How Restaurant Owner Stopped Managing and Started Leading

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 this formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurateurs I’ve coached and it’s now 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 their restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I do know the way to achieving 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 number 124, our guest is someone you may remember as the person asking me questions back in episode 106 called Flipping the Table. David Militello is back and he’s now the one in the hot seat. David was one of my very first five members back in 2005. Over the years, he’s been a restaurant coach and an on-the-ground consultant with me at my old company and is back as a member mentor for my restaurant transformation intensive group coaching program. David still owns and operates 3 restaurants in South Haven, Michigan and is one of the very best hospitality professionals I’ve ever met. Listen in as David shares a little bit about his journey from being his best manager into becoming the owner his restaurants needed and what every restaurant owner needs to hear when it comes to their journey into the systems. Let’s get started, but first a word from our sponsor. We all know managing costs is one of the most important parts of running a profitable restaurant, especially now. But between fluctuating vendor prices, waste, labor, and the never-ending list of tasks that demand your attention on a daily basis, it can be challenging for even the most experienced of us to manage costs well. That’s where Margin Edge comes in. Margin Edge is a complete restaurant management software that automatically uses data from your POS and invoices to show you food and labor costs in real time. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Margin Edge gives you tools to make decisions in the moment, like a daily P&L, price alerts on key ingredients, and real-time plate costs, all without ever having to touch a spreadsheet. Take control of your costs, work more efficiently, and be more profitable. Go to www..marginedge.com forward slash DSP to learn more and schedule your demo today. David, I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast. I think again, it’s good to have you, brother.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to see what’s in store for us today.
Well, we’re talking about you as a member mentor. And what is a member mentor for people outside listening to us right now? That is somebody who’s been a member who has made incredible change in their business and now helps our current or new members guide them through the systems, their challenges, and so on. It’s that extra, hey, I’m actually still running a restaurant. You need some support. Here I am. Now, your unique situation, why is that? Because what As I share with our members now, you are one of the first five members I ever had, period, as a coach. So I started in 2003 being a restaurant coach. By 2005, I had done my second workshop. It was a four day workshop in Las Vegas. I believe you attended the second ever workshop. And after that, you signed up and became one of my first five members in my coaching program. So I was brand new to coaching. I just put everything together. You, in fact, were so influential that at the time that was my elite group equivalent today as Mastery Plus, where we’d meet four times a year at each other’s places for two days. We had all these other benefits, one-on-one coaching and so on. And everything was supposed to be in Scottsdale and you’re like, nope, let’s do it at each other’s place. And you added other things. and so on. I’m like, okay, yeah, But over time, there was a point in time that we were in Vermont and we’re sitting in a motel room, motel room, because we were on a logging route. Henry Bronson, God rest his soul, has a chef that had this French restaurant in the middle of a logging route in Vermont. And we had a conversation. I’m like, I need help. You’ve done an incredible job. I want to bring you on. And you started coaching with me part time. Then you went full time. Then you consulted with me. You would fly all over the country. In fact, I believe you were in Canada as well, like all over the world. We’ll call that the world. And you helped members make incredible change. And now fast forward after I think we worked together for about 10, 15, 10, 12 years, maybe longer than that. We had, things had changed. My company got sold. I’m now starting over here. We hadn’t worked together for years even before that. And then By happenstance, I invite you to a Mastery Plus meeting. Next thing you know, I’m like, we rekindle the relationship. We rekindle all the things and I go, holy **** I forgot what a great fricking guy you are. What a probably top-notch hospitality operator I’ve ever met in my life. and you understand seasonality better than anybody because you’re on one of the Finger Lakes and you to all your business in the summer. I’m like, man, I need you back in the fold. And from that meeting on, I pulled you back in as a member mentor. We have digs and plans for you to go back to becoming a full-time coach with me someday as the business grows. Like you’re not a normal operator. And I’m going to share with people that we don’t always see eye to eye. And in fact, that I may give advice one direction and you may give advice another direction. And guess what? There’s more than one opinion in this business. Do me a favor. Tell people a little bit about your history and what you do.
