Building a Service Team That Dominates

Hey, is your service team less than stellar? Does it suck? Stick around. I'm going to give you a five step plan to build a service team that will allow you to dominate your market. And welcome to the restaurant coach podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. I'm your host, Donald Burns, a restaurant coach and author of the your restaurant sucks trilogy. Now you have a problem that we need to address. It's your service team. Okay, well that's not exactly accurate. The problem is you. Because you didn't train your service team to dominate the market. Sure, you probably trained them once, maybe twice, but half ass efforts yield half ass results. Oh, and please, for the love is all that is sacred, please don't throw out the excuse that you don't have time. Because you know what? You never had time to begin with. Things get done when you make a decision and develop the self discipline to get what you want. So if your service is so, so the effort you place into training them was at that same energy level. Water truly does seek its own level. And mediocrity is attracted to mediocrity. Don't think so how many powerful or successful people do you know that seek seem to be friends? They all seem to run in the same circles, right? Successful people like to be associated with other successful people. So how do you get there? How can you create a service team that just totally dominates your market? I have a five step plan for you today. Step number one, understand your role. When you're the leader in your bar, nightclub or restaurant, you become a source of energy that feeds the culture. Kind of much like, you know, the sun radiates heat and gives energy. In the solar system, people tend to give the most energy to those they are close to and also the people they like the most, those people close to the energy source have it really, really good. Think of it like the planets that are close to the sun. But you know, if you're like Pluto or Uranus, your days are relatively cold and isolated. And honestly, no one wants to be Uranus. You're the energy that creates culture. Make sure to write this down. Bad culture comes from bad energy which comes from bad leaders. It's not a very complicated equation. If you can take ownership of the idea that your service team gets their energy from you, then you've managed to take a really big step forward towards getting a better restaurant. Step two, become obsessed with becoming better. So if you're the energy source for your restaurant, as we just talked about, you need to become freaking obsessed with becoming a better person. Now, you might quip that becoming a better person has nothing to do with being a leader, generating profits, creating culture, or building a service team that really, truly dominates the market. Au contraire. It has everything to do with those things. Now, defining better is quite personal. It's actually quite subjective. So it's up to you to define what your better could be. It could be that you just become more focused, more dedicated, or more committed. Remember, restaurants get better when the people in them become better people. You can't raise your standards without raising yourself. Most people learn and do based on what's known as modeling. We imitate the actions or behaviors of others because we're kind of chock full of these things called mirror neurons. And the mirror neuron system helps us learn at a fast pace, and we need the entire system to function, to survive. I mean, you've been actually modeling behavior from others your entire life, from your parents to your siblings to your friends, to those people that you admire, like your teachers, mentors, and coaches. You might not have realized it before, but your behavior is truly a collection of other people's behavior that you've just kind of been exposed to both the good and the ugly. Now, once you become obsessed with becoming a better person, you can build a service team that truly dominates your market. But you must become obsessed. And I mean really freaking obsessed. Now, the word obsessed gets kind of a bad rap, because many kind of associate it with being out of control. And yes, it can be true that if an obsession can't be kept in check, it can actually kind of get out of control. Here's the thing I want you to remember. You either control your obsessions or they start to control you. Now, here's what you can do. You can read, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, substitute audiobooks for music while you're driving, go to seminars, find a mentor, get a coach. Hint, hint. Becoming a better person does not require you to sit at the top of the mountain, shave your head, and meditate for hours on end. It just requires you to become obsessed with learning one new thing each day and implementing it into your personal and or professional life. Remember, we build better restaurants by building ourselves. Leaders are forged through chaos, pressure, and discipline. Anyone who says that leadership is easy is just full of shit. And step number three, you practice until they whine, and then you practice some more. So now that your energy is amplified and you're becoming a better person, it's time to train and train like you really mean it. Here's where the path you've been Traveling on comes to a fork. You can either step confidently towards dominating your market, or you can meekly kind of shuffle towards settling into mediocrity. Mediocrity is the easy path, and easy doesn't get you shit. Elite athletes who want to win an Olympic gold medal know that they must commit to training every single day. In fact, they're aware that they need to train sometimes