How One Restaurant Owner Broke Free from Frustration

Hey there restaurant pros, it’s David Scott Peters and welcome to the Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast. For over 2 decades, I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurant tours I’ve coached and now it’s the foundation of what I teach restaurant owners like you so you can achieve success.
What do I mean by success? Success is a restaurant owner who dictates the terms of their life and their bank account instead of their restaurants dictating those things for them. Success is a restaurant owner who has the freedom from the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I know the way to achieve it is using the Restaurant Prosperity Formula.
This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula: leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts, and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their definition of success.
In this episode, 107, our guest is Daniel Herrero. Daniel was born, raised, and operates the 35-year-old family businesses, which include four restaurants, one bakery, and a commissary in Panama. He is no stranger to how things operate in other countries as he’s earned several degrees while studying in the US and Spain. Daniel’s story of a family business is not uncommon. He left his career working for Copa Airlines to step in and help his father. In this episode, he shares his story of being ready to leave the business because it was consuming his life to now having a life and the freedom to be present with his wife and two young children. Let’s get started.
Daniel, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. I really Appreciate it.
Thank you, David.
Honored to be here.
Well, tell people a little bit about your background because you didn’t kind of start in the restaurant business. In fact, it’s a family business that you came back to. You were in a completely different industry. Talk a little bit about your background.
Of course. I worked for 10 years on the airline. Actually, I’m from Panama. I was born and raised in Panama. And I did my undergrad and my master’s in the US and Europe. But yeah, I didn’t want to know anything about the restaurants. I actually started working on an airline for 10 and a half years. Actually, my two older brothers work on the restaurant. My father opened up the restaurants and he has four restaurants, one bakery shop and a commissary. So late 2018, he was like, hey, you know what? or I’m old for this. I’m tired. I sell this or you come and run this.
So it was like a game changing, a life changing decision I have to take at the moment because my father just wanted to retire and do something else.
So you found your way from airlines. Now you’re in the restaurant business. Talk about what it was like to come back to a family business because you and I have talked offline on this that we both grew up with parents in the restaurant business, which means most of them were old school, work harder, longer, like just put everything in there. Don’t put the systems in place. It’s all about the guest experience. There’ll be money left over. And it’s a slog. It’s tough to do. I mean, so you came into that atmosphere coming from, dare I say, a more corporate background. What was that like for you?
Totally. It was it was crazy. But when I got into the into work the first week I asked my dad, it was 2019. I told my dad, so what are the KPIs? I was like, the what? I don’t know. I read something regarding a food cost or labor and operational cost. Where are we standing right now? He was like, well, it should be like a 30% on food. I was like, okay, that’s not good enough because When I was on the airline, Copa, like that was my school, everything was measured. Everything was on KPIs, everything, we need to hit targets and everything. And in the family business, it was run different. There were not many people that trusted me I can do the work.
There was one of the restaurants, including that they have a bet. And the bet was that I was not going to be able to survive, that I was gonna say, you know what, this is not for me, I will just pull back on this. And we didn’t have systems in place, we didn’t have the numbers, the financials came in like 15, 30 days after the month was over. One of the funny stories is that when I got there on 2019, I was next to the commissary and the guy who had the call, he was the guy in charge, he was like, yeah, I’m putting it in the paper. I was like, you put it on the paper for what? Like, oh, the fax machine.
We’re gonna get the order from the restaurant through a fax machine. I was like, Jesus, what I’m getting into? Not only that, it was also sexual harassment. We had alcohol, we had theft. And those people that were like the family for my dad, because my dad was 74 at the moment, had people with him working 40, 30 years. And me telling my dad like, hey, these people are stealing. These people are, not, we’re not in good shape. So that was very tough. That was the having that kind of relationship with my dad. It was difficult. It was difficult at the beginning.
100%. I mean, you’ve come in here already built a successful business, for restaurants, commissary. Like it wasn’t that he wasn’t doing well. It was just old school. And the unfortunate reality with old school, we tend to trust, not verify. And so by not writing those systems in place, the KPIs, the eyeballs over top to make sure people are doing things, you know, people take advantage. And so, you know, I can imagine that not only did they take bets that you wouldn’t be there, I bet they were were making bets on who could push you out because you were going to discover the **** that, well, they didn’t want discovered because once that happens, they’re going to lose a job. It’s going to be problems.
