Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Clayton Gardner was living the glittery life as a business partner with David Koch at Seven steakhouse and Escape nightclub in Minneapolis, 30,000-square-foot see-and-be-seen hot spots that were once as riddled with controversy as patronized by celebrities.
“When it starts getting bad and you’re not seeing eye to eye, it was time to move on,” he says about the former relationship, which included a legal feud alleging financial mismanagement and personal shenanigans on the job, and ended in a sale in 2016.
“It was a hard breakup with Seven,” because of all he’d been through with Koch, whom Gardner calls a “very, very smart guy.”
“I learned a lot of lessons from David, the majority was what not to do,” Gardner concedes.
On a chilly day in October, he was tending to a visitor at the bar of his one-year-old restaurant, Caribbean Smokehouse, in Stillwater, a low-key, family-owned place in which he’s majority partner.
His brother-in-law, Adam Randall, is the chef and a minority partner with two other family friends.
This time he vowed to do it completely differently: simply, with sane hours and time for his family and other pursuits like coaching girls basketball. There’s still plenty of stress, like how will business be now that the weather’s turning cold again, but he’s at peace with his choice.
His chief lesson:
“I try to stay in my boundaries, knowing when you step into lanes” that belong to someone else, “there’s confusion,” he said. “I also learned what hospitality really means” from Chef Randall. “He is multi-talented. He can cook anything.”
Randall and Gardner’s sister, Barbara, started dating when they all were teenagers.
“He used to be our DJ” at the Roller Gardens in St. Louis Park, said Gardner. He is the youngest of 12 siblings, his sister the second-youngest. “When they started dating, my mother and father wanted to meet the people we were around,” he said, and his mother was a great cook.
“Adam would come over and we’d say, ‘Let’s play ditch or football.’ He’d say, I’m good.’ He wanted to be with my mom and dad. They were always shopping and cooking.”
Gardner also has time to coach basketball again, the girls’ traveling team at Bloomington Kennedy High School. “Basketball is kind of like my sanctuary,” he said. “You have these pressures, you walk in the gym, start working with kids who need that adult. You forget about everything else for 90 minutes.”
Gardner has four kids who are grown, including a former standout basketball player at De La Salle High School. His youngest is in eighth grade. “She’s going to be something special,” he said.
Does he have lots of tales from the days at Seven and Escape? “Oh my god,” is all he’ll say. “In that atmosphere it was always early mornings and late nights.
We wanted a family restaurant,” he said, and the rewards are many.
“To have my family life at home, I don’t think there’s words to describe,” Gardner says. Cheers to him, and anyone else who finds a way to stay in their lane, operate a business and still have time and space for pursuits that become their sanctuary.
This is one coach who’s winning at the game of life.
