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As a restaurant leader, your employees need confidence in your post-pandemic plan and to know what their role is in it.
During these challenging times, it’s more important than ever to be cognizant of the difference between managing and leading. It’s also critical that you empower your staff versus delegate to them.
In this episode of the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast I’m speaking with Matt Rolfe. He is a noted industry speaker, coach, entrepreneur, and author of the new book “You Can’t Do It Alone… Focusing on People to Scale, Develop and Lead Your Restaurant”.
Matt is a mentor to the top 10% of our industry, the pioneers, and the game-changers.
Listen as Matt shares:
- The Difference between True Leaders and Managers
- Why Empowerment builds your organization
- His approach to leading with Vulnerability and Authenticity
- The Importance of having a 1- and 3-Year Strategy
- How the most effective leaders prioritize and execute
He also explains why having a 100-Day Business Plan enables forward growth post-pandemic.
Watch or listen and then go Rock YOUR Restaurant!
Roger
Check out Matt’s New Book!
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Episode Transcription:
Guest 0:00
But what we’re just looking for is to make sure teams that communicate and stay connected, see great results. And look at how often a sports team would meet. You know, if you if you respect a retailer or a business if anybody’s a Starbucks fan, next time you’re in Starbucks has asked the person how often that team meets. The reality is Starbucks is a brand that most of us know and some of us like, spends more money and investment on their people than they do on coffee.
Roger Beaudoin 0:23
Welcome back again. rockstars. Thanks for being with us. My guest today Matt Roth is a mentor to the top 10% of our hospitality industry, a true leader who is going to share with us his philosophies on leadership and effective style, the difference between delegating and empowerment. We’re going to talk about what Matt calls vulnerability leadership. We’ll also be talking about how effective leaders prioritize and execute as well as Matt’s new book. You can’t do it alone. Stay with us. This is a great episode.
Intro/Exit 0:58
You’re tuned in to the restaurant rockstars podcast powerful ideas to rock your restaurant, here’s your host Roger Beaudoin.
Sponsor 1:11
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Roger Beaudoin 2:09
Welcome back, everyone. This is the restaurant rockstars podcast. And I’m excited to introduce Mr. Matt Roth. And he is a hospitality coach, a speaker, entrepreneur and author of a new book called you can’t do it alone. A long hospitality backstory, we’re going to dive deep into current situation in the hospitality industry what we can do best practices. Welcome to the show, Matt, how are you today?
Guest 2:32
I am amazing. Thank you so much for having me.
Roger Beaudoin 2:35
I’m excited to have you because you’ve got again, such an interesting story, your hospitality coach, you’re an author, you’re an entrepreneur, and everything we’re going to talk about today, I think is relevant to what operators are going through today. But as my audience knows, we always start with where did it all start for you? You know, were you a youngster working in a McDonald’s? Did you cook in the kitchen? Did you work at a country club as a dishwasher? Like I did? Like everyone has their own start business? What was yours? And how did it lead to what you’re doing now?
Guest 3:02
Sure. And I’ll take it back a little bit farther, because I think I want to say I found hospitality. But I think that it really found me. So in school, I was diagnosed with a learning disability in public school. So at that stage in Canada, it’s kind of a little bit of a holding tank. So you don’t get the opportunity to learn. I ended up in in high school and a guidance counselor in grade nine said, You know what, Matt, we don’t think you’re gonna make it through high school. I don’t think you’re gonna make it through the process. And it’s probably best for you to consider alternative employment. As a scrappy young kid, I resisted that and was able to fight through school and graduate with honors, but I did go out and look and I had the opportunity to get exposure to the hospitality industry. So just basic work inside restaurants. And you know, helping out cleaning dishes for for the start. And I what I loved about hospitality is there was no judgment around what people the oppression when people are having on my school background, or what others were saying was possible for me. And the restaurant industry, for me was the first people leaders that that looked at me and said, We believe in you can do great things, but you got to learn to work hard, you got to hustle. And I took my high school years to work, then went to college, had exposure to the campus pubs and restaurants, but got involved at the age of 19 with Bacardi. So I took on a sales job at a really young age, which allowed me to learn the retail side of our industry but also start calling for a very strange reason. But the dynamic having actually calling it 19 years old on about 150 restaurants, north of Toronto here and started to understand what they were going through and what they wanted. I then moved from Bacardi over to a company called the bat here, which is now owned by Anheuser Busch. So the biggest beer company in Canada, and through that had exposure to hundreds of restaurants, hundreds of operators of all these great districts and territories I was managing where people were selling a lot of my beer but when I sat with the owner in the back in their office, they usually had a cigarette in their hand back then and possibly drinking the other hand and they were had their their hands in their face. And they’re saying we have everything looks great on the floor, but I’m not making any money. And my the counts are my top 10 minutes for going bankrupt. So we then launched a company that focused on increasing profitability for restaurants, we could go in any restaurant and put about $100,000 to the bottom line of really well run restaurants in the first 12 months. But after 10 years of doing that, I realized we weren’t coaching processes or chairs, you know, what we’re really coaching is behavior change. How do we get people focused on certain elements of their business that when done relentlessly, as we talked about earlier, will produce the results they want and deserve. So that’s what I’ve tried to condense a little bit of an elevator pitch, but it’s gone. Yeah. I’ve never left it. And I said, 20 years later, I don’t I look at and look at the old guy that’s sitting on the zoom camera right now. That’s me, but it’s been 20 years. And this is my life. And where I told him where I stay.
Roger Beaudoin 5:49
Well, you know, passion is just coming through so clear. And this is a business of passion, whether you’re an owner, whether you’re a manager, whether you’re a bartender, a dishwasher, it doesn’t matter, the chemistry in restaurants, and the fun of running and being involved in a restaurant. And so many people start their careers there. And yes, they go on to other things. But you know, the life skills that we learn working in restaurants, I can’t think of, I’ve been in a lot of different industries, as an entrepreneur, just like you, and I can’t think of any business that has that passion that runs through an organization where you can learn anything, you can start at the very bottom, no college degree and literally own an empire of restaurants. I’ve had guests that, you know, have had that story. It’s just extraordinary. And you know, your passion and your story just rings. So true to that. And right now, our goal with a podcast because you know, I don’t need to tell anyone, the pandemic isn’t over yet. After two years, we’re like, Are you kidding me, it’s still going on. And then on top of all the pandemic challenges, there’s been the labor crisis, we’re going to talk a little bit about that. But unbelievable what operators have had to go through. It’s devastated the industry, we’ve lost well over 100,000 restaurants to the pandemic, but there’s still a lot of them standing. But there’s also new opportunity for existing operators to expand their business and for new people to enter the industry. So it’s a real rebirth that’s going on. And I think you’re at the forefront of that, and I can’t wait to get into a little bit more of your story. Now you’re a coach and your mentor. And I understand that, you know, you’ve coached some of the top 10% of the hospitality industry, and it’s all about unlocking true potential. So can you tell the audience what you specialize in, and how you go about unlocking the potential of a person and organization, and then getting the most out of the people that work for that organization? Like, it’s a real art and a science?