Well, I opened my first restaurant in 1998. That was Tello Italian Bistro. And most of the operators that we help, that you help, I was struggling for years, always looking for help, for a coach, for something. What’s the right way to do it? What’s a better way to do it? How do I stop working 100 hours a week and learn that whole thing? And Luckily, I found you because the only other thing out there back then were marketing companies, restaurant marketing people, and they were taking my money hand over fist and, you know, you know, they would they would have the these beautiful seminars and get you pumped up. And then I’d go and market myself into more debt because those are the days of coupons and doesn’t matter. doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t matter how much you give away if you have all this coming in, right? So that was the mentality back then. Luckily, at one of these marketing seminars, I found you speaking. And I don’t know if you remember, but I was fighting to get to the back door because you gave some The first ten people to sign up will blah, blah, blah. I don’t remember right now at this point, but I was I was at least in the top ten to show up at that table back there. And Sue was there with all of the stuff. And I said, I’ll take it all. And from that day on, I signed up immediately. And moving forward, you know, that’s where you really laid down what you know, the systems. and how to actually run your business. Not so much how to market it, how to get people in the door, none of that stuff, but how to run it. And I had what I thought was a decent foothold on them. I had already done inventory weekly just from the previous company that I’d worked for. They had some good practices, but nowhere near what you offered and in the detail that you had. So long story short, I, spent the next several years mastering the systems that you taught, implementing them, with implementers, many implementers. It wasn’t just one, two. It was, it was.
You had, you had how many restaurants at that time? You had three restaurants and a catering facility.
Just 3 restaurants at that time. Yeah, no catering facility. And in my approach was, hey, we’re going to have the same checklist in each place. That way, if I need to bump a manager from A to B, they can do it. They just don’t know where we keep the salt. But they know how to open a restaurant. They know how to have a pre-shift meeting. They know how to do X, Y, and Z. to get things operational in a pinch. And, you know, that’s the beauty of systematically running your business. You can never, in my opinion, this is my opinion, you can never manage an employee or a person. You can only manage a system or a checklist or, you know, a tangible piece of paper. And that’s been my approach is, you know, I don’t get hyped up over or emotional over people, employees and the dumb things that we do sometimes anymore. It’s human nature. You know, how do we create an environment that that our staff wants to be a part of and works toward. And it starts with all the systems checklist being the first one. And then right down the list of all the other good stuff. So it’s been a it’s been a few years.
It’s been a lot of years. And I think I want to share I want you to share a little bit about the systems journey that even top operators like yourself who figured it all out have been helping restaurant owners for a long, time with me old company, new company, because you really get it and you’re patient and you’re a great communicator. You understand where people are and have empathy to remember where you were that like, okay, everybody’s on a different path in the journey and everybody needs help. And it’s not like, oh, you’re an idiot. Don’t you now do this? And it just really helps people love working with you. as an operator, though, struggle just like everybody else that the systems are in place, everything’s working great. And then you take your eye off the ball and you kind of have to re-implement. Talk about why that’s a real struggle. Like what is it is running a restaurant that you put all the **** in place. It’s like working. You’re like, it’s working. And then you go, **** I took my eye off the ball and I got to start those systems again. Why do you think that happens? And am I misstating that?
You are 100% correct. You know, my business, I assume and I hope like everyone else is up and down and all around. It’s, you know, big picture. It’s a direct reflection of my discipline, my personal discipline. That’s all it is. If the minute that I do too much. I get burnt out. I, you know, I take on too much. I focus in the wrong direction. That’s where, you know, it’s no different than any job, anything in life. My Lowe’s in the restaurant and or the fact that I get disorganized or whatever it is, it’s a reflection of me not doing that routine on a daily basis, on a weekly basis. Maybe I stopped having meetings with my managers because you do that sometimes. Maybe I stopped reinforcing checklists and more so more often than not, it’s usually a relationship situation. I have long-term employees and I have a lot of empathy. And when you have long-term employees, they become your friends. And it’s really easy to overlook things. It’s not so easy to have those hard conversations. Yeah. And I’ve learned that over the years, though, and I feel really comfortable having those conversations. You know, I don’t make them hard. I just I just it’s reality. It is what it is. Hey, we are here because we’re here. So what are we going to do about it? Here’s a couple of choices or a couple of ideas I have. What do you think? But the big thing is keeping myself accountable.
