Build a Successful Restaurant Just Like a House

Hey, welcome to the Restaurant Cooch podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. Today is day three of our three part series, how to grow your profits in 30 days. I am joined today by my partners at Restaurant Simplified, Pamela Lee and Darren Mansari. Welcome back. Boy, it seems like we've been doing this deja vu, isn't it?

Yeah, it does.

We were just here.

We were. And it's fun doing this three part series because we're covering so many different, you know, important parts of the business. That's great. I'm enjoying it.

Yeah. And so what today we want to, we're going to jump right into this thing is we want to kind of tie it all together. So, you know, day part one was we talked about mindset and habits. Yesterday we kind of talked about the three things that you really must do to grow your profits. And today we're going to kind of pull it all together. We like to use the analogy when we're talking to clients or prospective clients, we like to use the analogy that if you want a really successful restaurant, it's a lot like building, it's like building a house. That's the way we look at it. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to say, you know, and I'm going to go on a limb and say that building a successful restaurant is simple. Now we say simple, but it's not easy because if it was easy, we wouldn't have the high closure rate that the industry is well known for. I think the saying is for any restaurant that opens this year, within three years, 50% of them will be closed, which I think that's, that's terrible. And actually your, your odds get worse as you get in business longer because, you know, competition changes and stuff. And if you're not adapting, innovating, you actually become obsolete. And there's tons of big chains out there that have kind of seen the bad end of not being innovative, not adapting to the market, not adapting their systems, not, you know, not hiring better people. And it's, it's pretty bad.

It's true, you know, and I just want to comment on something you just said. And it just made me think, you know, the way you said it, you said building a restaurant is easy. And you know, there's probably so many people on this call that are like, what are you crazy? It's not easy at all. Like, I'm working my tail off trying to do this. But if you follow the processes and if you follow the plan and if you Follow the steps. It really is easy. Like, the best way I can say it is there is a formula to success. If you don't want to follow the formula, you're just going to struggle, struggle, struggle, you know? So, yeah, I just want. I thought of that when you said that, so.

No, it's true. And here's the thing. If you have a plan and you work the plan, it's. It's actually. It is actually pretty foolproof. But you have to have a. And I like to say you have to have a proven plan. And now having the plan is one part. Applying the plan is always a challenge. And most restaurants struggle because they don't really have a plan. They kind of make it up as they go. And I call that learning on the job. And I don't know about you, but when I was young and, you know, I was in the kitchen learning on the job, you know, because they didn't really have really great training systems back then. The learning curve was really, really steep. I mean, it took a long time to get stuff down, and there's kind of a cost for that. You have to put in a lot of energy. You got to put in a lot of time, and you're learning. A lot of times you're learning by mistake. Mistakes. And Darren and Pam and I are also huge believers that coaching and mastermind groups, they actually take all that knowledge that we have and it compresses it down, you know, And I don't know, I mean, between three of us, I think what we have like over 90 years experience in. In business, right?

It's something crazy like that.

It's crazy. I mean, 90 years of experience, 90 years of mistakes. I won't even. I won't even. I probably won't even live to 90. And I know Darren's gonna say, it's just a story you're telling yourself. Donald, as much as I like steak and butter, I. I don't know, I have to, like, clean up my diet a lot to make it to 90.

I do have to say Donald likes butter. If you ever go to dinner with I love butter. Yeah. Don't get shocked when you see him butter his brother.

Don't be shocked when. Here's the thing. I tell my friends, don't be shocked when they bring the bread and butter. And I say, you might want to bring more butter for them because I'm going to eat all that. Right. You just brought. Butter is just a. Bread is just a vehicle to get butter to my face. That's how I look at Bread. I really don't like bread itself. Butter. I just use bread to get the butter up to my face.

But most people butter their bread. Donald breads his butter.

I'm telling you, I'm telling you. You like a little bread with your butter. Yeah, I mean, I was that kind of kid. Like I remember when we were kids, I would like, you know, saltine crackers with butter. Yeah, like a whole stick of butter.

You know, not to sidetrack you here a little bit, but you know, when you talk about this slide on this plan, you know, you have to have a proven plan. You have to. I was 21 years old when I opened my first business and I had no plan. I was very skilled in automotive and the automotive field. And I was a great automotive technician. And computers had just been put into cars and computer programming background. So I had a degree as a computer programmer and then a follow up degree as an engineer with a minor in automotive. And I just loved cars. And we got this idea to open our first shop and it is a miracle that I survived those first five years or those first few years because I knew nothing about business. I just had a passion for the automotive world and I see that now in the restaurant industry. I see so many good people that have just a passion for cooking, a passion for the culinary arts, a passion for serving people through hospitality. And they open a business, they open a restaurant and then they struggle for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years because they don't have exactly what you're showing them here. The plan.

That was me. That was me too. I mean, I had been a chef for years, Award winning chef, won numerous awards, you know, and you know, next progression. Of course, like I always say, the dream of all young chefs is to own your own restaurant. Open your own restaurant. Yep, I did. And I thought, like everyone else, I'm gonna open the doors and people are just gonna throw tons of money at me. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna have to have an armored car pulled to the back of the restaurant to take all the bags of cash, open the door. It wasn't like that.

I think they call that the if you build it, they will come fallacy.

That's what I had. I had that kind of mindset. That was before, I think that movie came out with Kevin Costner. But I just had this like, you know, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm, I'm award winning chef, I'll open this restaurant, people will just flood the place. They'll just walk by want to take pictures with me? I'll be like a celebrity star chef. And. And no, it definitely. There's a big difference between running a restaurant and running a business or building a business is which I really learned, and I was very fortunate. And Darren will tell you the same story, is that he had a mentor, and I got a mentor when I was young. And this guy, this man was very, very success. And he really taught me the nuts and bolts of how to build a successful brand and how to build a profitable business. And I was. I mean, it really. It changed everything for me. It changed my life. And Darren has tons of mentors in his life. You'll hear a lot of stories, Uncle Clarence.

You'll probably hear some on this call. You know, they just come out. I don't plan for it. People say something. I'm like, oh, yeah, Uncle Clarence taught me that, you know.

