A Quick Drink with Speed Rack's Lynnette Marrero & Ivy Mix (TCGP S3 E15)

# AI Transcript:

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Announcer:
Jonathan Pogash is the cocktail guru, a mixologist and hospitality expert. Ah, see? You know big words. Dude, I'm the cocktail guru. Cheers. Jeffrey's his dad, a wine and spirits author, historian, and consultant.

Jeffrey:
I do my homework.

Announcer:
With decades of experience, they're always looking for the next big thing. Join this father and son duo for a few laughs as they explore the hottest trends in hospitality with the service industry's leading trailblazers and tastemakers. Welcome to the Cocktail Guru Podcast.

Jonathan:
All right, to the audience out there, welcome to another episode of the Cocktail Guru Podcast. Dad, you are there, obviously. in full form, Jonathan.

Jeffrey:
It's great. I'm here. I'm here. We're here in the remote town of West Orange, New Jersey, soon to be the home of the Hollywood film studio of the East.

Jonathan:
Oh, OK. Oh, yes. I think I did. Yeah, I did hear a little bit about that down. Is that going to be down at the Edison lab area?

Jeffrey:
Yes, the birthplace of film.

Jonathan:
That's right.

Jeffrey:
Oh, yeah. The Black Mariah.

Jonathan:
That's very exciting. We should do an entire episode about that.

Jeffrey:
But yes, we should.

Jonathan:
But I just saw you did now. We had we had a really nice brunch together with the family in New York City at Bubby's, which was a lot of fun, wasn't it?

Jeffrey:
Yes, we did. Yes, it was great fun. Loved seeing the kids and the food was very good and the Bloody Mary was delicious.

Jonathan:
It was.

Jeffrey:
But now, today, in honor of our guests, I have a different drink. I have a drink that is rum-based, because I know that both of our guests are rum lovers. So I decided to make myself a mojito. But I thought back to the days when you worked at a place called Town, that restaurant and bar, which was owned by Jeffrey Zakarian way back when. It was in the Chambers Hotel. And there was a young bartender there who you worked with. He became your mentor, Albert Trummer. And Albert did something special for me. He was so happy to meet me. And he said, I'm going to make you something very special. And he'd made me a mojito. unlike any I had ever had before, because it was made, now this is not necessarily revolutionary, but it was made with dark rum instead of light rum. And I'm not sure that I had ever had a mojito made with dark rum. And it's delicious. I love it. And I have my little antique stirrer here in honor of our guests as well.

Jonathan:
That's very nice. Well, let's get to our guests. And, you know, I think that this is the very first time in our three plus years of the Cocktail Guru podcast, where we have a returning guest, because 50% of our guests today have already been on the Cocktail Guru podcast. And it is a huge honor to have both of these wonderful women as our guests. So two legends in the world of cocktails, Ivy Mix and Lynette Marrero, they both happen to be women who are dedicated through the cause of working on behalf of female bartenders through their organization Speed Rack, which has gained quite a bit of notoriety throughout the last, I don't know, has it been about a dozen or more years? Something of that nature. And they have this new book called A Quick Drink, The Speed Rack Guide to Winning Cocktails for Any Mood. And I think it was written with one of your past acquaintances, if I'm not mistaken, dad, is that right?

Jeffrey:
Well, yes, Megan Kreekbaum is one of my past acquaintances.

Jonathan:
Yes. Well, Ivy is also co-owner of the James Beard nominated Leyenda with, of course, Julie Reiner. And she is a legend unto herself. Yes, we had Julie on the show as well. And it was named Best American Bartender at Tales of the Cocktail. And of course, Lynette, we know Lynette. She's a bartending guru and also the co-creator with Ivy of Speed Rack. And we talked about the Ready to Drink line, Delola Beverages, last time Lynette was on. Lynette Morero and Ivy Mix, welcome to the Cocktail Guru podcast.

Jeffrey:
And Lynette is equally legendary. And it's like having mixology royalty with us here, having these two lovely young ladies.

