everything I could to consume as much information and become the best I could be. And at that time, you know, American Airlines is headquartered in Dallas. And I think a dozen salespeople that preceded me tried to break into that account, and no one succeeded.
Ron Ladner [:And so I went to the head of Southwest region. I said, I want to shot at it. He goes, everyone's failed. I said, well, I want a shot. And this is an example that I try to share with the younger folks that we mentor these days, that there's a lack of curiosity and the younger culture right now. And I'm a very curious person. And what I decided to do is, at that time, we didn't have Internet, right? So I couldn't. But I found this service that would track every newspaper or magazine article about any company, right? That's American Airlines, and they mail it to you.
Ron Ladner [:So of course, we didn't have security in those days, So I could just walk into the office of these people and all my competitors and my predecessors would walk in and say, hey, how you doing today? Is there anything I can do to help you out? I would walk in and say, hey, I hear American is about to hire a new CFO because your old CFO was let go. It looks like they're looking at the guy from Delta. And I always had news for him. I always informed them of something that they didn't know about, about. About their own company. And it got to the point where they couldn't wait to see me, right? Because I always had some news for them that, you know, hey, you guys just reported yesterday your third quarter earnings, and it looks like your revenues are higher and your bookings are higher. Oh, really? That's great. So that's, that's.
Ron Ladner [:And I eventually built American Airlines into the largest account in the Southwest region. And that's kind of when the light went on in my head that, that, you know what? Maybe, you know, I'm making these guys a lot of money, and no one, no one from my company did anything to help me get through that. Door and establish this account. Right. So why. Why am I working for someone else? And that's kind of when I decided to go off and do my own thing. And we ended up. I went to work for a much smaller company, kind of a competitor with more of a 100% commit.
Ron Ladner [:So I was just. I was like a. An agent for this company as a sales agent. So I wasn't employed, but I got a bigger piece of revenue. And then I turned. Turned into. I personally had more than half of the sales of the entire company with three other guys. And that's when I just said, that's it.
Ron Ladner [:It's time. And we started. I took one of the guys from there, and he and I started a software services company. We moved to Atlanta and then returned that into something pretty special as well.
Glenn Harper [:Did you then sell it out and then did something that was your exit to do this new gig or what'd you do with that?
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, we. We. We sold out. And, you know. You know, we didn't make enough money to retire, but I made enough money to get out of Atlanta and get back to the saltwater where I was born and raised and always wanted to be. And that's what we did. We had a second home on the Mississippi Gulf coast. So we sold a house in Atlanta.
Ron Ladner [:And our second home, we bought a dream home on the water In Pascan, Mississippi, 11 months before Katrina came right through now.
Glenn Harper [:Oh, that probably was not good.
Ron Ladner [:It was terrible. Yeah.
Julie Smith [:So when did you meet your wife?
Ron Ladner [:The previous company, the smaller company I was working for in Dallas, I. They assigned a. A technical sales guy. We worked together. And I remember at the Christmas. We traveled a lot. At the Christmas party, his wife came up to me. She said, I've been watching you, and I don't trust you with my husband, and I'm gonna get you married.
Ron Ladner [:All right, well, that's fine. I said, a week later, she calls me. She goes, I'm gonna set you up with a blind date with one of my best friends. And ironically, she grew up. She's from Mississippi. She grew up her childhood in Atlanta in the same neighborhood as my wife. So she told me, this girl's beautiful. She used to be a model, and she can't wait to go out with you later, find out that my wife told her no.
Ron Ladner [:I'm trying to reconcile with my boyfriend that we broke up with. So, you know, the persistence coupled with my arrogance. At that time, I literally called her 30 days. She. She said no every day. All right? She blew me off. 30 days. I called her sometimes.
Ron Ladner [:I talked to her mother an hour, and finally she gave me a Wednesday, and we were engaged six months later and then married six months after that.
Julie Smith [:So that was the best sales deal you've ever closed.
Glenn Harper [:That's impressive. 30 days of no.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, yeah.
Julie Smith [:Does she tell. Does she tell the same story? I'm curious.
Ron Ladner [:What's that?
Julie Smith [:I said, does she tell the same story?
Ron Ladner [:You need to get the book, because she explains the whole thing in my book. Yeah, yeah, she'll tell the same story.
Glenn Harper [:You know, it's. It's. It's funny how this life happens for everybody, and you're always where you're supposed to be doing what you're supposed to be doing. And it's. You know, at some point you were doing this for yourself and your customers, and then you had the exit, and then you're doing your thing and you're like, you probably had a feeling with this, with your restaurants. I think that's when you started those, right? You're like, well, how can I do this? Is that how that transaction happened or. That's how the story goes.
