Get Pumped Up with Restaurant Marketer Matt Plapp

Hey there restaurant pros, it’s David Scott Peters and welcome to the Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast. For over 2 decades, I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful 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 the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I know the way to achieve it is using the restaurant prosperity formula. This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula: leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts, and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their definition of success. In this episode, number 108, our guest is Matt Plapp. Matt Plapp is the high-energy, hard-driving founder and CEO of America’s Best Restaurants, ABR, a trailblazing marketing agency dedicated to helping independent restaurants tell their stories, acquire customers, and build unstoppable sales momentum. Listen in as Matt and I talk about the importance of having a vivid vision for your company and the impact it can have on your company. Plus, we get into other topics too. Take what you learned today and use it to elevate your restaurant and achieve the prosperity you’ve been working towards. 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. where MarginEdge comes in. MarginEdge 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. Matt, I want to thank you for joining me. As always, I don’t know if this is our third or fourth time together on my I’ve been on yours several times, but thanks, man. Appreciate you.
Thanks for having me. I love it. Anybody that invites me back, it’s like, hey, my wife’s been inviting me back for 29 years. DSP, we’re going on five years of inviting me back. So thank you.
Man, it’s crazy talk. It is crazy talk that it’s been five years. Man, I can remember when you invited me on your podcast for the first time to talk about my book. And then it’s been like, that just seems so long ago. how many things we’ve done together from seminars, traveling together. There’s my book. Yeah, you give my book out to people.
I have two books on my desk and yours is one of the two.
I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But hell, we’ve even casually gone out. I took you out at one point in time. I had some orb boards. We went rowing. Like we’ve become friends above and beyond anything else. But I can’t tell you enough. I talk about you all the time. The mad respect I have for you as an entrepreneur. And so do me a favor. Tell people just a little bit about yourself, whether maybe they’ve not listened to the past podcasts that we’ve done together, but give them a snapshot of who you are and what you guys are doing.
Okay. So Matt Plapp is the name. If you see me around, you always see me wearing orange and you’ll see the little MP logo. It looks like a fist bump, but it’s MP. Kind of mess with you there. I think the fist bump is the way of the future. I had it way before COVID, so I guess I was ahead of the times there of shaking hands being gone. I’m married to my lovely wife, Christy, 29 years together, 25 years as of last Wednesday. Two kids, 20 and 22. I’m 48 years old, and I’ve been in marketing since 1998-ish, somewhere in the neighborhood. The business I have, the corporate name is Restaurant Marketing that Works, and we own 2 entities. We own America’s Best Restaurants, which is a media brand that I created right around six years ago with the sole purpose of helping local mom and pop restaurants get the attention they deserve. And then the other side of it is Driver, which is a combination of two companies. We acquired a company called Repeat Returns, a software, which you introduced me to Cameron actually. And we merged it with our marketing agency to create a very powerful restaurant marketing software that also has customer acquisition and coaching. We help, we exist to help hungry customers get into our clients’ restaurants more often.
Yeah, and it’s good ****. I mean, that’s basic about it. But here’s the deal. So what I want to talk about is you sent me in the mail. For those who can see me on YouTube, you’re seeing it looks like a mini magazine with a picture of you. It says drive sales. There you are. But for those of you listening during the podcast version, just know that I’ve got this mini magazine. It is short. I mean, we’re talking about 810 pages, but it is about what’s called a vivid vision. Now, I read the book, and I’m going to lie, I cheated. I listened to the book when I was driving to and from race and Vivid Vision is really powerful. Talk a little bit about what Vivid Vision is before we talk about yours.
So Vivid Vision is a book written by Cameron Harold who took his big thing he did in his career was he took 1-800 Got Junk from a $1 million company to a $100 million company and ironically I’m in a coaching program with Cameron. I was on a call yesterday with him for two hours and the guy is amazing but his whole concept is In order to build a culture and to build a team and to build momentum to get where you want to go, you actually have to know where you want to go and you have to verbalize it. You have to put it in writing. If I’m leaving my house in Northern Kentucky right now, and let’s go back 30 years, my wife and I, maybe I guess 25 in college, we’re going to drive to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I’ve got a roadmap. this is way back before the iPhones. So I had like these landmarks my mom and dad gave me like, oh, you’re going to get down here and turn left. You’re going to see this building and that goes there. I don’t think we do that in business enough. And that’s Cameron’s whole thing is that if you’ve got a business and you’ve put your life on the line, you’ve signed personal guarantees, you’ve got stress out the wazoo. You better know where the hell you plan on going. Well, a vivid vision is writing that out. So what I’ve got in my hand is our second vivid vision. And the idea behind it is over the next three years, we are going to accomplish what this is. And this is written as if it’s May 17th, 2027. So I wrote this, I did our first one in December of 2019 and I wrote it out. And here’s the funny part about it. At that time, I had six employees. And we had a office in downtown Cincinnati, which was 1100 square feet. And there was three desks in it. And it was a nice little quaint place because only Doug and I came to the office consistently. Tom came occasionally. The building I’m sitting in now is 9,000 square feet. You’ve been here. When we moved into it in 2021, it was Doug and I in person, a 9,000 square foot office. And what’s ironic about it was you do things you don’t realize, but like that was in the vision. When I wrote the Vivid Vision in December 19, I laid out our company headquarters and what I hoped to build. And people were like, what are you building this headquarters for? You have six people. I’m like, I guess we’ll have more then. And so Doug and I move into this building in April of 2021, April 15th tax day. And for six months, it’s me and Doug. Well, now today I’ll be growing out steaks and ribs for our free lunch Friday with the team. There’ll be 40 to 45 people here that all work here. And so The vision is you getting clarity on where you’re going and why. And the thing about this, what I found powerful is the fact that it’s in writing and we reflect on it every week in a team meeting. And when we bring employees in to interview, when we talk to vendors, when I talk to my banks, I’m heading up in a couple weeks to Minnesota for one day for a PFG show to speak there. I will take copies of it with me and hand it out to anybody I can talk to and say, hey, this is where we’re going. This is why we’re going here. I’d love for you to be a part of our journey. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems restaurants have, in my opinion, and small businesses I’ll say in general. Everybody complains there’s nobody that wants to work today. These kids nowadays. I’m like, no, nobody wants to work for you. I told a friend of mine the other day, he’s got a burrito shop. I said, I can go work at 20 places to make burritos. Why your burrito shop? Imagine if you had this, if you had a map of telling that 21 year old, this is why you should have a career here. And so a vivid vision is #1 for me as the visionary, giving me clarity on where we’re going and why, but then also getting buy-in from everybody around me.
