How to Grow Profits in 30-Days with Darren Manzari & Pamela Lee

Hey, welcome to the Restaurant Coach podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. I'm telling you, 2021 is off to a wild roller coaster ride. And I am so honored today to be joined by a couple. And I'm going to say full disclosure that the people on my guest today are Pamela Lee and Darren Mansari. They are partners with me in a company called Restaurants Simplified. And Restaurant Simplified is basically, it's like my mastermind group company. So you probably know the Restaurant Coach brand. Restaurant Simplified is my mastermind group company and it has really two really cool components to it. We have the mastermind group and then we also have what is known as our KPI dashboard. And we'll talk about that. This is our first part of a three part series and we're going to talk about today, we're going to show you how to grow your profits in the next 30 days. So I want to enter Darren Mansari, but Darren, I call Darren, my nickname for Darren is he's the Profit Professor. And then Pamela, I call her the Data Queen. She is the Data Queen. She loves data. She loves to take numbers and she loves to take data and show you how to turn those numbers into gold that actually can spruce up your, your profitability. So let's start off right away as. And I'll have Darren kick it off. Darren. And we talk about mastermind groups and, you know, the power of a mastermind group. Napoleon Hill talks about the power of a mastermind group in his book, in a lot of his stuff. What do you think is the biggest benefit you see in being in a mastermind group?

Well, thank you, Donald, and thanks for having me on the podcast. I appreciate it. So to answer your question, there's a lot of benefits, right? So you're asking me to pick like one of them.

Right.

But one of the biggest benefits other than learning from other people, not having to make the same mistakes that people have made already. Oh, yeah, is, is, I would say, the synergy that comes from a mastermind group. Okay. So I'm in a group and I have a question and I ask the question. And the question is usually because I'm trying to do something in my restaurant or I have an idea for something, but then all of a sudden someone else answers the question. And they don't just give me an answer, but they actually take my idea and build it to the next level. And then all of a sudden someone else jumps in and goes, you know, I've seen something like. And before you know it, your idea has gone from a level 7 to a level 9 or maybe even a level 5 to 11. 9, level 9. So. So I can't say enough about the synergistic approach to a mastermind or synergistic value, you know, of just sharing ideas of like minded people who could just capitalize that. Because if you think that you're going to think of everything on your own, you're not going to do it.

All right? Right. Pam, how. What would you add to that about the power of a mastermind? Because you've been, you know, you've been in our mastermind group now for a while.

Yeah, I 100 agree with what Darren said. But also I think iron sharpens iron. So these people, even if you're at the top of your game and you've been successful in business, successful at owning and operating a restaurant, you're still able to learn from other people. There's always things to learn. And I think the three of us all consider ourselves lifelong learners and that's what master does for you. So also, you know, I have a psychology background and so it's kind of the gestalt theory where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So if you were to take the collective knowledge of everybody, it's going to be even more when you put all those people in a group because of exactly what Darren said, we can all learn from each other and build on each other's ideas.

Exactly. Yeah. And you know, we have people in our mastermind group that actually some, some of people in our mastermind group have been in business like 20, 30 years before they joined our mastermind group. And the common thing we hear from a lot of them is that, oh, I wish I would have known about this 20, 30 years ago. It would have saved me so much heartache, would have saved me so many mistakes. I could have probably be so much farther along. But I say, well, better late than never, right?

Exactly.

Right, exactly. So, you know, being able to pivot and change right now is huge and it's really paramount. What are some ways that, you know, that you can remember that we've been recommending to people in our mastermind group how to shift their business model?

Pam, do you want to go first or you want me to go first?

Ladies first.

Okay, I'll go first this time. The thing that comes to mind, we've been talking a lot about hiring because a lot of places in the country that are having a hard time finding people to, you know, the restaurant, the business has gotten busier. People are starting to go out to restaurants more often. And so now the challenge is, where do I find people to work for me?

Right.

And so. And I don't know if that's something that folks on this call who are listening can relate to, but we've talked a lot about that with our folks, and there's definitely a pivot happening and figuring out where to find good people and how to recruit them.

There. Thank you, Pam, for that. That was wonderful. You know, when people think about pivoting, they almost think they need a totally different business model. Right. Because to think pivot, I'm going in one direction now, I have to go in another direction. But you don't have to think of it as such a drastic pivot. Right.

So.

So, like, one pivot that we did was we expanded on our takeout. Right. But I think most restaurants did that. Right. They just do something like that. But another pivot we did was we added a bakery. Right. So we added baked goods, which increased our dessert sales. Another small pivot we did. And this could sound counterproductive to some of the people listening here, but we increased our staff to give better service. Now, yes, that increased our payroll, but what it did was it gave us an increase in guest check average because we increased wine sales, we increased dessert sales. So there's a lot of little internal pivoting that you could do within a company that you don't realize is right there at your fingertips.

And.

And, you know, so many people think, well, if I pivot, how long will it take to see results? If you do the right pivot, you can see results tonight, your dinner service this evening. You know, don't be afraid to try these small changes and these small course changes, you know, since you're talking about pivoting.

Exactly. That is so true. Yeah. The thing that we try to help our mastermind members understand is that, you know, we can give you tools all day, but if you don't implement them, they're really just, you know, kind of useless.

So.

Yeah, and. And we like to hold people. The biggest thing, I think, about a mastermind group is that you have the accountability factor. You have three of us, not just me. You have three of us that you could reach out to with questions, but also three other three people that are actually going to hold you to the fire and actually make sure that you are account accountable and that you are implementing the tools that we talk about.

Yeah. You know, it's funny when you talk about tools, and I love it when you use that as a word, because I picture a Toolbox. Right. My early background was in the automotive industry. So I picture a toolbox, and this would be like, you know, you go into a business or you go into a person's house, and they're working on something, they're building a deck, they're doing something, and you say, hey, I got some tools that'll probably help you. And you drop a whole toolbox, you know, right on the floor, right at their feet, and I'm sure this will help you. And then you come back to see how they're doing, and the toolbox is sitting in the same place. It's not even open yet. Right. And then you come back the next week, and the toolbox. And here's the guy struggling on his deck, and you're like, you know, the tool that you're looking for is in that toolbox. I gave it to you. I lent it to you over a week ago. And it would have made this job so much easier. And even then, sometimes they go, oh, I didn't realize that. And then you come back a day later, toolbox, still not open yet. You know, and I see this. I've been working in the business industry, in multiple industries for over 30 years, and sometimes you visit clients and you're having the same conversations over and over and over again for months at a time because they're not using the tools.

Yeah. It's one of the reasons I made a shift back in 2008 from just consulting to coaching, because I got really. I got. I really got disheartened and kind of felt bad. You know, I'd go in and do consulting and consulting. You, you know, and you have a consulting background there. And also Pam comes from a consulting background. I come in, I tell you exactly what to do. I give you the plan, and then I go, all right, thanks a lot so much. Shake your hand, take off. And then I call to follow up. Hey, how's it going? Well, what happened? We didn't really implement everything. We, you know, But I gave you all the tools. Yeah. You know, we just, you know, I had some pushback from the staff, and then I just felt like it wasn't a good time. And then, you know, I just kind of got out of the habit. And so I felt really bad that, you know, these people pay a lot of money for consulting, and then they did. They only maybe applied 10% of it. So that's why I made the big shift into coaching, because coaching to me is more of. And like, mastermind groups are the same thing. We're there with you every step of the way.

Yeah.

I could just get. Give you tools and say, there you go. Like Darren said, I'm not going to drop a toolbox off in your. On your. On your floor and say, all right, I'll see you next week. No, that's not how we do it. No, we're actually gonna. We're gonna hold you accountable and we're gonna show you tools and we're gonna help you work through them, too. So that's Right. Leads me to my next kind of. Kind of question or topic is leadership. You know, leadership is critical. I mean, so critical in restaurants. What do you think is the number one trait that a leader needs today in 2021?