Ron Ladner [:Our town, Pasco Shan, was completely wiped out. There's nothing standing. You know, we had a decision to make, and it was at a point in my life where I just didn't know if I had it in me to go through the rebuilding process. If you could see how it wasn't like, hey, we need to repair a roof, but we need to tear our house down and start. It's like rebuilding this whole city. There's no commerce, there's no nothing. And, you know, Laura and I, my wife, we were staying temporarily in Destin, which is probably a two and a half, three hour drive. And I was driving back every day, and, you know, we just kind of talked about it, said, you know, God has given us the resources to really help out here, all right? And that's.
Ron Ladner [:We shouldn't take our blessings and our gifts for granted. This is why we have what we have, so we can help. And so we made a conscious decision that we're going to stay and fight. And through that process, I got real involved with the city and trying to. The economic development component of what can we do? And there was a bait shop in the harbor, and I was talking to those guys prior to the storm because they want to get. They want to sell it, and it's owned by the city. And I thought about a great redevelopment of this little bait shop because that's really what I wanted to do, is commercial development with zero employees and Just kind of just thinking through the spirit of the town was, was broken. There was no hope with the people that they, they were down on their luck and everyone was just in this terrible mood.
Ron Ladner [:Right. So this came with this idea of like, let's build a waterfront restaurant. A place where the people in this town can gather and have their spirits lifted to give them hope, to make them feel better and to make them feel respected. A place where they can laugh and be part of the community with others. That's exactly what we did. The original, the original, that was our original mission. It wasn't to, all right, we're gonna, we need to do 15% and, and, and, and profits. It's just do it.
Ron Ladner [:If we don't make money, that's fine, but we're going to be disciplined because I'm a disciplined operator regardless of goal is right. And that was our mission. And, and the sub submission was, you know, let's create jobs for people and give them some dignity and respect and give them a place that they're proud to work and they know they're being treated fairly and that the owner's taken care of. An ironic thing is none of that has changed for 18 years. That's exactly how we operate today. And the lesson is, you know, I shared this with whoever's interested is the right, this is the right thing to do, to take care of people, to make sure that your guests come in and you know, our mission is to surrender yourself to our guests and to make sure that when they leave, when they walk out that door, they're happier than when they walk through the door. And that, that, that kind of gives our employees their mission. And it's not about all right, take the order, then ret read it back, then go get their drinks.
Ron Ladner [:It's like, what do you need to do with that person today to make them feel better about themselves? Because that's a guy, that's the people who are going to return and everyone's different so everyone needs to be treated differently. But your goal is to make sure.
Glenn Harper [:That they feel better on your employees. Are they long term employees then?
Ron Ladner [:Well that's, and I go over this in the book is one of the proudest metrics for me is that, you know, when we started this, people said you don't know how to run a restaurant. I said, I don't need to know how to run a restaurant. I can build a culture and run an organization. That's, that's all I want to do. And we were professional services company and we've kind of transformed the restaurant culture from transient employees to a full time home for people. And if you go do the research, the average tenure for restaurant employees in the United States is 75 days. For us, it's four years. So we've transformed that whole model.
Ron Ladner [:It's more of a permanent model.
Julie Smith [:So you're building this first restaurant against all, all odds. Right. So everything needs rebuilt. How do you get the resources to prioritize this restaurant to really make an impact on this community?
Ron Ladner [:You know, we have relationships and I think people, you know, the contractors kind of prioritized us. They too wanted to see some, some life in the town. They felt that, hey, this is a great idea. If we get, if we can get this town to come alive, you know, it's gonna be good for us too.
Glenn Harper [:Create a buzz.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, people are gonna want to move back. And that's kind of how we pitch it to them. You know, the better we do, the better, better you're going to do. So yeah, and I prioritize this over rebuilding our house. It's, let's, let's turn this into something special. We're all going to win everybody in this town, not just myself.
Julie Smith [:So you have this vision, you have this mission. While you're going through the process, at what point do you realize the impact?
Ron Ladner [:Well, this was, we opened in 2007 and this was right before the financial crisis. And I just opened the restaurant and had some people running it, not paying attention because I literally just wanted to break even. I put up all the money and it was just an investment for me, like a bond fund. If I just get my interest back, I'm happy. And so I embarked on a commercial real estate, real estate development mission. And I was going to do small condos, like six unit condos. And I literally bought the property across the street overlooking the water. And that was during 2008.
