A Post Coronavirus Marketing Plan with Bruce Irving

Yeah. There you are. Bruce Irving here on the Restaurant Coach Facebook page. You know Bruce. Bruce and I go way back. How long we know each other since like, what, 1982. 1982.

No, I think we've known each other for at least the last five years, right?

At least five years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was introduced to you. I think you and I were introduced on like, maybe Chris Hill and Eric Restaurant. We were kind of being into like some sort of mastermind group, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Five years ago.

And then we've been like friends ever since. You've come to Boston. We met up. We've done a few live shows together. So it's been on your podcast.

You've been on my podcast? We've been on.

Yeah, yeah. I think we've done a dozen of these live shows on each of our platforms.

I think we have. I know. If people like that guy again. Oh, my God. Can they find new people?

I think you can. I think that someone made a.

Like a groupie following us around.

Yeah, no kidding, right? I think it's when you find someone that can share valuable information that can help your audience. And there's never too much. I always tell people to. On social media. Like, just because you shared something six months ago doesn't mean you can't reshare it again.

Exactly. That's the thing about social media. It's. It's a. It's a fast platform and you have to. You have to, you know, keep that content flowing out there.

Yeah. A Facebook post from. So it's, it's. What is it, March? April? It's April 5th. So a, a Facebook post from February is like a picture you took in 1982.

That's a good analogy. Right.

Like, it's happened so long ago in social media terms that everybody has forgotten about it until you go search your closet and you pull out a box with photos. You're like, I remember that photo.

Well, you know, I'm really excited because you know what tomorrow is.

Yes, I think I do.

At the launch of the Pizza Summit.

Woo.

I know.

I'm pumped for it. I'm excited for it. It's our first virtual Pizza Summit. And I feel like I named it Pizza Summit because it. My community is pizza folks. But. But yeah, it's going to be a lot of people like yourself, Donald, who are coming in and teaching sessions. And you're teaching three sessions. Thank you, by the way.

Yeah. And I, I've got. I mean, I've been blasting it out there. I have a Lot of people signed up and I know there a lot of people that are in the restaurant space, but I told them at first, you know, people were like, text, you know, text me back, going, well, it's a pizza summer. I go, it's not just about pizza. You know, Lee Cockerel, you know, from Disney. Come on, that's amazing.

I would say, would say 80% of our content is, you know, local, business centric, and then 20 is people who own pizzerias, but they still own pizzerias and restaurants, and they're not going to come on and share about how to make pizza. A couple are. I have three sessions. Three out of the 35 sessions we have are pizza related.

Yeah.

32 are just general, local business related. That if you're a local business owner, you're going to come and leave with some sort of idea or inspiration or motivation or tool or whatever.

Yep. I mean, it's gonna be awesome. I mean, the lineup is really impressive. And I'm, I'm impressed by you just how fast you pull this thing here. I mean, it was like, what, three weeks ago. You sent me a text going, hey, man, I'm thinking about doing this online thing. You in? I go, yeah, I'm in. And now here we are. Right?

I know. Well, so a little backstory about. Let me share this out to fill in the, Fill in the gap for me here, Donald. I go find this and share it on my platform.

Platform. Yeah. I mean, it's just amazing. And this, this is actually a testament about how the new economy has changing business. You have to be able to adapt, and the faster you can pivot, the better you're going to be able to jump out in front of people and capitalize on this. So this is a real testament, and this is a great example, you know, don't hesitate. If you hesitate in this new market, you're done. You have to be able to capitalize and move quickly because, I mean, yeah, you gotta be able to jump out there and don't be afraid. I mean, if it doesn't work, try something else. You know, I study nlp and that's one of the big kind of things we always say, if it doesn't work, try something else. Doesn't work, try something else. You just keep making adjustments. You use what they call sensory acuity. You see what's working, what's not, and you make adjustments to move closer and closer to your goal. The worst thing you do is just stand there and just not do anything. I always say to take no action is an action. It's just really stupid action.

So I. We have this in our industry. There's the event that happens every year in Las Vegas. And obviously with the coronavirus going on. Yeah, it was. It didn't happen. And I said, you know what? There needs to be something. Because I get a lot of emails from people not just that they didn't want to go because of the coronavirus, they genuinely just can't get to Vegas and. And go to the event regardless of what the scenario was.

Right. I mean, that's a long trip.

It is. Especially when you own a restaurant. You know, even like leaving your restaurant for two or three days or four days, even if you have the best team involved, still can be a little weary.