Can I go first again?

Yeah, yeah, take it.

Okay. I'm going to state the obvious. It's good communication. I mean, it's just being able to communicate in a clear and effective way. And communication, there's so much involved in that. So it's. You could unpack that all day, but making sure that your team is aware of the expectations of them, making sure that you're correcting things at the time that they're happening in a way that's productive and not inserting fear into your culture. So it's just. There's so much involved, but good, clear, productive communication, I think, is the most important trait.

Exactly.

All right. So it's hard to even counter what Pam just said, because I agree with her. Right. Communication could either make or break your organization. Okay. Whether it's your internal team, whether it's your circle, your employees, without communication, it's over. Okay. But to answer the question, something other than communication, John Maxwell has a great book out called the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. And there's 21 laws of leadership. Right. According to that book, every one of them is important. Right. So. So you're going to ask me to pick one. So I'm going to say the most important, the most critical aspect of leadership, I think, is the ability to lead yourself. I'm going to say it's your mindset. Okay. Because while everything is important. Right. And I'm not, you know, like. Like Pam said, communication. Okay. With. I don't care. You could get all the other 20 laws. Right. If you don't communicate. Right. Your company's falling apart. Right. So I agree with that. So just to give another aspect, I would say look in the mirror. Okay. When my. My son's a speaker and he says your. Your biggest opponent or your biggest competitor stares back at you in the Mirror every day. And. And I believe that that's true. And an owner have the right mindset, right? We're talking about, are you dealing from abundance mindset or do you have a scarcity mindset? Do you have a limited view of what you could do, or do you have an unlimited view where. Where my potential is unlimited? Am I believing the stories when I cast vision to my crew? Do I believe it myself internally? Right. You know, if I'm going to sit in my group, hey, we're going to be okay. We're going to get there. And inside, I'm crumbling, right? Saying, oh, my God, I hope we could do that. Then. Then it's all wrong. Nothing matches. So I would say the ability to lead yourself through this crisis with the confidence that you're going to get through it and you're going to guide your team through, then go ahead and go for it and start exactly where Pam said. Start with good communication. Yeah. Excellent.

Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah. And I, you know, I say, in both of my books, your restaurant sucks, and your restaurant still sucks. I say it all the time. All business problems are people problems. The other side of that coin, I always say, is all people problems are communication problems. And here's the thing. Are you gonna get it right 100% of time? No. I'm just as guilty as everybody else. You know, human beings, we. We make mistakes. We don't communicate, we don't. We don't articulate sometimes, or we say the wrong words. The best thing you do is just recognize it, apologize, be sincere about it, and then move forward. You know, Are you gonna get it right every day? No. But that's why, you know, you're human. You're gonna make mistakes.

You know, Donald, I'm a pilot, and if I was taking a trip to see you, right, like, let's say I want to go to Donald's house right now. I would take off, you know, from my local airport here in Spearfish, and I would put in the coordinates of Donald's airport, you know, what's. Whatever's closest to his house. And then right after liftoff, right, as soon as I get the plane configured and, you know, gears up and everything's ready, the first thing I do is I click the autopilot on, because I've already programmed this course into the autopilot. And a lot of people think that the autopilot flies from point A to point B, but it doesn't. What it does is looking at point B, and then all of a sudden, the winds are blowing from the left side of the plane. And now we're going off course a little bit. So the autopilot picks that up and it steers the plane to the left. But you know what? He overshoots the course, and then he goes up. I got to go back to the right, and then I gotta go back to the left and I gotta go back to the right. And what you don't realize is your plane is off course probably 95% of the time. It's constantly failing, okay? It's never hitting the mark. But because it knows its end result, it sees division, it sees where it's heading, and it's gonna keep correcting the course back and forth even though it's failing, it's gonna say, let's just correct. Let's just correct. Let's just correct until it lands right on the dime, right on that Runway where it needs to be, you know, and that's the way business is. You, you have a vision for your business, and you're going to meet with obstacles, you're going to meet with failures. And the trick is to just. Okay, we hit a bump. Correct. Course correct. Course correct, get up, start again, fix this, fix this, start again, Course correct. And eventually you'll get to your destination. You will get there.

Exactly. That's a good analogy. So, you know, the hospitality industry to me is all about giving. And, you know, and when we're in the hospitality industry, we give and give and give to others, but giving to ourselves, I think probably one of the most neglected things and we talk about this like we preach about it in our mastermind group is about self care. What do each of you do for self care?

Well, I'll go first again.

Ladies first. Ladies first.

Oh, Yeah. I have three pretty young kids, 3 to 10 years old, and very busy life. I'm a career person and so there's not a lot of time for self care. But if there's one thing that I do always make time for, it's exercise, because I know how much of a difference it makes in just how I feel and my mindset for the day and everything else. It really almost feels like my medicine to be able to go to the gym and burn everything off, all the, you know, burn all the junk off and then just kind of have a calm mindset for the rest of the day. It gets rid of stress. So that's my big self care.

Okay, that's excellent. I just, I don't do anything. I just hope it's all going to work out. I'M just saying that because Donald hates the word hope.

I hate the word hope. Yeah, hope's not right.

Get him going a little bit. No, I wish I would do even more self care, but I watch my diet. I do try to exercise. I don't exercise regularly. I need to get better on that. So as soon as the weather's good, then I exercise regularly because I bicycle. I mountain bike every day. I mountain bike with Pam's husband a lot, her husband, Dusty. So he's a good partner for me to do that because I could almost call him at any time. He's like, yep, up front. Let's go, let's go. Very competitive. And he pushes me. I think you need someone to push you. But my winter months is where I struggle. Right. And that's where I do have to get better on self care. But. But I do try. So I'm not hitting my 10 on self care. I'll give myself a 5 maybe, or a 6, but that's what I do.

Hey, you have a bike in your house. I know you do.

I do. I do bike in my house. And. And it's funny, we have a. We have a movie room downstairs.

Yeah.

And. And my wife came. Came home, you know, this is a couple weeks ago. And there's my bike right in the middle of the movie. And she's like, oh, that's a nice piece of furniture. I took it out of our gym and I put it in a movie room. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we watch movies every night, I said, so this enables me to exercise while we're watching.

See the movie. Yeah. No extra net time, right? No extra time.

Correct, Correct.

I'll watch. I'll watch like, I watch like, educational stuff while I'm like, working out. If I'm at home, I, you know, I have like a little ellipt and. Or I have like my little rebounder here in my office. I'll watch like some educational stuff while I'm working out or I listen to podcasts while I'm working out. Yeah, I love that kind of stuff.

But I do want to tell you one thing about self care, if I can. And I know we're on a podcast so people can't see this, I guess. Right. So maybe this is gonna be a.

Video too, so they can see both. But we'll try to explain what you got here.

Okay. So for the people on the podcast, I'm holding up my journal. Okay. And one thing I do do for self care, and this is really mental self care and business self care and Health self care is I try to journal every day and I don't beat myself up if I miss my journal. I don't get time for it today. I'm not going to beat myself up, I'll just do it tomorrow. But journaling is so good because it gives your mind a chance. Okay, so you're exercising your muscles if you're in the gym, right. You're taking care of your body if you're eating healthy. But what are you doing to exercise your mind and your thoughts and your vision and, and what self care are you doing in that aspect? And that's where journaling comes in. Right. So if you don't journal, I would highly recommend it. Tony Robbins taught me this, you know, 30 years ago. He said, you know Darren, if your life's worth living, it's worth recording. Writing journal, keep track of it. And now I could look back on journals from when I was 20 years old, you know, or 22 years old and say, hey, this was a different person back then, you know, and what lessons have I learned in the last years?