But the first thing we always want everyone to do is we want you to be realistic about really where you are. And there's basically, there's four different stages of restaurant growth. Now. If you're looking at. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the slide. If you're watching listening to on the podcast, I'll explain it to you the best I can. So basically, think of this like a pyramid. And think of the pyramid divided into four equal sections at the bottom. Of course, I always say that's your bad restaurants or struggling restaurants. And how do I define a bad or struggling restaurant? Usually they're. They're breaking even or they're losing money. And just so you know, if your goal is to break even, you need a better goal. That's not a goal at all. Okay. The next level up from that is what I call the good restaurants. And those restaurants barely are breaking even or they're making the average profit United states, which is 6%. And I call these restaurants kind of surviving. Now, the next level up from that is what I call the great restaurants. And these are the restaurants that kind of stand out. They got a pretty good brand recognition, They've got a good following. They've got some really great things going, and they're making pretty decent money by now. They're making, like, anywhere from 7 to 15% profit at the very top of our pyramid. The fourth level is what I call outstanding. Now, these restaurants, they don't compete anymore. They basically stand out so far ahead of the market that they don't really have competition. These are the brands that are copied. These are the brands that people kind of go in and imitate. These are like the Chick Fil A's, the Danny Meyer Group restaurant, the Shake Shacks. These are like the Commander's Palace. These are those places that are just, you know, French Laundry. These are places that are just so out in front of their competition that everyone wants to be them. And they make usually a great profit, usually 18% or higher. So the first thing we want you to do is we want you to kind of be honest about where you really are. Are you struggling, which is bad? Are you surviving, which is the good level? Are you thriving, which is great? Or are you driving the market and out in front, which becomes outstanding. And just so you kind of get a clear definition of where everything's at. Remember, average restaurants are everywhere. I travel all around the world, and I've put this pyramid I just talked about. I put it to the test in every market I go to. It doesn't matter if I'm going to South America. I'm over in Europe, I'm in Canada, down Mexico, United States, anywhere in the United States. The. The pyramid always seems to play out the same way. It's just like. It's like Pareto's principle. 80% of the restaurants in any market are usually average or bad. And that's that 60% average and 20% bad. And right now, if you're. If you're. If you're a restaurant owner or operator or working in a restaurant, look around and see if that holds true. Look around some of the restaurants in your market right now and kind of be honest. Like, oh, yeah, I can see that.

Yeah.

And.

And, you know, sometimes when you look at this, especially with the restaurants that you mentioned as outstanding, right? These are like your Commander's palace restaurants, things like that. People might say, well, you know, Donald, I run an average restaurant. You know, I sell burgers and this, or I sell pizzas. Hey, I've been to some outstanding restaurants that only sell burgers and only sell unique, handcrafted pizzas. And so it doesn't matter. Don't equate average with, like, you know, just like an average restaurant. You could be in any category of a restaurant. You could have a diner. You could have, you know, hamburger and fries. You could have pizza, or you could have fine dining. And you could all be in that outstanding category where. Where people come and say, hey, I. I gotta get there to get one of those burgers, because they are just incredible.

I'm gonna say hashtag wtsd, which you've never hear me speak before when I say hashtag wtsd means write this shit down. Hashtag average is a mindset.

It is.

It's purely mindset. If you think you're average, you are average.

There's a place we go to in New Orleans to get po boys. And you know, if you looked at it from the street, you would say that's an average or below average restaurant.

Yeah. It looks like a dump. Right.

And the line is around the block, around the corner. Yeah. They are outstanding. And po boys.

Yeah. So average. Of course, when we're talking and we're working with clients, we always say average is not even. We don't even. We don't even. It's not. We even go there. Now, great is better than good. But we always say the danger is when you hit that great category, you think you've made it. And what happens when you think you made it? It's like you're in a race.

Yeah.

You relax, you know, you take your foot off the gas. I'm so far ahead of everybody. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna kind of kick back now, right?

Yeah.

So the only category that pays is you want to aim for that outstanding. Now, it's a small market. It's only 5%. Remember, only 5% of any restaurants in your market are outstanding. But to us, that is a worthy vision. There's going to give you an example of his restaurant.

Think of this, like getting in great shape. You know, there's people who can get in great shape. And then do they. Do they stop and say, I made it?

I mean it.

They don't stay in great shape if that's what they do.

The best shape of my life. Never have to go back to the gym again.

I exercised once. I did.

I went one time. It was great. I loved it. I'm good now. But like Darren. Darren. What? You have an outstanding goal, you know, and if people are just tuning into this for the first time. Darren and his wife Nancy own a restaurant in South Dakota called Nona's Kitchen. It's in Spearfish, South Dakota. If you're ever in the area, I hope highly recommend stopping by. But they have an outstanding vision and a goal. And share with everyone on the podcast today, what is your outstanding vision?

So my vision for my restaurant is I want to be the first Michelin starred restaurant in South Dakota. Okay. You look at Michelin starred restaurants around the country. They're on the coastlines a lot of times, you know, lots of New York, lots on the west coast, lots on the east coast. South Dakota. Nope. We're kind of like. And that's my goal, you know? And because our vision is such. And if you know what goes into being a Michelin star restaurant, everything has to be right. Okay? So it's not just the food. It's the food. It's the presentation, it's the recipes, it's the way you seat the customers. It's the way you set the table. It's the ambiance of your restaurant. It's. It's everything. You know, like, Donald talks about the bookends of success a lot of times, and that's what it is. Everything between those two bookends has to be right. So by holding that vision, I could go up to any one of our employees at any point in the dining experience or in the knowner's experience and say, hey, what just happened there? Do you think that's getting closer? Is that getting us closer to our Michelin star or further away? And that's all I have to say. I don't have to say any more. And they know exactly what I'm talking about, because they know the vision, you know? They know. Did you just get us closer to our goal or further away?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you got a whole division. Darren says all the time. Hold division. Hold division. Hold division.

Yeah. And if there are any people who work for James Beard, I would love one of your awards, too. Yeah, I'm not so focused on the Michelin star that I wouldn't be overwhelmed to accept the James Beard Award.

I didn't tell you. I don't think I ever told you this, Darren, but you know I'm a member of the James Beard Foundation.

Oh, you are so holding out on me.

I was gonna say we're just now finding that out.

Yeah, yeah. I'll get you hooked up, Darren.

Okay, you and I are gonna talk after this.

We gotta talk. I know I'm in trouble now. This conversation go offline, and it's not going to be good for Donald. So again, remember I said you have to have a proven path. We like to call. What we do is. We have a kind of. It's a three phase blueprint, and we kind of call it the 3F system. Okay. Phase one is your foundation, phase two is your framework, and phase three is furnishings. And I kind of joke that if you don't, if you fail to follow the first three Fs, there's a fourth F that you'll get that you don't.

Want, and we'll just leave it at that.

We'll leave it at that. I'm sure you can all guess where I'm going. If you've read my books, listen to my other podcast episodes, you probably know where I'm going with that. But the foundation. In the foundation phase, what we focus on are people, standards, and culture. In the framework phase, what we focus in is attracting the right team, having systems of accountability. And then we want to turn your menu into a real atm. We want that. We want your menu really maximizing your cash. And then in the furnishing area at last phase, where we really talk about is these are the little details that turn that good restaurant or great restaurant into an outstanding one. Here, what we dial in is we really dial in your marketing, your strategy, and your profitability, and we're going to walk you through each step one by one, so you can kind of understand how we do it.