Exactly.

So I've always wanted to do this, but like everybody else, this kind of gave me the kick in the butt to really get it going and make it happen in a short period of time.

Yeah.

Well, I have to say, it was easy for me. It was all up to. It was all thankful to people like yourself, you know, Rudy, Mick, Tyler, Anderson, Lee Cockrell, all those people who I message really fast, and they're all like, you know what? I'll help you guys out. No problem.

I'll tell you right now, sometimes, and I know a little bit more of the backstory, sometimes when people kind of upset you, it's a good motivator.

It's true. Yeah, it is true. Like, there's another event happening the same time as us, and I know why they did that, but that's fine. I'm gonna live my life by letting those things motivate me to do good. Right. And to help others. And. Yeah, I don't want to bash anybody else, but I want to bash people.

But we can use this. Like, you know what? I'm gonna take this experience and I'm gonna re channel it, and I'm gonna put out something great.

Exactly. Just like.

Just like you.

You and I talked a lot about, like, how you can turn this whole scenario of what's happening right now in the world into a positive. As much of a negative as it can be. You can dwell on the negative or you can turn it into the positive and do those things you've always thought you should do or wanted to do.

Exactly. You know, I hate to say I've seen people just immobilized. I mean, just totally shut down. Yeah. Good friends that were very active on social media just totally. Just gone completely dark. I mean, just like, it's terrible.

Why do you think that is.

I think the fear has just overwhelmed them so much. And then what they're doing is just letting this kind of. It just paralyzes. Fear is the worst thing in the world because fear paralyzes people. It just causes you not to take any action. You were just in your head so badly. And here's the thing about fear. Fear, if you look at the. An acronym, it's false emotions appearing real. The other kind of an acronym for it is kind of F everything and run. But. But fear. Basically, here's the thing. Fear is a survival mechanism. We have fear for one reason. Remember, you have that. You know, you've all heard about this. That fight or flight response. Yeah. It's wired in our genetics and our DNA to basically fight or flight. So when fear kicks in, sometimes you're just. People are just. There's just. They're just in fear and they just like totally just shut down and you just can't rationalize. Now if you let it overtake you, it's going to really. It's going to disempower you and it's going to. It's going to crush your. Not only you, but it's going to crush your business too. The thing I always say about fear is fear just wants to be looked in the face and just said, you know what? I see you there. I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to protect me, but I got this. That's all you got to do. And then take some action and move forward. Yeah. To be recognized.

I. I always find my. Like, I. Everybody's motivated differently. My motivation is always when someone either obviously challenges me or thinks that I can't do something. Nothing motivates me more when those two things happen.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Tell me I can't do something. I'm all in.

You know, you tell me I can't do something. If it's realistic, consider it done.

Game on. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you put. Throw the gauntlet down, that's it. No, you can't do that. What? Okay. Right. It's on.

Just a matter of time.

Yeah. So who are you excited about at the pizza summit? Speaking. I'm inspired for. I'm. I'm really excited about Lee because he was a great podcast guest on your. On your episode.

So I'm excited about Lee.

I love.

I like Lee's. He kind of reminds me an older version of you. Like, no, no, nonsense.

Like. So wait, wait. I have. I have the possibility to be like Lee Cocker when I get Older?

I think so. I think he reminds me a little bit of you. If you listen to the podcast that I did with him.

He's.

He managed so Lee's career. He was in charge of the Marriott resorts and then he went to work for Disney, the Disney company and he opened Disneyland Paris. He was in charge of the whole process of opening that, hiring all the employees, setting up the restaurants. And then once he did that, he moved over to Walt Disney World where he managed 45, 000 employees. And he always had this no nonsense approach, like there's no motivating employees. You find motivated people and you find roles that they thrive in. And that's his philosophy and your time. He is all creating a good culture in your business and making sure that people are happy. And he's not like one of those bosses that runs with fear, but he's an old school kind of operator and I like that Italy. And it's always interesting to hear his perspective when it comes to how he manages and builds teams. Because in Disney, I don't know if you know this, but Disney has a bazillion restaurants that they're in charge of on a daily basis. That Disney World, the Disney World company probably feeds more people than the average city when it comes to restaurants on a daily basis. They probably have a hundred restaurants just in Walt Disney World alone. Yeah. So they have the same things that go through our head when we're running a restaurant go through their whole thing as well as managing hotels and yeah, everything else that goes along with resorts and theme parks. So it's. It's pretty interesting to get. Be able to pick his brain. I'm excited about that.

