Owning a Restaurant Doesn’t Necessarily Make You a Great Leader

Hey the restaurant pros, it seems like up here and welcome episode 77 of the restaurant property formula. I’ve been coaching restaurant owners since 2003, and the restaurant property formulas based on what the most successful restaurant owners I’ve worked with do a daily basis to achieve success. The basic premise of the formula is centers around achieving prosperity, freedom of your restaurant and financial freedom you deserve. To achieve prosperity you have to follow a very specific formula made up of leadership systems training, accountability and taking action.

Today I want to talk about the importance of leadership when it comes to your success as a restaurant owner wanting to achieve restaurant prosperity. Along the way, I will help you identify what kind of leader you are and what behaviors you need to avoid. Let’s get started. By now, if you’ve been following me on social media watching my videos on YouTube, or maybe you’re a repeat listener to my podcast, or maybe you’ve read my book restaurant prosperity formula, what successful restaurant tours do, then you’d be familiar with my trademark restaurant prosperity formula.

In case you’re new here, let me get you up. To speed. What is the restaurant prosperity formula? The restaurant prosperity formula is based on what the most successful restaurant owners I’ve worked with do on a daily basis to achieve their success.

The basic premise of the formula centers around achieving prosperity which is freedom for your restaurant, the financial freedom you deserve. To achieve prosperity you have to follow a very specific formula made up of leadership systems training, accountability and taking action. You heard that in the intro didn’t yet. Well, let’s break it down into greater detail.

If you want freedom for your business, the financial freedom you deserve it starts with leadership. The restaurant leader makes decisions based on the systems and the numbers and leads her team with strong communication skills. Are you that person you must become the leader your restaurant needs. The systems part systems is the implementation of systems for everything that needs to be done successfully.

To run your restaurant on a day to day basis, no matter how small or large, which allow a restaurant owner slash maybe even the manager to impose their will without being there. For example, if you put checklists in place, that’s one of the reasons why chain restaurants tend to kick our butts. You have no owners in them, but how do these things get done their way every single day? Checklists, checklists, checklists, but there’s a system a process a way to doing anything and everything in your business.

That could be as simple as counting a drawer back to $300 or working on something as complex as dollars per labor hour worked. We have training as a part of the present restaurant prosperity formula. That’s the ongoing information gathering education and instruction of the restaurants management team and their team members towards a consistent restaurant operation and financial improvement. See the most successful people I’ve worked with understand that don’t know what they don’t know.

So they’re always looking to learn, watching videos, going to seminars, reading books, getting coaching, you name it. But more importantly, they learned it doesn’t matter if they learned it. They’ve got to teach their management team because if they’re the only ones who know then they’re a prisoner to their business, but when they share that data that information with their team, they can leave the restaurants feeling good that people know what to do. Accountability is a big one.

The Accountability, to me is the acknowledgement of the responsibility for your obligations, decisions and actions and how you’re answerable for the resulting consequences. Your obligations for your management team is their jlb their job, and we train them what their job is how to do it, how well it should be done. More importantly, by when they demonstrate they can do this task over and over again, like taking inventory 24 weeks in a row week. 25 that chef or kitchen manager needs gets to make a decision.

They know their obligation their jlb but they get to make a decision am I gonna take my inventory or I’m not? And then they’re answerable for the resulting consequences of the action they took her didn’t take. This changes everything that you’re not the big bad owner or GM at the restaurant. When people know what their job is.

They demonstrate a guided there’s no conflict. And it’s crystal clear. And it’s so much easier to hold people accountable because it’s no longer a negative. I’m gonna hold you accountable.

It’s their holding. You’re holding them answerable about taking action. This is important. This means you’ve got to take responsibility for your your own success by Well, consciously performing acts that move you towards your goals and running a profitable restaurant and getting your life back.

My father used to have a phrase is that ideas are cheap. It’s the people that put them to action that are priceless. So I can provide you all the ideas in the world. But if you don’t actually put them into practice, it doesn’t matter.