Guest 7:38
Absolutely. And, and I’ve to be honest, in the coaching space, my coach taught me to go out and learn from the best, like coaching is a process of coaching. You know, we have a lot of our general managers or managers and restaurants that were asking to be coaches. One thing I know from becoming one and making a lot of mistakes, it didn’t hurt my clients, but they’d work harder, and I had to find a new path. But coaching is a learned skill. So the approach that we take to break it down into simple steps is leadership and what we need now in times of extreme challenge and change, we need leadership. And what we need most and what people are craving right now is how do I get direction from the people I’m looking to or looking up to? Inside my company? So coaching starts with the leader or the leadership team. So how do we get them focused on where we want to be? And before we used to talk about three and five year business plans, but I think based on the pipe pandemic, it’s three months and 12 months? Where do we need to be to win? So how do we play to win, not play not to lose? So just playing again to try to survive? But how do we get our businesses back going, again, where they’re moving in a direction that’s sustainable? So the first step is, where are we going? The next step is how do we enroll and engage and communicate to our team on on that vision? And why should they care? I think pre pandemic, we can say, here’s our vision, join my team support me. But now I really feel that it’s about how do we design a strategy that our staff, our management buy into care about, so they feel developed and supported, and stay with us? And then what what I’ve learned is my first few years of coaching, we do these great workshops, but just you know, travel the world to get on a stage. You know, these people are thrilled with all the content. And I go back three months later and say how did that go? And they said, Matt, that was great, but got really busy. Yeah, we still want to do that. But we didn’t get it done. So I’m saying this vulnerably. And honestly, we went back and really looked at all of our coaching is grounded in an execution focused strategy. So no BS, we need to make sure that what we are aligned to and what we want to achieve. We have an achievable plan that that’s, that’s executable at the restaurant level. So not in a boardroom. But at a restaurant level.
Roger Beaudoin 9:39
You’ve touched on a couple of key points here because yes, inspiration is clearly there. You can get somebody all fired up. And then the nature of this business being what it is. There’s an I call it business of 1000 details, you quickly get caught up in putting out the daily fires. That’s the typical management MO You know, it’s like okay, things happen. The unexpected is always around the next one. Wonder we can’t see around corners and you have best ideas in mind. And then the execution may fall short because the bandwidth is just so much, especially now during the pandemic. So that’s the first thing I want to talk about. But then you mentioned business plans. Do you suggest and let’s talk about that three, did you say three months and a year versus longer term?
Guest 10:20
We still want to be looking forward. But I think right now based on the acceleration of change, that if we have absolute clarity on what success looks like inside of three months, and just right now, we’re seeing the Super Bowl approaching. So the teams that are in the playoffs know exactly how they win. Does your restaurant is everybody in your restaurant team or in your restaurant group know exactly how we win 2022 And a simple and concise you know, one or two sentence. I’m not a complexity coach, I can give you the five page business plan if you wanted with all the details, if that’s what what the want is from an operator, but really, its simplicity one page plans that are clear that we can go after it, I think clarity on our 12 months, what’s the one sentence that defines how you win this year?
Roger Beaudoin 10:59
Okay, that that brings up something else that I read recently, I was poring through your website and your media kits and things and you talked about a vision statement versus a y statement. But before we go there, let’s go back to the business plan for a moment. Because as I mentioned earlier, there’s lots of opportunity. Now, lots of people are entering the business, a lot of them have never been in this business before. But okay, they’re tied or the job, maybe they’re going to cash in their 401k they see an opportunity. There’s a restaurant that used to be successful. It’s it’s there, the fit up so that we can just move right in, you know, I got grandma’s secret recipe, whatever people get in this business for a variety of reasons. But they do need a business plan, which is like a road map. It’s a template to follow that keeps you on course, because you know how you’re going to get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going. You know, that’s an old phrase. And everyone’s heard that. So there’s your business plan, right? Whether you’re an existing operator, you need a business plan, or whether you’re just starting a business, but now we’re looking at a more short term focus versus, you know, a veteran that’s been in the Super Bowl year after year after year, you know, their veteran operator, but still everything has turned upside down. And now’s the time to re look and reexamine your business, but not just being so close to it as one person is getting the entire team on board behind it to share a vision. So that brings me to this vision versus y statement. Can you explain what that all means?
Guest 12:19
Yes, I think your vision statement is longer term of where are we going? So what are we looking to achieve? Where are we looking to end up? So I would talk to both of us our businesses is where do we want to be 12 months from now? Who’s around us? You know, what, who are we working with? Who are we supporting? What guests are we serving? What management do we have? What are we doing with our days, most people watching this have had to do tasks, they’re outside their love for the industry or outside their core talent based on just creating sustainability for their operation over the last four months, because we’ve been short on labor, we’ve been short on cash, we’ve had restrictions. So when people are doing things they don’t necessarily love. So how do we get back to what we’re best at for the business? But the vision is where do we want to be inside of 12 months and you can see we I still would work on a 36 month plan. But it’s we’ve got to get the 12 months nailed. But when it comes to the why statement is Why do you care. So goals don’t motivate us. So the actual the definition of a goal is not the motivators, how’s it going to make us feel? Why does it matter to you? Why are you willing to give up time, money sacrificed to achieve this goal. And if we can get grounded on why statement, so give us the invulnerable vulnerably on this call, I wanted to lose weight. So I don’t want to lose weight. And we’re going into the new year, I wanted to be more confident I wanted to look in the mirror and be more satisfied. I’m not trying. I’m an older guy. I’m not trying to get ripped and abs and all that stuff. But I found the weight that I was regaining wasn’t making me feel the way I do but my motivators emotional my vote motivators not tied around the metric. So the y statement is what’s what are you really going to deeply buy into? And what are your people going to care about? Because right now we have a labor shortage. So the one thing we should be making when we hire people as fine people, as Simon Sinek says, How do we find people who believe what we believe. And when we get people to believe what we can believe we can we can change the culture, we can change the business results, we can scale the restaurant group this year, the opportunities there, but it starts with focus.
Roger Beaudoin 14:11
So the staff of any organization, restaurants, hotels included, are based on the staff, the staff are foundational to all these organizations. And yes, we’re in the midst of a labor crisis. And a lot of operators are finding a lot of, you know, businesses booming, and yet they can’t serve the customer effectively. They can’t deliver the kind of service that customers come to expect. prices are rising. They have to raise their prices. And now there’s this double edged sword where customers come in and I like to use the word guests, not customers. So guests are coming in the door, of course, and they have certain high expectations. And it’s really hard to communicate the challenges that we’re going through in an authentic way so that there, you can get the support of the guests, as opposed to maybe they’re not getting the experience they’ve come to understand and be delivered before But now you got to find that balance somehow. Okay, so with that in mind, now we’re talking about getting the whole staff on this sort of forward vision and everybody on the same page, which requires training, which requires planning meetings. And I always encourage my staff to come up with their own unique ideas that, you know, brought our business for further. And I encouraged as you do any organization to do this. So let’s talk about, you know, how do you how does an organization nurture, and get the entire staff to be comfortable with generating ideas that are going to move that business forward? How do we get everyone to feel like they’re empowered and part of that team so that the ultimate outcome is a stronger business, a happier guest, you know, more profitability? All these things are like the three sided pyramid?