Yeah.
Keeping that routine. And I struggle with that. I’ve always have all my life. But hey, it is what it is. And once you’re up there, there’s always a way to get back up. And you know, I don’t it’s true what they say about being on top. You know, the better you get at something, the harder it is to maintain it.
Yeah. It’s that, or I try and remind people, you’ve seen it iterations over the years and you’ve probably seen my more recent one where I’ve got a restaurant owner checklist. And it’s once you have these systems in place, this is what you have to check on a daily basis. And with 100% certainty, I have never gotten one of my restaurant owners to follow the damn checklist because it’s It feels overwhelming. Okay, check your daily deposit. Okay, made it. Look at your DSR tracker. All right, got it. Was the order placed on time? Was it on budget? If they didn’t, did they check with me? Is it a Wednesday and they did they start writing their schedule and it’s got to be posted by Thursday? Did you check dot dot dot? Was inventory done Sunday night or Monday morning and input and was it accurate? And you start going through all these things and it’s like, holy ****. I’ve got all this work, but it’s not your work. It’s your team’s work. And if you don’t pay attention to it, that’s when things start to slide. Now talk about your transition from when we first met and you said, I’m struggling to the point in time where you are today and you’re helping restaurant owners and have for again, I’m going backwards in my brain. I keep doing math and I’m 99% sure that we spent 14 years together at the old company and we’re starting up almost a, we’re getting close to a year back together. And so you’ve seen a lot. You’ve been on the ground. We’ve been on, I can remember when we were on Nero’s and we had Judy was going absolutely *** **** because she didn’t, the checklists were paper and people checked it off, but they weren’t detailed enough. And you had to deal with that to You and I going to a restaurant where the kitchen was so bad, we’re like, I’m not going to eat here. And it’s like, holy crap, how do you deliver that message? As well as people who go, David, when you were in my restaurant, and when I say David, I mean you, e-mail, you were in the restaurant, you’ve changed my world. Like they got the light bulb went off and the system finally went in place, managers finally bought in. What has that journey been like? And what do you think makes you successful helping others.
Good question. The first part of the question would be that, as I was learning the systems, it wasn’t just about learning the systems more so. The hard part was changing my thinking from an operator to an owner from a manager mentality to, you know, you have to learn to change your perspective and constantly be able to change your perspective. You have to be able to look at things from everyone’s point of view all of the time. You need a top down visual approach to see what everybody’s doing. And then and then the biggest thing that you helped me with was you helped me see myself as a coach to my staff, not a boss, not, you know, do as I say, none of that. I don’t subscribe to any of that. But when I take on that coaching mentality, then That’s when things start to work for me. That’s when employees start to really love their job and do their job and everything else. So. So that the hardest part was was making that mental transition for myself was turning into a coach and not really break and breaking away from the day-to-day operations, you know? Yeah, I can go into the restaurant at night and I can touch a few tables, but the minute I start going and doing managers jobs, All the staff start to look at me and the managers become invisible. It just creates disruption all around of the whole process of what we’re trying to do. And then all of a sudden I have managers, they’ll take a ride too. Managers, if I walk into the room, they’ll stop answering questions.
Yeah.
They don’t know, they don’t know, but because they understand. You know, there’s been too many conversations where a lower line level employee will come up to me and ask a question and I’ll turn to the manager and say, hey, what do you think? Instead of answering the question. And that little piece right there was huge for me because it got me out of doing line level work into coaching my people.
Anybody who’s listening right now, because you’re a multi-unit operator right now. I think at your highest, I want to say you had Thirsty Perch, Telos, Sophie’s, you have PT 109, you had a catering. So you had five different businesses. You’ve since sold some things off and I believe you’re running the three restaurants now. But if I’m a single operator and I listen to you, you’ve been doing it, you’ve got all it in place, but you were in your businesses in the beginning. Like you were running around from one business to the next to the next. And if you weren’t there, **** was not getting done. What was that breakthrough moment? Yes, becoming coach, but when did you realize that your people could do this stuff, that you didn’t have to be the one to do it? What was that aha moment?