That’s the formula. Restaurant prosperity formula is freedom, the restaurant the financial freedom you deserve and it takes leadership systems training, accountability and taking action. Now we’re going to focus on the importance of being a good leader today. And to do that, I want to start off by telling you a story.

In the old days before video became the norm, everything I did was basically creating CD CDs that I would mail out and they were from recorded phone calls or interviews. And I’d put them through a duplicator and then I would put them in clam shells and we put them in an envelope, put a stamp on it and mail it to my members. Like this is what it was like 20 years ago. Now this required a very specific piece of equipment to get it done because I worked like say NPR radio, right?

If you ever listen to them and they do the interviews, the studio person sounds perfect. Yet the caller sends damn near perfect same same volume level and so on. Well, there’s a very specific piece of equipment that allows you to take a microphone like this and tie it in with a telephone and get everybody in just in one shot at the same level sounding great. Well, came a time where technology change and video became king so I no longer needed this specialized piece of equipment.

So I put it up on Craigslist. To move on to the story here. The buyer was actually a restaurant owner slash general manager but Chick fil A if you’re familiar, the GMs our owners are like 10% owner so owner and General Manager The Chick fil A you know one of the most successful fast food franchises there are out there. Maybe I shouldn’t say franchise because they have owners right.

But when this guy came to my office and he realized he walked into the office and saw what we did if we started talking, we talked about you know what he did what I did and next thing you know he asked me a question. We’re outside him taking the piece of equipment to his to his car. And he says, Hey, David, based on what you do now, what do you think there’s a restaurants greatest challenge to success. Like, rephrase it.

What’s the number one reason why restaurants fail? Right? Why don’t you think about it for a second. And then I said, Well, if you asked me this question when I first started my coaching business back in 2003, I would have told you most restaurants fail before they even open because they’re undercapitalized.

And the secondary thing was people are over couponing. They were couponing the restaurants to death. Now, I said if you asked me five years later, I would have talked about food cost, or cost and labor costs being the killer but today I’d answer that question completely different based on the years of working with independent restaurant owners. The years of coaching I’ve literally at that point in time, had coached 1000s of restaurant owners and their managers.

I said today, I would answer that question with the answer. of lack of leadership. That’s right. Remember, there’s a reason why we pull out of the story right now.

The reason why I put leadership is number one. To be successful, you must become the leader your restaurant needs. It doesn’t matter if you have systems if you don’t lead people to the system. Doesn’t matter if you learn everyday if you don’t share if you don’t lead people with that information.

Doesn’t matter. If you’ve got systems and you learn if you don’t hold people accountable. It doesn’t matter if you have all that data and you don’t lead somebody to taking action. They see leadership is probably the number one thing that a restaurant owner separates themselves from all the other restaurants out there and why they’re successful.

Why leadership? Why leadership? I just went through it right. How did I come to this conclusion?

What changed in me over the years that I kept changing what I saw as the reason why restaurants failed, or again repurposing that into what makes them succeed?

The short answer is that nothing changed. But through my years of experience, coaching calls, seminars, workshops, speeches, consulting mastermind meetings and much more. I’ve worked with literally 1000s of restaurant owners and their managers and it just became apparent to me. I came to this conclusion early on as I learned the following lessons.

Number one, it’s less about implementing systems and more about changing your company culture and two core values must be on paper, and must be used as guiding principles around your business and three, finally, three, there’s no such thing as common sense. You must be specific and clear in everything you want done. You all these lessons don’t matter if no one leads the team. Leadership is the glue that makes all of this work.

There are certain leadership killers that you must avoid and we’re gonna go through them right now. of leadership killer’s lack of confidence. The most common example of lack confidence that I see over and over again, is restaurant owners say to me that I don’t know their numbers. I don’t know what that means.

Well, I do know it but you got to lead. You must be confident as a person. You must feel good about yourself. You need to feel like you’re the you’re smart enough to figure things out.

