How To Get a Raise in 90 Days

Good morning. Hey. Happy Friday. Welcome to the TRC Nation, the Restaurant Coach Nation here on Facebook. This is our private Facebook group where we get together usually on Fridays and we talk about something, give you a tool, maybe talk about a topic, a theory that is going to help you take your restaurant to the next level. I love doing these things. I'm so excited for the rapid growth of the Restaurant Coach Nation. Thank you so much for sharing the Restaurant Coach Nation with your friends. Inviting people to be a part of the Restaurant Coach Nation is my honor. It's my duty to serve you. Remember, my mission has always been to help 1 million restaurants build their brand, strengthen their team and increase their profits. And I will not stop until I reach that goal. So let's jump into it, shall we? Today I got a really, really great training for you. This one actually is not just for restaurant owners. You might want to share this with your staff. It is all about, we're going to talk about today is how to get a raise in 90 days to become a rock star employee and get paid. One of the things we talk about a lot, especially in our my coaching groups, is we talk a lot about talent. We talk a lot about talent attraction. We talk about retaining or attracting talent. Today I want to talk a little bit more about retention and also helping people become better, Helping people break free from some of the mindsets they have, some of the outdated global beliefs they have, and help them understand that sometimes the way they're asking for a raise isn't the most effective way to get a raise. Sometimes the way you ask is what stops you from getting that increase, that raise that you want so badly and sometimes that you need so badly. We're going to talk about a lot of things today. You want to take some notes. Research has shown if you write stuff down your own handwriting right, you are 70% more likely to remember it 90 days from now. And that's really, really great thing to do. So make sure you're writing stuff down in your own notes. It is a great way to get started. Let's start off with a little quote. My favorite one is this. Restaurant success is not rocket science. It is people science. There's so many. And I don't want to, I'm not to be mean here. There's a lot of inexperienced restaurant coaches out there, restaurant experts out there that are giving you information and they're thinking that they're trying to sell you some fancy system, some fancy software, and just saying that a new checklist or a template is going to fix Your culture, no, you got to fix your people. People always starts with you. I'm a huge believer that culture flows down. It does not flow up. And it all starts with the restaurant owner and also the leaders. And if you're an employee, it starts with your mindset. If you really want to get a raise. If you want to get increase your value to the restaurant, you. It starts with your belief systems and starts with your mindset about who you are and what you're bringing to the table. Not just showing up every day. Okay, that's expected. Here's the thing I want us to tell you. I tell. I teach all my clients to say this is that they're a performance based company. We only give merit raises. We only give. We only give raises for two reasons. You help me grow the top line or you help me control the bottom line. People say, well, I show up every day and I work hard. Well, number one, hard work is subjective. And we'll talk about this a little bit later. You know, and showing up, you're expected to show up. You get paid to show up. You don't get paid for slacking. You get paid for showing up for your job. All right, so restaurant success isn't rocket science. Even though a lot of people make you think it, it's more people science. That's why coaching, I think, is the most effective form of getting you the restaurant that you want. Because coaching works on the people science coaching, definitely. I mean, I've been through certification programs to be a Coach. I've got 13 years experience being a coach. There's a lot of things I learn about people and the behavioral dynamics that really, really can fine tune a restaurant success or failure just by helping with the people products. The people problems. If we've never met before, is this your first time in the restaurant coach nation? Well, hello, I am Donald Burns. I'm known as a restaurant coach. I'm a recovering restaurant owner. I've been a consultant for huge, big, huge billion dollar broad line distributors. I've also been the executive chef of Wolfgang Puck. I'm an author. I have three books on the market. Your restaurant sucks. Your restaurant still sucks. And your restaurant culture sucks is just coming out on audio too. So all my books will be available in either you can get them in the book format. If you want to paperback, you want Kindle, you want a hardcover. Or if you want the audiobook format, they're all available. Remember, learners are earners and we'll talk about that a little bit more too. I'm also a Former member of the US Air Force Pararescue teams. I think I learned everything I know about teamwork from being a member of the US Air Force Pararescue. One of the things I will mention about teamwork is that we have a big misconception about teamwork. And that misconception is this. We think that a team is people that like each other. Hashtag, write this down. A team doesn't have to like each other. You have to respect each other and you have to trust each other. There was guys on my pararescue team. Honestly, I thought they were the biggest in the world. I would not hang out with them when we weren't doing some training and stuff like that. But I tell you, when the hit the fan, I trusted them to do their job and I respected them. So we have some, some things we have to work for. Remember I said it right in the beginning, it's not rocket science, it's people science. One of the things that we always talk about on every one of my calls, my clients will confirm this. Every coaching call, I always talk about the 3P framework. Every problem you have in your restaurant, the whole key. This was introduced to me back in the 90s when I had my first restaurant. And honestly, if I had not been introduced to this framework, I would have closed my doors because it was a life changer. Not a game changer, a life changer. I, I was struggling. I had been in the restaurant business for 15 years. I thought I knew it all. Just like a lot of people running a restaurant, it's not that complicated. Well, running a restaurant itself is not that complicated. Building a brand that is complicated. Building a profitable brand that takes a little bit of extra effort. I was introduced to a business owner. I was about to shut the doors and a guy who was a regular of my restaurant, a regular guest, sat me down one night and he offered to help me offer to be my business coach for a year if I would just basically listen to what he said and applied the information. I took it to heart because I really was in a place of desperation. And he introduced me to this thing called the 3P framework. And it's all people product process. Now if you want to get a good start on a solid foundation to building the restaurant and the life that you want, I, I have put together, it is over 3 hours of free training that you can get. It talks about the three basic frameworks all my clients have to understand before we even get started. They all start with this series called the three Frames of Thrive. Series and it has three different components. First is the restaurant success pyramid. Then we dig into the 3P framework and then we go into what's known as the culture wheel. My, my third book, your Restaurant Culture Sucks is all about culture and there's a reason for it. The audiobook itself. I'm telling you, it's crazy. 