Meet Stephen “old Man Liver” Staats

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephen “old Man Liver” Staats. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephen “Old Man below.

Hi Stephen “Old Man , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I’ve seen many examples around me of persistence being the most important aspect of success. So, I’ve always taken that into account and proven this to be true in my own journey, both personally and business-wise. I would rather fail at something than never try. Failures are a part of success. In my experience, there are a lot of people who talk a lot and have good ideas but not that many “do’ers” that actually give their ideas a real shot and stick with them until they figure it out. My Old Man Liver product brand, carried at the Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, NV and elsewhere, has really exploded in the last couple of years. But, I started the project back in the early 2000’s as a musical endeavor and just never let it go. Now it’s everything from whiskey to beer to hot sauce to beef jerky and more. More than creativity or intellect, it’s mostly about staying resilient and never giving up.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I moved from Louisiana to Los Angeles when I was 19 to pursue music and business. I didn’t know anyone in California and had never been there before I decided to move. I did the starving musician thing for a while, which is a great diet plan. I lost 30 pounds in the first 3 months I moved out there. But, I always thought “paying my dues” what a necessary part of the plan.

From there, while I worked full time jobs to pay the bills, played guitar in various bands to explore my creative side and took any viable business opportunity that came along. Through years I got involved in small businesses in multiple industries including healthcare staffing, factoring, music recording/publishing, test prep, real estate, septic & concrete and more recently food & beverage.

I acquired the Pioneer Saloon in 2021, which is the oldest bar in the Las Vegas area. It’s a mix of multiple businesses and a perfect culmination of several things I enjoy – food, drinking, retail and live entertainment. We’ve also been able to expand it’s fame and reach with online shopping, a food truck and old & new annual events we hold there now. These events include “Mojave Mardi Gras” (bringing my Louisiana background into the fold), “BreastFest”, a benefit for breast cancer research that we’ve held for 25 years as well as the more recent “Fallout Fan Celebration” which attracts thousands of video game lovers from all over the world.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Confidence, communication and persistence are the 3 most important qualities for success … in anything really – personal or business. The good news is it’s something that we can all improve on in time. You have to really believe in what you’re doing in order to sell the idea, whether it’s to customers or investors or employees. Make sure you’re able to articulate your ideas fully. Confidence in what you are doing is also very important. I’ve had folks pitch me with decent ideas but they didn’t seem full committed to believing the idea would work. I could never invest in someone who doesn’t portray that confidence. Then, once you have confidently communicated the business idea to folks that can help make it happen, you just need to stick to it – even it takes years to get off the ground.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

I would say writing my own book, “What my Dad taught me”, was an important part of my growth. It helped me to write my journey all down to help me figure out what’s next and give folks advice so you can learn from others mistakes and hopefully skip some of them. One chapter I titled “Work Schmork” emphasizing the importance of enjoying what you do and then it won’t feel like work.

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