Yeah, I'm excited about that one. What other ones you looking forward to?

I. I was actually. So I got a sneak peek. So as the person who's putting on the Pizza Summit, I get the advantage of seeing all of your guys sessions. That's probably not proper English, but I'm not an English major ahead of time so I get to watch all of the sessions from you guys ahead of time. So I've literally watched your session. I've watched Rudy mix. I've watched Ali Bloyd who's talking about local business advertising. I've watched Roger, I think his last name's Bodine from Restaurant Rockstar. You know who that is?

Yeah, I know Roger.

He did a session on like creating incentives for employees and how to get them motivated in helping you sell. There was also another session from. This is probably my. One of my favorite speakers at the session. He's a plumber. His name is Roger Wakefield. He's a plumber. And he's. He's built his business in the last two years to quadruple in sales by using YouTube in LinkedIn.

Wow.

And when you think of a plumber, you would never think of them being able to use YouTube and LinkedIn to grow their business, but he's done it. And his session is all about how he did that.

Oh, that's really cool. I'm gonna have to tune into that one now. Yeah, that's a good insight, because now I'm like, oh, that sounds amazing.

Here's exactly what he did on YouTube, exactly how he networks on LinkedIn, how he uses SEO for his YouTube videos. He has 30, 000 subscribers on YouTube as a plumber.

Are you serious? That's crazy. Yeah, I Wish I had 3, 000 subscribers on my YouTube channel.

I have, like, nothing. I said, roger, I'm embarrassed that I know you as a friend and I have no, like, 500 subscribers on YouTube, but I haven't really taken it seriously until I'm going to now. After watching his session, I'm like, I'm taking it seriously.

You know, I find what you focus on gets, you know, whatever you put your attention on gets, like, more results. So. So, like, I would probably, you know, maybe five years ago, I. I kind of dabbled around with Twitter back then, you know, it was like everybody else I got on because everyone said, you gotta get on Twitter. So I got on Twitter, but I didn't really do much with it. And then finally I just said, you know what? I'm gonna conquer this thing. I'm gonna learn how to make Twitter my, you know, B option, you know, And I just jumped in. And now, you know, I've got over 4,000 followers, and I get actually a lot of leads off Twitter. Yeah, my writing gigs, you know, Foodable tv. Paul Baron from Foodable, he actually first contacted me through Twitter.

Really? You do a great job on Twitter, I have to say. You use Twitter really well. I'm not as great on Twitter, I would say. My. My thing's probably podcasting. I do. I went heavy in, you know, Facebook Live and live video and then Instagram. I went heavy in, like, a couple years ago.

Yeah, yeah, I've been. I've been going more. The podcasting is great. I mean, the podcasting has been awesome for my business. My number one lead generator is the podcast.

I think no matter what business you're in, like, what business you're in podcast is a great way to share your knowledge and build your network.

And if you're a pizza place or a restaurant, live shows like this are, are awesome. I have a, you know, I have a restaurant in South Dakota. I'm gonna give a shout out to them. Nona's Kitchen, South Dakota, now they're shut down. But, you know, Nona, her name's Nancy. She, you know, she was real hesitant about going on live. You know, she's a people person, though. She's really outgoing. She's really extrovert. And she was really, like, scared about going online. I said, just do it. Just like, you just, you know, again, this whole thing, we had to shut down some restaurants. You know, people aren't seeing you on a normal basis. You got to stay that connection. You got to keep that out there. You got to keep out there with your guests, with your family, with everybody. Just let them know that you're thinking of them. And so I, I pushed her a little bit to get on, to start doing some Facebook lives. And she's been doing some cooking stuff at her show. Yeah, okay. This is like a shout out. She gets more people watching her show live than I ever do. 50 people online streaming watching her live, and tons of comments. I mean, she's doing great and she's like a real natural. And now she's, like, really getting into it. Now she's like, now she's like, oh, all right, tomorrow. Then she, like, calls me, like, last night, like, at midnight. Okay, tomorrow for the show. I'm thinking about doing this, and this sounds great. Do it, Nancy. Do it, Nancy. But now she's, like, into it. And I'm telling you, live streams are a great way to connect with people.

And the cool thing about live streams is, you know, especially if you do it on Facebook or Instagram, like we talked about earlier. And if you do a live stream, especially on Instagram, it's gone in 24 hours. If you do it on Facebook in two days, three days, nobody's going to go back and watch that again.

