SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Welcome back to the show. I am featuring an episode this week where I was able to be interviewed with Eric Cachatori, one of my friends who has the podcast Restaurant Unstoppable. He's the OG when it comes to the podcast space and playing in the restaurant podcast landscape. He really started this journey for many of us. So grateful to be able to spend time with him. He's a wonderful interviewer. And during the episode, we talk a lot about the three pillars that I believe every restaurant group should have in place in order to scale. And those three pillars are people, process, and profit. We're going to take a deep dive into each of those pillars. I'm going to tell you stories, success stories of clients that I've worked with and what the impact and outcome is for each of their restaurant groups when they've implemented all of these pillars. I hope you find this episode very valuable. Eric and I talk about a ton of resources during this, and they will all be in the show notes for you. Enjoy. Welcome to the Restaurant Leadership Podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics, and habits from the world's greatest operators. I'm your host, Kristen Marvin with Solutions by Kristen. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses through powerful one-on-one coaching, group coaching, and leadership workshops. This show is complete with episodes around coaching, leadership development, and interviews with powerful industry leaders. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about, leadership lessons you want to learn, and any feedback you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes, and I will give you a shout-out on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening, and I look forward to connecting.

SPEAKER_02: 2:17

With excitement, allow me to welcome back on the show for a second time, author and restaurant coach at Solutions by Kristen. Kristen, Marvin, my lady.

SPEAKER_00: 2:30

Always. Thanks for having me, Eric.

SPEAKER_02: 2:33

Always a joy to connect with you. And you know, the first time we had you on the show, that was episode 1096, almost a year ago, over a year ago. Uh tons of value. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed just sharing your story, and you really impressed me. So I'm stoked to be able to have you back to go deeper into that noggin you have. You have some great advice. I know this is gonna be good today. We're gonna be talking about the three pillars to scale your restaurant group without losing control, uh, those pillars, the teaser, people, process, and profit, which aren't really surprising pillars. You know, I think if you're a student of the industry, you're you're hearing a lot of content and you you hear things like that's that's not a surprise, but looking at the sub bullets, there's some great stuff coming our way. So I cannot wait to get into it. And I think that you know this is coming. I hope you know this is coming, but we can't get started until until we get that motivational, inspirational, ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?

SPEAKER_00: 3:27

Yeah, slow down to speed up. I think la I think I used the same mantra last time we recorded together, which you were in my living room, so I'm feeling a little bit distant from you today. I think I'm in your living room today or somewhere in your house.

SPEAKER_02: 3:41

But my studio. I actually have a studio now.

SPEAKER_00: 3:44

Nice, nice. Yeah, slow down to speed up is a mantra that I have been using since becoming an entrepreneur, and it's something that I talk a lot about with clients. And and it's just the a lot of the beauty that I um the beauty of the work that I do is helping people really take a second, pause, breathe deeply, and think deeply about every aspect of their business. And that's not something that we do a lot in the restaurant business.

SPEAKER_02: 4:13

What does that slowing down look like?

SPEAKER_00: 4:16

It really can look different for everyone. It's something that I kind of work on designing with people. But sometimes for people, it's simply taking a 10-minute walk outside. It can be listening to a podcast, it can be walking the dogs, it can be taking a tech break, a 72-hour tech break, um, and spending some time in nature. It can be walking around in grass with your shoes off and just connecting to the earth. Um, it can also be just a few deep breaths at a time when things are really stressful in the middle of the ship.

SPEAKER_02: 4:50

Yeah, and I think those are micro examples, but I think it also could be taking a month or two, a quarter, maybe a year to work on the business. And, you know, I think this is really true. I think today's conversation is about scaling. I think uh restaurateurs get super aggressive with scaling and they just they think about you know, they just put their energy out, out, out, out, and they don't put their energy into what they're doing better. And uh, you know, you see this going from two to three or four locations, uh, or even just going from one to two locations, they think, oh, I if I just have more of these, the money will come and things will get easier. Uh, and then they just end up overextending themselves and they don't put the the energy into uh what you're doing today better tomorrow, and constantly just making that thing that you do better, and that that takes slowing down um and really thinking and being intentional with how you do things.

SPEAKER_00: 5:45

Absolutely, and really understanding the reasoning of rent behind why you want to scale. Sometimes people scale because of ego, right? Or they want to build their brand and their name across multiple locations. Sometimes it's because they get bored, which I hear a lot, right? They've opened one or they've opened two, and they're like, okay, now what? I think the nuts next, you know, next natural step is just to grow. I was having a conversation with the owner, with a um an owner the other day who six months ago, when we started to work to start our work together, was completely burnt out and ready to escape the industry because things were so chaotic. And after being able to put some of these systems in place today that we're gonna talk about, he he said to me last week, he said, You you're gonna think I'm nuts, but now that things are going so well, I just got an opportunity to open a third, and I think I want to continue to grow.

SPEAKER_02: 6:33

Interesting. Well, let's see how that goes.

SPEAKER_00: 6:35

Uh so sometimes the opportunity, yeah, just comes and comes to them and they don't even, they're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02: 6:40

I think that's what I don't think you need to. I think the best way to scale is to attract opportunity, not to go look for it. You know? Um I think, you know, I think if you do the thing well enough, people will come to you. Uh and I don't know. Man, maybe that's not a universally accepted approach, but I find that when you are good at what you do, the opportunity you you attract it, you don't go looking for it.

SPEAKER_00: 7:03

I think it can work both ways, Eric. I think that you know, for I I'm learning a lot about myself as an entrepreneur and how I'm built and designed and how I should be working. And I'm finding that it's better for me when I wait for opportunities to come instead of chasing opportunities because one is much more draining for me and the other one is much more sustainable. But I think that no matter whether you have an invitation come to you or an opportunity come to you to open a new restaurant, or you decide that you're gonna open an additional location or multiple locations, there needs to be intention around how you're gonna go do it. And that really starts with people and the first pillar that we'll kind of dive into today.

SPEAKER_02: 7:48

Yeah, so let's get into that first thing. Um people. Like do your thing.

SPEAKER_00: 7:54

Yeah, for sure. So these pillars are um part of a framework, an independent restaurant framework that I built and put into uh my new book, Multi-Unit Mastery. So what and the the why and kind of the backstory behind this was I've been coaching independent restaurant owners now for a couple of years. And, you know, I've been again, been in the industry for 20 years. I realized that there was a common theme, a few common themes that were really missing for people and specific pain points with every single person I talked to. And I found myself coaching around very much some of the same things. And when I sat down and spent slowing down the speed ups and spent some time reflecting on what's going on here and what is the bigger opportunity here to support the industry, I was like, oh, this is something beautiful that I could put into a framework. I also really compared this to my previous experience, right? So growing an independent group from two locations that were different, and then opening five completely different concepts over five years. I saw that none of this framework was in place and it was incredibly chaotic. And what we did was we just found people that were really loyal to us, and then we put them in leadership positions and then tried to design roles for them. And what that does when you scale is it it's it can be expensive from a salary perspective. If you're just bringing on too many people and you don't really know what to do with them, they can get really confused on exactly what their role is and where their skill sets can shine. And you just can for for the position that I was in and where, you know, the company that I worked with, we didn't continue to think about how to grow our people and multiply them every time we opened more concepts. We just kept putting more and more and more work on our team, which is going to burn people out, right? So then moving to when I worked for Snooze and we went from six to 48 locations, I saw this framework in place. I just didn't know it at the time and saw how we were able to scale so quickly and so successfully and sustainably because we have these key components.

SPEAKER_02: 10:08

So this framework is the pillar one, two, and three we're gonna be covering today: people, process, and then profit.

