Garner Gerson, 28

Basement Tavern bar in Santa Monica and Malibu Café at Calamigos Ranch in Malibu

Employees: 100

Financials: 2010 revenue for the two businesses was about $6 million.

Where did you get the start up money?

My newest projects, Basement Tavern and Malibu Café, were built with revenue raised from earlier restaurants and other ventures. I started my first restaurant when I was 22 with money from a company called Full-A-Bull. It was a mechanical bull rental company that I started when I got my driver’s license. I got a mechanical bull from a junkyard and completely rebuilt and redesigned it. I eventually got to 10 bulls, and would rent them out every weekend to parties around California for about $2,000 a night. I ended up having all my friends running around to different parties from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

What was the most important lesson you learned?

I believe you always need to be open to learning, and sometimes you learn the most from people you don’t want to emulate.

How many hours a day do you put in?

I work 24 hours a day, and I don’t work at all. The best route between the two restaurant-bars is the coast between Malibu and Santa Monica. So my office is really my car, and my office is on the beach. I drive about 200 miles a day, but I end up sneaking away at least an hour a day to surf; but you can’t tell anybody! I call them “meetings.” The teams at each location are extremely self-sufficient and they know that they are going to see me every day if there is anything they get stuck on, or have a question about. As my dad says: organize, deputize, supervise.

Could you ever work for someone else?

I don’t think I could work for anybody else. I think I am a little too specific on what I want, and there isn’t a lot of room for input. But I work with my family on Calamigos Ranch; the Victorian; Candlelight Kitchen & Bar in Simi Valley; and Sjobeck Malibu, a clothing line my brother runs.