A Lifetime of Friendship and Success with Ed Novak

SPEAKER 01 : 0:01

Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.

SPEAKER 05 : 0:09

Hello there, friend. Angie Austin here with The Good News. Got an old friend joining me on the phone. In fact, I’ve been friends with Ed Novak since before I got married. His wife was in my wedding and we had my reception at his restaurant, The Broker, the downtown location when that was open down there. And Ed Novak and I have been friends then for, I guess, 25 plus years. Welcome to The Good News, Ed.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:35

Thank you. Thank you. I tell you, your wedding, yours and Mark’s wedding was one of the greatest days of my life. It was so much. It was just a fun time. It was amazing. I tell you, I just I really I just really appreciated being a part of that.

SPEAKER 05 : 0:55

Oh, I, it was a dream come true for us too. And you did, you treated us so well and, you know, surprise ice sculptures and your late wife was in my wedding party. And I just have so many memories of her pop up and we lost her several years back at barely into her sixties. And, uh, You and I have stayed friends, and Gail and I, your wife, we’ve been good friends. Obviously, she was in my wedding party. So you and I have navigated all of that as friends. And I was telling your daughter the other day, who I’m also friends with, I said, your dad, Ed, tells the best stories. And I thought, why don’t I have Ed back on the show? Because I’d say you were on the show maybe 13 years ago.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:39

You know, I tell you, I’ve got to tell you, and maybe I told you before, I don’t know, but, you know, the day that you came to work, you know, for the weather, you know, at that TV channel. Yeah, Channel 2. Mark was working there. And Mark and I actually were friends at that time that you came on board. And Mark called me and said, you’re not going to believe. They just hired the most beautiful woman to do weather. You are so funny. I knew it. He says, I’m going to pursue this. I said, good for you. Pursue it. Yeah.

SPEAKER 05 : 2:20

you know, Gail and I used to laugh because you’re, you were older than Gail and, um, I’m a little bit older than Mark. So Gail, Gail and I kind of met in the middle and then Mark’s the age of like some of your kids. So at first Gail and I were like, Oh, well, how will it work with, um, you know, Ed and Mark hanging out together because of the big age difference or whatever. Oh my gosh, we could barely get you guys like to go home. You guys were having the time of your lives.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:46

We had the best time together. I tell you, uh, I have just so much respect for Mark and how he’s achieved his business, and he’s just done wonders. He’s really done well, and I’m very proud of him.

SPEAKER 05 : 2:59

I wanted to talk to you about your business because younger people may not know, but older people who grew up in Colorado and have been around a while know I know that your broker restaurants were, I mean, very, very popular and you had the big shrimp bowl and delicious steaks and a lot of success and a lot of locations and even the hotel slash restaurant right there next to Williams Village and CU Boulder just off the campus, like couldn’t have a better location than that. and one in the tech center and one downtown. And so I kind of wanted to talk to you today, just about building your business as a Christian and, um, you know, keeping your integrity, but also the employees loved you. They stay for years and years and years and you promote from within. And do you just, a lot of bosses aren’t beloved, but people just love you.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:46

Well, you know, we’ve, we’ve had some of the most amazing employees, uh, Gosh, I tell you, by the way, we still get together yet. Former employees and I, we get together for lunch occasionally. And it’s just a delight. But the quality of those people was fascinating to me. They were wonderful. Yeah. Boy, they love to do service, and they were all over it, I’ll tell you that.

SPEAKER 05 : 4:15

Well, I think, you know, a big part of the success of your restaurant is you’re so personable. Your daughter once told me that you were in New York when she met a bunch of clients, and she’s like, oh, I’m ready to bring my dad along. And she’s like, oh, my gosh, Angie, he’d won them over. The clients wanted to know if he could go out with us the next night. Like, they love my dad. And I’m like, that’s what happens with Ed Novak if you go out with him. I want to know, I think people are like, oh, you had a successful restaurant. You know, lucky you. But you’ve told me the hours that you worked, and it was hard on your marriage and hard on your family. In order to build that restaurant, you know, that string of restaurants here in Colorado, what kind of hours were you doing when you were trying to build that restaurant up?

SPEAKER 03 : 4:53

I was actually working seven days a week, you know. And it just took it. I mean, at one time I had, I want to say, eight broker restaurants. So I couldn’t even go to one every other every day. I mean, so I just had to choose where to go. But and the advantage that I had was that I had probably some of the best managers the city has ever seen. I mean, these people were phenomenal and believable managers. And most of them were with me almost the whole time, you know.