Yeah.

So you could literally be horrible. And you will be horrible. Like, if you go back and listen to my first 10 pot, don't do it, by the way. But if you do, they will.

Horseshit. Oh, my God. My original podcast was so bad, I think I recorded it on my phone. I, I, I think I clipped some, some stock, some stock video or some stock music from like a, from a university music site. I clipped that. I did this taco. It was, it was horrific. It was so Bad.

I.

Like I said, I'm embarrassed, too.

You only get better by doing it.

Yeah, that's what he does. And you get more comfortable doing it, too.

I think I showed.

Yeah.

I've been doing a live show every morning for the last two. I think it's like 15 or 16 days in a row. I'm gonna go keep doing it until this whole Corona thing is over. So May 4, maybe. But I shared a. A screenshot of my very first live show on Facebook. I think it was either 2015 or 2016, and it was horrendous. The lighting was bad. The background was terrible. My camera was really bad. It was just awful.

Yeah, I didn't even. I used to do a lot of live shows. Remember? We used to. You and I. And then we get Mike under. We get. We get Andrew Carlson on there. We do this layoff live shows all the time. It was crazy.

Back when there was Blab. Remember Blab?

Oh, yeah. Blab was in. And then there was. What was that other one we did? There was another online service we used. Now I'm using, you know, Stream Yard now.

Yeah.

But. Oh, Doug. We talked to Doug yesterday, and he was on the show, on my show, and he said, you know, he wants to let you know his. His sub. His session's coming over today, Bruce. Don't worry.

All right, send it over to me, Doug. I'm gonna promote it tomorrow morning on my Facebook Live.

Yeah, well, you know, Doug was like. And I was like, did you send over your recording? He goes, send it over. I thought it was. So we're doing it live. I go, no, you send it over to Bruce. He has to upload it. Oh, no.

So I did a mixture. I wanted to. The thing about the. So here's my thought process into doing this whole summit, because there is a couple pizza things happening. But what I am in the middle of is I have the ability to be in two kind of worlds. I'm in the marketing world, and I know a lot of people, like, who speak at social media Marketing world. And then I'm also in the restaurant space, so I get to draft from both of those pools. So I think there's people who are good presenters and can give a good presentation that's recorded, that's entertaining, educational, and informative without having to be live. And I think some people are better live and they're not meant to make slides. So I want to do a mixture of both. I wanted to be able to do. All right. Pre recordings where people can just, like, focus and Educate and then live Q&As with people who probably wouldn't put together the greatest slideshow, but they're better answering questions and you showing up in the moment.

Yeah, I think my presentations are a mix. I mean, the one I did, the higher attitude, that was just me talking over slides, my menu design ones. Me next to a TV doing like a presentation. Like I'm in front of a group. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like. You do a great job of doing that. You have definitely the ability to be alone and give a presentation where you can educate and not it not be boring.

But that's where you. That's where practice comes in. You learn how to modulate your voice.

Yeah, I'm not the best at that. I'm much better live than I am recording a session. Like, you're.

You're super. You're. You're really great live. Sometimes I stutter on my words when I'm live.

But yeah, I mean, so do I. Do I use the wrong words all the time?

Yeah. We. Again, practice, though.

Yeah, exactly. Practice makes perfect. So I think it's a good mix. And I wanted to. I wanted to showcase people that maybe you haven't heard of. Like Roger Wakefield.

Right.

Like no one has heard of in the restaurant world. Roger Wakefield. But he's got a such a vast amount of knowledge that you can use in your restaurant or your business about YouTube in LinkedIn. But you'd never hear about them if you just hung out with the people you hear about all the time in the restaurant space.

I've never heard any plumbers, you know? Yeah.

But I'm telling you, you check out his channel, like, Dang, dude's got 30, 000 subscribers and he talks about poop in a toilet.

Nice. That's funny. Yeah. So. Oh, I want to. I want to share a little story. So, you know you've heard of Giada, right? Giada de la Renta? Yes. Yeah. So, you know, she was actually terrified to going on camera.

Really?

You first started. Yeah, when she first kind of got this idea about doing this. And now you see her on camera now you're like, there's no way. Like, she's so natural. So she. What she did to get over this fear. She had her brother. You know, this is like when they had those little. Remember those little handheld cameras?

Yes.

