Two Restaurant Owners Get Their Restaurant Coach on the Hot Seat

Hey there restaurant pros. It’s Dave Scott Peters, and welcome to the restaurant prosperity formula podcast. For over two 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 coach, 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 as a restaurant owner has the freedom from the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I do 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 number 110, we’ll be doing a segment I call flip the table, where a member takes over and interviews me. Today, I’ll be interviewed by some of the my most successful and inspiring members, Brianna and Jonathan Cowen. Get ready, because they’ll be asking the questions. Listen in and see how Brianna and Jonathan ask some really good questions, and have a really good time doing it.

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Brianna, Jonathan, I’m so thankful you’re doing this with me. We had fun in the podcast when, when I did it with you, but this segment’s gonna be a lot of fun. We’re excited to be here. David, thanks for the opportunity.

Well, this is this good, like I said, it’s gonna be fun. This is now a segment I call flip the table, where I give you the member the opportunity to interview me. We don’t know what the questions are, at least I don’t you do so it could be anything with that said, before we get started, why don’t you tell people a little bit about yourselves that maybe they’ve not seen the podcast we did together as a member. Yeah, that was a podcast. Is a while ago. It was a hot minute ago. A hot minute for sure. Yeah, if

I remember correctly, that was when we were starting up with you. I’d say we’re probably like a nine months or a year into working with you, and we were sitting in our framed out basement that we had not finished yet. And you’re helping us get better business. So we actually forward to finish it, and I can now report that it is finished. So thank you, David. We all work together here. That was like the best backdrop for that, because at that point of our life, we’re proud of that. We’re proud we actually did something down there, just like me. It was the beginning of freedom, and it was the beginning of freedom, and it was the beginning of having money. It was, you know, right? It was the prosperity side of things. Absolutely. Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about you guys, you know, how you got started, a little bit about your current business and the new location?

Yeah, definitely. So I got job having a pizza, really, when I was 14 years old. I ended up working at that place for six years. When I was 20, my mom was crazy enough to put a second mortgage on her house so I could move an hour and a half south where I was living at the time, and bought me the fifth owner in four years of that crappy pizzeria that was doing mortally. So during that time, two years into it, Brianna and I got married. We were 22 years old, and Brianna said, Wow, you really don’t know what you’re doing here once you start seeing my operations.

So at that point, like, you know, I thought I knew everything just because I’d been doing it a few years. And I found out pretty quickly, once she kind of got my hair, that no, we need to get educated in this whole thing. This whole thing. So we that’s our business. Long journey of trying to learn more about what we do, and that led us along the way to working with you at a certain point at two different times.

We started at one point in 2011 or 12 right around there, and we scraped a few pennies together to, you know, basically, not be able to feed ourselves while we were in Las Vegas at one of your seminars, the seat tonight seminar, back in the day, we got, we hired you guys on, and your old business partner told us that we should shut down our business, because it’s not, it just wouldn’t work with the numbers we showed which he was. It was not wrong. But you know, at the end of the day, we’re to, you know, head strong to do something like that. We fought through. We did fire you at the time back then, and we started working for about 2011 and then or 2020 we reconnected.

We had a different concept at this point, and COVID was like taking over the world. This one we literally met while they announced the NBA closure of the season. And that’s when I knew that the COVID was serious at that point, like, no NBA season. Oh my gosh, this is crazy. Anyways, we, we brought you on because we were like, all right, what are we gonna do with our time during this horrible thing that’s going on? We’re like, why not use it to, you know, things will be slower. We’ll get a coach and try to figure this out. Thing out, this thing out, the restaurant stuff. And you helped us so much by getting us out of the business and working on the business. You know, we, you were the first person to push us and make hold us accountable to hiring a management team, and that’s kind of changed our life, where you’ve gotten us out of operations, where we can actually start working on bigger things.

So where we’re at now is we have this restaurant in Lamont, Illinois. There’s 65 seats, and we run great business out of there. It’s very busy restaurant. And we have a catering brand to our company, where we cater around 100 weddings a year at this point. And we do the full service. We do, you know, family style pizza. We do family style food, I should say in general, we do bar services. We do rental services with that.