Ron Ladner [:And not a lender in the world would even have a meeting with, to talk about. There was no one was lending money on anything. So without funding, I really couldn't do anything. And I pursued it. One thing hit me is like 2008, we did five times the revenue that I projected. And I started digging deeper into Shaggies. And I said, we're in a recession, but people are still spending money on cheeseburgers, cold beer, margaritas. And that's when the light went off and said this, this may be a recession proof business model the way we have it set up.
Ron Ladner [:And you know, I kind of did some research and just decided that we're going to open another one to see if. Are we on to something special here, or is this just a special place that can't be duplicated because of the story behind it? And so we opened our next one in Biloxi, Mississippi, which is 28 miles away. And Biloxi did two and a half times the revenue as one in Pasker's stand. And that's when I said, all right, yeah, we're on something, isn't it?
Julie Smith [:So wait, at what point do you sell the land across from the first restaurant?
Ron Ladner [:Well, we. We built another restaurant there, and that was part of the story. We built another restaurant there. A second restaurant is a different concept. It was a little bit higher end. It did good, but nowhere near as good as shaggies. And I ended up renting that out to a. A restaurant.
Ron Ladner [:Guy opened another restaurant there, and he ended up buying that whole property for me. So I. I wanted to concentrate on just nude shaggies. And so we sold that in probably 2012.
Glenn Harper [:Isn't it funny? The catastrophic events absolutely pushed you away from something into something else that if they wouldn't have happened, I don't know where you'd be sitting today. You know what I mean? I mean, catastrophic events, the hurricane, financial crisis, you couldn't do what you wanted. You had to do something different, and it turned out perfect. That's crazy.
Ron Ladner [:You know, we tell our people when they get down or something happens or there's a setback in life. This is great news, right? You know, hurricane knocked your house, now that's great. We have opportunity now. If you go look at our five locations and, you know, we. We made a conscious decision before COVID to not add locations. You know, most of the people in my market, in my industry, measure themselves on how many locations they have. We just measure ourselves on our revenue. And so what we decided to do, since we own all of our real estate, we decided to expand on our current footprint.
Ron Ladner [:And from 2019 to this year, I think our revenue in those five locations is up like 60%. So it's going real well for us. But all of our locations go back to catastrophic. I think it's the way you accept it or reject it. Right. And I've always accepted these things as opportunities. And if you look at our five locations, except for our Jackson location, our four locations were built on land that was previously occupied by a food service business or retail business that was knocked down because of a hurricane. So we took advantage of that.
Ron Ladner [:You know, if there weren't hurricanes, there would be no Shaggies. Because all the locations we have now, there would be a restaurant standing there that's not ours. So we looked at this as an opportunity. Hey, there's nothing left standing. Well, that means there's a lot of land for a lot of different opportunities on the water.
Glenn Harper [:So the fun part of this is as you're doing this, you're developing your people, they've got purpose, they're staking around. Long term, your customer experience is growing. You feel good about what's going on, the community's rallying around it, and you're like, you know what? I got this passion of fishing. When did you decide to mix that into the locations to add the, the chartering and, and let you go do what you really love to do, which is obviously fish. No fisherman says they're not a fisherman.
Julie Smith [:I think he really likes a cheeseburger and beer.
Glenn Harper [:No, he likes fish.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, I, I have to give all of the credit to my business partner. Remember Junior? And he approached me right after Katrina and he, he was a well known fishing guy in Venice, Louisiana. Blue marlin tuna. And he started doing that when he was in high school. He ended up going to college at Millsaps in Jackson, Mississippi. And I didn't know Rimmer, he's 20 years younger than me, but he, he got a real job after college and he was still fishing on the wheel weekends. He was taking charter, he was chartering people out of business. He was driving three hours to fish on the weekend.
Ron Ladner [:And we ended up through, through a friend. I ended up fishing with him. He said he wanted my advice. And he said, man, I really think this is what, this is where my heart is, chartering. If I could start my own company, I could build this hospitality charter business. And this is where my heart is. And I told him, I said, brother, that's where your heart is. This is where you need to be, right? And the next question, I go through this, I spent one chapter on this in the book.
Ron Ladner [:So he looks at me, goes, well, that's what I'm gonna do. I trust you. You've been successful. He goes, I only have one problem. I said, what's that? He goes, I need a boat. I have no money. My credit is terrible. I was like, well, stop right there.