It’s truly powerful. Bits and pieces I’ve taught over the years that I’ve learned. the importance of goal setting. Without a goal, you can’t put the rudder on your boat to get you to your final destination of success. Like if you don’t know where you’re going, how the hell are you going to get there? The other is, I always talk about with independent restaurants, my coaching members, it’s like, you’ve got to explain and share your why. the hell you got into business, the passion you have for your why, anybody who will listen every single day, your employees, your vendors, your customers, because everybody takes you on a journey. Well, your vivid vision is your goal. It is your why. And more importantly, you have visualized what success actually looks like. There’s nothing more powerful. And I’m going to tell you, after reading the book, you know, I’m sitting there going, I was really motivated, but it’s daunting to do what you did. I mean, if people pick up the book, it is a must read, especially if you’re an entrepreneur. But the fact of the matter is, you’ve got to make a commitment to truly isolate yourself and say, what do I see my future? What is this as the BHAG, the big, hairy, audacious goal of what this company is going to be? And this is your second. And so talk about When you put your first together and where you are today, having to redo it to look again into three years in the future, how far away were you from that original big, hairy, audacious goal? Like the first time you did it.
Wow. I don’t know. I mean, I think back to when we wrote that, we were probably closer than I realized, but I don’t think we were as close as I don’t think we would have gotten where we are today without that vivid vision written out. And it’s funny, I can look back to so many things in my career that when I’ve put them in writing, they happen. And when I don’t put them in writing, they don’t. The other day, now this might sound insane, but Monday had a bad day, like we all do. A lot of stupid **** happened. I was in my car and I said out loud, is that all you got for me? bring it on. I can handle this. I’m trying to just make myself stronger. I got to be accustomed to having negative stuff. We all have it. Tuesday was worse. And Tuesday I thought, I got what I asked for. And I’m like, okay, I’m going to ask for good **** today. And Wednesday and Thursday were great. The vivid vision, what I’m finding out is more of a product of the people that support me than me. Because if I don’t let my team know where we’re going and why, then we’re never going to get there. When I look at our vision and what we accomplished, I mean, the scary part was page two said, we’re in Las Vegas celebrating the completion of our vivid vision. It’s December 31st, 2023. Ironically, we acquired Repeat Returns, whose office was in Las Vegas, and we were out there for a meeting that you attended to really plant the seed for the next year. I’m like, oh **** like this was in the vision. I didn’t even know it. Somebody pointed it out to me. And I think about a vision and getting there, and I’ll tell you a quick story that I think connects the dots. My son was a defensive tackle and very good. Grew up watching him play. I went to every practice. I went to every game, middle school. When he was in high school, I went to every freshman, JV practice, sit in the stands and watch. So I’m like, you know what? I can work my day around anything. I want to watch him and give him advice. And I’m talking to the coach one day and I said, you know, my only frustration, I’m curious, I don’t know D-line, but like I watch Cole. He’s that far from making big plays all the time in the backfield. And he goes, I know that’s what he should be. I’m like, what do you mean? Matt Cole should be making big plays. If Cole doesn’t do his job, the play doesn’t get made. He’s like, you see Cole going through that gap and barely missed the tackle. What you’re not paying attention to is a linebacker hitting 5 yards deep in the backfield. If Cole freelanced to try and make the play, All of a sudden that guy squirts up the other way and he’s got a 20 yard run, maybe a touchdown. He’s like, so by Cole staying in his lane and doing what he’s assigned to do, he’s helping the entire pitcher come together correctly. And that’s what has to happen. He’s like, Cole is the most disciplined player on the field every time I have him out there. When I look at a vivid vision, it’s the same way. It’s fine and dandy for me to have a vision in my head. But when I publish it and I give it to the people who are on my team, if I have the right people on my team, they’re going to help me get there. And they’re going to make decisions that live up to our core values, which is positive mindset, growth oriented and collaborative. And then they’re going to make decisions to help us reach that goal, which like our goal the next three years is drive sales. The only reason we did this title was #1, I have a wild dream the next couple of years of buying a print magazine that is established in the restaurant space to turn into part of our world because I still think there’s a place for print magazines. And that’s why I made it a magazine was to kind of put that little hidden message in there, but drive sales because our company, every one of my employees needs to be focused on one thing, helping the restaurants we work with drive sales. At the end of the day, driving sales is all that matters because guys like you can show them how to make the restaurant run correctly. I don’t know **** about running a restaurant, but that’s why I have two books on my desk. These two books are all that’s on my desk. $100 million offers by Alex Hermosi and David Scott Peters, Restaurant Partumerity Formula. Because I know that if our restaurant clients understand how to run a restaurant and understand how to sell their products at the right prices and treat customers the correct way and treat their employees the correct way, then all it needs marketing and sales. And that’s what $100 million off is all about. So that’s my reminder every day. Like these are the two things that restaurants need to find prosperity, systems and operations, and then the ability to tell people why to come there. And that is why the cover of our vivid vision is Drive Sales. The new company name that we created with Driver and our agency merging was Driver because what is our mission? Drive Sales. Let’s be honest with it. We want to be the driver for our clients and we put a Y in the middle there instead of an I. Number one, because we could trade market, but #2, because you need sales. And that’s the goal of our company is to help those restaurant owners get what they deserve. Because when they create a great restaurant and great product and great service, that’s one thing. But when you have nobody to serve, that’s another.
You know, here’s two things that go through mind. One is as an entrepreneur listening to you, and I refer to you as probably one of the most gifted, motivated entrepreneurs I’ve ever met in my life. And that is no ********. I say that all the time to people. The energy you have is crazy. And the vision is what drives you. With that said, because you’re going that far to tell people about your vision, You don’t have to micromanage your damn employees. They make decisions knowing full well on independently. The goal is to get to here. So if I make a decision, does it get me here? Does it meet our core values? If it doesn’t, that’s a bad decision. Like it is amazing. Talk about how that empowers your team and how you’ve built trust. You know, they trust you. trust them. It doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes. That **** happens like welcome to being an entrepreneur. But the fact of the matter is you have made huge strides and growth in five years that I’ve known you from again tiny to really kicking *** and what you’re going to do in the next three years is amazing. Talk about the trust part because everybody knows the direction they’re going.