SPEAKER 05 : 5:27

Yeah, when you tell me that they were with you for decades, like, you know, the manager that ended up being your partner in downtown, how many, and I think you gave him a Corvette once, it’s like a bonus, if I’m recalling correctly, I’m not positive, but how long did you two work together?

SPEAKER 03 : 5:46

I mean, literally from 72 to 2004, 5. Wow. From 72. Wow. I mean, it was amazing. And, you know, and I don’t know. But the Boulder Broker was just, it was so much fun. I had some of the best people ever working. You know, at one time I had just over 1,000 employees. Oh, my goodness.

SPEAKER 05 : 6:13

Well, and then I ask you, too, because you and I are both churchgoers, and so was your late wife. In fact, Ed, I think you know this, but just a few days before she died, she was on my show, and she was telling me how she’d been saved, and she’d gone to church as a young teenager. I think she said 12, 13, 14, right in that age range. And I can’t remember if a friend invited her or she went on like, you know, they’d come around and pick up kids to take them to church and that she got saved then. And she’d never told me that story. And it gave me such peace when she passed away a few days later. Absolutely. She just told me that story.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:53

Absolutely. We know she’s in heaven. I can tell you that. Oh, yeah. No question. No question in my mind. Yeah. She’s with Jesus right now.

SPEAKER 05 : 7:04

Now, in terms of your business, because I kind of want to start off there, I wanted to talk a little bit about you told me once with employees, I’m like, you know, it can get so contentious and you kept employees for so long. So I want to ask you two things. as a Christian in the workplace, you know, being a boss with almost a thousand employees at one time at all the different broker restaurants around Colorado, how, how you treated them that made them want to stay so long. But also you explained to me that firing them, what didn’t have to be like a horrible experience that you really only, only Ed Nova can fire you and make you still feel good about yourself.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:44

You know, some people just aren’t suited for the restaurant business, okay? And they may be intelligent and beautiful and everything else, but they just don’t fit the restaurant mode. But they can be very successful in another career, and that’s what they should look at. You know, I used to talk – it sort of goes into the same line, but I used to talk to – I did a lot of talks at high schools in the area. You know, I got invited to come and visit with them. The one thing that I always emphasized with them, I said, I want you to remember one thing. I said, when you get out of here and you go to college or don’t go to college, but you go to work in the workplace, I said, if some morning you say, I don’t think I want to go to work today because I don’t like my job. I said, you know what you do that day? You quit. I said, because work is a pleasure. And I said, when you don’t like to go to work, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a good employee. It means you’re in the wrong pew.

SPEAKER 05 : 9:02

That is funny.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:04

And so you need to just find something. And I said, you need to keep searching because I said, life is actually very short. I said, you should be searching for a place that you say to your spouse or you say to your friends, I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow. I’m so excited about going to work tomorrow. I said, because that attitude will make you successful at that job. And you’ll grow with that company or you’ll go up the ranks, you know. But you have to love it. And if you don’t love it, get the heck out of it.

SPEAKER 05 : 9:39

You know, it’s interesting you say that because my husband is more of the vein like, you know, work hard, invest, do your time. Like even if you don’t love your job, there’s a lot of jobs you won’t love and you just have to give it your all. And I’ve never met anyone that works harder than my husband. I mean, it’s mind-blowing to me. And my nephew said something to me recently. I said – and he’s a scientist. He’s getting his MBA in pharmacology. Yeah, he’s getting his MBA in pharmacology, brainy like a lot of your grandkids are, super smart. But he said – I said, hey, Levi, do you like this new job? And he said, well, there aren’t as many young people my age. And he said, Auntie Angie, he said, I just kind of figured, determined that jobs aren’t necessarily for enjoyment. They’re just, you know, to pay the bills. And I said, well, I really don’t want you to feel that way. You know, doing what I do is kind of more of a ministry now. And I do it because I like talking to people. I like interviewing people. I like hearing stories and kind of seeing what makes people tick. So I don’t do this anymore for like the big bucks. I do it for… I hope that people get something out of our interviews and hearing the good news. But I wouldn’t do it if I dreaded getting up every day to talk to people. So Mark and Levi don’t agree with you and I that you really should have some joy in what you do. Like, what’s the purpose if you don’t enjoy it?