Which in our mastermind group, you share a lot of those old journal entries. Like this is 24 year old Darren. Hey, 20 year old Darren's a lot different than 50 year old Darren.

Absolutely. It is correct. Yeah.

Different mindset, different kind of thing. You know, it's really amazing. I, I journal in the morning every morning because I'm like you, I just like it. I like to get the stuff out of my head and get it on the paper where I have something, you know, it just kind of helps me process a lot of stuff. If I don't journal, I'm a little edgy, I think.

Yeah, it could be because you're missing something.

Yeah, because you know why? It's all staying in my head and it's processing in my head. I think I have a better opportunity to process through stuff if I get out of my head, get on paper and then, you know, and I'm, I'm a kind of journaler. I'll write stuff and then I'll draw like lines and I'll draw like off, you know, it kind of goes into tangents, which is great for me because that's how I process. I guess so, yeah.

Very good.

There's probably some psychological thing behind that Pam could jump into since she's the resident psychologist.

Send me your journal.

Oh yeah. Get psychoanalyzed by Pam. I do not need that, thank you. I don't think Pam wants to get up in there.

Pam's. I Always feel like Pam's always analyzing. Someday I'm going to get the big report. She's gonna say, okay, here are all my notes.

She is always analyzing. What are you talking about? She's always analyzing us. I always feel like she's analyzing.

I'm not going to tell you what I know.

Yeah, she watches my. I know. She's like, watching my social media, like, oh, Donald, I'm telling you. So, you know, in our mastermind group, one of the things we really talk about, we teach a triad for culture, which includes mission, core values, and vision. I'm going to ask each of you, why do you think each one of those is so important to restaurant success? Pam?

That's hard to answer because it's so ingrained in my brain that you just have to have them. It's hard to imagine not having them. It just. It gives you guidance, it shows. It helps you to explain to your team where you're trying to go and how you plan on getting there and the standards for getting there and what your expectations are. It just. It's the map. I mean, it's the. It's everything. Without that, you're. You're blind. You're trying to. You're operating without the senses that you need.

I look at it like a compass. That's the way I always kind of define it, is that. That's your compass. And anytime I've ever, you know, I was in the military, I was in pararescue teams. Anytime we got, you know, inserted into a place, first thing you do, we pull out the map and we. We got the map oriented. You had to know where you were, you know, you had to.

Absolutely, yeah. You have to know where that starting point is. You know. You know, when you talk about culture, you know, if I said, what's the culture of Darren and what's the culture of my family? That would. That would encompass everything, right? That would encompass how I act, what I believe, what is my level of integrity, what's my level of honesty, right? That. That' my culture. And you want your business to be an extension of that, right? As you move the business, you. You want that to go into your. But I'm not going to be one person my whole life and then go into business and be a different person. Oh, yeah. I'm honest in life, but not in business. Or I have integrity in life but not in business. Right. I'm not going to do that. So you need it to be a culture. You need to be an extension of yourself, but you have to Communicate that. You know, as Pam was saying with the leadership question, you have to communicate that to your team. Right. So how do you do that? Well, you do that through your words. You do that through your actions. Don't be afraid to speak up and tell them. Right. So that's what I would say about culture as far as mission and vision. You know, your vision is where are we heading with this? Like, are we just showing up every day? Like, is your vision of being a restaurant just to feed people every day? Is that your vision? Right. Because I mean, if it is, that's pretty easy to accomplish, right? We just open the door and feed people. But I'm hoping that your vision for your company is something bigger. Right? Like maybe your vision is to be one of the best restaurants in your area or to have a five star rating on Google or, you know, for me, one of our visions is like a Michelin star. There's never been a Michelin starred restaurant in South Dakota. And I want to be the first one. Now. I, I would, I take a James Beard award. Of course I would. Right, of course. But to, but to hit that, whether I attain, whether I obtain it or not someday, that's the, that's the vision. Right? That's where we're heading with this company. So now when I see something, when I see a plate that's not perfect, when I see a table set not set, right. When I see a server not interacting with a guest the way they should be, you know, it's very simple. Hey, do you think that situation is getting us closer to our award or getting us further away from our. And nothing else has to be said, that's the end of the communication. And they know exactly in a moment what I'm referring to. And I think that's very helpful.

Yeah, very true. And you mentioned a couple core values you live by that I know. You know, honesty, integrity. Pam, what's a couple of core values that you live by?

Integrity is a big one. I think that we've all heard people talk about, you know, putting the shopping cart away when nobody's watching, that's integrity. But applying that to everything in your life, just doing the right thing because you should. And then community is a big one for me and I think came from the fact that I was part of a small community growing up on a ranch where they actually relied on each other to get big jobs done, like the branding and harvesting corn and from the garden. And you needed the community's involvement. And also I was part of a military community. So I really love being connected to something larger than myself. Those are two big ones for me.

Very cool. Very cool. You know, and a mastermind group to me is basically, it's like having. Especially in our mastermind group.

I know.

It's like having three mentors. Who are some of your mentors? And why do you say. Why do you think having a mentor is so important?

Pam, you want me to go first or you want to take it again?

Go ahead.

You know, years ago, I committed to lifelong learning. Right. And I hope I could learn from other people all the time. Right. I never. You hear people say, be the smartest man in the room. No, I don't want to be the smartest man in the room. I want to learn from the people that are smarter than me. So, you know, some of my mentors in life have been a person named Joe Foot. You know, Joe Foot mentored me a little bit in business, but mentored me in family. How do you be a father? How do you. How do you deal with family? How do you like so many things. Skills that I never could have obtained without knowing Joe. My uncle Clarence, like, mentored me in business. He gave me lessons that, I mean, he took 30 years off, mistakes that I would have been making. And I was a young kid when I met Uncle Clarence. He's not really my uncle. He was a customer and he just became part of my family. So we adopted him as Uncle Clarence. But again, the lessons, this was 30 years ago almost when I met him. And you hear me on the mastermind call all the time. Well, Uncle Clarence told me to do this. Uncle Clarence told me to do that. So those are some mentors that I've had. And then I have, you know, other mentors like Paul Martinelli, Les Brown, you know, I do public speaking. I get. I learn a lot from Les Brown. When I challenge myself in my visions and what's possible, you know, that type of thinking. Paul Martinelli, right. He just helped me with that. And these are people that I've worked with professionally and I know them personally, and they're just awesome in my life.

Awesome. Thank you, Darren. Pam, how about some of yours?

I've got a few. I'll say. I'm talking to two of them. I would consider both of you mentors. Iron sharpens iron. So I learned from you guys every day. But I'd say two big ones for me were my grandfather and my dad. Those are the ranchers. And the way that they taught things or taught lessons in life, I guess, were to. They have these Funny sayings. Like, for example, keep a leg on each side and your mind in the middle. And we're talking about riding a horse, but bigger than that, if that makes sense. You know, it's like, stay on course and keep hold. Your vision, I guess, is relevant to what we're talking about. They've been mentors all my life. And then I had a great teacher in high school. I had an amazing teacher in college who I've stayed with and have helped shape my career and my choices throughout life. So I have some really great ones. They're always these old souls, just really wise people.

You know, I find ranchers have like the best metaphors, you know. Yeah, yeah. My dad was. My dad was, you know, Texan. And, you know, he used to have some great, you know, analogies like, you know, don't call down for the thunder if you're not ready for the boom.

Yes.

I remember being a kid going, what the hell does that mean? I don't even know what that means. I learned.

You think for a couple minutes and then it really sinks in. So, yeah, they're good ones.

Yeah. So let me ask you, what do you. What do you see as the new normal for restaurants? You know, we're coming out of, you know, the pandemic. We're coming out, vaccines rolling out, you know, restaurants. You know, states are opening back up 100%. I know Darren has a summer home down in Florida. I'm in Arizona. Restaurants here open 100%. Things are starting to move, shift back. What do you think is going to be like the new normal for restaurants, Pam?

