25 – Getting 1 more hour a week to work on your Restaurant, not in it

James Eling: Hey, it’s James from Marketing4Restaurants and welcome to episode 25 of Secret Sauce, the restaurant marketing podcast. How to find an extra hour a week to work on your business, not in your business.

Voiceover: Some restaurants are quiet, lose money, and the owner works 70 hours a week. Other restaurants are busy, profitable, and the owners work a few hours a day. What’s the difference? They have a secret sauce. Join James from Marketing4Restaurants as he helps you come up with your recipe for restaurant success, your secret sauce.

James: Hey everyone, welcome back. Hope everyone enjoyed the profitable hospitality episode. I think we covered a lot of ground there, the feedback’s been really awesome for it. So, if you haven’t listened to it yet, have a listen. We covered a lot of ways that you can increase the profitability in your restaurant, café, or takeout.

And I think profitability is one of the big things that people struggle with in the restaurant industry, there’s no secret there. But there’s a lot of things that don’t cost a lot of money that you can do to improve your business, and some of them are really quick and easy wins and they’re the best wins of all. Because you can take a business that’s really struggling and you start getting those easy wins in there and it really starts to turn around. It gives you the resources to be able to make the wins that are a little bit more difficult to achieve, but will really build you to one of those, you know, top 10%, top 5% type businesses out there.

And really, isn’t that what all of us in our business? To be one of the top businesses in our field? So, the top Indian restaurant in the area. The top Chinese restaurant. The number one restaurant in, the number one Indian restaurant in the state, in the country. You get there little by little and it’s the little tiny things, it’s the one percenters that make those differences in profitability, in operations, in the marketing, in all of those sort of things. So, have a listen, I think it was a really good one. If you are getting a lot out of Secret Sauce, please, please, please, firstly leave a review in iTunes. We read all of the reviews. I really do appreciate them, and we use them to make the podcast better. Also, it’s part of the way that iTunes looks at it. It helps push us up the rankings and helps put the word out.

The other thing that you can do, if you see one of our posts on Facebook please share it. It helps us to get the word out. We produce this for free, so we produce, I like to think we put a lot of work into the podcast to provide you with a lot of things that just after 30 minutes you can go, “Wow, I’ve got a couple of ideas that I can use to make my business better.” And that’s really what it’s all about for us, is providing you with the resources that you need to be able to run your business better. And the other thing, of course, is download the app. So, in the Google Play store and in the app store, the Secret Sauce app. It’s the easiest way that you can listen to it. Do all of those things, please.

Now, before we get into finding an extra hour in your week, and I know what you’re thinking, “Oh my god, how am I going to do that? I’m already working 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week.” We’re going to talk about why you should try and find an extra hour, and then we’re going to go through a whole heap of tips that we do. And look, these are generic business tips in some respects, some of them are restaurant specific. But a lot of them are generic to any sort of business. But it’s most important for restaurant owners. Because restaurant owners are the most time, poor. They’re working the really long hours and so, it’s really important that you can start working that little hour to be able to work on the business because you’ll get such big gains.

But there’s something very important that we have to talk about, very, very, very, very important. Pokémon Go. Now, why are we talking about Pokémon Go? I don’t know if you are playing it. I played it, I downloaded the app just really because I thought it was important that I have a play with it just so that I can get an understanding of what Pokémon Go is. What is the big deal with Pokémon Go? And I played a little bit, I’m level five. I haven’t been into a gym yet. And look, it’s okay. It’s a little bit addictive. I actually enjoy playing it with my kids. So, because you’re not meant to play Pokémon Go while you’re driving a car, so I’ll get the kids to drive it and they’ll be going, “Stop here daddy, stop here.” And they tend to use all my Pokéballs though, which is a bit annoying. So, why is it important for a restaurant? Well, they’re going to bring out advertising, I’m not sure how that’s going to work. I saw a picture this morning of 5,000 people in Chicago playing who went just to catch one Pokémon. It’s obviously driving traction, it’s driving behaviour.

