Interviews with Extra-Ordinary People: Meet the Talented, Multifaceted Jeremiah Higgins
My next guest is a true mover and shaker, entertaining and inspiring others apparently comes quite naturally to Jeremiah Higgins. A popular on-air personality with his radio show broadcasting across the Nation, he intrigues and entertains his large following by showcasing musicians, restaurateurs, actors, actresses, and other artistic souls similar to himself.
As enlightened and introspective as he is, he’s also quite the go-getter, a forward thinking entrepreneur who’s found much success in the restaurant industry, opening some of the latest and greatest establishments in California and throughout the US, including the swanky Fleetwood's on Front St., a restaurant and bar owned by rock and roll icon Mick Fleetwood in Maui, Hawaii.
Jeremiah carries such an adventurous, optimistic outlook on life, contemplative and curious about all things related to art and music, and he remains on the brink of all that’s new, cool, and trending so I thought I’d ask for a bit more insight into this vibrant, multifaceted man who’s responsible for making so much happen around him.
Jeremiah Higgins is a celebrated radio personality, a talented entrepreneur, and an insightful soul.
Name: Jeremiah D. Higgins
Occupation: Radio Talk Show Host | Restaurateur | Restaurant Advisor
Place you were born:Santa Barbara California
Your Hidden Talent: Being me, Perception.
A Random Fact about You: I really, really despise metal dry cleaner coat hangers.
Your Motto in life: “Remain optimistic. Don’t offer advice unless asked, the person who talks too much tends to get voted off the island.”
A Favorite Hobby: One of my favorite hobbies is creating the music soundtracks for the radio show. I use ten original songs for each show, two shows a week. So each week I seek out and discover new 20 musicians, usually musicians that I have never listened to before.
Finding that perfect verse, hook or lyric in one of the songs and then inserting it into the radio show for impact. Probably my favorite thing to do each week besides hosting the show.
Really listening to someone. It’s a great hobby. Easy in theory, harder in practice. You discover a lot about yourself in music. And by listening.
Please name One of your Greatest Childhood Memories: I’ll give you two:
The first memory happened on my seventh birthday. My father, who had a life-long love and respect for Native Americans, sat me down and very seriously told me that the Native Americans believed that when a boy turned seven, he became a man. He told me that since I was seven now, I was a man. I’m not sure if this fact about the Native Americans belief in a boy's age is true or not, but I believed it to be true, and I remember feeling very proud and taking this news with a weight of responsibility, to behave as a gentleman might behave. I think what I liked most about the memory is that my dad thought I was a man, like him.
The second good memory that I have was around the same time. My family moved to Lake Curlew in Washington State. Our house sat on the edge of the water, the air smelled sweet from the flowers along the shore and the breeze was always gentle and clean off the lake. I can still feel the breeze and smell the flowers. It’s interesting how some memories imprint on you that way, forever.
Without being at all dramatic and completely truthful, my memories of that time and my time on the lake are all cast in a gold light. Picture the Hepburn movie ‘On A Golden Pond.’
As a child I was naturally drawn to older people socially, I felt more comfortable around them than with the kids of my own age for some reason. There was an elderly woman who lived next door to us. She grew apples and dried them in her oven. She would give me little cellophane-wrapped bags of her delicious dried apples. I can still taste the cinnamon and natural sugar on them.Her name was Francis. She had a little rowboat tied to her dock in front of her house, and after she caught me looking at it wistfully for the hundredth time, she struck a deal with me: I could use her rowboat if I helped her pull weeds from her garden on the weekends. Deal accepted!
After school I rode the yellow public school bus for forty-five minutes to get home. I couldn’t wait for the bus doors to open fast enough! I literally RAN to the dock, untied the little rowboat and paddled out into the lake. I spent every free moment out in that boat, fishing and exploring the lake. Great memory.
Your Favorite Musical Artist: I have many, naming just one would be impossible. I can tell you that the band that always cheers me up is the Dave Matthews Band. I love jazz and the violin, the lyrics are positive and uplifting, if I am in a bad mood I can’t stay there long.
In college, my friends and I would rent a bus every summer and fill it with our friends and go see DMB. I have great memories of those hot summer nights outside, great music, great company. Sometimes, or maybe almost always, a person's favorite music is tied to the events and experiences in their life that are tied to their favorite band. They become the soundtrack to your life.
Funny though, I didn’t always like DMB, in fact I couldn’t stand them for many years...If I heard ‘Crash’ or ‘Ants Marching’ one more time I was going to end it all and join a fraternity.
That was, until a girl I liked asked me to help her wash her car on a very hot day.
She played “Ants Marching” over and over and over as loud as her little Volkswagen Golf speakers could blare out. As we danced and crawled over each other with Armor All, Turtle Wax and warm soapy water, the music seemed to get better. Much better. Water, suds, girl, Dave.
Needless to say after that memorable car wash I was a “fan.” Deep tracks only.