Okay, I'm gonna stop you again for a second.

Sure, sure.

Because there is so much information that's just being given out right now. Like, these things could fly over people's heads and. And you're not realizing that. Like, we could talk for an hour about what Donald just said, and he. He equated your menu to an atm. And how many people on this call just answer for yourself, obviously. But how do you look at your menu? Like, is this just your recipes? Is this a necessary evil? Is this just your offerings for this season, you know, or this quarter or this year? Maybe you never change your menu, or do you really look at it as an atm, as a monetary generator for you? And, you know, we could. Like I said, we could unpack that and probably spend an hour just on that. But just realize that those words are so true. Your menu is an ATM for you.

It is. Exactly. And this is kind of like our blueprint. This is the restaurant success blueprint. Now, all of my coaching programs follow the same kind of path. And we start you off. If you look at. If you're looking at this thing, if you look at the visual part, it will start you on the left, which is, again, it's the foundation phase. And each phase, foundation, framework, and furnishings all has three different components to it. So we always start you off with strengths. You got to understand what your strengths are. You got to understand what makes you you, and you understand, what am I good at? What am I okay at? And basically, what do I suck at? Okay. And the problem with restaurant owners is that they're trying to do everything.

Yeah, yeah. Think of this as your differentiators, too. It's what are you good at and how are you different than other people? Hopefully there's some things that you're good at that some of your competitors are not good at that's going to make you stand out.

Right. And I think I'll use an example of our restaurant Simplified Team right here. You know, I'm, I'm. I love content. I love creating content. I love talking, I love writing stuff like that. That's what I'm good at. Data. I suck. Okay. But Pam is really great at that kind of stuff. Pam's great at going in behind the scenes, looking at the back end of our software, looking at the numbers, looking at our. Our Google Analytics and stuff like that. Knowing it, what, you know, where we need to do this and this to tweak that and stuff like that. And Darren's great looking at the big picture and saying, we need this here, we need this here, we need that there. I'm not a detail kind of guy. That's just not me. I'm like a big picture kind of vision, vision kind of guy. And Darren's like that guy who kind of. But between the three of us, we all have the components that necessary to move our brand forward. Same thing in your restaurant. Okay. If you're a people person, like Nancy. Nancy. I'll use Darren and Darren and his wife for an example. Nancy's a definitely a people person. She loves. But, you know, Nancy is so generous with people. She would pretty much give everything away if she could just come on in, have a seat at the restaurant. Have a seat. Let me go back in the kitchen. I'll make you some stuff. She would basically go back and cook for everybody if she could.

That's exactly right. She has that gift. You know what we call it in business, in a lot of businesses, we just say, what's your superpower? Are you working in that line? And my wife's superpower is clearly hospitality, right? That's what she's great at. And, you know, it's. It's so funny. I was working late last night, you know, last night was a late night on Zoom Calls, and I'm upstairs from my restaurant and kind of we're over our bakery, right? So we have a bakery next door to our restaurant. Our restaurants next door. And downstairs, the person I was on the call with, Zoom, we were working together, and they could hear my wife laughing downstairs, entertaining with the people. And I think this was even after hours, right? And people were just still here, still here, still here. And I got done working last night because, you know, I'm just under the gun for some projects. And it was kind of like midnight and I'm like, okay, I gotta go downstairs and see what's going on. And our restaurant closes at nine, right? So just get this in. And there she is with like a whole. Like all her friends are there and they're, they're laughing and they're having meatballs and they're drinking a little bit of wine. And, you know, it was just a great time, you know, and. And even though I was so ready for bed, I was like, I'm over. I'm ready to go home. I couldn't. Because I'm looking at. I'm looking at life. I'm looking at these people enjoying themselves. And you can't break that up. You know what I mean? Just so you join in and you sit there and it was probably one o' clock in the morning or later when I'm like, can we please go home?

And the reason Nancy and Darren's business works so well is because it's balanced. You got the passion for, you know, serving and cooking like Nancy has, and then you have the business side that Darren is really great at. And so because like I said, if Nancy had it her way, everyone could just come in a restaurant, sit down, she cooked for you all day, and just give everything away. She wouldn't charge you because she just loves to cook for people. Be like, you know, we need to make some money here. We need to pay the bills, we need to pay the rent, we need to pay for the food. You need to pay the staff. You know, all right, that's where, you know, understanding what you're good at and what you're not good at. And actually being honest with yourself is like, you know how I'm not good at data? You know, that's okay.

I'm going to make you laugh about what you just said, Donald, but we're doing a project for something that Pam is working on, right? This is a passion and nonprofit Pam works with, and we're going to work together on something. And she was on the phone with Nancy. They were discussing this. And I heard Nancy say something like, oh, and we'll do this. And Pam must have said, no, Nancy, you're not focused on the KPIs. Nancy goes. And I'm like, I love you, babe. Thank you.

Yeah, she.

She said, we just need to cover our cost for the alcohol. And I said, well, what about the food? And I said, you got to cover that too. And she's like, oh, I don't know. And I said, no, you got to cover the food or it's going to screw up your numbers. And I could hear Darren in the background. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. So, yeah, the strengths workshop is important because we. And we use behavioral assessments. We have some simple ones we use. We have some advanced tools. We do. But understanding your strengths is really cool. And then we move into culture. Culture, we find, is the definitive thing that separates the good, the great from the outstanding. Culture is everything. And we're going to take you actually through the recipe on how to create the culture that really will help you get to that outstanding level. Because right now you have a. You have. Everyone has. Every restaurant has a culture. And it's either two things. It's either by design or by default. And I'm going to say 90% of restaurants have a culture by default. Yeah, you didn't really have any. Any hand in creating the culture. And if you didn't have a hand in creating it, you kind of got Godzilla. It looks like it's a really cute little monster, and so pretty. Pretty. But then it's growing up now. It's eating the city.

So, you know, I've done a lot of work for a lot of businesses in different industries, too, and. And there's times where we go in to do some strategic planning and we say, tell us about your culture. And they say, that's a good question. Let's survey the staff and find out what our culture is. Because they have no idea.

They have no idea.

Certainly didn't craft it, which.