So you’ve got this kind of chaos going on as best we could say. What made you reach out? How did you find me? And what was that first call like?
Let me tell you a little bit more about the story because my dad translated restaurant business that you have to be there 14, 16 hours a day. if it was not 14, 16 hours a day, it was not that. So that was 2019. I started fixing the things that I was able to fix at the moment without systems and kind of a budget. We’re talking about food costs at the moment and the lowest one was one of the restaurants was like 33% food cost. And the other, the maximum, we had a restaurant that was on the 56% food cost. So you can imagine all the things that translate into.
That’s theft, that’s bad management, that’s all the bad things that you can do on the restaurant. So I have to start doing, like, how can I stop this bleeding, the hemorrhage, and not losing quality to my clients? Because that was a big thing for me. How can I lose I started losing money, but not translating into a bad quality for my customers. So that was a challenge there. So that was 2019. 2020 came, we fixed a couple of things. Like now the food cost was not in the 50s, but was on the 35. So it was better, but we’re not there yet. 2020 COVID hit, everyone knows how bad it was. Panama is the second country in the world with the most restrictions ever.
We had like the longest time children not going to school, which was insane and also translated into a restaurant part. We were 220 employees at the moment. So what do you do with 220 employees? We have to start losing up because we were going to just go bankrupt. 2021, things open up again. We start building up again. And on 2022, after my second anxiety attack, I talked to my dad and I was like, hey, you know what? This is not for me. I don’t have a life. I was losing all the moments in my life that were precious for me. I was not there for the first time my kid, Pablo, my son, my first son was walking.
I was not there when he was selling his first words because I was in the restaurant. I was there because that was the best thing we can do is be on the restaurant. And even though I was there, I was not there. You know what I mean? I went with my kid to the park, but I was not there. I was on the phone. I was seeing what was going on the restaurant. So I worked every day of the week. I even took homework home just to keep working at home. So it was taking a big toll on me. So after my second anxiety attack, and I was thinking a lot, David, on saying this, but this is my story.
And I heard Avery’s story and need to help me out. I felt identified with it. And when I had my second anxiety attack, I told my dad, I just had bad thoughts. This is not going to end well, and I’m destroying my life. I’m not there. And I told my dad, I’m gonna cash out. I’m just gonna let this be happy place and let’s try to fix this because I’m gonna be done until December. It was one of the moments that, few moments in my life that I saw my dad crying. He was like, no, no, let’s see how we can figure this out. So I did not want to be on the restaurant business. Then I started to look for some help.
And that’s when I found you. And I saw the podcast and regarding Avery and I don’t know who was the other podcast on, the same as my podcast. And I was like, if this guys can do it, I can also do it. And that’s where we got the call. And you told me regarding the seminar in November. So I told my dad like, hey, there seems to be hope. There’s this guy called David and I’ll just give it a try. And you were my last hope, to be honest.
Well, and it was kind of, at that time I only had one membership level that required you have an implementer and you were very interested in the membership. And I literally, and people don’t believe me that I literally said, no, you can’t join. You don’t have an implementer. And your frustration level was high because you needed help. But I knew that you would fail without the implementer in that program. We’ve since created a second program before restaurants don’t have that at a lower revenue. But the fact of the matter is I knew that the pace was going to do fast. There’d be too many things going on. You’ve got to have that right hand person to learn how to delegate.
So I turn you away for all intents and purposes, but you do come to the seminar. Now that’s probably about four, five, six months later, if I remember correctly, like time went by. You go to the seminar. What’s that like?
The seminar, a It was great. It was like I saw people that were having the same issues as I had, that I was not alone. Because restaurant business, it’s a lonely place. No one can understand actually when you have like a full shift, the restaurant is full and your dishwasher breaks down. Not many people understand that. Not many people understand that a cook didn’t show up. So those kind of stuff. When I went to the seminar, two phrases stick to me. The first one was there’s no second time for the first times.
Yeah.
So that was one. And the second one was that you needed to work on your restaurant, not in your restaurant.