I mean, it was around the same time. You know, remember when I when you have that mentality of working in the business and doing line level work, you think that you’re you’re doing it 100%. You think that you’re perfect at it. You think that you’re the best at it. You think that no one’s ever going to do do it as well as you are. And that is the biggest thing that we as operators, I think, get caught up in. You know, you need to just let that go, let the whole thing go. And understand the fact that you have employees that are better than you. have employees that are smarter than you. And stop, just stop imposing yourself on thinking that you’re the center of the universe in your own business. At least that’s my approach. I did have to bite my tongue in the beginning quite a bit. I had to learn to accept 80% what was in my head. They can do at least 80% As 80% as good as I can do it. That was that was my number. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But after a short period of time, that all went away. I understood the fact that, you know what, they’re getting it done and I can do other things. And once I turned that corner of learning that whole delegation process and coaching, I’d never go back. There’s no way. The other benefit that a lot of people don’t see is it empowers your staff. It gives them purpose. If they’re learning and they’re doing and they’re making important decisions in your business, they’re happy as opposed to walking around with handcuffs on, you know, you know, or you remember the The old way of managing, I think, I think we, I used to describe it that the seminar was, was, you know, the old way of managing was the owner would, would walk you up to the front door, prop the door open, he’d whip the keys inside the restaurant, turn the lights off, push you in, and then close the door. Find your way out. Good luck. That’s how that’s how we used to do it.
Yeah.
So, there and mentalities were so much different back then, but the point is learning to engage with your staff, learning to coach your staff, and You know, some people feel guilt too. I forgot about that. You know, there’s a there’s a point in time when you’re an owner and you feel a little bit of guilt for your staff because your staff’s doing all the work. Well, I think that’s made-up. because you could be doing 1000 other things to work on your business too.
So let’s talk about that, because that is probably the first aha moment I see somebody making the transition from being their best manager to becoming an owner. And they’ve delegated, they’ve trained the systems. The beautiful part about what we do is we go, here’s the ****** system. Just do this. Just like it is proven, oh, does it work? It’s been, I’ve been, it’s the same ****. I’m not the smartest guy in the world. You know, a key item tracker is a freaking clipboard system. Here, this spreadsheet, the numbers are the numbers, just follow it. And when they finally realize, this **** works. And they go, and they got managers when they didn’t have any, and now they’ve got managers and supervisors and hourlies and whatever you want to call them, key employees. Everybody else is doing the things they used to do. They’re no longer as an owner. You’re no longer taking inventory. You’re no longer entering recipe cards. You’re no longer writing a schedule. You’re no longer dealing with the silly questions on where’s the plunger. You actually have freedom. The biggest thing they start to go is, what am I supposed to do? Right? What do I do now? Because everybody, they’re doing my job. And I talk about, your job as an owner is working on budgets, marketing, leading the team, developing your managers, holding them accountable, working strategically on the business, moving the business forward. That’s from my perspective. I’m the coach. But from an owner perspective, what’s your job? What is your job now? If you’ve got managers in right now three different locations, they’re running the store. You’re not there.
Correct. I mean, my job is to is to oversee them and coach them when needed, but at a certain point, when you have long term managers, they know their job, they know what to do. So then it becomes, how do I how do I keep everybody happy on a certain level and keep the relationship there? And not unlike a marriage. You know, not unlike, you know, when you have long term relationships, you have to you have to find ways, creative ways to keep them to keep them healthy. But most importantly, my job as an owner is communicate regularly with my staff through regular meetings, hold my company financially responsible, you know, making sure taxes are all correct, making sure, you know, communicate with the CPA, the bookkeeper, everybody to make sure I’m on top of things. All the other systems at this point for me are pretty much everybody does them. Everybody else does them. So I don’t I don’t have to revisit them. And if I do, it’s not a big deal. We sit down and we talk for 15 minutes about it. We refresh ourselves. We get happy and we go back at it. You know, naturally people, people will not. I’ve found that I have to do that. Nothing goes on autopilot, right? Nothing. There’s always going to be a system that an employee is going to let go. They’re going to let go. They’re going to drop the ball on it. So I just kind of look around and keep my awareness and see what is it that we need to deal with. And you do that through reviewing manager logs. I do it through conversations with all the employees to get the real story of what’s going on. And then I just try to target and target it on the on the weaknesses that are the current the current problems that are going on in each place because they’re always different. And, I could be nailing inventory and labor at one place and at the other place, I’ve got a shy kitchen manager that just doesn’t want to let his buddies not work.