Even if you don’t know how to do something. Which means again, leads us right into that the next killer because if you say hey, I don’t know my numbers and you ignore things like I don’t even look at my p&l because I don’t know them. For me it was often I don’t know the kitchen so I’d ignore it and we’d get dirty or presentation plate presentation wouldn’t be to our part up to our snuff, if you will. Because if you don’t know it if you’re not confident, man, it just goes away.

But it leads into the next piece and that’s lack of knowledge. A killer of leadership is lack of knowledge. As a restaurant owner if you think you know everything there is to know about running a restaurant. Making money then you’re doomed.

Think about it. If you’re the smartest person in the room, if you know everything, nobody can help you. You’ll find yourself in a fixed mindset because now you’re blaming everybody else in the world because you know better. Seek to lead.

You need to grow and learn new ways of doing things. You must admit to yourself that you don’t know what you don’t know. You need to seek out help when you need it. You need to be consistently on a quest of learning, because that’s what great leaders do.

Leadership killers fear of making decisions, like combined lack of confidence with lack of knowledge, and what do you get a fearful decision maker? Right if you if you’re not confident in what you do, if you don’t know what to do because you don’t know enough information to come up with a conclusion, then you’re always teetering. On man. If I make this decision.

It could go wrong, you know when it could go wrong. It could have more confidence with more knowledge. When you make decisions, they become better decisions. Does that mean you’re not going to have a failure?

Failures are opportunities to learn. See, often fearful decision makers will avoid making any decision at all for fear that well, it’s going to be a bad decision, especially when they’re hard. And they get pushback from their managers or other team members. It’s like, oh, I tried David.

I tried to put this stuff in place but people say it’s so hard. I don’t know what that means. See the lead, you must be able to make decisions. You will make mistakes.

But the benefit of good decisions for well, the bad ones. I really want you to think about that. How about lack of passion? That’s a leadership killer.

Too many restaurant owners are in the business for the wrong reasons. My favorite reason is I’m gonna retire and open a restaurant. That is not a reason to open a restaurant. Retire, right think about it.

They entered the toughest industry, the toughest industry, this toughest business that I know without passion, it becomes a job and you might as well be doing something else. Otherwise the business will take you down. Passionate is critical. Remember my book?

Well, there are two personality traits that restaurant owners all the restaurant owners that were basically the whole book was modeled against the most successful people I’ve ever worked with them on these two personality traits in common and you know what they were passionate for the restaurant industry for hospitality and persistence. Know critical personalities that you’ve got to dig into to be a great leader, another leadership killer, or negative attitudes or negative thoughts. Now, negative attitudes can show themselves as somebody who has a fixed mindset that you know the world’s out to get you. But negative thoughts are really easy.

times of stress man you you convert back to that, that preteen kids going through tough times. And that record player of negative thoughts can play themselves over and over again and take you down doesn’t matter what, what age you are. I often see restaurant owners who will have a bleak outlook on life, business and everything in general. Again, that’s the fixed mindset person.

The negative thoughts can destroy hope and create a bleak reality. Because once you grab onto that negative thought it spirals it grabs attention it grabs friends more negative thoughts, right they get together next thing you know, you’ve got a gaggle of negative thoughts that are just pulling you down. Because that’s all you can think about. You’ve got to be a positive thinker to be a great leader.

Lack of vision is a really big leadership killer. The restaurant business can be all crisis management day to day. That’s when you’re killing your closest snake to you right here comes a priority of a machete just take off the head. You cannot see how many snakes are out in front of you.

You can’t see a path through all these snakes think about Indiana Jones right he’s back. He’s got a new movie out. I have not seen it. But remember he’s afraid of snakes and he dropped a new pit when I was a kid.

I can remember that movie well and chop chop, chop, just trying to get his way out. Right It makes us feel like all we’re doing is putting out fires walk on a restaurant, there’s little fires called the fires or crises and then all we’re doing is we’re just walking the circle and we accomplish nothing in the restaurant, because we’re just taking care of the closest crisis. This happens because the restaurant has well, lack of direction, and managers, team members who just open and close the restaurant just to keep the money safe to keep the lights on to keep people happy, if you will. There’s no real joy in that.