And now we’re, we’re in the middle of a project, and we’re actually documenting this. So if you go to wooden panels YouTube page, you can follow along. We’re releasing episode 10 very soon, and actually many more. We release one a week, and we take you behind the scenes, where you can see a build out of 12,000 square feet of space being built out. So we’re doing a restaurant on the main level. We’re putting bathrooms in the basement, we’re putting a big elevator system in, and we’re on the second level, we’re doing a wedding venue that can see around 200 to 250 people. So it’s a major project. It’s crazy. Where we started, when we met with you, and where we at now, and thanks for being part of that journey with us, David, so I appreciate you bringing me along. It’s been nothing but fun, and I can’t tell you how amazing it has been to have a back seat to your journey. Again, from a seminar to young kids coming through when it was a four day seminar in Las Vegas, was a lot of time to working with my old company, which really was going a software direction at the time, and wasn’t real fit. And again, as you said, my partner said it’s a hobby you should get out. That’s not a real good business plan when you want to, you know, have people continue to pay you. And then we reconnected again as COVID hits, and this is when I’m on my own. I just restarted, sold the company and just solely coaching it. So in that time, I mean, it has just been amazing. What you guys have built from a, again, a pizzeria that was a hole in the wall, slash local hobby, into a multi million dollar business, opening into a huge facility. And everybody should check out your YouTube page, wooden paddle on YouTube, because the video blog, I guess, vlog that you guys are doing, showing the process, is not only entertaining, but it’s educational, and it’s really neat to see how you guys go through the iterations of the many, many challenges that go with opening a building, especially when you got it. So everybody should tune into that. So this brings us to, this is a section I or a podcast now I call flipping the table, where I’m the person being interviewed. You guys are in control, so ask away. All right. Floor is ours. I’m excited. Okay, so I kind of kept it all business, probably just because I’m, like, obsessed with business in general. But, you know, I did throw in one personal question, super but I get my I am so curious to know, because I feel like you have met so many entrepreneurs, obviously, all in, like the restaurants space mostly, but they’re all entrepreneurs, and you’ve done this, like, one on one kind of consulting with them, even before they like, maybe work with you. And I want to know, I feel like you would probably be good at identifying within like, the first five to 10 minutes if that person is going to be great as a business owner, or if they maybe won’t be, I’m kind of interested to see, like, if you’re talking to somebody first 510, 15 minutes, what are the things that they say or do that might indicate like they’re they’re not going to hack it, or they have what it takes, even if they, you know, don’t have the experience necessarily. Well, I think the first two things I look for are, do they have a passion for hospitality? I mean, that’s one thing that is not uniquely you guys, but is why you have stuck it out and made an incredible business you’re passionate about providing to the guests the best experience possible, from the food quality being not just a pizzeria, not just another Chicago place, but really bringing in that Neapolitan very unique like Thai pizzas and things like, they’re so good and so unique that you Spend the time training your team, putting out specialty cocktails. You’ve recently brought in a celebrity chef to be a part of it. Because you care so much, you have to have a passion for hospitality. Now that’s important. The other is you gotta be persistent. You guys exemplified that right getting through all the heartache and the problems that come up with running a restaurant, being an entrepreneur, that’s important. But I’m gonna tell you the one thing that really stands out, and I talk about it quite often anymore. And I really didn’t realize what it was until after I wrote my book, the importance of somebody having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. The fixed mindset people like, Oh, son of bitch, government and these employees and these these customers, they don’t understand blah, blah, my vendors are screwing me, and it’s always somebody else’s fault. They never look introspectively. Go, I can control what I can control the things I can’t control, what am I going to do? I’m just going to keep going. And that’s where growth mindset people don’t look at these things as as roadblocks. Instead, they’re speed bumps. Now some of them are really high speed bumps, and they hurt to go over because the shocks don’t handle it. But the fact of the matter is, we’re always learning, and so you have to be at the beginning of your journey. Now, I’m not going to lie to you. There are times where I’ve misread people. They show me, they present growth mindset. They’re ready. They meet with me. They’re excited. I get people kind of energized when we’re on a discovery call, like, oh, you can make this change. Like, yeah, I want the change. But they weren’t quite ready. And it’s interesting to see them in the group, because they almost they just don’t they. They’re an oddball. They’ve got all these people, these entrepreneurs, who care what to change, what to learn, what to do more, have challenges. Want to help each other, whereas these people just focus on the negative, the negative, the negative. And I truly think that that’s the the Achilles heel. If you’ve got a growth mindset, you are certainly destined for a lifetime of challenges or failure. If you have a growth mindset, you have a destiny for lifetime challenges, but you’re gonna see your way through it. I think that’s the biggest thing, totally so we’re the names of the people that fall in that bucket. Now, they were few and far between, because I, you know, I literally don’t let everybody into the group coaching program. Because of that. I know what will happen. They will not succeed, and I don’t want to take your money if you’re not, if you’re not ready for the change. Totally honestly, and being a part of the group, coaching, thing mastery, plus that we were in like, we are such big fans of that we feel like blessed to be a part of that group, such a good group of people, and you got a great job curating that group. I appreciate that. And like, I tell you guys, almost on a on a meeting by meeting basis, I’m thrilled you guys pay me to be part of your group. Like, it’s a magical group of people. It’s amazing. I’ll invoice you. Okay, um, let’s see.