SPEAKER_00: 10:14

Exactly. Exactly. Before we dive deeper into today's topic, I want to share something that's been a game changer for the restaurant owners I work with. You know how we've been talking about building stronger foundations for your restaurant? Well, I've taken everything I teach my coaching clients about creating core values, mission statements, and long-term vision, and I've turned it into three hands-on online courses. These aren't your typical watch and forget courses. Each one walks you through using AI tools like ChatGPT to create the foundational elements every successful restaurant needs. We're talking about core values that actually guide your hiring decisions, mission statements your team can rally behind, and a three-year vision that turns your growth from reactive to strategic. The best part is each course is only$49, or you can grab all three for$99. That's less than what most restaurants spend on a single food delivery order, but it'll give you the clarity to make better decisions for years to come. You can check them out at kristenmarvin.com slash courses. You can also text me directly in the show notes. There's a link at the top of the show if you want a special promo code to save an additional amount of money on any of the courses, including the bundle. Now let's get back to our conversation.

SPEAKER_02: 11:44

So let's break down that first pillar. People, uh, get into it.

SPEAKER_00: 11:48

Yeah, so P I put people first because no restaurant can operate, whether you're a single unit or multi-unit, no restaurant can operate without people, right? And it's about understanding, again, successfully scaling is all about understanding who exactly you need to hire and making sure that they align with the core values of your business. And some people know what their core values are and some people don't. And so that's okay. And you it starts with identifying what the core values are for your business, hiring teammates that um that fit with those core values, and then ensuring that you're working on developing them. So, what happens when somebody typically when an owner opens a restaurant, right? They've got all the systems and the processes up here in their mind. And as you continue to grow and you hire more people, the challenge then becomes how do I get all these systems and processes out of my head? How do I put them down on paper? And how do I teach those to people when I'm still working in my current position? So it's about, you know, Dan Sullivan talks a lot about this. It's about finding the right who um for your business, right? Instead of thinking to yourself, I want to grow, how am I going to do this? It's about making sure that you're putting the right team in place.

SPEAKER_02: 12:56

I think I have who not how on the shelf behind me. Do you? Yeah. It's a great, it's a great book. Yeah. And it's, I think a lot of people they think about like the what and the why and the how, but it's really uh it's at the end of the day, it's all about the who's like you don't have to be the the end all be all. It yeah, you you can go to the people who are those things and and you know, they might bring the how to you if you can find the right who.

SPEAKER_00: 13:21

Absolutely. And and when you identify, okay, here are the core values of the business, here's exactly who we're looking for. Again, the challenge in the independent space tends to be, oh, well, let's just go find somebody that's been working with us and working hard for a long time, and then we'll teach them how to do this skill. But sometimes that can be really challenging because the restaurant owner isn't great at marketing per se, right? Restaurant owners didn't get into the restaurant business because they're good marketers. So if you're trying to, if you have a skill set that's lacking, and then you're turning around and trying to teach somebody else that's young, that's got, you know, that's lacking in those same skills, here's how to do this. That's draining for both people. So again, it's about finding somebody with that skill set. And the beautiful thing about today's world is you don't have to pay somebody a salary and have that person be full time, right? You can micro outsource. So once you identify what leadership components, exactly what roles you need in your restaurant, then you can figure out, okay, am I going to delegate this out to somebody on the team? Am I going to outsource this to a fractional CEO, fractional CFO, a fractional HR? I mean, there's just all these really, you know, or or is this an AI? Is this something I can use AI for?

SPEAKER_02: 14:31

Where where is the restaurant tour in their life cycle as you're talking right now? Like, is this one location, two locations, three locations? This this point of outsourcing, like you're discussing.

SPEAKER_00: 14:41

Yeah, the where the biggest pain point I tend to see is going from two to three.

SPEAKER_02: 14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:46

Two seems to be a little bit more manageable because they can be in both locations within a week.

SPEAKER_02: 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:52

Right. Three is when it's just like it feels like the wheels are starting to fall off.

SPEAKER_02: 14:57

I have segmented my community into uh basically four groups that I haven't opened yet. Um, between one and three and uh four to ten and eleven to twenty. And those tend to be areas of like evolution to your point at three locations. You can it it can all go through you up to three. But if you want to get beyond three locations, you have to start thinking about that mindset of owner operator to CEO has to start kicking in where you have to remove yourself from the manager executive roles where you're really starting to surround yourself with the the the who's, right? And you're you're the visionary, you're the you're the why, or maybe you're uh you're a technician. You could be somebody who needs to find a a why guy or gal, right?

SPEAKER_00: 15:42

Yeah, yeah. It's about understanding for the the the owner first and foremost, what role do you want to truly be playing?

SPEAKER_02: 15:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 15:49

What's giving you energy? What do you want to get get rid of? And then exactly who you need to have in place in order to get rid of those things.

SPEAKER_02: 15:55

And you have a note here, core values aren't just wall art. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00: 15:59

So it's important to make sure that, you know, and this was a beautiful thing that we did at Snooze. Once you identify your core values, it's important to revisit them often because they're gonna change as your business grows. They should, they should evolve. Not only does the leaders does the leadership team need to know your core values, but they the entire team, your entire staff needs to know what your core values are. And so those core values should be used not only to build your business, but to hire every single person on your team in your restaurant group. And they should be used when you're coaching and they should be used in performance reviews. So they're always a living and breathing thing. If you just hang them on the wall and then you expect people to hold themselves accountable to them, it's not going to work. You have to teach people what the behavior is around each of those core values and then coach when that behavior gets off track.

SPEAKER_02: 16:54

Yeah. So when do we resurface these core values? Like when are the one of the right times to echo these things and to resurface them?

SPEAKER_00: 17:02

Annual reviews are a wonderful way just to check in and just say, again, as you're checking in with your vision, whether you've got a one year, three year, five-year, 10-year vision, and you're doing annual reviews with everybody, whenever you start to say, okay, let's check in on how the business did last year, and then let's talk about where we're going next year. Core values should be right there. Are we still living to our core values with this growth plan? And are our core values still making sense for the business today? Or do we need to make an adjustment or two?

SPEAKER_02: 17:31

Yeah, uh I'm I'm thinking of Mario Del Pero who talks about using rituals like in any culture across the world, there are rituals. Um there are annual rituals, there are decade rituals, there are um monthly rituals, there are daily rituals. Like it's like, so like how do you incorporate rituals with your core value? So that you are forcing like there's a habit around resurfacing these things. I think that you could do it daily. I think maybe pick one core value and cycle through maybe you have seven core values every week or every day of the week. Find an example of a time where somebody used that core value, right? Or who live that core value and in and make an example of them in front in front of the group, right? Yeah. What what comes to your mind when I say this?

SPEAKER_00: 18:17

I mean social media, telling stories of how core values are showing up in social media is really powerful. Yeah, pre-shifts are a wonderful way to talk about them. If you have leadership retreats with your teams, it's a wonderful way to revisit them. I mean, you could have them on your menu. I mean, there's so many ways that they can show up in your business.

SPEAKER_02: 18:34

Yeah, I think the thing, you know, you said like core values aren't on your or something that's you know wall art. It's even if you have these things written down and you're talking about them, really um it's what you do every day that are your values. Like it's it's not what you say, it's what you do. So it's the behavior. Exactly. It's you got you gotta live it.

SPEAKER_00: 18:53

Exactly. And you can't live it if you're not being constantly reminded of it, right? Exactly. Because we can we forget things after 90 days. We're just humans. That's why quarterly check-ins are so important and performance reviews are so important and coaching is so important.

SPEAKER_02: 19:05

Yeah. Uh well, I like to say something often, like in terms of scale, like what determines growth is people and cash flow. And um, you have a little note here about you know promotional traps. Um, promoting people like like your best service to a manager usually fails. Like, get it get into that.

SPEAKER_00: 19:21

Well, again, it's you know, Eric, I'm sure you hear this all the time. I'm still hearing story, you know, horror stories of people saying, I was promoted too soon. I was promoted without any skill set, I was promoted without any training, and I have no idea what my job expectation is. There's a lot of operators that I talk to when they say, Hey, I need to find X, the first thing I ask them is, Do you have a job description for that? And a lot of people don't. And and it's and it's surprising to me because, and again, I've lived this world. Um if you don't have a clear job expectation for people, they have no idea what success looks like in their role. And there is an there's there, you lose an opportunity as a restaurant owner or a leadership team to be able to hold people accountable to something. So you lose that measurable component. And it's such a, you know, especially with AI now, you can sit down and talk to chat for a few minutes and start to draft a really nice job offer. It adds another level of intention and professionalism to your organization that is very, very easy to implement.

