How Doing Less can actually Result in More and Better!

Running a successful restaurant can make you feel like McGyver. Always having to deliver on whatever comes up!
You become like a Swiss Army Knife…but is there a better way? A more effective way? Today on Reservations we share how doing less can actually result in more and better!

Transcript of Video – How Doing Less can actually Result in More and Better!

Hey, welcome to reservations. Yeah, the big guy is back. I’m Jeff Harrison. Hey, I’m Andrew McCauley. Good to be back. So, Andrew, you’ve been a little on, I don’t want to call it a vacay, but you have been? I’ve been away in the backwoods of Arizona near the Grand Canyon. I had a couple of days off with the family. A good to get away and unplug for a little bit, but itching to get back into it. Yeah. Well, I mentioned before you get back into it so I can go unplug because one of the things is, it never stops.

Now, today we’re going to talk about how can you do more by doing less. Just kind of to get started, I just want to share a story of a friend of mine. It became a reality this morning when I listened to a message from him. Normally, this guy is just so positive, so upbeat. You can tell the energy he has in his voice and it sounded like he was like out of energy, almost depressed. I know from knowing him and his business. Well, he is trying to do it all and I think, sometimes Andrew, we kind of fall in that sometimes. We’re like, imagine a Swiss army knife, right? It has all those little tools in there and we try to be everything in that Swiss army knife. Is there a better way to do this?

There are things where if you’re doing too much, you’re not going to get it done

There is, yeah. Speaking from in terms of hospitality, I get it. I think I counted 37 hats I used to wear and that could be all in the space of a couple of hours. One minute you’re the plumber or the food server, the bartender, and next minute you’re the host of a nightclub. You know, you had to be thinking on your feet and hospitality is great for that night. I love my training, you know, just learning to do that. But sometimes there are things where if you’re doing too much, you’re not going to get it done.

Delegate. Everything is getting done by the right people.

You know, when I was running one of the clubs and we had about 1500 people in and I had a spot in the club where I used to be able to stand on, to be able to see everything. I used to be able to see the bar staff right below me, see the security and could see all the crowd.

I knew what was going on and one of my staff members said to me, “Hey, you don’t do anything over here”. I’m like, “Well, what do you mean?” She said, “All you do is stand there”. I say, “Well, think about this. If I jump in and help somebody and serve somebody individually, only one person out of 1500 gets my attention”. No staff gets my attention. No security get my attention, because I’m trying to do the bar job. I’ve employed people to do the bar job, right? That’s what I should be letting him do. So I stand back and I look, I know exactly what’s going on with the bar staff. I know exactly what’s going on with security because I was able to delegate those little jobs.

If you’re one of those people who try to do everything, you get nothing done. Right? So I just always think about that thing and I’ll never feel guilty about not doing anything because everything is getting done by the right people, and not me.

Where are you expert at?

Well, let’s take this like you’re in a restaurant, right? You’re the one running that. Whether you’re the person who opened it up, you’re funding it and you’re running it from the front of the house, or you’re the chef who said, hey, this is my passion. I want to open up a restaurant. There’s only so many things that you’re an expert at. You opened up a restaurant because you’re an expert at, let’s say you’re the chef, at cooking and you’re not an expert at staffing. You’re not an expert at scheduling. You’re not an expert at advertising or marketing or choosing the right uniforms. You know you’re not an expert at that. Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t know about those things. Just like that.

Imagine, a Swiss army knife. You have all those things in there, right Andrew? But it doesn’t mean that you have to do them all. Here’s something as we go out into the marketplace and we talk to customers or other restaurant owners and they’re trying to do all of that. And so what happens is they get to the point where there is a burnout. Not only that but then those other areas that they’re trying to take care of, that they’re only so good at fall by the wayside. We see maybe customer service drop off or we see, you know, maybe the uniforms not being what they should be or maybe the change in the menu is not as appealing. Those kinds of things.

How can you get more by doing less?

So what we’re talking about today is how can you do more, or excuse me, how can you get more by doing less? And I just want to give you a specific example. I love editing videos and I’ve probably edited it over five or 6,000 videos in the last several years but I realized that’s not the highest and best use of my time.

The realization came when I thought, hey, I was the guy. Then I hired two or three editors, and they make me look like an amateur. I thought why am I doing this anymore? And so the only reason I do it is that I love to do it and I might take on some special projects. Now, more and more I’m passing it off and I’m just managing that. The one thing that we don’t want to give that delegate off to is what Andrew?

Making sure that you are the person that’s holding onto that vision

Well, Jeff, it’s usually the vision. The path forward where like if you’re the manager or the owner, you’ve got that vision. You created the business or you’ve been hired to make sure that the vision is held for the owners of the business. If you try and give that up to your staff members or somebody else, you’re going to find that you’re almost like a ship without a rudder. Alright? So you want to be making sure that you are the person that’s holding onto that vision. You’re like the puppeteer and you’re controlling all of the pieces together to make that vision happen. If you outsource that, I think that you’ll start to lose track of where you need to be going and that’s when people start chasing shiny objects and things that really aren’t or weren’t in the vision in the first place.