You know, to be honest, I think it kind of remains to be seen a little bit because we're not exactly back to some kind of normal or in a new normal. Exactly. The vaccine is coming out, but people are. Some people are still a little bit fearful of going out. We don't know exactly how effective the vaccine's gonna be, but restaurants have changed and they largely went to more. Less contact and less touch and more digital and things like that. But people are craving the way it used to be. And so trying to figure out that right balance between keeping everybody safe but still having that experience that you want when you go out to eat at a restaurant. I think the new normal for the foreseeable. Well, at least for a couple years, at least is trying to find a balance and trying and remaining flexible and being able to pivot a little bit beyond that. I'm going to let Darren have a say.

Well, I'm going to give you an Answer. I don't know if this is going to be what you want to hear or not, Donald, so we'll see. But I believe there was an old normal. Okay, so before COVID there was a standard business model for restaurants, you know, and 90% of the restaurants fit into that model. You go to a restaurant, you almost know what to expect. You're going to be seated by a host or a hostess, and you're going to get to your table, and you know the routine. Okay. And then Covid hit, and it broke all that up. It shook everything up. It just like, kind of like, just killed everything.

I call it snow globe.

Yeah, it was like a snow globe. The people on the podcast couldn't see me shaking my hand like the snow globe, but that's what it was like. And I want to say, you talked about earlier, like, about pivoting, and you talked about that, and I just want to commend so many restaurants out there that I saw come up with ideas that were so outside the lines. It was so out of the box, thinking it was unique, it was creative. And, I mean, if I could meet each one of these people individually, I'd be shaking their hand, saying, this was phenomenal. What a great decision you made. So now, looking at that, I want to say there is not going to be a new normal. I think the future is whatever they want to make out of it. I think we've opened up the box and let people realize you're serving food. How do you want to do it? Be unique, be creative, do it in a different way, and let's break up. I don't want to see a new normal where everybody kind of goes back into one source sort of mode again. I love the creativity that we've seen. I love the uniqueness. Like I said, what I see from people doing out there, I'm amazed. I mean, hats off to you. You've done a phenomenal job, and I'm learning from you, right? So we're talking about mentors, creative restaurateurs out there. I'm learning from you, so. So thank you for your creativity. Keep it up. You're doing a wonderful job, and the future is whatever you want to make out of it.

All right, I'm going to add on another question here to that part about the new normal. And in fact, I'm going to ask you. So, Pam, how comfortable are you? You go to Arizona, 100% open. How comfortable are you sitting at a table? And the table next to you is full, too? How comfortable you going out to restaurants nowadays, I'm good.

But then I come from South Dakota, where we didn't really have the same.

I think Covid skips South Dakota.

I mean, we have our share of cases, but we didn't the lockdowns as much as other people did. We didn't have the mandatory masks like other places did. So I'm good, but I may not be the norm.

How about you, Darren?

I'm pretty good, too. You know, for people that don't know South Dakota and say, wait, wait a minute. I read about South Dakota in the papers. You guys had it terrible. We didn't. Like, we have one main populace all the way on the eastern side of the state, down by Sioux Falls and Sioux City, and then that makes up, like, a huge part of our population. And then everybody else is just scattered around the rest of the state. So, you know, Pam and I are both out on the western or the northwestern part of the state. And, you know, if you didn't turn your TV on, you would know Covid existed. You'd be like, what are you guys talking about? You know, it was very rare here. I. I could still remember when we had, like, one case, right. Or two cases. Like, we didn't have a lot. But I don't. I don't get too nervous, you know, if there was someone sitting right next to me and they were sneezing and coughing. But I'm a germaphobe. I was a germaphobe, so. So that would bother me. But, no, I don't walk around with masks on. We spaced our tables out in our restaurant just to help people feel safe and feel a little bit more secure. We do sterilization every night in our restaurant, you know, so that people feel secure. And hopefully we are helping with that system. But it doesn't bother me. I don't. I haven't been vaccinated yet. I travel on airplanes, so I don't. I haven't worried about it. Hopefully I'm not being negligent on it, but. But so far, it doesn't help me.

Yeah, so. And one of the things we talk about in our mastermind groups a lot is culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. How influential do you think, or I mean, actually change it? What do you think is the key to creating a great culture, Paul?

Well. Oh, boy. I think that it starts from day one. Not to say that you can't correct a bad culture, but the key, I think, is start early in creating the culture you want. Be very diligent in the fact that you are creating a culture, not just letting one happen, and then it starts from the top. I mean, the leader is in charge of making sure that that culture is created and is protected. And. And then you also have to make sure that you're bringing the right people into your organization that are willing, able, and wanting to help you maintain that culture that you want.

Exactly. Now, now, you said, you know, I. I think bad cultures can be corrected. It just takes a long time. Yeah. One of the things I get hired to do a lot in the coaching programs is I get hired to come in and help create a positive, a better culture. And I tell people this is that however long your restaurant's been running amok, it's going to take half of that time just to get you back to normal. So, like, if you're running a restaurant for a year and you had a toxic culture, it's going to take me at least six months to get you back just to. Back to normalized, and then it'll probably take me two or three months just to get you in the right direction. So it's not an overnight fix, trust me. Toxic cultures are very, very hard to change, but they can be done. Take a lot of work, though. So much better to set up from the beginning like Darren did. Darren. Darren opened up his first restaurant, and he set up everything right from the beginning.

Yeah, it's. It's always easier to build it. Right. Than it is to rebuild it. Right. Because then you have to tear it down. Right. About Donald. That's why it takes you so long. It would be like, imagine if I built my house and we found out the foundation was cracked or the foundation was crooked. They'd have to tear the house down, redo the foundation, and then rebuild the. How. Right. And that's what Donald has to do in restaurants with this bad culture. You got to tear everything down and start over again. If the culture of the owners isn't good. Right. Maybe you have a. Maybe the owners have a toxic culture in their household. That's even harder. Right. That. That I think is getting towards what Pam was saying. How do you fix that? Right. That's really difficult to fix because what you're doing is you're imposing a better culture. Right. But probably a lot of that comes from you. A lot of that is your culture. We have to make sure the owners adopt that culture is a funny one. Like I said, it's an extension of who the people are. And. And it starts with the owner. Right. So I guess if I wanted to Fix a culture. I would have to look at the owners first and say, where is this all coming from? Right. And it's all coming from you. If the culture is not what you want, maybe that's. Maybe that's not what you wanted as a culture. And now the restaurant's gone off kilter here a little bit. I see it from a lot of owners not correcting problems as they're occurring, you know, and we have something that we say, if you're not correcting it, you're condoning it. That's it. And. And we don't want to do that. We don't want to condone bad behavior. Just correct it. Just. Just fix it. Just get it right. I just had this happen today in my own restaurant just before I came here to this podcast. You know, I never eat what's on the menu because I want the cooks to be a little bit creative with me. Right? So. So I went in, I spoke to one of the cooks, and he goes, what do you feel like? I said, I go, I don't want anything heavy. I want a salad. I go, but I want something spicy, like. Like a Jamaican jerk or something like that. And we own an Italian restaurant, so this. So I'm pushing him out of his comfort zone. So he made me a phenomenal salad with Jamaican jerk chicken on top of it. I mean, it was unbelievable. And. And it had this great dressing on it, and it was like a lemon dressing. And you know me, I have. I have a lactose intolerance. Right. So what question would I normally ask? Hey, this is phenomenal. Is there dairy in the dressing? Right, well, he didn't. He didn't prep the dressing. He didn't make the dressing. The dressing was already made by a previous cook. Because I'm not sure.

Oh, not sure.