To lead. You have to have a greater vision for what successful looks like what it looks like for you. It’s important that you share your vision and your why we each and every one of your team members with your customers, with your vendors with anybody who listen. Because as a leader, you have to get everybody to buy into your vision.

They’ve got to buy into the why you open your restaurant and why you do these things, why you implement new systems, why you make change how it’s going to benefit the guests how it’s going to benefit your employees how it’s going to benefit you and your employees. leaders share that. Don’t think that I’ve shared it once and everybody should know they don’t know they need to be reminded on a daily basis and this is why you got in the business. This is what the fire the spark that got you to do it in the first place.

You need to fire that back up. Another leadership killers poor communication and this is big. If you can’t express your desire your visions, your expectations, your why everyone around you will fail. If you’re lucky, maybe one person can reach your mind.

Poor communication also rears its ugly head through misunderstandings which starts to become a cancer in your business. And as it builds resentment, resentment to everybody around you and including yourself because all you’re doing is correcting mistakes, and well incorrect behaviors to lead first make sure well, you’re clear on what you want done how well you want it done by when? Right what the job is how to do it how well it can be done more importantly by when How many times have you heard me say that? See when it comes to tasks and job duties you’ve got to make sure people are getting things done.

That’s why we have systems things like manager logs to communicate. Get your managers to chase you with information, the information that’s important to you on a daily basis, but more importantly, you’re getting them to pay attention to things you want done. You’ve got weekly manager meetings to keep everybody on the same page. What we wanted to do last week, what we hear missed and goals and what we’re going to do this week that we’re all moving forward.

We’re using software packages like Asana or Monday that allow you to project manage to put everybody up there and all the tasks that need to be done who’s going to be responsible for when the due date is that all communications there and attachments and all are all there that everybody at any time. You can communicate with them what you want done.

Another leadership killers lack of self discipline often is entrepreneurs. Were starters were not finishers. A joke about being ADHD restaurant or restaurant owners. Well I can tell you that I am probably not undiagnosed ADHD why because my daughter got diagnosed and you said that you know it’s hereditary.

With that said one of the symptoms can be or byproducts is start lots of lots of things but then squirrel squirrel squirrel, chase the new shiny object and you’re off and you don’t finish what you started. It’s so apparent when you you know you come home from one of my workshops or a seminar you’ve attended with me. And your staff says oh no. What’s the next new thing that the restaurant or just learned that’s gonna make us do now and then they’re continually pushing back until you keep it No, you don’t understand?

Oh, yeah, David’s probably smart guy, but we’re different. It’s people in product, how are you different? All of a sudden you cave in, and all the things that you want to do. All the things that you started to put in place to make change for your business to make sure that you had a life that the restaurants successful providing guests a great experience your employees have jobs and make good money, right you understand all those things that the intentions you had behind your why you’re going to make the change.

It all goes away. Just as fast as you start to put in place it’s gone. Or you decide you’re going to do it all yourself. You’re going to do all the things you came to my seminar that you learned and you’re going to you’re going to put it all into place yourself and quickly.

You become overwhelmed and go back to the old ways to lead you have to not only stick to your guns, like when you get that pushback right? No, no, no, we’re different. And I would rather run short staffed and have the wrong people in my team. So if you’re going to keep fighting the change, you may not fit my company culture.

But here I’m going to tell you you have to stick you have to stick to these changes, even and especially when the tasks are hard to deal or better yet uncomfortable. You must have self discipline to come to work every day to ensure that change is happening. The changes that you know are well important to you in the business to lead the business for to be the leader your restaurant needs you to be persistent. That nothing and no one can stop you.

A leader stays the course. So here’s the hard truth. Just because you own a restaurant. It doesn’t make you a great leader and to be successful.

In the restaurant business. You must become the leader your restaurant needs. How many times you’ve heard me say that a great leader. Well, they’re not often born.

Like how often do you run across somebody who’s a born leader? Like when somebody is a born leader? It’s like people are like, wow, that person is a born leader. But here I’m gonna tell you this.