SPEAKER_02: 20:25

Right. Um, I'm thinking of I think it this is uh POS language. I think I might have heard it through Dan Sullivan too, but they have to get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it. And I think we just take these people, we're like, well, you're the most dependable, like you're the best at your job. Um, so we're gonna take you out of the thing you're the best at and give you this opportunity uh that you might not want or have the capacity to do, or maybe you don't even get it, you know. So like um reflect more on that.

SPEAKER_00: 20:54

Yeah, I mean, I love doing um leadership workshops with junior managers because when I sit down and ask them and I say, hey, we're gonna develop a customized leadership style for you today, a lot of them say to me, like, I don't know what leadership is. I don't know what, you know, how I want to be showing up. And that's a really fun space to play in. But I think people don't understand, again, the difference between um being a server and providing, you know, having great menu knowledge and being able to provide a great guest experience is one thing. But managing and leading a team are completely different skill sets, right? And there are a lot of um skills that you can bridge to set up a server for managers uh for a management role, but there needs to be a very clear specific process. And again, it starts with clear expectations. So I love helping people set up a 30, 60, 90 day transitional plan for anybody moving into a new leadership role so they really understand here's where I should be focusing my first 30 days, here's what I should be observing when I'm on the floor, here's how I should be behaving and interacting with the team, right? Being a sponge, soaking in as much information as possible, building relationships, getting to know the entire business from a leadership perspective, then in 60 days, formulating here's some of the problems that I'm seeing in the business, and then 90 days starting to implement some of those things and learning how to implement change in a really, really successful way. Because if you don't set those new leaders up with that confidence out of the gate, they will fail.

SPEAKER_02: 22:27

Yeah. So as we're moving these, you know, high performers into uh management roles, giving them opportunity for growth, we have to fill that void, right? And um get into you know this this next note that I see here on values-based hiring. So how do how do we use values as a filter when when growing and scaling?

SPEAKER_00: 22:47

Yeah, so I'll give you a great example. I've got a client that had um, they have three locations and they just opened a fourth. So they have a regional manager who's in her mid-20s. First time she's been in a regional role. We've taken her from AGM to GM to regional over the last year and a half. And she just went through her first opening and she we we got to sit down and you know help her figure out. She'd hired a few people for some, well, many people for the shops that she had managed, but she'd never done an opening before. So we really sat down and and created a core values-based interview sheet that she could start using. And she ended up interviewing about 60 or 70 people. She needed to hire a team of 30. And when we were checking in and talking about how that process was going, she said, Kristen, I've never said no so much in my life. And this feels really weird. And the end result of that was a rock star team out of 30 people, they lost two people because they chose to take different jobs. Um, but she's been able to hire a rock star team that was all aligned, all moving in the same direction together, believed in the purpose and the mission of the company. And now she's been able to develop three of them into management positions with the entire company.

SPEAKER_02: 24:02

Well, I love that. Um, I mean, I feel like people might be listening to this, and it's just like, I just need to hire somebody right now because there's just not a lot of help out there. And do I really want to like be turning people away if they don't check all the boxes of our shared core values? What is the argument to that?

SPEAKER_00: 24:19

Yeah, they don't have to check all the boxes.

SPEAKER_02: 24:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 24:22

They can check it, let's say you've got five core values. Like I usually recommend three to five, those are good manageable numbers. Let's say they check three and you need to coach them and develop them to um grow into the other two. If there's a willingness and desire for someone to get more involved in those core values, let's say it's community or sustainability, for example, and you have programs or training in place in your company in order to train them and teach them those things, that's okay, right? Those core values are going to be showing up in the business. Now, again, give somebody 90 days in the position and you see that they're not living up to some of those core values, then you can go in and coach and figure out what's missing. But they, you know, to have to have the expectation that every single person on your team is going to be aligned with every single value at every stage in their life just isn't realistic because we grow and change as humans. So our values grow and change over time, just like businesses do.

SPEAKER_02: 25:20

I think a lot of people get caught up in developing their core values as well because they're like, they just want to cement it and put it away forever. Um, and it's like, listen, like what are your core values today? Like something is better than nothing. Just get like what like there are tests you can take, but really, you know, just start and know that you can evolve and give your yourself permission to grow. If you're not growing, you're dying. So you're you should be changing your core values as you advance as an individual, you know? Yeah. And as your organization advances. Actually, one of our attendees today, this is a struggle that he's been going through, is getting his core values out. So maybe we can um do a little QA at the end of this. But uh I I am curious, um, you said that you help people develop their core values, or you know, what are some of these exercises that you you can do to get what's inside of you out?

SPEAKER_00: 26:09

Yeah, I think for for a um a solo restaurant owner, I love figuring out when they were happiest in their life and have them tell me that story of who they were surrounded by, what was happening in their life, maybe the job that they were doing, um what their community looked like, where they were location-wise, and what was impacting some of the decisions that they were making. Because just from hearing people tell a story, you can pick out a lot of things. Maybe community is important to them, family is important to them, integrity is important to them, fun is important to them. So that's a great way to start building that list. And then from a company perspective, it's about just having a conversation with the leadership team of what do you want your company to stand for? What are things that are really important to you as the leadership team? What do you believe in?

SPEAKER_02: 26:57

Yeah, yeah. I just recently reworked my own core values actually after a conversation I had with a past guest, uh, repeat guest, Sean Finter. This episode hasn't gone live yet, but he basically like, you know, I share my core values with him, and we're like, this is like a live, like he's like kind of giving me this hook like I was like, shit, my core values suck, don't they? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, all right. And then I realized that my core values that I had in the past weren't really so much core values as much as they were guiding principles. And those, those they were, you know, we have integrity, we are students, we are teachers, we are collaborators, we are communicators, we show up and we have fun. Like those were the core values. I think I also worked in like we prioritize freedom was one of my other core values. And the more I looked at that, I was like, these are like guiding principles of like what the most successful restaurant tours, the the habits they have, they're not necessarily values. And then I started thinking like what got me here? Like, who am I and what are the things that got me here? And I was able to rework my core values, and now it's uh my number one core value is freedom, but it's freedom of purpose, it's freedom of relationships, it's freedom of time, and then money, you know? Yeah, uh and it's integrity, it's doing what you say you're going to do, like follow-through, like do the hard thing. Uh, and it's uh transparency, like that is what got me here. Like just being open, honest, and vulnerable, having an open mind, hearing different perspectives, like being a student first, you know, like these are core values.

SPEAKER_00: 28:27

I love that. I we you and I share the same number one core value. Freedom is a huge one to me. I mean, I just you know uprooted my life and moved to Denver and start and starting over and and you know, I've got freedom all around me. And um, you know, one of the things that I find a lot when business owners reach out, the ones that are struggling, sometimes they'll say, I feel like I'm out of balance or I feel like I'm burning out. And the first place that we go to is the core values. And I have them write down what they are, if they know them. If not, we discover them together and then rate them on a scale of one to 10. Where are you right now? And then when you rate them, I have them put it in, put them in like a circle of like pie or pizza, whatever they whatever they like. Exactly. And then when you when you take a step back and you look at where you've rated yourself on that wheel, you look at what does if this wheel was in motion, what does that ride look like? What does that ride feel like for you? Is it real bumpy right now or is it pretty smooth? Right, exactly. Yeah, I did this exercise.

SPEAKER_03: 29:20

It's fun.

SPEAKER_00: 29:21

Yeah, it's fun. And then have them rate where they want to be, right? And so sometimes when they when they look at that and they understand where they're at today, you can really see, oh, exactly where my life is out of balance. And then picking one area to start to move the needle on actually helps all of those values increase.