Who would know. Chris would know. Where's Chris? He'll be back in 10 minutes. Gotcha. Now, Chris is my kitchen manager, so this was a problem that I didn't realize was there. We uncovered it right away. Second Chris walked in the door. Chris, do you real. Oh, no, you're fine. There's no dairy in that. It's not my question anymore. I don't care about the dairy. Now I want to know why every single person in that kitchen couldn't answer this question. That's what I want to know right now. Was I being mean? Was I being harsh? No, But I was being enough of, you know, we talk about a velvet covered brick. We'll talk about that another day. But I was being a little Brick Darren saying this is a non negotiable. I said, I want a chart on the wall of every single menu item we create here. Every dressing, every p. And I want every allergen listed on it. I want you to write that down. I want it in printed. I'm going to laminate it. I'm going to hang it in the kitchen. Every server, every cook, everybody should be able to answer this question immediately on anything. Does it heck, does it contain this? Does it contain this? Does it contain us? I'm glad Chris knows the answer, but I want everyone to know the answer. So this is where, like, culture could get off target. Because if that's. If that happened in your restaurant, would you take such a stand like I took to correct it? And that's what we do in our restaurant. We correct everything we see so that we could live by, you know, a culture called kaizen. Right. Where we've adopted that, where we're always trying to get better. It could always be better. I don't care how good it is, it could be better. And that's what we try to do. We try to make it better.

Yeah. One of the biggest things that we find is that restaurants don't set and maintain their standards. They set standards really high when they first open, but then as the team pushes back, those standards start lowering. And the next thing you know, your restaurants kind of a pale vision of what you wanted it to be and just becomes this thing. And actually that's when it starts running you. And we always want you to have control. We don't want your restaurant to run you into the ground, so.

Exactly right. You know, I'll give you a good analogy. And this comes from my wife. She was talking to the crew the other. Last week we were talking about this. And she goes, remember when you were a kid and used to go to the beach, you know, and. And your parents would set up on the sand. You set up a blanket on the sand, and you're a kid and you go play in the water and in about 10 or 15 minutes or 20 minutes goes by and you look up on the beach, your parents are gone. Where are your parents? And what you didn't realize was that the current was like just inch by inch by inch, little by little. You drifted 30ft down the beach, you drifted 40ft down the beach. And all of a sudden you're like, really nervous. Where'd my parents go? And that's what happens in a restaurant if you're not careful. You drift away from the vision. You drift away from your culture. Just an inch an hour, like, or an inch a day. It's so minute, you're not even noticing it's happening. And before, you know what, a month goes by or two months goes by or a year goes by. This isn't what we had in mind. This isn't the restaurant we had planned for. We're not heading towards our Michelin star, what happened here? And it was because that current just, like, took you. It was just a slight pressure every day. So we want to try to recognize that and stay on course. Right. And if anything, we want to drift towards the positive, not drift towards the negative.

Exactly. So what's one thing you can suggest right now that restaurants can do to stand out in 2021? Pam?

Yeah, I would say because of the year that we've had, because we all live through Covid, and some of us are still living through Covid, especially in certain parts of the country, I think that human connection is probably the best thing that restaurants can do to stand out. And so this is kind of. I mean, if you listen to Donald, you've probably heard him talk about how important videos are marketing, and they can allow you to let your clients. You're sorry. Not clients, your customers. See, you get to know you. I have a leg in education, so we talk about clients a lot. Your guests. Yes. Thank you. You can let your guests get to know you even before they set foot in your restaurant and just have that feeling of, if I go there, it's going to give me a certain feeling and a feeling of connection. And again, community is. That's one of my core values.

Exactly.

That's kind of. Donald, that's kind of your advice. But I think it's great advice.

Good. It's awesome advice. It's good advice. Darren.

Yeah. I'm gonna just agree with Pam a little bit here with. She ended it with. It's a feeling, you know, and I think 20. You know, the whole Covid price crisis has had people locked up in their homes or locked up in their houses or locked up in their cities or whatever. It is.

Exactly.

Nervous for a year. It's been a year. Right. And. And we want that feeling of, you know, I'm tired of being in jail for a year. I want to get out. I want to go to a restaurant. And. And I see this with some people like. Like, I have. I have some great customers. I'm not gonna name them in case someday they see the podcast here, but they come in and they haven't eaten in the restaurant. They just have been doing takeout for like a year. And one of them said to me the other day, hey, I got vaccinated. So in 14 days, I'm going to be able to come into this restaurant again. And I want to say to him, you could have came into this restaurant six months ago. You know, like, we would have put you in a table away from everybody else. It's beautiful out. You could eat outside if you want. Like, you've been living in fear for all this time, and now you think you got the vaccine, you're free, life's back to normal again. Well, I'm glad you feel that way. You know, you still have to be careful. The vaccine isn't the end all to be all. You could have been doing this six months ago. You know, just take a little precautions, wear your mask, call us. We'll seat you at a table upstairs all by yourself, right? If you want. But. But that sense of normalcy, and. And Pam was right when she said it's a feeling. It's a feeling of safety, it's a feeling of security, is a feeling of normalcy, whatever you want to call it. But buying is an emotional response. Right. And dining is, you know, a way to say, hey, let's break bread together. Right? It's. It's a feeling. It's just like Pam said, it's a feeling. So what could you do different in your restaurant to give people that feeling? Whether it's a feeling of security, a feeling of normalcy, a feeling of family, a feeling of, you know, connection. Try to figure out what it is that's missing in your community and promote that. Do something unique. Don't follow the guy next door. Don't do what the restaurant down the block is doing. Run your own race and provide that to your. To your guests.

Exactly. That's so perfect. Yeah. And another thing you can do to stand out is, I like to say, is one of the things that we like to focus our mastermind group on is we get away from vanity metrics, and vanity metrics is sales. And what happened when Covid hit, everyone's sales dropped, like, through the floor. And everyone was freaking out. Oh, my God, my sales dropped down to like, 25%. So what we. We did it with our mastermind group is like, all right, let's not focus on the sales number. Let's focus on some other key performance indicators, some other KPIs. And I'm going to tell everyone right now. One of the reasons I partnered up with Darren and Pam is that Darren Created this amazing, amazing platform. And you know, with him and Pam behind the helm on this thing, this is a tool that restaurants need. And there are there. I'm going to tell you right now, if you Google, you know, restaurant software, there's dozens and dozens of restaurant software out there. But the thing I love about the KPI kind of platform, the dashboard, as we call it. And I'll kind of give you a preview. You can kind of see it's really beautiful, beautiful dashboard. And think of it like almost like a car. And what we do is in our mastermind group, I always say it's like a one, two punch. We're not only going to help you kind of track and measure and manage your KPIs, your key performance indicators, but we're also going to, we're also in the mastermind group, we're going to coach you on how to improve them, which that itself is life changing because a lot of people like, all right, my food cost is 32%. Is that good? And I'm like, well, I don't know, what's your theoretical. Or somebody says, oh, you know, my, my discounts and comps are 8%. Is that too high? Yeah, that's way too high. How do I lower them? You know, and that's the thing. You look at these, these gauges and you get your POS report and Pam's like the expert on the debt on the data side, but, you know, and she can get lost in the data part. But you can dig into your POS system and you can spend hours in there searching for data. And having the data itself doesn't do anything. You got to have an action plan on how to turn that data into results. That's what I have to say is a restaurant kind of mastermind group and the dashboard work hand in hand together to give you those, not only to give you the tool, but also give you the resource to say, all right, hey Donald, what do I do if, you know, my district average is too low? Hey Donald. Or hey Darren, what do I do if my rev patch is. Seems like it's too low? Hey Pam, what do I do if my, you know, my guest check average is not where I want it to be? What do I do? And we work with these people on this. And the reason I'm throwing this out there is I'm going to ask each and everyone here on the, on the, in the group here, what's your favorite KPI? We have 12 that we track in our, in our KPI dashboard. What's your favorite one, Pam?