The irony about this question is the meeting that I just had. I just had a meeting with Doug, my COO, and Shaheen, who you’ve met, who was a seven-year client of ours, a 28-year restaurant owner, and he’s now my director of sales and training. He’s gonna help me manage our sales team of 16 now, which should be 30 in a year. The only department in our entire company that is not living close to their potential is the sales team. And the reason they’re not living close to potential is Matt Plapp, who is the acting sales manager, has not given them clear direction. Ashley’s team, which she runs all the operations in Driver, they’re killing it. Scott’s team runs client success in Driver, killing it. Austin’s team that runs all of the travel logistics, the filming, the broadcast of our thousand shows every year, which is a huge number on Facebook that we drive and film at 1000 restaurants a year, killing it. We’ve missed Three visits in the last 1000 because of travel issues. That’s a huge number. And then David and Max, who handle the creative of those TV shows being edited and broadcast, killing it. The sales team, while they’re killing it, they aren’t close to their potential. They’re not close to potential, not because of them, because of me. Because I loosey-goosey managed them. I thought through osmosis, they were going to know what Matt Plapp expected out of handling sales relationships just yesterday. One of our sales guys sent me an e-mail from a restaurant that emailed him back and said, Trevor, while we love what America’s Best Restaurants is doing and we want to be a part of it due to these reasons, this freezer we had to replace, our roof leak, all these reasons, we can’t financially do it. We want to do it in the future. And Trevor was bombed. I said, dude, that’s what you want. What do you mean? I’m like, we’re not always going to win right now. Customers that come in occasionally to a restaurant always aren’t going to become the person that comes in three or four times a week. It’s a relationship building process. And I said, so like, you’re bummed over that e-mail. I’m excited. They agree with what we’re doing is impactful. They agree they want to be a part of it. They just want the money right now. I’m like, dude, I’ve got 7 acres 4 miles down the road that does not have a house on it. I’ve owned it for three years. You know, why there’s no house? He’s like, why? I’m like, I don’t have the money to build it. Like, so I bought 7 acres as a gift to my wife a couple years ago in a great area and haven’t bought the house yet. I don’t have the money. I’m going to build a house. I said, so when I looked at when you asked that question, the only part of our company that is faltering, even though they’re doing a great job, is the sales team. Because I’ve not given them clear expectations. I’ve not given them job descriptions. They don’t have like, this is what your KPIs are every week. And then this is how we conduct ourself as a professional salesperson. And so I’m self-aware enough to know that’s my fault. And so while I’ve got this great vivid vision we can all follow, Do they have an internal vision of what their job is? And if they don’t, they’re never going to get there. And I always go back to your example. Like you said, I’m one of the greatest you’ve met and you talk about right back at you. I’ve interviewed 128 authors in the restaurant space. One of them, Bruce Nelson, we just hired as our CFO. I look up to him at a high level. I gave my copy of my book. I had my office to our bookkeeper, who’s now he’s in charge of like, read who your boss is. But the other one was you. And of those 128 that I interviewed from 2020 to 2022, I did 300 interviews. There’s only like four of them that I’m like, man, these guys are rock stars. The rest of them are ********. Like, hey, I had a restaurant that failed. Here’s how not to do it. I’m like, that doesn’t make me a nutritionist. That means I just failed at nutrition. And when I think back to you, one story you always say that is the exact same thing I just said was like when your wife asked your son to clean the bathroom. and clean the bathroom. Okay, cool. Well, he’s got an expectation of what clean the bathroom is. And you go up, you’re like, this is disgusting. What do you mean? She didn’t say clean the mirror. Obviously the mirror isn’t here, but it’s laying out expectations and saying, okay, this is what a clean bathroom looks like. Here’s how you get to a clean bathroom. When you give people that, they’ll do it. And that’s what I believe that part of what you’re talking about is, that my team, when they fire on all cylinders, it’s because they’re hired under our core values. They’re living our core values. They’re held accountable by their colleagues in the office by our core values. And then they have a clear understanding of what we’re trying to do for our clients. We’re not trying to send an e-mail on behalf of Chris at BBQ Productions. We’re trying to send an e-mail that gets people to click and take the offer that’s in the e-mail to come in the restaurant and buy a burger.
Yeah, yeah. Look, what excites me about what we’re talking about, and I hope that Everybody listening or watching understands that what you are talking about applies to any entrepreneur, any business. Change the word for marketing and video and all the things that you do to what restaurant doesn’t matter. Like we’re leading people. We’re leading people. I always talk about as restaurant owners, your job is not to do a task. Your job is to work on budgets, marketing, lead the team, develop your managers, hold them accountable, move the company forward, work strategically on the business. You’re the high paid person. You’re supposed to have freedom to think, to journey. But where are you leading them to? And are you giving the tools to be successful, to be able to be independent, to think because they’re so clear on where you’re going and you’ve just, you’ve nailed it. Now, you are an entrepreneur, which means, like you said, you have bad days. We all have bad days. But I always talk about what you do the next day. Like, do I dwell on it? Do I mope? Do I, you know, do whatever? Or did the next day go, screw this ****. I’m moving forward. I got this. And that, that mindset is so important. You know, that’s one piece that, that I don’t think people understand that the vivid vision does for you is forces you to really focus on all the good, to be a growth mindset leader, because we all have **** we all have challenges, we all have things that pop up. And in fact, in a group coaching call I had just two days ago, we talked about resilience and the importance of resilience as an entrepreneur. I think you magnify that. But I do want to talk about what that Vivid Vision has done when you built your company. Because at this point in time, you’ve got an online portal that people can learn. You’ve got the ability to come in, video, create this. incredible TV show for all intents and purposes, put it out on YouTube that people can use to have extreme power to drive people in that’s more powerful than TV. You’ve got the ability to gain new customers for inexpensive ways using Facebook, track it, know for a fact they came in, what they spent, and now pull them into loyalty, which means I’ve got the ability to drive offers to them that make me money and get them to come back more often, spend more. And it’s like the full life cycle of a customer relationship. It’s amazing. And now it’s all under one umbrella. Talk about what Driver is and what you all do because you know, you brushstroked it at the beginning, but it is truly powerful. Any independent restaurant owner needs to talk to you and your company.