A great leader can learn the skills to be great. So you may not come to it naturally. But this is where systems come in. When you put systems in place they make up for your leadership weaknesses.

I covered this in great, great depth in my group coaching program, because again, the restaurant prosecuted for me that we start with leadership. So here’s my case in point. I teach all my members and seminar attendees for that matter, something I call my restaurant leadership viewfinder. The leadership profile view finder for restaurant owners has well those created to help restaurant owners clearly identify their default or natural leadership skill sets and see where opportunities are to grow.

Human beings think about this are dynamic creatures. We learn we adapt, we change. It’s not unusual to self identify what character traits in every leadership style when you’re looking at them say hey, I’m one of those I got some of that I got some of this. In fact, we often learn to navigate between different leadership styles due to outside influence such as crisis situations unfair or unforeseen events, joy and more.

Do know that in times of stress, though, it’s not uncommon for a restaurant owner to fall back into their default profit profile. So there are four different profiles. The first one I hope this is not you, this is the victim. Unfortunately, there’s a small percentage of restaurant owners who fall into this leadership profile.

They’re also known as chaos makers, running their restaurants and place basically with shame and fear, shame in the fact that they don’t know basically what needs to be done on a daily basis. So what they do is they just put in more hours in their operations, and everyday is in crisis mode. They often allow employees and customers to dictate how the business is going to operate. That’s a very much fixed mindset person.

Hopefully that is not you. Could be though, the bean counter. Well, this is also known as a numbers person. This person leaves the company based on numbers as basically their operational roadmap.

They’re often doers, people who take action implementing systems, but often fall short because they can be distrusting micro managers who don’t communicate clearly with their management team. Keeping an endless cycle of well systems failure the givers where I think most people are in the restaurant business. I’m an Off The Charts giver, wow. It’s also known as a social worker.

Think about that. The social worker leaves using their need to take care of people. Both guests and employees often do a financial fault. They run the restaurants holding on to romantic ideas of the perfect guests experience.

They often love the limelight to a fault putting their ego needs ahead of the financial success of the business. Where I need you to be is the captain. The captain is known as a great leader who use the systems and training to ensure everyone well knows their jobs demonstrates a willingness to hold everyone accountable to their jobs and takes action. They sometimes rest on their laurels that everything’s working.

So they take their eye off the ball and when they do so they find that system stopped being used, and they’ve got to restart that process. So taking the victim off the table if you’re a giver, systems get you to what pay attention to budgets, KPIs, key performance indicators and the systems to achieve those targets those KPIs making you a captain, the leader your restaurant medians. If you’re a bean counter the numbers person systems go to clearly communicate your expectations on service cleanliness, training, the guest experience and more making you the captain, the leader your restaurant needs. A great leader is confident knows that they’re what they’re talking about makes decisions, while not worrying about if they’re good or bad decisions.

has a real passion for what they’re doing. thinks like a winner. has a clear vision of what success looks like and where they want to take their business. They’re able to communicate their wants, desires and vision.

And no matter the obstacles in front of them. They stay the course. Look at yourself with a critical eye. After you assess where you fall, victim, giver, numbers person, Captain.

Make a decision to improve. You know your strengths you know your weaknesses. Make a decision to improve your team and your business are counting on you. And that’s what great leaders do.

If you want to help on this journey of becoming the leader your restaurant needs, want to learn the systems that make this all positive possible. And I invite you to jump on a call with one of my member mentors Ryan James he’s a restaurant owner just like you has gone through my group coaching program now helps me connect with restaurant owners just like you. Would you set up a 15 minute call with him? Spend 15 minutes with Ryan that’s it.

Because he’s your gateway to me to get on a discovery call with me he needs me to learn more about you your business, find out what your challenges are and make sure our program is a good fit for you. And the two of you can figure out if it’s potentially a good fit, then he’ll get you on my calendar and then we get on a call and I can tell you this that call could end up changing your life. And that’s no exaggeration. com.

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, too. I something I need from you. Please leave a review on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you happen to listen to podcast 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 three if you find any 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. 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 ass.