And those are powerful because the first thing, as you told your story, There’s no second chance for the first thing. Like there’s only one first T-ball game. There’s only one first steps. There’s only one 80th birthday for your grandparent. There’s only one 50th anniversary. Like it’s once you miss it, there’s no do over. So when your restaurant sucks in your life and you miss all these things that are going on, as you talked about, you’re not present and then working on your business, not in it. That’s a tough mental shift, especially when you and I grow up following our parents who work, work, work, work, hours, hours, hours. That’s how you get it done. And it’s counterintuitive to what we watched.
The seminar, I do recommend this seminar to everyone I can, because I saw people that it was capable of doing things like, you know, doing a weekly inventory on a restaurant that sells from other owners there that were selling three, $5 million a year. They were able to do inventory every week when I did a month selling less than that. I was like, no, it’s a way. There’s a way of doing things. And you showing a bunch of systems there that I was like, I needed this in my life, you know? And a story additional to that is that my father was the one who was going to go and pick me up at the airport.
Because that day, I was gonna arrive and go directly to a convention center, to a theater where Pablos was gonna do his first dance on the kindergarten. When I landed, I was like, I opened the phone, I told my wife like, Hey, I just landed on my way there. And she was like, No, Pablo just made his first dance. Like the moment shift. So I lost that moment again. I was like, Damn it. And when I saw you for the third time on the seminar, you were like this restaurant Tony Robbins. I don’t know, you know, like all pumping up people, like the F word was saying like a hundred times. I was like, you know, we’re talking the same language, man.
I was like, this dude understands me. And I remember also people on the same table, we were talking about, you know, like, how do you do the… the purchases and the Guardian, all these kind of things that we were seeing on the seminar. And it was true, you were like the two systems we don’t, restaurant owners don’t have, budgets or recipe costing cards. I didn’t have those. So we came back home with a lot of homework, but I had a lot of hope. I told my dad there, I was like, hey, I think These are the big leaks.
I told my dad, these are the big leaks, but I think this is the way that I can, we’re able to fix this and me falling in love again with this place. I think there’s a way.
And so you immediately put some systems in on your own. You weren’t a part of the program. You lowered your food cost and you made major changes on your own just by attending the seminar. Is that correct?
That’s correct. That’s correct. One of the things that the seminar paid for itself was on the waste tracker. The waste tracker was one of those. We also put in place the checklist, of course, but we improved our checklist and the checklist of not being in that place, imposing my will without being there. That was very important because I started to get a life back. And we start looking at the waste and the amount of waste and the things that we needed to improve in order to train our kitchen staff so we can improve those things. So we start reducing a lot of waste at that moment.
So you took action, you made change, paid for the seminar or the trip, you’re starting to feel like you understand systems. You do finally find an implementer, somebody who is got, you know, English is a second language, not quite as strong as yours, but could watch the videos, could participate on calls. And you get on a call with Ryan James. You start talking about now joining the RTI group, Restaurant Transformation Intensive. What was it like making that decision to say, okay, we are going to do this? Because it’s at the time wasn’t any small investment. you had to commit and you’re coming from Panama.
So we got a time zone, we got language issues, we’ve got labor issues that people do not understand here in the United States that we’ll talk about a little bit. You know, as far as once you have an employee, you kind of own that employee. We don’t have the ability to send people home like we do here. What was it like making that decision?
So it is true. You declined me joining the program because I didn’t have an implementer. And To be honest, I was like, I.
Don’t need an implementer.
I’m the operations guy. I was the guy, again, that it was a Friday night. I remember this story. It was a Friday night. I was with my wife. We were watching a series on the TV. And someone called me from the restaurant like, Hey boss, we need some Aperol, some liquor. I was like, Oh, yeah, sure. So I just stood up, go buy the stuff and go to a restaurant. I was not having a life. So you were like, you need someone in order to help you out. You are the owner. And because I was not being an owner, I was in the restaurant. I was not able to look at the marketing.
I was not able to see that numbers were getting where they belong to the bank. So more stories there. And I say, you know what, I need to give someone a shot. And it took three months in order to me hiring someone I felt like this was the right person to join the program. And on the interview, I told him, hey, I’m going to join the program. And from what this guy said on the seminar, he said like, I suck. I create more work. So it’s a lot of work.