Lynnette:
Thanks for having us.

Jeffrey:
Yeah, thank you so much. Enormous contributions to the to the industry in general.

Jonathan:
Lynette and Ivy and Lynette, as you know, we always start off the podcast by asking this one question. What is your desert island drink? And Lynette, you have already answered it. But I apologize. I don't exactly remember what it was. But do you remember what you said, Lynette?

Lynnette:
I don't remember what I said then, but I think if I had to pick one from the book that were launched, I would say it's the Smoke Show. It's a fun cocktail that actually takes a spin on the piña colada, but uses scotch whiskey instead. It's fun because you get to change people's perception of one, what a whiskey drink is. Um, with lots of different, so we use like a really smoky Scotch, some Holo Rosa sherry, some coconut cream, demerara, and a whole egg. So it has like kind of that flip, um, tasty vibe with some grated nutmeg.

Jonathan:
Delicious. Uh, Ivy Mix, what about you?

Ivy:
Yeah, going off of what you guys were talking about before, what that mojito variation sounds like to me is a Queen's Park Swizzle, which is a riffraff mojito. I call it like a grilled mojito. It's got muddled mint on the bottom, a little bit of a drum, and then crushed ice and some Angostura on top. It's super delicious.

Jeffrey:
Well, I did everything except put the Angostura in.

Ivy:
You're missing out. Next time, do it. It has to look pretty, though. It's a drink that always gets called on speed rack and no one ever makes it look good enough because it takes time. But you should try it.

Jeffrey:
Yeah, I like it. I must say I'm enjoying this drink immensely. And I'm not a bartender and I don't make particularly good drinks at all. But I'm very happy to do this one.

Jonathan:
You're too humble, Dad. Your drinks are OK.

Jeffrey:
I'm a cocktail historian, but not a bartender.

Jonathan:
Well, Lynette and Ivy, I'd like to start off because I don't think I know the answer to this. How did you guys meet and kind of develop, kind of blend your brains and everything that's going on? into creating such an amazing organization like SpeedRack.

Ivy:
Do you want to start, Ivy? Sure, yeah. So we actually met on a Saturday night shift. I was cocktail waitressing at Milewell in the East Village. It was like 2009. And the other person called out on the floor. So Phil Ward, who owned it, had to call an SOS out and called in Lynette. And I was like, oh my gosh, Saturday night, we're at the busiest bar in town. I have some lady in here who doesn't know her way from, you know, she doesn't know anything. She's never been here before. Like, this is going to be a horrible shift. And I ended up being like, okay, like, let's, let's do this. You take those four tables right there. I'm going to take all the rest. And next thing you knew, She's running drinks to my tables. She's just doing it. I'm like, holy shit. But I was like, this is great. We clearly work well together. And we had a great time. And we went out afterwards and had a drink. And she was like, oh, I'm going to run this thing. It's called Lupec. It's called Lazy Night for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails. And I was like, that's cool. What's that? Can I get involved in that? And long story short, a few months went by, I joined, and I decided that I was going to, you know, join Lupec, and then I actually sat down next to Lynette at the Super Bowl in 2011, and I was like, I have this idea, it's called Speed Rack, do you want to do it? And she was like, yeah, and that's how it started.

Lynnette:
Wow.

Jonathan:
Does that story check out, Lynette?