Right.
You know, so then I got to have that conversation. So there’s no magic pill. It’s managing the systems, it’s managing the emotions, it’s managing the problems as they come by and then figuring out what to do about them.
So let’s backtrack to something you said more eloquently than I always say. I say I hate managing people. What I love is managing a system and teaching and developing my people, right? It’s very different. Managing them versus here’s a system. You either did it or you didn’t. And when I can teach you food costs, when I can teach you recipe cards, when I can teach you all these things and you have on an annual basis, there’s this lower level supervisor because summers come and they come with a rush every year for you. And then the off times, it’s barren, but you have learned to use your budgets, make that work. But it means every year you’ve got some young supervisors. Talk about the difference in what it is to have a system a process, a way to doing everything and training them on that versus the old days when it was all in somebody’s head and you really couldn’t get rid of a certain manager because by God, they are the only ones who knew how to write a schedule. They’re the only ones who knew how to take an inventory. They’re the only ones who knew because it was like this proprietary information of experience and there was nothing documented. There was no system, no process, no way. It was just in this person’s head. And so we would hold on to them too long. Where today you don’t sweat it. You have new supervisors almost on an annual basis. You have long-term hire managers and even when they go away, you don’t sweat it because you got a trained replacement. Can you talk about that, what that means to you and how you got there?
Yeah, I mean, there’s always new faces. Coming into my restaurant, I’ve found over the years that it’s really hard to hire a manager outside of the company.
Yeah.
Just because training culture is, I don’t think it’s possible. I think you have to be at a certain place for a certain amount of time unless, you know, and I’m not the best at this, but unless you really have all of your core values, vision, mission in every employee’s face at every shift all the time. And unless it’s just cult, I call it a little bit of cultishness going on. Unless you have that going on, it’s hard to hire a manager cold. Right. So I always try to push people up or you know, find the person that’s ready to move up and, and manage that, that, that thing. I don’t have a lot of management turnover. It’s all lower level employee turnover just because of the business levels. You know, when, when, if they’re not making money on that, you know, as a server, then they’re going to go somewhere else or what they’re used to. So, and that’s mainly due to our seasonality. But I think more what you’re getting at is having that next person ready to move up into a position opposed to hiring from the outside. So I just believe that for so many years that that’s the way I do things.
So I’m listening to you and I sit there and think about why you are so good at what you do. And a part of it is if people don’t, you watch me, I’m animated, I am full of energy, I’m all this, you are level as hell. Talk about the fact of the matter with all the different members you’ve worked with over the years, consulting clients we’ve got on the ground. We have personalities all the way through. A little bit about why it doesn’t matter whether you’re calm and just level like you are or I’m emotional and crazy at times and anywhere in between that it doesn’t matter when you’re leading your business. It’s more important that you are communicating your why, your core values, you’re creating an environment that lets your employees feel like they’re empowered and they’re acknowledged. because you do a great job of that. And I’ve seen you coach restaurant owners on the ground, one-on-one and so on. Why is that authenticity? Why do I why do I not have to be worried about if I’m a pencil pusher versus the social worker in the leadership styles? Like, why doesn’t it matter?
Well, it doesn’t matter. I mean, because we’re all different. We’re always going to be different. And I don’t, you know, anybody can be a restaurant operator.
Yeah.
Anybody can be a pilot. Anybody can do whatever they want. You know, it’s it’s learning. It’s learning the systems. But you said it. You just said it 2 seconds ago. The key is authenticity. You know, you have to you have to be an honest person if you’re going to do anything. I don’t care if it’s owning a restaurant, business, employees, whatever. You have to be an honest person. I’m an open book to any of my staff. My door is always open. I’ll lay it out for them and tell them exactly whatever they want. You know, they need to hear too. But authenticity is huge. Honesty is a number one priority. Transparency. That’s the difference between, you know, over the years, I’ve tried to emulate you in your coaching style. And it doesn’t come through. Because it’s not me. And that’s the whole authenticity part. You have to be yourself. And it’s taken me 50 years to figure that out. But you can’t get somewhere else being anyone else other than yourself.
