Interview with Jay Porter from The Linkery

From Office Space to urban planning #

How did you get started? #

Like anyone, I did various things when I was young. I was going to be a rock and roll star, but that didn’t pan out. It wasn’t until I was about 25 or 26 when I realized it was time to get a job. I went to USD and got a bachelor’s in computer science and then went into software first as an engineer and eventually ended up as a manager and consultant for consumer electronics companies—it was very Office Space type stuff.

Last time we spoke, you talked about your pursuit of civil engineering… #

Well, not civil engineering, like building bridges, but I have an avocational interest in urban planning. I’m interested in how the fabric of a culture is shaped by the land use policy decisions at a very tangible level—for instance, what your storefront looks like or if the parking is in the front or the back. There are so many things like that that make a huge difference in the fabric of a neighborhood.

So I went to SDSU to enter a master’s program in urban planning. I was there for about three weeks when I realized that the program was more about administering city planning codes rather than thinking about the philosophies of city planning. I realized that if I really wanted to make a difference in how the fabric of the community came together, the best thing to do would be to open a business in the neighborhood.

But in a pure sense, that is civil engineering though, right? #

Everything we do is, really. As long as we’re talking to other people.

How to start a restaurant and succeed on your first try #

Tell me about starting the restaurant, three years ago. #

So I had the idea that we could have this place in the neighborhood that would be worth working at, so we wouldn’t have to commute to Mira Mesa. It would be a place that would, as a business, provide a community space that would bring people together. And it would celebrate really good quality food and drink and beer in a simple way. So we have handmade sausages, really high quality products, produce, meat, great wine, beer, everything done with a clear attention to detail, but not fancy.

I wanted it to be a place that lets us walk to work, allows us to engage our whole selves at work, and lets us come in and enjoy being a part of it, and hopefully it could be a place that could become a center for something that adds meaning and richness to life in this area.

Did you have any restaurant experience before? #

No. I was totally making shit up.

Really!? Did you have a partner with experience? #

No. They say don’t do things that you don’t have experience in because you’ll do every stupid thing possible, which I did. But by the time we opened, we’d attracted people who wanted to be a part of it. There are people with skills and knowledge who came in and said “Oh, you’re building a restaurant! What’re your plans for this?” and I’d say “I don’t know!” And they’d say “Well I need to come in here and help!” “Great!” You know?

At this point a customer named Ken chimes in: you were the first, like, pioneer in this neighborhood, weren’t you Jay? #

We opened maybe a couple months after Zensei. Lefty’s opened first, Zensei a couple months later, and we were a couple months after that. Over the course of 6 months this little corner went from being basically totally unused at night to rocking.

And there was so much community demand for it that when we put the sign in the window saying we were going to build a restaurant here, people just flooded saying “I want to be a part of it. I want to help.” So I was able to substitute other people’s passion for my lack of competence. (laughs)

You know that quote about how if you love laws or sausages, you shouldn’t watch either of them being made? Is making sausages really that gross? Is it really that bad? #

No! When we were open during the day, we used to have this window that people could look through to see the sausages being made. It’s not gross at all.

From rallying against “them” to creating “us” #

What’s been the biggest surprise so far? #

Without question, the biggest surprise has been discovering the dynamic between myself, or anyone who works here, and the business as a whole. The business, the group you work with, becomes a reflection of what’s inside your head. And it’s true for everybody here, not just me, but when you’re the leader it’s more relevant.

That is, the dynamics of a small business happen to be so that if I have a blind spot or an issue that I don’t pay attention to, it communicates permission to everyone that that’s ok to screw that up. What happens is that even if nobody else shares that trait in the beginning, someone will eventually develop it and it will seem like there’s nothing wrong with it until it becomes endemic to the group.

So I have to say “What am I doing that’s communicating that it’s ok to grow in this direction?” Realizing that it all starts with consciousness of what I’m doing was a huge thing for me. So if I just work on that and am a good partner to my coworkers, everything is going to be fine.

Had you held leadership roles before? #

I had. And in the corporate world there’s a role for a leader that rallies the troops together to fight the bureaucracy. You know, “We’re going to do this project and we’re going to do a great job, and we’re going to get you guys raises because nobody appreciates how good you are, and I’m going to go to bat for you and make sure that nobody sells you out!” And you build this core of loyalty which allows you to do great work within the company.

Now, being the bureaucracy, being the ultimately accountable person, that “us against them” mentality is stripped away, because I’m “them!” I had to shift from this zero sum paradigm to a non zero sum paradigm. In the corporate world the mentality for me was always that we were gonna get something that was ours! The implication being that we were going to take it from somebody else.