Donald, this is like asking you to.

Pick a favorite child. Who's your favorite child, Pam?

It's gonna short circuit my brain to ask me choose my favorite number metric. It doesn't. They're all important, but I would say so I'm gonna cheat a little bit and say that probably my favorite is profit margin because it encompasses most of the other ones and it's like the ultimate measure of efficiency and how well you're running your business is your profit margin.

How about you, Darren?

That was really good what she said there.

Good. When the profit margin is good. I mean, that's like it's the end all be all right.

It's the end all to be all. That's it.

What's the average restaurant, United States make? 5%, which is. We think is. We think that's a crime. If. And if your restaurant's average, you're making 5% or less, you definitely need to talk to us and you definitely need to join our mastermind group.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you said earlier, before the question, you said the word vanity metrics. And I don't know if I know what you mean by that, but I don't know if everybody knows what you mean by that. But these are these, you know, restaurant owners that say, oh, we did $3 million last year. We did five last year. Right. But what was your profit margin? Right. So let's take your vanity metric of 3 million and let's link it to what Pam just said. What's your Profit margin? Well, 3%. Okay. And you think that that's good, Right? So. So you're walking around happy that you did $3 million, but the problem is when you did one and a half million because of COVID if you're still at 3% now, your income went in half where we have so many restaurant tours on our mastermind group and that work with us in KPI Mastery that they did half the revenue, if not less. Right. Some of them did one third of the revenue. They say, I've never had so much money in my bank because they went from a 3% profit to a 20% profit, 10% profit. And. And now they're in for a whole new surprise. They haven't even, like, they don't even realize what's coming down the road because, you know, my uncle Clarence. I'll tell you an Uncle Clarence story. He would say, darren, anyone could run a business when there's an abundance of work. Anyone can make a. You could run a sloppy operation and still be profitable. But it takes a real boss, it takes a real owner, a real entrepreneur to make money, make profit when there's no business, right? So that. So what Covid did here, not for everybody, right? So I'm sorry if it didn't do this for you. Covid did for a lot of people was it taught us to pay attention to food costs. It taught us to pay attention to labor costs, pay attention to your fixed expenses. How do we really run this operation? Leaner and meaner and increase that profit margin. And now what we have to be love is as the floodgates open and as people start coming back in, that we don't get back into the old habits again, right? What we want to do is we want to keep running this lean, efficient machine that's now making 18 profit margin. And now if you have sales of 2 and 3 million at an 18 profit, now we're making some money right now. We're doing good. So I. I would say, you know, I don't have a favorite KPIs. Like, like Pam said, it all comes down to profit margin. But, you know, too many people focus on profit margin, and then when it's not right, they want to take some kind of action, but they don't know what to take. They don't know what action to take, right? And this is like, you know, I go into a doctor, and, you know, last week I said, doctor, I have this pain, you know, and he says, where's. You know, And I pointed to the pain. I said, oh, it's right here. And he said, okay, well, just here, lay down on the table for a minute. And. And he put his hand right where it hurts. He goes, this where it hurts? And I said, yep, right there. That's where it hurts. He goes, okay, don't move. And he held one hand on that spot, and then when his other hand, he reached for the scalpel, and he's about to, like, cut into. Doc, what are you doing? He goes, well, that's where the pain is. Let's just go in there and fix it. There's got to be something wrong under there. Let's just. Well, shouldn't you do some more tests? I want to take some X rays. If I went to a doctor like that, you would say I was crazy, right? But yet, that's what business owners do. Their profit margin is not right. And they do no more testing. They do no more diagnostics. They don't look at any other KPIs. Well, we need more customers. We need more marketing. We need more we need less people and start throwing ideas without any diagnostics to back it up, any testing to back it up. And they think it's going to affect profit margin, which is Pam's number one KPI, but it's probably going to adversely affect it. You know, you need to look at the other KPIs to figure out where is the problem. How do I diagnose? It's like, it's like taking X rays, taking tests, you know, run on a treadmill. Let's figure out exactly what's wrong, then we could do the surgery, then we can fix you.

Not only might you adversely affect profit margin by, for example, thinking, well, we just need to get more people in the door. If you're, if your variable costs are not under control, you might actually be reducing your profit margin and you're creating more work for yourself.

Correct? Correct. There's so much in there that people need to understand. And you could do this, you could try researching it on your own, or you could join our mastermind group and learn from the experience of others in KPI mastery. That's what we do in a restaurant, simplified, that uses the dashboard. We actually teach you through the masterminds, you know. Exactly. Okay. If this is your problem, your profit margins, let's explore some of these other KPIs, let's explore some of these other indicators and figure out where the problem lies. Right?

Right.

Then we could optimize your operation for maximum profitability.

And I'm not going to get too far ahead, but I'm going to tease out a little bit on probably our next episode. This is a three part series, by the way. If you're just tuning in now, three part series, how to grow your profits. But Darren's going to take you on the next session. We're going to do not all KPIs are created equal. And Darren's going to explain the difference between a linear and a multiplicative KPI. I'm throwing out the big words now. We're going to talk about what those two are and why not all KPIs are the same and which ones have the most impact that could actually move the needle for your profitability the fastest. So a little tease out on that for the next, for the next episode. So make sure you tune in for that. But let me ask.

I'll look forward to that episode.

Yeah, it's gonna be good. I love that. I love when you explain that kind of stuff. And like, you know, and we talked about mentors before and like Pam, I also think of both of you as my mentor. I mean, you both have such different, you know, different experiences in business, in the corporate world that you help me kind of grow as a leader and as a coach, which I always am very appreciative of. So let me ask you a question about that then. What kind of. What essential rules have you learned about business that has made you more successful?

You want to go first this time, Darren?

Oh, yeah, I could. I could go first. An essential rule about business. Focus on the guest. Focus. Make the guest experience as good as it could possibly be. And everything else will kind of follow, okay? So don't focus on the money. Don't focus on the KPIs trying to improve. Start with the guest. Right. What is your vision? And our vision for our restaurant is the guest experience. We actually call it the known as experience. And that's most important to me than anything. Right. That's more than profit, more than everything. I want that perfect. And then everything else will follow. Everything else could be worked out, you know, So I guess to answer your question, that would be it. You know, don't get too stressed out about everything else. Let's focus on the guest. I always view it as an honor that they came to my establishment. These people, they work hard for their money, their night off. Maybe it's a special event, right? So like, let's say, you know, Dusty wants to take Pam out for her anniversary.

Yeah.

If they choose my restaurant Known as To Know Honored. I am about that. There's other restaurants in town they could have chose. Right. So now it's. It's my job to do everything to honor that decision and say, hey, I'm gonna make this perfect for you. Right. You're gonna have a perfect meal here. You're gonna have great service. You're. The atmosphere is going to be just what you expect it to be. And if it's not, I'll take full responsibility. We'll figure this out. We'll make it right for you. So that's my most important lesson, is I always focus on the guest. Focus on the guest experience, and never take for granted the value of a customer. Honoring you with their service. Honoring you with your money.

Well said. Well said. Damn, Pam, you got to follow up on that. I'm telling you, that's tough.

It is tough. It is tough. I will say I learned this one from the hard way. And it's something that I think is absolutely critical. If you're the leader of an organization, you have to have time to be the leader of an organization. And I think this is something that a lot of restaurant owners can probably relate to because you find yourself working in your restaurant all the time to the point where that's all you have time to do. You don't have time to think. You don't have time to strategize. You don't have time to evaluate your numbers. You don't have time to create new plans or come up with new ideas. And therefore, your restaurant stays the way it is, and you are stuck continuing to work in your restaurant and not on it. And so, and I've been there. And so I think that's number. That's the number one thing with leadership is make sure that you have time to be the leader. And part of the job of being the leader is being mastermind of the organization, who's protecting the culture and the core values and everything else. And if you can't figure out how to do that on your own, then that's perfect time to get help from. From coach or mastermind group.