The thing, the one thing I think’s really important about it is that there are more people using Pokémon Go than there are using Twitter. Now, I think that that is an amazing statistic. And it really highlights the way that the world has changed. Because that is a huge, Twitter was founded in March 2006. So, we’re just over 10 years for Twitter and in one-week Pokémon Go had more active users than Twitter. Now, is it a flash in the pan? I don’t know. It’s July 2016, so I don’t know when you’re listening to this time. In two years’ time it’ll be like, “Yeah, I remember that. No one’s playing it now.” Or, it could be, I don’t know, 10 times bigger than Facebook. Who knows? I don’t want to make any predictions, because I know that they’ll be wrong. But the big thing about Pokémon Go is that they created an app that has got such massive traction so quickly. Now, what does that mean for a restaurant owner? Well, I think it means a couple of really, really interesting things. It highlights the, and I’m not suggesting everyone should go out and play Pokémon Go or, you know, turn it into your main advertising platform.

The only thing that I think that it highlights is the way that the world has changed and changed dramatically. The fact that someone can create a business that goes to so many users so quickly really highlights the opportunity that you have. And far too many restaurant owners are stuck in the mindset of doing what they’ve been doing for the last 20 years. It took Twitter 10 years to get to this point. Pokémon Go did it in a week, okay. The rules have changed. Nothing highlights this more than that. The rules have changed. So, if you were successful five years ago, and we see this so often. People who are going to die in ditch running their restaurant the way that they’ve run it, because the rules of changed. They either know that the rules have changed but they don’t like the rule changers, or they don’t understand that the rules have changed. And you need to really, really look at this.

The way that people are finding, discovering, talking, communicating, building communities is so different to five years ago. And not enough restaurants are taking advantage of this, because and a lot of people say, “You know, I wish Facebook was never around. I wish there was no such thing as Instagram.” Yeah, you know what, Instagram’s around. It’s a thing, it’s happening and it’s making money for restaurant owners. You have to just accept that. You don’t have to be on it, but you have to accept it. It’s the way that life is. Too many people though aren’t, aren’t taking advantage of that. Now, we were talking, so one of customers they use our services for an outsourced marketing expert.

And so, that’s one of the solutions that we offer with our websites is that we will help you for an hour a month to go through all of the issues that you’ve got in your restaurant. Now, we were going through some marketing ideas, and one of the things I said, you know, why don’t we try some fusion ideas? Now, I know a lot of people don’t like fusion restaurants. But a lot of people sort of struggle with them. But what about fusion items? So, and I was just, so I’m on the phone call at the time and I kind of panicked and it was like… So, Indian restaurant and I’m thinking, “Okay. Indian, Indian, Chinese. Okay, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What about a chicken Vindaloo dim sim? That sounds awesome.”

Now, yes, an Indian restaurant isn’t for me with how to make a dim sim, but they can make a mean Vindaloo or a butter chicken. They thought it was a pretty good idea, they weren’t sure if they were going to do it. So, here’s a couple of things that you can do. One, you know, you put that on Facebook. And people just think, “Wow, that would be awesome. I would try that.” Also, you can put your hand up and say, “We don’t know how to make dim sim.” Okay, that’s fine. What about, just what about if you did a joint venture with another, with a Chinese restaurant, you know? Go in there, have a meal, see if the dim sims are alright. If you like their dim sims, why don’t you make the Vindaloo or the butter chicken curry? They make the dim sims, and then you sell them in both restaurants. Now, that’s one of those ideas. Because you’re going to cross market that out to both restaurants. You’ve got the expertise, it’s a great story and a lot of people say, “But I don’t want to work with them, they’re our competition.” They’re not.

The competition is people sitting on their bum at home, not cooking anything. So, the thing I like about that idea is that you can put that on Instagram, you can put that on Facebook, you can run a small campaign around that. And, you know what, it might go completely insane. I haven’t seen anyone doing it. If anyone in the Melbourne area does it, feel free to use it. Just please let me know, because I want to come and try them because I just reckon it sounds awesome. Because I’m not trying to get, I want this thing, I want the butter chicken dim sim to be a thing in Melbourne so that I can try it and say, “Yeah, that was awesome,” or, “I need to go back to the drawing board.” But I need someone to cook it up for me, so please do that and let me know. If you’re not in Melbourne then take a photo of it and send it to us, because that would be awesome as well. There’s people out there who are trying this sort of thing.