Lynnette:
Yeah, I mean, we had been doing events, so, like, probably Ivy had been involved in Lupec at that point. We sat down for probably at least eight or nine months, and we were, you know, doing lots of events around town, like, the whole idea of the Lupec chapter, and especially we borrowed, you know, the people who inspired me to start the New York chapter, Misty Kalkofen and Kirsten Amon, or Kitty Amon, from Boston, when I met them at Tales of the Cocktail one year, And they had a cocktail book that they wrote with Lupec. And I just saw what they were doing, which was bringing bartenders and people surrounding the hospitality industry together to do events. And they were raising money for charities within their community. And I thought that that was extremely impactful. So I was like, well, also, maybe we can do this. And what we can do is take over spaces that were predominantly held by men. are run by men and bartend there. So we did events, you know, we took over Death & Co. We took over, a lot of times we took over, what's the one? I'm thinking, can't forget, but all these different bars, it'll come to me in two seconds, that, you know, were traditionally more male-heavy bartended and they would let us come in, take over the bar and then do some events. We were working the Manhattan Cocktail Classic one year because Don Lee and John Deragon, big supporters, were like, hey, you know what? What if the Lupec group wants to learn how to do batching large scale for an event? We can offer a program where Lupec members, and this was nationally, could come and hang out and they can learn how to batch and set up for seminars. And that was a really great opportunity. And that was something that we were all excited to do. And Ivy was a part of that. And so was our friend, Rachel Shaw. And, you know, there was a legendary account that happened on that day when we were there. And Ivy and Rachel were tapped to go be in a video because they didn't have any women bartenders. Like, we just need women bartenders. And so Rachel and Ivy did this video series. And it was like, but there's all these women who are here. They're just working. They're in the back making stuff happen. And so it's kind of an eye-opening moment of that, A, there was enough exposure for the women in the hospitality industry. And if there were, they were behind or behind service bar or in someplace else that they weren't being seen. So that was when Ivy kind of had this idea and approached

Jeffrey:
As a point of history, may I just say something about Lupec?

Lynnette:
Yeah. Do you mind?

Jeffrey:
Go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to read your mission statement, which I think is very clever, very interesting, too. It is a guerrilla women's history action collective that works to dismantle the patriarchy by proffering delicious classic cocktails and surreptitiously teaching thought-provoking women's history. We are dangerous women gathering to work undercover, chipping away at the patriarchy. I love it. Wow. Wow.

Lynnette:
And that mission statement was started by the original chapter who started in Pittsburgh. And it was a group of feminists and scholarly women who liked going into bars and having classic cocktails and talking about gender and politics. And they found that the only places they could find who still made those drinks were in these what they called these old man bars. And so they would go into these spaces and disrupt the space. And that was their mission. And, you know, obviously when the hospitality industry got a hold of it, you know, we adapted it a bit to our mission a little bit more, which was where it was more doing things in hospitality. But it was, you know, if they didn't start it, it was great. We all just kind of

Jonathan:
leaned in. And two very important missions of Speed Rack are obviously the charitable component and partnering with various charities, but also the empowerment vis-a-vis competition. So Ivy, how did the sort of competition element come about? I mean, we've all kind of participated in competitions, and I feel like so many bartenders have never competed. and kind of bringing bartenders who've never competed to learn how to compete and then to compete is extremely empowering.

Ivy:
Yeah, I mean, at the time, you know, all these cooking shows, like all the shows and everything on TV were taking off, all these competitions were taking off. Personally, I'm not a massive fan. I don't watch a lot of it. Lynette is a big fan. So I was, you know, I was kind of come up in the industry and having kind of a hard time doing it. I was like, Hey, I've been bartending for years, but in the cocktail industry, all of a sudden it was like, actually lady, you're more of a cocktail waitress. And I was like, well, what the hell? I've been bartending literally for years. Like, why can't I do this too? And, um, you know, I entered some cocktail competitions, this local ones in New York being a young bartender. And like, I was, almost always the only girl there. And I was just like, okay. And to be frank, I'm not very good at competitions, ironically enough. But I was like, hmm, this is interesting. And the whole idea about Speedwreck originally was like, okay. I was just kind of riding the wave, if I'm being perfectly honest. Cocktail competitions were starting to pop off. I didn't see many women at them. They were all over TV. And I was like, well, why don't we just do a cocktail competition that's literally just for women? And let's make sure it's on stage. It's like a big event. It's a party. Because Lynette was doing all these Loot Pack events for charity. One in particular that really inspired me, she did one for this tsunami relief in Japan. And I was like, okay, they got all these brands to pay to put on the event, and then they sold tickets, and then they raised money. Genius! We should do this, but we should do it for women, and then why not do it for the thing that affects women the most, which is breast cancer. So I was just inspired by little things I saw people doing, and I thought competition was good because it's like, I'm an identical twin. I'm horrifically competitive. Like anything else on earth, your biggest attribute could be your biggest fault. Mine's my competitive spirit, I think. And I was like, let's just get people on stage and have them duke it out and may the best woman win. And it will really prove to everyone out there. The point was, this is how good we are at this job. You can put us up against other women, other men. You should put someone in your service well and see who can rock it out on a Saturday night, because this will be your best bet. And that was the idea.

