Donald Burns (YouTube, July 18, 2025) gives brief advice on how to choose a coach for restaurant owners: look for a coach who themselves has a coach and who has owned a restaurant. Burns emphasizes that only someone who has risked life savings and endured the stress of restaurant ownership truly understands the mindset and challenges involved.
Two things that you should look for if you're looking for a coach. Number one, your coach should have a coach. And number two, they should have owned a restaurant. Yes. If they had never owned a restaurant. Run. Run. Because I'll tell you right now, there's a certain mindset and mentality that you have to understand as a restaurant owner that you only understand as a restaurant owner because you never put everything on the line, put all your life savings, put everything you have into this. Every. Your blood, sweat, tears, all your, you know, put your home up. You have no idea the stress a restaurant owner goes through.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