That'd be a question for you right now, you know, and. And you can. You can comment. I know, like on. On the. On the YouTube channel. You can make comments in the YouTube channel. A lot of times this will be posted on social media. In the podcast, you can make a comment, too. What's your. Give me one or two words that defined your culture. One or two, three words, max, that define your culture, that. Tell me about your culture. If you can't do it, you really need to take a hard look at your culture. And then the last phase of the foundation part is what we talk about. We look at your. It's kind of like your standard stabilizers. Most restaurants don't have established standards. They think they do, but they don't really have them. They're usually all up here, all up in your head, and they're not written down. And the first thing we always try to get people to do is get out of your head, get on the paper. So. Because that way, when it's out of my head on paper now. I can enforce it and I can discuss it and I can train people about what my standards are. And that's the first phase. That's just foundation and I know that's a lot. Right. So then we move into the framework and the framework part, we actually again, we hit three areas. We talk about hiring because who you bring onto your team is probably the most important thing ever. So we're going to show you how to attract, train and retain top talent. We're going to go into what I call as my restaurant track system, which I basically, we're going to give you accountability systems that you can use to hold your team accountable. Now, everyone in the world has some checklist. The problem is, is that you have the checklist but you're not using them properly. The restaurant track system helps you kind of get them all set up right way. Then in the menu maximizer, what we're going to do is we're going to, again, we're going to take your menu apart, we're going to see what's really driving sales and also what's really driving profitability. And then we're going to put your menu back together. And like Darren mentioned before, you should think of your menu like an atm. That's exactly what it is. And then the final phase, the furnishing. This is where basically, you know, the rubber meets the road. And this is where you really start moving towards that outstanding category. In this category, what we're going to do is we're going to really teach you how to market, and I mean market effectively. All, all restaurants post on social media. Very few, like less than 5% actually market. We're going to show you what the difference is between posting, marketing and then the restaurant map is our monthly tool that we have all our mastermind members go through. I have all my private client members, client, private coaching clients go through it. It's my monthly map. It's basically going to set you up for success each and every month because again, if you don't have a plan, don't follow a plan, you're just showing up hoping that you have a good day. And what do we say about hope, Darren?

Hope is, first of all, it makes Donald really mad. Hope is not a strategy.

It's not a strategy. And then the final phase of the furnishing, furnishing phase of our blueprint is we're going to take you into what we use and it's one of our, basically it's the heart of our system of the Restaurant simplified system. It's the KPI dashboard. Darren has spent years and years perfecting this thing. And it is, I tell you, when I first saw it, I'm not really a kind of a techie kind of guy, but stuff I, I fell in love with it if I could, if I could. I love that system so much. It was like, oh my God, this is a game changer for restaurants. And I told Darren, if we can get this thing fine tuned for restaurants, it would change restaurants forever. Because it's an easy to use system. Because I know from, you know, being in a restaurant business for so long, there's so many different softwares out there, so many different restaurant management programs out there that you can get a hold of, but they require a degree basically from MIT to be able to implement them. And you got to spend like three or four hours a day putting in the data. And then a lot of times they spit out data and you get these numbers and you look at the numbers ago. All right, now what do I do right? No one tells you how to fix, how to fix the data or what do I take this data, how do I interpret this data and actually turn it into real results. And that's where our program is really, really different, is that we're going to not only give you the tools, but we're also going to hold you kind of to the fire. And my mastermind group always kind of freaks out when I send it to you. Oh no, Donald just sent a text. What are we getting accountable to? But you know, that's my job. My job is to hold you accountable. So it all starts off with having a blueprint and we're going to use some real life stories here. So when Darren actually reached out to me and this is how Darren and I met, if he's the first time you're listening to the story, Darren and his wife decided to open a restaurant. They did some research on restaurant consultants. My name kept popping up because I'm like everywhere on this, on, on the Internet. And then they did some, they did some checking, they found out, you know, and then we had a call. And the thing that really impressed me about Darren is that he goes, yeah, I'll send you over some numbers. I've already, I've already run some preliminary numbers. I'm like, who are you? I, I, I think maybe in all my years I've met maybe three restaurant owners that actually had some preliminary numbers before they opened the restaurant. So I knew Darren was an anomaly, but I also knew he spoke my language. That he actually had kind of a. He had a blueprint kind of down already of what he wanted to do and what he wanted to create. So, Darren, talk about that a little bit.

Well, yeah, when we decided to open the restaurant, you know, we said, what's a really easy, highly profitable industry we could get into? Right? And no restaurants, Food service? No. My wife just had a passion to do this. We were actually ready to retire. We had made a decision that we were going to retire. And then my wife got this idea. It was something that's been on her mind, on her bucket list. Yeah, I'd like to open a restaurant. Okay, yeah, if you want to do that, let's do it. I'm okay with that, but, you know, I'm going to run it in my head. Okay. It's a business, right? So what's going to be my overhead? What's going to be, you know, my food costs. I did some initial research and I figured out, okay, food costs are supposed to be here and labor costs supposed to be here, but what would that look like? And what's a break even analysis? And if these were my projected expenses, and this is my projected food cost, or I mean, gas, check, average, you know, is this right? And I came up with these numbers that seemed realistic to me, but I've never done this before. Yeah, I work in business and I work as a consultant for 30 years and, you know, with a lot of businesses with numbers. But I said, you know what I need now, a professional to look at this and tell me, hey, either these. Where'd you get these numbers from? These are crazy. Or yeah, this isn't too far off, you're in line, and we just need to tweak a couple things. And that's when I started searching, you know, who's the best consultant I could find. So I found this guy who's associated with James Beard. His name's Donald Burns. Just found out he's associated with James Beard. And I called Donald and he said, yeah, email me over your spreadsheet. And I sent it over to him, you know, and then it was funny because he was like, yeah, I got these different programs to do and, you know, you could download this. And I have a library. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Just. Can't you just come here like. Like, I don't want to read all this stuff. Just come here. How much is it to get you here? How are you not on the plane already? And that was it. We got Donald here, and then Donald's Helped us from that startup to get the foundation set according to the blueprint. So first refine the blueprints. Right. And say, hey, this is good. But, you know, the way you have these blueprints lined up, lined up, there's a couple little things we have to make, and thank God we did, because imagine pouring your foundation and then finding out the blueprints were wrong and you're six inches over onto your neighbor's property.

Yeah.

Start all over again. That's what I didn't want to do. Right. So let's. Let's get the blueprints approved first and then start pouring the foundation, then start building the house.

Yeah. And blueprints are, you know, they're still a draft. I mean, you can make changes to blueprints. And Pam has a good story about, you know, tell, tell people when you're building your house. Pam.

Yeah. Actually looking at this picture, and I guess for those who are listening to the podcast, we're looking at a picture of a house. I guess this is a blueprint.

Yeah. House blueprint.