Jeffrey:
And thank goodness, because I'll tell you, things were awfully boring when there was nothing but the patriarchy dominating the cocktail industry.

Ivy:
Yeah. Diversity is the spice of life, you know? That's all we can lay on them. That's all we can lay on them. All right. It's Feedback's mission is to make sure that it's a little bit more diverse.

Jeffrey:
And not only did you bring beauty to the industry, but also a great deal of sensibility when it came to creating new.

Lynnette:
Yeah, we had, you know, obviously we leaned into the the woman we saw and the mentors at the time, Julie Reiner, you know, who was doing great things. So I got my start working with the Flatiron Lounge and Craft Cocktails and, you know, Audrey Saunders. And I think there was just this Collective clearly we were all over the country wanting to, you know, stand out, you know, we've Bridget Albert was doing the work in Chicago. We started meeting all these people and these women who had been building their, you know, really making a name for themselves. And we just wanted to expand that and and also give a little bit back of what we we gained from working where we were in New York and having access to, you know, people who were dusting off all the cocktail books like Dale DeGraff would walk in our bar, Dave Wondrich would walk in our bar, Gaz Regan would walk in our bar. we to be able to ask them questions so when you know we needed judges we asked those people to do it and they did and they were willing to do a really hard thing of sitting on a stage and mentoring these younger bartenders and critiquing them. But when we decided to base the competition on classic cocktails, didn't realize how much that would impact the rest of the years that Speedwrack was going, because it still serves as an opportunity for new bartenders to get a book of classics that maybe they're not as accustomed to making anymore. And they start studying and training

Jeffrey:
And we should really stress that the money that is made through Speed Rack goes to breast cancer research, education, and prevention.

Lynnette:
Yep. We have amazing partners who are doing incredible things for really battling disease. We were honored this year by the Pink Agenda. And in that conversation, we got to hear about all the incredible advances that they have helped fund. A lot of them are advanced treatments many of our Speed Rack friends have either benefited from if they've been affected by breast cancer themselves or someone who is close to them has benefited from. So there's also something really beautiful to see longevity and how our community together has come together to raise these funds and have an impact on something.

Jonathan:
And I'd like to talk a bit more about the actual format of Speed Rack and also the book in just one second, and we will be right back. The Cocktail Guru has some very exciting news. We now sell booze! That's right, you can now browse our shop for Cocktail Guru swag and your favorite spirits in the same place. We personally have chosen all of the items in our store. Are you looking for a water bottle with stainless steel straw? We've got it. T-shirts, hoodies, snapback hats. Yup, we've got that. Oh, we've even managed to create a onesie for that little mocktail lover in your family. But wait, there's more. A cocktail shop wouldn't be complete without bar tools, cocktail box kits, and some of your favorite spirits. So head on over to shop.thecocktailguru.com and see what's new. You c for 10% off your first or merchandise at the checko cocktail guru dot com, 10 be 21 years old. Purchase And now we are back. So Lynette and Ivy, I have a very hands-on personal experience with Speed Rack because I was one of the many barbacks during, I think it was one of the Boston stops. I don't know how many years ago, five, six, seven years ago. And it was great fun, you know? And what I think is great is that you've got these you know, male bartenders that are in the back, that are batching, that are doing things that they may not normally be doing. Normally, you know, they're in the front behind the bar. And then you have these amazing talented women who are performing and shaking and mastering technique. And I think that that is just amazing. And what you've done with that is really outstanding. But there is a specific format when it comes to speed rack for the competitors, for the events. It's kind of a very plug and play thing with, you know, some masterclasses and training sessions beforehand on how to kind of make all of these cocktails in a certain amount of time. But can you can you just kind of give us a brief introduction to what the format of Speed Rack is?