Guest 15:48
Welding, I think anybody listening to this, if there’s some divers, the gold is in the question. And I think the question is strategy if everybody right, those three questions down, do you spend the next week or month in your management or leadership meetings? Just to get the question, right. But I want to start a little bit farther upstream. So what I’ve seen how to measure you said the industry is booming. So we’ve reopened staff had been off, they’ve been brought back, we’re short staffed, and we are charging hard. And one thing that I say is I COVID was like open heart surgery. So we got a diagnosis, it was COVID. word that’s like we have something wrong with our heart that we need to fix it. The surgery part where they cut open our chest and cracked open our ribs was the shutdown. So we’re actually shut our restaurants and then had an impact. Then they closed our ribs back up, stitched us up and reopen our industry back up again. But for a lot of us, we emotionally have not healed. So we haven’t like a reinstall of staff that are coming in the restaurant. So before we can get them to buy into our vision, our plan and our engagement. I just and this isn’t going back to I don’t want to bring back up COVID I just want to bring that what’s the reality of what we’re expecting from our people today? Because in a hotel, think about a housekeeper aside responsibilities now versus pre pandemic, they’re significantly higher. So we’re asking more from our people we are and I encourage everybody to sit with your team and create create space. And we can send an agenda for this meeting. Because probably won’t get into all the details. Anybody who’s interested, but how do you have a conversation with your people just to say I care about you, I see you I value, it was hard for me vulnerability as a leader. I know so many leaders have said they were close to closing their doors or remortgaging their home or you know, making significant financial decisions. So we show up a little bit honest, create space to have that conversation, because the biggest mistake is we step over what just happened and into ops. And there’s still staff that are in your restaurant, say that love you care about you. But they’re still holding on to what they went through in the in the pandemic or just the ripple effect afterwards.
Roger Beaudoin 17:38
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Guest 19:44
100%. I’m the biggest believer in any work that we do around co creation. So we’ll create 30 to 60% of his strategy with a leadership team. But if we don’t have a co creation model where we’re we’re bouncing off the people that are actually responsible to execute it, whether it’s frontline staff, backout staff whereas the management team, we need to get people involved if we want to get more people supporting the strategy. But I think one thing that you said, there’s, when we ask questions, there’s so much power to learn. And we can make this in the podcast, one of my favorite TED Talks is called Shut up. And listen, it’s Ernesto. And I forget his last name, this incredible Italian man who just shares this story about some agricultural developments that they did in Africa. And it’s it’s one of the most watched TED talks, but it just something for your managers. But yeah, it just the thing, the power of actually listening to people. And what you said there that I heard most, is safety protocols don’t necessarily make our people feel safe. We can follow them to the tee and they are safe. But our job as leaders now is to make sure number one, that our staff had the tools to do their job at the level that’s expected. And number two, is there’s like the one that with the pandemic, it’s more of a feeling, and it could just be capacity of working, but how do we make our staff feel safe? If that’s still a question, depending on where you’re offering it, and then also how do we make them feel supported. So they feel they’re not coming into a shift, knowing I should, we should have 10 people on the floor, or 10 people in the kitchen, and we’re gonna have six and I’m walking back into this again today. So we just have to our best of our ability, feel supported, feel safe, driving the conversation and and our job as leaders is to be more coach, like, don’t be coaches be more coached, like, so we can listen. And if we listen, you’re gonna find the gold and fix the mixer. We’re gonna make it cooler in the restaurant like these solutions, and they matter to people they deeply do. And I would assume you didn’t have the labor shortages that most people in your in your market did based on what the changes that you make you are who you are. But I don’t like what you went through, I just probably much more efficiently executed than the average restaurant.
Roger Beaudoin 21:43
Yeah, I mean, I always had a different approach. For many of my audience, they know that I started restaurants from scratch, ran them for 20 years built what I call the dream team staff, and it really focused on working on the business for a while so that I didn’t have to work in it anymore. So I put systems in place in the biggest system was all foundational around the staff and they were empowered. There’s a difference between, I believe delegation and empowerment, I believe anyone can tell somebody what to do and how to do it. But to really empower someone so that they understand what the task is at hand. And even if they may not be able to accomplish it with great success, give them the room to fail, encourage them, nurture them, develop them recognize and reward them. And then they’ll have your back when the chips are down. And that was a philosophy that worked great for me. And then you said some things that really revolve around company culture, and not every business has really thought about what their company culture is. And that maybe leads to that vision statement, the mission statement, whatever, but getting everybody on board so that they all understand what is the end goal of this business? Why are we here? It’s all about the word hospitality so that everyone feels hospitality, you know, I mean, but that whole company culture is a crux there, do you have any words of advice or magic formula for business that has not really developed a company culture, but it’s, it’s almost a link to their brand, because branding is super important. And the image that we present to the guest is super important for new and repeat business and all that. But the brand is all wrapped up in the staff as well, because every person that works in that restaurant, I believe, is a brand ambassador for that business in any industry, you know, so as a guru, as a coach, as a consultant, what would you say to that? And, you know, what do you see in your everyday work life in working with clients? Do they have fully developed company cultures, mission statements, all that kind of stuff? Or Is now the time to really just think about it and say, Hey, this is foundational as well, this is going to help us get down the road where we want to go. Yeah, I
Guest 23:48
think part of it is language. So a lot of us in the restaurant industry, some of us have come from corporate jobs are built up in the industry. And when we say things like I often find resistance against statements a vision mission values, to people kind of say I get it, don’t really need it. And so there’s kind of resistance towards the language because it feels corporate. So when that we have to do is get comfortable with what’s it’s not about the statement, it’s about the outcome. It’s about how do we use language that like language, for me really matters inside the restaurant group? So that’s for some people, I say, what are what’s our core drivers? What’s our purpose? What’s our play to win statement, but I’ll work with somebody to make sure it lands for them. So they’re buying into doing the work because the reality is you have a culture strategy right now, today, your restaurants open. It’s there might not be documented. But what’s the benefit? If we do revisit it? What’s the benefit? If we do improve it? What’s the benefit if we start to engage more with our people versus the risk if we don’t? So just trying to I think our industry is how do we make it seem less big? And how do we can make it more clear and then again, focus on the outcome. So all the work that I do as a coach isn’t we’re not looking to do work to create an Exercise to create a business plan to present in rooms and workshop. That’s all the process the outcomes, what are the behaviors to get you the results you want and deserve for your restaurant or Restaurant Group. And I think it’s just breaking that down in different ways. And we have a on our auto course we will share all this stuff with you, there’s 33 Worksheet assets that we can give to people will find the right one for you. Great. And the biggest thing for me as a coach, I’m trying to coach people to do less, not more, all of us are over committed right now. So it’s actually how do we do less, and go deep when it comes to our goals and plans rather than over commit? As I find myself definitely as an entrepreneurs is one of my biggest weaknesses.