SPEAKER 03 : 11:01

That’s exactly right. I mean, why go through life being miserable, even if it’s a big paying job, but you don’t like it? I said, you actually won’t ultimately be successful, by the way. You won’t. In other words, you may have the big salary and you’re doing this and you’re doing that and you’re well respected, but you don’t like your job. I said, you’re not going to actually be successful at the end of the day.

SPEAKER 05 : 11:28

You know, that’s a tough one, yeah. But I know that you were able to incorporate that good feeling and good vibe with your employees because I used to interview and you’d be like, oh, so-and-so has been there 33 years and this guy in the kitchen 34 years. And I’m like – You said you had great managers. You gave them a lot of – you put a lot of trust in them. How do you think you treated them? You’re kind of a servant leader, I think. Like you were there working alongside them. If something needed to be done, you’d run plates back or you’d bus a table or you’d come talk to people or you’d help up at the front. You were always wandering around doing something and on your feet a lot. What do you think you did that made them want to stay, helped them want to stay?

SPEAKER 03 : 12:11

They were in charge. And I made sure that they knew they were in charge. I can only be at one restaurant at a time. So if you have eight restaurants, then you’ve got to rely on them to run the show. Right. You have to trust them. And trust them. Trust them and run the show. And that allows them, by the way, to feel good, too, because they know they’re making the decisions. And, you know, and if they have a question, they just called me on the phone. But, but in general, they just ran the, the, each restaurant, you know, they were the, they were the superstar. They ran it and they made all the decisions, you know. So we had a lot of, we still had meetings and things, but, but in general, you know, as they go to work all the time, you know, you just got to trust them.

SPEAKER 05 : 13:06

Well, you know, I think you have a gift, you know, with people, and I’m sure you’ve heard that over many years. So your personality helped build the brand. And then Gail, my friend, your late wife, she worked alongside you during the later years of your business. I just want… I just want to have you keep joining me, and we’re just going to talk about, you know, just some life lessons because you’ve told me some really interesting stories over the years. And so I just want to continue that chat. Ed Novak, wonderful Colorado businessman and friend of the good news. Thank you so much, Ed.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:37

Thank you so much. I love your show. Congratulations on your show, by the way. Thank you for what you’re doing for the Christian community.

SPEAKER 05 : 13:47

You’re welcome. God bless you, friend.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:55

We’ll be right back. We’ll be right back. donation centers they always need donations so why not start out the new year with downsizing the items you no longer need you can find any art thrift store or donation center on their website at artthrift.com Akron is tuned to the mighty 670 KLT Denver

SPEAKER 05 : 14:54

Hello there, friend Angie Austin and Grace Fox with the good news. And, you know, when I called Grace, she came up with the idea of talking about the power of song. And it’s just kind of funny that you say that, Grace. So tell us about the book and tell us about about the devotion, because it’s just rather timely that you would suggest that one.

SPEAKER 04 : 15:15

OK, so the power of song comes from the devotional book Fresh Hope for Today, Devotions for Joy on a Journey. And it starts with Psalm 104, 33. It says, I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise my God to my last breath. And I wrote about how when my one granddaughter, Lexi, was two. She’s six now. But when she was two, she would always ask me to sing a song at bedtime. Aww. It was great. We lived with them for several months, and so I had a lot of bedtimes with her. One of the favorites that she and I both enjoyed was Jesus Loves Me. And I thought about, it’s just so simple, right? Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And I just thought about how the simplicity of that simple song carried me it has carried me through my life through the ups and downs just as a like an anchor right when when life gets tough and when when really hard things happen and then I thought about how worship songs are like weapons. They’re like weapons that we can employ against the enemy on our journey through life. No matter where we are, no matter where we’ve come from, no matter where we are on that map, these worship songs can be that anchor to hold us steadfast and remind us of the truth. No, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, Angie, that several years ago, I went through a very difficult time where I lost my mobility for three months. I broke out into shingles as soon as I got my mobility back and blew an Achilles tendon and that led to all of this. It was a mess. My body was a physical wreck. I remember struggling even with sleeplessness, but on the nights that I could sleep, when I’d wake in the morning, my human bent would just go towards, oh, how am I going to get through this day? And a lot of you know, dealing with the harsh reality of where I was, but also leaning into this negative thinking. And it would just take me down right from the outset of opening my eyes. I remember having to just turn that around. And one day I woke up and there was a song going through my head. It was a worship song. And then I thought, I wonder how often God has put a song in my head and First thing in the morning, but I have failed to listen because I was so overwhelmed with the negative stuff. And so I began to pay attention to that. And seriously, Angie, morning after morning after morning, the Lord woke me by putting a worship song in my head. So before I get out of bed, I would lay there and just pay attention and listen to what those words were saying. And always it was a song that I was familiar with from the local radio station. But I would just pay attention and lay there and bask in the beauty of those lyrics and their meaning before I put my feet on the floor. It just really began to change my whole outlook towards my day.