And I was talking to another Indian restaurant who’s looking for some help finding some customers. And I said, you know, “Why don’t you try this?” And the guy goes, “We do that. I made a butter chicken pie.” I go, “Oh my God, that’s awesome. How successful is that?” And he goes, “We don’t actually cook them for the public, it’s just really for the staff.” And I was like, “That’s crazy. You should be jumping on that, because that would be a really, really… All you’ve got to do is put it on Facebook.” And I said, “You know what I would do? Make enough for the staff for the next two or three days, make 10 or 15 of them and then put it on Facebook. And if no one comes, who cares? Your staff have got butter chicken pies for the next three days. If they sell out, then you put on Facebook, ‘We’re really sorry, we sold every single one of the butter chicken pies that we made. We’re going to make them next Monday.’”

Now, that turns into Monday is butter chicken day. See what I just did then? Monday, it’s a really quiet day. Monday could be your busiest day, because that’s the only day that you cook butter chicken pies. I’m just saying. These are the kind of things that you can try. And the beautiful thing, you have got amazing tools like Facebook and Twitter. You’ve got your specials boards, okay, you don’t even need to use social media. You could just be your specials board. You could have an A frame out the front, so people go driving by and they go, “A butter chicken meat pie. Wow, that sounds good.” This is the opportunity that’s out there. This is the opportunity that is highlighted by Pokémon Go. This is what I want everyone to have a think about. Most importantly, make me a butter chicken dim sim, because I just think it would be awesome. Just try it out. You know, there’ll be a little bit of work, it won’t be easy to do. It can’t be too sloppy, it’s obviously got to be a different consistency to your normal butter chicken.

­­­­But the challenge is, we have the capabilities people, we can do this together. So, let me know. At least send me a photo, at least send me a photo please. Now, right how are we going to find an extra hour? I’m going to find an extra hour by me shutting up and getting onto what we’re actually meant to be talking about today. So, a lot of people that I talk about they just, at the end of the week they’re just exhausted. And it’s because they’re working really, really long hours. And that concerns me for a couple of reasons. One, it’s the old adage. How do you make a $100,000 in the restaurant business? It’s easy, you take 2 $50,000 jobs and you do both of th­­em, right. That means that you’re working 70, 80 hours a week. That’s crazy talk. Some really sad things that I hear, you know, “We’ve been running this restaurant for 20 years and I haven’t seen my kids grow up.” That’s not right. “I’m getting old and I’m don’t know, we don’t have enough money to be able to retire but I have to continue doing this.” You know, as I mentioned in the last podcast, we talked to someone who was 76 and she’s working 12-hour days, that’s not right. So, what we want to do is help you to get one extra hour a week.

And the really important thing is not that you can go home an hour earlier. We’re not really interested in that, we’re not at that point yet. What we want to do is we want to provide you one hour where you can work on the business not in the business. If you’re working on the business, you’re going to be starting to fix a lot of the problems that are causing you to work 80 hours. It’s very interesting. I find the people who nail this stuff, who nail this personal productivity, who nail the priorities, who nail running a restaurant really well, they’re the guys who are working 20 hours a week. They’re the ones who are really profitable, they’re the ones who are taking the awesome overseas holidays. That’s the opportunity that everyone should be driving towards. So, you need to think about that.

And we come back, personal plan. What’s your personal plan? What’s your business plan? What’s your marketing plan? All of those sort of things, and how are you executing on them? How are you executing on them? If you’re not happy with your personal plan, that’s your own problem, you know. If you’re not getting to where you need to be with your personal plan because your business isn’t providing the resources and the cash flow and all of those things that you need to, then you need to fix the business plan. And if your business is running well but you’re not getting enough customers, that’s your marketing plan.

