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Irish Guy Is Smiling
By A.J. Daulerio
It becomes a deafening chant, and the Bottle Boys begin a Farmer-in-the-Dell-like melody to go along with it. “Fuck Mike Perrone. … Fuck Mike Perrone. … Fuck Mike Perrone.”
When the din dies down, Magrogan points out that Perrone (or “that fucking guy”) cost him $5,000 in bar money. But he’s not bitching about it. He probably earned most of it back by firing the crowd up afterward.
He grabs his Guinness, stands on top of a table, and watches the crowd, his crowd now, and he’s beaming, because he loves a challenge. Loves it. And though this stoppage of play could’ve derailed many a bar, Magrogan persevered. His mantras start to spill out of him: You need thick skin in the jungle! Keep charging! Believe in yourself and your mission and persevere! This is Dave Magrogan’s MO. This is why he’s a multi-millionaire at the age of 34, thanks to the “authentic” Irish bar business he’s built in four years. This is why he plans on opening up 25 Kildare’s by 2010. This is why Philadelphia’s pseudo-celebs — from Pat Croce to Bam Margera — adore him. And this is why — no matter how audacious and successful he becomes — you can’t not like him.
DAVE MAGROGAN GREW up poor. His parents divorced early, and he and his two sisters bounced around Havertown and Brookhaven with their mom, who was a nurse. “Every time the rent went up, we moved,” he remembers. The lack of wealth left an indelible mark on him. He saw so many unfulfilled great ideas between his mother and his friends and his other relatives that he vowed never to emulate that habit.
Before his budding Irish bar empire, Magrogan was a chiropractor. It was while he was in chiropractic school that he discovered a little motivational book titled Rhinoceros Success, self-published in 1980 by a then-23-year-old named Scott Alexander. It’s a 122-page book with bold letters and cartoons, telling the reader that the key to greatness lies in transforming yourself into a metaphorical rhinoceros. In fact, the book divides people into two groups: rhinos and cows. The cows are the dawdling middle managers in life, the lazy, disaffected herd who do more whining and waiting than actual doing. The rhinos, on the other hand, charge through the jungle with two-inch-thick skin and overcome adversity with a headfirst-type attitude. The book is incredibly, laughably corny, full of the kinds of exclamatory slogans you’d find in, well, a chiropractor’s office. But Magrogan ate it up. Inside his West Chester Kildare’s office (and his home in Glen Mills), pictures of rhinoceroses are prominently displayed, and the logo for his Dave Magrogan Group, Inc., is a rhino. “If I don’t know how to do something, I don’t waste time trying to figure it out,” he says. “I find the right person for the job.”
Magrogan is by no means a micro-manager. In fact, he’s the type of big-idea managerial presence who doesn’t actually look like he’s doing anything. He’s a walking whiteboard, and each contact he makes during the day — whether a five-minute phone call, an e-mail, or a brief face-to-face meeting — ends in a concrete result. There’s no wasted time. This is a tenet of the rhino, of course.
The whole culture of Kildare’s is built around rhino success and other hang-in-there-style motivations distributed in handbooks to both staff and management. Sections include the Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership (“Some people are illogical, unreasonable and self-centered — love them anyway”); guest loyalty (“Touch every guest”); and managerial philosophies offering encouragement and relying on self-evaluation (“You are only as good as your day off!”). And each staff member of Kildare’s is labeled with a role in the hierarchy: entrepreneur, manager, or technician, which are all roles that people can evolve from (or devolve to) based on their performance. Everyone has the opportunity to succeed — dishwashers can become general managers if they have that rhino attitude.
When the din dies down, Magrogan points out that Perrone (or “that fucking guy”) cost him $5,000 in bar money. But he’s not bitching about it. He probably earned most of it back by firing the crowd up afterward.
He grabs his Guinness, stands on top of a table, and watches the crowd, his crowd now, and he’s beaming, because he loves a challenge. Loves it. And though this stoppage of play could’ve derailed many a bar, Magrogan persevered. His mantras start to spill out of him: You need thick skin in the jungle! Keep charging! Believe in yourself and your mission and persevere! This is Dave Magrogan’s MO. This is why he’s a multi-millionaire at the age of 34, thanks to the “authentic” Irish bar business he’s built in four years. This is why he plans on opening up 25 Kildare’s by 2010. This is why Philadelphia’s pseudo-celebs — from Pat Croce to Bam Margera — adore him. And this is why — no matter how audacious and successful he becomes — you can’t not like him.
DAVE MAGROGAN GREW up poor. His parents divorced early, and he and his two sisters bounced around Havertown and Brookhaven with their mom, who was a nurse. “Every time the rent went up, we moved,” he remembers. The lack of wealth left an indelible mark on him. He saw so many unfulfilled great ideas between his mother and his friends and his other relatives that he vowed never to emulate that habit.
Before his budding Irish bar empire, Magrogan was a chiropractor. It was while he was in chiropractic school that he discovered a little motivational book titled Rhinoceros Success, self-published in 1980 by a then-23-year-old named Scott Alexander. It’s a 122-page book with bold letters and cartoons, telling the reader that the key to greatness lies in transforming yourself into a metaphorical rhinoceros. In fact, the book divides people into two groups: rhinos and cows. The cows are the dawdling middle managers in life, the lazy, disaffected herd who do more whining and waiting than actual doing. The rhinos, on the other hand, charge through the jungle with two-inch-thick skin and overcome adversity with a headfirst-type attitude. The book is incredibly, laughably corny, full of the kinds of exclamatory slogans you’d find in, well, a chiropractor’s office. But Magrogan ate it up. Inside his West Chester Kildare’s office (and his home in Glen Mills), pictures of rhinoceroses are prominently displayed, and the logo for his Dave Magrogan Group, Inc., is a rhino. “If I don’t know how to do something, I don’t waste time trying to figure it out,” he says. “I find the right person for the job.”
Magrogan is by no means a micro-manager. In fact, he’s the type of big-idea managerial presence who doesn’t actually look like he’s doing anything. He’s a walking whiteboard, and each contact he makes during the day — whether a five-minute phone call, an e-mail, or a brief face-to-face meeting — ends in a concrete result. There’s no wasted time. This is a tenet of the rhino, of course.
The whole culture of Kildare’s is built around rhino success and other hang-in-there-style motivations distributed in handbooks to both staff and management. Sections include the Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership (“Some people are illogical, unreasonable and self-centered — love them anyway”); guest loyalty (“Touch every guest”); and managerial philosophies offering encouragement and relying on self-evaluation (“You are only as good as your day off!”). And each staff member of Kildare’s is labeled with a role in the hierarchy: entrepreneur, manager, or technician, which are all roles that people can evolve from (or devolve to) based on their performance. Everyone has the opportunity to succeed — dishwashers can become general managers if they have that rhino attitude.
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Posted by Jermaine | Oct. 12, 2007 at 1:10 PM