Yeah. And I think when you write that vision down like we have a very clear vision of what we want to have achieved in our business. We used it as almost like our north star. Are we doing that? So as an example we realized we were doing too many do things, right? And we said, wait a second, our primary role should be what is to make sure people know what we do for our business. Building content and letting people know that if they need help with these things, they can contact us. Not so much in the selling, but being the tip of that spear to make sure they understand.

Customers are changing all the time

One of the things I really want to be specific about is marketing. The reason I want to do that is that’s changing all the time. Now, the reality of it is, hey, you need customers, right, and you need people to pay for your services. But the way in which you attract and get those new customers are changing all the time, Andrew. With that, is that something that the typical restaurant manager owner should be doing?

No. Here’s the thing, as you said, it’s changing all the time. We do this full time and it’s hard for us to keep up. You know, every time we have a conversation, which is probably three times a day. Hey, do you know this just changed? Holy crap, really? Wow. We got to make sure we adjust accordingly.

How to make them work

If you’re a restaurant owner or any business, any business owner for that matter, it is almost near impossible to a keep up with what’s happening in your industry ­-your business but also in terms of marketing too. So you know, we have it inside our marketing, even just with our business. We know that Jeff has a certain skill set. I have a certain skill set and there are other parts that I don’t want to touch.

Even in marketing. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to learn it because it’s too complex. You’ve learned it, you’ve done it, you keep doing it. I don’t want to learn it, and it’s the same here. So if you’re a restaurant owner and you’re trying to manage everything in the restaurant as well as your marketing and all of that stuff. I definitely agree to oversee it, but don’t try and learn it because we get so many managers or so many people come in.

When I do training, I mean like on Facebook ads for instance? Oh yeah. Well, had they worked? None of them ever said they work. Yeah. One person said that they worked really well, but most of the time it hadn’t worked. What did they work? Facebook ads work as simple as that, but the fact is that they didn’t know how to make them work because they trying to do it themselves.

There are ways to do more by doing less

Yeah. It’s almost like if they got on a bicycle and they rode it backward, they would say, hey, this whole bicycle thing just doesn’t work. So there, when I use this word, I mean it sincerely. I don’t mean it derogatory. They’re ignorant of the best way to use that, right?  It’s just like if I came into their kitchen and I’m supposed to make something that, I’m not sure I’ve heard of. But I’ve never actually done it and I do that and I run it. What would my thoughts be? Hey, this just doesn’t work. This doesn’t work. It’s because I don’t know how to do it, but yet you are an expert at it and you make it work.

So really the thing today is there are ways to do more with, by doing less than getting the results, higher results. And I want to take just a second and this is just a selfish plug and talk about some of the numbers. When we talk about one of our customers or some of our customers when we say, hey, is this Facebook advertising working because it is working. It is huge for restaurants specifically. Talk a little bit about, there’s a place over in Moreno Valley called Angelo’s burgers and they’re just killing it. So give us a little bit of information about that.

We’ll never have to pay to get  them again

Sure. So Angelo’s burgers, you know, we’re helping them with their business. And over the last probably 40 days now, we’ve been able to grow the database. They got 700 people now in their database, right? So, 700 people in the last month. It hasn’t cost them very much at all. We’ve also bought in enough revenue to cover the costs that they were getting from us. But the cool thing is that 700 people we’ll never have to pay to get it again. We can go and market to those people again for zero cost.

It was costing us about a dollar per lead, a dollar per person to get those people into the database. But now next month, the month after month after month after that, zero, we can reach out to those people. We can send them an invitation and offer whatever it is that we want to do and they’re going to find that people will bring those in. Now to Angelo’s, it costs nothing to do that, right? So we’re finding that we’re giving out some great offers for Angelo’s Burgers, but they’re also getting money coming in and we’re redeeming every person that opts in. One in five is coming into bringing a ticket into the restaurant and spends money right there at the restaurant.

Giving something away

So let’s put this into a traditional kind of thing. So you’re saying if, if let’s say you’re saying 20 percent of the people who saw the ad and took the coupon, they’re coming in and redeeming, their walking into the door, right?

Yes, twenty percent of the people that said I want a free burger or whatever it was the offer were. Twenty percent of those people are saying actually gambling with their legs and walking into the restaurant, bringing the buns on the seats, or so we like to say. They’re bringing it in saying, hey, we went out for a burger. But oh, so while we’re here, we muzzled by this, this and this, and they’re spending money and they’re spending nearly $17 per check that comes in for a Freebie that we’re giving away. So, we’re giving something away and they’re still spending an extra 17 plus dollars. Yes, 17 dollars that the restaurant would never have had and now we’ve done this. We’ve done this over a hundred and 50 times already.

Return on investment

So here’s a cool thing, gang. It’s all about return on investment. It’s no different in if you’re in the back and you’re cooking a certain dish. You don’t want to serve it and lose money because you even won’t make that up in volume. You’re saying, hey, if I can make it for x and I can sell it for x plus, which covers all my costs, then it’s worth making it again. That’s how we approach and attack our marketing services. If we can help you say, hey, this is what we do. At the end of the day, this is what it costs, but you make this plus this, and we’re also growing a database. I think that’s a massive one.