Yeah, she. She had her brother, basically. She got him a handheld camera and she just told me, follow me around for days and just always be in my face with the camera. He was just like, followed around all the Time just always, like, interface with the camera and just had her talk to the camera to the point where she got so comfortable of the camera being around. It just felt like talking to somebody else. And that's what I tell you too. When you're looking at the camera, just act like you're talking to one person. Yeah. Yeah.

It's so funny how people get so flustered. Soon as, like, you could lit. I've literally had a conversation with someone about exactly what they need to do on video, in person, in front of them, and they're totally fine. They reenact it. They do it fine, and there's no difference. But the fact that I hold up.

My phone and then they flip out.

Totally horrible. You're like, you just did it. They only difference is my arm is raised and I'm holding a device.

Yeah.

There's no camera flashing at you or light on or a red light.

Oh, you wouldn't even know it was on if I didn't. If, you know, if I didn't tell you I was recording.

Totally.

And then people get so concerned too, about how they look. Ah, you know, my hair. You know this. I maybe I know I don't look. I don't feel I look Right. I'm gonna tell you right now, people don't care how you look if your message is good. Yeah.

Even if they do, who cares? Like, somebody said something to me on my live show. So my head, right. I've short hair, but my head. My scalp is kind of weird. I have like these bumps.

Like.

And like, they go. Yeah, well, no, no, no. Someone didn't say anything about the bumps in my head. But they said something like, they. They put a. They put us. They put a comment like, who cut your hair, bro?

Who cut your hair, bro?

And I was like, I just deleted it. I'm like, you know what? If. That's what you gotta if. If you're going through your feed and your life is so great that you gotta comment on somebody else's haircut that you don't even know. Like, I don't need to talk to you whatsoever.

Yeah. Really.

Nor do I care what you think. So just. You're gonna have stupid people out there who leave random comments. But you gotta think of the 99 people who like your content and not the one person who leaves a stupid comment.

Exactly. And we'll put a link in the show notes too. But Pizza Summit kicks off tomorrow. You still can get on.

Yeah. Free.

This is. Yeah, it's free too. You can use the code what code do you want to use?

Use your code. Whatever. I gave you one, right?

Yeah, it's, it's. My code is Pizza Summit DB yeah.

Pizza Summit DB Free content. So it starts tomorrow? Tomorrow it starts at 10am Eastern time. And every, there's a session every hour.

Until 7pm we always make a joke, Bruce. I'm in this mastermind group for a long time. We used to always make the joke when Bruce says Eastern time. We used to always make the joke.

Because that is true.

Bruce always like, oh, when we explain times, I'd say 11am like, you know, like today the show's on at 11. I say, Bruce, like what time? I go 1. 1pm Bruce time. Because.

Yes, that's the only time zone I know.

It's the only time. Bruce time.

So 10:00am Eastern time. So 7:00am West Coast, 8:00am Your time, Donald. Right. Is that 8 or 9? 8.

8. 8. Yeah. 10:00am Is 8:00am My time.

All right, then all the way till 5 for you. So 5:00pm Is the last session and then how it just works is on the website. You'll see in the description a live Q A. If it's a live Q A, there'll be a zoom link that you can join us on. And then the recording after it's done will be placed back on the website. And if it's not a live Q A at the time it goes live, you just click on the link for that talk and the talk will pop up and you can just record it. And they'll be on demand so you can watch them even if you can't catch it Monday, you can go back on Thursday and re watch the session, which I, I almost can guarantee a lot of the sessions you're probably going to want to re watch.

Oh yeah, no, yeah, my menu design one. Now people have understand my normal menu design workshop. I do profitability designs usually like two hours, but I, I couldn't go two hours. So I actually condensed it down to it's like 45 minutes.

Well didn't you offer something like a free hour consultation or something?

Yeah, I have a two hour consultation we're giving, I'm giving away.

So yeah, so I mean that's worth the, that's worth. I mean the ticket's free, so it's obviously worth that.

Oh yeah.

But all the guys too, like you, Rudy, Alberto, Alberto from Forza Pizza. My friend Alberto who runs Forza is a pizza website. He's giving away like a couple T shirts if you like, to a couple winners who watch seminar. There's a whole bunch of goodies that you get just by showing up.

Yeah. And then also too, on my profitable menu design workshop. I have a link now on the, on the website, on the, when they take the, when they do the session, can we put in links in there for them?

Yeah.

