Passion Drives Profits with Mark & Ruth Mills of The Plough

And welcome to the Restaurant Coach podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. I am, I'm not only excited, honored thrilled, I mean just over the top. About my guest today, I have Ruth and Mark Mills from the Plow. Now before I say anything else, when they speak you might get the sense they're not from the United States and just let you know the restaurant Coach brand we coach, I mean all around the world. So I want to say number one, welcome Ruth and Mark to the podcast. Asked tell us a little bit about your restaurant.

Yeah, thank you, Donald. We have been here only my 16th year. It's, it's a beautiful old blue stone building, 164 years old this year. So we had our birthday last month. Yeah, in July. So that was good. Ruth and I are looking pretty good for that.

You guys look good for 100 years old.

Yeah, 164. Yeah, yeah. And we're a full service restaurant. We really focus on the farm to plate. We use a lot of local ingredients and we're very big and we have our own dry age rooms. We do a dry aged meats, we do our own salamis, that sort of stuff. So very passionate about hospitality, the food, the service, the whole thing. So that's really good. Yeah.

And my background is I'm from, not from the restaurant industry. I'm background graphic artist. Has been all my life. I've loved graphic design and so he's one of the few restaurants around here that has own graphic arts department.

That's it.

That's it.

Neither the two shall meet. So I won't go in his kitchen if he doesn't come onto my laptop. And the arrangement's working so far.

How long you guys been married?

185 years.

No.

No, 10 years. Yeah, 10 years.

I love how Mark looks to ruse for verification. Like how long exactly?

Nah, it's, it's, it's been, it's been an amazing journey and since joining um, the trc, um Method, the group, our business has changed a lot. It's really, it's turned upside down, you know what I mean? We were going in one direction and you know, running the restaurant, the processes, the systems, the food, the service, that, that's, that's the easy bit, you know what I mean? It's the hard bit is changing the culture to get everyone on the same page, you know, really cementing those, the standards and getting everyone to meet those standards. And it has some challenges and also.

For us to have the direction and focus because as leaders you actually have to Know where you're heading. You can't just make it up as you go along. So for us, we've had the confidence through the TRC method to actually have a guidance and we could roll these out in the format that our staff could embrace it. No use bleeping it and just saying, just understand it, just get it. You've got to live it. You've got to be able to build on what we're teaching them, what we expect from them.

Yeah.

So you mentioned leadership and I would, you know, you know, leadership is very, very important. What do you, what do you think if you had a narrow down to. And I'll ask, each have your own answer. What do you think is the number one trait a leader today has to have?

You've got to be compassionate, you've got to really, you've got to care. But you're not there to manage, you're there to encourage, to help people grow, make them the best person they possibly can. Everyone grows at a different pace, different rate and you just got to work with them. You know what I mean? We've got, we've got some amazing guys on our team. A lot of young, young kids that are just dynamite. I look at our team now and it's the best we've ever had in 16 years. I can honestly say this is, is the best. And not by a little bit. I'm saying it is. Oh, wow. It's not, it's like.

No, I think it's because we've got depth. So we've got depth and we've got up upcoming senior members and they're just in their, their infancy of being at the plough. So we can actually have a, a growth program for them. These are 15, 16. I don't know how often we say to this young gun who's in the, in the kitchen, you, how old are you? 15. We go, oh, fantastic.

You know.

They have no bad habits when they're young. That's. I love the. I love, I mean, I love, I love mentoring, coaching, developing because they just, they're like, they're just like clay. And you can actually really pour yourself into them and then really, really help them, really find out who they are.

Which is a big thing.

And I believe we have to, as a leader, I think I have to checking on my empathy because everyone's here for a different reason and with a different set of skills and you have to engage those and pick those to get them on board. I find.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah, we all learn differently, you know, Everyone learns. We know we've got our training academy, so we try and put things up as an audio, as a visual, as a PDF, because everyone learns at different rates. And we can't just, you know, stick to the one version of, you know, the pedagogy. We just got to keep ticking over.

That's probably the biggest thing, you know, when we came to you, Donald, and it's coming up probably two years now, is that the only way we taught was watch me. I'll watch you now. Let's go. You know what I mean? Now it's like we actually have this online website for our team, and it's both, you know, service team and culinary, and it's all the little. All the little bits and pieces that. And so it's got health and safety now. It's got health and safety as well. Yes. For the Australian government.

Yeah, for the government. We got. Make sure we talk about that. For the Australian government. And we are talking about health and safety, too. Yes.

But it's just. So then. And it's. And that's probably the way I learned, too, is that. Which is the biggest thing I've taken out is that we sit down and we do a call for an hour, an hour and a half, a couple times a week, which is the teaching and the coaching that you do. And then it's uploaded to your system, which means I can go back and my pace and listen to it 2, 3, 4, 5 times, sometimes up to 10. Because every time I listen to it, I get a little nugget. And then I teach that to the team.

Yeah.

And so everyone learns differently.

And Donald's always playing in the car.

Yeah.

Every road trip.

Yeah.

I have a lot of married couples in the. In the Tier 2 method. And, like, they always, like, joking. Like, they'll walk into a room and they'll hear, like, the audio, the video, like, me talking, like, you cheating with me. It's like I'm just listening to a video. It's like they always like, oh, my God. You know.

Know. Yeah.

And it's.

It's made a. It's made a huge difference to my growth as a. It's even improved my cooking. But as a leader, as a restaurant owner, you know, like, my background is I'm a chef. I've been cooking it, I don't know, 42 years, maybe 43. So the cooking is the easy bit. But to grow as a leader and to be leading the restaurant, not the kitchen, but the whole restaurant, you know what I mean? It was. It was A challenge for me to be able to do a pre shift with the front of house. You know, I mean, the, the service team, it was like.

Yeah, it was always. It's always tough when you, when you have to. When you basically start elevating your. Your leadership role in the restaurant. It always is always a challenge because automatically default back to our comfort zone, which is our way of doing stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And then through that 3P process, and it is really a framework and you just got to follow it and it, it works. And we are now teaching our young leaders the same process. You know, I mean, so I get them now doing the pre shift, working through the, the 3P process. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's, it's. It's good.

Yeah. And you know, I'm a big believer in self care. Now a lot of people, when I say self care, a lot of people think self care is like working out stuff like that. To me, self care is anything that you do that helps you develop yourself as a human being. So, I mean, that could be going to gym, but also, I mean, you guys are very, very great about taking excursion, taking trips, going out, learn and educate, talk about some of the trips that you've been to lately where maybe, maybe give an example of something you've learned to do and then maybe something you learned not to do.

And it's like we try and go to Italy every year and used to be France, but now it's Italy. And it's just, you know, to see. Yeah, just to see that culture and, and the food and the history and that's good. But also, you know, when we're in Australia, we do a lot of these, you know, get in the car and drive an hour or two hours and go to a wine region and learn and hang out. And like recently we went to a resort, beautiful resort, you know what I mean? And spent hundreds of millions. It was gorgeous. And this just the hospitality. The guy was right on point. But it was hospitality from the head, not hospitality from the heart. And he did everything right. But it just wasn't. Wow.

It wasn't hard. Yeah.

And I was just. It was just service. You know, he had all the scripts down, he had everything spot on. But he just went through the motions.

And had us looking out the window at the vines and it was dark, there was no lights.