When we were building our house here in South Dakota, we had the blueprints. We picked out our. Our plan, and we were excited about it, and they laid the foundation. But then when we actually started, and we're skipping ahead a little because we're now talking about framing, but we. When I actually got into the house, when they started framing it, I walked through the master bedroom into the master bathroom. And I'm looking around. Everything looks awesome, exactly according to plan. But then I see the closet, and I'm not, you know, I don't have a ton of clothes, but this closet was not going to cut it. And so we had to. We had to completely redo the entire blueprint for the master bedroom area, master bathroom area. And we had to get rid of the tub and had to move over the shower. And we had to actually build two closets because that's the only way it was going to work. So we did have to make an adjustment to the blueprint once we got a little ways into it, but still better. Better that we did it then than after. Waiting until after the walls were up and everything's painted, and then I realized my clothes don't fit.

Yeah. Really?

So, yeah, you have to be able to make some pivots and adjust as you learn as you're building.

Then after the blueprint part, definitely the foundation. And I like to use the kind of, you know, if your foundation wasn't that solid, if you had a really kind of a weak Foundation. How confident? Now, Pam, I'll throw this up to you, Pam. Let's say you hire, like, Acme foundation specialists, which are. These guys are super cheap, and they come in and they make a foundation for your new house. I know you guys are moving down to Phoenix, Phoenix area. These guys make a really, really cheap foundation. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's good. Yeah. You know, it might be a little unstable, stable, but, you know, you're good to build on it. How confident would you be building a house on top of that and then moving your family in there?

That's terrible. I'm sure we've all been in a house that has a crack in the basement. Right. Nobody wants that. You can imagine the problems it causes. And again, with our own house, we had an issue where in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where we live, there's a lot of gypsum, which is a rock that when it can kind of just dissolve. I don't quite understand it. Maybe somebody knows better than I do, but I think when it gets wet, it kind of disappears. That's the bottom line. And so we were building on gypsum, and the engineers come in and they say, you dig down, and they think they're ready to pour the foundation. And then the engineers come back and they do take some boring samples and stuff. Well, they said, you need to dig down a few more feet because that's not. The gypsum's not gone, and your house is going to sink. And of course, we're not going to say, nah, just go ahead and pour the foundation. We're ready. You dig. You dig until you're ready for that foundation to be solid.

Right. And that goes back to, you know, looking at our foundation. We're looking at, you know, your strengths, your culture, and your standards. You don't just, like, say, oh, you know, I got a couple. I got a couple things in my core values. I got a little bit of my culture, and I got a couple standards. I'm right. I'm ready to go now. Oh, you know, you make sure yourself your foundation's solid. And then the framework. This is. This is where a lot of restaurants make the mistake, is that. And when we talk about framework and if you're looking at the. If you're listening to the podcast, you're looking at a slide here of, like, a house, a frame of a house. It's framed out now, let's say, like, Darren's coming to me, and, you know, we're building this house, and all of a Sudden I tell Darren, like, you know, that's. It's a lot of, you know, that's a lot of wood. What if I only use half the amount of wood to frame out the house there? And I can save us a lot of money. You.

You could. You could save a lot of money framing that house differently, but it's not going to last very long.

No. And that's where restaurants go wrong, is in the frame area. They start making. They start taking what I call shortcuts. Like, if you don't have a good hiring system, like, you don't have interview guys, you don't have really great job descriptions, you don't have a training program to onboard people with in a retention program, you're going to experience high turnover or you're going to attract the wrong people. If you don't have good systems in place that hold people accountable, they're not going to use the systems. And if your menu hasn't really been like, how many people do I know? And you, Darren, you know them, too. How many people, like, haven't, like, they cost out their menu two years ago when they first opened their restaurant. Right. When did you cost out your menu last? Oh, when we opened. When was that? Two years ago. Oh, you know, prices have gone up. Right.

Trucking costs, commodities, Tomatoes.

Yeah, tomatoes, avocados, everything. Right. Right now, like, meat is going through the roof. Because of COVID because of supply and demand. We had this huge, you know, Covid happened, pandemic happened. Restaurants shut down. There was a huge supply. The vendors and the suppliers, like, all right, well, we need to cut back on our production of, you know, animals and stuff like that. So they don't have as many animals that they usually do. But now restaurants roping back up again. What do you think happens to supply and demand? Now? Demand is huge, supply is low. Y. So framework is where a lot of restaurants make a big mistake and they cut corners. And I. And I like the house analogy because I want to think, if you had to put your family in this house, would you be confident having them live there? Would you be confident that they could. That they could. That, you know, your house could weather the storms, Man. I don't know if you've ever been to South Dakota, but South Dakota gets some, I mean, hellacious hail storms.

And tornadoes, too. And tornadoes and blizzards.

I don't care about the tornadoes. It's the hail that scares me.

Yeah. That house better be solid.

That house better be solid.

You guys worry too much.

You're probably right. And the Last part, of course, is your furnishings and furnishings really what makes your. Your house makes it you. And we all have different styles. This is where. This is what I really call furnishings, is what separates the brand. This is what makes you outstanding again. And if we're looking at our. Our kind of blueprint, our furnishings involve marketing, having strategic plans that you not only use every month, but you follow and you implement. Then using the KPI dashboard, where I'm actually using the information that my POS system provides me, and I'm actually taking that raw data and I'm taking it, I'm looking at it, and then making action plans, changing things, adapting so I get better results.

I love this house analogy because you can imagine if you, you know those. There's a lot of neighborhoods where every fourth house is exactly the same as previous four. But you could take the same exact house and a family moves into it. And I'm going to add paint into the furnishings because that's kind of a unique thing. That's. That's decor, right? So a family moves in, they choose their paint colors, they pick their stuff on the walls, they put the furniture in. And fast forward to two years from now. Those two houses are going to look entirely different, and they're going to have entirely different feelings when you walk into them because of the furnishings. And that's exactly, that's exactly how it is with a restaurant. Once it's all built, even if you have a great foundation and a great frame, those furnishings are going to make or break what your restaurant looks like.