So they say the best things that are created are created for somebody’s need. That a lot of the things we’re using nowadays, somebody said, hey, I need this or I need a solution for this. For example, the product Slack, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. That was a tech company that had another project and they created Slack so they could communicate internally better because they couldn’t find a product. Well, eventually that company failed. They’re like, oh **** what do we do now? Like, well, that Slack thing we have is pretty cool and now it’s a giant company. In 2015, I had this client, Hofbraus, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Newport, and we did some work with the Cleveland location. And my biggest frustration was they were spending money that I was spending on their behalf. I was the at-large marketing director. It was me and Ashley. We were a two-person company from 2008 to 2015. And I was spending their money for their marketing. I was doing their radio, their TV, their direct mail, their couponing, their in-store marketing, everything. Down to the cards that Jay Lang, one of the investors, had in his wallet for his 20% discount I created and they still use them to this day. And the problem I had back then was I had no way of knowing if any of this **** was working. I mean, We’re sponsoring the Cincinnati Reds. Yes, it’s really cool. They had some FU money in their budget. They were, each location was between 5 to 7 million in sales. So they had some profit and they were run very, very well. Jim Colmes, the guy who operated the restaurants, one of the best operators I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And so we had a big budget. But still then I’m looking, okay, we’re spending 80 grand to be a sponsor of the Cincinnati Reds. I agree. It’s the right audience. It’s across the river. It’s a big splash. Do we have any proof that any of them walked in here and spent 50 bucks? No. And then at the same time, this was when loyalty was starting. And we had a small loyalty product that I had found that I thought, hey, we need something for the people that buy the growlers that are in the stein club, that are in the beer club, basically, that we can track their usage and then incentivize them to spend more. Because the people you’re going to get the, like their restaurant, their problem was lunch sales. And it was like pulling teeth to get somebody to come to their restaurants for lunch for the simple fact that it was not in style to drink beer anymore at business lunches. That was the 80s. We’re in 2015 now and corporations are a little different. Like you can’t have beer on your receipt for reimbursement. And so I had to evaluate who would come to this restaurant during the week on lunch and then who would come at the nights like Monday night sucked. It’s our best customers, the Stine Masters, people that are giving us a lot of money. And so the loyalty programs we had, I thought, okay, these are great. There’s nobody in them. And I’ve got thousands of people a week coming in this restaurant. What are we doing to capture their information? And it was like rocket science sometimes when I explain it. I’m like, we got 500 people on a Friday night dining here. Do we know who any of them are? their first name, their last name, their e-mail, their birthday, their cell phone number. Do we know the last time they came? Do we know if they ordered desserts, if they have lunch, if they have dinner? And the answer was no. And so I went to the NRA show. I’ll never forget this. I went to the NRA show. It was 2015. That was nine years ago because I just made a post about it not too long ago when I went this year. And I went there thinking, okay, there’s 4,000 booths here. There’s everything under the sun for restaurants. I mean, you can buy something to level your tables. There’s got to be everything here for marketing. And I left there like disgusted. There was nothing for marketing. I mean, they say that the certain industries are behind 10 to 20 years in the times, like marketing at the NRA show was behind like 100. It was like they had Jesus drawing on rocks there. So I thought, okay, it doesn’t exist here. Let’s figure it out. So I spent 2015 to the middle of 2016, and I’m not a tech guy, by the way. I had to learn how to do it. I mean, I stayed up till 2 A.m., seven nights a week doing this because we had our clients. We had 30 clients we had to manage every day. And so from 8 A.m. to 5, 6 P.m., it was manage those clients, go home, have dinner, work out, and then get on the computer and work till 2 A.m. and figure out how to build digital marketing solutions. Because my vision was I wanted a tool that would interact with the number one place people were at that time and they still are today, Facebook, and something that was in store that I could say, hey, if somebody interacts with this in store, somebody interacts with this on Facebook, they put them into a place where I get their contact information and then I put them in a marketing program. Are they a hardcore customer? Are they a lunch, customer, dinner? And so we created that and I wrote a book on it. was called Don’t 86 Your Restaurant Sales. I created a product called the ROI Engine. because that was my goal was to create something that gathered customer data that showed us how much they spent. And where it happened the first time was in what started all this was Hoffper House. It was a couple weeks before National Pretzel Day, which was April 26, 2015. And Nick Ellison, the owner, looked at me and said, Matt, I can’t deposit likes. And the reason he had said that was I was showing them in our owners meeting, here’s all the stats from social media in e-mail that we have. And then We have no stats from all this other crap. Radio, TV, I mean, supposedly somebody saw the commercial. I don’t know. that you did. But Facebook, I can look and see that Hof per house Pittsburgh went from 3,000 fans to 39,000 fans. At least I know that. And he’s like, man, I can’t deposit likes. I can’t go to US Bank tomorrow and say, look, here’s 36,000 more customers on my Facebook page. Give me a loan. I said, fair enough. I said, so give me enough rope to hang myself. National Pretzel Day is in two weeks. Let me do a Facebook and e-mail exclusive promotion. that I will show you how those people will come in with this action. Well, it drove 19 grand. It was a half price, $5 off. It was a $9.99 item, the number one P mix. It was $5 off pretzels and beer cheese this Sunday only, bring in this offer. The only place they saw was Facebook or an e-mail. And we spent on the Facebook post, I created an ad behind it for $50. It did like 18, 19 grand in sales, incremental sales just from that. And he called me Monday morning