12 hours of audio. It is a huge book. But there are tons of gold nuggets in there that can really help you if you're feeling stuck, you're feeling like you're suffocated, you feel like you're on a giant hamster wheel. This is where to start. Right here. Go to threeframestothrive.com and you can sign up for the free training. You can also go to my website, therestaurantcoach.com I got a link on there. I really want to get this in the hands of as many people as possible because I really think this is the game changer and the life changer about getting your mind focused on the right things. It's so easy to stay busy in our business, but what are we doing to focus on the right things that are actually going to move our business and our life forward? This is the way to start the three Frames to Thrive series. Totally free. Please, please enjoy it. Share it. I love it when people share stuff. I mean, I'm one of those things, I'm one of those kind of coaches that I believe that there's tons of information out there, tons of restaurants that need help. The more help spread the message and the mission, the better we are. Okay, so let's jump into this. 90 days. How to get a raise in 90 days. Become a rock star employee and get paid. Who wants to get more money? More money, more money, more money. There's a famous kind of a. I guess it's a. I guess he's a motivational speaker. He's also a real estate guy. Grant Cardone. I went to one of his boot camps a couple weeks. Weekends ago he had a three day boot camp here in Scottsdale. It was pretty, really fascinating. High intensity. Lots of high achievers really get you pumped up. That's another huge thing I would say is get yourself in groups like mentor groups or mastermind groups or coaching groups where you're around like minded people because it will elevate your vibrations, elevate your mindset. And that is the start of getting more out of yourself and more from your restaurant. You gotta raise your energy level, you gotta raise your thinking. The thinking that has you stuck is gonna stay there. Okay. Einstein said this. A problem cannot be solved on the level it was created. That's so true. And when you understand that concept that a problem cannot be solved with the same thinking and habits that created it, you need new mindset, new habits to be able to get to that next level. For every new level, it requires a new version of you. So how to get a raise in 90 days? Become the rock star employee and get paid. We're going to talk about a few things. I'm going to give you an outline real quick of what we're going to talk about. We're talking about understanding the statistics because I think it's important that you have some understanding about the restaurant business in general. There's a lot of misconceptions. Like I said earlier, we have a misconception about teamwork and about teamwork. Everybody has to be friends and buddies and hang out and sing, you know, and party together. No, that's not teamwork. Okay. Those are like frat part. That's like a frat party. Okay, so we're going to understand some restaurant statistics. We're going to show you how to look at some numbers. And I want you, when you take this information back to your employer, I want you to ask questions. I want you to seem interested. I want you to want to learn the business. Cause when you understand how people make their money and how they don't make money and how they lose money, you can become, number three, become more value to your employer. That's what this whole session is about. Becoming more valuable not only to your employer, but also to yourself. Just having better self esteem and self confidence that you bring more to the table. And that involves more than just coming to work and doing your job. You're never gonna elevate to the next level just by doing what you do in a normal 40 hour work week. You have to put in a little bit extra work. Now that's scary to. You might want to drop off right now because I'm going to talk about pushing forward out of your comfort zone. Because that's what I do as a coach. I'm here to push you out of your comfort zone to get to that next level. And number four, you got to be obsessed with learning. You got to be. You got to want to learn, you want to grow and you got to develop. You got to want to become a better person. All right, let's jump into this a little bit more. All right. Typical restaurant expenses. Let's talk about this one. Unlike retail business, the restaurant Industry has a lot of challenges that we kind of forget. We have, number one, we have a market that changes all the time. I mean, guest taste fluctuate. One minute it's, it's, you know, remember when chipotle peppers were hot, then Chipotle's went, and now there was Sriracha, then Sriracha left, and now it's Korean peppers. And then it's always. Then it's North Africa. Markets change, taste change, guest expenses, their budgets change. Trends change. Every year, about this time, about December, there's always like three or four companies that come out with, known as a trends report, and they kind of put their crystal ball and pulled out and they try to estimate where the big trend is going to be for 2023. And I will tell you, looking back, I've done this for so many years. Looking back, they probably hit maybe 20% of the trends that they predict hit. The other ones are just kind of a stab in the dark that don't really hit. But you got to be aware of what's going on, where your guests are going. And you have to also communicate and understand that. And the other thing that really kills restaurants is we have a perishable product. We have a product that. It's not like retail. I can buy a bunch of clothes and they can sit on the shelf for six months and they don't go bad. It might go out of style, but they don't go bad. Whereas in a restaurant business, you have a lot of perishable products sitting on that shelf that only has a few days to move, or else you're going to waste it and you're going to lose it, and that would suck. We don't want to do that. Okay. Sad statistic. The average restaurant in the United states makes just 5% profit. I know you think restaurant owners are rich. They're not rich. I try to make them rich. That's my goal, is to get them to that level where they're making like 20, 22, 25% profit, and they're having a life they want and they're having four or five locations. I want to get them to that. That level. That's my goal. It always is my goal to help them have a lifestyle doesn't run in. But the average rest of the United States, which Sadly is around 80% of the restaurants in the United States, only make around 5% profit. That is a very, very thin margin. When you have very, very thin margins, there's not a lot of room for error. This is important for you to Understand as an employee is that there's not a lot of room for error when you drop a plate in the kitchen. You know, and you might just think, well, I just dropped, it's just a burger. I just dropped a burger. No big deal. That actually has a lot of ramifications down the road because it also infects. It impacts inventory, impacts their discounts and comps. It also impacts their small wears. Because now you broke a plate and plates, I don't know if you haven't shopped plates lately. They're not cheap because of supply chain issues. Plates have gone up quite a bit. If you can even get the same plates that you originally bought at your restaurant. So the average restaurant has a very, very razor thin margin. Of course, my goal is to increase that for them. But you have to understand that most restaurants that you work for are struggling, okay? They're what I call is, they're basically, they're surviving. They're what I call is the, the P and L roller coaster. They have a good month, bad month, good month, bad month, good month. They think, oh my God, we're in a franchise. Bad month, I'm gonna sell. It all sits up and down. It's horrible. And you probably noticed your employer probably has a range of emotions that they go through when it's a good week and sales are good. They're probably really, really positive, having a great time. When sales are down, you will see a dip in your employer's mood and their mindset. That's why it's also important that if you're an employee listening to this, that you push your employer, get a coach, help manage that mindset. Help them keep that energy level up even when times are down. Because energy is everything. Here's some other real sad statistics I hate to share with you, but you have to be aware of this stuff. 