Ron Ladner [:He goes, would you consider partnering with me? We'll buy the boat together. I'll handle the operations and you can go fish whenever you want. And I got home and I told my wife about it. I said, I've got to help this guy. I mean, I love him. He's a great guy. You tell he had a great heart. He was just a good human being.
Ron Ladner [:So we ended up partnering together and that's how we met. And that's when I started fishing. He during the BP oil spill, another disaster, Rimmer was in the right place at the right time and formed a company to support BP and the state of Louisiana in the cleanup effort. He did really, really, really well. That was a, you know, short term, short term venture for him and he was kind of looking for something to do and he. That's when we were looking at opening a new restaurant, Pensacola beach, and he asked if he could, hey, man, now I want to be your partner. I want to help you out like you helped me, and I like to join you in the restaurant and expansion. And we became business partners.
Ron Ladner [:And he's kind of one that got me, no pun intended, hooked on the fishing and especially the blue marlin fishing.
Glenn Harper [:You know, it's so bizarre. You know, most people, it's hard to trust somebody and it's hard to help somebody putting it out there where they have zero experience, zero cash, zero whatever. That was a big ask for him to do that for you. That's a big thing for you to help him out with that. And sometimes you just got to say yes, right? And not more often than not, it doesn't work. But when it does work, it's really special.
Ron Ladner [:Well, I talk about this in the book and to me it's real important. But what I say is that one of the most important achievements for an entrepreneur or a business leader is to find his replacement. And a replacement that's better than him. And that's exactly what I did with Remmer. And culturally, we spend a lot of time mentoring people, whether they're going to be a manager for us later or they're going to leave us in three years and go be a manager at Dell Computer. It's important for us to give them as much wisdom and guidance. And maybe it's because I didn't have that growing up. And I just feel that, you know, God has given me this gift and these talents.
Ron Ladner [:I need to share them with these young kids who are interested in us. And we typically, most of our managers come from within. And we spend a lot of time, we find is that managers from national chains, we spend more time breaking their habits than we do producing real results. And I'm gonna give you an example. This is a really good example of our culture and how we develop people. My boat captain has been fishing with Rimmer since He was seven years old. He did an internship. He graduated from Ole Miss with a mechanical engineering degree two years ago.
Ron Ladner [:He did an internship with us on my fishing boat, the Cheeseburger, two years ago. And he got credit for it because part of the internship was managing budgets, maintenance, all the things that you would use, all the skills to managing people, managing schedules. And now he graduated. He said, I don't want to be a mechanical engineer and go to work for engineering company or an electric company. I want to go to work with you guys. What is he going to do? And so we talked about it, and he wants to run the Cheeseburger as a boat captain. He's doing a fantastic job, but part of the process is I'm mentoring him right now to take a bigger role in the restaurants. So I'm teaching him to budget, how to create a culture, how to treat people, how to inspire people, how to motivate people, how to deal with vendors and contractors, how to manage money, how to inspire people to come work for you, how to keep people employed.
Ron Ladner [:We're teaching him all of these things at a much smaller level as he runs our fishing boat and our motor yacht.
Glenn Harper [:You know, one's point in an entrepreneur journey we see a lot is most people are passionate about what they do, and they have this false illusion they do it for the money, but it's never really about the money. They want to make some money, but you reach the absolute apex when you are impacting others and you are teaching others how to be successful. And it sounds like that's what you're doing, and that's got to be the most rewarding thing that you've ever done, right?
Ron Ladner [:Yeah. And I don't think I'll add to that. I don't think all entrepreneurs reach that apex.
Glenn Harper [:No, they don't.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, there are a lot of them who still chasing the money first. And that's. That's a model that will blow up at some point. But back to your point. Yeah, it's real, real important for us to make a big impact on people's lives. And we do that through. You know, a lot of these folks in the restaurant business really never had that mentor or that person in their life. We're teaching them things now at age 30 that they probably should have learned at 15.
Glenn Harper [:Yep.
Ron Ladner [:It's just solid manners and, and respect and work ethic, social skills. And, you know, I think that's why a lot of these folks hang around. They're getting more than just a job. They're getting two guys who care for them and want to really see them succeed not just in the workplace, but.
Glenn Harper [:At home in life.
Ron Ladner [:We want to help you at home. And I was on a recent podcast and they asked me, the guy goes up, I used to sell health insurance and that's a big topic today. Do you guys have health insurance? I said, well, it's not just a health insurance. We do provide our people with more. Just, just an insurance policy kind of take a holistic view and say for someone to be healthy, in our opinion that our workforce the number one path to helping people solving their problems at home. And we take it case by case situation. They may be, maybe they can't pay their bills because they have a sick child or maybe they have an elderly parent and they're helping them. So we go down the path of trying to understand each individual and help them overcome what may be going on on at home and we find out that that's the best investment is to making sure that not just a health insurance policy, but they're being healthy mentally and emotionally and their family is doing well.