We have a client in our mastermind group who has a group of a small kind of restaurant, chain of Mexican restaurants in the Texas market. I don't know about you, but if you've never been to the Texas market, there are a lot of Mexican restaurants in the Texas market. Like every other restaurant, a Mexican restaurant. What do they. What separates them is the furnishings. It's how they approach their marketing, how they look at their brand, how they. Every, every month they're doing strategic planning, how they look at their KPIs, this group, this company, and their clients of ours in our mastermind group, they told us, and they told us the other day that they're making more money now than they ever had. And they've been in business for over 30 years. They're making more money now than they ever have. This is, this is. This is still during a pandemic. They have more money in the bank than they ever had just because they started implementing this blueprint that we talk about. They got solid on the foundation again. They went back. We basically had to go back and tear the house down, Poured a new foundation, rebuilt the frame, and then we put in new furnishings. And now they have a brand that allows them. I know the owners just last week took a small vacation and went to Arkansas for a few days to kind of enjoy life. I mean, this is what happens when you set your brand up, you know, to work for you. Correct? Yeah. And then if you've never heard of what a mastermind group, A mastermind group is, basically, it's where we kind of coach you on a weekly basis, but you also have the synergy and the power to learn and grow from other restaurants experience. Because we have, you know, we have restaurants from all around the world right now, and a lot of them have similar concepts. Some are, you know, some are Mexican restaurants, some are pizza places, some are ice cream places. We have some fast casual places. We have some burger concepts. We have basically all over the place. And that synergy of coming together, people really love. I think. I think some of the biggest compliments we get is that people just love learning from other people on the team in the group, don't you think?

Absolutely. And they like sharing their own knowledge too. So having different restaurant. Having restaurant owners from different types of restaurants is really neat because you can have people like, for example, if someone who owns a pizza place and they're used to handling pizza boxes, but you've got somebody else who doesn't do a lot of pizza, but all of a sudden they have to start doing more delivery and things like that. So they've got questions about handling pizza boxes, and there's an expert on there, you know, that they've figured it out, they've mastered that plan. And so they. There's. It's awesome to see people learning from each other and contributing to each other's success.

Yeah, we go to Alan. Alan's our pizza box expert. We go to.

Yeah, Alan's an expert at that. But like, Alan's like an expert at like one program, right. That Jolt program. So if anyone on the team using that program, they call Alan. If someone usually has a question about toast, they call some of the guys with toast. So even though the mastermind group meets once a week during the week, these people are communicating now. These people are, you know, hey, I need help here. I need help here. Can you. Can you help me with my marketing? And. And the synergy that builds from being in this group is just amazing.

Yeah. You know, and I think most independent restaurant Owners, the biggest problem they have, and if you're an independent restaurant owner right now, you might say, I have experienced that, is that you feel like you're in a silo. You feel like, no one understands my problems. No one's gonna. No one's gonna care. You know, I just gotta take all this burden and all this weight and put on myself. I just gotta figure it out. Well, you don't have to.

It's a support group. Psychologist.

Yeah, psychologist calls support group mastermind slash therapy. Support group. Cognitive behavioral therapy.

Right, right.

But, you know, the heart of our restaurants, Restaurant Simplified program is again, is our KPI platform. And the KPI platform, if you're watching this on a video, you can see an example of. If you're listening to the podcast, the best thing I can do is, you know, get ahold of us. And if you want a demo, we're more than happy to give you a demo of what this thing can really do. Because it really is. I mean. I mean, I think it's. It's brilliant. And the brilliance of it comes in the simplicity and how do I say it's simplistic? Is that basically your POS system puts out data every day, and it's tons of data in there. What if I said all I need you to do is take eight numbers out of your POS system every night, and you don't have to do it. You can have someone on your team do it. You can train someone to do it. This is stuff that anyone can do. It doesn't. You know, it's not rocket science again. It's just people science. Ten minutes a day. You could train someone on your team to take the data at night, put it into the KPI system, and then in the morning, what they do is you log in and you look at this beautiful dashboard, just like in a car, and it tells you. Just like gauges in a car. It's got different color coding, and it tells you, where am I? Am I doing good? Am I doing bad? What do I need to work on? And then what our members do is that they look at their dashboard every morning, they make a new habit, and then now they have an action plan for the day. Like if Darren. Darren has a restaurant and they use the KPI platform. Let's say Brooke comes in and let's say you've been running a guest check average of, you know, $32 the last week. But she comes in, she notices that, you know, today the guest check average is down to, like, 29.

Yeah. So she knows Something's wrong. And, you know, that's the next phase of this. It's one thing to know the KPI. It's another thing to know what affects the KPI and what influences the KPI. You know, we're so transparent with our staff that everybody is looking at this now, right? So, like, I came into the restaurant just a little while ago just. Just before this podcast, and, you know, we're already through our lunch shift and things like that, and. And I said to one of the servers, and it's not even one of the managers is one of the servers. I go, how was lunch? Oh, it was pretty good lunch we did. And she knew the numbers. And we had this as a GCA and went like, this is a server rattling off these KPIs to me. See, because I have everybody involved. Last night, I was sitting at the bar, and I was sitting next to one of my friends, and he has been in the industry for 20 years with the same restaurant. I'm gonna. It's a corporate restaurant across America. Okay. So it's a chain restaurant across America. And when. When Pam made the comment to my wife on the phone, I said, thank you, Pam. And the letters KPI came up, and he goes, what are KPIs? And now he's been running a restaurant as a general manager for years. And I said, oh, they're key performance indicators. And we started talking about them. And in his restaurant chain, they do use KPIs, but they don't call them that. But very, very limited, you know. And when we started talking now, this turned into an hour conversation with me and him, but he really didn't have a good understanding of them. You know, a couple things here and.

There.

But yet you're running, not just you personally. If they're not teaching you this on a corporate level, they're not teaching all their restaurants this on the corporate level. And if this is your first call that you're making with us right now, you're listening. Go back and listen to the last, the second one, where Donald tried to drive his car without a dashboard.

Yeah, it sucked.

It didn't work out so good for him. But this is how people are running their businesses. They're running businesses without a dashboard. And even if they're looking at the gauge, they're not understanding what are the influencing factors that affect that gauge. And if I try this, is it going to hinder another gauge? Right. So it's really understanding the KPIs. That's what this tries to do for you. It tries to give you an indication of where everything is and that we help you understand the influencing factors on how to make that better. Right.

That's where the mastermind coaching comes in handy, is that we help you learn how to improve all your KPIs.

Yeah. It's not a lot different than learning to drive a car. So you've got to learn what all those lights and colors and everything on the dashboard mean. Like what ha. What does that mean when the light comes on and that says, you know, the gas indicator. Well, that means you're out of fuel.

Right.

And what are you supposed to do about that? So that that light goes away, you got to go fill up with gas. That's what the dashboard is. It'll. Sometimes it'll go into the yellow or go into the red. What does that mean? Why did it do that? And then what do you do about that to fix it?

It's exactly right. And then there's influencing factors like, you know, Pam will remember this story, but what if. What would happen if you went to fill up your car with gas? And then now I get to the gas pumps and there's five different choices of gas. There's five. There's. There's regular, there's high test, there's diesel. That. What if you put the wrong gas in? What influencing. How does that influence the way your car runs? Is it even gonna run right? So you want to be careful about when you're making changes. Make sure you speak to someone that could give you that answer.

Exactly.

