Donald Burns, who spent five years with Wolfgang Puck, says restaurants fail because of the owner, not bad luck. Success needs three things: systems (operations and training), strategy (positioning and planning), and mindset. Most owners ignore the last one.
Three decades (approximately 30 years).
Five years.
So why do restaurants fail? There's only one reason. There's only one reason why your restaurant will fail. However, first, let me tell you all the reasons it won't. It's not your business partners. It's not your staff. It's not your market. It's not your spouse. It's not your competition. It's not your price point. It's not even who is currently president. The only reason restaurants fail is because of you, the business owner. My name is Donald Burns, and I'm known as the restaurant coach. I've spent the last three decades working in the restaurant industry. I've owned my own restaurants, and I've also had the honor to work with celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck for five years now. I've had successes and I've had failures, and I've also come to terms to be able to own all of it. And I'm here to say to you, if you can't own your successes and your failures, then you. You can't move forward. You still with me? Great. Because in this video, what I want to do is offer you some advice on how to select the best business coaching for your restaurant. Really? I mean, what do you look for in the minefield and the world of business coaches? So let's get some real value here. Okay, so the first thing you understand is there's a difference between advice and opinion. Everybody has an opinion. What's the difference? Well, advice is information given firsthand from someone who's been there. I see so many business coaches in the market today that never have actually owned their own restaurants. Now, would you trust a skinny chef? No. Would you hire an overweight person to be your personal trainer? Of course not. So why would you take restaurant advice from someone who's never actually owned a restaurant? Taking that even further, have they actually had any failures as well, learned from them and became successful afterwards? Failures are your biggest capital. That's where most of learning comes from. If you're going to take advice from someone and know that it's not opinion, then make sure it's from someone who's actually been there. In all my years, I've distilled that there are basically three keys that make outstanding restaurants. The first one, and it's fundamental to all restaurants, and that is the systems required to operate a restaurant. Every great business coach understands systems, and that's what most of them teach. In fact, I'd go to say 95% of business coaches focus on systems. What do I mean by that? I mean, it's your menu. It's your marketing, it's your checklist, it's your training, it's your procedures, it's software. Basically all the fundamental elements that are needed to manage day to day operations. Now don't get me wrong, systems are very, very important. In fact, I would go to say they are foundational to restaurant success. And there are some great business coaches out there that are really great at teaching systems. However, the problem is that they only focus on systems. And you can have the best systems in the world. However, if you don't have a plan on how to strategically use those systems, then you're going to fail because you don't really have a direction. So the second area of understanding is strategy. That's the second key you have to have. You know, now you can be great at systems. However, if you don't have a strategy, you're just going to get lost with the competition. So what really makes up great business strategy? It's asking better questions. Why are you in business in the first place? Why do companies customers drive to your restaurant? What are your core values? What do you stand for? What are your overall strategic objectives that guide your restaurant? There's probably a dozen business coaches out there to understand strategy for restaurants. At a high level. Strategy is the difference between playing chess and playing checkers. Most restaurant owners run their restaurants based on reaction. Just like in checkers, the market does this. They counter with that. When you start running your restaurant with a strategic plan, oh, now you start looking at all the moving pieces and develop a plan to best use each element for its strengths. The challenge with strategy is that it really takes a deeper level of thinking. Most restaurant owners get too caught up in the day to day operations to really come up with a strategic plan to move their business forward. And that's why they struggle. Probably 10% of the business coaches out there understand strategic planning enough for restaurants that they can actually help them move forward. So you have to understand that if your strategy is not in front of your systems, you'll get left behind. Now, while systems and strategy are critical elements needed to run a restaurant, in fact I would safely say they make up 20% of restaurant success. There's a third area that almost all business coaches don't talk about. And that's probably because most aren't qualified. And it's really sad because it makes up 80% of restaurant success. That last area is psychology and the mindset of the business owner. Now, as a restaurant owner, you can learn all you need about systems and strategy. However, it's how you apply and use those things that make a difference, and that's you. So unless you understand how to manage you your inner game, then it really doesn't matter what's going on in the outer game. After all, the inner world creates the outer world and it's not the other way around. Thoughts do become things. So how do you really address mindset? I mean, there's so many different layers that we can discuss and so many people don't address this and aren't even aware of the mental breaks they have on them. So there's basically there's so many behaviors that restaurant owners have that are unconscious. So how can you be aware unless you have someone to point out your blind spots? If you'd like to learn more about systems, strategy and the mindset of successful restaurant owners, I invite you to take a look at look inside Restaurant Coach University. It's really loaded with tools and programs designed to strengthen all three key areas of restaurant success. Sign up at the bottom of the page for my VIP list. Enter my world, Play the game at my level.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