And thank God, my operations manager with me today, and we are being able to Turn the ship around we have done a lot of stuff together, and we are on the target of looking and open up more to more businesses, so things are doing well right now.
So you’ve got an implementer, you’re going through the coaching program, you’re implementing more systems. And I think you again agree with me now that you have one in that it is critical to have that implementer. I mean, learning how to delegate from the beginning, start to separate yourself from doing the tasks and leading the business is really, it’s not theory, it’s reality.
With that said, You inherited, if you will, walking into a business that had all these long-term employees, and I want people to understand who are listening to us, that in Panama, when you have somebody work for you, I think it was over six months or whatever, you kind of own them, meaning they start accruing an exit payment that if you were ever to fire them, you got to pay them to leave. You had people with 20 plus years that would cost you 10s of thousands of dollars to fire. You say, okay, I’m going to let you go. Here’s a check for $25,000. Like it is a major deal. But we start looking at your labor.
And while we can’t necessarily stagger start, because it doesn’t make sense, once you hire somebody, you want to get the 40 hours out of them. That’s just the way it is where you are in your country. Talk about how many employees you had and how many you have now and whether the operation is operating better with fewer employees or worse.
Sure. So you own the employees after three months. So it’s like a lump sum that after each year, you have to pay X amount more because of this person. And I must say that we are a proud employer that we We retire people. We have a lot of people who has retired from the restaurants. But the thing is that some were doing well their job, but others were just like, they didn’t care anymore. So when I started, we were around 220 employees. Now we are around 160 employees. That’s my full staff. And we are operating way more efficient And why?
Because we started to understand that the roles, we can start shifting the roles inside the kitchen, even though we are not degrading or making better, it’s just, instead of being on this station, just be on this station now. So when you are sick or you’re on vacation, I don’t have to bring extra people or hire more people. So we’re building up a more efficient ecosystem. And besides that, I’m able to pay more to those people because they have increased their level of skills. So it’s not I’m paying less, it’s I’m paying more because now they have several skills that now I have on my kitchen.
That’s amazing. Go ahead.
No, I just want to apologize if my English as a Spanish singer was saying English is not very good looking, but I’m trying my best on my English. It’s kind of rusty.
You’re doing great.
I apologize for that.
Thank you. So here’s the deal. You go from 220 employees to 160. And I want people to understand, it wasn’t about stagger starting. It was about kind of that culture of labor creep. Somebody whines and says, oh, we’re at slow ticket times. You had a cook three months, you got to keep them. Right? Oh, we need better service. You add another server, you got to keep them. And so all of a sudden you’ve got people standing around. And this was kind of our discussion as we were looking at your budget. I’m going, holy crap, what is this labor?
And let me be clear, you’re in a country where the labor minimum wage is very low, but the food cost is going to be a little higher. And you know, it’s just different. But the fact of the matter is you can’t send somebody home. You could, but you’re going to pay them for the 40 hours. There’s nothing around it, getting around it. But the fact of the matter is By opening your eyes, you determined, because you had one, a budget, two, a plan, and understood where things were, that by decreasing the labor, even though it would cost you, like what was the most money you paid out to an employee that had been with you for a long time? Do you remember?
Yeah, I remember it wasn’t COVID.
It was like $48,000. $48,000 So imagine everybody listening. There were people who were $20,000 higher that Daniel had to go, you know what? You’re not working out. It’s time for you to go. I don’t need all these people. And it was more cost effective to pay out $40,000 than it was to keep them on the team. So when we whine here in the United States, oh, my labor is killing me. Holy crap. and so people understand there’s still efficiency issues we could fix, but we can’t because you need X number of cooks on the line on a Friday night, a Saturday night. Well, that you need to have that full-time employee.
So we’ve got to figure out how to get more efficient with them on these slower days. And it’s a much different puzzle. But if you can do it, how the hell can we not do it here when we whine about hourly employees that we can send home, we can stagger start? It just amazes me. Talk about one last thing about company culture. It was not that easy. You picked a couple restaurants that you knew would play, but you left the last one to the very end and why. Talk a little bit about that and what it meant to you when you finally said, damn it, I’m taking over this restaurant. We are going to do it this way.
