Exploring Life & Business with Wen Yeh of Neat.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wen Yeh.

Hi Wen, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My current view on my story is I’m a student of life and just trying to be grateful and continue to learn as much as I can and hopefully be a positive influence on others. While I was going through it, I was definitely grumpy and short-tempered/impatient miser. I’ve spent over 20 years in the commercial and real estate business. The real estate and capital markets collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, and so I had to find something else to keep me busy. The opportunity to open a bar/restaurant came along in 2010, one drink led to another and here we are today.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been anything but smooth; the path has been filled with obstacles, as in life. There are a lot of impediments that are completely out of your control like rising labor and product costs, ever-increasing rent (due to unreasonable overleveraged landlords), and governmental and political changes that make it very difficult for a small operator to thrive especially in California and Los Angeles. Then there are the struggles that are within your control: staffing, training, and offering a quality product on a consistent basis.

By far, the biggest difficulties in this industry is managing the varying personalities of people we work with on a daily basis. Pride, ego, various personalities, and little idiosyncrasies can truly make or break professional work environments. You REALLY have to get to know your future business partners before you commit or it can lead to disaster. Many in the hospitality industry, especially in Los Angeles, talk very loudly and with false confidence, but sure enough, they’re full of shit with zero experience and purely just to impress. The key is to learn to sift through who has grit and intrinsically motivated versus fakers; like life, this is a never-ending learning process.

Making mistakes; this is part of the job and being human, the successful ones learn and bounce back stronger; instilling and reinforcing these values into the right people and seeing them thrive is such a joy. Our GM at neat., Isaac is a perfect example of this. Isaac and I have worked side by side for over 11 years. He started as a busboy when he was 18 and watching him grow, learn, build foundational confidence and blossom as an exemplary leader is truly humbling and admirable.

We’ve been impressed with Neat., but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Neat. is a spirits and cocktail bar. We carry a highly curated selection of craft spirits, specializing in high-quality agave spirits (Tequila, Mezcal, Bacanora, Raicilla, Sotol), Scotch Whiskies, Japanese Whiskies, Bourbons, Rum, and a multitude of other great spirits. ALL of the brands we carry represent quality; their ethos and priority has to be top-notch quality and the pursuit of it. The first time our guests come in, they do not recognize 95% of the brands we carry; we spend a lot of time researching and sourcing some of the best quality spirits around the world. We focus on educating our staff on what makes spirits special and we love sharing that knowledge with our guests. We travel to the different distilleries around the world to learn about what makes these distilleries so great at what they do.

At neat., we pride ourselves on our people, training and ability to provide the best experience and service to our guests. Our people are extremely hard-working, have fantastic attitudes, and are an intrinsically motivated group to do well by our guests.

We foster a very educational environment here; our motto is: the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know. Be humble and drink curious. We love learning and teaching about great cocktails and spirits and encourage our guests to join us in our journey into the rabbit hole of the spirits they enjoy. The TRUE golden rule is: Treat people how they want to be treated.

We regularly offer classes and tastings on all of the spirits and their respective categories.

How do you think about luck?
I believe that a person makes her/his own luck. If you put yourself in a position to succeed, that’s not really luck. By this I mean work hard (entirely within your own control) and focus on the process and enjoy it. Do it for the joy of learning versus focusing on how to be successful (unfortunately for most, this is usually defined by what others think it is versus what you intrinsically think).

Luck happens and is great and has benefits, but that’s not a strategy (neither are hope and wishing) to rely on; if you do, good luck with that and winning the lottery… This is tantamount to winning the genetics lottery or being born into a wealthy family, you did nothing to earn any of it, so if your pride is based on that, good luck. Continuous work on yourself to develop a skill set that you can be proud of.

I’ve had the good/bad luck of working with ignorant people and circumstances; was it really bad luck or just bad decisions (by myself or others) or lack of experience on my end? It could be any one of them or all of the above. At the time, I attributed it to bad luck that I had to deal with these issues and dwelled on it longer than I should have. I look back on it and think it may have been good luck/silver lining that it did happen when it did; I learned from those mistakes and applied them to future scenarios. It’s all a matter of perspective and being open-minded and realistic to expect that “bad luck” or life’s trials and tribulations happen, learn and grow from them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.neat.la
• Instagram: neat.la
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/neatbarla

Image Credits
Nicole Renee Casey Eiland