Roger Beaudoin 25:36
You mentioned the word risk. And that really stood out to me, and I don’t want to scare anyone in the audience. But you know, now is the time of rebirth in our restaurants, where we really, if we were too close to it before the pandemic, it’s just endemic for an owner to be so close to their operation. A lot of them think, Oh, I got this, you know, I’ve been doing it this way forever. And I always, you know, took a walk outside the front door, and I tried to put my guests shoes on and open up my eyes and see what the guest sees every aspect of my experience, I trained my staff to do the same thing. I had 53 employees in my biggest restaurant, every single person had to come through the front door with their eyes open, noticing things that the guests might see and fix things before the guests sees them. Okay, so that was a critical foundational element of how I approach the business. But let’s get back to risk. What I meant by risk was, you have to stay relevant. As a restaurant owner and operator, you have to keep moving forward, whether that’s technology, whether that’s marketing, whether that staff training, combination, all those things, because that old adage survival of the fittest is never more appropriate than right now. You know, and this is the crux of what we’re talking about. It’s like, okay, we want to get our staff on board. We want to get planning sessions going on, encourage people to feel comfortable sharing their ideas. But it’s all about how do we move this organization forward? How do we stay competitive? How do we stay ahead of what the competition is doing? And then continue to, you know, fix little things that are broken, make the work life more comfortable for the staff, get them so that they are delivering superior hospitality experiences every day, even though they are beaten up, even though they are short staffed? I mean, what a challenge what an ask that is. But if a restaurant is still standing, and they’ve made it through the pandemic, again, now’s the time to somehow figure out how to stay relevant. What would you say about that?
Guest 27:31
I think you know, to stay relevant, I would go back to the vision you had when you took the loan out for your restaurant, the day you got the keys, and you put them in the door, there was just there’s an ash. And if you go back to that feeling, you were sharing, you’re sharing me hanging in your previous restaurant hanging things that meant pizza to you creating a feeling. So we want to go back to the question of why does your restaurant exist the reality in most communities in North America, we don’t need another restaurant, we will continue to see 5050 plus percent closures in our industry as we did pre pandemic. So why does your community need? Why does your community need your restaurant? What’s the under service niche or niche that you’re providing? So is it your food? Is it your experience? Is it your staff? Is it your presence? So what is it that is that you’re going to bring to the market that is going to allow you to be unique? beat your competition in a respectful way, because we’re we’re a close community, but we do have to survive and thrive. But what is it that you’re looking to deliver because sometimes as we go through COVID, it becomes a COVID and the pandemic recovery and the challenges and you have a labor crisis. And we probably have a supply chain crisis or pandemic coming down was what we’re seeing in supply chain issues. Now, of course, so what’s going to keep us fighting forward and not just lift our heads up and saying, why did we get here in the first place. And I think you know, I’m often working myself through the pandemic we had to go by the work has been hard. So why fight is much I want to help operators get the results they wanted to serve in their business. Since I’ve said a few times what that looks like is what gets me out of bed and gets me on planes and travels and calls. But for you is what’s where’s that fire. Because one thing I’ve done a lot of work with Tony Robbins and I say his name now and the younger generation doesn’t know this much better spent weeks of my life with Tony Robinson I do spend 10s of 1000s of dollars on his courses and I break it down, I got a chance to sit with them. And he just repeated 70% of our results are driven by our physical state to how we show up in a room. So as an owner, your staff are looking at you and they need leadership now. So what is your energy? What are you bringing to your businesses? What’s your clarity, what’s your communication, but just remember that 70% of your results if we want our staff to change our behaviors come from your leadership and your consistent way that you show up and I appreciate how hard that is right now. And what Tony says 20 percentage 20% Is your wide 10 percentage your Excel sheet business planning strategy. But if we get the if we get the why and the intention and our physical state as Rogers you showed up getting on this call, it’s you’re bringing you’re bringing fire right you’re bringing energy and excitement to everything you do which is why people respond So if we can revisit that we can get better results.
Roger Beaudoin 30:02
I have to ask, we keep talking about fire rediscovering the fire, did you walk on fire with Tony,
Guest 30:08
I was mostly going to date with destiny or the program and it was so excited and it’s gonna go down with my wife and they actually canceled it. So I’ve done sorry to hear that. I’ve done 18 hours in a room for six days and the minus two temperature that it keeps, but and love it and continue to go back. But I will firewalk one day.
Roger Beaudoin 30:27
Oh, excellent. Excellent. Yeah. I don’t really know what that involves, obviously, a very positive mindset. But I wish you the best when you when you do not
Guest 30:36
overdo it. So she looked
Roger Beaudoin 30:39
so amazing. I have no idea. Well, that says a lot. Well, if Oprah can do it, you can do
Guest 30:44
it. Merci. We’ll see. You coined
Roger Beaudoin 30:47
the phrase vulnerability based leadership. Now what does it mean to leave with lead with vulnerability and authenticity? Can you bring that concept to life force,
Guest 30:58
I’ll share a story from from my side is based on my school experience, I’ve walked around with a pretty big wound that I’m not a smart person. So what I would do in my early stages is I would use big words, you know, have fancy clothes to try to show up here. Most of the times the clients that might be in a sweater or hoodie or are running shoes, a pair of Jordans to help them through now, but I wasn’t being my authentic self. And I thought I was showing up right, I was trying to be my mentors. And in doing so, I wasn’t authentic. I missed some connection, although I had some some success. So the vulnerability based leadership for me is to start to share my story of my learning disabilities start to share that as someone through the pandemic, I struggle with anxiety and depression, I share my failures, and what were not only how I’ve succeeded through the pandemic, but also how I failed and I’ve learned this from Brene, brown Browns work, it’s who’s basically written on vulnerability, shame and blame, and one of the most successful authors of the lesson coaches speakers for the last 1520 years now. But what I see in our industry is a lot of us as leaders, if we have to show up and be perfect, show up and make sure to have an answer. And the reality is, for many of us what our team’s need right now is for us to be to be real, for us to show up and be honest, because that’s what creates connection. So we’re not looking to overshare our family situations or become therapists, we’re just looking for people to really be real when they show up. And as we look to we have a retention, the staff retention issue, if we can try vulnerability in a new way, every group I’ve worked with us on it has had significantly beneficial results. We have to it’s not zero to 100, we got to move quick. But if we can start to connect more with our people intentionally, I promise you, it’ll prove your retention results, engagement and culture.
Roger Beaudoin 32:42
Like that. That’s beautiful. Let’s talk about the book now. Now the book is called you can’t do it alone. Can you tell us why the title and what someone’s gonna get out of reading that book?