Okay. Because I gotta send you a link because I have some bonuses in there for my profitable design menu workshop. They actually get. I have a book I wrote. It's like an 87 page menu design bible that they'll get part of the workshop.

That's awesome. I think everybody needs to work on their menu. I get that question a ton.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

And I, I also, I retailer this one too. A lot for pizza places too. Cool. And I, I called out, I, I gave a great example for our buddy Spiros over at Easy Pie because, man, he does it right. I'm telling you.

He took your advice too when we went there. So we did a live show there with Spiro and you, you, like in person. Kind of redesigned his whole menu for him and he listened to you. He really did a good job of re.

Yeah.

Maneuvering it.

Yeah. And I love doing those things, like on site. That's one of the things I do love is like when you're there in person with someone, you can have their menu right in front of you and you can actually just, okay, you know, move this over here, do this over here and stuff like that. But yeah, it's gonna be great. And I'm really excited to the pizza summit. So.

Yeah, Tuesday is more of a Q A day, I think there's like eight Q A sessions happening Tuesday, so that's going to be a busy day. And then Wednesday we wrap it up with a few more mixture of both.

Yeah, that's gonna be so awesome. I can't wait.

And you said you're gonna be doing something like this soon maybe too, right?

Yeah, actually, yeah. You're actually a speaker at it, so. Yeah, you inspired me, you know, to do a, do a, an online summit too. So I'm doing one and you can. Here, I'll show you the ticker for it. It's gonna be called Conquer the C19 Online Restaurant Summit. We're gonna be doing it May 17th to 19th. I've got 20 speakers lined up from five different countries, three different continents. Wow. I got speakers from around the world. I got speakers from Spain. I got speakers from the Ukraine. I got somebody from Peru. I've got you on there. I've got some, I got some James Beard award winners. I got Craig Shelton, James Beard award winning chef. I've got Kevin Boehm who runs a Bokeh group out of Chicago. A James Beard Award winning outstanding restaurant tour from last year from the James Beard Award. He's gonna be on there. I've got Liam Fom from Houston. She's a mindset and peak performance expert. I've got on my, He's a huge entrepreneur. He's, he's really kind of reinvented a lot of the concepts in Houston. He's going to be on. It's going to be really, really awesome.

That's interesting.

And of course I got the, you know, my standard kind of, I got, you know, I always say I got kind of like the gang, you know, I always got you.

Yeah.

I always got, you know, Kelly Jones from Kelly Hospitality. He always usually accompanies. I got Ava Ballerin from Spain, she's the host of Hospitality Innovation Planet. She's, she's going to be on. I got Ramon Dios from Spain also too. He's another great consultant. Going to give kind of a global view. And of course I got Andrew Freeman from Andrew Freeman & Co. Out in San Francisco. So it's going to be a really, really great show. And then I got my, my new, my partner on my new business called KPI Mastery Restaurant KPI Mastery, we have this new program we're doing. It's going to help restaurants kind of really manage their KPIs on a daily basis. Darren Mansari, he's going to be on there and he's going to give this real in depth Overview on what KPIs are, how you can measure them, manage them. And we're also going to give like a free kind of let people kind of, you know, get a jump on our beta program with restaurant KPI Masters.

Oh man, I should have had him come on mine.

Yeah, he just, he just basically got back from traveling a bunch.

So I know we this month, this last probably three weeks, in the next eight, no traveling for me.

And then also too, we got a really special speaker. We got his son, Matt Mansari. This kid was, we talk about, this kid's going to talk about adversity and overcoming extreme adversity. Kid was a professional wakeboarder, right? I mean signed up for Nike and traveled around the world performing at the highest level of sports when it got slammed into a wall on a really bad accident. I mean, broke so many bones in his face they had to put plates in his face like that. So you think, okay, that's tough right there. To come back from that, right? Yeah. Then decides that his calling is to go into the clergy and become a. And become a priest, and he wants to, you know, follow that. And then he's working at his church, helping trim stuff, trim trees and stuff like that. Hits a power line, gets executed, puts him into a coma for like months. Burns like, probably a huge portion of his body. They want to like amputate his arms and legs. His parents say, no, we're not going to do that. You know, we have faith he's going to come back. You know, they're positive people. I mean, super positive. Darren and Nancy are super positive. He's going to come back. Kid comes back better than ever and now he speaks around the world talking about how to overcome adversity. He's going to kick off the conquer summit, so real excited about having him on too.

Amazing story.