If you look at the window, if you look out the window, you'll see the vines, like what mine. This dark out. There's going through the motions, like now, now you tell them to look out the window and you make the hand gesture and like, please look at the window and you will see to your right.

Yeah. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Yeah. And I have to say, and like a lot of people, like, you know, where do you get something, Some of your inspiration for some of your training calls stuff like that. A lot of my inspiration actually comes from the conversations I have with my members like Mark and Ruth. And then they told me about this resort and had this disconnection between head and heart. So we actually did a full training about head versus heart hospitality, which I always say, like, I always want to give credit where credit is due is like, those things inspire me. Because here's the thing, like if you've experienced or there's gotta be someone else who's experienced the same thing and then we have this connection, then we like to give the tools and the training and the coaching on how do you close that gap and make that connection from the head and heart.

And I feel in within our restaurant, you know, a year or two ago, it was very much hospitality from, you know, the head. And then over the last year, I suppose it's been, we've just transferred from that heart to. From that head to that heart. But the, the thing about it is that it really improves the guest experience and a byproduct of that is you have less staff turnover. The spend per head is up. Right. We've. We lifted maybe 8,9% spend per head just from the staff, just, you know, just giving that hospitality from the heart, you know what I mean? And once we got that change, we talk about it in our pre shift every day, you know what I mean? They probably look at me going, oh, here we go, that's on it again. Yeah, but, you know, it makes a difference, you know, I mean, but now I make them appreciate I'm there, I'm going to look up, we're going to get, get it started. And now you're on the pre shift. Yeah, let's go.

That's it.

And during the. Now that they're leading the cruise ship, they have to quiz their peers. So you tell me one way that you're going to increase your guest. So they're actually now having to engage amongst each other because they have trouble role playing. It's one of those things that we need to do more of. But this is a really great opportunity to lift each other up.

Right, Right. That's so cool. Yeah, that's when you. So we talk about, in the TRC method, we talk about four levels of restaurants Bad, good, great. Outstanding. And there's also a corresponding culture that goes over everyone. There's toxic. There's training, there's learning, and then there's leadership. And then I've seen through, you know, coaching with Mark and Ruth that they've transcended from that training culture to now, definitely the learning culture. We're now. And now it's been infectious in the sense that everyone wants to learn, grow, and develop. And when you do the exercise like that, it just feeds this kind of. Oh, oh, yeah, I could. Oh, yeah, we could do this. It's just feeding this kind of. Just this mindset that we want to grow. We all want to be better, which is awesome, because everyone elevates.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that because we have very clear focus and we share that with our team, they reap the rewards. They see what they've achieved. And so at the end of. The end of the ship, they haven't just served the food and guests have gone. They've actually reached their goals. So anyone who reaches the goals, it's pretty rewarding.

Yeah. And they've really elevated the guest experience. And we talk about this every day. What can we do for the guest that they weren't expecting, like a little amuse bush? We do our own salamis. We do these little lovely salami chips or, you know, I mean, we do a pre dessert that no one's expecting. And, you know, when it's someone's birthday, we, you know, sniff that out, and out comes a candle and the dessert, and just little things like that, you know, just. Just make them just connect with the table and just. Just give them something they're not expecting. You know what I mean?

Which is you talk about your handmade salamis. I'm thinking, like, can Mark smuggle some of those into the country? Or you get flagged in. Or you get flagged in customs, like.

Yeah, no, not doing that.

Yeah, no, no, no. Okay. All right. So, you know, there's a lot of coaching programs out there, especially nowadays, everyone calls themselves a restaurant coach.

Yeah.

How would you say is, like, how is the TRC method different from other, like, coaching systems or traditional kind of coaching programs?

I find the biggest. You know, and this is. Everyone's heard this. You got to work on your business, not in your business. No one tells you how to freaking well do it. Right, right. They don't. We all know you've got to work on your business. This is the thing with the TRC method. You break it right back to the basics and it takes time. Like this is not. I'm going to change my business in 90 days. It's not like that. It takes time and everyone runs at a different pace. For some people it might take a couple years or four years, whatever. It's pacing because you only get out of it what you put in it. And so like, you know, I'm very passionate. I'm a high achiever.

Yeah, no, no, my passion.

No, but you've gotta. And so you, what you do is you sit out these frames within frames and you actually work through it. And as you grow and learn, you put another one on top of it, then another one on top of it and all of a sudden you go, oh my God. You know, like they say there's a, as a labor shortage. Right. Well, I can tell you I'm in a tough 200 people. Right. I am what we call right out. Not completely sticks, but I'm in a really pretty close.

In the sticks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're pretty close.

And we have some bigger towns around us and we capture those for the guests and some cities that like within half an hour drive. So that's where our market is. We love this livestock. We do not have a labor problem here. For our business we used to. But within the last and probably in the last six, six, nine months.

Yeah.

We've had a waiting list of people that want to come and work for us. So we are just constantly stacking the bench. So our business is just full of A players and B players. C players. I'm sorry, go down, break someone else's.

B, we call it legal sabotage. Ruin someone else's restaurant. Not doing right. This is definitely what we want. Yeah.

You know we've got like little like we do is pop quiz that Ruth creates every say two weeks.

Oh cool.

And it's a little three minute. It takes about three, four minutes. It might be a little video or a little, you know like the one that just went up this week was about because there was counterfeit money running around in Australia. Right.

Is it really? Oh wow.

Yeah, yeah.

So I try and make it engaging for the 15 year olds, the adults. Yeah, everyone. And so this week was just about going to a reserve government website, reserve bank and how to identify counterfeit money. Well, everyone can learn from this. Just it's a really interactive, it's really cool. Three minutes. The one last one was about truffle. We went out on a truffle farm last year and took a bit of a video and actually showed you how the dog Finds the truffle and they dig it up. And then. So it just took three minutes. And then the question was after they looked three items on our menu that has truffle. Oh, that's cool. Now all of a sudden they're all learning. Just, just three minutes.

That's where you get that learning culture. Yeah.

And then when we sit down and we do Those, you know, 90 day check ins, those appraisals, you know, Ruth pulls up the spreadsheet and how many times you're basically engaged in the pop quiz and it's like, because it's not about, it's not hard. So you either don't know or you don't care.

Yeah, exactly.

And so if you don't care, you need to start caring or you go sabotage someone else's restaurant where they don't care.

Exactly.

100 response rate is expected.

Yeah. Anything under 100 to fail.

Yeah, Yep. That's the way it should be. Yeah, definitely, definitely.

It's not, it's not a hard question. It's not like I'm asking to do, learn how to do brain surgery or take someone's eye apart or something like that. I'm just saying this. Watch it. Watch a three minute video about how the doctor find the truffles in the farm. Yeah.

I want to sidestep here. And this is, this is something I don't think I prepped John, but I want to sidestep because I think it's a fascinating topic. So in the United States, labor, especially hourly labor is always something everyone complains about. Oh my God, Donald, you wouldn't be complete. You wouldn't understand. I pay 16 an hour. Let's talk about labor in Australia.

Yeah. So I server.

Yep.

That is a casual. Because they all want to be casuals because then they can take set. They know it off if they want to. Right. As laws in Australia are pretty tight. Right. And then what is it at the moment? It's on the, I think on the weekends it starts around 38 plus 12 super, which goes into what you call your 401 or whatever.

Yep.