17% of independently owned full service restaurants fail during their first year. And then there's somebody said the other day, 90% of restaurants fail. If, man, if it was 90% of restaurants fail, no one would ever open a restaurant. That's horrible. That's horrible odds. The truth is only 70% failed the first year, okay? Now 61% of independent restaurants fail within the first three years. Now that is another sad thing. Sometimes getting started is okay, and if they got enough cash flow, they can maintain it for a while. But eventually the cash runs out and 80% of restaurants close within five years of opening. I'll give you one more super Sad statistic. Only 5% make it to 10. The odds start really dropping down as you go out in years. Why? There are some reasons why, number one, people don't adjust to the market. Talk about having that restaurant kind of mindset where the market adjusts. We have to make adjustments too. There's tons of famous chains that went out of business because they didn't make adjustments and adapt to the ever changing market fast enough. The number one strength all independent restaurant owners have is your ability to adapt quickly if you're bold enough and brave enough to make those changes and implement them fast. Most restaurant owners wait. When you wait too long and you wait until it becomes a trend. Especially I always say, like when I've seen the trend or the fad in a fast food restaurant, it's already dead. You're already too late to the party. It's better to adapt early and adjust and dump it than adapt too late and lose out market share. Okay, all right. Now, just like any business, they, they have to build. They, they must, they must build the top line. And they must build, they must also control the bottom line, right? So when restaurants are looking at stuff. Okay, little typo in there. Let me fix that. Like any business, they must build the top line of their P L. And the P L is a profit and loss statement they get. Usually the average restaurant sadly gets this like once a month, which I think that's the stupidest thing in the world if you only get your P L once a month. Now you're just playing catch up. And this is where, you know, this is where restaurants go wrong too, is by not getting a P and L on a weekly basis, not understanding their numbers on a weekly basis. They have to make rapid adjustments to make up the losses that they have. This is where you'll see people like, if your restaurant is like this, if you notice that, you know, you guys are doing great at the end of the month, everything seems like it's okay. Then after the first week of the new month, seems like the owner comes around and wants you to cut, cut, cut, save, save, save watch hours, send people home early, watch inventory. They're not managing your P and L properly, right? And you want to send them my way. You got to understand that they build, they must build their top line and control the bottom line. This is exactly how you get a raise. Okay, Profitable restaurants, and I'm saying all profitable restaurants follow certain budget benchmarks. A benchmark is kind of like I, you know, I want to say a rule of thumb. And they, they use these as targets. They should have a budget and a Target so many restaurants. The highest operating costs on here. When I'm looking at your. When I'm looking at restaurant P. Ls. So the top line is everything above that prime cost line. And that's basically your sales cost of goods, labor. And especially when I'm looking at controllable, I'm looking at cost of goods and labor. Most restaurants run high labor higher than they're supposed to. And cost of goods are usually too high because they don't know the theoretical food cost. That's another area you could help them with. If you're an employee, you could, you could jump, you could double down and say, let me help you understand this. Help me help you cost out recipes. Let me help you get the recipes together. Let's make sure they're solid and consistent and they're verifiable, that this is the way we make the batch recipe. And you have everything down that you could do. Okay. This is important. They have certain rules, benchmarks. Here's one of the one. Some basic ones they do. Some basic general ones. And I always say rules of thumbs are more like guidelines. They're not set in stone for every restaurant because every restaurant's a little different because markets change. Your market might be different, your investment might be different, their rents might be different, their overhead might be different. So it's more of a guideline. It's not really set in stone. All right, Sales per square foot, losing money. Full service restaurant if their sales per square foot is 150 or less. For limited service, that's like fast casual or. And for limited services, 200 less. For a full service restaurant, 150 or less break even for a full service restaurant is 150 to $250 per square foot. A limited service, like a fast casual place is 200 to 300. A moderately profitable full service restaurant will run between 250 and $350 per square foot. A limited service one will run 300 to 400. A high profit full service restaurant will do more than $350 per square foot. And a limited service for fast casual model would do basically more than $400. Now, food cost in general, and this is a really, really big generalization, generally tends to run 28 to 32%. And I will tell you this, that is misleading because you should base your food cost goals on your theoretical food costs. If you don't know sure what theoretical food costs, that's when you take every item on your menu, you cost it all out to the penny. That is what we call theoretical or perfect world food cost. Now, that takes to account that I never drop anything, never burn anything, never waste anything, which we know is not true. So theoretical is pretty much what it says. It's theoretical. It's potential is the way I like to look at it. Now I take that potential. Now I can look at my actual food cost, which your actual food cost is basically take all your invoices, add them up, divide them by your sales. That's your actual food cost. That's what you're really spending. Because someone will call me, like if they looked at just general food cost, this rule of thumb, and it says here, 28 to 32, I get a call like this every month. Someone will call me and say, hey, Donald, my food cost is 30%. Is that good? I'll say, I don't know. They say, what do you mean, I don't know? It's like, it's in the parameters of the guidelines, you know, 28 to 32. I'm at 30. That must be pretty good, right? And I'll say, well, what's your theoretical? And they go, I don't know. That's the problem. If your food cost is 30% and your theoretical is 28, then that's a pretty good food cost. You should be able to run around 2% above theoretical. Now if someone has a theoretical of 20, you got some work to do on that 30% food cost. You're leaving a lot of money on the table. The average restaurant in the United States leaves nine points on the table. There's a big gap between their theoretical, their potential and their actual food cost. 9%. I can usually find someone 5% right away just by helping them understand their food costs more. This is another great way for you to get a raise. Double down and say, how can I help you understand our theoretical food cost? Take this data, take this information, go to your employer and say, how can I help you make more money? Because if you work for a really great employee, like all my clients are really, really great people. They really care about their team a lot. If you walked up to any of them and say, how can I help you make more money? They would definitely be more open to giving you a really great merit increase, a raise. Oh, here's the thing. And if your restaurant gets. The rules of thumb are nice. Because if your restaurant gets too far out of line, it can cause problems like alcohol cost. Liquor usually is 18 to 20%, bottled beer, 24 to 28%, draft beer, 15 to 18%, wine, anywhere from 35 to 45%. These are where things can really easily get out of control. Hourly employee gross payroll. This is where people like freak out. A full service restaurant should run around 18 to 20% as a percentage of total sales. A limited service restaurant, a fast casual place, should run 15 to 18% as percentage of total sales. Now I will tell you, based on current economy and rising minimum wages, that that is not really doable. It's going to probably go up to like, full service will probably be 20 to 22% and limited service be 18 to 20, 18 to 20, probably 21%. All right. It's going to change a little bit. I probably should update these, these rules of thumbs here, these guidelines. Now, employee benefits, this is something you don't think about as an employee. But employee benefits is that your owner has to pay. It has to match taxes they have to pay, workman's comp. There's a lot of things they have to pay that you don't understand as a is the benefit to you that they have to fit the bill for. And when you understand that, you can easily see why sometimes they're a little stressed out, especially when it comes to payroll. They're kind of like, I don't understand why this is like this. You got to understand their pain points and then what you want to do. If you want to get a raise, you want to understand your pain points and ask, how can I help you ease this pain? Prime cost, full service restaurants, 65 or less is great. For a limited service restaurant, 60% or less is great. For prime cost and prime cost. If you're not sure what prime cost is, that is food cost and labor cost combined. It's kind of like the holy grail of how we gauge if your restaurant's doing great or bad. And they should measure prime cost on a weekly basis, by the way. Okay, so that being said, let's jump into the meat of the saying. How do you get a raise? Help the owner build the top line and control the bottom line. This is a fantastic quote from Albert Einstein. I highly recommend you write this one down. Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value. Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value. You get paid, you get compensated based on the value you bring to an organization. That is the honest truth. I had a lot of struggle in my early career as like a prep cook, line cook, as a sous chef. I did not value myself a lot. I had a lot of self worth Issues from my father kind of being mentally abusive. So I did not think I deserved more. I thought that was just my lot in life. But as I worked on myself, started doing some coaching, started working on my mindset, I found that it wasn't about entitlement. Just saying, well, I'm so good, I deserve a raise. No, it became like, you know, how can I help this person? How can I help this restaurant owner make more money? How can I help control their bottom line? How can I help them be more successful? When I make them more successful, I found that they take me with them and they actually embrace that, and they paid me more. That's a huge thing to do, and it's a huge mindset shift, because right now you're thinking about what's in it for me when you go to your employee employer, but you want to say, how can I help this person? How can I help my restaurant owner? How can I help these people become better people? How can I help the team around me elevate their skills to a higher level? How can I show them how to. So maybe, oh, hey, let me show you a better way to do that. Let me show you a faster way to, you know, cut those. Let me show you something a little more effective, a little more efficient. When you try to be a person of value and help the people around you, I will tell you with 100% certainty that when you seek to be a person of value and help raise other people around you, they will take you with them and you will be elevated to the top of the game. It comes from taking that mindset and that focus off yourself and putting it on to contribution about other people. So here's my thing I want to do. And this is where we're going to say, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we get down to some brutal. Honestly. Let me ask you a question. Do you work hard? I would say 99% of people that work in a restaurant, if I ask them, do you work hard? Of course I work hard. I work really hard. I bust my ass. That's why I hear all the time, I bust my ass every day, I bust my ass. And this owner doesn't appreciate it, right? Well, here's the problem with hard work. You see, hard work is very subjective. Hard work is subjective. And subjective means it only has reference to the person experiencing it. Now, you might think you're working hard, and I'm not saying you don't work hard, but I would suggest that instead of working harder, we work smarter. So let me ask you another question, and this is another one. You gotta be brutally honest. When you come to work, are you making a 100% effort to become of more value to your employer? Now, if you're honest, you're probably gonna say, well, I mean, there's probably some things I could do better. There's probably some times that, you know, I cut some corners. There's probably some times I, you know, slacked off a little bit. So remember, what you put out, you get. That's exactly what everything in life is. You are basically like a boomerang as far as energy and effort. And the energy and effort that you put out into the universe comes back to you. I always say there's boomerangs and there's sticks. A stick is someone who doesn't have any energy. All they do is complain. Wine. And they have this kind of, you know, external locus of control. And there's a thing in psychology called locus of control. And locus of control is this external locus of control. You think that I'm just a clog in the wheel. It's just my lot in life. I'm not lucky, you know, I'm just, you know, outside forces have impact on me. Or a person with an internal locus of control, focus of control, or locus of control has this belief that I'm in charge of my own destiny. I bring what I get what I want from life because I value myself and I also value other people, and I try to help them raise their standards. So when you're honest with yourself, you know, you know, we could all do a little bit better. We could all be a little bit faster. We could all be a little bit sharper. We could all be a little bit cleaner. When we're at work, we could all be a little nicer. We could all be a little more respectful. This is what I mean by being 100%. I want you to make this effort inside yourself that you're going to be a hundred percent dedicated to being your best when you're at work, when you show up in that back door, I always refer to restaurants. A lot of times we call the restaurant out front. We call it the floor. I call it the stage. Because anytime you're on stage, just like an actor, you're playing a part. And when you walk in that back door of that restaurant, think of that restaurant from now on as a huge stage. And it is production. And your job is to play a role. Your role now is to help elevate and bring value to everyone around you, not make it self centered and focused about you. What's in it for me? But start thinking about what can I do to help the people around me elevate their game? What can I do to help the owner take some of that stress and anxiety off their plate? I mean you've probably seen the owner of your restaurant walk through and they just look like they're about to like have a heart attack. They're so stressed out. When you see that, you should start a dialogue with them. Hey, you seem a little stressed. What can I do to help you? Hey, what can I do to help ease some of this stress from you? What can I do to help you get the restaurant where you need to be? Ask better questions, you get better answers. You also get better results. So there's two ways. We mentioned this earlier. There's only two ways, two ways to get a merit, increase or raise. You can build the top line, which is sales, and you can control the bottom line, which is waste. Now this is a diagram, this is a, this is a mind map I give out to all my clients and it's basically it's top line, bottom line management theory. Top line management theory is growth. There are tons of things that you can do as far as growing the top line. You could help. Now this is things that you could do as an employee. Increasing sales. You could get guests to, there's only, just so you know, there's only four ways to increase sales. You can either get new guests to come to the restaurant, which is marketing. Which if you want to help with marketing, I'm sure your restaurant owner would love you to help with marketing. And how can you help as an hourly employee, help with marketing? Hey, usually, I know you usually have your phone with you. Why don't you take some great candid photos of the team doing work, everyone having a good time, maybe guests having a, celebrating a birthday, anniversary. Get some pictures of people in your restaurant, in your restaurant enjoying themselves, sharing them with the owner and saying, hey listen, I got some really great candid pictures of the team doing prep today. I got some really great pictures, you know, black and white photos of the team, you know, you know, just doubling down during the lunch rush. And these are the great photos that really separate restaurant brands is by having more emotions of marketing in there in their social media post. So that's one way you can help attracting new guests by marketing, contributing, asking, how can I help you with the marketing? Another way to increase sales is get current guests to return more often. This is usually loyalty programs. If you have a Loyalty program. You need to be talking about the loyalty program. If you're in the service team, every table should be asked right away, hey, are you a member of our loyalty program? Oh, it's so easy to sign up right here and get them signed up for loyalty programs. Another way you can increase sales is get guests who come to your restaurant to spend more money. This is called upselling or suggestive selling. If you're on the service team, if you're in the bar team, you should be making, always be making sincere recommendations to increase the guest check average. Right. And the fourth way, which doesn't really have anything a lot to do with you, but they could raise prices. That's the fourth way to increase sales. Another thing that increases the top line for restaurant owners is training. They need to train more. They need to train you to actually, really, really want to be a better person. You need to ask for more training. What can I get? What kind of training can we do? Most restaurants have what's known as a training culture. Training culture is normally, and please, if you've ever been through