Yeah, we've all heard it too. You know, you need to work on your work on your business, not in your business. I mean, every consultant in the world throws it out there, but they don't tell you how to do it, you know?

Right.

The goal of all, you know, goal of the mastermind group we have, and the goal of all my coaching program programs is always the same. I'm going to show you how to get the restaurant in the life you desire. You know, so you're not basically chained to your restaurant. We want you. We want you definitely to work on your business, not in your business. Darren and his wife own a very successful restaurant in South Dakota. And Darren always likes to make the. Make the kind of joke that he doesn't work there. You know.

What? The employees will ask me a question, and I say that to them, why are you asking me this? I don't work here. And then they laugh because they think I do work there, but I don't. And, and I may. I don't give them the answer, you know, like, go up the chain. Who's your direct report? Right? Who, who do you report to and how can you source this information? Right. You. Donald hears me talk about resourcefulness all the time, and so does Pam. And I say it's never a lack of resources, always a lack of resourcefulness. And you have to be able to. To do that. Otherwise I'm going to give myself a job. And I don't want. I just got Nancy and I just Got back from Florida a week ago and Brooke, my, my manager and my partner who works at the restaurant just asked me today, she just sent me a text message, when are you leaving? And I said, we're leaving Monday. Right? She's probably thinking, you've only been here for a week. Where are you going on Monday? Well, we're going back to Florida for about, you know, 10 or 12 days. She goes, oh, you'll be back in 12 days? No, from there we're going out to Scottsdale, Arizona for, you know, almost a week. We'll be there five days. I won't be back till the end of the month. You know, so we're only a little over a year in business and I refuse to be chained to my business. You know, that's not going to happen at all. Yeah, so, so, but this is a good example.

Yeah, and this is a good example too. Like Darren, when he decided to open his restaurant, he contacted me to come out and help coach and help him get set up. So we set Darren's operation up from the start, the right way so I didn't have to go back and like tear down the whole damn thing and rebuild it. We built it right from the beginning. So that's why Darren is actually, you know, he's enjoying being an owner and his wife's enjoying being an owner, not an operator. So. Because we did it right the first time around.

Yeah. Yes. And. And just in case people don't.

No.

That's how Donald and I met.

Okay.

We're opening a restaurant and I've been a consultant. I work in 25 different countries for 20 plus years. And I know the value of expertise. I know the value of seeking out help to answer these questions. So we said, look, if we're going to open this restaurant, yeah, we're good business people. We've been self employed for 30 plus years. We own multiple businesses. Never owned a restaurant before in my life. There's totally new. I did it because it's a passion of my wife's. Right. She wanted to open the restaurant. It was on our bucket list. Always do this. Sure, let's do it, let's go for it. And first thing I did, who's the best, who could I seek out that could give me the best advice here? Did some research, came up with Donald's name called Donald. And he's like, oh yeah, I got this program, I got that program. What are you talking about program? Donald, I want you here. How much to get you here? Just get on a plate. Why aren't you in the airport already and like, joking around? He laughed at the time, but that's what I said to him. Like, why are you still, why are we still on the phone, Donald? You should be packing here, right here. Because it didn't matter what it cost, it didn't matter what the money was because I knew the value was going to be a hundred x, not 2x, not 4x, not 10x, 100x. Because the lessons he could teach me, I have in perpetuity for the next 10 years. Right. It's not like, it's not like he teaches me stuff and in a year, the license to use his knowledge runs out. No, I have that forever, that knowledge. So people who don't put a value on that, you know, I'm just putting it out there. I'm not, you know, trying to be salesy here. But if you're not putting a value on professional consultation, you're losing 100 times what it would cost you to seek help and get advice from a professional. So you definitely want to do that for sure. But that is one of the reasons why, you know, we refuse, you know, we own a couple. We own, let's say, four or five different businesses. My wife and I, I have partners in different businesses. My own businesses with Pam, my own businesses with Donald. We do a lot of projects together. And to do that, you can't be tied to anyone. Right. You have to be able to manage your time and you have to be able to good people in place. You have to have a good culture for every business. You have to have faith in your staff, you have to have trust in your staff. And then you make the right decisions when things don't go right, you just handle the problem, you handle the people. Whatever the situation is, you take care of it. But yes, get help, get professional guidance, and you won't be tied to your business.

Exactly. Let me ask you a question. Name a book, an audiobook or a podcast that you recommend.

You want me to go first? You want to go first?

Go ahead. Because I'm weighing out options right now. Go ahead.

Okay, so it, if I turn my camera around, I mean, you could see all the books behind me, right? The people on the podcast?

Yeah, I have tons of books behind me too.

Hundreds of books.

Right.

I'm gonna give you two. Can I, can I give two books? Is that okay?

Two is fine.

Okay, so I gotta grab one right here.

So I'm gonna, we're gonna tease out something to you also too. So part of our advanced mastermind Groups. So if you decide that, you say, okay, you say, you know what, Donald, this sounds great. I didn't want to jump in a mastermind group. We have a foundations course available that I teach. And then after you go through the foundations course, you go into our founders course, which is more advanced stuff, which has all three of us in there, has Darren, Pamela and myself. But we also, when you get to that level, too, we have a leadership book club that we do every week and we study a great classic book to help you become a better leader. And right now, I know, I saw the book in your hand. So that's why I like.

So one book is. Is a book, an old book. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I can't say enough good about it. Okay. Think and Grow Rich is, is a. It's. It's the bible to business people who want to take life to the next level, who want to take your vision and your business and possibility thinking to the next level. Okay? So I can't say enough good about Napoleon Hills. Think and Grow Rich. It will only benefit you. It's an incredible book. But don't just read it, don't audiobook it. You have to study it. There's so much in there. We're doing it as a study right now. A 16 week study. We're doing a week, one chapter a week. Because you need time for it to really marinate and understand it. And the other good book that I just finished recently was Extreme Ownership. Right. And Extreme Ownership is by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

Oh, you love that one.

Yeah. And it's just fantastic because you know what? It does, and you got to be ready for this book. Okay? But basically, everything that happens in your.

Business.

There'S no wiggle room here. It's your everything. Everything is your fault. Right? And if you could just take that extreme ownership and not say, you know, this happened because this person did this or this person did this. No, if that person did that, it's your fault. Okay? It's your problem. You're the one who's, who's leading this expedition of your business and everything is your fault. So extreme ownership, I can't say enough good about it. I really enjoyed the book.

Highly recommend it, actually. It will end up in our book club. It's the next one after Think and Grow Rich, right?

I hope so.

That's the one. We already picked it, remember? We already picked it. All right, Pam.

Yeah. And that's why I wanted you to go first, actually, because I was. I Would have said that one, but I thought that might be your answer.

And she knows Darren.

I do. And it's rare that I actually read a book before Darren does. Usually I read the books that he recommends to me. But I read Extreme Ownership. I've read it twice now and it's an awesome reminder of just everything that goes wrong. You have to look back at yourself and say, okay, now what could I have done? What can I do next time? So, great book. I'm going to recommend. There's lots of them that kind of get to this point. But Know youw Strengths is a book that I really love and there's personality index in there and really, it could be any kind of really good personality index. But know yourself is essentially what that's about. Understand yourself, take a personality test of some kind and make sure that you understand how you operate as a leader. And so I think that's really important. But one of them that I really like is called sorry, it's not know your Strengths, it's Now Discover your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham.