On a public holiday. Right. For the guy that stands in the coffee shop making the coffee. Now he's over 70 an hour. Right?

70 an hour.

Yeah.

We don't open on.

So we don't open. Yeah, we got a holiday.

We're closed. Yeah, we're definitely closed.

Yeah, we're going to the beach. And so when you're paying that sort of money, you cannot afford anyone that's not an A player because they're out there. You just gotta find them, attract them, look after them, teach and coach them and then you will stick on. We haven't lost a staff member for I don't know how long.

One's about to head off next week to go and do a musical.

Oh, in Sydney. Yeah, but that's only for six weeks. So then she's coming back. But we don't really. Yeah, we don't, we don't have a turnover.

She's actually just joining. She's going to be driving to Sydney which is about a nine hour drive and she's going to listen to the audible, your audible book on the way up.

Yeah.

So she's really embracing. She says no, I want to learn as much while I'm doing this, this musical. She's got a lot of spare time. So she'll come back and still in check with what we're doing. You know, I come back, we've forgotten everything. She won't.

No, it's not with that. So we, it's, you know. So labor is a big component of your expenses in Australia. You know what I mean? It is huge. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I hear like you've told me some of those states the tipped employees so little 13.

Yes.

Yeah. I'm going. What's the say? It's a bows because I'm going to open up a restaurant because.

Yeah, and there's, there's a common thing we talk about in restaurant coaching. It's called prime cost. Prime cost is your food cost. Labor cost.

Yeah.

And I would say like you got to pick which battle. If you can't fight the labor battle like Mark and Ruth have, I mean their hands are kind of tied because the government has a very, very, a lot of rules, a lot of regulations out there. So they realize like we can't really fight the labor battle too much. What the best thing we can do is like keep the staff retention, you know, as, you know, as much as possible. Turnover low as possible so we don't have to keep retraining people and spending money on training hours. The food cost is another area that I will tell you right now. I've been in this game 45 years. I've been coaching 17 years. And like a lot of people there's certain what we call belief system. Belief systems are things that are like you just like little set little rules or little barriers that you think it's like that's the bottom, that's the, that's the lowest it can go. So for a long time Before I met Mark and Ruth, I thought like 18, I've had clients like 18. Food cost, I thought that's the lowest no one could ever beat late team. Then along comes Mark.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah. Tell them, tell them what your, tell them what your food cost is.

It's, it's, it is running a little high at the moment. Basically inflation overhead. Nuts. So we're running at 12.5%.

12.5, yeah.

12.5, yeah. That's what we're doing.

People are going to say on this call, they're going to say, they're going to say no one can ever run that low. How do you achieve that level?

We, we have this learning culture in our kitchen. We've always had it that nothing goes in the bin without actually really looking at it and go, what can we do with that? So we, we're a steak restaurant.

Yep.

We have our own dry age, cool room. We break down sides of beef. That beef has trim and so that trim gets turned into a Bolognese, it gets turned into a meatball, it gets turned into a burger. You know, it's all dry age, which means it's high end, which means I can get a little bit more money for it.

Premium money for it. Right, right, yeah.

You know, we're making ragus. So we have, we have steaks on their menu that are in the 70, Mark. They're dry age. That's good. We have some that are in their high 40s, we have some in their low 40s. And then we have a cottage pie, which is a beef ragu, you know, I mean, 26 bucks in a steel rakin mashed potato. So we cater for, you know, we cater for both ends a lot. As Ruth says, you know, the husband comes in and he orders the big steak and he, he's in it. And the wife says, I'm having a cottage pie cuz I look after the family budget all day and, and it's like, it's good. So then that's how we, that's, that's what we do. And we make all our own salami. So we actually make beef salamis, not pork salamis because we have all the trim. And then that gets turned into a tasting cord, which is one of our signature sort of dishes with four or five housemade salamis, a couple different types of terrine. And we really work through that, do a lot of slow cooking. So there's no wastage. So our wastage is like nothing like I'm, we would probably put for every 20,000 that goes through the till. We might put 20 or $30 in the bin. Like, we are really focused on that. Yeah. And then what you've taught us, Donald, is that. And I've always had low food cost, but you actually helped me before inflation kicked in. We were running at ten point.

You were super low for a while.

Yeah, and yeah, but what, what, what you did to get us there was that you actually taught us how to menu engineer the menu, right? Everyone's you hear, oh, you've got to engineer your menu and blah, blah, blah. That's not about putting a freaking dollar on everything. That's just, that's crap.

It's lazy.

That's lazy.

That's definitely lazy. That's lazy.

It's looking at your point view of a sale, sales for the, the month or the quarter and then analyzing what sells and what doesn't sell. But before you do that, you have to know what everything cost you. And then if something's got a high food cost and it's not selling much, piss it off. If something's got a high food cost and you're selling too much of it, you got to bury it in the menu so no one can find it, right. And then you've got a find stuff that has got very, very low food cost. Right. And then you've got to put that in a place where that is what you sell. So when we like our Italian meatballs is complete byproduct, right? We've, we've marketed the out of it. So it actually has become one of our biggest sellers. So the stuff that makes us money, we push it on the socials, we really just market it, market it, market it.

You know, that's a huge mistake restaurants make. Like if you look at their social media, most of them, if I ask them, hey, what's the profitability of that? They have no idea. But they're promoting it and it could be like, that's like, that's like, that's why they're bleeding out money is because you're making busy, busy. You're making items that are not profitable more popular, which is just, just bears you. So we always have that rule is that we always take the items that are like our most profitable but not maybe popular, and we promote the hell out of them like you guys do to make them popular. Now they become stars, which means they're high profit and popular and then they stay.

Yeah, yeah. So anything that is made with a byproduct, which is what my chefs are trying to be, right I've seen it all my life. We then just promote the crap out of it. So when we like. I'll get a little bit cheffy for you, Donald. So we make our red wine sauce from the bones. So we don't buy bones in for our red wine sauce. And then we make the stock, and then we get the trim, and it goes into the pot and cover veggies and wine and then stock on and then reduce it, and that becomes the perfect red wine sauce. You know, demi glaze. But then all that veggies and the meat, there's nothing wrong with it. And then the. That gets turned into a cottage pie. So every chef. And I used to do it myself.

Bloody 30, 40 years I've done it too.

40. But, yeah, just throw it in the bin.

It goes in the trash right away. Yeah. Oh, we got the stock out of it. Oh, what do I do with all the stuff left over? Just throw in the trash.

Yeah. And so we actually have now come up with a lot of recipes with that meat, and we've created pies and ragu. And then we just market it and then. And then, see, so we can pay us stuff. So we passed off correctly. Yeah.

You know, they're. They're making, like, you know, 50 bucks an hour. So another thing that you do, and I want to give you credit on, too, is that you're really, really good about vendor relationships, especially with your winemakers.

Yeah.

Where a lot of people look at, like, so a lot of restaurants have this adversarial kind of relationship with their vendors, like, and they're trying to screw me over. They're to. Trying. Try to take advantage of me. They're trying to, you know, rip me off. Where you take this more approach. Like, hey, man, how can we partner together?

Yeah.

For everybody.

Yeah. And we. We have. We have some real. We have one particular winemaker, Sam. He's an amazing guy. Great winemaker. Makes really good wines. And, you know, we buy wine off him by the pallet. That's, yeah, 720 bottles at a time.

Yeah.