So what would you say? Now, there’s like, the group of everybody who owns a restaurant and is doing well, or owns business and is doing well, what do you feel like separates the people who are like, better than average from the people who are really great. Like, what do they do differently? Or, what about them is different?

Wow, that’s a big question. You’re welcome. It falls in line with with the first question. But I think where it really differentiates them is innovation. You are. You are the people who are truly stellar. Make they never settle. There’s always the next thing, like, you hit a goal and it’s like, okay, well, that’s so yesterday. What’s the next goal? We’re gonna innovate with technology. We’re gonna innovate with how our menu. We’re gonna innovate with service. We’re gonna do things differently, not just follow what everybody else does. We want to be that good. And I think innovation and that leads to being a leader, not just where I talk about the importance being a leader in your business, but an industry leader, right? You look at that table, the vast majority of the mastery plus members are innovators. You know, if I look at you, I look at Avery Bob Katie, go down the list. Mark mcshaffery, we sleep going down. I’m doing a list. Everybody off. So those of you I didn’t list your name, it’s not because I don’t think you’re an innovator. But the we look at everybody around that table, and these are people at the top of the game, and while they’re at the top, they keep looking to go higher and higher. I think that’s that’s probably the biggest thing. Is not just being a leader in your business, but being an industry leader not selling I actually remember on our date night this week. I don’t know why it came up, but we were sitting having like, cocktails down the street, and John’s like, why are you so quiet? And I was like, I’m literally just thinking, if we’re gonna be able to, like, stay cool forever. Because I was like, that’s that’s hard to, like, kind of, you know, stay relevant and constantly innovate. I love doing that, so I think we’ll be okay. But also I’m getting like, I’m young now, hey, I’m an innovator. I’m old. It’s okay. You just keep innovating. All right? It’s just the body hurts. Just, I’m gonna let you know the secret, the body starts to hurt.

That’s fair. What I said, what I told her, is, why we will be cool as a place going forward is because we can finally experience like, the finer things of the restaurant industry. It’s like, maybe we move from doing this type of concept or maybe do another concept, whether it’s a finer thing thing, I just want to be clear, once your children turn 13, you’re no longer cool. We got a few more years. Yeah, okay, if the restaurant consultant COVID struck and said you can no longer be in this business, restaurant, coaching, restaurant, coaching, consulting, like whatever. If they, if they just said, like, No, you can’t. You can’t be in this business. You can’t be close to this business. What would you do? The question is going to be, do I need to make money, or am I independently wealthy?

Yeah, let’s do independently. Not being able. I’m going to tell you, it’s really easy. I would become a crew coach. I’d coach masters rowing, and I’d be out on the water and not only me for for competing on myself, but also help other people get better. So I guess I can’t get rid of the coach. When I when I was in college, I initially thought, Man, I’m gonna, I’m gonna. I had a speech calm degree. What do you do with that interpersonal, organizational I thought maybe I was going to act and do some things afterwards, TV, that kind of stuff. But before I made that decision, I was taken as a speech comp major anatomy, physiology. I thought about taking kinesiology because I love the sport of rowing and I wanted to coach out so when I graduated from college, was one of my directions I wanted to take. So it’s still coaching. It’s just not business. I love that. I’m just glad you don’t hate yourself enough to say stand up comedian. You know, if you recall, I did improv comedy, which I love. I’ve never done stand up. It’s on my bucket list that is terrifying. I don’t see myself making a living that way. Sign up for kill Tony. Kill Tony, so fun. I don’t know how he is. Oh, man, we’ll tell you to watch it. We both, yeah, great, great, great, perfect.