and said, Matt, I can deposit 18 grand, have fun. So that’s what set me off on this journey was, man, I want to be able to, that was cool that I have 18 grand, but I don’t know who were those customers. Like I don’t have any way of contacting them. So I started off that journey. I wrote that after I created the system, I wrote the book in early 2018 and decided at that point that we were going to, we had kind of put our foot in the water in 2016 and 17 to work with restaurants nationwide. We decided at that point, hey, we’re going all in. We’re going to dump our local company, which was a lot of clients. So I had to slowly do it. But by 2018, we were a national restaurant marketing firm focused on customer acquisition. Because to me, That’s the hardest part, is getting people to come in for the first time and then getting people to keep coming back versus just hoping and praying. Well, along the way, our biggest negative, and Steve Eller was a client of ours, one of your guys, was a client of ours and he had all the acquisition program and he had his COMO loyalty program. A couple of the negatives we had was our program was all front end. I couldn’t show you the lifetime value so I could say, hey, look, these 500 people in May of 2022, engaged with our Facebook ads, gave us their contact information, and 125 walked in the restaurant. I don’t know what happened after that. We don’t have point of sale integration. We don’t have an app. We don’t have this, that, and the other. And so that was a frustration that we like pounded our head against from 2020 to 2023. And so back in 2019, when I wrote the vision, I had on there on page three is that we will create our own restaurant marketing software called Database Dynamite. And the reason I like database dynamite was like, it’s going to blow up your database, make it bigger, but also it’s going to fragment it. Because I think that the easiest way to lose in marketing is to e-mail and text and talk to everybody about everything. That you have to have segmented conversations. Like the people who bought growlers at Hofbraus Pittsburgh weren’t the same people that came for a business lunch. And so I had to have a database of my growler people to sell growlers to. Otherwise, why talk to the college students who don’t give a **** about Growlers. And so that was in the vivid vision that we were going to have this software that we could finally connect our customer acquisition tool to and show customers the true lifetime value. Because if you get Matt Plapp to join your birthday club and Matt Plapp comes one time with my wife and kids and you give me $20, you know, $20 free steak and I spend $70. You might say, **** I lost money there. You probably did. But that wasn’t the goal to make money on that visit. The goal is to get Matt Plapp’s information so you can predictably drive me back in the restaurant the next 10 years. You know, La Rosa’s Pizza down the street gave me a free order of cookies like 10 years ago. I didn’t know they had cookies. I didn’t think about pizza restaurants for chocolate chip cookies. I go in there with my free cookie offer, my wife and kids. They’re fire. Flash forward, I’ve been there 1000 times. I’ve probably bought $10 in cookies 1000 times. And so my vision was, okay, database dynamite needs to be that next piece. And I call it the customer journey. We use a product for our business called HubSpot and it’s a customer management system. We get all of our customers’ information in there and then we manage those through digital marketing, e-mail, text, social media, online ads, and a sales team. of predictably creating relationships to get them to do business with us at some point or refer us. Well, there’s nothing like that in the restaurant space. You’ve got loyalty programs, which people that join loyalty programs are loyal. 90% of your customers aren’t loyal. And then you’ve got review platforms and you’ve got MailChimp, e-mail platforms. So my vision with Database Dynamite was a solution that allowed a restaurant to put all their data one place and then fragment it and have different conversations. you introduced me to Cameron Carrington of Repeat Returns, I think because you knew what I was looking to do. I figured out along the way that I had no right to build a software. I’m not that smart and I would have gotten raked over the coals by and gone bankrupt by programmers. Cameron was on the point of 15 years in business of like looking for an exit down the road. And so we ended up acquiring repeat returns. And originally we were going to have our agency and repeat returns run side by side. Like our agency clients could use repeat returns, repeat returns. We just make it a better product. And then I realized that nobody had the full equation. Like there’s no loyalty program out there that has acquisition. There’s no acquisition program out there that has loyalty. There’s nobody that ties in the catering relationships. There’s nobody ties in the review relationship. So I said, you know what? We’re going to build it. We’re going to build the first restaurant marketing customer management tool that restaurants can just deposit every bit of customer information into. And then with the help of automation and an expert, take that data and say, good. What do we need to work on? We need to drive lunch sales. We need to drive appetizer sales. We need to drive Sunday sales. We need to drive sales this week. And that’s the goal of it is to predictably drive sales when the restaurants need it.
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing again, because I knew you and I knew Cameron for almost 20 years. The fact of the matter is the two marketing guys put my name on. And the fact of the matter is we talked about all the way in the beginning, when Steve Eller was a member, I remember you and I were sitting outside, it was during COVID, we were sitting outside of a Starbucks, you were visiting, and I literally, to hear about what you’re doing, and I call Steve, he was a member at the time, he’s now my director of operations, and I call him, I go, you got to get on this system. And that was the beginning. And like you said, it was like, hey Matt, this is working, but how do I know? How do I know? And it was that missing piece. And now with Driver, with all of it, And I can acquire that guest. I can get them to come back more often. I get them to spend more. That’s the only three ways you can increase your sales. And it’s all simplified. It is powerful. And we’re not even going to talk about all the before AI was the thing to say, how that system knows so much about your guest and can help you with the offers, let alone the coaching that you guys provide at times. It’s the full package. Talk about a little bit about ABR too as well.