these kind of cultures, you've seen them in action. Training culture is when you get trained on the front end. When you get trained on the front end, you get hired, hey, welcome to the restaurant. You know, we're first day here. You're gonna do a usually called the shadow program. It's four or five day shadow program. They turn you loose, they have you follow somebody around. That's just, that's pretty boring training. And almost 80% of restaurants do it just like that. Learning culture is the next level up where they're actually wanting to be better. And they have this kind of culture where we want to learn, develop, grow, and become better, 1% better every single day. So being hungry about learning is one way you could actually help grow the top line. Because when you train more people make less mistakes. When they make less mistakes, that's less waste. Less waste means more money in the bot in the bottom line. Okay. Improve guest experience is another one you could do. Okay, you should be able to help improve the guest experience. What can you do to do that? Some other things you could do as far as helping grow the top line from a, from an hourly employee, right. You can get, you can be involved in what's known as menu analysis. Menu analysis is where every, every quarter we do a menu engineering worksheet. We understand where the stars, where are the dogs, what are the puzzles, where are the workhorses? And we work through how to make those things better. Another Thing you do to help grow the top line is ask questions about the weekly finances, the financial reviews. Hey, where are we with the labor costs? Where are we with the prime cost? What can I do to help? Ask questions. What can I do to help you? Okay, now, the biggest thing for most people, when we're talking about top line, bottom line management, if you notice, there's two yellow things there. The top one is top line, of course. The one in the bottom is bottom line. Restaurant owners are supposed to focus 80% of their time on growth. Top line. And 20% of their of their focus should be on bottom line, controlling, you know, protecting the brand. You, as an employee should be focused the opposite. 80% of your time should be focused on the bottom line, protection, protecting the brand. And 20% of your time should be focused on growing the brand. This is a huge shift, and this is where restaurants really become super successful. When we divide and conquer. When we divide and conquer, not everyone's focused on the same thing. The owners and the leaders should be focused on growth. The hourly team should be focused on protection. What do I mean by protection? You should be actually making sure you're serving food properly. If you're in the kitchen team, you should be following all the HACCP guidelines. All the, all the basically health department guidelines. You should be ensuring everything is up to standard, up to code. One of the most basic ones is hot food. Hot. Cold food. Cold. Right. You should be asking about KPIs. KPIs are key performance indicators. What are some KPIs you should be looking at? If you're. You should be looking at guest check average. What's my guess? Check average right now. All right. Hey, Donald, Your guest check average this week so far is 2785. All right, perfect. My goal by Sunday is to get up to 29% or $29. All right? That's my goal. Now you have goals. See, now you're actually helping your owner by moving the target forward by you coming to him and saying, hey, where's my guest check average right now? And then. All right, cool. You know, a $4 increase in guest check average is not hard. A $5 guest check increasing guest check average is not hard. It's one extra dessert, right? It's one extra cocktail. It's one extra glass of wine. It's one extra beer. It's not that hard to get your guest check average up. Sometimes you're just afraid to ask for the sale. If you don't ask, you don't get. And if we Want to be more valuable. You want to take a vested interest in learning how to increase your guest check average. If you run the service team or the bar team to to make more money, increasing your guest check average automatically gives you a bump in your tips. Because as you increase your guest check average, that also does increase your tips too. So I'm looking at that stuff. I'm also looking at my table turn. How can I be more efficient in my table train? If you're on the service team? One of the things I see all the time is poor table management. People just aren't pre bussing their tables. And then people get up and leave. The table's filthy, it's full of plates, full of glasses, full of everything. It's just a mess. And then it takes them at least five minutes to reset the table, which loses valuable time. Remember also this. Every seat in a restaurant is is valuable. There's an old joke out there is what's the most expensive thing in a restaurant is an empty seat. So every time you see an empty seat, just know that your restaurant owner is freaking out because the empty seat means revenue. When he sees a table sitting there dirty for 5, 10 minutes that he could easily turn over and get a new table in, there he is. They are, they are freaking out. So if you can help them with table management, that's great. That's pre bussing. Pre busing is the fastest way. And stay on top of table management. When people are done with their plates, ask them, may I remove this? You know, get you a to go box, get the plates out of the way. By the time someone gets ready for dessert, there should be only their water glasses, their glasses, their drink glasses, and that's about it. You should take everything off the table by then. You got to stay on top of table management. If you're not sure how to be better at table management, ask someone on your team. Ask the funding managers, hey, I'd really like to learn how to pre bus better and how to be more effective. Can you give me some tips on how to do this better? Do not be afraid to ask. Asking people for help or asking people to become better is not a sign of weakness. Please write that down. Asking people on your leadership team to teach you and train you is not a sign of weakness. It's not saying you're stupid. It's not saying you don't get it. You just want to learn a better way. I want to be more effective. I want to be more efficient. There's working hard and working smart. I Will tell you Right now, 99% of people work hard at the end of the shift. You just feel beat up and tired and exhausted. People that work smart and they're ready to go another round, they can work a 7, 8, 9, 10 hour shift and they're still ready to go because they work smart, that's being efficient. I can always tell someone in the kitchen, especially when they're being efficient, is they move with purpose, they're not taking extra steps. Same thing on the service team. When I see someone who's really effective, they're not running back and forth like forgetting something. Oh, my God. And they look like they're panicking, and then they, all sudden they run back to the, to the weight station to grab something. They run out to the dining room. You can just see they're, they're flustered and they're frustrated. They're not organized. Organization starts with your mind first, and then it carries out. You got to make sure you're measuring those things. Prime cost is the biggest thing that kills restaurant owners. You want to ask them about prime costs, how can I help with a food cost? How can I help with labor? How can I help with the labor cost? Watch overtime. Watch your overtime. I know you like overtime. It's nice to get, you know, extra money, get time and a half. But overtime is killing the restaurant, and it's killing the restaurant owner's profitability. Okay? That's a short term fix. That's when you're focused on you. And what's in it for you is overtime. When you're always wanting overtime, you're not thinking about the long term impact on the success of the restaurant. You're just thinking about what's in it for me, what's in it for my next paycheck. You got to change that mindset if you want to be more valuable. Got to be that kind of person that steps up and say, hey, what can I do to help you? You know, trust me, your family would probably appreciate if you weren't at work, you know, 14, 15 hours a day. Got a little time with your kids. Don't make the mistakes. I did my very first restaurant, and this is before I got my coach. I was, you know, I was like most people in their business. I just knew that, you know, a chef goes and works 14, 16 hours a day. That was, that was, I was trained. And up until I had my first restaurant, that was my mindset. And then we were closed on Sundays and Mondays. We were driving by the restaurant. My daughter was really low at the time, we're driving by the