That's exactly right. If I have two lights that come on at the same time in my car, if the check engine light comes on and the. I don't know what. What's another one? I can't even think of another light. Darren, what else?

Tire pressure.

Low tire.

Yeah. If I have two things that come on at the same time, I'm gonna go. This is. I'm calling Darren.

I don't know.

I don't know what to do. I'm gonna mess something up. I need help.

Feel bad, Pam, when my lights go off? I called in my car. I called Darren, too. Getting calls from everybody.

Yes. Now what would happen Now, I could ask this to the both of you. What would happen if, you know, that first light came on and then that second light came on and then maybe a third light came on, but you didn't even know those lights were on because you had the towel over the dashboard. You weren't paying attention to your dashboard. You think your car would keep running very Long.

Yeah.

Or if you're only watching one of those lights, but it's actually being affected by something that's a different light coming on.

Exactly. And then things get worse and worse. The problem compounds. More lights will start coming on. And this is what happens in business, not only in the restaurant industry, but in many, many industries, but especially in the restaurant industry. People aren't looking at the lights because they just, you know, they finished a week. We had a good week. Look, the checking counts up a little bit. Life is good money. We got money this week. And you're not paying attention to that. You know, And I'm not saying that derogatory. Just, it's your. Your. Your superpower.

Exactly.

Is in running your restaurant. Your superpower is maybe as a cook. Maybe it's like my wife in hospital mentality. Right.

If.

If my wife was running the restaurant without me, she doesn't look at KPIs, she doesn't look at the dashboard. She. She just wants to cook and feed you. Cook and feed you. She's just happy when. When your mouth is smiling and your belly is full. My wife is happy.

That's true. That is true. I've been to your house, and I've had Nancy cook for me at your house. Is she happy? If you're. If you're happy and eating, she's happy. Yes.

And I look at the same table, I look at the same people, and I'm like, if my food cost was right, I'm happy.

That's it.

I mean, I want them smile. And they're smiling, right? They're smiling. And my pocketbook has to be smiling. And then we're good.

So I. I put up. Now, if you're listening to the podcast, you can't see this, but it's a picture. It. Basically, it's a picture almost like a postcard, and it's a couple laying on this beautiful white sandy beach with a beautiful blue ocean back behind them. And the postcard says, you wouldn't think they're running their restaurant from here, but they are. And this was inspired by something Darren had as an example, as a story happened to him when he had his automotive restaurants. Darren, share that story, if you would.

Okay. My automotive restaurants. Donald. I'll just go.

Automotive. Automotive restaurants.

That's what you said.

Yeah. Automotive industry, automotive repair shops.

So when I was young, my superpower was in fixing cars. I had. I had a passion for cars. I went to college. I got a degree as a computer programmer, but I didn't want to work with Computers. My whole life I just loved cars. So I went back to college, majored in engineering, minor in automotive. And then guess what, I graduate college and they start putting computers in cars and I'm stuck with the computers anyway, so. So I started my own business. I started. And I knew nothing about business. Right. My superpower was that was in my passion, right. Which was, which was cars. And I was working. I mean, Donald, if I worked a 12 hour day, that was half a day for me. That was a part time job. I was working, you know, 16, 18 hour days, six and seven days a week, trying to fit in life with my wife and my kids as much as I possibly could. But I had all this responsibility with the business on top of my shoulders and it was, you just couldn't get away. Like, I know you've seen an analogy of a ball and chain. This was like a boulder on my back. This was like, I'm never going to get out from under this pressure. And then all of a sudden I get this postcard in the mail. And this is back before Internet. Like now you'll see it on Instagram, right?

Right.

There was a, there was an industry, right? And a mailman used to come in and actually bring the mail in. And here's this postcard. And it was two people on a beach. And it would say, you know, is this any way to run a repair shop? And then it would say, we think so. And that was so foreign from anything my brain could comprehend. You know, I was like, there's just no way. What are they talking about? Like, this is possible, it's not possible. And, and that, you know, plus a few other things that happened in my life started me looking at key performance indicators. And, and back then I didn't even know they were called key performance indicators. I just wanted to know where's the profit coming from? What are the different revenue centers in my business that are really driving that profitability into my bank? And then I did a deep dive into key performance metrics. And next thing you know, you know, two or three years later, we moved to Florida. I have three repair shops in upstate New York. I have 80 to 100 employees working in them. And once a month I got in my own plane and I would fly up there. I'm a pilot, I own my own airplane. And I would make unannounced visits. Hey, how's everything going? And then I would go back home for a month again and I'm coaching baseball teams and I'm on the beach like these people and running My businesses. Instead of working in my business now, I transitioned from having a job to being a business owner.

Right. Which. And I'm gonna throw out there for anyone listening to this podcast or watching the YouTube video. Have you ever felt like that, too? You ever felt like, you know, it's impossible? I just. I have to be here. I have to be. You know, I'm. I'm the glue that holds it all together. No one understands that there's no way I could ever get free from my restaurant. What's Darren always say? What's Darren always say, Pam?

It's a story you're telling yourself.

Exactly. It is.

It's a complete story you're telling yourself. Right. Right now, I own multiple businesses, and I don't really work in any of them except the ones that we're starting up right now. Like startup businesses. Yeah. As an owner, you have to come in and you have to do that initial work to get that foundation right, to get those blueprints right, to get everything up and running, get the systems and processes in place. But once it's running, then you step back. Right. And you just become a thinker, a planner, you know, someone who's going to steer the ship, not drive the ship.

And right now, you and Nancy have a very highly profitable restaurant. And what are you doing next week?

Monday morning, I'm headed back to Florida. I'll be in Florida for almost a couple of weeks. And then from Florida, I'm going to this restaurant Summit over in Scottsdale. I'll let you tell them about that, but I'll show you at this restaurant. And then I won't be back here till the end of the month. So I'll be leaving tomorrow. I'll be back, I think, on the 28th or the 29th. And we have a great staff that's going to, you know, run this restaurant. Perfect. While my wife and I are here, while we're not here, and even while I am here, I mean, I'm here today in my restaurant, but I'm here with you on the podcast. Right. And if people say to me, hey, Darren, can you do this? Or I need you to do that? Or what do I say to him?

I don't work here.

Yes. You know, because.

And here's the thing, too, is like, you know, but, Darren, when you're down in Florida, are you looking at your KPI dashboard?

Yes. Every day.

Every day. Right. And then are you coaching and training and working with your team to keep them on track while you're out, while you're gone.