Yeah, well real quick on driver, the last part you touched on too is the coaching. One of the biggest weaknesses with what Cameron built with repeat returns, he built the software like software companies do. Low employees, low touch, set it and forget it. I’m not that way. I like analyzing things and optimizing and making decisions. So my team has seven people on it that are all about looking at things and telling our clients, hey, this is a collaborative relationship. Yes, you have a software, you can set it and forget it, or you’ve got a Ferrari, you might as well learn how to change the oil, maybe upgrade it, put a turbo booster on it, put better gas in it. So our team really helps optimize that. And the part of the vivid vision here that I’m excited for, and this is going to be an F you moment in the industry, is I’ve got this idea that when we bought repeat returns, it was an eye-opening experience. We had an insurance agent that I had to call my insurance, hey, I have this software. And I was like, well, you got to hold it for policy, homie, like get ready to pay. I’m like, okay. And I had to get these numbers from Joe, who is the programmer and the guy who built it with Cam. And he gives me this number back of like the amount of customer data in there, the number of all these different line items. And I call him, I’m like, am I reading this number right? Like it’s in the billions, like billions of data files. And he’s like, yeah, I said, So what do we know about this? He’s like, everything that’s ever happened at any restaurant. I’m like, so let me ask you a question, Joe. I said, stick with me. This might be futuristic, but if I’ve got $1,000,000 restaurant and I want it to get to 1.2 million, theoretically, I should be able to take that 200 grand and say, okay, if assuming they have the capacity for 1.2, they have the tables, all that kind of stuff. So if there’s 200,000 in capacity, I should be able to look into the repeat return system and say, for a casual dining pizza restaurant that also has delivery carryout, because that’s all in there, how many emails need to be opened, need to be clicked? How many text messages open to click? How many loyalty promotions need to be redeemed? How many double offers? I should be able to look in there and predictably say that in order to grow by 200,000, you need this many more things to happen. He’s like, yeah. And so my moment in the vivid vision, is that by this time, we’re going to have a calculator that when clients come to us, it’s not, hey, we’re going to help you through marketing. It’s where are you at now and what could you possibly do? And I hear it all the time. Like Avery took Little Italy from 400 grand to like 3 to 4 million before he moved to a new store. There’s $3 million in revenue in the same building, which is insanity. Now, he’s a very special operator. Let’s just say you find something that’s half of half of Avery and you go 400 grand to 1,000,005. I think anybody take that. So my vision with Driver is that when clients come into our world, it’s great. Where are you at? Where do you want to go? And why do you want to go there? Because if you don’t know why you want to go there, you’re not going to get there. And then we look at the data and say, great, in order to do this, we need this many new customers to be acquired. We need this many people to come back more often. We need your lost customers to come back at this rate, which means we need this many emails, texts. It’s in there. And it’s an opportunity I know is there and I look forward to doing that. Now on the other side is America’s best restaurants. Now this happened back in 2018. When I wrote that book, I was at a conference in Newport Beach and I meet a guy named Joseph Mahomon. When I go to these events, and I’m sure you’re the same way, you meet these operas, hey, you got to come see my restaurant. You got to come see my restaurant. Well, this guy knew a little bit about me, knew I liked milkshakes. And he’s like, dude, I’ve got hand spun milkshakes. I’ve got a Captain Crunch milkshake. I’m like, okay, you got me. You had me at Captain Crunch. So I scoot down the streets, Orange, California. At the time he had three stores called the Burger Parlor. And we’re sitting there and it’s a ****** restaurant, DSP. I mean, it was phenomenal at every angle. Very well operated, clean, systematic, just a great restaurant. I said, dude, how did you start this? Like, this is awesome. He goes, let me tell you this story. And because I looked at his website, you know, when I was looking him up when I was on my way there, there’s nothing. It looks like he could be a Burger King owner for all you know. And so he’s like, it’s pretty cool stories. Like about 8 years ago, I was an executive chef at this high-end restaurant and I had an idea for a high-end burger restaurant, but I don’t have the money and I’m not going to take that risk. We were closed these nights every week in one day. I convinced the owner to let me do a burger pop-up here. And I did a burger pop-up on Mondays and then like Sunday and Monday nights, it was burger parlor. Well, after a year of that, owner saw how successful it was, say, hey, I’ll help you open a store. Here we are a couple years later with this big chain, these three locations killing it. They were at least like $4 million. And I said, okay, Joseph, your separator between you as an independent and Applebee’s, Starbucks, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, everybody who’s kicking everybody’s *** is that story. Why is it nowhere to be seen on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, on your website? It’s like, I don’t know. I said, you know what we’re doing? We’re going on Facebook Live right now. We’re going to tell the story again. So I turned on Matt Plapp’s Facebook. I checked in at Burger Parlor. I turned it on. Hey, it’s Matt Plapp. I’m out here. Got my guy, Joseph. I gave him a copy of the book. Tell me Burger Parlor story. And it blew up. It did really well. And at that point, I had been thinking about what if. And the two what ifs I had were number one, what if restaurants didn’t hate Yelp? Because Yelp is not liked by the restaurant community for obvious reasons. You can’t control your presence. You can’t control the reviews. Can’t control the pictures. You have a listing on there that is what it is. But they have the consumer’s eyeballs. At least they did. They’re dying on the vine right now, from I understand. But they, you know, 2018 had every consumer looked at Yelp for where to go for restaurants. Then I looked at the other side. Guy Fieri in Diners, Drivings and Dies, my favorite TV show of all time. And I thought, imagine if Guy, because the hardest part I struggled with was these restaurants don’t listen. I could have the most accolades in the freaking world. If they do not know, like, and trust me, who gives a rat’s ***? You’re just some other marketing person. And that’s what was happening back with me. I knew I was right. And 9.9 out of 10 restaurants I talked to had no interest. And it was like, man, this makes no sense. I thought if Guy Fieri was in a restaurant filming and said, hey, I want to sit down with you for 5 minutes and show you a couple things I think you’re doing wrong in your marketing that you can optimize and increase your sales by 15, 20% next two or three years. Would you be game? There’s not one restaurant that would ever say no. Am I right?
Yeah.