So I run a delay. So

Okay, who are your mentors or coaches, and what are some of the biggest things that you have learned from them?

So over the years, I have, like most entrepreneurs, I have paid for coaching because I believe that you don’t know what you don’t know, and sometimes you can buy speed. So why learn through mistake? Instead pay somebody who’s been there done that? I’m gonna tell you I’ve had very different successes and things that I really liked, and there were some that I went, Man, would I pay for that for? So it’s a mixed bag. And I think people have the same thing when they meet with Maggie. Is it really worth the money? One of the things you’ve got to look at introspectively is, what are you going to do with it? Whether you’ve got a good coach, bad coach, completely indifferent.

The first one I was going to tell you would be John Childers, who was a guy who made millions of dollars selling people into buy my program on how you can make millions of dollars in real estate. He was sold from stage. This is in the infancy when info marketing was all the the shows that go around that have all the big name speakers, and all they do is sell you shit from, you know, from stage. Well, that’s what he did. And he put on a program called Million Dollars speaking. My mother went to a preview event and for $100 and got sold into, I believe it was a $25,000 thing. It was like $3,000 up front. And then if you went into the business of info marketing, you would pay 25% of your revenue till you paid off 25 grand. I’m like, You did what to my mom, like you’re nuts. And it opened up a whole world to me, because I was a speech com major. I was doing improv comedy. I knew I was turning, at the time, a failed franchise around for sale. I would be selling myself out of a job. And so that was when the light bulb went off. I’ve got incredible knowledge being an independent operator, growing up to being a chain operator and changing those things around. I love being on stage. You know? I was like, I was a speech. I was like, This is my dream job. So that would probably be the first one.

The second one is probably has become a really good friend of mine is Cameron Carrington, who was a speaker in the pizza space in the beginning. He just recently sold repeat returns his loyalty program to our friend Matt plapp at America’s best restaurants, who I talk to all the time too, but Cameron took me under his wing. He was a copy guy. He could create copy and he could help sell and he could it was a great sounding board on what it was like to work with entrepreneurs and be an entrepreneur on your own. I can remember one point time we flew to Mexico, to the other condo in Puerto Vallarta, and we spent three days together, we created my my USP, which, at the time was, and my old company was, I was the guy who could walk into any restaurant by the time from the front door, by the time we go to the back door, I’ll find you $10,000 Hidden Profit guaranteed. Like it was, like, that was the thing. Like, how do you explain what the hell you do? David, and yeah, you know. So my time with Cameron, and the conversations we’d have, I think were among my favorite, because here was somebody who’d been there, done that, and at the same time I could help him, which made it even more rewarding. I think those would be the top two.

That’s awesome. And honestly, that is a good like lie to explain what I actually remember that, and it was like 10,000 and the reality is, now that we’ve made all these changes, what is $10,000 change? It’s so tiny, it sounds huge when you’re struggling, but it’s like nothing, Yes, yep, that’s awesome.

Let’s see what would be the best advice you’d give to your younger self, two twofold business advice, and then personal advice, like two pieces of advice if you give to your younger self, and I know the business one, I’m just wondering whether it’s politically correct to Say it, but also your funeral don’t have a partner.

Partners, let me be very clear, I don’t regret having a partner in my old company, because quite honestly, I believe what he brought to the table and what I brought to the table made us better. It was a better company. But it’s amazing when you start to have the struggles and one wants to go one direction. One wants to go another direction, and some of what churns up that way, more importantly, is when there’s a separation, even when it starts out amicably that there are indefinitely bruised feelings and it just you’ll lose a friend, and that would be what I tell myself, just trust your gut, stay stay the course on your own. I don’t regret anybody having partners, and there’s, we have lots of members who are partners, and they have incredible relationships. But for me, personally, I just that’s not the direction I’m way to go.