restaurant and my daughter points out the window and she says, that's daddy's house. And right then, it was like a stake in the heart. It just broke my heart that she thinks I, I work there so much that that's where I live. I was sad. That was a wake up call for me. And then like, honestly, talk about the universe conspiring to help you out. A week later, that business owner sat down and said, hey man, I'm worried about you. Let me help you. If it wasn't for those two things, I probably would have just spiraled that thing into the ground. But luckily things turned around and someone reached out and helped me. And I want to help you too. So whatever I can do to help you get there, please let me know. The thing. You got to understand this top line, bottom line management theory. Most owners don't understand it in its complexity. They understand a P L and there's top line, bottom line. But here's the thing. What happens when the market contracts, when sales drop down, when the owners panic, they focus on the bottom line. And sadly, that's bad for you because it's cut, cut, cut, save, save, save. They're going to cut back on supplies. You're going to have lower inventory, you have to work with less stuff. You're going to have less people on this, on the line with you, left people on the floor. It's going to suck. So here's the question you have to ask yourself. How can you become more valuable? Where are the opportunities to increase your value to the restaurant? The number one way you can become more valuable is this. Become a learner. I will share this with you too, that an education is more valuable than a degree. There are a ton of people that are self educated that are multi millionaires. It's not about getting a degree. It's about having a mindset that I want to keep improving, keep growing. The Japanese have a term for this. They call it kaizen. Kaizen is constant, never ending improvement. When you adapt this philosophy of kaizen into your life, you always know there's another level and that you always know I can always get better. All my clients, we adopt this philosophy of 1% improvement. We just want to be 1% better today than we were yesterday. If I can just be 1% cleaner, 1% nicer, 1% sharper, I'm winning the game. You got to remember that an education is more valuable than a degree. And you don't have to go to school, a formal school, to Learn. There's tons of stuff out there. We're gonna talk about that. Hashtag, write this down. Learners are earners. A study by economists from University of Padova in Italy concluded that individuals who read for self education earn 20%, 21%. Wow, 21% more than those who don't. Learners are earners. People who invest in reading, developing their skills, changing their mindset, developing new habits. They earn 21% more than the average person. So what are some ways you can learn? What are some ways you could actually reach out and say, hey, you know what, I want to take this to the next level? Here are some sites for online education. Skillshare, LinkedIn, learning skill success, Corsa, TED, TED, Ed Khan Academy, Udemy. There's MIT open courses, milk Street, Cooking School, Stanford online, Open Culture, edX, Tipsy, and YouTube. My favorite are the ones in orange. LinkedIn learning has tons, tons of, tons of stuff on there that you can, that can actually help you up your game and become a better person. Actually become a better leader. If you're in an hourly position and you're looking at setting your sights on like a management role or a leadership role, or if you're in a leadership role and you want to move to like a higher level role, like maybe a managing partner role, you have to up your skill sets, you have to up your mindset and your game. So what should you be learning when you're looking at these things? Right? Here's what you should be looking at. You should be looking at business classes, leadership classes, communication classes, body language finance classes. Okay? Especially personal finance. Budgets should look at marketing, video production, software apps like Adobe, Microsoft apps like Excel. I'll tell you right now, if you go up to your owner, especially the stuff on the last ones on the right hand side, budgets, marketing, video production, Adobe and Excel. You'd be shocked how many restaurant owners hate Excel. If you knew how to do Excel really, really well, and that's a skill you have, you could help them so much. If you had to do Adobe like Photoshop, Adobe Rush Video productions and video editing, you could help them out so much. Video production, just learning how to shoot video on your iPhone. There's free classes you can take on YouTube and how to become a video, a videographer using an iPhone only marketing. There's tons of ways you can help your restaurant grow by learning more about marketing and asking how can I help these? And the way I look at it is look at the things that maybe appeal to you. If you're kind of in the video, you Think video is kind of cool. Hey, jump into that. Hey, I want to learn this, I want to help you. This is what you want to do. You got to learn business skills. Especially if I was looking at business skills. If I was a manager and I wanted to evolve, I was an assistant manager or just a shift leader, I wanted to get to a general manager role or a regional manager role. All the ones on the left side I would focus on. I need to learn more about business and need to learn more about leadership, more about communication, body language and finances. And on LinkedIn learning, there are tons of classes for all this stuff. On YouTube you can find tons of stuff about video production, software, apps, Microsoft apps. There's tons of stuff you can self learn. Another thing you want to do is you want to create a personal development plan. You want to show your employer that you want to learn and grow. This is a super simple two page personal development plan. You write down some goals you want to achieve. I will tell you now, if you had a personal development plan filled out every quarter and you went to your owner and say, these are my, these are the top things I want to work on to improve myself and help your restaurant, you would get a raise every quarter. I promise you. If you took initiative and just went up and say, hey, here's my personal development plan for this quarter, for January, for the next three months. These are the things I want to, I want to achieve. These are goals. I want to do this. How long it's going to take me, I'm going to be committed to doing this. I'm going to spend this much time, the strengths I have to do this thing, I'm going to start doing this, I'm going to stop doing this. These are the skills, knowledge I need you to help me with. If you did this, you will get a bonus every single quarter. Because you know why? Because now you're helping become a better person and now you're increasing the value of the business. Ask them that question. How can I help you control the bottom line? Remember, 80% of your focus should be on bottom line. How can I help you control the bottom line more? How can I help you control the top line? One of the huge things about bottom line, I'll tell you right now, if you're in the kitchen team, you want to know how you can help save the bottom line Right away. Watch your use of linen, those bar towels. I don't know why, if I put out a stack of bar towels in the kitchen, they get devoured like a, like a Like a school of piranha on a cow. Faster than you can think of that thing, they're stripped. I mean, they're gone in like 30 seconds. And then I go check the linen bag, and probably half of them barely have anything on them as far as dirty. Just got a couple little spots on them. But, you know, people just like, oh, got a little stain on there. Like, get a new towel. There's plenty of them. How can you help? How can you help control the bottom line? Help control the linen cost. Watch that waste when you're trimming vegetables in the kitchen. Watch how much is going into a waste bucket. Be cognitive and be conscientious about how your work is impacting the bottom line. Remember, 80% of your time should be focused on the bottom line. 20% should be focused on the top line. Here's a little secret, okay? There are a lot of things you could offer to help with that would take pressure off the owner that make you more valuable. A lot of things. But here's the thing. You got to ask. Hey, what's going. Hey, how can I help you? Now, a lot of people are on this call, are going to say, that's just asking. I'm just. That's just giving me more work. I'm not getting paid for it. Sometimes you got to have a little blind faith that if I put myself out there to the universe, the universe will reward me. I know it doesn't. It sounds counterintuitive to some of the belief