SPEAKER_02: 29:37

Yeah, 100%. Um pretty fun. So looking at some of the things you want to get out relative to people, we have uh this line of like, you know, creating that pipeline, um, promotional pipeline. What what what does that look like?

SPEAKER_00: 29:51

Building a bench of talent to help you scale, right? I think again, a lot of people will say, Oh, we're gonna open another location. We found this great opportunity, and then go. Who is the leadership team that we're going to need to hire or put into place? And that can be backwards thinking and very, very dangerous. Because I mean, sometimes you have 18 months to put a team of people together. Sometimes you have six. So if you have an intention and a very clear vision with your business out of the gate of, okay, we're going to open three locations, one each year, then you know how many managers, supervisors, chefs you need in order to fill that need in three years. And then you can start working backwards from there. But opening and chasing your tail is just a recipe for burning people out. And again, continuing to throw people in positions that they're not ready for. Right. So again, slowing down and having that intention and that really clear vision on exactly what the numbers are and then exactly how you're going to go hire those people and what you're looking for will help you just really be more sustainable.

SPEAKER_02: 30:55

What do you mean by knowing exactly what those numbers are? What numbers are you referring to?

SPEAKER_00: 30:58

So again, so if you open, let's say you open, you want to open three restaurants. And for each restaurant, you need one GM, you need one chef, and you need two managers per location. At the end of three years, you're going to need three GMs, you're going to need three chefs, and you're going to need six managers. Then you can start working backwards from there, right? Just like if you want to hit a labor cost of 30%, how do you work backwards from there, right? In order to have the goal. But it's it's much easier to get there if you have the goal versus just saying, well, now we're going to open a location. I don't know how many managers I need. So let's just start, you know, let's try to find people internally or externally and then put them into place.

SPEAKER_02: 31:37

Yeah. And back to the statement cash flow and people are what determine growth. Um, I see this all the time where people they're like, oh, like I have something special. Like we are we have interest and investors, we got to scale, scale, scale. Um, and you know, they they scale at that and they lose the thing that made them special, you know, because they're just taking any because they have these voids and they just have to fill the voids. Uh and it's like what you like when do you know it's time to scale? When you have like depth, you know, like depth where if you don't scale, you're going to lose people. And I think it's only creating opportunity for others. And that is the the primary reason why you scale. Uh is that if I don't, then I'm gonna lose somebody who's truly amazing, and I want to be their opportunity, I want to bring them in, I want to share the wealth, and it's that that mindset of like going further together, but uh you need togetherness to go. Like if you don't have the people, yeah, you're going far on fumes and you're gonna run out of gas.

SPEAKER_00: 32:41

You're so right. And again, it goes back to really understanding the why from the gate of what your intention is to scale. If it's all about you and it's all about building your brand and it's all about ego, it's gonna be really, really tough for you. And it's gonna be very difficult to scale. But if it is about bringing your people up, that's a beautiful culture to breed success in, right? When you're collaborative and it's team focused. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:05

Right. So there's one more thing we haven't touched on, um, the power of one-on-ones. Uh, we talked about annual reviews and stuff like that, but let's let's tap into the why one-on-ones matter before we move on to the next pillar.

SPEAKER_00: 33:16

It's such a crucial. Uh I if anybody asks me what's the most important thing I can start doing to change my business right now, I would say without a doubt it's one-on-ones. One-on-ones help you go from complete chaos to recognize a problem, recognizing problems before they even become problems. And so it completely shifts everything you do from reactivity to proactivity. So I have a client in um Australia, in Sydney, Australia, has two restaurants. One's been open for 12 years, one's been open for three years. Reached out to me because one of the restaurants is not doing well. And we've really been peeling back the layers of what his communication looks like. He runs his restaurants with no managers. It's just him and a chef. And so, and he's not on the floor um seven days a week. He's he's doing other things. And so, and he doesn't want his role to be on the floor. So, because he's removed a little bit from the business, the first thing that we implemented was one-on-ones, opening up communication from the team, understanding how to handle team complaints and not take them personally, but view them as opportunities and feedback. Give the teams an understanding and start to train them on how to bring solutions to one-on-ones and not just problems. So he can start to shift and develop them to be empowered and think like owners when he's not in the building. And that has completely shifted um his stress level, his time and energy and focus. And now again, he wants to scale.

SPEAKER_02: 34:49

Yeah, I love that. Uh so like in this bullet here that uh, you know, when you you bring up the 101s and moving from checking into uh developing leaders, I think back to that quote we shared earlier. Do they get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it? But if you if you establish these, whether they be quarterly check-in check-ins or annual reviews, uh, and you really go into that with not trying to be heard, but under to understand. Um, like if if you can reverse engineer, like get back to you, like get it, want it, have a capacity to do it, what do you want? What does this person want? Not in this job, but in their life. And if I can give them a vertical to get exactly what they want in their life, um, and if I can verify and confirm that they they have the capacity to do it, um, you know, like if you can give people like tangible path for growth within your organization, that is amazing. Like, tell me they're not gonna show up different for you. Um, but you have to open up that channel of communication to understand what is it that you want? How can I serve you?

SPEAKER_00: 35:52

It's so true. And so I some people will say, I don't even know how to start doing one-on-ones, Kristen. Like, what does this process look like? How am I supposed to meet with my entire team? And what's the frequency, right? It starts with you can choose, you can sit with somebody for 15 minutes, one person, 15 minutes each week. I guarantee you everyone can find that time. And it's about building relationships first, right? Because one-on-ones don't happen frequently in the industry, uh, employees are terrified of them. So when you start to ask for one-on-one from somebody, they're like, oh, they're immediately like, oh, I'm in trouble. So it's about establishing trust and building that relationship to let people know I truly care about you and I am going to just sit here and listen. And all you have to do is ask a few pointed questions. Are you happy? What are you enjoying most about your job? And what do you want to learn, want to learn more about? Right. Learning where they're happy, you can keep them in a place where they're continue, going to continue to feel like they're thriving and they're enjoying their work and they're making an impact. When they tell you that they want to learn more about something, that's a wonderful opportunity to immediately start developing them. And that doesn't mean that you have to do that yourself. That means pairing them with somebody on your team. Again, finding a who that can help that person continue to grow and develop. And you just do that and cross-training, right? You just do that and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat, repeat, and just watch your team start to develop each other because you're listening to one little component that somebody said that's giving you the clue to what to do next in your business.

SPEAKER_02: 37:24

First seek to understand, then seek to be understood. One of those highly uh or seven habits of highly effective people. Um, okay, let's move on to pillar number two. We're already over 30 minutes of talking. That was supposed to be 18 minutes. I guess when I just talked to you, we we go. Uh, so we cover pillar number one, people, uh building your leadership foundation. Uh pillar number two is process, creating consistency without micromanaging. Get into that.

SPEAKER_00: 37:50

So, and and some of the stuff is going to be, you know, some of this we went into a little bit, the processes, right? Once you've identified pillar one of the people, exactly what rules you need, and then you start to get them into place. It's about how to nurture them and how to develop them so that you can retain them, right? Systems are wonderful for your business because systems provide support to your team when you're not in the room. Again, so it's about taking those, that all that knowledge that's in a restaurant owner's head and putting it down on paper or in a tech platform or whatever, what have you. So it lives and breathes within your location when you're not even in the room. It gives people the tools to be able to problem solve on their own. I had a meeting a couple weeks ago with a restaurant owner who has three locations and we sat down for an hour and he, I'm not kidding you. 20 text messages and phone calls over the course of an hour asking, where do I purchase this ingredient? Uh my refrigerator just broke down. What do I do? Somebody just called in sick. What do I do? That's not sustainable. No, right?

SPEAKER_02: 38:54

And so are those systems or those protocols?

SPEAKER_00: 38:58

Well, the there's a difference between leaning into those questions. There's a difference between systems and procedures, right?

SPEAKER_02: 39:04

So, what is the difference between a system and a procedure?