Guest 32:54
Absolutely, the book was written as I get a chance, we do work with the top 10% in the market with my one on one coaching. So that’s where I get to spend my time and over about five years, I started to see patterns that would come up. So whether it’s an independent restaurant trying to get out, we can’t do it alone, we need support inside the restaurant, whether it’s a scaling multi multi site group, if it’s addition, going from one location to to maybe to three, it’s multiplication as we go up complexity once we go 456 and beyond Sure. And then we have scaling larger groups that are really looking at some rapid scale or expansion. And if we want to have our operations run properly, no matter if our 500, or 500,000, or your coffee shop, or one of my clients will be 500 million this year, in sales to the restaurants, we need people to support our vision. So that we can’t do it alone is to talk to the owner to say there’s a way that you can do it differently. We can get others involved in your strategy. And it will allow you to get what you want and deserve because I’d sit with these owners and it’s it’s written in the book. I’ve sat with over a dozen owners last year that when I asked them to turn their screen around that I’m looking into now and show me their calendars, I would see their hands go in their face. And in many cases tears roll not being dramatic here for a fact that literally tears roll down their face. It’s not sustainable, right. So as humans, we move away from pain or we move towards pleasure. So I found that patterns, we can’t do it all we got to move away from that pain. And it starts with the leader that we work through how we you know how we create a proper plan, how we enroll people in the plan. And then we just talked through strategies of how do we communicate and execute? How do we build contributors inside your inside your restaurant?
Roger Beaudoin 34:32
Wow. Now one of the concepts we talk about, or I should say you talk about is there are so many opportunities right now and how does an effective leader prioritize and not get lost in that whole indecision? It’s like how do they make these decisions? How do they evaluate those opportunities? Because whether you get a $500 million restaurant company or a $500,000 coffee shop, that premise remains the same. It’s like there’s lots of opportunities out there. Where should I go? What should I do, and how do I not Get lost in the overwhelm, because our bandwidth is literally pulled in so many directions yet, we don’t want to lose any of these opportunities because in a blink of an eye, they’ll be gone. What would you say to that?
Guest 35:10
I agree that like, we have to look at recovering our business, and maybe it’s more hours, maybe it’s more effort, maybe it’s just getting the right team in place. But the reality is anybody listening to this as a top performing operator, like you’re taking the time to invest in yourself and listen or watch. And the reality is for your team, you know, we can’t do all things, there are going to be incredible opportunities that come across this year. But if we commit to everything, our execution as the Harvard study saying, if we’re committed to doing three more than three things at an excellent level, we will get zero done at a good level, or even a great level. So the challenge for leaders now is to sit down and I say not all things have a return on time, or a return on investment. So there could be great ideas. But what we want to look at, and if we had a session, we would we would storyboard. We’d put the whiteboards up, we paint the wall and the opportunities, but then we’d write them in priority of how do they align with our goals? You know, what’s the impact on the business, short term and long term? Because sometimes we chase short term cash, sometimes we need that most of the times we don’t. But how do we focus on the top three initiatives. And what I encourage people to do is the most people don’t have hours in the day. But I say if I could get somewhere between six and 12 hours of somebody’s time, in a week to focus on your core goals. So if somebody’s working a 50 hour work week, give me six hours to work on it on your your guests service experience. And let’s see what that looks at how are they coaching your staff? How are they engaging with your guests? How are they putting a recognition program in play, the compound impact of focusing hours a week, and if we did that consistently and relentlessly will fundamentally change your business. So we’re trying to get over the objection of I’m already too busy. But if we really went all in on this, what would the benefit be? What would the outcome be? What would the impact be for us, our team and our guests in our community? But it’s it’s not only what do we need to do? It’s where’s the time in the day? When are we blocking time to do the work? And how do we give our general manager permission to coach your staff and spend two hours a day coaching staff on service experiences? Because right now, they might feel that they have to cut labor. And they’re cutting labor working on the floor. But I and you got to decide what’s best for you right now. But what’s really going to get the best beneficial long term results. So I know that’s a lot. I know that that’s a big coaching conversation. So let me know if that was clear. But
Roger Beaudoin 37:29
oh, it was for sure. But that leads to that whole balance that we have defined between and the mindset shift, you know, a paradigm shift, because right now, okay, labor is tight. And costs are rising. And we gotta maintain the bottom line, yet people look at labor as a cost versus an investment, you know, and I’d love to cover that fact that your staff are an investment, they’re not a cost. And even if you pay them a couple extra hours to do these brainstorming sessions to really generate great ideas, you’d never know what the ROI potential is in some of those ideas that are more than pay not only the labor for the two hour meeting once a month, but also, you know, incentives, bonuses, other recognition, some big idea could come out of a one session that literally transforms your business. And I speak from experience when I say that, so I love the fact that you you brought that up. And I love the fact that we can sort of maybe open the eyes of some operators right now and let them know, Hey, don’t be short sighted. For the short term, let’s be a little long sighted for a strategic idea that might generate some some serious ROI. I think that’s a really powerful idea. What is consistent and effective communication look like? The future? Yeah, Coach me coach us on that communication is, again, I keep using this word foundational, but it is absolutely essential to be good communicators, not just us to our staff, but our staff up the chain down the chain sideways communication and effective leadership is super important. So let’s talk about that concept.
Guest 39:00
And, you know, just based on my career, I’ve worked with lots of managers and I’ve offered my time over throughout the pandemic and my phone rings a dozen times a week from people I haven’t seen in a long time. And the number one thing that comes up from them. And these are senior managers, so we’re not talking kind of mid level managers and restaurants, your GMs your chefs your regionals. Even directors that are calling me saying I’m not clear as to where we’re going. I haven’t really heard from leadership, or I’ve heard from didn’t really understand or we heard a bunch of the start of the pandemic. And I haven’t heard anything since and we’re all working such crazy hours but I’m just I’m not I’m not as bought into where we’re going as I was or I’m scared. You know, the reality is that the fear of can we pay our mortgage Kenner industry recover? Will I stay open? You know, all of these things are playing through our heads. So what people are asking for is, is consistent communication and connection. So I say COVID took away community and connection. But whether it’s post pandemic, whether it’s you know, going into our Our staff crisis that we’re in now, what people crave during times of challenge and change is consistent communication. And we work with people. And we take this from from the business community. So the entrepreneurial community, from small business from large business, the fact is most restaurant, or most restaurants or restaurant groups aren’t communicating enough. So what consistent communication looks like for me? We’ll start with the process of do we have? Do we have a daily meeting in place? Is there any touchpoint pre shift? What does that look like? Is it intentional? Do we have a weekly meeting, in most cases, we can all relate it, we all been in a weekly meeting that was scheduled for an hour that took four, we still have walked away from there. So what are we talking about? And now I’ve got 10 times more homework, and I’m not sure who’s actually responsible for it, we go back to that meeting. And we talked about the same stuff again. So nobody wants to go back to the meeting. So we want to have a weekly meeting. But it’s an update for the business that we would go to this is all in the book we get, we don’t have to get the book, we can get to this information. If that’s if that’s what you need, but it’s live, we have the weekly meeting, a monthly meeting and offsites. But what we’re just looking for is to make sure teams that communicate and stay connected, see great results. And look at how often a sports team would meet. You know, if you if you respect a retailer or a business, if anybody’s a Starbucks fan, next time you’re in Starbucks has asked the person how often that two weeks, the reality of Starbucks is a brand that most of us know. And some of us like, spends more money and investment on their people than they do on coffee. Yes, I’ve heard that we’re spending more money on people in coffee, and that that’s a shocking stat for the for the scale of their operation and some of the benefits. But they’re, you know, Howard Schultz shut the restaurants down when he took them back over to re communicate training cost the business 10s of millions of dollars, just shut all Starbucks down for a day. But the foundation of great businesses is communication. And I know there’s more depth that we can go into is how do we run a successful pre shift or huddle? How do we run a weekly team meeting. We’ve tried a lot of different ways. There’s not a one size fits all, but we can create the structure that you can shape to fit your business. Because if we’re not communicating and the excuses that we’re busy, I promise, you have short term execution today. But it does have a tendency to break down over time. And Roger, you shared like, your staff knew how they had to walk in into your location and look at the business that’s trained. That’s the communication done that that creates dialogue and conversation that creates a standard, it creates an expectation. If we can just do those simple things consistently. It’s incredible the culture we can build.