systems. You have that, oh, no, no. I have to get it first and then I'll give more. Now, that's outdated mindset. If you want to get a raise more often, you have to flip that mindset and say, I'm willing to give in order to get. It's just like making an investment. I don't make an investment in stock and expect to get my return up front. No, I have to write it out. Same thing with you. You have to make an investment in your time and your energy and your effort at your employer to give more and be more. To go above and beyond what your normal job requirements are to help them. When you do that, trust me, you will get a raise. Unless your owners are total jerks. And then you should look for a new place. Because I'm telling you, there's a lot of great owners out there that truly appreciate their team and want to help them grow and develop, but they're also not stupid. And they're not just going to give raises for just time and tenure just because you've been there six months and you're still doing the same effort and energy and you're still doing the same level of productivity. Doesn't mean you're going to get a raise. That's outdated mindset. New mindset is how can I become more value to my owner? How can I help them grow the top line, protect the bottom line, more emphasis on the bottom line. How can I help their business improve? And then they're going to take me with them. That is the new mindset that we have to embrace. So how do you ask for a raise? Well, there's a couple of things you got to do. Number one, you want to ask for a meeting. Number two, never demand a raise. Please, please, please. I have a restaurant owner every week gets on one of my, either my mastermind calls or my accelerator program calls or am. I have a private coaching program called Team one once a week. Easily someone will say, yeah, so and so walked up and demanded a raise. And I always tell them, don't, you know, just like negotiating with, with terrorists, we don't give in to the demands of terrorists. Do not demand a raise. Because now you just took the power of control away and you showed the owner that you're only interested in yourself. You're not interested in the growth and wealth being and welfare of his business, their business and their brand. Right. You're a mercenary. And mercenaries jump around from job to job and they go where the highest dollar is, but they're never happy because they're not having any kind of actual fulfillment. They're actually not helping contribute to becoming better people. Never threaten to quit if you ask for a bonus increase or a merit increase. Don't ask, don't threaten to quit if you don't get it. That's again, that's a terrorist demand. We don't, we don't. I do not support giving into terrorists. So have a tlbl. That's top line, bottom line plan. How can I look at the top line? Bottom line, how can I help them grow the top and most importantly 80%. How can I help them, you know, protect the bottom line? A restaurant to me is like a bucket. And that bucket gets filled up with cash. And the more holes they have in a bucket, the more they bleed out. I've seen restaurants, honest to God, this is a sad but true story. I've had restaurants start coaching with me that do 3 million or more in sales and they make no money. My question is, how can you make $3 million in sales and not have any money? They have a lot of holes in the bucket because everyone in the team is out for themselves and they're not thinking about protecting the brand. They're just thinking about how much can I get from this gravy train before it dries up. That's outdated thinking, people. You gotta think more proactive and you gotta think more what's in it for you? And then I know you'll take care of me. And again, I know that goes counterintuitive to what you've been thinking your whole life, that I need to take care of me. I need to watch, you know, take care of number one. That's me, get what I can. It's a losing mindset. If you ever want to be ultra successful, you gotta have this thing is I'm gonna give to others and I just know that if I'm good and I give to other people, it will come back. Karma is a bitch. What you put out comes back tenfold easily, right? Create a personal development plan. If you want that personal development plan I showed in the link I showed in the slide deck, just email me donaldrestaurantcoach.com I would be more than happy to send you a copy of that personal development plans that you can fill out again. Ask them, what can you do to become more valuable? Do not think you're Murphy mind reader. I don't know about you, but my mind reading skills really suck, okay? They really suck. Ask them, what can I do to be more valuable? Ask them just like that, hey, what can I do to be more valuable to you and the brand? Improve your personal habits. This is a huge one and you're not gonna like to hear this, but your personal habits do impact your income ability, right? If you're sloppy at work, you're sloppy at home. Sloppy people are not going to make a lot of money because you don't have attention to detail. That's a personal habit. Attention to detail is a habit. It can be improved. Okay? If you're always late for work, that's a habit. You gotta get to work on time. You got to change your personal habits. And this is a hard thing to sometimes face. Look in the mirror and say, what? What habits do I have that are holding me back? What habits do I have that I need to work on that are going to make me a better person and make me a more valuable employee and that way I can bring more value to the brand. But you gotta face that demon and say, what habits do I have? Like, you know, there's a lot of bad habits we have in the restaurant business. This business is notorious for a lot of bad habits. Some of them are, you know, we like to, after work, we go out and have a couple drinks, and then we have a couple more drinks. Next thing you know, it's three or four in the morning and we're going home and we're not getting a lot of sleep and we're straggling and we're dragging into work all hung over. Okay, time to get. Time to get serious about building a life that you're proud of. Time to get serious about helping other people. And the best way to do it, Start helping yourself and just say, you know, hey, no, I had to stop a long time ago because it was a downward spiral. And I will tell you this. Nothing good ever happens when you go to an ATM at 2 in the morning. Okay? Nothing good happens after you go to an ATM in thousand, two in the morning. That's my personal advice to everybody. Nothing good happens at an ATM at 2 in the morning. Nothing good happens. And then ask about bonuses for reaching goals. Sometimes they might not be able to give you a merit increase, an hourly increase, but they might be able to give you a bonus, a quarterly bonus, or a monthly bonus for reaching goals. Again, you got to ask. Not every situation is going to fit every restaurant. Some restaurants can afford to give you a. An hourly increase in merit if you're contributing to the bottom line and helping them grow the top line. Some places are cash. You know, their cash flow is a little strict. But if you say, hey, if we reach this goal, can I get a piece of the pie? Now a lot of people would say, well, well, if I don't get the goal, I did all that work and didn't hit the goal. I would say, well, then make sure you hit the goal. Double down on your effort. If you, if you already have this premise, like, well, if I. If I set this goal out there and I work my ass off, I don't hit the goal, I don't get the bonus. Oh, I worked all that for nothing. No, that's a bad mindset. My mindset. When I set a goal, I'm gonna hit that goal, I'm gonna hit that target. There's nothing about it. I mean, I'm gonna actually go past the target because I'm gonna hit that sucker and then blow by it. You want to have that kind of winning mindset that if I set a goal, we're going to hit that goal. But be creative. There's lots of ways to get a merit Increase lots of ways to get a raise. It's not just necessarily on hourly side. Bonuses are great. Bonus programs are really, really valuable because it's showing the owner that you're invested in helping grow the brand and you're willing to put in the work for a quarter, like or a month. Hey, listen, let's set a quarterly bonus, let's set a monthly bonus. What can we do? What can I do to help you and let maybe help me set up a bonus, a bonus program for our restaurant. Sometimes you got to be the initiator and go to your owner and say, hey, what can we do? Hey, how can I help you? What can we do to create a bonus plan so we can all share in the wealth? Right? Your employer wants to give you a raise if they can make sense of it on the P and L. Now I will say, and this is honestly just working with thousands of restaurants. 