Favorite Movie: Again, so many greats. Vanilla Sky. Elizabethtown...Basically any Cameron Crowe Movie. ...Of course my favorite movie on any given day changes with my mood. Stealing Beauty....I have such a long list.
I can say with certainty that the film that made me fall in love with great filmmaking was Last Tango in Paris with Marlon Brando, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. I felt mesmerized and deeply disturbed at the same time - and I loved that dichotomy. When a film can do that, when any art form can do that, change your perception and beliefs, it is magical. It doesn’t happen that often, when it does you remember that feeling forever.
The film is shot so beautifully, everything in the picture is touched by golden light.
I remember reading that Bertolucci saw a gallery showing of Francis Bacon’s paintings of shops in Paris in the winter at dusk: The light from the shops was cast out into the streets and reflected off the snow, and it inspired him so much that he directed the famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro to shoot the entire film in that golden light: From a shopkeepers window on the snow.
Favorite Book/Author (or both): Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.
A recent act of random kindness: There is a man that sets up a sleeping bag outside my office when the sun goes down. I’ve been bringing him dinner.
Please name a Personal Accomplishment that you are most proud of to date: We moved around a lot growing up. My dad was a nomad by heart. We lived in Stevensville Montana for a year on a large farm on a vast prairie in a log cabin.
As I mentioned before he also greatly admired the Native American Indians. My dad bought three teepees by a company that specialized in making them out of a heavy beige canvas. They were huge! He cut the poles, peeled and treated them. He set them up all in a row on the prairie.
In the middle of each teepee he would build a fire, and at night the teepees would glow a beautiful orange, you could see them from miles away. I distinctly remember my parents playing Fleetwood Mac during this time, the music wraps the same memory of the glowing teepees and Montana prairie.
Years later, Mick Fleetwood hired me to complete a lifelong dream that he had:
He wanted to open a restaurant. This is what I do.
Mick and I spent one night on his farm on the Haleakalā Volcano in Maui sharing a bottle of his favorite Beaujolais while discussing how, at age 12, his parents let him build a “bar” in his barn. He collected his parents empty wine bottles and strung them through fishing nets. He then hung them around the “bar.” He called it Club Keller and it was a hit with all of his mates.
I am extremely proud that sixty years later, and with strong memories of what Mick’s music added to my childhood, I was able to meet him and help him finalize his dream of opening a restaurant. Fleetwood’s on Front Street in Maui.
Coincidently, last week I was able to interview Larry Vigon, the artist who created the Fleetwood Mac hand-lettered logo and the Rumours Album cover! How random is this life?
What is the Largest Challenge You’ve Encountered in life so far and How did you overcome it?
The hardest lesson I’ve learned came through business partners who weren’t so... Honest.
It’s very difficult when people that you trust aren’t trustworthy and break your trust in them. It makes for a grim world outlook.
For many years after, I didn’t trust anyone. My instinct is the opposite of that, I’d prefer to trust until proven otherwise. I had a lot of inner turmoil for a few years.
Eventually I decided that those people could break my trust as they had, but they weren’t allowed to change me.
What is your personal belief about life in general?:
I’ve thought about this question a lot. My answer most likely will be misconstrued. But here it is anyway:
“My belief about life in general is that nothing really matters. Meaning, that you cannot let every little thing that someone says or does devastate you or anger you. We have no real control of others or events for that matter. You simply cannot let anger take over when someone lets you down, it hurts you more than them, most likely the person who let you down is experiencing a shortcoming of their own, it isn’t intentional or directed towards you. You must have your morals, and your convictions, but 80% of what upsets us in our daily lives will pass, and most likely we will learn something about ourselves. The hard times help form our own beliefs, our own opinions, and how we want to be alike or different. The people that have angered me the most, or have disagreed with me have often become my favorite people. Well, maybe not ALL of them. But some. Maybe not right away, but later.”
“I genuinely tend to like the people that challenge my opinion or authority. Who am I? Who are any of us really, to tell another what they should do, say or think?”
It’s all a little silly to get so upset. Of course that is just my opinion. I’m not asking you to change yours.
And...I try to do what I say I will do. That would be easier if the other person involved made that easier on me to accomplish sometimes!
“I try to remain empathetic. I try to listen, learn, communicate and evolve. I end each radio show with that intention to remind myself to strive for that.”
Are there any projects you’re currently working on?: I’m in the hospitality business, so currently no. Before the Covid-19 pandemic I was working on a hotel project in Cabo San Lucas and Cancun. I was very excited to work on the project, in fact I had an airline ticket and I was about to fly down to Cabo when the project abruptly was put on hold until 2021.
So now I’m advising restaurant owners and my friends in the restaurant business on ideas that they can use during this time to better their business and hopefully hang on and survive until it's safe to re-open their stores, hopefully coming out the other side with a new revenue stream for their business. Try to make something good from the experience.