SPEAKER_00: 39:06

The system is the bigger picture goal, right? So let's say that the system is the entire ecosystem around this, we are going to provide a really great guest experience in our restaurant. That system is made up of the bar, the host, the busser, the servers, the kitchen, every single aspect. The procedures, though, are the step-by-step ways that you're going to achieve that.

SPEAKER_02: 39:30

The system, if you're looking, if you're is the watch. A watch is a system.

SPEAKER_00: 39:34

You've got it.

SPEAKER_02: 39:35

A gear is one element of the entire system.

SPEAKER_01: 39:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 39:38

Yeah. Uh so I I have to, you know, I had uh McClaskey, David McClaskey from the McClaskey uh excellence institute on the show. Uh and he echoed a sentiment from Rudy Mick, uh, somebody who I love and respect as a restaurant coach and consultant. And and really what the sentiment of excellence is like your job as a restaurateur is to paint the picture of what the job done right looks like, and that's what systems are. It is literally like if if you could like walk around your like walk around with a camera on your chest for the entire day, like what are all the things you're doing and just document all those processes and like like this is what uh this is what take a photo of the food, like this is the job done right. Uh, like this, these are like that's why I love restaurant systems pro so much. People struggle with budgeting, cost is costing, purchasing, um, you know, inventory, like all these things, uh, labor management, like those are very complex systems. Uh uh, you want to go create that from scratch, or do you want to like literally get handed a this is how you do it when it's done exactly right? And you have the software around it to support it, and it's all fully integrated. Like you're never gonna build that on your own, like plug it in, reverse engineer your business around the best systems.

SPEAKER_00: 40:52

Yeah, absolutely. It there's no reason to reinvent the wheel here. And that's again what this framework is entirely about is just getting back to basics. There's not a tech platform mentioned in here. This is about taking care of your people, making sure that you've got systems and processes in place to set them up for success and achieve the results that you want, and then how you measure that. Um, and and the result is the profit.

SPEAKER_02: 41:14

So as you scale and uh, you know, as you get more and more locations, you get more and more complex systems and communication can break down. So, how does that information get lost?

SPEAKER_00: 41:28

You can say one thing to seven people on your team and they're gonna hear it seven different ways because everyone's perspective is different and everyone's experience is different. And so in-person communication is absolutely key, but it's very difficult to do when you're scaling, when you have multiple locations. That's why it's key that you are having one-on-ones with your leadership team and that they've clearly understand the concepts that you're talking about, and they have the tools to successfully implement implement those things through their entire staff. Sometimes some I read somewhere recently that sometimes you have to tell people something seven times in order for it to click, which is really challenging when you're growing a business.

SPEAKER_02: 42:13

Yeah. I mean, I feel like even just like, you know, one of one of the the core values I used to have, which really again is is not necessarily a core value, but a guiding principle is we communicate. Um, you have to have systems around communication because you don't instinctually, I mean, you might be good at communicating with the people that are right in front of you. You might be a good natural communicator, mean meaning like, you know, you can speak with inflection, you have great body language, and you can listen really well, but that's not good communication in the organization. You need systems for information to flow.

SPEAKER_00: 42:47

Yeah, it's like training, right? When you bring in a new server and you're training them, you're providing all this information in four days or five days or seven days. There's no way that they're gonna retain 100% of that. You'll be, if you're if you're training them visually and through um auditory and somatic training, they're gonna retain 60% of what they learn. That means you're gonna have to retrain the 40%. That's where training materials come in, right? Testing, um, steps of service, you know, training materials, menu testing, whatever you have in place. There needs to be a resource once they're out of training for people to go refer back to. And again, when you're scaling, all those things just become so much more crucial because when you're constantly growing and you're changing things in your organization, you're just constantly feeding new information into your team.

SPEAKER_02: 43:34

Right. Um, I mean, this is why tools like Opus and WisTale and Mies um have been on the rise lately, because you need a centralized place for all that information to live. I mean, you can also get by with Google, um, being able to use Google Docs where if one, you know, like that one document is the single source that everyone references. So you update it in one place, everybody has access to the latest information.

SPEAKER_00: 43:57

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 43:58

But that's not enough, right? There's more. We need we need systems around meeting architecture. So, what does that mean? Get into that.

SPEAKER_00: 44:06

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll I'll give you another example here. Um, my client down in in Arizona was referencing earlier, three locations getting ready to open six in the next couple of years. So the leadership team is really the owner and the regional manager. Now, owners are visionaries, right? On the same way. Um, and they say nine out of our 10 ideas are complete shit. So the visionaries constantly coming in right to the to the organization and bringing new ideas, and the regionals trying to figure out what's important and what's urgent, and which one of these things do I need to say yes to and what can I say no to? So setting up a structure with these two of quarterly meetings is really helping us again understand, okay, what's the one-year vision? What do we want to go accomplish this year? How are we going to get there? And then each quarter, checking in and saying, what are the three to five things that you're going to focus on this quarter? Let's keep it small, let's keep it focused, let's keep it intentional. And so every time the visionary comes and says, I want to do this and this and this, and I saw this, and this is really cool. I said, I want to, you know, implement this that it can that I saw at a competitor. That quarterly review is the check to go, does this align with us, or is this something that we need to put on the long list?

SPEAKER_02: 45:16

Right. Are you familiar with EOS?

SPEAKER_00: 45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 45:18

Yeah. So this is why EOS is so powerful. Uh, there is nothing in EOS which stands for the operational, sorry, the entrepreneurial operating system, which was intro which was introduced by Geno Wickman in the book Traction. Uh, but you need systems for information to flow and for like you need systems for growth. And part of the most important thing to growth is is is everybody pulling in the same direction? Does everybody know their responsibility? Are we achieving our individual goals that are crucial to the whole ship getting to where we're going? No, why or why not? Let's all help each other solve our problem so we can achieve those goals. Uh and that's exactly what EOS is the level 10 meeting. So, like, so like you said quarterly, but what about like weekly meetings?

SPEAKER_00: 46:03

Yeah, absolutely. Weeklies are super important as well, right? Weekly operations meetings. I think I forgot to include this in here, but you're right. Like Gino talks about the fact that we as humans we lose um our focus after 90 days, right? That's why it's um that's why those quarterly meetings are super important. So you start with your quarterly focuses and then you make sure you're following through on your weekly operations meetings. You've got those targets and your scorecards that you're setting up, right?

SPEAKER_02: 46:27

Scorecards and the numbers, like are we moving the needle?

SPEAKER_00: 46:30

Exactly. Exactly. And then in the one-on-ones, making sure that if somebody's falling down, if one of your locations is falling down in one of those areas, you're able to get in there and coach and understand why uh why that's happening and then course correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 46:44

Selfish plug here. If you are interested in EOS, uh, I'm working with an implementer, um, actually the son of Mark Winters, who's one of the authors in the attraction library of books. This guy grew up in the house of EOS. Um, and we're we're basically like we're helping each other out. If you're a restaurateur and you're interested in leveraging this, come join one of our conversations because it's super powerful.

SPEAKER_00: 47:09

Very cool.

SPEAKER_02: 47:10

Um, so okay, anything we have not I mean, a lot we still have to cover in the world of process. We just talked about the importance of meetings, but uh performance management, uh, moving from reactive to proactive leadership. How does that happen?

SPEAKER_00: 47:23

It's really again through communication, through having creating, you know, the restaurant industry is so different every single day and it's chaos, right? And there's so many things that you can't control, but there's so much that you can control. And so again, creating this structure of having clear job descriptions for people so that you have something to measure their performance on, which you do in one-on-ones and coaching. Again, it's a all of these things are tied in together, right? All of these components of the framework work together. Um it's, you know, I just implemented something um with one of my clients of just having a again from a regional perspective, she because she just got out of opening and now the opening is done and everything is feeling settled down, she's like, okay, now I have four locations and I'm completely bored. What do I do? It's like, well, we need to go back to your um original job description and go through what exactly should you be looking at every single time you're in one of your locations and creating an audit for her to look at, and then an audit that the teams are going to be doing as well. So, and and again, and then taking that audit and then building it into their bonus structure. So you're creating a system and then figuring out how it can be measured and used to reward reward results and coach on performance. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 48:48

Yeah. Um, so we talked about the importance of systems, um, the difference between systems and procedures, but when we're going through this process of documenting, like how do we know what should be documented versus, you know, what systems to document versus what we shouldn't have to worry about?