Of course. One of the things before also about numbers, when we saw also on the seminar, I told you, just let me do the parentheses, because on the seminar I was like, David, I don’t think I can hire an operations manager because my labor costs, it’s way up. And you’re like, no, you’re reading your numbers wrong. So that was also a big thing that I learned on the seminar, that we have to also separate the sales and also how do we manage I know provisions manager because if he or she was not in the four walls, it should be not measured that way. So that was a big eye opener for me also of how we should be reading those numbers.
So besides now the culture. So the culture, there were several things. There was the classic speech that I think you only teach when you are on the program regarding Things are gonna change, they’re easy, but it’s gonna be uncomfortable. So I gather up my managers. I also managed, I gather up the chefs, the head chefs for each restaurant. And I was like, so we hire a guy, he’s an American, and there are gonna be changes. They’re gonna be tough, but you’re gonna be, you know, it’s gonna take time. But we have this manager, everyone was like, yeah, sure, yes, let’s rock it on. And we had this manager that has been with the company for more than 40 years.
And she was like, okay, but she didn’t want to play along because the way she was taught and the way she was doing things were the way that it worked. It worked, but they were not efficient and it didn’t apply to the new culture. And one of the stories that I always tell and you always crack up about it, it’s Boris. That’s my chef on Waikiki. And I spoke to Boris, like, hey, Boris, we’re going to do a prep system that we’re not only going to work for our shift, we’re going to be preparing our shift for the next shift. He was like, what do you mean?
He was like, dude, we’re going to leave all the the refrigerators, everything on the par level so we can open for the next shift and they are not running around. He was like, we always do this, but it’s on my brain. I was like, no, no, no, no, this is going to happen. And it is what it is. He was like, no, no, I don’t think that’s going to work. I was like, dude, we’re making this. Let’s do it. So two, three days go by. And I went to Franklin, our manager. I was like, hey, Frank, how are things going? He was like, oh, buddies, Hates the gringo. I was like, Why? I was like, ******* gringo.
He’s making me do more work, and so on and so forth. I was like, Yeah, things are not doing that well. And I spoke to him later on. I was like, Hey, Boris, how are things? I was like, Look, at first I was not okay with the things of leaving the part levels on the fridge because that’s extra work. But now I understand. I can open up my shift. It’s beautiful. I don’t have to be running. The gringo knows his stuff. The gringo knows his ****. I was like, okay, that’s good. So every time now, when the culture was changing and the new things we were implementing, I was like, they were like, who’s telling us to do this? Why?
I was like, well, that’s a gringo. I was like, if gringo says so, we’ll do it. Gringo knows his stuff. So that was very easy for us in order to implement. But on the other hand, We do have people that were saboteurs. So that was sad. And culture was coming so we can be 40 more years in business because the youngest restaurant that my dad had has 38 years old and the oldest one is 47 years old. You know, it’s a it’s a it’s a place that many people in Panama, it’s part of the culture when people go out.
So that was an important culture shift there of people understanding that the systems do work and the system, if they’re not there, the restaurants will keep running.
And so you got to the, you had that change, but you still had the one manager that you literally had to get permission, if I remember correctly, from your dad going, she’s got to go. If she’s not going to play, are you willing to let that happen? And when you made that change, when you got technically permission to make that happen, what happened to that restaurant? Like, was it better, worse? What happened?
The cost, the food cost there, the food cost was doing better. We were like on the 27%. Now it’s like on the 23. percent. Why? We improve the efficiency of the kitchen. We also improve the structure, the managerial, the leadership structure inside the kitchen. We also made some changes on the POS system. So remember the fax machine? Well, we had the similar on the POS system. So us changing that because the manager there didn’t want changes. Like she has been working like this for so many years and it has been working. Yes, it worked, but it was not that efficient. And the changes, now the manager is like, she enjoys doing inventories and doing actual and theoreticals.
When before she was like, no way I’m gonna do inventories every week. Now she does them, she enjoys them because now she drank from the Kool-Aid and she saw it work. So sometimes it’s like you have to lay down the line on the sand and say, you know what? No more. This is how we’re going to do things. Are you in or you’re out? Because I already have a blessing from my father in order to make those changes because I understand him. This person has been with him so many years. This person saw me on my mom’s belly. It was even difficult for me in order to make changes and talking to them because they’re being all their life.