I mean, and so we. We move the wine. We get it at the right price.

We.

That's what's by. We offer by the glass. And that's majority of what people order by the glass.

You know, I don't know, like, in, like, a lot of places, they have this wine. Oh, you know, I've got a 300% markup on it or 400%. I'm like, man, really? Why? Seriously? Like, we're like, yeah. You know, and we're going like what? Yeah, like way up here. It's because we buy it the right way, it's the right wine, we structure it like we sell so much wine by the glass, you know, and it's 8,91100. Yeah. Percent like a margin, you know what I mean? Like it's just we have to.

Because we're still going to pay us.

Because we're going to pay our stuff, you know, I mean like it's not $10 an hour, you know what I mean?

Or really I mean, I mean I was like, I love like use you guys as an example because like every, you know people. 16, I have to pay 16 an hour. Or like oh, minimum wage going up to 20 bucks an hour ago. You should talk to Mark, talk to Mark and Ruth and see what they pay and then you won't feel so bad. You'll be like that 21 an hour is now a bargain. Yeah, you're thinking. Yeah.

Because in Australia, like in America, each state runs their own labor laws, right? In Australia is one labor law, right? So we all pay from the same pot as in we all have to pay the same amount of money for people to work in the restaurant industry. Right? And that's cool. But every year it goes up. Like it's, it's like yeah, up goes this go down.

Never know that never goes down. Like things never go down.

And cuz the government's got no money so they make us put money into the 401. Like it's compulsory, right? So even if so they used to have a couple years ago where once they earned $400 a month then you would start paying. Now it's from the first dollar, you know what I mean? And 10% because overnight. Yeah, like just bang, get into that one. Yeah. Oh well, okay, we're gonna figure it out. We're gonna work on our menu and get the food cost in because you can't fight labor.

You've gotta have your, your labor team just on check. You can't afford to carry, carry anyone.

You know another thing like in Australia, which is different than the United States. So in the United States, most states are what we call at will employment at will employment. Like you could work for me, Mark, tomorrow I could just like have a, just a bad day and I say Mark, you're fired, get out. And then that's it. At will employment at will Employment's like it's basically like I can, either of us can terminate our worker relationship and no harm, no foul, everyone just walks away. Where in Australia, there's a lot of labor laws, and there's also contracts available, too, which makes it. Again, that's why earlier in the show, we said we marked off. This is for hr, because there's a lot of stuff in Australia. We don't want anybody in trouble. So we want to make sure we check that box that we are. Yes, we are safety and. Safety and fair work. HR compliant. We are definitely doing everything we need to do. Yeah. So you guys travel a lot. What would you say is, like, the best meal you've ever had? That's gonna be a hard one.

And you might believe it or not, it. We talked about this, and we both agree.

Okay.

Two years ago, I think we went. So in Australia, we have an organization called Share Tables. Sorry, Inventoria. Right. And it's just. It's a bunch of 120 chefs and restaurateurs that get together once a month and go to a different restaurant and that. But we also do these educational tours. And this year was Brisbane, the year before Perth, and then Western Australia, and then the year before that was Singapore. Right. So it was about two, two and a half years ago.

I remember when you went to Singapore. I remember that was. That was a great trip. Yeah.

Basically, we did. We're there for the trip was about five or six nights, and then we did seven Michelin Stars. We went to two private clubs, and then one of the lunches we went to.

Rough Life Markets. Rough Life, man.

Yeah, it's tough.

It's work.

It's work.

It was work. Definitely was working, you know, and we went to a restaurant called Odette in Singapore. It's. It was on point. It was. It was just at a whole different level. You know what I mean? The food was amazing. It was a small restaurant, only seated 36 or 38 people. So obviously, when we do these trips, the numbers are kept to the smallest restaurant.

So.

But it was. It was pretty spectacular.

We were so enamored by it. We even drank the glass of Sav Blanc that they offered.

Yeah.

But don't tell anyone, but it was.

We'll delete that out of the podcast. So no one knows that you had that. Yeah.

Yeah. We're Chardonnay drinkers. Yeah. And it was. And I really believe that that restaurant came into our lives and we. We think about that all the time, about what they did and how they made us feel.

Yeah, that's a bit right there. Yeah.

Yeah. It's really. It was really, technically, yes, perfect all the way through, but the way they made us feel There was one girl that was with the group, and she actually uses her knife and fork back to front. Like, knife in the right hand, fork in the left hand. Right. That's how you normally do it. But she's back to front. The waiter picked that up on the first course and for the rest of.

The day sat her silverware that way.

Yep, I know. And I'm like, oh, my God.

That's. That's. That's hospitality from the heart right there. That's like noticing and making adjustments. Yeah, yeah.

And. And she said, of all my years of dining out, never has that ever happened. And like, she's.

I don't think I've ever seen that happen. I've never seen that happen in my life. I need to go now because I've never experienced that in my level. I was like, I've seen some really cool stuff and traveling the world and eating at really nice restaurants, but I've never had a waiter pick up that I might do something. Stuff different. And they set. They said the next course up, depending on mine. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. That's really, really amazing.

And it was. Yeah.

I mean, the food was outstanding. It was always going to be. But just the whole experience, you know, you couldn't even get a table in this restaurant. It's cooked out. It costs. What's the price of.

I don't know. Look, let's call it a thousand bucks person. You know what I mean? It's just that sort of money. And that's if I think. I mean, that's. If you just drink a mineral water before you. Yeah.

You know, tasty menu is usually not too bad. It's the beverage bill that comes with the tasting menu they usually give you. Like, it's like, ah, you know, like, you know, I go to like, you know, you go to places like New York, you know, you know, Napa Valley and stuff like that and like, you know, tasting menus. 500. You think that's not too bad. But then you get the bill for the beverage pairing, for everything. You're like.

It catches up on you really quickly.

It does really, really, really fast too, especially. Yeah.

Yeah. That was, that was a. That was an amazing trip. But we, we seemed to, I don't know, lucky with stuff all the time. You know what I mean? Like, just, we just. We're just open to experiences and it just, it just comes to us.

Yeah.

9.

But it's really good for us. I like getting out there and being reminded what our guests. Why they come to us.

Yes.

We enjoy the fact that someone opens the door for us or says hello or recognizes us, we'd like to sit by the fire. Just all these sort of things that people share with us that we reminded because it's very easy to get stale and just. It's a job. This isn't a job. You know, this isn't a job.

I know.

Yeah, we, we both agree that, yeah.

You work far too hard to, for it just to be a job. You know what I mean?

It's a life.

It's a life.

No, it definitely is a lifestyle. It's definitely what you want to cultivate and that goes back kind of the culture. So think about, you know, culture and we all. We know culture is very, very critical. What would you say if I get to pick one thing, one key to culture, what would you say to this?

I think it's leadership and I really believe it starts with leadership having a clear set of standards that when. And I really believe it's that onboarding, when people on board, you either onboard right or you onboard wrong. And if you onboard right because the first, the first week and a half, two weeks is if you get it right, then you got them. But if you don't get it right, they're not going to. It's a battle forever.

And definitely.

And so we, we. And we're getting better all the time because we're always improving, but now like our onboarding has just got better. And this is. And so for the service team, I need you to. This is your login for the Plow Academy. You need to do this, this, this and this. At the end of the first week, we'll have a talk about these modules you've done. Week two, you're going to move into this. Week three, you're going to move into this. And it's like they do it or they don't. And if I don't, they.

