On this week’s Five Rules for the Good Life, I’m posted up in Houston with Aaron Bludorn and Cherif Mbodji, friends and partners in the growing Bludorn Hospitality Group. They share their Five Rules for Juggling a Family and a Restaurant Group, including embracing therapy, building trust within their teams, and even attending Phish shows. They discuss scheduling family time like a meeting, getting comfortable with taking weekends off, and why joy has to be part of the plan. This conversation is about doing the work and still making room for happiness. These five rules serve as a blueprint for anyone seeking to achieve balance without burning out, especially when they have people relying on them at work and at home.
This conversation really stayed with me. I deeply believe in finding balance between the intensity of creative work and being a present dad & partner. Hearing how Aaron and Cherif navigate that same space, especially in the high-pressure world of restaurants, was both inspiring and affirming. It’s not just about running a business, but about building a life that feels full, fun, and aligned with their core values. Their honesty made me reflect on how I’m doing my best by showing up for my own family, and also gave me a little more permission to protect that space as well.
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Transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I'm in the deep heart of Texas, hanging out with Aaron and Cherif of the Blue Dorn Hospitality Group. It started as a friendship in the New York restaurant scene and has transformed into one of Houston's fastest growing and most exciting restaurant empires.
Today, they share their five rules to juggling a family and a restaurant group. We chat about the importance of getting exercise and therapy, that the key to success is communication above all else, and we go back and forth on the rivalry between the Astros and the Dodgers. So let's get into the rules.
Aaron and Cherif, so good to meet you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy restaurant empire to chat with me today on Five Rules for the Good Life. Welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thank you for having us. Excited to be on the call.
What I found as I've gotten older is that so many of my work habits have been directly inspired by my parents. And I find that people usually take a path as they get into their own adult working life—either embracing their parents' work ethic or running away in the opposite direction. What do you remember of your own parents' work-family balance and were you drawn to it or did you run away from it?
My dad was an airline pilot, so he had a very set schedule. He worked 12 days out of every month and then he was off 100% of the time after that. I would say I ran away from it. He had a ton of time off. I gravitated toward a career in kitchens that was 16 hours a day, six days a week. And I still feel like I learned my work ethic from my father, but yeah, I definitely went the other way.
Same here. I grew up in a family very stable where we spent a lot of time around each other. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and my dad—very typical government 9-to-5 job. He was around the household a lot. We all had breakfast, lunch, dinner daily together.
I love that. I mean, those are beautiful memories and that's what I grew up with. And I think if anything, it really gives you this sense of family presence and having parents who are around all the time. They were able to raise their kids, and you always kind of want some of that, no matter how busy life is.
Wanting those things I think comes later in life. What were those early days like when you were all-in, getting your jump on your career in the restaurant industry?
Well, the greatest thing about those days was that it was just me that I had to worry about. Throughout my 20s, full-in on learning how to cook, learning how to run a kitchen. I knew that the more I put into it, the more I'd get out of it. I remember just knowing that if I worked hard now, I'd be able to have what I wanted later.
That's good foresight. The harder you work, the easier it is to write your own ticket. And knowing that that's where you want to go, you can create your own path through that.
That was my goal—to always give myself as much flexibility as possible.
As you started your own restaurant and as you guys came together as partners in the Blue Dorn Group, when did you start to think about having balance, getting to write your own ticket? Was it an active thought that you worked toward or was it, “Oh, we're having a kid and this is what it's leading to”?
My wife had a big part in pushing me towards finding balance very quickly after our first child came. We were in the throes of opening up our first restaurant. But I had also watched Cherif go through all of that. Cherif had kids when we worked together in New York and watching him balance those two... and I always thought that he did a really great job.
I don't know whether your wife thinks so or not.
I don't know.
And that inspired me. The hardest pill I had to swallow was my wife being pretty adamant that I took Saturdays off along with Sundays. I felt this immense sense of guilt, like I wasn't contributing to my team. But then I realized that my whole team all got two days off themselves.
Of course.
Well, and I'd always been pretty adamant about that. I would push for that. And so I'm like, well, why am I cutting my nose off to spite my face just to work the sixth day and not create balance?
And one of the things that really helped me out is going to therapy to work less.
Yeah, to let go.
Well, when you have this mindset and you're just thinking about yourself and working for yourself, and then other people come to rely on you—both at work and at home—you've got to shift that mindset. And sometimes, having therapy really helps.
And for those who haven't crossed into that world of therapy, I'm really excited for you guys to share your five rules for juggling a family and a restaurant group. Or for those who just have one restaurant—it applies, I think, just as well.
Your very first rule was the first step I took into finding a balance. What is your rule number one?
Keeping healthy is extremely important to us. And it became something really apparent. Aaron's been really someone who actually has inspired me to start working out again because he's very active.
He runs.
Love it.
And I remember one time I wasn't driving when I first moved here and I would catch a ride with him all the time. As we're pulling up here in front of our office, he says to me, “Our health is the biggest factor in our ability to be happy and successful.” And it is true. 100%.
I think that also speaks to staying healthy mentally. The ability to find ways to calm yourself, to collect yourself. For a long time, running has always been a way for me to sort of filter out the day or set myself up for the day. Having yourself in a healthy mind space where you're not just burning the candle at both ends—having a healthy mind, a healthy body—it all comes from us, especially the drive and the push and the leadership. And if everyone sees that we're taking care of ourselves, they will as well. And that's so important in keeping the machine going.