So that was the first part. So the personal one is what I had discovered after selling or having my my part of the company bought out at my old company, and having a heart attack a year before that is I learned that I can’t put all of my eggs in one basket have my identity only be my work.

And that’s where I found my way back to rowing. That’s where I made my way back to blocking out my schedule and going, you can’t have me at this time. And this time I’m not available, whereas I used to make myself available, 24/7, now, don’t get me wrong, you know, as a mastery Plus member, you have my cell phone, and you call me and text me anytime, like I’m going, but that’s a very small group of people. It’s not every waking moment anybody who needs help, anybody, anybody. And because all I did, my whole identity was, at the time, the restaurant expert, the guy who knew prime costs in numbers, and when I lost it, when it was gone, when my health and, oh, by the way, if you don’t have your health, you’ve got nothing, just so quickly. So it took enough scare, a heart attack, to give me that scare, that you need something else in your life that you identify. Say, so I can say, I let myself say, I’m a restaurant coach, I’m a rower, I’m a husband, I’m a father, I do other things, and I would tell myself not to let rowing go or or to make sure I spent more, made more time for my kids as they grew up. Because, you know, I missed birthdays because I, oh, I had to go to New York to speak at the show. And every third birthday had missed with my daughters, it was like, Really, did I really have to be there? Could I miss one day and gone the next day? You know, not, instead of three days of the show, I could have done one or two. But we tell ourselves why we do things? It took me a long time to take my own medicine and say, I got to have a life too.

Was it after? Was it more immediately after you sold, or was it the heart attack that really, like made the change? The Heart Attack started it and at the time, the company was struggling a little bit, and I was taking a personal haircut on finances and just just, you know, entrepreneurial struggles. And so now I’m having the challenges of software and changing the way, the way I do things, not just being a restaurant coach, but also a software company and things that are out of my control to being a entrepreneurial poverty. Like, okay, I got money in the bank account, but these are things I need to do in order to keep everybody paid, and build and grow the software in the company. And it just added up. Now you add the heart attack that now you go, what am I doing this for? Kind of a shocker, but it really set in when, then not even a year later, I sold my interest in my company, and then who was I? So it was kind of a building block. I don’t know if it was chicken egg is it just kind of built it just kind of built. It just built and built and built. Because I’m not gonna lie, I I was in the downy dumps for about six months because I’m like, Who the WHO THE SHIT am I? I’m no longer the restaurant expert. I’m restarting this business. And I still do what I do, but it’s starting from scratch. I went from, oh, do we have 14, a dozen, 14 employees, small company, to me, you know, and it’s quiet in your own office when there’s nobody to talk to, so you need somebody to talk to.

That’s, yeah, that’s the truth. Okay, do you have this one’s like one I’ve always been curious to ask, and I feel like there’s always people around that I can’t really bring it up around, but now that it’s just us and nobody loses your podcast. To your podcast. Do you have, because I know you used to go to people’s restaurants, do you have, like, a Kitchen Nightmares or a Bar Rescue sort of story?

Oh, yeah, we’re gonna leave the name. I want you to picture fine dining bistro level fine dining Italian restaurant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s Christmas. Our member, who’s really a great entrepreneur, real estate person ended up, you know, out of space, ended up becoming a restaurant tour because the person they brought in went away. I’ve heard the story 8 million times, right? Yeah. Posters out, partner and I for a consult an emergency lost her chef. My partner was a chef. We’re gonna come in. We’re gonna save Christmas because literally, it is the week before Christmas is when the busiest all hell. We’ve got to get systems in a little further than where we were, like it was all hands on deck. And there’s one thing that most restaurant tours dread, and that’s me in their building. If they allow me to walk around and find everything that’s wrong with it, right? I look for the dust bunnies and the grease and the, you know, the chairs that look like they’ve been mopped against. And, you know, out there, I find all the details that you don’t ever see anymore because you’re so used to seeing it. Well, I’m doing this walk through, and as I’m going through the walk through, we get in the front open kitchen looks beautiful from the customer side. There’s mold on the line. I watched somebody they were heating up sauce on the hot table, not in a pot on the burner. I look down, it looks like in the Peet’s oven, that it’s got so much soot in there that it’s a fire hazard. We go back into the kitchen and all of a sudden there’s raw sewage coming up, where the person standing doing prep, we go into, we go into the walk in cooler. Nothing’s day dotted. I find things that are opened, and I start losing my shit to a point where the chef at the time failed to come into, into the walk in cooler. And there’s a sous chef or a kitchen, man, somebody was in there, and I lose my shit on this person. I am so pissed off, and I finally, I grabbed the owner, and I go, I can’t believe I’ve been eating this restaurant for this past week. I said I’m gonna be dead straight with you until all this is cleaned up. I will never eat here again. And we had all hands on deck to clean and do it, but I’ve never seen anything, because we have cricket about, oh, it’s hard, and so on. So I don’t know the kitchen and the bullshit excuses. You know what dirty looks like? You know that we have a legal and moral responsibility to serve, you know, save food, like don’t there are no excuses when it comes to that there can be a little bit dirty. We all know that if I come in, I’m gonna point all these things out. We’re gonna get yourself to where your restaurant looks brand new every single day, especially in the kitchen. We allow things to get bad. But man, when you when you have such a bag of I don’t give a shit, and open it all up and spill it all around the place, when there’s literally raw sewer bubbling up as somebody standing at a prep table doing prep, you gotta be kidding me, that would probably be my number one Kitchen Nightmare story, if you will.