It shows.

It shows. And there's. And I said I can tell straight away what you've done and what you haven't done. I can tell you straight away what the people that thrive in our business are the ones that want to learn and grow, the ones that don't do the work. And we're not talking a lot of work, we're just talking, you know, just fine 10 minutes here and there. You know what I mean? The ones that don't do the work, they don't last. They don't last. They can't keep up. They just, yeah, they just. Sorry, you know, I mean that's just the way it is. I'm sorry, it hasn't worked out. This is not on me. It's not on me. This is on you.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna ask Ruth a question and it's directed about Mark. So Mark, just kind of hold for a second. Right. So, Ruth, how have you seen Mark change over the two years that we've been coaching in the TRC Method? What is like, you say, with like, a couple of the most significant changes and how he has become, you know, a leader.

He's always been very passionate about what he does, but he hasn't had the method to bring that passion out and to share it with our team.

There you go.

So he's had a long history of, you know, doing like, Amway, all those sorts of leading.

Yeah, yeah.

Leadership in the past. So he has a. An opportunity and he's got a history of learning and building, but he hasn't had that method to, okay, this is what I want and this is how I'm going to do it. So now he has those put together, you know, and it's really lovely. It's just delightful to see him.

You know, I've, I've seen him really grow over the last two years. Yeah, it just is. Number one, he's just, he feels, he just, he's calmer. Number two. Yeah, yeah, he's definitely a lot more. He listens, you know, he's definitely has a lot more of a listening thing. He takes a lot of notes. He actually has become. I would say that Mark, to me, has always been a great example. He's like the ultimate professional. Because he's a student, he doesn't act like he knows it all. He actually comes open. Like, you know, and I, we do. We do three group calls a week. We have a Monday call, two and a Thursday call. Mark's on every call. Mark's always early on every call. He's. I don't think. I think there was one time he was late for a call. And my other coach, Michael, we were like, freaking out, like, oh, my God. Mark's not on a call. What happened? Smart. They got an accident. We were like, worried about him. We're not getting ready to text. We're gonna get on to WhatsApp and text Australia. Ruth, what's happening to Mark? He's not on the call. He's not five minutes early. What the hell is going on?

Yeah, because what. People don't understand it. Like, I gotta get up at 5:30 in the morning.

Yeah, that's Another thing to understand is like Australia, we do calls here at 1pm Pacific Standard Time. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Mark is up and he never misses a call. Yeah, they never miss their one on one calls either.

Yeah, it's like, you know, we're paying the money. Why would you want to miss it? Like you, you don't know what you're gonna like sometimes.

Sorry. I mean, it's rough, but it's not so much pain. The money, money, it's the, the value that we get out of it.

Yeah, yeah, right.

You know, Mark wants this.

Yeah.

It's not just the transactional. Oh, I've paid the front up.

Yeah, that's so true.

You know, at the end of every call. How was Donaldson? Oh, wow. Today, every single call, one thing I.

Always try to do is like, you know, especially I have people who've been in the program like you guys been in two years. I have people like Stephanie and Matt. They've been in the program six years, years. One of the things I always want to do is I always want to bring fresh stuff. So we're always looking at things. I always say my job as a coach is to give you more and more tools. Now some of the tools work for you. And yes, I always say, like the tool works for you. That's your tool. You keep it, it's in your toolbox. If you look at that tool and say, you know, Donald, I don't really work for my concept, for my, my location, my country, whatever I'm at, then you toss it aside. It's not valuable. But if it's not valuable, you won't use this. You just get rid of, rid of it. But I always say, like, my job is to bring lots of, lots of information, lots of tools. Always keep it exciting, always keep it engaged, always keep you learning and growing and developing. Because when you stagnant, I know it's just a, it's going to be a slow decline. So I always try to keep it fresh. All the, all the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing is what it's important if I get involved with the, if the people out there and I really believe everyone needs a coach, everyone needs a little bit of a, a nudge.

A little bit of help.

Right. You know, you can have, you might be your, your restaurant concept, you might be front of house, right. But you're bleeding out because you got no idea what's going on in the kitchen. Right. Well, you have the tools to teach people what the hell happens in the kitchen and why they're Bleeding. Now, for me, my background was culinary. I've always been the kitchen since I was 15 years old. Right. So that's easy. So you've got tools to help me become a better restauranteur with the service team. You know what I mean? And, no, like, you have over 2000 hours of video training, right?

No way. A lot.

No one can get bored in our restaurant. I don't know, two months ago, and he was saying, oh, you know, I'm a coach and I'm this. And I guess, fantastic. You know, you obviously do some video training that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how many hours you got? He goes, oh, about five. And I'm like, oh, mine's got. My coach has got over 2,000. And I said, our online training academy that we have has got probably 100 hours, and we're just getting.

Just for your own restaurant. I know you guys have done a great job of building your own training library, and you've got, like, a lot of videos, stuff like that.

Yeah. And so it's. It's, you know, so for anyone that's out there, what you're saying is you just pick what you need at the time. So obviously, it's all. It's all about the culture and getting that leadership and that culture and getting the standards and all that. But once you've worked through that, you just work. You just work through it and at your own. At the pace that you want to work. You know what I mean? Which is really important. But you've got the tools, you know, lots of, you know, coaches out there. Oh, you know, you got to work more on your business.

Not.

Anyway. Yeah. How?

I don't know.

It's got to do it. Yeah, just do it.

I always love that. Well, just do it. Just do what? Everything. Fall to the side and just. Just sit in the office and work on my business while everything goes like. They're like starting fires out there. No, I don't think.

Yeah, and it's. It's. It's. It's. It's what? It's what that TRC method is. It's. It's the tools.

That is a method. It is a method. Yeah.

And I. And it's funny, you say at the start, oh, you know, everyone jumps around and has a look at all the shiny tools and that.

They do.

Yeah. I was one of them.

Everybody does it. I do it, too. You know why I say that? Because when I sign, you know, I have coaches, too. And when I get a coach searching program, I jump around, too. It's like oh, that looks, I don't want to do that looks boring. Who wants to do a, you know, I want to do that. Fun. That looks fun. Let's do that. Yeah. And then you realize that, all right, there's a method to the madness. And if you follow. What do we always say? If you want to win the game, just gotta follow the frame, right?

Yeah. It's like, oh, you know, I want to re engineer my menu, but you don't know what anything costs. Like, yeah, like what are you gonna engineer? You don't know what you're doing. Yeah.

So how do you guys deal with, how do you guys deal with stress.

In the moment or long term?

Both.

We try and take a lot of little breaks, you know.

You guys are good about that. You guys are one of my favorite members who would take like little, short, little getaways. Like you jump off to that resort, you take a little time off. Yeah, you guys are great about that.

Yeah. Because we, we live at the back of the restaurant so there's a home at the back of our restaurant. You know, it's a big property. You know what I mean? And so we have to get away and we try and, you know, do a Europe thing once a year and probably once a month. We probably get away for two days sort of thing. Two or three days, you know, sometimes it's every second week we get away, you know, for just like two days away is like two weeks break, you know, I mean like you just. Yeah.

Last week we went into Melbourne, into the city of Melbourne, which is a beautiful city even in winter. And we were just walking along the main river that goes through town and the sun was warm, you know, on your back and you go. Yeah, this is because it's not Mooney on, it's just. And we're very familiar with the town and went to a couple of fabulous restaurants and. Yeah, and you do you come back and you feel like you've been away for a week.