And so I thought, I need to become Guy Fieri because Guy Fieri is on the Food Network, which is on cable, which is slowly dying and is basically dead now. Nobody watches it now. Back then it had an audience. But my thought process was if Guy Fieri is being paid $40 million a year to be a personality on a TV show. They’re being paid by Coca-Cola, whoever else. It’s a TV company. It’s a media company. They don’t give a **** about helping the restaurant sell more product. They care about shows and ratings. I thought, what if I created another version of that? And I had been looking at the name and I had America’s Best Restaurants. I thought, what if I created a brand? that was solely to help independent restaurants get exposure. America’s best restaurants.com. The idea is really simple and it talks about in the vivid vision is that the ABR Roadshow that travels and films right now is a product of America’s best restaurants. My ultimate goal in the next three years is they have 50,000 independent restaurants listed at no charge on America’s best restaurants.com. And what we do is we have a 10 point checklist. We don’t look at restaurants and say, oh, their reviews suck. They’re a terrible operator. There might be a reason their reviews suck. Maybe they fired the wrong people who had a good audience and they got bad reviews. We look at 10 items and if they check off at a score of 23 or higher, then they, in our mind, are a good operator. We then have a Zoom call with them to confirm they’re not a moron. And we say, hey, You’re listed, you’re going to be listed on americasbestrestaurants.com at no charge. And then here’s another option. We can come film your store. Yes, there’s a cost to it because we don’t have Coca-Cola sponsoring us. We don’t have a media. It costs me a lot of money to fly people all over the country, drive vans, put gas in them, feed people, and then of course, film and edit these products. But then the goal is another thing is I looked at what they do on cable. Who gets all the attention on the cable show, the cable channel? And so my vision was, what if we gave the attention to the restaurant? cable TV is dying. Everybody’s watching TV nowadays on their phone, on Facebook, on Netflix, on YouTube. And so we did something unique in that all of our shows. are marketed on the restaurant’s Facebook page. And then the show itself is broadcast on the restaurant’s Facebook page, tagging us so that they get the views, they get the likes, they get the comments. I was looking at one the other day. We debut four or five episodes a day because of our volume. And one of the restaurants the other day within five days was at 15,000 views locally, not nationwide, like 70 shares, 400 comments and 1000 likes. And That was another big aspect of this was I know media really well. And a lot of people don’t know this, but if you go back to a couple years ago when Diners, Drivers and Dives and shows like that at their peak, yes, they’re reaching a half a million people nationwide. That’s cool as ****. That is an ultimate ego stroke. I was on the History Channel, Food Built America. Really cool. Did nothing for business. For a restaurant, you’ve got 500,000 people watching you on a cable show. If you narrow it down, there’s 500 in your neighborhood watching it. If I’m a restaurant owner and I take my cell phone out and go Facebook Live on my Facebook page, I can reach 500 people like that and not have anything on a TV show. So our vision was how do we bring that TV show to the restaurant locally and help them elevate their presence, but more importantly, force them to tell their story. Tell the local people how hard this **** is, how the recipes are named after their grandmother who immigrated from Italy. We had a restaurant I talked to, it was about two years ago, and they told me the story, it was insane. Their mom and their dad, they had a picture of the boat that their mom and their dad came over with them as little babies from Italy. It was like just crazy **** you see in like history books. And I said, well, let me ask you a question. Your website’s got that picture in two sentences. Do you think your mom and dad deserve more than two sentences? And a lady like teared up. I said, they do. And I said, that’s the difference. Like, why am I eating at Olive Garden or your Italian restaurant? The consumer needs to know, they need to have somebody to fight for, they want to win with. And you’re local. And that is the best part about being a restaurant owner is being able to connect to be hospitable to your customers, but they don’t know what you’re going through. And so the ABR Roadshow under America’s Best Restaurants, that’s the vision.
It is amazing. I think most of my Mastery Plus members have had you out and your group do it. And the pop in sales, the recognition on the floor, hey, I saw you on. I like their TV stars. It truly generates this incredible excitement and this bond that, man, I know these people. This is my place. And I think it’s pretty amazing. And what you’ve built now with ABR, the website, is Now that is going to become where consumers go instead of a Yelp. And like you said, you have control of the message. It’s not, there’s no posting a comment. This is all the positivity. This is what we’re good at. This is who we are. This is how you find us. Like it is really amazing what you put together. And you know, I hope people appreciate that the marketing ecosystem you’ve created and you’re creating still as the vivid, your vivid vision, easy for me to say, talks about is going to revolutionize how people market and truly dial in trackable, affordable sales growth.
Let me give you one wild card in there. Let me give you one wild card that we have that I haven’t talked about a lot, but it’s happened. So With Driver, one of the reasons we’re excited about that as well is the ability to tie that and America’s Best Restaurants together because the missing piece with America’s Best Restaurants is yes, we do these a three month marketing campaign around our episode and we’re lending our credibility. When consumers see, like we’re not saying like this is America’s Best Restaurants. We’re saying we’re America’s Best Restaurants and this is a place you should know and go eat all the time. But consumers get excited over that. They’re like, holy **** America’s Best Restaurants is at Super Smokers. I got to see what this is all about. So those restaurants, almost all of them that I’ve talked to tell me there’s a pop. How much? I don’t know. How many customers? I don’t know. So what we’ve done within Driver, we’ve created a sub account called ABR Rewards and we integrated with Facebook Messenger with our system. And so the future is that by the next, like I say by October of 2024, depending on when you’re watching this, We’ll have ABR rewards live where every single America’s best restaurants.com listing and every single ABR roadshow visit will be connected to our integration in Facebook Messenger. So as people engage, like I had a restaurant the other day, 1800 comments on their 11 campaigns cumulative. If I would have had messenger hooked up how we do it to acquire data, I would have had 700 customers information. I would have had 300 visits. This restaurant would have had 20 grand in track full sales and a database. And so the next step to ABR Roadshow is hooking that up and then down the road, because not everybody can afford to have us come film the restaurant. We’re trying to make it as affordable as possible. We’re trying to make it to where it’s a no-brainer, but we understand that not everybody is cut the same way. But ABR, americasbestrestaurants.com is always going to be a free listing if you’re an independent restaurant that’s doing it right. And then we’re going to have upgraded features in there for small increments where you can have ABR rewards. That way you can have a really cool digital marketing program hooked up to your listing that you use on the back end. So we got some cool things that come out there. And it’s exciting because it’s exciting and stressful. I didn’t realize ABR was going to be a 29 person employee company back when I did it. When we started it, Luis was the only person that came on full-time. Luis and Ryan. Ryan was a videographer. Luis was a host. Austin was already working for me. David Schlatter worked for me already, and Doug worked for me. David, Doug, myself, and Austin just did two jobs for six months. Luis and Ryan focused on that. And I never envisioned and realized that we’d be sitting here now, like you don’t go down to a lower level of our headquarters here. There’s 6 professional editors down there with a giant server and all this fancy equipment. And then there’s just so much happening from the PR standpoint that it’s exciting and it’s nerve-wracking too because it’s expensive as ****. Like I told some other day, we’ve spent right around $13 million to do this show since June of 2021 and there’s $20,000 left to account for it. I mean, think about that. You talk about profit margins in restaurants.
Right.
13 million, 20 grand. I’ve obviously done something wrong, but we had to build something unique and we’re not funded by any, you know, venture capitalist or any major company. So the promised land is coming pretty soon and it’s exciting.