Julie Smith [:So we like to end the podcast with one last question. It's the hardest question of the whole podcast.
Glenn Harper [:It's deep.
Julie Smith [:But what is your end game?
Ron Ladner [:I don't think about an end game. I don't, I don't know what that means. Endgame. I'm just living, live every day and just be thankful that I'm alive. And you know, I tell my guys I have four, I have a captain and three crew member and say, hey, let's go fishing, you know, next year. I'm right now, I have the money and the health to do this. You can lose both of them overnight. So let's go fishing.
Ron Ladner [:I can stand, I stand up and fight a 600 pound blue marlin for two and a half hours. All right, let's keep doing this. And you know, we just try to live every day and, and use our talents. Every day is different. I don't, I'm not a long term planning guy. It's, hey, let's, let's just fish. Let's enjoy the boats. We have a 97 foot foot boat and a 60 foot boat.
Ron Ladner [:I fish and my wife comes down and we hop through the Caribbean and just live a day at a time and try to stay as healthy as I can. I work out every single day and just live a full life and be very, very faithful and be ready when my time comes. But that end game is to be ready to have my conversation with the man.
Julie Smith [:Well, you answered it. Perfectly. Because for people like you, there really is no end game. You're never going to stop. You have too much knowledge, too much passion. You have too much to give. So you answered it perfectly.
Glenn Harper [:Again, you reached that apex of helping others achieve their greatness they didn't know they had. That's when you know when you've reached the point and why would you stop doing that? That's the best.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah. You know, it's just like we were talking about sports earlier. You look at, you know, these coaches, like NFL coaches like Bill Parcel or even college coaches, Nick Saban. And if you've ever seen the graphics of these guys, they'll do like a coaching tree and who they coached and, you know, how successful they were. And then they spawned off other coaches and, you know, Nick Saban and work for Belichick and I'm sorry, Bill Parcells. Saban and Belichick were assistants on the parcel. He turned these guys. He made.
Ron Ladner [:He made them better coaches than he was. You know. That's right. I think that that's a great way to look at things. And Bill Parcell is probably happy and very proud that he was able to.
Glenn Harper [:Create a legacy. That's what you're trying to do. Well, I can tell you this if you would have been a pleasure having you on here. We're looking forward to this conversation for a while. I hope our listeners will glean some things of There's a right way to do business, a wrong way to the business, and the way everybody does it. And if you have a choice, it's always better to do it the right way. And if you want to give a plug to your book or something, that would be great. So people know what that looks like.
Glenn Harper [:And then how to get a hold of your restaurants if they happen to be in the neighborhood.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, the book, we released it actually September 18th on National Cheeseburger Day. And it's called Shaggy's Cheeseburger. And it's a real life tragedy to triumph story. And the cheeseburger is a metaphor of when I started writing the book, the name of the book was the Shaggy Story. And I just felt like that was a lame, you know, uninspiring title. So I got thinking about it and the Cheeseburger is our number one seller at all times, even though we're a waterfront seafood restaurant. That's why I named my boat the Cheeseburger. And that you think about a cheeseburger and, you know, cheeseburger kind of brings you joy and comfort in a messy world.
Ron Ladner [:And metaphorically, that's exactly what our culture is. It's bringing people comfort, joy and happiness in a messy world. And we released a book, and for the past three or four weeks, we're Amazon number one best seller in the restaurant category. But what I'm most proud of is we were the number one bestseller in business biographies.
Glenn Harper [:Wow.
Ron Ladner [:It wasn't just that we were number one, that category, it was the company we were in. You know, we were ahead of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Elon Musk, Donald Trump. Very big accomplishment for us. So the book is doing very well. And Simon and Schuster just signed me on. They're going to publish the audiobook, which should come out in the next couple readings.
Glenn Harper [:Congratulations. That's a big deal. Well done.
Julie Smith [:We can find the book on Amazon. And then. Do you have a website or anything that you want to.
Ron Ladner [:Yeah, I have a website. It's just Ron Ladner. R O N L A D N E R dot com. If someone wants to get in touch with me, they get my email address there.
Glenn Harper [:Awesome. Well, really appreciate you having on the show today. And I hope our listeners will get all kinds of good nuggets out of that. This is the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:Julie Smith.