Partially that’s because the consumer electronics and tech world is spiritually bankrupt and isn’t creating any real value or wealth on its own. Not all of it, but I worked making digital television software. I mean, are we really creating emotional love out there? It’s nice to go to a store and see some DirectTV product that I worked on, and it came out really well and it’s fun, but it’s not the same as bringing people to a table and feeding them.

So, that background of a zero sum world, I had to switch completely to a non zero sum game. Where we work on community wealth and spiritual unity, and there is no them. It’s just us saying let’s build something together. It’s a very touchy feely metaphysical thing, but it’s real.

Money is like air, walking to work is priceless #

So is that your motivation? This creation of community wealth? #

Yeah, absolutely. You know, there’s always a financial component to consider. But you realize pretty quickly that the business needs money the way the human body needs air. You need it to sustain yourself and keep going, but as a human, you don’t go walking around saying “God! If I could only have more air! My life would be so much better if I could only have more air!” You obviously need it to get by, but what it does is allow you to do is have this rich life, and the finances give us an opportunity to have a rich life here.

I can’t deny that as much as I love the touchy feely stuff, part of my mind is always thinking about making sure we can continue to grow and that we continue to provide jobs and enough money for people to live. I have a really strong personal conviction that people should be able to live in the community they work in. And this has become a pretty expensive community. But one of our staff just bought a house and that was a really nice feeling. That needs to continue. I mean, it was part of the original idea that people should be able to walk to work.

So finances are out there, and that’s never going to go away, but the goal is now. It’s the moment we’re in. People are coming in here and in about 30 minutes or so more people are going to be in here and a real incredible energy is going to build, and getting to be a part of that flow is really fulfilling. That’s the goal—getting to work with these folks and eat good food.

Knowing yourself, loving your team #

What specifically has been a low point for you? #

Like anybody, I’ve got my limitations and there have been points where I had to turn to other people and say “I can’t do this. I’m having trouble getting through this.” But I think anybody who takes on a high stress, high growth task like this is going to experience that. There have definitely been times where I’ve had to say “I have to do something different with my life.”

But those crises are personal, and I do whatever I can to keep them from affecting the business. The trickier thing is understanding the contour of our pathology or psychology, the things that keep you from being effective at work. You don’t know how your quirks are going to affect things until you’re facing them every day.

For instance, we were really bad at accounting for inventory, we were always running out of beers, and I had to think “Am I meticulous about what I do, about what I’m tracking? Are people looking at my work and saying it’s ‘just good enough’ when I should be doing great work?” The temptation is to just address it with a meeting where we talk about how important it is to do a better job, which we do, but it’s more important for me to say I need to do a better job at whatever it is we’re striving for.

What’s the high point of the past 3 years? #

Not to sound totally cheesy, but honestly, it’s every day. Every day is better than the last. It’s like the opposite of Office Space. It’s the joy of working with people that you love who reinforce one another and grow together. The feeling of union we enjoy is building on itself every day. There are tough days when we fight or we fire someone, which are hard, but we have enough history and trust with one another that we can take those days within a larger context of growth and progress. It’s good and getting better.

I know I probably sound like I’ve been taking happy pills or something.

No, no! You’re in good company because I really admire what you’re striving for, however I realize that some people might hear you describe The Linkery and think you were talking about a cult. #

Yeah, people say that, and the way I articulate isn’t necessarily the way the way everybody else here would say it…but people stay! They like working here. And also, I haven’t taken anyone’s material possessions away from them (laughs).

Creating a pre-industrial community#

I think the people who would be leery of this sounding like a cult are hearing what you’re saying within a context where neighbors don’t talk to each other and there aren’t any local pubs where communities gather to talk. #

Yes! We live in a very unconscious world. Where people aren’t conscious of their neighbors or community. So it’s weird for us to even talk about being part of a family or a community because the words we have to describe it make people uncomfortable.

Like, to use the word “love” when talking about your neighbors and co-workers just doesn’t happen anymore—that kind of language has been driven out of our consciousness! So yeah, it might sound like a cult, but it also sounds like 1910…or 1850! And that’s the core of it, the idea that we’re realizing a new kind of community within this post-industrial Web 2.0 world.

Which is interesting because the web 2.0 world is what allows us to strip away some of the rigid industrialization that’s confining our lives and stepping back and saying “Can we reconstruct this kind of 1850’s society using only the parts that matter to us?” So, that’s a fantasy, but…

Well, no, it’s a reality. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t found your blog and enjoyed it so much. #

Yeah. First you have the vision, then you share it with other people, and then you start to act according to the vision. And then before too long, is it a reality? I mean, we have 3,000 people on our mailing list and 20 people who work here, and a full restaurant every night, and people experiencing this new kind of community (to a degree), maybe that’s real!