So, number one analyse your time. What is it spent on and why? Is it really important? Are there things that you can do to better manage your time? Is it absolutely necessary that you do absolutely everything that you are doing? What are the things that are taking up your time? And I understand that, you know, you might be doing all of the prep because you can’t afford a line cook, you can’t afford someone to do that. I get that. I think it’s important just for you to have a think about what it is that you’re spending the time on, because that’s going to give you an idea about what you can do where the quick wins can be made. And it might be that you need to bring more money in before you can do that. But if you realize that there’s, you know, 20 hours of prep that you’re doing that could be done by someone else, then isn’t that an awesome goal? I mean, that’s got to be your 90-day plan: I am going to increase the profitability of this restaurant to be able to employ someone for those 20 hours.

Now, I don’t know, what’s that person going to cook, is it an apprentice, you know? Who is that you’re going to employ? But work that out. Work that out and set that as your goal. That’s the first step, you know, analyse your time. And you might be able to find a couple of hours and you think, “You know what, this is not important. This is not important, there are more important things that I need to be doing in this business. I’m not going to do that.” And that’s a quick and easy win.

Second point, delegate. Too many people are too afraid to delegate. And this goes absolutely hand in hand with if you want a job done right, do it yourself. And that is the enemy of every great business, because there’s only one of you, you know. There’s only one of me in our company, there’s only one of me. And so, some of the things that get done aren’t as good as I would like them to do. Now, it’s easy because in some respects there’s some things that I cannot do. So, I can’t programme, I can’t code at all. So, I let developers do that, which is great because it means that I’m not going to stuck back here late on a Wednesday night coding. I get stuck back late on a Wednesday night doing other things. I can’t do graphics design, you know. We’ve got people in the team who does those components. But there’ll be somethings that, you know, I sort of struggle with letting the reigns go. And it’s something that I need to work on and it’s something that you should work, as well. Now, obviously if you’re in fine dining then you don’t want a front of house service to go. I’m not talking about the things that are important to your business. I’m talking about the things that, you know, aren’t overly important. We have an accountant who comes in.

Now, it’s an interesting point of discussion internally within the company because the level of service has slipped over the last, you know, three or four years. Remember the good old days when we had a great accountant. But we delegate that out to them, because of the fact that they do it quicker, our time is better spent, it would take us much longer to do it and we don’t have the time to do that. Now, if I studied a lot I could probably do a better job, I reckon. But it would take me five or six times, and you can’t run a business like that. It’s just crazy to do that. So, we delegate that out. It’s not done as well as I would like it to be. I have the level of knowledge required to manage that process. So, often when they make a mistake it’s like, “Wow, hang on a sec, I don’t think that that’s right. Can you go back and check that?” What are the things that you can delegate out? And what are the things that you can accept 80%? You know, I say it here, 80% is the new 100% in a lot of the things.

Now, obviously when we’re building ecommerce systems 100%’s the new 100 percent because we don’t want to have any bus or errors in that. But a lot of the things, and marketing campaigns is the classic example of that. If you don’t do any marketing today, then today’s the day that you didn’t do any marketing and so we’ll send an email out or something will happen and I’ll be like, “I wouldn’t have done it like that, I could have done it a bit better. But we did some marketing today.” Otherwise, if we didn’t, if we waited for me to do that it would never get done. So, it’s really important to work out what it is that you can delegate and then delegate relentlessly.

Now, number three goes hand in hand with delegation: procedures. I love procedures, okay. I hate following them and a lot of chefs, you know, traditionally a lot of chefs aren’t really big, you know, it sort of takes the artwork out of creating food. But from point of view, I love procedures. Because it means that when a process is started, it will get done the same way every time. And it’s easy, you train people to follow the procedure and if they don’t then you train them again. And then you retrain them, then you provide them some guidance and then you fire them. And it’s, you don’t fire them because they’re not good or because you’re a nasty boss, you fire them because they chose not to follow your procedures and at this place we follow procedures. It’s as simple as that. And people know, you know. There are some things here that, when procedures aren’t followed, we have very one-way conversations, you know.

