The Teacher I Never Met

As we build The 601 Group, I find myself thinking less about what to copy and more about what to avoid.

That may sound counterintuitive. Most founders look for models. Playbooks. Case studies. Best practices. I do too. But over the past 25 years, I’ve had a vantage point that most operators never get. Through my career, I’ve had a front-row seat inside dozens of companies across industries, stages, leadership styles and ownership structures.

Some extraordinary. Some struggling. Many somewhere in between.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something… I’ve learned as much from watching things go wrong as from watching them go right.

The Japanese have a phrase for this: 反面教師 (hanmen kyōshi), a teacher by negative example. Someone whose mistakes become your instruction. A situation that clarifies truth precisely because it misfires.

Some of my best business teachers never meant to teach me anything. They simply made decisions. And I got to observe the consequences.

Capital and Control

I have seen founders take outside ‘professional’ capital with excitement and confidence. The pitch decks were clean. The growth projections ambitious. The opportunity real.

And often, the growth came. But so did something else.

Control shifted quietly. Decision rights moved. The time horizon changed. The conversation at the table evolved from “What kind of company do we want to build?” to “How fast can this scale?”

There is nothing inherently wrong with outside capital. It can be catalytic. It can unlock expansion that would otherwise take decades. It can bring expertise and discipline. But capital is never neutral. It amplifies whoever holds influence. It brings expectations. It narrows certain paths and accelerates others.

Watching this play out over time has made me cautious… not fearful, but deliberate.

As we build The 601 Group, we are thinking carefully about who sits at the table, not just how much capital comes with them. Growth matters. But control, culture and long-term alignment matter too.

Sometimes the lesson isn’t “Don’t take capital.” Sometimes the lesson is: understand what you are truly trading.

Clarity vs. Rigidity

I have also seen leaders become so committed to a strategic plan that they stopped seeing what was unfolding around them. Three-year roadmaps. Five-year projections. Quarterly targets meticulously defined. Clarity can be powerful. It aligns teams. It reduces ambiguity. It builds momentum.

But there is a subtle shift that happens when clarity hardens into rigidity. The market changes. A new opportunity emerges. A better path appears just off to the side. And the organization cannot pivot. Not because it lacks intelligence, but because it lacks permission.

When everything is predetermined, serendipity dies.

Some of the best opportunities I’ve seen in business were not part of the original plan. They were adjacent discoveries unlocked by paying attention rather than sticking to a script.

So as we grow, we are trying to hold direction without becoming overly prescriptive.

We know where we are headed: immersive hospitality experiences that bring people together around food, learning and connection. But the exact shape of that expansion - including the cities, the partnerships, the formats - may evolve.

We want conviction without tunnel vision.

People Strategy Must Live in the Business

Another pattern I’ve observed is more subtle.

In some organizations, people strategy slowly drifts away from operational reality. Policies become layered, abstracted, procedural. Culture is discussed in conference rooms but rarely felt on the floor. The intent is often good. Protect the company, standardize practices, ensure fairness.

But when people strategy becomes disconnected from the work itself, friction grows.

In hospitality, the work is physical. Emotional. Immediate. It happens in real time with real guests.

If your people strategy doesn’t live inside that reality, if it isn’t shaped by operators who understand the daily rhythm of the business, it begins to create tension instead of clarity.

So at The 601 Group, we will always embed our people philosophy directly into operations. Not as a layer above it, but as part of it. Leadership stays close to the floor. Standards are clear, but human. Culture is built in motion, not on paper.

That lesson did not come from a book. It came from watching what happens when the distance grows too wide.

Designing With Memory

When you build in your first act, you build mostly from ambition. When you build in your second act, you build with memory.

Memory of incentives that drifted.

Memory of cultures that diluted.

Memory of speed that outran systems.

Memory of leaders who mistook motion for progress.

Those memories are not anchors. They are guardrails.

At The 601 Group, we are not trying to be the fastest-growing hospitality company in the country, the state or even the cities in which we operate. But we are trying to be one of the most enduring.

Enduring means aligned capital.

Enduring means leadership close to the work.

Enduring means growth paced to protect experience.

Enduring means clarity without rigidity.

We want to build a company that can scale without losing its center. A company where the economics work, but the soul still shows up in the room. A company that future operators will want to inherit, not fix. That doesn’t happen by accident.

It happens by remembering the lessons others unknowingly taught you and designing differently because of them.

Some of my best teachers never meant to teach me anything. But their lessons are shaping the company we intend to become.

- Mike