multiple times a day to dominate and become elite. You must make a new commitment to train your team every single day. There's no days off from training. If you're aiming for the top of the mountain, you must be as dedicated to training as you are to becoming a better person. It all comes down to obsession. Following the most straightforward path to greatness is crucial for success. And here's one of the easiest ways to find your greatness. It's a simple, simple trick. Get a blank index card. Pick your favorite color. That makes you a little bit happier. Now take that index card. Draw a line down the middle. On one side write my three, and on the other write Team three. Here's what you're going to do. Choose three things that you're dedicated to improving for yourself for the day on the My3 side. And then pick three things that you're committed to train your team for the day on the Team 3 side. Now, let me give you a little fair warning. Your team is not going to be like to be pushed out of their comfort zone. That comfort zone was established and burned into their souls after working in the past for mediocre restaurants that only gave training when they first started, you know, and it was probably really shitty training at that. So be aware that they're going to complain, they're going to whine, they're going to push back, and they will not like it. They're going to try to get you to stop this new obsession you discovered, and they're going to try and lure you back into the comfort zone. Stay the course with this new mantra. Either play at my level or step aside. Step number four, asset allocation is key. Now look at the people on your team right now. Now, would you honestly say that they're all at the same skill level? Of course not. Now you probably have some A players, B players, and maybe a few C players. Now you should have any D players working in your restaurant. And if you do, you need to fire them and give yourself a timeout for bad team selection. Now look at your team again. Do you have everyone playing to their strengths? Most likely you're just filling positions and shifts you're not looking at your team as assets. You're treating them the same or worse than they truly are. Let's have a talk real quick about checkers versus chess. When you treat all your employees the same and you're trying to be fair, you're just basically playing a big game of checkers. Now, when you look at each individual on your team for their unique strengths and the position that you have them in, and that you can use that position leveraged for their full abilities, then you're playing chess. Managers play checkers, leaders play chess. You're never going to develop a service team that dominates by standing in their way. You need to let them do their job so that they can learn and grow. And here's the thing, you can't do their job for them. You have your own job to do. Do you want to lead, teach, coach and train? If you say hell yes, then I want you to take away from this, that you need to be learning, growing and developing from someone else. Let me provide you with a few examples of opportunities for growing the team and opportunities where the team doesn't grow. Maybe you've seen some of these. The general manager who's working expo when they should be on the floor orchestrating the guest experience. How about the chef who pushes people out of the way on the line, grabs a plate and finishes the dish? How about the floor manager who seats everyone and has three hourly hosts standing behind the host stand doing absolutely nothing? See, if you're in a salaried position and you're doing the job that's normally fulfilled by an hourly position, you're not managing your assets properly. When you take away the opportunities for people to grow, they're going to leave to work at a restaurant. That's going to help them grow. Step five, got to keep the cycle going. Now it's time to follow the same directions on your shampoo, rinse and repeat. Excellence, greatness and market domination requires one critical element, and that is consistency. It's not about taking one step towards being a better person, a better leader, training your team and suddenly achieving greatness. You're never going to be all set that way. It's always about developing the discipline to take many steps and following through even when you don't want to do it. Here's my thing. I would warn you, don't expect to be motivated every single day to get out there and make things happen, because you won't be. You don't want to count on motivation. You want to count on discipline. How you develop yourself determines how your team will develop, how consistently you train. Your team determines how consistently they're going to perform. How much you allow others to grow will definitely determine how much your bar, nightclub or restaurant is going to grow. It's time to step up and into your potential. Because once you start down that path, a true leader really allows others to to step up into their greatness. It's all synergy. Each element on its own is great, but combined effectively, they really become unstoppable. Now, if you want to learn the secret to restaurant success, I'm offering viewers of this YouTube channel free access to the Three Frames to Thrive series. It's over three hours of training which is going to show you the three foundational frameworks that I teach all of my private coaching clients. How to make more money while working less in the restaurant. All you gotta do is just head over to threeframestothrive.com and sign up now. Hey, make sure to hit that like and subscribe button before you go. In my next video, I'm going to give you a 12 step action plan to survive a recession.