Roger Beaudoin 42:17
Thanks for bringing that up, you know, to take that one step further, we created what I called battle stations within the restaurant where the front of house staff had their own section that they had to police and monitor for these things that were broken, that we didn’t want the guests to see whether it was a wobbly table, or maybe a ketchup bottle that had ketchup dribbling down the side, whatever it is, there’s 1000 details in each section. So that’s a battle station. But then we also had a mantra, every table is your table. So there was the overlap, where if someone in a different section was in the middle of service, let’s just say a customer dropped their fork on the floor. And that person server was in the kitchen getting food or doing whatever. And a busser a host, a server, an indifferent station, notice something every table is your table and up level the organization so that everyone has eyes on the floor, and everyone is backing each other up. And it’s all about teamwork, and team spirit and recognition and rewards. You know, let’s let’s talk about that I really love to talk about recognition. Because everyone works for a paycheck. Of course, obviously, we all have to eat, we all to pay our bills, we need to make money and save for the future, all that kind of stuff. And that’s a given. But people really thrive on praise. And, you know, being recognized for going above and beyond was so empowering for myself and my team. You know, we had a program called difference dollars. And we recognize two people every week, because the majority of people worked on a Friday and a Saturday night not you know, in different styles was as simple as I could recognize someone for going above and beyond maybe they helped a teammate, maybe they solve the guests problem, whatever it was, it was going above and beyond the typical scope for the job. And I would call the entire team together on a Friday and then again on a Saturday just before the doors open for business. And I would recognize someone. And it was really empowering, because I would tell everyone gathered, you know, the person would come forward, I would hand them a $20 bill and a can of Redbull. And I would thank them very much for what they did for making a difference. And then I would go into my office and I kind of type it up. And I had all these inexpensive frames that we got from Walmart or whatever and we covered the kitchen and the employee area and the employee bathroom in the hallway, you know, all the behind the scenes areas, over time filled up with all these differences. And whenever a new employee was hired, you couldn’t help but notice they would stop and read all these things. And that sent a very clear message of how we ran our business and what our expectations were. And after a while it’s like that builds such chemistry and it up level the team that people knew instantly whether I fit in this organization or I don’t and I either follow, you know the lead of all the veterans that have been there and assimilate best practices or I’m not gonna last very long. And after a while we didn’t have to fire anyone anymore. People just sort of fell by the wayside, or they were voted off the island because they didn’t fit the culture of their business. You know what I mean? So, do you have any stories similar to that? Or can you give any advice about how to recognize and reward people, especially now when, you know, people are getting high wages, and we have to pay higher wages, and we have to incentivize our people, but not just because it needs to be earned, I believe, you know, you can’t just be throwing money around just because we have to keep people, you have to somehow build that culture. People want to earn it, they want to take the next level, and grow in an organization and rise above the situation. Now, you know what I mean?
Guest 45:42
100% in recognition, again, as a foundation as it’s in the book, and anything you’ll find that we do that you’ll find US Army online, is founded in a recognition focused culture. And I think the one thing that I hope everybody heard in what you just shared was that there are there’s there’s great activity and expectations, but it is driven towards a standard, what it meant to work with you what it meant to serve your guests the experience you wanted to create, right? There is an incredibly strong why that that comes out of you that why? Because these things might sound to some OPERS like I’m busy, how would I do you know, how would I type up the do the walls, it’s because of the impact and the business you created and the retention of hat and the recruiting element? How because people knew that what you stood for. But my belief is that the days of reprimanding stuff, so we do 500 covers, and we mess up slightly messed up seven. So at the end of the shift, we’re talking about the seven. And we’re not talking about the benefits of this is cultural in our industry. And people tell us something that we don’t really believe in recognition here. We’ve done it this way. And I just I don’t It’s not genuine for me. And I get that and it’s it’s not about you anymore. This isn’t my business as well. It’s not it’s not about my my recognition beliefs, which are what they are, but it’s about how are we going to take care of our people. And I think that recognition happens by design. I want to hear this for most of the teams I work with, we put a recognition process in place, as you see that we get the toy dog to Canada, and we type it up and we post that’s a process. But we actually look at simple measurements. So for managers, the one question if you want to change your culture, and all of the noise, if you say to your managers, I’d like you to recognize three people all next week. And I just want you to jot down in your phone, what you recognize them for, how did they react? And how did it make you feel. And then when we come back to our manager meeting, we’re going to review that, because recognition creates the feeling. And it’ll create it not only in the person receiving it, but the person giving it. But if we start putting recognition and attention in the direction of what great looks like, like I want people to look for great today, when they’re listening this go into your restaurant operations, fine, great, pull that person aside and save that was great. And I probably like this, that simple change. But if we can’t do that, and we’re trying to force change from behind people, and right now the staff have some leverage and choice. We have four generations in there in the workforce right now. The force, we have Gen Y, Gen Z, Gen X and even looking into boomers who have Boomer generation. So we have four generations in the workforce. But I think Gen X or Gen Z and Gen Y are one of the most remarkable generations we’ve ever had in the workforce. But they need to be recognized and communicated to it is if you go into the deep surveys, we can go into Gallup surveys, it’s a must for them not not a want, it’s a must. And if they feel they’re working hard and not being recognized, they will unfortunately I say this respectfully, but I want to put some pressure on you, as the operators testing, if you don’t the risk is low, even find somebody who will
Roger Beaudoin 48:32
absolutely true. That perfect segues into leadership by example, how important is leadership by example, versus just being a strong manager that empowers and just tell someone, this is how it’s done? I’m going to nurture this, you know, nurture this sort of task or behavior, whatever it go do it? Let’s let’s uncover that whole thing. What is leadership, by example, really mean? How important is it today in any organization.