Because it’s very hard to manage a business. Your business should be exactly the same, “This is the way we set a table. This is the way that we set a table. This is the way that we run front of house. This is the way that we prepare these dishes.” If you’re not setting a procedure on how to layout a dish, then how much, and I’ve seen this in restaurants where there’ll be two chefs and one of them will cook with 150 grams of steak and the other one with 250. Now, whoa, how do you cost that? How do you even know that that’s the case? And it’s only when the two of them were together and one of them was cooking and they guy said, “That’s a big steak.” “What do you mean?” “That’s a big steak.” “It’s 250 grams.” “Whoa, that’s a big steak.” “That’s what I normally cook.” “Whoa, what.” If you’ve got procedures, it’s easier to delegate. So, what procedures are there that you can put in place? Now, if you’re not very good at writing procedures, that’s fine. One of the empowering things that you can do for a team is get to write their own procedure. “How do you think that this should be done? Write a procedure for we’re going to run front of house.” How often do the toilets get cleaned? Was it that you say when a guest first comes in? How do you know that someone has been successful at their job? All of those sort of things, you can get people to write those statements.

Now, obviously you go through and vet them and make sure that you’re happy with them. But procedures are a great way, because they’re an extension of your management control. Rather than you telling someone 10 times how to do something, it’s, “Read the procedure, read the procedure, read the procedure, read the procedure. This is the way that it’s done.” And for us it’s like the Bible, this is what it is. Now, we use a tool called Confluence, which probably isn’t really appropriate for restaurants, I don’t know if there are any restaurants. If there are restaurants out there using Confluence, let us know. But it allows you to put a process in there, and the thing I like about it is that we’ve allowed everyone to be able to edit Confluence. Now, that means that when something goes wrong, we can just say, “Okay, so what happened here? Let’s review the procedure. Did you follow the procedure?” “Yes.” “Alright, so let’s just add in that procedure. If this happens, do this. If that happens, do that. Make sure that you remember this.” So, procedures are a really great way that you can find, because people then know what they’re doing it’s a lot easier. You’ll be fixing up less areas, which means that, look, we’re starting to get a little bit more time.

Number four, ask for help from the team. Too many people think that, and so this is like, the first thing you’ve got to realize about that sentence is the team, okay. It’s your team, you’re building that team. You’re the leader, we should do one on leadership, hey. That would be a good thing to do. Hang on a sec, let me write that down. That is the kind of stuff, I’m actually not going to write it down, I’m going to put it in Confluence. They’re your team, and too often people don’t ask their team for help. You know, “I’m working 80 hours a week here, it feels like 80 hours a day. I’m working 80 hours a week, what we want to do is we want to try and fix this problem, this problem, and this problem.” Ask people for what ideas that they’ve got. Ask them, you know, what it is that you want them to do differently to try and free up some time for you. You’ve got to reach out to your team. Which leads into the next one.

Five: And that’s build a better team, okay. The next time you are hiring, try to go that little step further and make sure that you hire a better person. Because we find you talk to some restaurant owners and they say, you know, “We’re hiring people and they might last two weeks.

Sometimes they only last one or two shifts.” And like, you know what, yup, I get that. That’s hospitality. People are a bit, it’s hard to find good people in hospitality. But if you start setting that criteria, we talked last week about using Facebook to build a pool of people who you can get to work in your restaurant. They’re the kind of things that you can start to do. Hiring that little bit better means that you’re going to be hiring less often which means that, look, you’re now starting to free up a bit more time. Hiring people right, I mean, when we do it here it’s probably 30 hours of management time to hire one person. By the time we sift through resumes, we do the phone interviews, we do the first interview. Then we have a technical interview where they get to show us how good they are at what it is that they do. Then we have a third interview where we get down to, “This is what we’re going to offer. This is what we would like to see for you, are you happy with that?” You know, it’s a big long process. It’s an easy 30 hours of managers’ time. And so, it’s very expensive when we hire people. But we want to do it right, because we know that it costs us a lot more than if we just hire any old bod. And, you know, there’s plenty of resumes out there, there’s plenty of resumes. But it’s about getting the right people. That’s really important.