SPEAKER_00: 49:03

You know, it's I would say anything that's being trained needs to be documented. You know, it gets a little gray sometimes when you're talking about coaching. If you have an opportunity to document everything, I absolutely would. Is that feasible? It depends on what's happening in your location and where you're at and how big your company is. There are very easy ways to document conversations, like right now, we're using a note taker to document this conversation. You can do that if you're meeting with your teams virtually and or in person. Those notes from a conversation that you have with someone are really great nuggets because you can use those in performance reviews to celebrate wins. And you can use those when you need to coach someone. And so when you sit down and you need to write a coaching document for someone, let's say it's a negative coaching document, instead of having to rack your brain and have all the emotions flood and say, I don't really know what to put in here. I don't know what to say. You can go back to this amazing, um, Tiago Forte calls that a second brain, just a data storage information system. You can go back to your folder of all these notes of the conversations that you've had with people and just pull from that and put that right into the performance review. That way it's not so, it doesn't feel so emotional and personal. It's it's factual. These were conversations that were had. Here's what we're celebrating, and here's what needs to be worked on next.

SPEAKER_02: 50:19

Right. So, I mean, so there in my mind is the procedures are relative to like an individual role or a task that has to happen daily, right? Or maybe it's a monthly task or a quarterly task or an annual task. It's more like ri ritualistic. Uh, but what about the things to your point, like, hey, the refrigerator broke down? Or um, you know, somebody like like any event that is random that could happen at any time and happens frequency, frequently. Is that one a procedure or like how how do we document that? What is that?

SPEAKER_00: 50:51

So, one of the things that I did when I was a GM and I was 25, I carried around a piece of POS receipt paper with me at all times during service and a pen. And any issue that would come up, I would just write it down. So refrigerator breaking is a great example. That's going to happen every once in a while. However, you have a ton of different pieces of equipment in a restaurant. And again, thinking about scalability, when you've got three or you've got six, what do you want to happen? And who do you want handling that? So we put in place an oh shit guide. Um, when I was managing at SuiteCow, we had seven locations and our entire staff were high schoolers and college kids. It was awesome. We didn't call it that, I just called it that. It wasn't very professional. But it was basically a um a little booklet and we wrote down every single uh problem that could go wrong in your in your space. So if your internet goes out, troubleshoot like this. If your TV goes down, do this. If your refrigerator goes down, do this. We gave them six or seven troubleshooting steps to try first. And then the next step was to call me. Right. So the cool thing about that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So the staff would be super excited. Nine times out of 10, they were solving their own problems and being able to troubleshoot on their own. And sometimes they just call me to tell me that they did it and they were super proud of themselves. And so even though something seems like a one-off, you've got to understand in in terms of the bigger picture of operations, how much money could this potentially cause us if it's not taken care of? And how do we make this experience easier for the teams and not impact the guest experience?

SPEAKER_02: 52:24

Right. So these are more protocols, uh, if this then that. And in my experience as a commercial pilot, uh, one of the things how they train, like how the flight instructors would train this behavior in you is you ask a question, I don't know, you tell me was always the answer. It's like I'm paying good money to go to this like private pilot school. Like, I'm asking you questions, and that what they're trying to do, you know, when if you're up at 30,000 feet by yourself, uh, and you have a question, you can't call a buddy sometimes, you know, you gotta know where to find the answer. And that's what the operations manual is. So, like if you have if you're going through the process, if you're writing down these things as they're happening and you're documenting them and you know that the answer to the question that's being asked is documented, develop the habit of saying, I don't know, you tell me, and then your team is gonna start to realize that it's documented and they don't have to know the answer, they just need to know where to find it.

SPEAKER_00: 53:19

It's so true. And I used to tell them if I knew it was in the training materials and somebody came and asked me something, I'd say, let where do we go find that? Let's go find it together. I had a conversation yesterday with a husband and wife who owns a company and they're getting ready to scale. And they they had a conflict because when the employees go to go to her, um, she coaches them and educates them on how to find the answer. Same thing. Ask them, what would you do? So she's building them that trust and judgment, right? Building their good judgment strategic thinking skills. The husband just tells them the solution. So it's very confusing for the staff. And so the staff starting to choose sides, right? Like, I'm gonna go to this person because it's just a lot easier. I immediately get the answer and then I can get on with my day. So we just talked about the completely different styles. And again, what the end result is, because the husband said, I'm so sick and tired of everybody calling me and texting me on my days off. And I was like, Well, you've trained them to come to you because they know that you're gonna give them the answer. So now you've got to retrain them to think on their own two feet and to go find their own solutions.

SPEAKER_02: 54:20

Yeah. So one of the whole reasons why we build these systems and we document these systems is so that we can remove ourselves from having to do those things because there's a picture of the job done right documented that we can keyword here, delegate. So in terms of delegation, can you offer any framework?

SPEAKER_00: 54:38

I it's delegation is very, it's very, very challenging because you've got to figure out who you're delegating to. I was listening to a podcast this morning, uh, one of Dan Sullivan's podcasts, I think it was, I think it's called Who Not How as well, on um the fact that delegation can be really uh successful or it can be really challenging. So if you're delegating something, let's say you're a restaurant owner and you want to get some tasks off your plate because they're draining your energy and you're not good at them. And you turn around and you start delegating them to somebody on your staff who does not have that skill set, now you've created more work for yourself because you're gonna have to train them and you're gonna have to hold them accountable and you're gonna have to help them try to figure out how to find the resources to develop their skill set. So when you're talking about delegation, when you find something that you want to delegate, it's important to understand, again, find the who. Who is the best person for me to delegate this to? And make sure you're delegating up to somebody that has a skill set so that you can grow your business, right? If you're managing 10 things, you're I guarantee you you're not an expert in all 10 of those areas. And if you are, you probably don't have the time or energy or the bandwidth to be able to put the the focus and energy and the quality into that work that you want to. Um, so go find those people who are gonna help you elevate.

SPEAKER_02: 55:54

Got it. We've covered people, pillar one. We've covered pillar two process, and we're about to get into pillar three, profit, tracking what actually matters. And it's funny, I feel like there's uh this like avoidance of profit in our industry, uh, especially with young people, like profit's evil. Uh, it's not above the money. Uh maybe, yes, I agree with that statement that it's not about the money, but there is a level of fiscal responsibility that should be a core value. So let's get into that profit. Um you take it from there, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 56:29

Well, it's I agree with you. I've heard that and I I think this is this is something that is a really difficult topic to chat to to tackle when especially when you're an independent group and you start growing. There seems to be with growth, seems to be more of an emphasis on profit. And so I would recommend for anybody that's listening to this, if you're not talking about profit with your teams today, please start. You cannot operate a restaurant without profit. I hear people say sometimes, oh, one to five percent, that's all we can do in the industry. And so they they keep themselves in this limiting belief cycle because they just think that being in the restaurant industry and owning a restaurant is all about grit and you're never going to be profitable. And if that's how you think, those thoughts are going to inform your decisions.

SPEAKER_01: 57:18

Perception is reality.

SPEAKER_00: 57:19

Absolutely. It's very important for your team to be aligned on what does it take to run a really successful business and what is the result of that success? It's a great culture, it's happy teams, it's development, it's growth. None of that can happen without profit. So figuring out how to not make profit a dirty word and have it be a beautiful end result of the work that you're doing and something that is celebrated within your organization, um, that's a completely different mindset that a lot of people need to make.