And I think there’s there is a A certain person wants what I have and a certain person wants what you have and we saw that first hand when we worked together, old company, we would have we’d often trade. members like I’m making you crazy. Go talk to David. You’d have somebody they ain’t doing ****. They’re yours. Go kick them in the ***. And it really is. Some people work better with different personality styles, but I think overall more people work better with you in a coaching situation because the knowledge is there. The confidence is there. The patience is there. The willing to teach is there. So I want to switch gears and set you up for what is one of your favorite things that you see when you’re coaching people? Maybe whether it’s a favorite story or a favorite shift you like to see, an aha moment. You as a coach, what is it that gets you energized?
Just when I see the opportunity to, you know, connect the dots for someone, point A to point B, to get them there. I’m more of a and we both know this. I’m I’m a I ask questions. You’re more of a tell person, right? You will tell people what to do and do it this way. And here’s the direction and follow it this way and trust me. And and you’ve got the enthusiasm to make them believe you. And that’s not my approach. I can ask enough questions and see the key points to get them to realize it themselves and and then it clicks. And if I have to repeat that question, I have that patience and repeat it sometimes three or four or five times. Now think about it. And I like to really push people to to make that connection themselves that, you know, That’s what gets me going. And then and then the aha moment happens. And, you know, that’s that’s the reward. You know, the other benefit of or the thing that really helps me is when I’m coaching and when I’m teaching, I can come back after a coaching call or a visit or conversation, come back to my own business and just apply that lesson that I’d forgotten about five years ago immediately.
Yeah.
And see it. And so it’s it’s it’s a win win any way you look at it. You know, they always say if you want to learn something, teach it. Right. And and that’s the case. Even though I’ve learned the systems years ago, you have to relearn them. You have to keep up on them and there’s always going to be a new way. It’s going to evolve. Things change. There’s so many variables. Labor systems 20 years ago when we were teaching them and when I learned them from you aren’t the same because things change.
I look at it this way. They’re technically the same. It’s now we’ve added three other layers to slicing and dicing your numbers. You know, we used to just do the labor allotment, I now call the restaurant payroll guardian, and a schedule variance, which is the discrepancy finder. And then over years, we started looking at, oh, we need to, we added dollars for labor to our work, and we had that system in line. And then over the years, we added what we had called the reverse labor system, which was just the day-to-day tracking with so much information that it’s not just your percentages. And then we’re like, more recently with the addition of Steve Eller to the team, it’s like, oh, no, we’re going to do dollars play per hour by the every 15 minutes because that’s where everybody’s using toast. And we can literally see the exact moment. You’re like, this is when you’re inefficient. And it’s the longer you do this, the more you see. If you remember this at the seminar for years and years and years, you’ll remember I put up the box. So everybody picture a square and in it, we’re going to draw 3 lines vertical and horizontal. And it makes perfect squares. And I ask people to count. And you go, one, two, three, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Oh, wait, this is 13. And I’d say, all right, yell out how many squares. And we’d get 16, we’d get 24, and da da da, whatever the numbers. And I’d stop everybody and go, great, I don’t care. The answer is I don’t care. What the purpose of the exercise is the more you look at it, the more you see. And one of the things that is fantastic with all the operators you and I have seen over the years is we are gaining millions of data points. And as we look and slice and dice, we’re learning every single day. Like, would you agree that for the years of you helping others, you’ve learned more from them over the years than you or I ever brought to the table?
Absolutely. I mean, tenfold, tenfold. You know, it’s it’s evolution. It’s it’s it’s how we get better. So, you know, I even coaching, I’ll get that aha moment when I’m teaching something, even though it’s the same thing over and over and over. I’m like, Oh, well, why didn’t I do it this way?
Right.
Oh, you know, we stumble upon these things that that really leap us forward and change the game sometimes.