SPEAKER 05 : 18:23

Well, normally I’m not like a music or musically oriented person. Just as an aside, though, I’ll mention when my aunt, Ginny, my mom’s sister, comes to stay with us, she always has like her Bible time in the morning and private time. And I will go out on a limb here, and she doesn’t listen to the show, so I’m just going to throw it right up there. She is a terrible singer. She’s like tone deaf, right? But what I really love about my aunt, They talk about making a joyful noise, regardless of whether or not you’re tone deaf or not, and that the Lord is so thrilled with your singing and your bonding with Him. And I can hear her in the guest bedroom, just singing up a storm and going through scriptures and singing songs by herself. And it’s really neat to me that she’s in there just getting a kick out of herself in her quiet time with God and singing songs all alone that do not sound good on the other side of the door, but… I just love it. She’s having the time of her life.

SPEAKER 04 : 19:19

And I’m sure that they are picking up her spirits. They’re making her strong on the inside. Worship songs will do that. There is power in song. And scripture even talks about the stars singing, right? And if we don’t sing, the rocks are going to cry out. And there is something to be said about that. vocalizing praises to God, whether it be verbalizing just in talk, but there’s something about song that, that is strengthening and encouraging. And when I felt really down, I have like turned on the worship music and played it loud. Or if I’ve been in my car, I’ve turned on the worship music and turn it up loud. And there was one time I had to drive or buy a vehicle way up North from our daughter, actually 10 hours drive and then drive it home by myself through the mountains and all that. and I I’d never driven this vehicle for a long stretch. So it was all new to me. And I was a little bit nervous about it, but I had the best time. And my, my fears were eased as I turned on that worship music loud and just saying like, I could sing as loud as I wanted because there was nobody else around. And it, it was just the best time.

SPEAKER 05 : 20:30

You know, um, the reason that I, uh, said to you that this was a timely topic, uh, Interestingly enough, just yesterday, you know, my daughter had seen these. She showed me on Instagram somebody coloring with these sparkle markers. And she goes, look how satisfying it was. Someone coloring very precisely. And it was, you know, obviously sped up. And it was filling in these cute little animals and cute little pictures with a sparkle pen, sparkle pens. And so I Googled and I found, oh, you can get scripture books with like really beautiful backgrounds. And right now I’m doing one on kindness out of Ephesians. Like I got the pens and the scripture books, coloring books delivered right away. And they’re kind of cool now because the pens can’t bleed through because they have a black backing on each picture. So each picture that you color with the sparkle pens, you’re memorizing scripture at the same time. And interestingly enough, over the last 24 hours, all three, my daughters and myself, we’ve been working on it. And I had said, and I was listening to praise music while I colored. And I thought, oh, what a great way to have, you know, quiet time or, you know, time with the Lord or your prayer time to have worship music on and to be memorizing the scripture and then be coloring with your glitter pens. My girls loved it. And then we all ended up going to church yesterday, too, even my husband. And we didn’t necessarily – he’s not one to normally go with us. He always has a project he wants to do. And my youngest daughter is like, I’m always praying for Dad. I really want him to come to church with us and just to make sure that he’s saved because we’re – And we’re more into our faith, I guess I would say, the kids, the three kids and myself. So we thought it would just be the four of us, but he joined in, and it was nice. And all of that, Grace, started with the worship music and the glitter pens. So here we got, you know, Dad to come to church with us, and everybody went. And we even got up early, which is also not a thing for me and my teenagers. So that was nice. And Dad, you know, joined us. I just said, we’re all going to church. Do you want to come with us? You know, because everybody’s home right now. So that was really nice.