Lynnette:
Sure, how you want to go with that one?

Ivy:
Yeah, sure. So, basically, speedrack is, in its essence, a head-to-head round robin competition. So imagine, like, it's March Madness, it's the Super Bowl, it's where you get a bracketed system, and you have the first seeded against the last seeded, and you work your way down, winner goes on to the next round. We open up applications in the cities that we go to and we get online applications that we then whittle down. At this point we're getting like a hundred, sometimes a hundred plus, 150 applications per city online that we then have to troll through and be like, okay, who are we going to take to come and compete in this city? We usually accept about 25. Then we do something called a preliminary round. In the preliminary round, we tell them six drinks of which four will be called, and they can practice every iteration that could be possible of those six rounds. And then they come up I announce the four drinks, they're always classic cocktails. It could be as easy as a martini or as kind of obscure as a jungle bird or something like this. But usually for prelims, we keep the drinks like relatively under five pickups, we hope. And yeah, and then they go and they make their drinks as fast as they can. The prelims are really about making good, quick drinks. So really being fast and the drink is hopefully good. It's like, imagine you go to a nightclub, you order a margarita and you're like, It was delicious. It took some seconds. I'm pleasantly surprised. That's kind of like our seating system. Imagine that as that's like normal season. The onstage competition that the public's open to, that's like the playoffs. So we do the first fast against prelims against the eight. All the other people who came to compete, we say, thank you so much for coming, but we can only have eight people because the event lasts four hours. And if we did more than that, we'd be here for two years. So we have first against eight. we have the competitors go on stage, we have an all-star panel of judges who will select one drink each from our list of what we find to be the most imperative classic cocktails to know, because Lynette and I are big proponents now, honestly, more than ever, in the way bartending has been, that if you don't know your classics, you don't know how to bartend. Like, it's fine if you know how to make your, you know, rosemary, you know, rotovap, whatever the hell that you put into clarified with the agger agger and like, whatever, like, great, I'm so proud of you, but can you make me a good mark? And that's really important. So judges will again select four of these cocktails at random. Again, they range in difficulty or obscurity. Like, yeah, you could get a Dhakri or you could get a Rammus Jinfit, you know? Like, they change. And then the two competitors go head-to-head. So Glenette and I are going head-to-head, and I'm going quickly, and I'm really, like, kind of shaking first. I'm a few steps behind Glenette the whole way. I slam down my buzzer, my drinks are up, Lynette is going. And I tell you, when you watch two people go head to head and you see another competitor going for like 10, 15, 20 seconds longer than the other one, it truly seems like an eternity. You're like, oh, well, that's going down. This is so bad for Lynette. We feel so bad for Lynette. But the fact of the matter is that it doesn't end just on speed. The judges then taste the drinks side by side. So if I'm Dale DeGroff and I'm tasting my two Negronis that I ordered side by side, I might be like, wow, Abby wishes her moving quick. I think the proportions of this drink are right, but it's hot. She didn't stir it long enough. She stirred it right in the glass. This garnish looks not pretty. I'm going to have to dock her. I'm going to have to penalize her some points. Whereas Lynette's in comparison, this is really beautiful. It's very, very cold. The garnish is not my favorite, but it's there and it looks, it's fine. Like she did an orange slice, let's say, instead of an orange twist. I'm gonna give Lynette a five second time penalty, but Ivy, this is like, it's really hot. I would, you should have stirred it longer. I'm gonna give you a 15 second time penalty. And this goes for every judge. So in the end of the day, if I was so quick that I made missteps that added not enough penalties, Lynette can actually move on to the next round. So we do that quarterfinals to the semifinals to the final round. And at the end of the day, we have our winner. In the winning round, we do two classics. They're usually the harder classics the judges have called. And to what we call dealer's choices, which also is the foundation of the book that we have coming out, A Quick Drink. And this is where it's like any bartender, we've all dealt with it. Someone comes into the bar, they look at your menu, they're like, oh my God, you've got 35 cocktails and I don't feel like reading a novel. They slam it down, they say, I don't know, make me feel like I'm on the beach, or I don't know, you know, my boyfriend just break up with me. I'm so sad. Maybe something for that. And you have to think on your toes really quick to make this person something that's going to scratch this itch for them. So that's the final round. And we try to have people's flex their creative muscles as well as their speedy muscles. And then we get the winner. But we started doing the dealer's choice a few years into speed rack to try to like, you know, differentiate like machine versus human with this creative aspect. And that's how we decided to organize our book. So

