For Saltie Girl Owner Kathy Sidell, Success Requires This One Crucial Thing
written by Stacey Lindsay
Kathy Sidell "banked" on herself.
That's exactly how she describes the giant career leap she took when she was 47. She’d been running her film and television production company in Los Angeles and traveling worldwide for shoots. Her career was thriving and compelling, but it was time for a change. Life was shifting, her marriage was ending, and she wanted to be with her kids more. Plus, Kathy had a dream burning inside her: She always wanted to start a restaurant of her own.
"I knew I had the stuff to do it," she tells me over the phone. "So I had to figure it out."
Indeed, Sidell figured it out. The lauded restaurateur opened her first restaurant, The Metropolitan Club, in Boston's Chestnut Hill in 2004, which she ran for 10 years. In 2016, she opened Saltie Girl, a wildly popular seafood restaurant that boasts one of the best lobster rolls in New England (that’s a hefty superlative, as we Bostonians are serious about our lobster). She's since opened a sister Saltie Girl location in Los Angeles to parallel rave reviews.
Kathy, who is 67, credits much of her success to hard work—there are no shortcuts—but she's forthcoming about her mistakes. "It's been 20 years, and we've made some brilliant decisions, and we've made some not-so-brilliant decisions," she says about her time in the restaurant business. "You can't bat a thousand, but as the adage goes, you certainly learn a lot more from the failures than you do the successes."
She only wishes, she continues, that women didn't didn't beat themselves up so much in the aftermath of missteps. "We've got to find a way to be kinder to ourselves and take what we learn from our mistakes and apply it to what we want."
Kathy shared generously with me about women supporting women, how she loves the intergenerational energy of LA, and the funny ways life has of preparing us for what's ahead. Here are seven bits of wisdom from our conversation.
#1: Women Supporting Women
"I feel a shift. It's been slow and a long time coming, but the old rules are fading away because women are just doing it. We're not allowing the rules to be applied to us anymore. We have started to support each other in a way we haven't for a long time because we were competing in this male-dominated landscape. We were so afraid to lose our position that we were busy jockeying and elbowing ourselves out of the way instead of promoting, supporting, and running together. So that is changing. We also realize that we are stronger in numbers. I see that in my daughter's generation. She has an entirely different way of thinking about her mentorships, both her mentors and the women that she's mentoring. There's a consciousness around how women treat each other that never existed in my generation."
#2: The Multigenerational Appeal of LA
"What I love about Los Angeles is that it's very multigenerational, and I think that brings with it a lack of judgment. If I'm at a dinner, I could be next to somebody who is 85, somebody my age, someone in their forties, somebody 25, and the conversation is much more compelling and inclusive. Your age does not define who you are and what you bring to the table. It's more about your experience, energy level, the things you pursue in life, and the people around you. It's exciting and helps women break boundaries because they're not judged because they're over 50. I see it as more European because I've always felt Europeans are very kind to older people. There's an appreciation for someone who's been through it."
#3: Leaping From the Film Industry to Restaurant Business in Her late 40s
"I didn't think about my age. My mom went back to law school at 40. She was the oldest in her class with these 20-something-year-olds, and they'd all do study groups together at our house, which I thought was the coolest thing. There was no limit on when you could explore any interest or passion that you might have. So, I'm sure somewhere subliminally, I felt that anything was possible."
#4: How the Past Informs the Present
"Also, I had two passions in life: food and film. I am from a major food family. My dad financed many of the great chefs in the city, so I grew up with that experience at play in the back of my mind. It was all a cool and interesting world that I was part of tangentially through my dad. I always thought I wanted to have a piece of it somehow, but I didn't know how to when I was younger. Then my sister, Stephanie, went into the business with Stephanie's on Newbury. I had been doing film for many years at that point, and when she started that restaurant, she asked if I wanted to join. I traveled with her and consulted, but I was happy just to support her and watch that unfold because I was in the thick of my film career. I knew one day I would do it. I just didn't know how it would evolve. But when you look back, life prepares you. I had a commercial production company, and we shot many commercials around the world, and I made several feature films. Working with advertising agencies, marketing products, and shooting all informed me about what came later in my life, which was building a restaurant brand. All of my experience has played into how I look at everything today, from a font to a color to the plate. I also had a mother who entertained a lot and was brilliant at it, and that also informed the hospitality part of what I do. I believe you learn many of these things by osmosis, and then as you develop yourself as a professional, you see how your past plays into your present."
#5: The Need for Self-Trust
"I think this is the most difficult part for women. In my experience, I have seen women not trust themselves enough. And I have seen women be afraid to be wrong, so they have a very tough time making decisions. I remember working with one woman, and I wondered why every decision she made was so arduous. She was talented but would get bogged down in these little decisions. I knew I was not going to let that happen to me. I was not going to get stuck there. I will trust my gut; if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. For men, it rolls off their back. But if women are wrong, they can become paralyzed by it. When I was 47, I had had a modicum of success, and I knew a lot about my strengths, which helped me feel confident. But I also realized that we don't do this alone. If you can identify your strengths and build a team around you that has complementary strengths, you're poised to do a pretty fine job."
#6: Finding the Magic in Change
"I ran into an old friend who is in her early sixties. She and her husband had a business in Nantucket, and the husband met someone else and left her. It was so moving having the conversation with her, it almost really makes me cry to talk about it. This is not what she expected to happen in life, and she's scared. She's figuring out how to buy the business from her ex-husband and now has had experiences she never would have had in the relationship. Change is scary as hell, but it's also liberating. Sometimes, we get second and third chances, and we must embrace those moments and see them as opportunities. She and I had an intense conversation, and I saw the pain, and I also saw the possibilities for her."
#7: Banking on Herself
“When I was 47, I had a production company, and then I got divorced, and I wanted to spend my high school years with my kids. I didn't want to be travelling all over the world. I was lucky to have a great relationship with my business partners where I could choose what commercials I wanted to do. Then Stephanie asked me if I would be part of her food shop, because I always love to cook, and I thought that would be a great opportunity the year I divorced. It would give me some freedom. But what happened to me was that I realized that no one else was going to take care of my family and me. No father, no mother, no ex-husband, no sister, no future husband. I had to do it myself. I was at that critical moment in my life, and I just thought, you know what? I don't want to depend on anyone. I'm going to make this happen, and I'm going to make it happen for myself. So I had to figure it out without depending on anyone else, and that was a game changer for me at 47. I was banking on myself. I knew I had the stuff to do it. And here I am, 20 years later."
Kathy Sidell is a restauranteur and former film and commercial producer. Her restaurants Saltie Girl, one in Boston and one in Los Angeles, focus on fresh seafood and tinned fish. Learn more at saltiegirl.com.
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