SPEAKER_02: 57:48

I think traditionally, people who were profitable, uh, not all those people were necessarily um what's the word? I guess it's it's not a matter is profit bad. I think it's a matter of what you choose to do with the profit. Are you taking that profit and putting it into your pockets and living like a king while the people that are making you profitable are scraping to get by? Or are you using that profit to put it back into the business, to to invest in assets, to uh maybe do profit sharing? Uh like to your point, like like it's not a dirty thing, it's what you choose to do with it. You know, just like privilege isn't a dirty thing, it's what you choose to do with it.

SPEAKER_00: 58:30

And how and how you explain it and talk about it, right? And and getting people bought in. I mean, we I struggled with this in my career where we were rapidly growing um with a group that I was with, and and the managers were working so hard and they were watching all these new locations pop up, and maybe they were working in an older legacy location with you know equipment that wasn't functioning properly or you know, holes in the floors or or whatever, and then being told they'd get a one to three percent raise at the end of the year. You know, it like they they didn't understand what growth truly looked like. So when we're talking about vanity metrics and vital metrics, it's really about having your teams aligned on, okay, this is our vision for the year. And that vision includes how many leaders we want to promote, what the goals are that we want to achieve, maybe it's guest satisfaction ratings, um, maybe it's event sales that you want to bring in. But here's the amount of sales that we want to generate, and here's the amount of profit that we want to generate, and here's what we're gonna do with it, just like you said. We're gonna turn it around and invest it right back into you guys, this percentage, and then we're gonna invest the rest of it in the business. If they, if you treat them like owners and you explain to them the big picture of the business, you're gonna see that output in how they show up every single day.

SPEAKER_02: 59:45

I want to make sure we document them.

SPEAKER_00: 59:47

Yeah, absolutely. So, sales, what's your sales goal for the year, right? That's assuming a one year vision. I mean, it could be sales goal. Obviously, you've got to look at your labor, you've got to look at your cost of goods. Let's, and then you're ready. Revenue streams, right? If you've got online sales, that's a component. If you've got event sales, that's a component.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:05

Um it's an opportunity for growth.

unknown: 1:00:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:08

If you how many, how many locations do you want to open this year? That's a target. And then how many managers you're going to need in order to make that happen? How many people do you want to promote? Yeah, 100%. And then what's the percentage of internal promotion versus external promotion? And what's that percentage look like? And what's that balance there? Right. Because that's a whole different conversation.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:25

And I think the this is a line from Mike Ganino. Um, the number one most important number you should be tracking. I think you know what it is. I think you mentioned it earlier. Yeah, like retention, people, yeah, happiness, like literally every day when your people leave and they check out on a scale of from one to five. Where are you today? And if you get any threes or twos, like, okay, like let's schedule a one-on-one. What's going on? How can you how can you get me back to a five?

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:52

It's so true. I'm so over um you know, hearing people say, oh, there's just not good and getting any good people out there anymore. It making generalized statements like that is really, really dangerous for our industry. And again, it it just I when people say that I just question what their hiring practices look like. And do they know what they're hiring for and do they know who they're hiring for? Because not every single person is different. And there are, with the leadership workshops that I'm doing and the experiences that I'm having, there are a lot of good people out there that want to learn and grow. They're just not that experienced in the industry like they used to be.

unknown: 1:01:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:27

I think there's one other thing that you mentioned the first time through. You're you were sharing those numbers that you want to track and it's customer satisfaction score.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:33

Yes, yes, and comps, right? You've got to see what you're losing. You've got to, you've got to manage your waste and you've got to manage your comps.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:39

Right. There's there's three tools I know out there right now in terms of customer satisfaction. Um, you know, or at least customer reviews. Um, in terms of in-store uh like the QR apps that you're seeing people, whether that be ovation or Sunday app, um I've heard ovation is a better option when it comes to QSR or Fast Casual. But if you're in-store, uh if you're a full service, I would highly recommend checking out Sunday app because they also offer a payment solution that is like an amazing like guest experience, like the user experience on that payment solution is really great. Uh, and then um in terms of online, a tool like Marquee. Any any thoughts there or in terms of getting that customer feedback?

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:22

Yeah, I mean, I think uh I'm I listened to a webinar that Eat Denver had with Marquee, I think it was last year. And I was, I don't know a ton about some of those platforms that you mentioned, but I think Marquee, what stood out to me was that they pull from from all of your platforms, your Googles, your Yelps, and they help you respond um to all of your positive and your negative. And obviously you can customize what you want that to look like, depending on the severity of the review. But being able to have all of those reviews coming to you in a one, you know, one stop, easy shop is it's it it's a beautiful way to offer hospitality um beyond your four walls. And it's and it's such an easy way to build repeat guests. And um, I did an um an episode on retention on my show recently, but um Ewan said that people he focuses on coaching and restaurants around retention. People that come back the second time spend 20% more and they bring in two to three more guests.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:18

Right. And if they come back a third time, they're like 70% more likely to be a lifetime guest.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:23

Yeah, it's just it's absolutely incredible. So retention from guests and retention from customers. And you know, a lot of those times too, depending on what concept uh and what industry you're in, those guests become your employees.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:37

Yep, 100%. So um as we're scaling, um profit leak can happen. So we're where are like the the the secret killers, the the things we have to be aware of in terms of where you lose money as we scale.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:51

There's just so many, right? Because people's focuses are just pulled in so many different directions. And so um it's it's any food prep, right? So prepping on the line, if your recipes are not consistent, you're gonna make you're gonna be losing food in the kitchen. You've got to constantly be keeping an eye on your um prep cooks and checking in and making it. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. What's your waste look like there? Same thing in the bar, right? Are they using jiggers? Do they have recipes? Um, are they over is you know, is your team over-ordering? Are they under-ordering? If they're underordering, are you going to the grocery store, which messes with your cogs? Are you um because you're paying a different price for something? If you're substituting something, that's going to mess with your um your cost of goods as well. Um, gosh, there's so like there's I feel like there's so much in terms of waste. Looking at how you're seating your tables. Are you seeding two tops at four tops? If you are, you've just lost two seats for a turn. Right. So there's a lot of different ways. Uh it's maximum resources. Absolutely. Looking at your labor. If people are clocking in 10 to 15 minutes early, that's a loss of productivity.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:58

So when you're talking about the profit leak and the the multi-unit operators uh where they're losing money without knowing it, are these the things you're talking about?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:05

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:06

Got it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:07

Uh anything else to add there?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:13

I think the reservation book is another one. This is a great conversation I just had with um with a client as well. What does the pacing look like? And where when people, when you have to say no to people, how are you doing that? Are you saying no, we don't have a seven o'clock, or are you offering a 645 or 715? If a walk-in comes in and you're not ready for them, are you saying no? Or are you saying go to the bar, I'll buy you a round of drinks, I'll be able to seat you within 20 or 30 minutes. Waste is not just product, right? It's people too. And and retention is a huge component of that. Yeah, 100%. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:52

So talk to me about strategic planning um and you know how strategic planning ties into profitability, why it's not just hoping to be successful, but actually having a plan for growth.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:01

I had a conversation yesterday with two brothers that own 16 locations and they're looking to put a new leadership team in place because there's no one between them and the locations, and they're drowning right now. One has a current full-time job outside of this, the other one just quit their full-time job to manage 16 locations. 16 locations, wow. 16 locations. They want to grow, but they need somebody in place in order to do that, potentially a team. And my first question was what's your goal over the next year? What do you want? They have no idea. So they feel like they're spinning their wheels. All they do is sit around and brainstorm, and it doesn't lead to action. So the first thing we did was sit down and come up with a really clear vision. Again, how many locations you want to have next year? How many, what do you need in terms of sales in order to do that? What does profit need to look like? What does your profit margin need to look like? How many team members do you need? And then now you've got the plan, you've got the target. Now you start building the roadmap to get there. And then you can start removing those roadblocks.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:01

That's strategic planning. Another one of those seven habits of highly effective people, start with the end in mind, right? 100%. And going back to this organization, EOS, that I promote all the time, like their V the VTO, the vision traction organizer. Before you gain traction, you have to know where you're going. So you're you know you're moving in the right direction. It's nothing new, it's nothing earth-shattering.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:20

It's just it's it's not. I learned it in coaching, in my coaching courses. And it's and it doesn't just apply to business, it applies to every single aspect of your life, right? You want to lose weight, you set a target. Right? It's it just um, it applies to every single aspect. You want to be happier, you gotta figure out what that looks like.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:38

I think people they set these audacious goals. Like, what's your five-year plan? I want to be 10 times where I am today, maybe 20 times where I am today. And then you start figuring out, well, how are you gonna like what is it gonna take to achieve that? And then you start thinking to yourself, holy shit, how the hell am I gonna pull this off?