Make sure reviews are growing as well

There are two other options to this, which we haven’t even really mentioned, one is their facebook page. It is getting more and more active every single day. Facebook loves that. Secondly and the most important thing is, I can’t remember. No. Secondly, is the fact that. What was it? I really seriously just lost it. The second one is that, what was it, Jeff? Come on. Help me out here. Help me. Oh, here. This reviews, right? People are leaving reviews now because they go into a restaurant there on Facebook, they’ve got their offer and stuff like that.

Now they’re leaving reviews and we’ve increased their reviews just in the last month by something that they’ve never seen before either and we haven’t even tried to increase that and that’s just what type of thing. So that’s the other part to whoever we do is make sure that reviews are growing as well.

Stand back and manage and make sure that happens

So this was not a session about how we do marketing, but this was an example of how you can say, wait for a second, there’s a blade on that Swiss army knife that, you know what, I’m not getting results I want. Yes. I feel like I’m in charge of it, but why don’t you do, like Andrew said at the very beginning, stand back and manage and make sure that happens.

Reap the Rewards

I think that’s the important thing. We should say that the management of this place has almost zero involvement. Zero involvement in what we’re doing, but not as far as. Then I get to say what’s going on? They certainly tell us what they want to give away and stuff, but it’s all managed by us. These guys, the manager hasn’t had to do any extra work, hasn’t had to go and look for copywriters or videographers or photographers or anything like that and the staff haven’t had to do much at all. Like, don’t have to go on into data every day to find out and show us what’s working and what’s not. We do all that. It’s all automated in the back end, which means the staff and the management keep doing what they’re doing. They just reap the rewards of more customers coming in the door.

Know, love and trust

So if you’re interested in knowing more about this, every Thursday, we’re actually, we’re going to set it up a little differently, aren’t we? We are, We will tell you about what’s going on

We’re putting together a more of an educational webinar that you’re able to access. And we’ll let you know when that comes up. The one thing that I want you to remember this is people buy your product when they know, love and trust you, right? Know, love and trust you. Andrew said right now we have over 700 people that know, like and trust this new business, that’s in 40 days of 700 new people. What is it about that database that makes that so important to have? Because, I’ve always said, hey, if you have a database, all things are possible, but give us an idea about this specific business. Like, do we still give them free things or what do we do?

Keep them involved

So the way that we keep them involved is we’re going to let them know that Angelo’s every month. Like, there are new offers that can be, that can be redeemed and that sort of thing. Keeping Angelo’s at the forefront of people’s minds. And the fact that 700 people are all local, they do not people from all over the world. There all people that are going to use if I going to use the business down the track. So it’s not as if we’ve got random people from another country that is irrelevant to the owner. This is a physical business that needed physical bodies that we’re going to be accessing the venue and this is who they are.

What happens after this? Who do we get involved?

Yeah. On the way out, I want Andrew to also explain we’ve taken on this new role. This is I think our third week of doing reservations, right? But here’s the thing, there’s a lot of things that go on in the background that I never get involved in. This is the part I get involved instead of the camera and you make sure the sound is right, scheduling this kind of thing, but what do you do afterward, Andrew? Who do we have involved? We have to give the name, but what happens after this? Just so we know it’s more effective.

So I got a couple of things that go on. This is content. We’re recreating content for our show, of course. We want to make sure there are lots of words we transcribed. We have a virtual assistant who helps me do this. She takes a video, she uploads it to our website and we get it transcribed. She creates some great images, maybe some stills from the video. She’ll put those into the show and then she’ll go and also send these out to some of the groups that were involved with as well. Cool. And all this happens. This happens while we’re not doing anything we just did bang send it to. And she does it all.  I’m working on my backswing. Yep, exactly. But you’re right, that’s. It’s all about how do we get more done for less input from us.

Our challenge

So what I want you to do is to challenge you. Look at that Swiss army knife. What are things you say and do it one at a time. Say, this is something I’m doing in the front of House and I’m really involved in the back house. That’s where my expertise lies. Is there someone else that I can get it to? Sometimes that might be someone in-house, but when you’re doing something in-house, Andrew made a perfect example of if you turn, let’s say you turn your social media, your Facebook marketing or paid advertising over to someone in-house that normally is your server or your maid, they’re not an expert at that.

You’ve just added one more blade and they’re swiss army knife. They’re not sure how to do that. Seek someone, if you don’t get us, get someone who has proven that they can do the work and give you the results. Our whole thing is the return on investment. We can’t do a return on investment. We don’t want to take your money. That’s not the goal. Our goal is for you to win. We win when you win and nothing else. So that’s really all got to the Andrew. I think it’s a good one.

Hey, thanks everybody for showing up. I appreciate that and apologize. I don’t have my glasses on so can’t really see the comments, but we see a lot of people who tuned in today. We really want to thank you for joining us. We’ll be back again Monday with me, Jeff, Andrew, on Reservations. Have a great weekend, everyone. See you later.

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