Now, tip number six: multitask. So, how can you spend your time better? Now, when I said to you analyse your time, what is the time spent on and why? Is it really important? Now, you might be doing things, like you might be going for a jog, you might be driving into work. You might be doing a whole heap of prep. In those times, what else could you be doing? And I would suggest the number one thing that you could be doing is listening to podcasts. I was talking to someone a while ago, and he said, you know, “I always try and set some time aside to listen to your podcast.” And it was like, “Well, that’s very flattering. But it’s not designed that way. I know that you’re busy. Why don’t you listen to it in the car?” And he goes, “How could I do that?” And it’s like, “Download the app or stream it on your phone while you’re in your car.” “I hadn’t thought of that.” Now, that’s one of those little life hacks that can help you because I think, like, there’s my podcast, there’s heaps of other podcasts.

There’s Eric Cacciatore’s, lots of other podcasts out there that you can listen to where you’ll pick up those little gems. And you need to be educating yourself to run a better business. And everyone needs to be educating themselves to run a better business, because everything is changing and it’s changing so quickly. That is why you need to be educating. And it’s the perfect thing. If you’re out taking the dog for a walk, if you’re going for a jog, if you’re driving in, if you’re catching the train into work. They’re the times that you can, rather than just be sitting there listening to music, make that commitment, make that investment in yourself to be a better person. To educate yourself, so that you can run a better business. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your staff, you owe it to your family to do that. And, to me, it’s a no-brainer. Okay, so there’s a lot of things out there that you’ll be doing in your business that are time consuming.

Seven. Now, the number one thing that I can think of is your accounting, your bookkeeping. Now, if you’re doing the bookkeeping one of things that you can do is you can use an accounting system like Zero, which has bank feeds. Now, this is really interesting because restaurant owners say, you know, “The world’s changing, the internet’s changing, and people don’t eat, people are changing the way that they eat.” Yup, that’s fine. But the good thing is that everyone eats three times a day. Everyone in the world, well, apart from underprivileged people. But most people eat three times a day in the world, that’s a massive opportunity because that’s the industry that you’re in. And it can’t be outsourced, it can’t be disrupted really.

Because eating is a fundamental part of survival. If you’re a bookkeeper, then, yeah, your business can be disrupted and it is being disrupted and that’s why bookkeepers are struggling to find work because some of the things like the basic bookkeeping entries have been taken over by applications like Zero. So, if you haven’t used Zero before, you can hook it up to your bank and it will go and work out what all of the payments are. And if you’ve made a payment to a supplier before and you’ve coded it as a food purchase, it will grab it and say, “This is a food purchase.” How easy is that? You’re not having to key in $74.58 from this person, all of that is done. And once you train it to what it is that you’re doing, it becomes very, very quick. Now, people are saving hours and hours in doing that. Reordering, you know, could you delegate the reordering of stock? Could you set a stock level? Now, I know this sounds like common sense, but a lot of people don’t do that. They’ll sit there and go, “Let’s order this, this, this, and this.” A.) It’s bad because your inventories not well managed. B.) It means that you’re doing. Can you delegate that out to someone and say, “This is the orders for today, are you happy with that?” “Yes.” Bang.

8. Set a procedure, delegate it out. Then you’ve automated things like ordering. Have a look at Zero, I’ll include to the link for the notes for it. The eighth one, focus on what your goals are and prioritize. There are some things that you will do that aren’t important, and I just think you should get rid of them. Because if you’re running the kind of restaurant that probably 80% of people are running. If I was running a restaurant where I’m working long hours, where I’m getting paid less per hour than other people even though I’m the owner, even though I’m taking all of the financial risk, then you’ve got a problem. And some people, a lot of people who are doing a lot worse than that. Even if you’re making, there are some people out there who are making really, really good money but they’re still working 80 hours a week. And it’s like, you know what, “I’m making $150,000, $200,000 a year.

But, hey I’m working 80 hours. I’m happy with that.” Still I reckon you can do better. You should be able to earn an extra 10, 20 percent and you should be able to work half that time. No one needs to work those ridiculously long hours. There’s processes in place, so look at your time and focus on the important things and try and cut out some of the unimportant things, some of the time-wasting things.