Yes. And that's really important, what you just said, Donald, because if I look at my KPI dashboard and something's not right, I don't call the restaurant and say, hey, you got to do this, you got to do this. I call Brooke, right? And Brooke runs our restaurant for us. She's one of our partners. And I say, hey, Brooke, you know, this. This KPI was off a little bit. Our rev pass was a little bit down. Or, you know, our GCA is a little bit down. Why do you think that is? And even if I know the answer, I won't tell her. I want to challenge her thinking because I don't want to be the only one to interpret the KPIs. I need to let them do that. Otherwise, what do I have? I have a job again. Then Darren's job becomes, oh, well, Darren interprets the KPIs.

Darren's a problem solver.

Yes. Darren doesn't do any of this stuff. Right. I just teach other people how to do it.

And that's one of the biggest mistakes I think a lot of independent restaurant owners make is that they become the problem solvers. If you do not teach your team how to solve problems, you have a job being a problem solver.

Correct.

So right now, what we want to do is if we want to invite you to try out our restaurant Simplified Mastermind Group for free. And we say it's risk free, because you can try it out for free for 30 days. And here's the thing. Jump in, sign up, take action, do something today that your future self is going to be proud of. Take some action, sign up, try it out for 30 days. I'm going to tell you, if you don't like it, quit. Yeah, but we have a very high retention rate because Darren and Pamela and I are. We are all committed to providing more value than you ever imagined. We want you to have the restaurant that you want. We want you to have the life you deserve. It's actually part of our tagline, and we will do whatever we need to do to make sure that we help you get there.

Absolutely. And, you know, if you. If you're listening to this podcast today and you took anything away, right? Just one nugget of something that you learned. Imagine what you'd learned spending 30 days with us. Oh, yeah, because this podcast is fun. Like. Like, we didn't even really plan this. You know, Donald called and said, hey, could we interview you for a podcast? You and Pam? Yeah, absolutely. And we didn't really, like, go over the Questions. We're just, we're sitting here having a good time. If you're watching, I'm drinking water here, I'm in my office and just kind of shooting a breeze for an hour with you, spending a little bit of time, hopefully pouring into you, hopefully sharing some knowledge that'll help you run your business better and more efficiently. But imagine if you jumped into our program for 30 days where that's our focus is and give you framework. It would be like chalk and cheese, right?

Chalk and cheese. Chalk and cheese. And if you want to join our mastermind group again, you can jump in with a 30 day free trial. All you have to do is go to www.restaurants plural restaurants simplified.com. there's a button that says start my, you know, start now for free. And you hit that button and you're good to go. You'll ask you a couple easy questions. Our mastermind calls go on Mondays. We have a educational call every Monday. We also have a Q and A call every Thursday where you know a lot of restaurant mastermind groups. There's a lot of, a lot of different mastermind groups out there. Most of them only meet on a bi weekly basis. They meet every two weeks. We think that's, that's not enough. We want, you get to, we want you to get the restaurant you want as fast as we can. So we kind of amp it up and we do mastermind calls every week. Now what happens? Go ahead, go ahead. Pam.

Donald, you mentioned that we have a Q and A call. I think that's important to kind of highlight because there's a whole call every single week devoted to just answering the questions or the problems that you're facing in your own restaurant right now that you want help with. So yes, there's teaching and there's, you know, you'll, you'll learn a lot, you'll improve your restaurant, but you'll also have the chance to say this is my problem. Help me with this.

Exactly. And this is the mastermind group that I run. I mean I have some other coaching programs that I offer more on a private coaching and team coaching level. But I decided, you know, for as far as a mastermind group, this is the only. If you want to do a mastermind group with me, this is, this is the mastermind group I do. And it's with Restaurant Simplified, it's the only mastermind group I do because you know why? It's the most effective group I've ever been in. And working with Darren and Pam really has escalated. I think the the value that we bring to the mastermind group. So if you're looking, if you ever say, like, you know, I've heard about restaurant mastermind groups, this is the restaurant mastermind group that you, I'm telling you right now, you want to jump in and you want to jump in and you want to do it today. It's pretty easy. Just go to www.restaurants simplified.com. darren did mention that we're having a boot camp. He's coming, him and Pamela are coming down to Scottsdale and we do this like every quarter. So we're doing one in April. It's a live two day workshop. I'm gonna give you a fair warning about my workshops. Pamela likes a little more breaks. I'm more of a, I'm more of an immersion. I'm gonna keep you there captive for like six hours and I'll let you use the bathroom if you maybe, maybe.

Pam and I are gonna pop in and out.

Yeah, but you're, you're an adult. If you need to go, get up and go. I mean, I thought about issuing adult diapers, but then Pam, I thought that was like, that was like over the top and we couldn't do that. And there was some kind of hipaa, you know, requirements against that. So I couldn't really legally make people wear adult diapers and keep them there all day. So we're gonna actually, you'll be able to get some breaks. We'll actually stop for lunch. We will let you take some time to eat. But it goes April 25, April 26. That's the one that we're doing this month in Scottsdale, the boot camp. We have. I think I have, I have. I had one person the other day cancel. I've got two seats left. Here's the thing, it's totally free, but you got to be dedicated. You got to come down, you got to show up and do the work. Don't come down to Scottsdale for a vacation and then you like, don't show up for the thing because we're gonna, we're gonna work you and I'm gonna work you hard. So if you're interested in getting into the restaurant owner boot camp again, it's free for qualified restaurants. Email me@Donald therestaurantcoach.com and I'll be more than happy to send you the application. We're just going to look over it, make sure it's a good fit for you. We definitely, we want restaurants that are established. They have to be up and running. That's Kind of one of the requirements. If you're like just planning a restaurant, this probably isn't a good thing because we're going to really kind of take you deep down into like the eight driving forces of restaurant success. And it will really only work for you if you already have a restaurant up and running. So if you're thinking about opening a restaurant, you can call us or email us and we're more happy to talk about that on a different program. But I want to say thanks so much for being here today.

This was fun.

It's been a great two, three days now.

It really has. We've done this for three days in a row. So if this is the first time you're tuning in, go back and watch episode one. Episode two. We share a lot of information in there. Sign up for our 30 day trial. Come see us in Scottsdale. Whatever you do, just do something to improve your restaurant. Because we know, we know that 80% of those restaurants out there and even more, they're probably not at the vision that you originally planned for your restaurant. So. Yeah. So do something today to help. Help yourself get it there, please, please.

And if we can help you, that's great. You know, again, 30 day free trial. The Restaurant Simplified Mastermind group. You're going to get access to all the stuff we talked about today. You get the whole kind of cool curriculum, plus towards the end you will get access to our KPI dashboard platform which I've. We find with our Mastermind members. It's been a game changer for all of them as far as their profitability.

So absolutely.

Thank you so much again. If you need to get a hold of me, reach me out. Donald the restaurant coach.com and otherwise we will see you on another episode.