From Sweeping Floors to Building an Empire | Gabe Orta

Gabe Orta is an award winning hospitality visionary who co-founded Bar Lab Hospitality in 2009 and helped create the award winning Broken Shaker, along with venues like 27 Restaurant, Mesiba, LilliStar, and Jolene Sound Room. Born in Colombia and raised in Miami, he was ten years old when his grandmother, father, and uncles were all killed within two weeks.This episode covers growing up around that violence, an unlikely start sweeping floors at a nightclub, and how he's turned inward in recent years, merging hospitality with ancestral practice and somatic ritual, inherited fear that isn't his own, and grief he never had time to feel. Chapters 00:00 Intro2:02 Meet Gabe Orta2:18 Redefining what service means9:14 Losing his grandmother, father, and uncles within two weeks13:13 Finding refuge in a library15:14 Tasting cocaine at eight years old21:53 Fear that isn't even his own32:00 Sweeping floors at a nightclub, and the start of a career53:15 Grief he never had time to feel55:28 Ancestral wisdom without a medicine man in the house58:42 Feeling his father's presence1:14:51 The wounds we all carry, and pass down or heal1:17:50 Pure joy, and a physical form that's finite Listen & Follow GUTS: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933 Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/ LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/ Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com #gutspodcast #topazadizes #gabeorta #generationaltrauma #immigrantstory

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