Guest 49:01
So I think you know, as if you’re an independent operator, multisite chain, you’re designing an experience you want for your guests, whether it’s on the back of a napkin, in your office, or over a coffee or whether you’re sitting in a boardroom with a team of 20 designing the experience. But ultimately, what we want is to create something that’s going to be executed by our frontline staff consistently. But the only way people are going to buy into that if they’re showing leadership, like leadership is willing to, to lead by example. And I know we all know this, but I’ll often get asked people content that we want to do a scaled staff training process for our staff. And I said, that sounds really exciting. What are we going to do with the leadership to know it’s about the staff? We’re good? We’re busy, Matt, we got stuff going on. Okay, great. So we want people that them to invest in themselves, but we’re not going to do the same investment. And this is i I’ll push a bit on people on the side. But if we’re not willing to invest in ourselves and have a development strategy that’s top down and work through the organization. From my experience I have designed probably it’ll fail. It can’t be a out them, it has to be about us. And then an operator actually, what are we going to do together that are going to allow us to show up a lead by example. And actually, that they understand we know how to execute. And I’m not asking you to get on the line and cook something tonight, I asked somebody, somebody asked me, the bartenders, if you know everything, you know, you come and get behind our bars couldn’t do it ever done, it wouldn’t work out very well for your inventory. So it’s not an idea. But I can make sure that I can do moving recognition points with your staff, or we can help to appreciate or we can leave, but you just have to, if we want some new behavior from our staff, we need to do it consistently. I also encourage people, if you want your staff to do different, just doing a meeting to watch the strategy to say, here’s the expectation, I want you to go into that that you need to be consistent and creating a standard for 30 to 90 days before you should expect your staff to consistently follow through. So often, we presented new service strategies, new menus, new promotions, new technology, and it’s lasted for a bit and it’s gone away. So it’s fell off, and it’s fall by the wayside. So staff or this has happened at your staffs, previous employers. So in order for them to fully buy into your vision direction, your service strategy, whichever it is your new technology, you need to make it a standard. And it’s going to take a bit of time for them to buy in based on the trusts and challenges that we all have from what we’ve based on what we’ve just gone through. I know whatever cover big stuff. So I know it’s a lot for somebody to take it on the other side. But these are some big concepts that I’d love to talk about. So I hope that’s planning for the audience. Yeah, I
Roger Beaudoin 51:28
was hanging on every word that was beautiful. That is absolutely true. You know, the word pivot has been used so much since the pandemic hit. And obviously, every business it doesn’t matter the industry, but we’re focused on restaurants here, and every restaurant has had to pivot in an instant lightning quick because, okay, I didn’t expect this. And tomorrow, everything has to be 100% different. We have to change processes procedures. In my own restaurant, we literally had to rip out all the chairs and boots, because we couldn’t see it inside anymore. We had to turn it into a market, you know, and that was one pivot of five pivots that we had to make. So obviously organizations are used to pivoting it may continue into the future. But in your book, you talk about leaders pivoting as well. Now, how is that so important? And let’s let’s talk about the concept of leadership having to pivot and where are they pivoting to? And what kind of decisions are they’re making? That they weren’t making yesterday?
Guest 52:23
Sure. And I think it’s, you know, we’re looking at different choice. So based on the pivots, we all put some of us moved to delivery, some did markets, some did different hours, we’ve done a lot of pivots. But I think as leaders, the one thing we have to do is look at what changes did we make during the last two years? And what still serve us today and our future? You know, I love the third party delivery companies, I got a couple who, who get quite frustrated with me, because my concern is I want the restaurant turn on the guest. I don’t want the third party delivery the marketing machine to owe the app to own your guests where there’s hundreds of choices. Absolutely. And if we’re, if we’re not engaged, I just work if there’s a pivot, I just want to make sure that delivery and delivery is not going away the statistics from FSR magazine or QSR. Magazine, or if you want to look at those statistics there, they are shocking.
Roger Beaudoin 53:13
It’s not going away. It’s essential for every operation in the future for sure. Yep.
Guest 53:17
So just how do we continue to own that pivot if you did changes and your staff but I think when it comes to leaders pivoting, it’s how, what do I know is I’m not the leader that my business needs need to be, and my clients needed me to be six months from now. So I need to continue to invest in myself, I need to continue to get clear. If we want to take care about others. If we might want to lead others, we must first take care of self. So I think the pivoting for us is making sure how do we become the leader that our business needs us to be moving into the future. And that’s something you’ll see from somebody like Gary Vee online, Gary Vaynerchuk, if that’s your generation of Jack Welch, Jack Welch, the top CEO of the last century century, unfortunately, we passed, but one of my mentors is just saying, as leaders, we need to be crystal clear, we need to let our people know exactly what’s expected of them. And I think the pivot right now is do we have clarity of where we’re going? And have we created the clarity. And I’ll repeat that word, but clarity is important. Have we created the clarity for our people, so they know exactly what’s expected of them in their positions. So we can’t assume like COVID Change responsibilities and management and staff have we sat down and just said here, here’s actually your measurement of success. Because what’s happening is often the leadership is expecting one thing. And the manager staff members working so hard over here doing everything they can, but it’s not what the leader wants. So the leaders disappointed the staff member doesn’t feel recognized. So we have a disconnect. So managers working on our local store marketing, and what they really want them to do is work out attracting new staff. So we have a disconnect. It’s our job as leaders if we’re going to pivot to one thing, clarity and where we’re going, but make sure all of your core people know exactly what’s expected of them. Not 100 things not not their job, the core things that they need to do to move the business forward.
Roger Beaudoin 55:00
I’m inspired by that. That’s great. And
Guest 55:03
then takes time. It’s fluid right now, unfortunately, I had died earlier this week. So I’m really busy, not how my ad got referred. He’s like, dear Fred, and they have 150 locations that have massive 800 person support office. And he’s like, What am I going to do that map? And I said, I don’t know. I said, I’ve got your back. I’m here to help you. If you have a you have a wonderful team, or what happens if we don’t? Because we decide can we decide conversations about what you expect and what he’s doing, and there’s a gap there. So some of this stuff takes time. And I do appreciate that. And it is fluid. It’s not a one and done. But if we consistently revisit every quarter, twice a year, it’ll have the impact of I have a great return on time.