I talk to people all the time and I go, I would laugh at myself. If I go back now, we’re coming up on 22 years as a restaurant coach. 22 years. And you started with me when I was like, hey, I’m the guy because I said so. Like I had truly imposter syndrome before they ever knew what the hell that was called. Like, am I good enough to do this? What makes me think I can do this? Here’s my experience. Okay. But the fact of the matter is, I keep getting better and better and better because I’ve seen so many things that I find on calls. I’ll go, oh yeah, here’s the answer. And I’ll go, I’ve never said that before. The only way I got to that is the 22 years of seeing thousands upon thousands upon thousands of restaurants, their budgets, their struggles, their managers, their crises. It’s all of a sudden just stored in the back of my brain and when I need it in a moment’s notice, it comes in. So I want you to talk about, because you’ve had the same experiences, different experiences, what you bring to the table, what you learn all the time. What is it that you would say to somebody why they why would they want a restaurant coach? Because all too often, whether that’s me, whether that’s you, whether it’s Avery Ward on the team, whether that is Deja Wakefield, whether that is Steve Eller or Mary De Leon, like we’ve got a team of people. It’s not just me. Why would you want a coach if you’re a restaurant operator? What is there to learn?
This business is so overwhelming and so consuming as an operator, you’re gonna be consumed by your own business at some point. And if you don’t have outside perspective, outside influence, if you’re not forward thinking, if you’re not growth oriented, if you’re not always trying to work on your business and make things better, you’re gonna fail. You’re going to you’re going to become the business.
Right.
And then it’s going to you know, it’s it’s like an airplane. It’s going to it’s going to stop flying eventually because you’re not feeding it. You’re not growing it. You’re not watering it. You’re not. And you can’t do that as an operator. I at least I’ve never seen anyone be able to do that without surrounding themselves with like minded people, growth oriented people, learning new techniques, learning, learning new ways to reinvent. I mean, that’s to me, that’s that’s running a business. That’s being an entrepreneur. That’s and if you don’t have it. we know what happens to people that don’t have, that don’t do that.
I think of two things that pop in my head. Two days ago, at the time of us recording this, two days ago, we had our group coaching call for our RTI members, restaurant transformation intensive members. And we had at the very end of the call, a brand new member said, I just want to thank y’all. for the first time, I feel like I’m not alone. And that was to the whole group, all the other restaurant owners and their implementers and us as coaches. And that’s rewarding to see because it truly is a journey on our own. And if you only know what you know, you don’t learn, you don’t make change. If you don’t have somebody to throw an idea at, and oh, by the way, we all love the next door neighbor restaurant. We trade food, we buy each other beers, but we lie to them. We will never tell them how we’re really doing. We’ll never give them $1,000,000 marketing idea. We hope they die because they’re taking business, but we love them. When you get on a call and you’ve got coaches and you’ve got other restaurant owners and their implementers and they’re not your competitors, you share. You share your dirty laundry and you allow people to help you. And then you go, I can help somebody else. I’ve been through that. And it’s magic. Take it all the way through where you and I first started working together as a member was my elite group, old company. Today is Mastery Plus. And mastery pluses, what is that? It’s a mastermind group. It’ll be maximum 25. I think we’re somewhere around 18 right now. Restaurant operators who’ve put all the systems in place, want to take their business to the next level, are always looking to share, always looking to learn, growth mindset people. Many have multiple locations, but the fact is the bond in there is just outrageous. Talk about what it is. from being a brand new person when you started or you see people start in our program and what it’s like to be at a mastery plus meeting when you’re dealing with people at a higher level. What’s that journey like and what’s the difference?
I mean, ultimately it’s the same to me. I just get to ask better questions at those higher level meetings or, you know, there’s more opportunity to to learn bigger lessons I think when you get a small group of of highly tuned operators um yeah and in those meetings it’s it’s special because these people aren’t playing it they they’re not they’re 1,000% focused on improving their business um and you get around those people and be Be careful what you say. You better be on your game. I mean, at least that’s how I feel.