SPEAKER 04 : 22:35

That’s great. I’m glad that you were able to do that. But yeah, I just love what you’re doing with the glitter pens and the scripture and bringing it all together. There is power in that as well, just like with the songs. There is power in worship songs. So whether you’re listening on the radio or your favorite playlist or singing in church corporately, there is a lot of power in the power of worship songs.

SPEAKER 05 : 23:02

Well, I think everybody concentrates in a different way. One of my kids definitely has ADHD, the other maybe mildly. And I’ve never thought of myself as having ADHD, but I have a hard time, you know, sitting still and not being distracted. So it really works well for me to be able to do like those three things at once, you know, the glitter pens keep me focused on the scripture that I’m, you know, drawing. And then, you know, the music is very upbeat to keep me interested as well. And so I guess we just, you know, have to find our way of how it works for us to have, you know, our relationship with the Lord and to have something that keeps us satisfied for that time so we don’t stray off in our mind into doing something else. And for each person, it’s different. Other people might not need the glitter pens, the music and the scripture coloring book, you know, but for me, that just seemed to be a nice trio.

SPEAKER 04 : 23:55

Yeah. Yeah. You know, music, you mentioned that music has not been something that’s been so important to ministering to you in the past. But for me, it has been. So I’m the opposite, the opposite end of the spectrum, perhaps. And boy, you know, the power of song. There was a time where. somebody had said something and done something to me that was just so hurtful. And it was a person I loved and trusted. And so I was just devastated to the core by, by what this person had said and done. I remember playing the same song. I found one on YouTube and it just, the music together with the lyrics together, even with a person’s voice, I played that song over and over and over again. One day I just sat in my family room when we were still in the house and, you know, I’d come to the end of it on YouTube and I’d play it again, play it again, play it again. It was like cleansing for my soul, I think. Like healing or comfort. All of that rolled into one. And, yeah, music has just always been something that has ministered deeply to me. Maybe that’s Part of one of the reasons why I wrote that one was because it works for me and I just pray that it comforts people, other people in the same way that it has comforted me in the hard times.

SPEAKER 05 : 25:26

Well, I think you really had to dig deep into your bag of tricks, you know, and how to buoy your spirits when you were going through so much where you lost your mobility and then the shingles and then the, you know, physical injury as well. And it just kept kind of spiraling and getting worse and worse. So you really had to go into the arsenal and get all of the things out of your bag and bag of tricks to help you feel better.

SPEAKER 04 : 25:52

Yeah. And you know, there’s something biblical about that too. I know I mentioned earlier, even the locks will cry out. The star is saying that type of thing is mentioned in scripture. But, but if we think about that story of King Jehoshaphat going into battle, all this host of enemy army was coming his way and he, they prayed, he prayed, he got the people together and they prayed together and cried out to God. And in the end, they went into battle, not with the soldiers and their weapons going first, but with the praise singers and, going first and by the time the rest of everybody got to the battlefield they saw that the battle had already been won on their behalf god had gone before them and fought the battle but it’s like praise they went out with praise leading the way and those worship songs and maybe that helped to redirect their hearts to away from fear and back onto the character of god and his his faithfulness and his power and all the rest of that that gave him courage to walk into that battlefield in the first place.

SPEAKER 05 : 26:53

You know, you and I talk a lot about experiences with our families, with your kids, your grandkids. And we went on a big trip with our kids over Christmas break. And I was just wondering if you guys did anything special with family, because it seems like you do a lot of that.

SPEAKER 04 : 27:07

Yeah, we had fun time from the 23rd to the 25th. Our youngest daughter with the three little ones. came down to the boat and so there were five of them and two of us in a sailboat and that was crowded but it was fun because we made a memory. So going out to the swimming pool, the local indoor swimming pool for two hours on Christmas Eve morning, it wasn’t an option. Let’s just say we had to do that to give the kids space to run their wiggles out and we went to a lovely service that evening at a local church and woke up with Christmas Day morning to open guests around the boat and then New Year’s, my husband and I drove down to the States and we went to Washington, which is about five hours drive to my older daughter’s home. And we welcomed in the new year with her and her husband and the grand dog. So that was special.

SPEAKER 05 : 27:56

Wonderful. Well, always a pleasure to have you on the show, Grace. Gracebox.com if you want to find Grace and her books. And also you can contact her if you want to learn more about the ministry that she and her husband are involved in. Thank you, Grace.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:11

Thank you. We’ll talk again.

SPEAKER 05 : 28:13

Talk again.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:14

Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.