Well, I’m going to disagree with you on one case. I don’t think that it’s expensive. Now, if I’m a $300,000 sandwich shop, it doesn’t make sense to invest. Man, if you’re doing 850 or more a year, like it doesn’t make sense not to try and figure out how to get your crew out there because quite frankly, you couldn’t do it on your own. Meaning if I’m talking to you as a restaurant owner, you couldn’t do it on your own for what you’re paying for and have all this infrastructure already built and the website and the driving and the marketing goes with it. So I can’t highly recommend you guys enough to any independent operator. And more importantly, I think what I really was hoping as we talk on this podcast, is that they understand who you are, that you’re not a company. You’re Matt Plapp and your team and your core values, they’re all aligned together. And it’s truly magical what you’ve created and know that somebody cares. Like you built this company because you give a **** not because you saw dollars and cents. Heck, the last example you gave, you spent $13 million, you made 20 grand on that one project. That don’t make any sense, right? It’s because By God, you want to make a difference. And I just think that’s so important when you do business with people anymore. Too often we’re doing with these cold companies. Like you’re a human being. Your teams are incredible people and you care. And I think that really matters.
I appreciate that. And I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of great people that care as well. If I wanted to make money, I would have kept this company at two or three people because I was making a lot more then than I am now. And I’m not making money by any means across the company, but in the future, we’ll make a lot more. But that’s why the focus on my desk here, it says, become obsessed with driving sales. The front of this magazine, we named it. Like I didn’t want to be on the cover. I had Loisent from Nears. I had Dean from ViroBrew. I had like 3 people I gave my team and they’re like, no, it’s you. This is your vision. this is where we’re going. You’re going to take us here. And let’s get to that level. And it’s wild. I want to end with one thing on this. is the back page I made like, because I made it a magazine intention. Like I mentioned, the back page is an advertisement. And it is our headquarters. The headquarters I want to build in the future. And it’s got insane stuff in here, like a massage room, a coffee lounge, a library.
I’ve had pickleball court. You got pickleball court on here.
And so I’ve already, we just published this four days ago. We did a rollout where we overnighted it to every employee in a sealed envelope. The employees who were in the office had a sealed envelope. We did our Monday Zoom call like this and we unveiled it. I walked them through it. We then published it online and then a lot of our employees shared that post. The applications that have rolled in because, my gosh, I wish I had a place like that. I wish I had an atmosphere, the values of the company. They weren’t looking at what we were trying to do with the restaurant stuff. They’re looking at where they want to work. And I get people all the time that tell me, Nick Schaefer is a good example. He’s one of our guys in our sales team. He came here with very high credentials in the media production world. And I said, man, I don’t have a job for you here. He’s like, I don’t care. I want to work for Matt Plapp in America’s Best Restaurants. He’s like, I see what America’s Best Restaurants is doing. I believe in it. I believe in Matt Plapp. I’ve been following you for a while. Let me know when something opens up. I’ll take anything. He came in at our lowest position at $600 a week employee plus commission. This was last summer and he’s rose the ranks. But he came in because of the mission and me. And that’s where I think a lot of restaurants are failing is that they’ve got the hardest job in the world in my opinion. They’ve got personal guarantees out the wazoo. They’re probably most of them been telling their spouse next month, next month, next month. The biggest way to unlock success in the future, whether it’s building your team or building your sales is through you and your story. And that’s what people, that’s what a vivid vision is about. This is Matt Plapp’s vision. And some of it’s insane. Like the building is 48,000 square feet. Why 48,000 square feet? Because this other company I modeled it off as was 12,000. I said, screw, I’m going four times bigger. I don’t even know how big a 48,000 square foot building is, but I’m going to do it.
I have no doubt, my friend. I have no doubt. And I think that is a great summary of the beginning of our talk. that as an entrepreneur, we can learn and how important that vivid vision is, how important your team is, how important it is, by God, to dream, but to put it on paper. And I hopefully, I hopefully have the balls to do something similar. I’ve, you know, again, read the book. I believe in it, but it is major. What you have done sets you apart from any entrepreneur who Just anyone. And again, I think it exemplifies your company and I can’t give any more glowing recommendation or really scream the top of the rooftop how good ABR and driver is for an independent operator. And I don’t get any commission. I don’t get nothing. This is just we are friends. And more importantly, you take care of my members. I have member after member after member who, you know, sing your accolades. because this **** works. And I want to thank you for that. Now, I do want to say if somebody wanted to contact you and learn more about what you guys do, how would they do that?
Okay, I want to give you three quick URLs, not to give too many, but these are easy. I want people to get a copy of the Vivid Vision. They can go to mattplapp.live/vv. That’ll take you to a blog post on my website, mattplapp.com. And there’s a digital version of it. And you can e-mail me from there to get a free copy. We’ll mail the copy out because I want people to see this and go, holy crap, I need this. Like, you know, Loyce, Loyson from Nearest Tavern. I had Avery is working on his. I’ve had so many people that saw my vivid vision and they’re creating their own. I want them to bind what we’re doing, but more importantly, I want them to see what the opportunity is. So head there. And as I mentioned also, where that blog post is going to live is mattplapp.com. That is my URL. I have a daily blog I write on there. There’s links to my daily podcast. I’m on episode 698 right now. So I’ve been doing that for a while. And I pull this microphone every day and talk about marketing, lifestyle, things of that nature. And then last but not least, from a business standpoint, restaurantmarketingthatworks.com and that’ll take you to a page with me talking and there’s a link below to Driver and America’s Best and the podcast and the blog. So mattplap.com, mattplap.live/VV for the Vivid Vision and then Restaurant Marketing That Works to see what we’re doing and hopefully come on the journey with us.
I really appreciate it. I hope everybody goes out and searches all those URLs and just spams you to death so they can learn. With that said, I want to thank you for doing this. If there was one last thing you wanted to share with people, what would that be?
Mind, body, and spirit. You have to become unbreakable mind, body, and spirit every day. As a leader of your company, you have to work on yourself to make you stronger mentally. You have to work on your body to make yourself stronger physically. And then you have to be a better person. And trust me, I know that. My wife got me this cup holder from my desk to remind me not to be * **** *****. And we have to become better people. And so I think as leaders, we fail to realize the impact we have on the people around us. Our words carry a lot more weight. The people around you look up to you. You’ve got to become the best you can be.
Matt, I think that’s awesome way, you know, as a mantra to live by, I hope I can live up to it. I appreciate you and we will do this again, I’m sure.
Love it. Thanks, brother. Appreciate you having me.
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.coach forward slash talk dash to dash Ryan to schedule your call now. Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you 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 ***.