Yeah, a little recharge is always nice. Yep.

Yeah, yeah.

So we, we sort of keep that really regular.

I would say that's kind of your self care routine is that you guys take time away to spend with each other and just like enjoy each other's company and enjoy like other cities and food and.

Yeah, yeah. So on Sunday night, one of our daughters, pruner, chef, she's working in town at a really good restaurant. And so we went and so she was with us, she had the night off, which surprised me because I'll, you know, anyway, lucky her Lucky her.

How'd you get a night off? Yeah, how'd you get a night off?

So, you know, two of our daughters and us, we just went for dinner and it was just really nice. And, you know, the food was right on point and the service was spot on. You know what I mean? And we're really proud that she's actually there learning the. She's young, she's 19, and the team are really helping her and coaching her. And, you know, they see, I look at it from what we're learning with you, Donald, and I can see that there is a leadership program there for her. You know what I mean? You know, which is good because, you know, one day she said, you know, I wanted to come back one day. And I'm like, yeah, but not yet. You're 19.

Yeah. That's one thing a lot of people don't understand, too, is like, you know, they think, like, you know, when they hear about the restaurant coaching program and my TRC method or our foundations program, they think it's all just about restaurants and restaurant owners. But we also have a lot of material that are designed to help you train your leadership team, because, I mean, case in point, like, kitchen staff. Mark knows how to train kitchen staff, easy. But, yeah, one of the things I got years ago was people asking me, well, hey, man, I know how to train my cooks. I know how to train servers, bartenders, hostess, I know how. But how do I make these people who are actually leaders? How do I step them up into a leadership role? How do I help develop those soft skills that we talk about, that 60, 40 protocol? And so we actually developed a whole. We have what we call the restaurant leadership roadmap. It's nine courses that your. Your whole leadership team can have access to. And the beautiful thing is that we can track their progress. So on one. On one calls with Ruth or Mark, there was like, hey, pull up so and so, and let's see what. How they're doing. And then I'll be like, well, they last logged in, like, July 20, and they haven't watched the modules. Like, that's all I need to know.

Yeah, well, we put these things in place, but we want them to be accountable because then they. They have respect for what we're trying to do. And if you can't. If you can't measure it, you can't.

Can't manage it. Can't manage it. Can't manage you can't improve it.

Yeah, the same thing.

I mean, I hold. I hold my. I hold you guys. I Hold my members accountable.

Yeah.

And one of the things I always preach in my, my coaching program is this how I coach you is how you coach your team.

Yeah. And, and that's what we're really learning now, is that how you do coaches, Donald, is how we do coach a team. And sometimes I say, now this is a question from, from Donald this week. And they.

Remember like you guys asked for. Yeah. So we have these wristbands. As TRC says, raise your standards. It's kind of our, our slogan at the TRC kind of brand. And, and Mark and Ruth were like, you know, hey, can you send us some wristbands? You know, so we want to hand them out to our team and they. You actually made like a, like a, like a, like a celebration about it, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Like we, like a one on one with the staff.

Yeah.

And at the end of the staff appraiser, we said, this is a gift from Donald. You know, just to reinforce that what we're going through and that you've got to wear. It's part of your uniform.

Yeah, yeah.

And so call them out if. Where's your wristband? Yeah, one girl, she was panicking, she's lost it. Well, you can borrow one for today, but I need it back. You need to.

I need it back. Yes, yes. It's funny, I like at the gym, I hand them out to my friends, friends at the gym. And like, they'll be like, they'll see me at the gym and they'll automatically hold their hand up right away like, I got my wristband. Yeah, yeah. Our.

Personal trainer, he's got one.

Oh, that's right. He actually posted on social media, I thought.

Yeah, yeah. And then one of the other girls that works with us, she's, she's doing dancing. She, she's doing. Studying dance and that. She was at the dance studio, they were doing a warm up and that, and she had her phone go because they all filmed themselves doing the dancing and stuff. And she put her wrist down really low to the floor and you could see it.

And I'm like, yeah, that's right.

We are.

My plan is world domination. So that's my plan. That's my evil plan is world domination with the TRC brand. That is my evil plan. But it's important.

It's important.

We're infiltrating Australia for you.

There you go.

Yeah. No, and that's my next. We're gonna infiltrate Australia. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

What do you, what do you think is one thing restaurants or maybe just maybe a suggestion A topic, a tool that restaurants can do now to make more in 2025.

The quickest fix, right, for restaurants is understanding your, your food. Understanding what each dish costs you.

Yes.

And then understanding what you're selling every week. And then look at it and go, you know what, we, we are losing money on this dish. We are selling too much of it. So we can now make a decision what we do with it. Like you can either get rid of it, you can put the price up, you can adjust the portioning size, you can bury it in the menu so no one can find it. And you know, and that's a whole different psychology. There's all, you know, you can put stuff in boxes to highlight the stuff that you want to sell or you put something in a box to highlight it so you don't sell it cuz it's too expensive. So it's that like.

Yeah, graphics. Yeah, graphics can stimulate sales. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. You don't know your menu costs. Yeah.

So we had the, so the dishes that we actually have the highest food cost on is our dry aged steaks. So we highlight them and then I highlight the price and then they go, wow, they've got this, but I'm going to have that. And I'm like, yeah, fantastic.

We call that priming. Priming and anchoring. Yeah. It's a psychological tool. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes we, sometimes when we have high priced items, we can actually put them on the menu at a certain spot and then put an item that is our more profitable item right underneath it to drive that sales. Because like I said, it's priming or anchoring is.

Yeah.

See a steak for like $80. But then underneath I see a stick for 45. I'm like, yeah, I want a stick. But you know that 80 stick, you know that 45 stick actually sounds like a good deal right now.

Yeah. And, and we do that all day, every day. And then obviously we have all the byproduct from breaking down our meat ourselves and then that. Yeah. Anyway, that's a whole different story. But I really believe the quickest way to change what's left at the end of the week is to understand what stuff costs and, and if it, and just work out how much you'll be selling it because it's, it's easy fix. Because Most people run 25, 30 cost of goods. Right. You know, if you can shave five points off and you're doing a million dollars, it's 50 grand.

A lot. Yeah. And I'm always Shocked how many people don't know their food cost. Like, you know, I'll go on big stages and I'll have like a thousand people in the audience and I'll raise my house, say, raise your hand if you know the exact cost of everything on your menu. Thousand people in the audience, ten hands go up. I'm like, yeah, man, that, that sucks.

Yeah. And like we, we can't. And so I know there's all these software and food costings and bits and pieces.

There's all kinds of tools out there, Right.

I'm old school. I'm the spreadsheet.

Right.

I get my phone out and I look at the cost of summing in and then look at how many portions and you know, what was the wastage? And then I really analyzed this protein cost me this. I've got this trim, whatever left over, which is gonna then, you know, I mean, so yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm old school, you know, I mean, that's just the way I am. You know what I mean? Yeah. One day my daughter will come in and she'll be new school and she'll.

Be paying some tech stack, some software company to run. Yeah. So when you were little kids now, before like you got into the restaurant business before you were 15, started working in restaurant market when you were a little kid, what'd you want to be when you grew up?