I was on school on primary was drinking milk when she was already running a restaurant. So that was tough. That was tough.
Well, were there any unexpected changes? I mean, so I mean, you’ve painted a picture of, being on edge to a point where like, my God, I don’t do this anymore. I’m out to finding hope, but more importantly, taking action. Even before you joined, you came to the seminar, you came home, you put changes in place, saw that the **** works, then started joined, had your implementer. You’ve seen incredible change and we still got a lot more to do. Like if there’s one thing I know about you, are driven to make change. In fact, you’re looking at opening two more restaurants, which is craziness. But with that said, was there something unexpected?
Yeah, look, the best way of me knowing my operations manager and the structure I was building was the right one. My daughter, when she was born, she had a heart condition. So we didn’t know about this. So I have to fly to the US on the ambulance, an air ambulance with less than a month. She was like 2 weeks, a week, a month old when we flew there. I’m my operations manager. We were still, we were like on month one or two on the program that I was like, okay, so there’s a pause, like pause in my life. Like I don’t care about anything. I wanna be with my daughter.
Yes.
A month later, I was in the US with my wife and my daughter. She was having surgery. Thank God she’s now okay. We went, we came back home and still I didn’t wanna work, David, because I was so drained. that this traumatic experience happened, I was like, I don’t want to work.
But I discovered that the hard way that I was able to be away from the restaurants with assistance were being implemented, were being followed up by my operations manager, the managers knew what to do, there was a checklist in place, they knew what was the will, they knew what were the purchasing systems, the guardian, everything, so those are the things that I saw that me not being there 24/7, I was able to do. I’m able to have a life today. I’m able to go on the weekends to the beach with my wife, my kids, and not being holding the phone, what’s going on? What happened? Well, we need to purchase a trash can. Let me just go and purchase a trash can.
And these are real stories. And now things are being taken care of because before I was like, I got so much theft on the previous five years that we’re all sleeping with an eye open. I was like, when’s going to be in the next crisis? So I didn’t have a life. I was always on fight mode. I was cranky. I was a jerk because everything was like, another problem. Now I have to solve this. And now with this, with the systems in place, with my management team, You know, the restaurant, sometimes when I go there, I’m disrupting people because I’m there and people are like, oh, we’re working, like, let us work. And it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful.
I go around, I see my, I still don’t stop doing it. I see the trash cans, what’s going on, you know, I see the fridge, I pass the finger if there’s dust or whatever, and things are working, it’s not perfect, but are working.
It’s never going to be perfect. I mean, like we talk about, there’s no finish line in the restaurant business. You got it all done because there’s always a new thing or somebody new that you’re retraining and so on and so forth. But what I really enjoy is you go from panic attack to being able to be present with your family. And in fact, I think you and I talked about it. You went on a cruise and you kept checking in. And when you got away, even though you didn’t have to work, you just checked in. I’m like, why’d you do that? And then when Andy would go, stop. Like, stop calling me. Like, we got this, man. And what people don’t understand is it’s difficult.
When you pour your heart and soul in and you’re used to doing everything, you almost feel guilty. They must need me. They’ve needed me for so many years. And it’s giving them permission to run the damn place because you were so clear on your expectations. And I think that’s really exciting for me when I watch one end because he never says no. He just says yes. And he goes in and he works with the management team. You don’t have to. And the **** gets done. It’s not perfect. It’s never going to be. But by God, you can be present with your family. You can go to the recitals. You can do the sporting events. You can just shut down.
In fact, you’re at a point now, you know, you watch the podcast with Avery Ward. He’s a member mentor. I think you met him at the seminar, if I’m not mistaken. And now you sit at a table with him three times a year in Las Vegas as a Mastery Plus member. And I remember the last meeting, the two of you just geeked out on spreadsheets. You had a break. You were like, let me show you my spreadsheet. Let me show your spreadsheet. You’re slicing and dicing numbers from your budgets and so on, which you would have never had time for. You would have like the KPIs. You’re inventing new KPIs. You’re finding ways that take my systems to a whole new level.