This pandemic is not only devastating for the restaurant business, but all business owners across our globe. I can’t speak as an expert on all small business models that are suffering, but I am trying to find the silver lining for the restaurant owners: Time to clean up your operations and re-open your restaurant with no blindspots. Fine tune your business, make it unbeatable when you re-open your doors!
If you know anything about the restaurant business, you know that it is one of the hardest businesses to be in.
This is because as a restaurateur you wear every single cap:
You are a bookkeeper, an accountant, you are a marketing Guru, a business operations expert, you are head of HR & payroll, responsible for hiring & training, keeping your staff informed, healthy and happy, staying on top of the latest trends, you are open crazy hours, seven days a week, with typically only 2 days off each year, you are greeting and meeting thousands of guests, preparing thousands of meals each week, ordering food, beverages, and on and on. It is nearly an impossible task to keep all of this moving forward each and every day, and what typically gets overlooked, because of sheer exhaustion if nothing else, is the growing to-do list of the restaurant owner, the things that need attention to make the restaurant profitable, but there is NEVER enough time in the day.
Well, now there is. NOW is that time. Who knows how long this will last, so use the time wisely. Restaurant owners should check off all of those pesky action items that kept them up at night and improve their business from the inside out. Hopefully, you will never have this time again.
I am the host of a radio show. I have tried to use the show as of late to share the plight of my three favorite passions: hospitality, the music business and comedy.
There is power in shared experiences; I am so lucky that I have this medium to share our stories and broadcast them to hundreds of thousands of people each week.
What drove you to pursue the project?: The project in Mexico? Because I love the Mexican culture; the people are some of the very best I have ever met, and I can’t lie. It’s a five star resort in Mexico. Who wouldn’t want that project?
What makes the project important to you and to others?: I think what makes this project, and the countless other projects that I have worked on important to me, are the business owners and their employees.
Someone had a dream to create a business that would provide an experience and a service to others, a place of employment for their friends, family and employees, and they followed their dream to the stage where they sought out my experience to help them. That belief in me helping them open a business is a great honor.
They trust in me with their future livelihood and their business is not something that I take lightly. I take great pride in every project that I have been asked to be a part of.
What is your ultimate future goal?: I’d like to return to the film business as a producer and a writer eventually.
In my twenties, I used the restaurant business to fund my dream of becoming a film producer. I worked hard and got into USC. During school I waited tables at The Enterprise Fish Company in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica to support the education, I also became a two year intern for Miracle Pictures. Miracle Pictures’ unofficial slogan was “It will be a miracle if we get this movie made.”
The owner was a famous movie producer. Alex Kitman Ho.
Alex won an Oscar for “Platoon” and produced “Wall Street,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and so many more of our favorite films.
A friend of mine introduced me to his wife, Laurie. Laurie was an Executive Producer for Alex. She hired me and became my mentor. During my time with Miracle Pictures Alex and Laurie produced “The Weight of Water” with Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley and “Brokedown Palace” with Claire Danes and Kate Bekinsale.
When all of Hollywood went on strike in 2000, I took a General Manager job in Santa Barbara at The Enterprise Fish Company. I always intended to return to the film business after the strikes, but I fell in love with creating and making great restaurants. I’ve lost count of how many restaurants that I have created, been involved in, or fixed.
Your favorite charity? And why?: I support No Kid Hungry. We have plenty of food in the United States. And we have child nutrition programs that work. The problem is that not enough kids are able to access them.
That’s a problem we know how to solve. No Kid Hungry does that.
I was recently introduced to Chef Kristen Thibeault.
In 2015, Kristen launched Nybll, a next generation, high performance food company with kitchens in Los Angeles and San Francisco. “We focus on high performance food for extraordinary people,” noted Thibeault. Chef Kristen has redefined what healthy food looks like and turned an industry on its head. Today Nybll is the fastest growing corporate catering company in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, serving thousands of healthy meals a day to athletes and high-profile companies. Her client list includes The Dodgers, The Golden State Warriors, LA Clippers, Anaheim Ducks, NE Patriots, SF Giants, Astros, The Red Sox, Amazon, BuzzFeed, Ring, Pandora, Levi, Apple, Kayak, and Lyft to name a few.
Guided by a passion to end the growing food inequity in our country, Chef Thibeault founded The Patra Project in 2016, a non-profit 501c3 that gives at-risk children and their families access to healthy food in urban food deserts through a meal for a meal program. “1 in 4 children in our country goes hungry,” notes Kristen. “In a country obsessed with The Food Network, gluttonous eating habits, and obsessive eating out, it’s a travesty that so many of our children go to bed hungry.” The Patra Project pledges a meal donated to a child in need for every meal served to a corporate client with the goal of donating $10 million annually.
You can learn more about No Kid Hungry here: https://www.nokidhungry.org
You can learn more about The Patra Project here: https://www.nybll.com
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