90% of restaurant owners want to give you a raise. 10% are cheap jerks that will work you to death and will take advantage of you. Those are people you want to stay away from. Those are toxic cultures. Those are, those are toxic owners. Toxic owners are basically what gives the restaurant industry its bad reputation. Because we treat dale. Because they treat people like shit. They don't pay them anything. They work them to death. They don't give them breaks. You don't get any food. Those are toxic employers. And there are toxic employers out there. There's also some really, really fantastic employers out there. I am so proud of all the people in my, in my coaching programs. They are the kind of employers I wish I had when I was growing up. Because you know why? They really are invested in learning, growing, developing themselves and learning, growing and developing their brand. Learning, growing and developing their team. They spend a lot of time training, improving. They want to elevate to that learning culture level where everyone wants to be better. Hashtag, write this down. Restaurants become better when the people in them become better people. That starts with you. It starts with you asking questions and offering to become more valuable. That's the number one thing you can do. Ask questions and offer to become more valuable. Alright, so here's a little toolkit for you. Some things to help you. Number one, and you're not gonna like this one. Learn to manage your money better. Your personal money. Please take a finance class. Okay? 76% of people live paycheck to paycheck. 64% have no money in saving. 67% of Americans can't pass a basic finance test. These are sad statistics that we got to do so much better. Restaurants become better when the people in the become better people. Ask your owner for a financial class they have access to. I mean, there's people that, like, they're bookkeepers, they're accountants. There's maybe people that come to the restaurant that are bookkeepers or accountants that would easily, more than happily come down and teach a financial class on how to set up a simple home budget and help you get your money a little bit more organized. You got to start taking your finances under your control. Don't put it on the whims of other people and saying, and, you know, living paycheck to paycheck is a choice. You might not say, oh, it's not true, Donald. It is true. Living paycheck to paycheck is a choice I will share with you. When I was a prep cook, this is back in the early 80s when I was a prep cook, minimum wage was $5.18. $5.18. And I learned how to manage my money on that amount. You can learn how to manage your money if you really just want to, you know, just double down and say, hey, you know what? I'm going to take control of this. I'm not going to let it control me anymore. It's like time management. Time management. Everyone always says, I don't have time. That's bullshit. You have time. You just don't find it a priority. Time management is not about controlling time. It's about controlling what's important and putting your attention which gives you the most value. Same thing with money management. It's not that you don't know how to do it or you can't do it. You can do it. You just got to focus on doing it. To start you off with, I recommend these four books. The Richest man in Babylon changed my life. It was probably. It's a short book, too. I mean, super easy to read. You can read it in, like, two hours. I will teach you to be rich. A great book, The Psychology of Money. Another great book. You are a badass at making money. That will help you with your money mindset. Psychology of money and you are a badass at making money will really help you with your money mindset. And the beautiful thing is that they're also all available as audiobooks for those people who hate to read. I got a solution for you. They're on audio, too. No excuses here. So what's next for you? Of course, you can always check out any of my books. Your restaurant culture sucks is now available. Your restaurant sucks. Your Restaurant Culture sucks. Your restaurant still sucks. There also will be they're all available on audio. Your Restaurant Culture sucks will be available in the next few days on audible and itunes. Invite like minded people to join the Restaurant Coach Nation. This, this movement grows when we get more people involved. I really need your help to help perpetuate the movement. So if there's people you know in the restaurant industry that could benefit from being a member of the Restaurant Coach Nation, make sure to send them an invite. Also just remind them that they have to answer the three questions just so I know that they are in the restaurant industry so they can get in this thing. Follow me on Instagram My Instagram handle is onaldburns Pretty easy to find. Subscribe to my YouTube channel the restaurant Coach Listen to Restaurant Coach Podcast. I just dropped a brand new episode. A couple episodes in the last few days. Great way to listen. Great way to get some education while you're driving back and forth from work. And if you really want to speak to me about coaching, book a one on one strategy session with me. And I also want to real quick mention that starting in November 28th, 29th and 30th, I am doing my annual three days to thrive online challenge is we're going to dig down probably like two and a half hours a day. Day one's all about culture and hiring. If you're having problems hiring, that's a great one to go through. I'm gonna give you my kind of step by step ultimate hiring guide. Day two we're going to dig into your menu, some menu design stuff and mark and marketing because marketing is another huge way to drive traffic to your business. All right. And then day three I'm going to talk about strategic growth and profitability and I might even throw in a fourth day and just do a special Q Q A session for anybody who has questions from the first three days. But and that probably will happen. All you gotta do is just go to 3daystothrivechallenge.com Sign up for the Three Days to Thrive online challenge. It is going to be at least eight hours of highly highly valuable stuff. You will get access to the replays. If you can't make it live. They go in the mornings. We started like 7 00am Pacific Time during that time. It's it's going to be a great thing. So as it goes from 8 to 10 Mountain Time, 7 to 7 to 9 Pacific Time on that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it's a little early but I knew I had to make accommodations for People on the east coast too. So if you've never been to the three Days to Thrive, it's an awesome one. Again, you will get the recordings. I also have some bonuses in there too. You get some access to some other programs I have. Right. Like the Level up system. Everyone talks about time management and they can't get their time, you know, time management together. The Level up program is my peak productivity program that I teach all my clients on how to manage your time better. I also give you access to the outstanding Mindset which another great little booklet. It's a booklet and also the audio program. So you get access to that audio program and then I also am including a rare PDF that is 365 Little tip, little bites of information that you can use every day. It's called the Restaurant Coach Playbook. All my clients love to do it. They find a quote every day and they share it with their team and it kind of pushes them to stay on track and on target to not ever accept mediocrity. And that's how they do those things. All right. If you ever need to get a hold of me, always go to my website, the restaurantcoach.com book a call with me if you want to talk to me more often. If you want to send me an email, Donald, the restaurant coach.com is always available. And then Friday Member Restaurant Coach Nation we do training here every Friday, well depending on holidays or if I'm traveling. But most Fridays we try to do training here. You will see a notification in the Restaurant Coach Nation when we're going to go live and I appreciate you being here today. If you have any questions, comments, please reach out to me. Donaldrestaurantcoach.com I appreciate you being here. I hope everyone has a fantastic day and then we won't have a call next week because it is Thanksgiving weekend. So everyone have a happy a very, very thankful and grateful for you. Have a great Thanksgiving and make sure to push those Black Friday sales. You should be pushing gift cards right now. If you're not, you're missing out on a huge, huge market. Black Friday gift card sales, Cyber Monday gift card sales are some of the biggest money making opportunities in the restaurant business. Do not forget to push the gift cards. Everyone have a fantastic day.