And It’s so ****** impressive. And I want people to understand that it’s not what I did. You did the fricking work. You put in the effort to make a change, even and especially when it was hard. And that’s amazing to me.
Thank you.
No, thank you.
That’s why when you told me that regarding for this podcast, I feel honored and humbled of being here because Yes, in Panama, we do struggle a little bit because we need to tropicalize the things from the US in order for the systems, because we use different systems. And it’s not impossible. It’s not impossible. Whoever is watching this, if someone, one person gets inspired from my story, it is possible. There’s a way. There’s systems, it’s structure. It’s tough. I’m not going to lie. It’s a lot of work. No, you didn’t. You didn’t, but it pays off.
The key is that’s why you’ve got to have the implementer. It’s learning to delegate. It’s learning to lead, not do. It’s a muscle. You just keep, like you start working out and it gets stronger and stronger and stronger to where you are today. And so we’ve worked together now from the time we first met, if we said the seminar, has it been two years? Massive change in that time. It is truly amazing. Just for ***** *** ***** what would you tell somebody who is thinking about the program? Maybe watched or listened to this podcast? associates with your story.
What would you tell them about reaching out and actually joining, whether it’s the RTF program or RTI does not matter, getting embarking on the system of having coaching, having other restaurant tours that understand you to just getting the systems and being held accountable? What’s what would you?
I think you said several things there. It’s one I would say don’t don’t hesitate on reaching out because I did hesitate a lot on reaching out because I was like, I think this will not fit me, but it does fit. There’s so many people in the industry that this is a lonely place. As I said, this is a lonely place and not many people understand the issues a restaurant owner goes through. And I think the cool thing also the program is that every week there’s a call that you can just go there and just say your problems, or I’m having these difficulties.
And there’s a lot of people that have gone through that difficulty and be like, oh, this is a way of doing it, or this other option, or we can do this. And there’s always people willing to help in the group. And your staff as well, Mary and Steve, just amazing people that are willing to help, just you’re a call away. And I think if I had these issues that I had a lot of problems, and I was able to fix them through the program, I know that there’s people that are going to have the same issues, and also we’re going to have a solution through the systems that you teach throughout the program.
I appreciate that. I’m so thankful that you took the time to do this with me today. I think it’s also really important that people acknowledge that you’re in Panama. You’re in a whole other country. And that running a restaurant is running a restaurant. It’s about great hospitality. It’s taking care of your guests, taking care of your internal guests, your employees. It’s about becoming an employer of choice. But it is important that you have a life and that you make the money you deserve and that it’s possible no matter where you are. Because we certainly don’t have the same restrictions or challenges you do. But the reality is it’s still the restaurant business. And if you take action, you’ll get **** done. You’ll change your life.
And it’s I don’t change your life. You change your life. I present you the information. I’ll coach you. I’ll hold you accountable. But man, if you don’t do the work, it ain’t going to change. And that’s what it really comes down to. If I take one thing away from watching you is you had a problem, you found the information, you freaking took action, and that was even before we ever even joined the membership. That’s the key. That’s the critical piece. If there was one thing you wanted to leave people with that we didn’t talk about, what would that be?
There’s a life. Even on running the restaurant business, you can have a life. I thought that was gonna be impossible. I saw from my father that he was not able to take a life, time to spend more time with his family because he was all day sucked up in the restaurant business. But there’s hope, there are systems, there are a way of doing things. And I love my new life. It’s something I’m grateful for that I’m able to spend time with my family and be impressive with them and not missing more first time moments with them. And I’m really grateful that I joined the program.
I found you guys and I do recommend it to everyone else that it’s going through something similar like I did.
Thank you so much. And I can’t wait to see two more years from now when you have two more places open, what life is like for you, my friend. Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate you so much.
Thank you very much, David. Have a great day.
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Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant. Before you go, I want to give you these three thoughts.
One, by combining leadership and taking action with systems and training being checked by accountability, you are on your way to creating prosperity for you and your restaurant.
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For more restaurant resources or to get in contact with me, connect with me at DavidScottPeters.com. Be passionate about what you’re doing. Be persistent, but more importantly, become better and help everyone around you become better and your restaurant is going to kick some ***.