Number nine, try and get a decent amount of sleep. Look after yourself, try and get some exercise. If you’re getting a little bit on, go for a walk each morning. Try and get some fresh air, try and get some sunlight. It’s really important that you get out, and I think it’s important for a couple of reasons. One, you go running, you do some sort of exercise, you get that endorphin rush, you know, it makes you feel better it makes you feel happier. The other thing is, when I go for a run, sometimes I will listen to a podcast. Other times I like to just let my mind wander because that’s the time when I’m creative and my mind will just, it’ll just pick at things. You know, “We’ve got this problem at work, we’ve got this problem. What would it be like if we did this?” And then just these ideas pop into your head and it’s like, “Wow, awesome.” And then, you know, you run that little bit quicker home because you want to jump on the computer to do something. That for me, that’s how it works. But I always try, you got to try and get as much sleep as you can. You know, you can’t go out boozing every night of the week and then work ridiculously long hours.

I find some people, they put in really, really long hours and they will spend the last four hours at work doing an hour’s worth of work because they are just that slow, they’re that tired. They don’t even know what they’re doing, they’re in desperate need of sleep. And because it’s taken them an extra four hours they’ve gone home late, they come back to work the next morning they’re not refreshed and they’re still struggling. They’re off to a bad start on the next day. They would have been much better off to have gone home four hours early. Come home, gone to work an hour early the next day, and got that hours’ worth of work done. Look after yourself, I think it’s really important. It’s one of those things that, like as a leader if you don’t look after yourself, no one will. You need to take responsibility, make sure that you’re getting enough sleep, make sure that you’re getting enough exercise.

Number 10, do some marketing, okay. You need to do some marketing. You need to be doing marketing that you’re measuring. Make sure that you’re measuring the effectiveness of your marketing. That’s interesting, we had a local, there’s a new local magazine that came out. And we’d been contacted on numerous occasions, you know, “Do you want to advertise in it?” It’s like, “No, we run a global business, we’re not really interested in local restaurants.” And they said, “Okay.” But they kept sending us the emails. And anyway, this was delivered on our doorstep and I looked at it and it was really interesting because there’s about probably 15 restaurants in there. And not one of them included a coupon. Now, you’re saying, “But I don’t like discounting.” No, wait. Next month these people are going to go back to you and say, “Saw your ad,” look at it, “Doesn’t it look fantastic? I want to sign you up for six months now.” And they’re going to say, “But it doesn’t work.” “But so many people have told us that it works.”

Now, there was the really, really awesome opportunity there to include a coupon. “Bring this coupon in for 10% off. Mention this and get a free coffee. Blah blah blah blah blah.” Come up with some sort of offer. Now, this is not about discounting, this is about how many people saw the ad, how many people came into your restaurant because they saw the ad, how much economic value did you spend? What was the return on your investment in your marketing? And none of the restaurants did that. So, they will be bamboozled when the people come in, “But we printed this many. It was seen by that many. This is what people have said.” There’s always going to be some business that you’ve never heard of that said, “This is the best piece of marketing I’ve ever done. I can’t believe how exciting it was. Blah blah blah blah blah.” And you’ve got no leg to stand on and you’re going to hesitate, they’re going to be applying high pressure tactics because this is how these things work. And you’re going to go, “Yeah, alright. I’ll sign up for three months.”

Okay, now they were hoping to get one month out of you, they went with six months because they knew it was going to be expensive and they knew that you were going to fall back to one or three months. They got you. They got you. The way that we, look, we used to get hassled by the Yellow Pages. Remember Yellow Pages back in the old days? So, we put a separate phone line in. And the phone never rang apart from people trying to sell us stuff. And it was like, you know what, there’s no one actually using this at all. And so, we cut it. And the guy just said, “Blah,” and I said, “No, we’re not going to advertise.” And he goes, “But everyone else is getting really great effects.” I said, “That’s fantastic. Let them have their great results. We’re not interested.” Because I knew that the phone never rang.

Now, these restaurants will not know whether it’s been, and I don’t know. Look, I don’t want to denigrate print marketing at all, I don’t think it’s great I think you’re much better off, I quite like flyers. I talk to a lot of people who have success with flyers, you know, unaddressed mail delivery. But these guys have just left themselves completely open and all they had to do was include a little, you know, “Cut this out, bring it in and get a free blah.” Or, even just, “Mention that you saw us in the magazine.” Do some marketing and measure its effectiveness. It’s not hard to do. If it’s online, it’s a piece of cake. You know, you can link a Facebook ad up to your ads to your online ordering if you’re using something like our free online ordering system. That tells you exactly how much money it brought it, you want to know how much you spent. “This is my ROI, this was a good campaign, this was a bad campaign. I need to do better.”