I mean, it's amazing.

He's fine now.

He's fine. Yeah. Usable all his arms and legs. I mean, super positive. Really a great kid.

Imagine that. You have nothing to complain.

I mean, I guess I look at people in their 30s as kids. Like, you know, he's not a kid.

Really, but I know he is to us, though.

He is to us. Yeah.

I just think people like, when you hear stories like that, you should look yourself in the mirror and be like, you know what, as long as you're healthy and your family's healthy, yeah, business can stink sometimes and they can be adversity there. But as long as you're healthy and you can wake up in the morning and still live your life without having any physical setbacks in your family's fine, then you can figure anything out.

That's one of your things.

You say, everything's figureoutable. Where's my shirt?

Where's your shirt, man?

I don't have it on today. Yeah, what am I saying? Everything is figureoutable. YouTube business, you know, anything you want to figure out. If you're willing to put in the time and put in the work or ask the right people, anything's figureoutable.

Yeah. You know, I'm a huge Tony Robbins fan and Tony Robbins big thing is it's not lack of resources, is lack of resourcefulness.

Totally.

You have the right, if you know, right attitude, you know, right passion, right mindset. You can again, you can figure it out. You can find the right people. You can find people to help you.

Yeah, 100%.

So this coronavirus thing has really wiped out a lot of restaurants. What do you think for marketing right now? What's the number one thing people should focus on.

I think people should focus on showing up every day. Honestly, I think that's super important. Especially so the category that I'm in, quick service, pizza takeout, They've kind of pivoted and been able to survive, and some have thrived because everything else is closed. Right. They're the only option available. But there's a lot of people we work with that are closed and they can't open. And they're. They're thinking to themselves, like, how do I market in the conditions when I don't have a business to be. To be open? And I. I think like you mentioned earlier with that lady you mentioned, showing up every single day is very, very important. And it doesn't have to be like selling your restaurant. It could be talking about the community. It could be interviewing people.

Exactly.

It could be showing people how to do things that you do inside your restaurant. Think about your customer who's home right now, can't leave their house, probably have kids at home who aren't in school, bore out of their minds. Like, what can you do to teach them something, make them smile, show them some insights into your business, and just be there. So that way when it is over and everybody can go out, they remember that, hey, you showed up every single day. And I didn't forget that.

Right. You were there. You were there for me. Yeah. No, you have to. This is the biggest time, remember? And here's like a little inside tip. The trick about social media is to be social. Yeah. You know, so I'll give you a.

Little tip about our show. So I do a live show every morning, and my goal, and anybody who's has a restaurant or any kind of business can take this as an example if they want. So what I do is I get questions like you, Donald, all the time through email, through Instagram, through Facebook. So what I do every morning is I'm going to take three to five questions, depending on how long those responses are going to be. And on my live show every morning, I've been doing this for two and a half weeks now.

Right.

I'm going to answer those three questions at least now I always get more questions when we're live. And I always share a little bit about our Pizza Summit, and I always share maybe an article or two that people in our industry can kind of go learn from and get some insights, too. But what I do is I'm showing the reason I go live every morning is it holds me accountable, makes me show up every Single morning. At 10am Because I know people are counting on it. And that's my one piece of content. But then what I do is I record that one piece of content, which could be. It's usually about a 30 minute live. I record it and download it, hand it to our team and what they do is they'll take two to seven pieces of content out of that one video that I did to repurpose on other platforms later. So I'm getting, you know, two to ten pieces of content from one 30 minute session I do every single morning.

Yes.

Over the course of a week. That's a hundred pieces of content just from doing a 30 minute live every morning, which you can do as well.

They call it the Gary V. The.

Gary V. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just use it as they just have like bullet points of things you want to talk about or make sure you have a little bit of structure in the beginning so you, if nobody shows up, you can still have a few things that you want to talk about and use it as the time to record that thing you wanted to record and then download it and then you re reuse those examples on other platforms, on Instagram, on Facebook, again, on LinkedIn, on Twitter.

Exactly. Yeah. If people want to connect with you, the best place to find you is@smartpizza marketing.com your podcast, Smart Pizza Marketing.

Yep.

Another podcast too. Local business.

Yeah, the local business podcast. We just started that earlier this year. That's actually a really good one. So the Smart Pizza marketing, we talked to a lot of pizza operators, how they're doing their business, what they're doing. That's marketing the local business podcast. I have guys like Michael Stelzner, the founder of Social Media Marketing World, Marcus Sheridan, who is a sales leader and a trainer on. And it's not so much local businesses, but it's people who teach things. Like Roger Wfield was a guest and teaches how local business can use specific things to grow their local business marketing.