That's a good one. Yeah, I like Marcus Buckingham. He's a really good author. He's a good speaker too. So you probably heard Darren mention that he's coming to Scottsdale. Him and Pamela are coming to Scottsdale. We actually are doing a two day live workshop. It's called Restaurant Owner boot Camp and it's free for qualified restaurants. I think we have two seats left. If you want details and want to apply, email me at donalderestaurantcoach.com and I'll make sure you get an application. The link to the application for it. It's gonna be great. It's a real small group. We're actually going to be start doing these throughout the year. Different locations around the country. We decided to kick off this one in Scottsdale because I just recently moved here and besides, Pam and Darren want some nice weather. So we're doing these strategically based on where we want to be. So now we're thinking like, all right, where do I want to be in June? That'll be our next one. Where do we want to be in June? That will be the next Restaurant Owner Boot camp that we do. But again, and if, and if you're ready just to jump in into our mastermind group, you can jump right ahead. Of course, go to our website, restaurants, restaurants, simplified.com. you can start your free trial right now. If you're like, you know what, I'm not sure if that's good for me or not. That's Cool too. And what you can do is you can schedule a one on one strategy call with me. There's no charge for a one on one strategy call. Go to my website, therestaurantcoach.com schedule a session with me and we'll talk and we'll have you and I will have actually a crystal clear conversation about where you are, where you want to be. And I will give you some recommendations of what I might think is the best program for you. And if I can help you, and if Darren and Pam and I can help you, that's awesome. If there's someone else we think might think might be a good recommendation to help you, maybe you're doing a startup and you want something else. Someone has more startup, you know, we'll make the recommendation. Our goal has always been to help restaurants and to help you get the restaurant and the life you desire. If we can help you, great. If we could recommend someone else to help you, we will because we just want you to get help. We want you to see you break free from where you are. So if you want time to schedule a one on one strategy call with me, just go to restaurantcoach.com schedule that up again, no charge. So we're gonna kind of wrap it up here. I got a couple of last questions. What's a quote you live by, Pam?

I'm gonna say this is more of a rule that I live by than a quote. But I. I live by the golden rule. It's pretty simple. Treat others the way you want to be treated.

That's a good one. How about you, Darren?

My, my favorite quote is a story you're telling yourself.

That is a good one. You say it all the time in a mastermind group. Everyone, I think, I think actually we made a little meme card that goes around the group. Everyone shares it.

That's it. Because, you know, we have these beliefs set up in our head. We have these rules, belief. And it's just a story. It's a story you're telling yourself, right? If you think you can't do something or you think it's not possible, that's just because it hasn't been done yet or you haven't done it yet. And you're telling this, you're telling this story to yourself in your head that I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it. You know, Tony Robbins says, change your story, change your life. And that's what it is. You know, stop telling yourself that story. Change your story. You Will change your life, I promise.

Yeah. And my favorite quote is back on my wall, on my bookshelf. It's on the top. It's by Zig Ziglar. Live my life by, I live my, all my brands live by this kind of quote from Zig Ziglar. And it goes, you can have everything in life you want if you just hope enough other people get what they want. And we all believe that 100%, with all our hearts. We want you to have the restaurant that you, that you desire. We want you to have the life you deserve. And that's why we do what we do. So if we're gonna give a little three step plan and we're gonna tease out, you know, a couple other episodes here, what would you say is a three step plan to grow your profits?

Call us. Call us. Call us. I'm just kidding.

He's kind of kidding, but he's not really kidding.

Okay, so. So here's your three step plan. I'm going to need some help from Donald. Probably where this is. But number one is define reality. Okay? Figure out where you are. Wherever you think you are, you're probably wrong. You know, we tend to overestimate ourselves. We had to overestimate our results. It's probably not as great as you think it is. I'm not saying that bad, but it all, it could, it could be better than you think. So I would go to our website. We have a free tool on our website. It's called, you know, the, the KPI Challenge, we call it. And it's an evaluation tool. Takes you five minutes to do it. You just put in some basic information on your restaurant and it'll let you know the level of resource utilization you're working at right now, whether it's 40%, 50%, 60%. And you know what I want you to do? I'm going to challenge you to do something. Before you actually take that test and take that little challenge, I want you to write down on a piece of paper, where do you think your restaurant is? Efficiency wise or utilization wise? Are you running at 75%? Are you running at 80%? And then take the test and see what it says. Okay? And then number two. So that's your first step, right? Define reality. Figure out where you are. Second step is figure out where you want to be. Okay. Where do you want to go? Right? So if you're a 50%, do you want to get to 70%? Are you looking to get to 90%? Do you want to just get a little bit better? Maybe 55%. But let's figure out where that destination is. Okay. So know where you are and then know where you're heading. And then step three, make a plan to get there. Right. And if that plan, if you could make that plan by yourself, all the more power to you. Go for it and just do it so that you could start living the life of your dreams, living the life you intended when you opened your business. If you're not exactly sure how to make that route, it's kind of like when I'm going to Scottsdale, I could either head, you know, a little bit southwest and I'll probably hit Scottsdale at some point in time, or I could just use a GPS on my telephone and it'll draw the course for me. Right. So if you can't draw the course for yourself, call us. We would love to help you do that. And we'd be honored. Just the way I talked about honoring guests earlier. We'd be honored if you chose us to help you do that. So that, that's the three step plan. Define reality. Where are you, where are you heading and how do you want to get there?

Exactly. Yeah, we call it, you know, we always say, know where you are, know where you want to go. And then we always say you want to create a map or a massive action plan.

Yep.

And the thing about a massive action plan, it has to be flexible because I'm telling you right now, shit's gonna happen. It's called life. You know, things are gonna happen. Things are going to pull you off course, things are going to distract you. But like Darren says it all the time, in a match, my groups, you got to hold your vision. You gotta know I'm heading to that mountain up there. I'm not staying. I'm staying on track. I'm gonna get there. Now. Do I have to maybe take some different roundabout ways? Yeah, but we're still going to that mountaintop. That's where we're going.

So that's exactly right.

In the KPI challenge, you just go over to www.kpimastery.com. you'll see a button that says take the challenge. And then you'll see it. See, if you're watching the video right now, you can see the form. It's pretty. It's good. Pretty. A pretty self explanatory thing. It takes like five minutes to do. It's pretty easy. But that'll get you started. And now at least give you a little reality check about where your restaurant really is now. And, and I always Recommend. Sit down. When you do it, don't stand.

Correct. Yeah. And for fun, just write down the numbers in advance. Where do you think you are of resource utilization wise? Are you 50%, 60%? And you know what? Write down this other number two. What do you think is possible to make an additional income? Right. Do you think your restaurant could do $50,000 a year better? You think you could do $100,000 a year better? Write that number down. Just for. Just for fun.

Yeah, Just for. Just for fun.

Yes.

We're always. People are always. It's a great kind of wake up call, let's put that way.

Yeah, but you got to have fun with this stuff, right?

You got to have fun with it. Got to have a lot of fun with it. So that's this, that's part one of our, of our little session here for the Restaurant Coach podcast. Tune in for our next session where we're going to dive a little deeper into some KPIs. Pam's going to take you a little bit more of psychology behind it, how we're going to help you get your mindset right. And then we're going to talk about, like I said, we're talking about the difference between linear and multiplicative KPIs.

And even if you're not a data person that has you on the edge of your seat, I promise it's good stuff.

It's good stuff. Pam. Pam has a. Pam makes. I'm telling you, that's why I call her the data queen. She makes the complicated. You know, where I can understand it because I'm not a data kind of guy, but she can make it. I, I understand. Okay. I get it. I get that, you know, so. But I want to say thanks again for showing up today. Thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you, Darren. Thank you, Pamela. I love working with you guys so much. And we will talk to everyone soon.

Okay? Thanks much, Donald. Thanks, Pam. And thank you everyone for listening.