Being very public about shifting the way you eat and going to therapy is pretty vulnerable, especially in a very competitive place like a kitchen or a restaurant group. Which ties directly into rule number two and surrounding yourself with a certain type of people. What's your second rule?
Building a team you trust and building that trust with your team. For us, it's been all about team building since day one. We've been so lucky to have such amazing people come on board and work for us. And it's picking the right people that mesh well, setting up a culture with those people where everyone buys into it. Where if you have someone that comes in that doesn't fit that mold or potentially is a bad influence, they find themselves out pretty quickly.
One other thing I want to point out in here that's so important is paying them appropriately and paying them well. You can't try to nickel and dime your team. You have to pay them what they're worth.
It's an investment. It's an investment in your own company and how your company grows. If you don't take care of your team, you get what you pay for. We are very open with our team. They're all very invested and aware of how we're performing as a group. They understand the financial operation side of things. And we sit with our team members every six months—not just annually—where we are constantly making sure that they feel valued. Whatever their worth is, it's acknowledged and taken care of to that extent.
You talked about supporting the team you've built at work, but there's the other team at home where the balance is really important—because the team at home gets you for two days and the team at work gets you for five. What is your rule number three?
It's protecting family time. Family time is something that, just as we think about important meetings or the things that we have on our calendar and protect and make sure that there is no excuse—we're there for it—family time is treated the same way.
It starts with creating the culture where we are understanding and respectful of each person's family time. We do our best to give you the space to spend it with your family. If they have wants and needs with their family, we respect that just like we ask them to respect ours. That’s from day one. Because if we're equitable in the way that we protect this—so it's not just us that's being protected—everyone will find ways to run blocking for each other. Knowing that that is the way that it works in our company is incredibly important.
But this is specific to our role and how we are obviously running this company with all these restaurants and still able to do this. There's a lot of effort that goes into protecting those days. It is easy to fill your schedule and even the best intentions of balance doesn't always happen.
The restaurant is a fickle business, and at the end of the day, people look to you for leadership. Striking that balance by giving a day here to the restaurant when they need it, or to your family—or vice versa—ties directly into your rule number four. And that's good communication.
Yeah, having good communication is so important—whether it's communication between me and Cherif. A lot of it is good communication between me and my wife. My wife actually does work alongside Cherif and me.
You met in the restaurant industry?
We did. She understood what I go through and the needs, the pulls that this career has on me. Keeping our calendar is so important. There are a lot of days that she asks me to pick up our kids from school and I’ll make time to do that.
Having that open communication with your significant other—that's what allows us to do what we're doing. Being very transparent about whatever it is that we need to do or where we need to be. Because at the end of the day, they're invested in our success as well too.
Of course.
Yeah, of course. And you'll see this as your kids grow. They get to an age when they start to be aware of your schedule and start putting themselves in your schedule. My kids will ask me, “When are you off next?” “Are you around this weekend for sure?”—things like that. Because they want to plan, and when you say yes and confirm something with them, you need to be there. Because a last-minute change is a task for them.
My kids are younger. They're seven and four and they still want to hang out with me all the time. I know that will change and that'll be a day that I will probably have to talk to my therapist about. But as much as they want to hang out with me, making that time when they do is really important. Which gets to your last rule—because it's all work, it's all really tough, it's a lot of communication—but it's all for this. What is your rule number five?
We make time to have fun.
Yes, I love it.
This is also not only making time to have fun with your team at work—because working in restaurants is fun, that’s what attracted us to it. It's not only having fun with your family, which is so important to find those times to take them to the Astros game—
Are you bringing your own trash cans?
Hey, you know, if Altuve tells me to do something, I can hear it in my earpiece... anyway.
Finding time to do family dinners—that's important. But Cherif and I also have found that having fun ourselves is very important. And we found this a year in—I took Cherif to a Phish show. It was his first one in 2022, and found that this was a way for us to enjoy ourselves. It's something I've always enjoyed since I was younger but had more meaning once I became a dad.
Finding a way to break away from everything else—you come back so much more focused, dedicated, grateful to everything you have. Find something that's yours that you really, really enjoy. That you can go leave everything for and then come back to your whole life. It makes me a better dad, a better leader, a better everything that I do. I'm so grateful for it.
Happiness is something that you seek. You have to create those moments for yourself, for your family, for people. And the happier you are, the more you find yourself in your happy place, the more you can pull people in and help people find theirs. It’s really that balance of work and family and self—and it’s always just trying to get them all equal.
Congratulations on everything—on the restaurant group, congratulations on working to find the balance. It's really hard. And I really appreciate how open you are with your staff and with all the listeners. And for anyone out there who's younger and listening—I can tell you, you either find the balance early or it's going to find you later on and make you find it.
That's true.
Well said.
Well said.
If people want to follow along with what's going on with the Blue Dorn Group or the different restaurants or what you guys are up to, where can they go?
On Instagram, it's @bludornhtx. I am @aaronbludorn. www.bludornrestaurant.com. Those are the best ways to find us.
Amazing. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Go Dodgers.
Boo Astros.
Thank you.
