Meet Ashley Brown

We recently connected with Ashley Brown and have shared our conversation below.

Ashley, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

I get my work ethic from my mother. She raised me as a single mother, worked so many jobs at once just to get us by. She saw what needed to be done, showed loyalty to the companies she worked for, and of course loyalty and support to my sister and I. No matter how hard times were, she never showed fear. She rolled up her sleeves and got done what needed to be done with no complaints.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am the Executive Chef at Four By Brother Luck in downtown Colorado Springs. We showcase the southwest cuisine you will find in the four corners reign, and tell stories throughout its history, we don’t just create dishes and menus, but we curate experiences with tradition and innovation. We change our menus seasonally which there are four seasons in a year, we also show respects to four pillars of fisherman, gatherer, hunter, and farmer. Our menus also feature a four course tasting menu.

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?

Some impacts I have came across that helped me in my career is to be teachable. With that, skills, and education come. Being a chef, you have to spread the knowledge you have, and that’s not just in recipes, or technique, but it’s also life coaching. We are in the hospitality field, so to be in this field, you need to know how to be hospitable to everyone you encounter from vendors, guestes, deliver drivers, and most importantly, your team.

The team are the first people walking through the doors, and the last. We spend more time with each other than we do our families, so we need to be able to adjust how we lead by each individual, because they are not robots. The team needs to know they are heard, and valued. To any young chef establishing themselves, my advice is to be teachable. Soak in as much as you possibly can from your chef, to your peers and to learn your own style of leadership that is open, clear, and respectful.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I was always told by my first chef “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” I say take your time to be more well rounded. If you put in everything you have now, you will be too exhausted to continue with enthusiasm and passion. Very much like long distance running. Steady yourself, find your pace but dont sprint. When you start to see the finish line is when you sprint because you conserved that energy.

By keeping it slow, you can perfect techniques in a more efficient way and what you learn resonates deeper. That’s when you want to move on to the next one. Keeping your pace smooth and leveled, you will then become fast in the future like its second nature to you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fourbybrotherluck.com
• Instagram: chef_browntown
• Facebook: Ashley Brown
• Linkedin: Ashley Brown

Image Credits

Lea Flores Photography, Dana Keith Film