Jeffrey:
And we must say that the book is a compilation of winning cocktails for any mood. That's an important subtitle in the book.

Ivy:
Yeah, exactly. It's meant to fit your vibe. It's meant to fit just exactly that. Any patron knows going in and being like, oh my god, I cannot possibly look at that thing. I do not want to read. I don't want to make a choice. Let me tell you. Interpret my obscure thought into something liquid that's going to make me happy.

Jonathan:
But you know, what's interesting is that what you were saying, Ivy, about how if you were competing head-to-head with Lynette, and if Lynette, if you're making the same Negroni, but Lynette was 20 seconds longer, and then you do the side-by-side tasting, and Lynette's is better, and she gets the time taken off, it reminds me of at Cocktails in the Country when Gaz Regan would demonstrate having two people think, oh, hold on one second, sorry, having two people think, in their minds as they're making their Negroni, one person thinks a negative thought and then the other person thinks a positive thought. And then they both make, they both make the Negroni and then you taste each one. And then the one who is thinking the positive thought tastes better than the one who's thinking the negative thought. And I mean, it might be kind of like this, like, Gazrigan esoteric kind of out there type of thing. But I mean, there is something to it. You know, every bartender behind the bar making sure that they're kind of relaxed and they have a positive outlook and that they're really passionate about it. But that in itself could affect flavor too, I think.

Lynnette:
Yeah, I mean, I think you watch the, you know, the bartenders on the stage and how they're executing and their, you know, their level of stress or how they're handling it. And it does affect how their cocktail is. But when you see them really give in to the crowd and the joy and just doing what they're doing, they had great cocktails come out. So it's always really cool to see that.

Jonathan:
And so what else about the book do you think could help you know, maybe the bartender who's starting out, who wants to get into competing or a bartender who wants to, you know, potentially do speed rack.

Lynnette:
I think the book actually has a lot of really cool features that, one, in the back of the book, we actually have a range of speedrun classics. So if you are a bartender who's looking to get your hands on what we give out, we have them listed there in the resources. So you have a bit of, you know, different cocktails in different categories. There's also features in the book about scaling up your cocktails, so a little bit of a lesson on batching and how to make sure you can do that correctly based on the style of cocktail you have. And then we talk a little bit about orders of operations and things like that. So I think there's quite a bit in there that bartenders can learn from it, as well as our consumers who are trying to entertain. I could also know this like our diluting batches one, which is kind of fun. So there's there's quite a few features that I think are very useful. And then the inspiration and the creativity from the contributors and the recipes, you know, we have recipes from bartenders, almost I think it's almost 100 bartenders from all over the world, you know, predominantly in the US, because that's where we've done more events. But, you know, we have folks in there from the UK, from Australia, from Asia, from Canada, so Mexico, and it's really great to see kind of the collective in the book.

Jonathan:
And what is coming up with Speed Rack? Where can people find information? Are there upcoming events, competitions?