I actually remember this. I actually had a, a picture of a fighter jet on my wall because I was going to be a pilot. And then I realized that I was never going to be smart enough. So I was like. And I just love school. Like at school, you know, we're doing home economics and I'm like, yeah, yeah. I like this cooking stuff.

This is good.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Licking the bowl and that sort of stuff. Because that's what you did when you're, you know, 13 and 12. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So.

And I've just always just loved it.

And what would you, Ruth?

I always wanted to be a photographer.

Did you really?

My dad had a beautiful Leica camera and I was allowed to use it and we'd process, you know, our own photography photos in the dark room and. But then I realized that mum and dad could not afford to send me to uni. So that's when I started doing an apprenticeship as a compositor.

Did you know, in high school, and I probably. You probably don't know this, but in high school I was actually, I was in a small town. I was actually the local sports photographer for the newspaper. I was. When I was in high school, I was like, the local. The heist. The newspaper, this, the town newspaper, hired me to be the photographer. And I would go and take pictures of the. All the football, all the sports at a high school game, stuff like that. And then they had a dark room. I would develop all the pictures. I loved it. I actually, at one point, I thought about going into that a little bit, but. And not. Not to beat my father up too bad, but, you know, he's long gone, but I guess I can now. He told me, like, you know, this is how parents have a big influence on their children. He told me, you're never. You're never. You're not talented enough. You never make money enough. You never be good at it. You might as well just give it up. So I gave it up. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And then he just. He just dragged me around the kitchen. When I was a little bit. When I was a little bit a kid, I wanted to be a zoologist. I wanted to, like, run. I wanted to run a zoo. Yeah.

Yeah. Good heavens.

Yeah.

Well, we feel like we do sometimes.

It's the restaurant energy.

Yeah, that's it. It's like. What's that? There's that old line. Don't. Don't blame a clown for being a clown. Ask yourself why you keep going back to the circus. That's the restaurant business right there. Right. So if you came with a warning label, what would your warning label say?

Mine is just, I'm just passionate. That's it. I'm just.

You are passionate.

Yeah. I'm driven and I'm passionate, and I just want to. Yeah, that's it. That's my warning label.

Yeah. How about yours, Ruth?

Mine would be don't.

Merciful. Don't.

Yeah, yeah, I know. That's so true of Ruth. Yeah. There's no. Yeah, she'll call me.

So you've known me for a couple years. If you had to say what was be my warning label, would you say my warning label is.

Get out of my way? Yeah, sorry, it's more. You're either. You're either with me or you're not with me, but if you're with me, let's go. And if you're not with me, just get out of the way.

You know, I actually have. I actually have that little sign in my office, my other office. It says, you're on my side. By my side. You're in my fucking way. Choose wisely.

That's it. That's the One.

Yeah, that's what it says. Yeah. You're on my side, by my side. You're in my fucking way. And it says, choose wisely. And here's my thing. I don't care what you choose. I just want you to choose. Yeah, yeah. Same thing with coaching. You're either you're all in or you're out. That's the way I look at coaching.

Yeah.

Because my biggest thing is I get paid to get people results. And if people aren't going to do the work, this stuff, like, then just, you know, go find one of those. Go find that restaurant. Coach has only five hours. I mean, that's more your speed. Then, you know, you should find that guy and hook up with him, because that's a little bit more your kind of task tempo that you need. But if you want results, I mean, massive results, you want to jump in the TRC method, it definitely does work. I mean, these, these two right here, Ruth and Mark, they are examples of what happens when you take the system and actually apply it. You do get the results you want.

Yeah, absolutely. It's huge. Like, there is a labor crisis. Not in Australia. Everywhere in the world.

Right.

Except for many of. Right. We do not have a labor problem. You know, I mean, we're, you know.

You know what it really is, I would like. People say there's a labor crisis. I said, no, it's a culture crisis.

Yeah, absolutely. There's no leadership. The culture. Yeah, yeah.

And even after, you know, you say two years of working with you, we just. It's not like it's coming to an end. The more we work with you, the more we've got to work with you. We've just got so much to do. And that's the beauty of it. And it's not an overwhelming. I'm not overwhelmed anymore. It's. No, no, I'm ready. I'm ready for the next now. I've cemented that level. I'm now moving on. And that's what this is. It's. The depth of it is so vast and just rewarding on the way through.

Because when you listen to your modules, Donald, you only hear what you're ready for. That's why I listen to them over again. And.

Yeah, that's true. That's so true. That's why we have a diverse library, is that you might listen to something right now, like, that doesn't really apply to me, and it might not apply to you right now, but six months down the road, you might be one. Yeah.

What was that?

Thing. I get that all the time for people that they'll text messages me and like, you know, I remember like a couple months ago you talked about this. I think you talked about this thing. I think I need to watch that. Okay, it's there. Here's where it's at. Yeah. They go find it and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah.

Because you're only, you're, you're only going to listen to and absorb what you're ready for. So with your, with your group, Donald, does everyone from every different type of industry, like fast casuals or pizza to.

Restaurant catering places, everything, right?

And everyone's at a different level. Everyone needs something different from you. And, you know, and they're ready and they'll, they'll get it when they're ready. And if you do the work, you're going to be ready quicker for the next thing. If you don't do the work, you're kidding yourself. But you won't, you just, you won't see it. You won't see it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes I listen, oh, my God. The light just bulb just went off and go, oh, my God, this is incredible. Know what I mean? R, listen to this, listen to this. Sometimes after a call, I go, oh, my God. R. Because I did the course in the morning. Because I'm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm there, right?

You are there. You're always there.

Yeah. R goes, how was it? I'm going, oh, my God. I can believe it. It's everything.

It's like he was just talking to me.

It was there. You know, we talked about this struggle we had last week.

Yeah.

I just got a hour and a half master class on how to fix this bloody struggle. You know what I mean? And I'm like, oh, good. Anyway, we listen to it together and we just work through it and then we just implement the tools to just iron it out. You know what I mean? And it's good. And it just, I see it within our business. It's really, it's, it's. Thank you, Donald. You've really changed.

I want to thank you. That's been an inspiration to me because when I see my. Here's my thing, I get inspired to just really, just really go, you know, more deeper, more passionate. When I see members like you actually applying, getting the results and stuff like that, it inspires me just to become a better coach. So I want to thank you for inspiring me to be a better coach.

But it just means we work well. You know, when you work You've probably.

Seen like, you've known me for a couple years now. You've probably seen my coaching has evolved and developed.

We have. Yeah. No, it's, it's really. And as the group grows.

Yep.

You, you're growing as well. I know, I know. You have your own coaches. And it's like, I know when you've. Because we've been like, we're.

Yeah.

Four days, four days a week. We do three calls and we do a one on one call. Right. I, I know when you've gone off and learned something because you're bringing that back.

Oh, yeah. Come back.

How good's this?

How do we get with his coaches? Here we go.

Yeah, but it's, it's good. You know what I mean? It's really good. You know what I mean?

It's been, it's. I, I love this process. I mean, I am so blessed to be able to help restaurant owners because again, it all goes back to that very first restaurant. I had that one businessman sat me down and just had that heart to heart that hard. Talk about, I'm worried or worried about you not being open in six months. And then you're saying, hey, listen, I'm willing to show you the roadmap if you're willing to do the work. And I said that. Yes. I mean, I was desperate. I was like, yes. And I always tell people it didn't just change my restaurant, changed my life.