Roger Beaudoin 55:37
Excellent, excellent. Let’s talk a lot about what every organization needs. Right now. Every every restaurant, every hotel, everyone’s struggling with a labor crisis needs solutions. And you mentioned the word recruiting versus hiring before that is certainly one aspect. But what what advice or what best practices? or what have you seen within your clients that is really working right now? Where are they finding successes in solving this, and it’s not going to be solved overnight. But here in there, I keep hearing of these innovative ideas that are helping restaurants that are achievable, and are actionable by other restaurants, not just the organization that came up with the idea, what are you seeing out there? Yeah, so
Guest 56:18
there’s a say, and we’ve coached on this topic for quite a long time. And there is some great technology out there, if that’s right for your business. But if there’s any operator out there, I’m gonna give you simple but very powerful things that you could do, that’ll change your attracting results next week, the first thing I want you to do is revisit your job. So often, I’ll go into meetings that we can’t, we’re having trouble attracting people. So my team will pull down five of their competitors, job ads, take the logos and brands off, pull their job ads down, which most leaders haven’t looked at it a while because they haven’t posted them, take a look as I put them in the middle of the table and say find your job, which one’s yours and of the five or six. And often we they it’s a good laugh, because they’re all the same great place to work fine, great hours, good culture, all of this stuff. But what I want to encourage people to do is revisit your job. So it’s a very dark, you’re just not competing with other restaurants, you’re competing with all retailers, all quick service, all retailers, you’re dealing with the gig economy for people, so we need to really stand out. So when it comes to your job ad, traditionally, what happens is people are talking about themselves at the top of the job, and here’s our company, here’s what we need from you. I still see people posting get an entry level management job at my restaurant, and you need three years experience. It’s just it’s not good. I just got one from the Canada’s biggest airline, who we work with here just posted it for one of their restaurants. So I called them up and said, Please take it down. Let’s revisit this. So I want you to talk about your candidate upfront. So I want you to what does it mean to work for you with you? And what is your promise to your people? What are they getting get from working with you talk to them in the first paragraph, talk, what you’re going to provide them what you’re going to compensation, how you’re going to grow and develop them, and how you’re going to support them. And it’s just we’re trying to interrupt the pattern online. So if we get a unique job at it, we can supply some examples. And we will provide the link we have an hour long recorded webinar and attracting and retaining staff that we can everybody can have access to and it’s it’s our best work over a decade that you can go through to support this conversation. But Job Number one, job two is where are you posting? Where’s your ideal candidate today? Where would you find them? So you said the one thing I loved $20 Bill into Red Bull. Red Bull means you know your art your your market, Red Bull means it’s probably younger demographic, on a ski hill. There’s somewhere where they are in that market on the skate, we know exactly where to go find them. But if you’re in a major city right now, where’s your ideal candidate? Where are they looking for jobs, LinkedIn, Facebook, indeed. And you probably have to get a small budget behind to pay to play. So right now if you post a job, and he’s got these wonderful ads 16,000 job that’s posted per day, and gets even more than that. If we put a job that up right now, by the time this podcast is over, you’re gonna be on page 16 unless you pay to play. So, gotta pay to play just a little bit. We’re talking $10 bills, not $100 bills. So you can literally put 20 bucks up and it’ll change your ranking your ranking strategy. But here’s the one thing that’ll change your results. Previously in the past, we would get a resume and we would call them once. And they would be lucky to be interviewed by us because we had the leverage. But right now there’s less of them than there are positions. So we need to filter our resumes differently. So we need to make sure whoever scanning the resumes you’re receiving because we’re probably sitting somewhere in a fit. We want to make sure they know how to filter and what to look for. But I strongly encourage you to create a simple dashboard. Out of the qualified resumes we’ve received. How many times did we reach out to them? And did we actually contact them? In most cases, if we fix the the resume filtering process, we changed the results the next week, because we’re calling once we didn’t get an answer. That’s a 21 year old who actually doesn’t have a phone does never answer their voicemail. So he left him a voicemail, they actually made a text message. So we want to make sure if we reach out three to five times for potentially qualified candidates. It will change your connection. It will change them under people you speak to it’ll change them where people show up to your interviews and hopefully you’re hired results that is the linchpin that’s missing for most operators. We went into a call center recently, who said that we can’t and they needed like 100 staff and said, Matt, we can’t find any. And we found out that they were getting hundreds of resumes. Oh, yeah. But just based on capacity, we’re following up with a fraction. We changed it they hired, I think it was close to 60. Some people the next week, they some fell off and the training process, but I think we stuck under just under 40 people in a week into the call center trained and engaged working through the process. So the filtering, if you change it, it works.
Roger Beaudoin 1:00:34
That’s very strong advice I saw, thank you for sharing that because it’s something everyone needs to hear and embrace and try to execute. The key word being execute. I mean, there, there were a lot of strong ideas there. I’m going to re listen to that, because I thought that was really powerful. But you also mentioned a webinar. So I’m going to put the obviously the link in our show notes to that, I think that’ll be superbly helpful.
Guest 1:00:57
It’s just it’s we really broke down three sections. So there’s a section on attracting, so what are the core, and I know, I get told I talk fast, I started slowed down, you can see that but the webinar, there’s a lot there. But there’s supporting assets that allow us to execute. So there’s the tools that will take you through the exercises. So there’s a section on attracting, there’s essentially a section on retaining. So what do we do to retain our people once we have them? We recently did a poll on LinkedIn to ask operators what’s most important in 2022, attracting or retaining, knowing everybody’s going to say both? Even in my surprise, it was 69% of people responded, that retention is their number one focus for 2022. Let’s keep it where we have the bonus. Nobody knows. Couldn’t agree more. And then we have a develop. So what did we do to support our people? So they learn and grow? Because if they’re not growing, they leave.
Roger Beaudoin 1:01:45
I love it. Okay, so that’s attracting, retaining and supporting those three, there’s those three sides of the pyramid again, super important. That’s excellent. We’ve covered a ton of ground today. Matt, is there anything else you’d like to share that we’ve missed?
Guest 1:01:59
No, I think the one thing that I encourage people is just to continue to fight forward. You know, we didn’t come this far to only come this far, we’ve gone through the struggle. We’ve you know, we’ve had some support and subsidy, I hope that you have I know a lot of that has ended now. So we need to be looking forward for ourselves. And I care about our industry. As you can tell, I’m very passionate, I care about every single leader that’s committing the time or owner that’s put their house on the line. But what it’s going to take for us just to step back at ops for a little bit and create a simple plan that makes sure you’re running in the direction you want to get the results that you want and deserve.
Roger Beaudoin 1:02:30
Fantastic, Matt. Well, thank you so much to Matt, and our audience for tuning in. Check out the book. It’s called you can’t do it alone now available on Amazon. There’s thank you for holding that. I look forward to finishing it as well. Thank you so much for being a great guest, Matt, and I wish everyone out there to again rediscover that passion relight that fire, dig deep, be resourceful, be creative, and stay well everyone. That was the restaurant rockstars podcast. We’ll see everyone in the next episode. Thanks again that for sharing your insights on effective leadership. One of the things that is critically important right now, during these most challenging of times, I want to let you know that we are offering a free gift at restaurant rockstars.com. It’s all about maximizing profit in your restaurant, which is also critically important right now as we emerge from the pandemic. I’m giving away the three ways you are killing your restaurant profits, actionable ideas you can use immediately in your restaurant as well as a free restaurant assessment. Two versions, whether you’re starting your very first restaurant or you’re an industry veteran, you’ve been in business a while or even for many, many years. There are 50 different questions that are thought provoking and designed to make you think through your entire operation and see where you’re making money where you’re losing money and where the opportunities lie. So check it out at restaurant rockstars.com And we also like to thank our episode sponsors Davao, the automatic sales tax platform, as well as serve which stands for study restaurant variety. Check them out, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in.
Intro/Exit 1:04:12
Thanks for listening to the restaurant rockstars podcast for lots of great resources, head over to restaurant rockstars.com See you next time.