Very cool. Yeah, so check out those things. They're both available on itunes. Spotify, right? Yes.

All those platforms anywhere you listen to podcasts.

What's your Most popular platform? ITunes. Spotify.

I'd say itunes for sure. Itunes is where we get the most of our downloads. And I'd say Spotify is getting a close second.

Yeah, for me, that's my top one. Top ones for me is itunes. And then second one, Spotify Cashbox is.

Another one that people use a lot of.

I haven't even heard of Castbox.

Yeah, they get a lot, a significant amount of Downloads from Castbox, believe it or not.

Oh, wow. Cool.

Yeah, yeah.

And if people want to join my Restaurant Coach nations of my private Facebook group, just head on over. You can you just find it? Restaurant Coach Nation. I'm like, a lot of people. Just answer a few questions. I try to keep the riff raff out.

There is a lot of riff raff. I have five. So I have a Facebook group too.

Yeah. 500 people. 500 people.

Yeah. Well, I asked a question. I don't want any marketers in there selling their crap. I want it to be all valuable.

Yeah, yeah. That's one of my rules for Restaurant Coach Nation because I have a. I have a mentorship program. So if you didn't know, Restaurant Coach Nation has a free mentorship program. I have people that signed up. I have like 20 people that sign up to be mentors.

What is the mentorship program? Explain that to me.

Basically, it's an eight week program. People can sign up to be a mentor. And actually Facebook has this thing already built into the groups and it takes them through like a series of questions. And every week you have a question to answer and you meet up with, you know, with your mentor online and you go through some stuff and it's a nice little program, but it gets people at least somebody to talk to and get some. Some kind of action plan going about getting unstuck from where you're at.

Yeah.

So Restaurant Coach Nation, I've got, you know, we've got quite a few people in the mentor program, and I've got like 20 people that are world class consultants, experts. So it's really. It's really a cool thing.

That's awesome. I should check that out.

You should start a mentor program on yours. I'll. I'll sign up as a mentor on your.

Yeah, I definitely will. Definitely got to look at that because I. I've heard you talk about that before, but I wasn't sure what it was.

Yeah, it's built right into Facebook. You can. You could activate a button and it just says mentor program. It's pretty cool.

Oh, I'm gonna go check that out.

Yeah. All right. So, Bruce, thanks so much for stopping by today. Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

Words of wisdom for people about this coronavirus.

Oh, man. I don't know if I have any words of wisdom about the coronavirus, but I know that it'll be over hopefully soon. And, you know, I don't know what the new normal is going to look like, but I do know this, that people will remember what you did. And what you said during this whole thing. And they will remember it long when it's over. Because nothing like this has ever happened to anybody who's alive.

Right.

So you're going to talk to your kids 15, 20 years from now about what happened back in the year 2000 when we were all stuck in our house for three months during the coronavirus.

Yep. No. And people are going to look back and remember those who helped them get through it.

Exactly. So show up.

Show up every day.

Yep.

Again, thanks so much. Check out the Pizza Summit. It's a Pizza Summit. What's the website?

PizzaSummit2020.com.

Pizza Summit2020.com. When you go in, just use my code. Pizza Summer.

You know what else I have? I also have virtual pizza expo.com.

Do you really?

I do.

Oh, that's awesome. That was a good score.

Virtual Pizza Expo dot com.

That's a good one.

Go to the same spot.

Score. Yeah. So again, it kicks off on Monday, goes to Wednesday. Three days. I mean, I think I had at the time I put this up there, 26 speakers. You got more than that now, right?

I think there's 27 speakers or 28 now and like, five sessions.

35 sessions.

Yeah.

Crazy. That's awesome. That's amazing. And it's super amazing for the short amount of time you pull this thing together. Only, what, three weeks, man, from.

Yeah.

Implementation. Boom.

Yeah. Anything can make. Anything is possible.

Everything is possible. So, yes, please check out the Pizza Summit. And if anybody has any questions again, feel free to email me, text me, message me, you got Bruce. Bruce is like, I am. There's no question. Just throw it out there and we'll be happy to answer it if we can.

So thank you, Donald.

All right. Thank you, everyone. Be safe out there. And remember, show up every day. It's all you can do right now.