And here’s the beautiful part, though. Every one of them started at the beginning. Like every one of them were a member at the beginning. And so it means every one of us have an opportunity to take our businesses seriously, become the leaders our restaurant needs, to want to grow, to want to learn. I mean, this is all about that self-motivation part. It’s becoming a part of a program. Whether it’s our group coaching program, somebody else’s, one-on-one, does not matter. You as an operator have got to go outside your four walls and stop living in your own little bubble. Because if that’s all you know, that’s all you’ll do. And that’s all the results you’ll ever get, whether they’re good or bad, does not matter. It won’t change. And if there’s one thing I know about you, when we were doing your core values 22 years ago, 21 years ago, You love change. Like you have in the beginning, your challenge with your managers were there was change coming down all the time, whether it was new piece of software, switch from this, we’re going to do this now, we’re going to do this, because you’re always innovative. The change to you is innovation. Is there anything about innovation that you would want to drop into people’s head? Because that’s who you are. You’re all about innovation.
It’s growth. I love to grow, I love to learn, and that’s what it is. You know, you’d mentioned that I’d like to change all the time, but I only like to change if we’re growing, if we’re learning something new, if we’re applying a new system, a new technique, something. So, I mean, it just goes back to that, you know, that mindset of a growth mindset. You know, we always have to be learning, always have to be looking for the next new thing, learning, finding a way to improve our business, identifying ways to figure out what’s really wrong with our business. So then we can turn those rocks over. You know, we’re just, we just need to be endlessly searching for that. And the minute, the minute you become so consumed, most of the time by your business is when you stop looking for any of that. You just turn your back on it all and act like it. And that’s what imposter syndrome is to me, is people just closing the shades, you know, acting like and then not being willing to do anything about it.
Right.
Occasionally we have some clients that aren’t interested in hearing what we’re proposing, usually that doesn’t stick. And if it does, there’s other things going on outside of the business or personal or they’re just not ready to grow their business. There’s not many in, I don’t think there’s any in this group to be honest with you, but over the years we’ve had a few here and there. But if you want to be successful in your business, it’s not rocket science. It’s just, I don’t even care what topic it is. Go out there and get excited about one thing in your business and do something about it.
Yeah.
Take action, baby. Take action and do something about it. And then that’s going to lead to something else and something else. And pretty soon you’ll get overwhelmed like the rest of us and realize how many things that we have to get done in our business. And then you can take massive action. And then one day you can learn to pick and choose. And as long as you’ve got that brigade of great employees and you’re coaching them and you’re delegating and having meetings, you can take a break when you want to take a break.
Yeah, David, I appreciate you doing this. I want to respect your time. If there was one thing we didn’t talk about that you wanted to share, if you had a favorite book or quote you wanted to share, what would that be before we wrap up?
Oh man, there’s so many books. The E-Myth is always a great book. It really spells it out. The process of us, our crazy entrepreneurial spirits and It makes us realize that we’re all the same. We’re not alone. And we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It makes us realize, and not just that book, but it makes us realize that in the big picture, these are just small problems that there’s an answer to. And let’s just get busy. Get busy and start doing, taking action. I mean, there’s a thousand quotes I can. I can’t. Of course, I can’t spit them out on demand right here. But, you know, it’s it’s it’s taking action. If there’s anything, it’s it’s taking action, you know, identifying a problem, being calm about it and doing something about it, you know? So.
Amen. David, I want to thank you so much for doing this with me today. And I want people to know that if you come into the program and you really want to make change in your life. David is a great example, but he’s also a great mentor. And it’s people like David that make the program really special. Because again, I’m high energy. I’m the kicky in the pants. Let’s go, go, go, go, go. And then people like David come in and go, this is how you put it in place. This is how you get your managers to do it. This is real world. I’m still walking the circle. Here are my 3 restaurants. I feel your pain. Stop with the excuses, but in a much nicer way than I do. David, thank you so much.
Let’s just get it done. Amen. Thanks, brother.
Ready to take the next step towards achieving restaurant prosperity, freedom for the daily grind, and the financial success you deserve? Book a discovery call with Ryan James to learn about our group coaching program. Ryan will guide you through how our program can transform your restaurant and help you achieve the prosperity and freedom you’ve been striving for. Click the link in the description below or visit DSP. dot coach forward slash talk dash to dash Ryan to schedule your call now. 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. Two, I have something I need from you. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you happen to listen to podcasts. By leaving us a review, other restaurant pros seeking out this information are able to find it. I read the reviews, and hearing how this information has benefited you does wonders for me. And 3, if you find any of the discussions helpful, share them. The more restaurant pros who have access to them, the better we become as an industry. 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 ***.