That’s a good one. That’s literally kitchen.

They’re paying me $10,000 a day to be in their building screaming, yeah, and I’m rip it. I mean, I’m, I lost my shit.

$10,000 a day to be yelling. That sounds lovely. Okay, what time are we at?

You’re good. We’re good, just on a double check. You don’t want to go too long. Okay. What is no no. This is like you on your own from that point on, what is your favorite part about running this new business? And what’s your least favorite part?

My favorite part is changing people’s lives. When you see the aha moment, you know when, when I see you guys make the change of oh, why do we close on the Mondays? Why don’t we do this? What? And all of a sudden, the light bulb, and things change. Well, we can’t really afford a manager. Then you add a manager, and you have a life, and the next thing you know, you’ve got an operations person, you’ve got a chef, you’ve got a new person in sales, you’ve got someone to handle catering. Like all of a sudden it explodes. It’s seeing that light bulb. It’s seeing that you can touch someone’s life and truly make a difference. And it’s hard. Like, I don’t lie when I tell people I suck, I create work, but when you do the work and the aha moment hits, man, that’s That’s amazing.

What don’t I like?

I don’t know about don’t like as much as sometimes creating content is hard for me. I’ve been creating content for over 21 years. I’ve been in my, you know, on YouTube, between my old company and here, have seven years of videos. I’ve got the podcast happens every other week. I’ve got lives. I do every Friday, if I’m not traveling. I’ve got shorts and all this.

At some point in time, sometimes I look at my calendar and go, I’ve got to create content. What are the five other things I get to be doing right now? Let me do those instead, and it becomes late, and it’s not the on camera stuff, it’s the prep, doing my research, making sure I have, you know, the intro done, and making sure I know what I want to say and that it’s that extra work.

But man, if I could just fire off every single day and not have anything planned and just speak on the on a camera that shits easy. It’s the planning group, because I’m not built that way.

Yeah, and that’s why this is a good segment for you, because I had to do the prep. That’s right, that’s right, okay, I think that’s all my questions, actually. Then we did good. Oh, wait no, there’s one more. There’s two more. I like it. So this is my second to last one. I was going to make John and I both do an impression of you. Oh, shit, I want you to. Okay, great. Mind, not at all.

I was like, tentative, sort of a bitch. Okay, that’s one. And then you need a system, a process, and a way dead on. There’s a system of process away doing anything and everything in your business. Yes, ma’am, okay, well, I probably win, but you can, you know, you know, the son of a bitch is I get stuck on that one some bitch, there was another phrase I get caught on sometimes I don’t give a rat’s ass. My wife made me a t shirt. It says, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I wear it proudly as a child. It should be. I love your T shirts. Okay, here’s the important point. Here’s the last one. And I need this to be obviously, in your own words, who is your favorite client of all time, and why is it us?

Painful? It was painful, haven’t I given you all the reasons so far during the whole the whole interview, I swear. I think I’ve said so many nice things.