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:53

Gotta find the who. Now you're talking about Dan Sullivan, 10X is easier than 2X, which I'm reading right now. And I love that he talks about, you know, two, if you're gonna 2X something, you're not gonna change a lot of your behaviors because it's fairly easy to 2x something. But if you want to 10x something, you have to change 80% of what you're doing. And I'm working on doing this right now with my business, and it's to hit just the thought of changing 80% of how you're doing something is so incredible. And yes, it's scary, but it immediately means I've got to go find the who's. Right. I can't do this on my own if I'm gonna change all these things.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:26

Are you familiar with Dr. uh Benjamin Hardy, the co-author in those books?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:30

He's on the podcast. So I've been uh listening to him the last couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:34

He Dr. Ben Hardy, like um, so he has a lot of stuff that kind of compounds on those earlier books that you're discussing. Um, one of them, the the the latest book is The Science of Scale. I actually have it right here on my my desk, ironically, um, which gets into like the psychology, but he also has this other book in terms of like the I think they call it, you know, one is like this other one right here. I'm like I've got books over my dad's right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:59

You would have thought we planned all this.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:00

Be your future self now is the title of this book. And it's this idea of like, okay, who, okay, so you want to be this is your five-year plan. Be that today, like what is what can you do today to be a closer version of that thing? Uh and the ass talks about the gap and the gain. I don't know if you've heard of that. That's another thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:15

Yeah, love it. It's just like measure the measure the gain, not the gap.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:19

What are the wins and focus on the wins? And the thing is, you can get very intimidated by your goals, but if you just focus on what you can do today and the gains in taking one bite at a time, it compounds.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:30

Yeah, it's pretty awesome stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:32

Yeah. Um, so okay, we've been talking about a lot of things. Uh, it's hard to keep track of all the our little check.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:38

Come to my world, Eric.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:39

Uh, so we talked about strategic planning and why that's so important. Um, I think we've gotten a lot into the financial literacy for operations, understanding your numbers beyond the PL. Is there anything that we you left on the table there that you want to?

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:52

I think it's just again, seeking to understand, right? When you're looking at your team's numbers, really the numbers just tell part of the story. Right. And and making sure that your team understands why those numbers are that way and what thin they can impact.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:06

I I can't help but think of Jack Stack and the great game of business. Um, make it a game. Back to the idea of a scorecard. Like those numbers are the best ways to measure your success. And it can be fun. Like anything. You gotta need a scorecard.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:20

It's so true. I um I first learned of the scorecard concept at Snooze. And so we, I don't know if we had 48 locations at the time, but we were getting there and we launched the scorecard. And the cool, the really cool thing about it was um somebody produced it for us in the mothership and handed it over to us once a week, but we could see the entire company. So we weren't just competitive within the Colorado market and with the managers that we knew, and we could call and say, Hey, how did you hit this? What do you guys do? And differently, we were competitive with the entire company, which was just an absolute blast. And so it was very colorful. We had the reds and the greens and the yellows, right? And it was like you knew exactly where you um could move the needle, and it was really awesome to see that progress every week.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:59

How should we measure compare unit success?

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:03

It depends on square footage, it depends on location, it depends on sales volume. Um it, you know, it again, every business is very different. So there's there's definitely not a one size fits all here. But it's again understanding what your metrics are that you want to measure. And if people are hitting those targets, that's what success looks like. And also success outside of the metrics, too, right? Like cleanliness. How does it feel in there? What's your culture feel like? What's the environment?

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:29

You can even create scorecards on that. Like you can define what a five out of 10 is, you know, and you can start measuring that stuff. Um but what about like, okay, we've we've covered a lot. Uh when do you know in terms of like understanding the numbers and the profit? I think a lot of times you see people overextend, you know, they they go, they grow too soon or too fast. And when do you know it's the right time to open your next restaurant? Like what metrics do you to measure there?

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:55

I would say, well, if you again, you need cash flow, right? You need cash flow in order to open a business. If you've got a strong budget and strong projections, and you understand how much cash flow you're gonna need in case something goes wrong, right? Give yourself a runway of six to 12 to 18 months, depending on what kind of concept you're in and what location you're in and what your market's like. Start with the cash flow and make sure that it's a smart business decision. So you're not making decisions based on emotions, you're making them based on data. And then you need to look at your team. You know, I worked for a company where every single week the owners were coming in going, we're gonna look at this location, we're gonna look at this location, we're gonna look at this location. And it at the time it made me feel like I wanted to throw up every single time I heard that because there was never any conversation around what leadership structure do we need in place in order to make this successful. We were never a thought in that decision-making process.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:53

Yeah. And I always say like growth doesn't come from the outside. Right. It comes from the inside. You put your energy into what you're already doing in the people you're doing it with.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:02

Yeah. If you start to talk about expanding and your team goes silent, there's a problem.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:07

So pay attention to your team and start asking some questions. Like, what do we need? What do you all think we need in order to be successful here with this scalability?

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:15

Kristen, we've covered a lot, the three pillars, one more time. People, process, and profit. Tie it all together for us.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:24

So again, this is the independent restaurant framework. It is available in the book Multi-unit Mastery, Simplify Operations. Um, I've got to look at my title.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:34

That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:35

Simplify Operations, Maximize Profits, and Lead with Confidence. Thank God it's behind me. Um, you can get anybody can get a complimentary copy of this book that's listening to the show at www.irfbook.com. And anybody that's listening, if you would like, I would be happy to gift you a coaching session so you can check in on where you're at with this framework and then what success or what potentially you need in order to successfully scale. And you can do that by reaching out to me at kristinmarvin.com slash contact.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:09

Beautiful. Um, social handles.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:12

Uh LinkedIn is pretty much where I live 24-7. So at Kristen Marvin, and my first name is spelled C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:22

And it's Kristen uh L Marvin on Instagram.

unknown: 1:14:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:26

Am I allowed to share that?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:27

Or solutions by Kristen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:29

Got it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:30

Yeah, there's a lot.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:31

Um so I like to wrap up every episode. We already did the you know contact information. How do we get connected? But who do you respect and admire right now? And all the work you're doing, who's out there in terms of operators that you think are just doing it right, who are successful, who are willing to get vulnerable, open up and to share with my audience and with me how they got to where they are today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:54

I had a wonderful conversation this week with a restaurant owner, and I'm I'm not gonna say who they are, but they I I had a great conversation with them. They're very people focused, they want to grow. They know they need a strategic partner to give them a different perspective and an outside perspective on what's going right in their business and where the gaps and the blind spots are. So we had that conversation. I then went and ate at their restaurant, which I haven't been in probably three years. And every single component of the guest experience was extraordinary. There was intention in the greet and the design and the cleanliness and the food preparation and the the steps of service and the presentation of the food, the seasoning, the execution, the thank you on the way out. It it it was beautiful. It was very well orchestrated. And I think I don't see a lot of that in the industry as much as I use. I'm not gonna say who it is.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:59

Can you tell me off air so we can try to get them on the show?

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:01

Yeah. All right, awesome. When you come to Denver, we'll go eat there.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:05

Kristen, thank you so much for taking the time uh to reconnect, uh, to go deeper to get granular to share your knowledge. I love today's conversation, and uh, I just gotta say it. There is no questioning, my lady, you are unstoppable.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:20

Thank you, my friend. Good to see you.