Market and measure your marketing, really important. It’s really important that you do that, because that’s going to give you the resources that you need to build your business, alright. It’s not all about the money, but the money buys you resources and the resources give you the ability to get more time.

Lastly, number 11, work an extra hour, okay. Now, I know what you’re saying, “I can hardly, I don’t have an extra hour to give.” If you don’t have an extra hour to give and if none of the previous 10 ideas work for you, if they don’t resonate with you, that’s fine, that’s cool. Just work an extra hour. What it is is really important and the work that you will do in that last hour, well, it’s not really the last hour it shouldn’t be the last hour. It should be the first hour that you do. When your brightest, when you’re most motivated, when you’re most fired up. Because this is the most important work that you will do all week. Because if you’re doing prep in the kitchen then you are trading an hour for dollars. Now, in your case, it’s the dollars that you’re saving by not having to make payroll for that person. It’s the same if you’re waiting tables, if you’re front of house. You’re saving the wages that would have been paid. The word that you do when you’re working on your business is an investment.

And what you want to do is you want to, because you don’t get paid for it, but what you want to do is you want to invest that one hour and get a return on it. Now, if you spend an hour doing procedures, every time that procedure is being followed, that is a return. And you’re getting paid back in time. How many staff have left your business because they couldn’t make you happy because they didn’t know what it was that you wanted? You’ve yelled at them because they didn’t set the tables right. You’ve yelled at them because they haven’t prepared a dish right. Or, they haven’t handled a customer situation right. But you never actually told them what to do in that situation. A lot of the time it comes down to you, a lot of the time it’s your lack of preparation. And I know, I’m not having a go at you. I’m saying it’s because you don’t have a procedure in place. It’s really hard, everyone’s under a lot of pressure.

There’s never enough time in the day. But if you put that procedure in place, it will start returning to you all the time. And it could work for years. So, you spend one hour doing one procedure and that procedure comes back to you and, you know, you might be saving one or two hours a week if it’s a great procedure. And we come back to the first thing, analyse your time. What are the issues that you’re spending your time on and then how do you deal with those issues in a way that can automate them away, that can proceduralise them away, that can team work them away? And that’s where probably, it’s not the first hour that you’ll find, it’s probably the first 5 or 10 hours that you will find. And one of the things I find really interesting when you’re building a high-performance team is that you will find people who you will give extra responsibility to, and they will struggle with it. And then you sit down with them and say, “Look, I think you’re struggling with it. What’s the story?” And they’re either going to say, “You know what, it’s not for me,” or, “I just need help and guidance and mentoring.” You help them and then you’ve helped them with their personal development. That’s a lot more important than just paying the bill. They start to become a lot more loyal, they start to become a lot more engaged in your business.

So, think about your team, think about how you can build a better team. Because it’s the team that’s going to really help you. you can’t run a restaurant by, well, I mean some people run a restaurant husband and wife but, you know, they’re small restaurants. For most of you, you’re not going to be able run a restaurant by yourself. Whether you’re front of house, you need back of house as a minimum. If you’re back of house then you need someone front of house. You need that team work. And putting the resources in to building that team effectively is the first really big step that you can take to building a high-performance restaurant. And then, dare I say, once you’ve got that first restaurant nutted out, then you can have a crack at number two. Going from one to two is immensely difficult. Going from two to three is hard. Going to three to four not as hard. Going from 10 to 11 is easy. And that’s how people build chains with 100 restaurants in there. Is that what it is that you’re thinking about? Have you never thought about that but you’re thinking about it now? These are the opportunities, these are the things that you can do. So, have a think about it and, look, hopefully you found something that in there that can help you with just that little bit of personal productivity. I know it’s really hard. But they’re the kind of things that you need to focus on. So, that’s about it. Hopefully you’ve gotten something good out of it. If you did, once again, please leave a review on iTunes and have a busy day. Bye.

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