I can’t believe there’s anything else to add. Brianna, I just needed to track you see what would happen. Well, it’s like you tell your children that we have no favorites, and your children look, we know who your favorite is.

I know I’m not the favorite in my family yours too.

This has been a lot of fun. I’m not gonna lie, this has been a lot of fun. Very favorite. I’m gonna turn the tables on you guys. What would you share with somebody who’s listening to us and as young entrepreneurs, what do you think the most important thing is for you to be successful.

Can I say one thing before that? My mind moving at a certain point, and just what we heard the other day, just the business within the business, you know? So what business are we in? Are we in the restaurant industry? Yeah, we are. But what is the business behind that? And that would be the we’re a talent acquisition company at this point, when you’re not a startup anymore, it’s not just about me and Bree just running around in circles, trying to put up every fire, trying to figure out everything.

As we’re past that startup phase, it’s like, all right, how can we fill this position? How can we improve our high level hiring system? How can we and now we’re like, Oh, shoot. So if we’re in that talent exhibition thing business, and we’re in a training business, and our training system sucks, how can we become a better business? You know? So that’s just something. As you were talking, I didn’t want to cut you off, because you’re so eloquent. You’re saying some great things, but that’s what I kind of went to thinking about at some point. Like you would tell somebody, well, I’d say, like, at a certain point it changes. It’s not just about being artist worker anymore, about being this, for being smarter and, you know, going along with it, but it just there’s different iterations to business. You know, you have your startup phase. And I’d say we’re at like, a middle of the road type phase right now. And then I’d love to get to mastery someday with that seems so far away. I know that’s a loose again, again. That’s what makes you special, is again. You’re innovative. You’re always moving so, you know, there’s a phase and you say, hey, that mastery, it’s that lofty goal that is. It’s almost reachable, just you can almost touch it, but it keeps moving further. As long as you stay, stay on it. I think you’ll get there. Just might not touch it.

I feel like my advice I would give, I prepared something from Gary Vaynerchuk. He said, You have to be willing to be bad at something long enough to get good.

And I feel like that’s the only way you can really grow. We didn’t want to do this documentary thing. We didn’t want to do our podcast because we’re like, we don’t know how I’m not good at it, which is the firearm game podcast on Apple. Apple podcast. And Spotify, yeah, literally inspired by this guy, his phrasing, not like we’re super fans or anything. Literally, the name is from me. Yes, it is, it is. But I think that would be my advice, because there’s so much that I think stopped us in the beginning, because we’re like, well, we’re not good at that yet. We can’t start that until we’re good at well, you’re never gonna get good at it unless you try it out a few times. And I’m shocked at from our first like, filming of this new documentary, it was so awkward, like, I didn’t know what to do. I just felt so stupid doing it. And now we’re getting more comfortable and like, I’m okay on camera, and I feel better about it, and it’s only because you’re just like, Alright, fuck it. Let’s try it. I don’t know, and I feel like that’s all you have to do in business, is like, keep you know, keep going, because you’re not gonna be good at it ever to start. So don’t believe that. You know you will be just jumping. It’s uncomfortable till you put in the hours and to use your podcast, slash your vlog, you know, document all this. No, I didn’t think you were awkward in the beginning, but now you’re doing pull ups and help. You were filmed in a portalet, so I’m just gonna say, you know, you got a little more comfortable.

Yeah, now it’s, like, more fun, but to start it was awkward. And, you know, I felt stupid, but Well, honestly, I’m so think this is our second large renovation of a building project. And I just think back to wow, it would been cool to, like, capture a lot of stuff that’s going on in the first one, you know, and but we’re finally doing on the second one.

I’m really proud of that, because it would have been very easy to have the idea and be like, Oh, we don’t have the time. We don’t have this or that by now. I now know forever we’ll watch that. Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing.

I think every every restaurant tour, should tune into your podcast. They should tune into your YouTube channel. I think what you guys bring the table is amazing. I love you guys to death, obviously, based on this podcast, I guess I’m you’re now my favorite members. I didn’t know that since you told me, but I hope they search you guys out, because I think the world of you and I really want to thank you for doing this with me today. I’m not gonna lie, there’s a lot more fun than I expected it to be. This was a blast. I appreciate you.

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 two. 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 podcast 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 three, 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 David Scott peters.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.