Yeah.

Gave me my life back. Because at that time my restaurant was. I was handcuffed to my restaurant, you know, like, just because I didn't see any way to escape it. Just working harder and harder.

Yeah. And I actually feel that that's what, you know. Yes, you've changed our restaurant, but I believe you've changed our life because it's. Everything's so crystal clear now.

Oh, thank you.

Our focus, our direction, you know, everything.

We work hard anyway, so we may as well work hard with a purpose.

That's it. And then just enjoy it. And then you're like me now. It's like I get, I get excited when I see my members like you like, rising up and becoming better. And now you see it when you see your team elevating, becoming better, it just gives you that little. Oh my God, they get it. Oh my God. They're actually getting it. They're absorbing it. Yeah, yeah.

And like, because of what you've taught us, like Ruth does the, you know, builds the website and for the training and that. And like I, I just say when we on board you're gonna do this, this, this, and this. These are your first six modules. And it's more hospitality from the head, not the heart. So it's the how to what?

Yeah, they have to understand the standards. Yeah.

That sort of stuff.

Which.

It brings in the standards, and then from there, we slowly work through hospitality from the heart. You know what I mean? So we're. It's more. This is the. This is the way we do it now. This is the heart, and we just focus more on the heart, not the head. You know what I mean? One step. Once they know what to do, it's all hard. That's good.

So if you had to recommend one book, one audiobook, and, yes, the audiobook's coming, Mark, or one podcast, what would you recommend?

I love all your books. You know, like, I started listening. Favorite one, I think the one we're listening or we're doing now is the Ingredients. The three ingredients.

That's my. So far, my favorite book. If I had to pick my favorite book out of the Restaurant Sucks trilogy, I would say it's your restaurant Culture Sucks. I think that's, like, of the. Of the Trio. That's my favorite book. Out of the Trio. Yeah. Like an introduction. Two was a little more tactical. Three was a little more harsh. Art into it. Yeah.

Yeah. Because there's three ingredients. It really lays out the different frameworks. But you can. Either you can read it, or maybe tomorrow it'll be up. Like, I look on the Audible account every day to see if it's.

I know. Like, I'm waiting for it. It's a. It's a company called acx. I keep looking for my email from them to say your book's approved. I'm like, I keep it every day.

Yeah.

And look for their email. I look for their name. Like, acx. Anything from acx.

But you can. You can. You can listen to a podcast, you can read a book, you can listen to an audio book, and it's just information. If you actually do the work, you will. You got to do the work. You can't just listen to it. You've got to. Because that's how you. That's how you. It changes everything. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So. And, like, Ingredients is a big book, too. I mean, it's 500. 525 pages. It's a big book. So. And here's the thing. Like. And Mark was talking about, like, you can read the book, and you'll get some great information out of it. Now you want to take this Book and apply the information. That's why we've started. We actually have two new programs that we've introduced. It's called One's Builder, which takes the total framework that's in this book. And we teach you the step by step tactical elements of the total framework, which I tell you right now. I mean, I couldn't even come close to explaining all the total framework in a book because it would have been 2,000 pages. Because I mean, think about how long the calls are on Monday. They're like usually an hour and a half.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're long. They're long calls. The Monday calls is the tactical one. And then the Tuesday call, we started implementing the first part of the book. It's called Reboot. And that's where we teach more of the psychology, the leadership. Just deep dive into the TRC method and stuff like that. But I made those courses because I found like, like again, I've learned over the years. I write a book. People love the books. Oh, your book was great. I love the book. Got a lot of stuff out of it. And then I'll ask the one question, how did you apply it in your restaurant? And I get crickets. So I'm like, okay, all right.

Because no one knows how.

Yeah.

Why it. It's like that. You've got to work on your business, not in it. Yeah, but how, but that's what you teach. You teach the how.

This is right step by step out right here.

We all know, we all know we've got to have a better culture. We all know we're going to on board better. We all know, we know what we do.

Behavioral based, new questions. I know I need to do my food cost. I know I need to do menu engineering. I know I need to market more consistently and aggressively. And I need to use the 13 emotions of marketing.

Yep. How, you know? Yeah. And, and that's what, that's what your system teaches, the how. Right. We all know what we have to do. Right. It's not what we have to do.

That's.

That's obvious. You know what I mean? It's how do you do it? And that is for me, you came into our life at the right time because we were ready, ready for it. And you've taught us the how. You know what I mean? Cooking good food and keeping food costs low. And you know, you had that down already. Yeah, it's. Man, that's easy. You know what I mean? It's the how, the culture. You know, I think about where we were Like, I think our culture was a show. You know what I mean? It was disgusting when I think about it.

We're just limping through.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

We were of the opinion that it didn't matter.

Yeah.

A lot of people are, you know, we're making money. You know, as you say, you know, all. All sins are hidden when there's too much money.

Yeah. Sales definitely hide sins, that's for sure.

Yeah.

And then with COVID there was no money. There's no restaurant. There's nothing.

There's nothing. Yeah.

Fabulous opportunity to complete, completely rebuild the restaurant, which is what we've done.

Yeah. And we've rebuilt it. And it's. It's. Yeah. It's such something that we're really. Yeah. What's something we're really proud of? You know what I mean? And we're really.

Amazing job. I love watching your social media. I love seeing the team interactive. I see. I love seeing like, when you do staff interviews or just like do staff spotlights, which one of the things we encourage. The team just. They're very. I mean, you tell. They love their job. They love working there. They love. They love to be a part of something bigger than. Than just having just a restaurant job. I'm a server. No. I mean, they feel like they have a mission and driv. And they're driven and they're really, really passionate. And that's the thing. Remember what I always say. Culture flows down. Your passion definitely has flowed out into the team, which is a beautiful thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And it. And it comes back up through the guest experience, which then comes back up through the spend per head, which comes back with repeat guests. And it just. And it's just one. And it just sort of just keeps flowing around. You know what I mean?

Like we.

We give the love going down. You know, we work for our team. Our team doesn't work for us. Most people have got that freaking flipped around the wrong. Right. You know what I mean? It's.

Get so much media.

Yeah.

We.

We're constantly saying to our team.

What.

Can we do to help you? What can we do to make it easier for you? What tools can we give you? What you need helping. Yeah.

What.

What do you want to work on? Learn what not just the restaurant in your life. What can we do? You know, I mean. And it matters. Yeah.

So what's one quote. What's one quote you live by, you know, lately?

It's just raise your standards and it's. Raise your standards on everything. Yeah.

But it's like everything.

Everything.

Yeah.

You know, just raise your standards the way, you know, just.

My quote is choices and consequences.

That's good.

Yeah.

Because that just guides everything.

And that's always been risk quote.

Yeah. That's next year's wristband. Yeah. Choices and consequences. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to be on the. On the podcast today. It is definitely. I mean, it's an honor to be your coach. It is a pleasure to be your coach, and it's also a really. I mean, I am blessed to be. Be also your friend. So, yeah, I want to say thank you so much for being on the call today. Thank you for being here. If they need to get a hold of you guys, how can they find you guys on Instagram?

The plow mang Mirion.

And if you don't know how to spell it, M, Y, R, N, I, O, N, G. Yeah, yeah.

The plow manual. Yeah.

Marion.

Yeah. All right.

Thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you guys.

Thank you. Bye.