Lynnette:
Yep, so you can go to our website, www.speed-rack.com. We have a couple more stops on the tour, so that's exciting. There's going to be another regional in Nashville, and then we have our national finals in New Orleans. That'll take place on the Sunday, the 20, I believe 21st, and that's going to be really fun, and we'll be opening up wildcard applications. If there are bartenders who didn't quite get the chance to participate in either our regional competitions or these Bacardi Fast Track competitions that we've been doing, which have been happening in bars to sort of help reach more communities, which one is coming up to Boston. And if they don't get to do those, they can apply online for more spots to be a part of the community. So keeping an eye on our website and our Instagram, at speed underscore rack, is where you'll get the most up-to-date information.

Jonathan:
And Ivy, if you had one piece of advice to give to a bartender, what would that piece of advice be?

Ivy:
Man, one piece. Just one. I don't know, the first thing that comes to my mind is like stay off the internet. But I guess it could also be like bad advice, I don't know.

Jonathan:
No, I like that one.

Ivy:
I think that people get really caught up in their persona and their image. And like a lot of people that you see are very successful right now made their career before they made their social media To me, there is a chicken before the egg thing. I think you have to do both simultaneously, but there's only so much time in the day. And if you want to be a bartender, if you say you want to be a bartender, be a bartender. If you want to be an influencer, be an influencer. There's two different paths. I know people who have done really great examples of taking different paths. I think that Pam Witts is a great bartender. who has become a fantastic influencer. And I just am like, look at you. You took that path. You took it. You ran with it. That's primary. The bartending thing, she still does it. She's consulting. She's doing great stuff. But the influencing stuff is just great. But I guess my real piece of advice, if I'm not being like, don't do that, kids, would be just keeping at it. I think this is not the easiest of jobs on earth. And sometimes it's going to be really hard, but taking time to just enjoy the little bits of it. In the end of the day, we get to make people happy for a living. And if you can just remember that, which I need to practice what I preach, but it is the best. Like my fiance is like, at least you like what you do. And I'm like, no, I don't. And he's like, yes, you do. And I'm like, yeah, I do.

Lynnette:
Yeah, I do.

Ivy:
You're right. I really do like what I like to do. So, yeah, I think just like remembering that it's not about what competition you win. We're not solving We're trying to solve cancer, but realistically, we're not in there in the lab. So try just to remember that we're here to serve people and to create a little bit more happiness on the planet. And if you like that, stick with it. And then if you fall back on it, it'll be a

Jonathan:
And what about you, Lynette? One, just one piece of advice. Sorry, me too.

Lynnette:
No, no. I say number one is be accountable. I think that can be useful in so many different ways. To grow in this industry, mean what you say and do what you say and be accountable and do the things that you say you're going to do. There's a lot of, you know, and if you can't do those things, don't promise it. So I think that's kind of been a bit of a secret to success for me and something that I hold true to. And so I think, you know, that's when people ask, how do you get where you want to be? I'm like, that's the only thing that I can think of that is consistently gets you where you need to be. Because to Ivy's point, there's so many different pathways in this industry. So whatever you choose to do, just be accountable.

Jonathan:
Amazing. I love it. And before we let you guys go, can you let our fine audience know, to date, how much has Speed Rack raised for breast cancer research?

Lynnette:
I think we're over 1,750,000. Oh my gosh. It's a lot. We're approaching that 2 million mark. And we actually had a little bit of hiatus during the pandemic, but we've had some really great strong events and people keep showing up and being a part of it. I would even say even post-pandemic, we even became a stronger industry event, which is really great because it's something that everyone wants to contribute to. And that means we're all on the working towards something good and earnest.

Jonathan:
That's terrific.

Jeffrey:
Well, I love Speed Rack. I was at that Speed Rack event when you were a bar back job. Oh, yes. That was very exciting to watch. And congratulations to both of you, Lynette and Ivy. Thank you.

Jonathan:
That's great. And thank you guys so much. It's great to see you. Yeah, you as well. Thanks for having fun. That does it for today's show.

Jeffrey:
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Jonathan:
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