How We See It

My New Year’s Resolution Wishlist For Operators

After reading and listening to way too many New Year’s resolutions that are entirely meaningless, I thought I’d give you my wishlist for a few I haven’t heard but wish I had. Read more

Thought Leadership: Caveat Emptor

There are a multitude of opinion forums, groups, Q&A and membership sites and the like (I belong to and manage several) that allow you to ask a question and get an answer from a supposed expert on your question.  In theory this is good, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the underlying premises is what’s called thought leadership. People who want to establish their “bona fides” in a particular industry will join these sites and begin to answer questions on a variety of topics to market their “expertise” in the hopes of someone thinking they are smart enough to hire to do a job. Most have good intentions. Some are just plain trolls.

Among the many problems are people who have absolutely no successful experience in the industry or job in which they offer advice.  Take the restaurant industry for example. All sorts of lawyers, accountants, bankers, real estate brokers and retail marketing consultants will line up in droves, with the hope of saying that one thing that makes you think they’re brilliant enough to want to hire them to do whatever you need done. The problem is they’ve never worked a day in their life in the business and their theories have no practical application for your business. What’s worse is that people will listen and act on their bad advice – usually to their own detriment.

The only criteria for listening to advice from someone or hiring them as a consultant is if they have successful experience doing what it is you need done – period. Everything else is theory or worse. If you want to learn how to drive a race car professionally, you don’t take lessons from the guy in the stands whose only claim to fame is that he has a dozen speeding tickets. The restaurant and hotel business is hard enough without listening to Andy wail on about this, that or the other thing without any context for your business. Yeah, it worked for J.C. Penny’s (probably not) but what does that have to do with your independent restaurant or boutique hotel? Nothing.

I’m talking about this now because I’ve just about had my fill of  these out-of-work gurus talking about how to do this or that in a restaurant, when their only basis of expertise is that they eat out a lot. They run the gamut from people who sell text marketing applications, to foodservice equipment (how do they know what you need when they’ve never cooked in a restaurant?) to industry sanctioned social media experts who couldn’t find a food cost with six hands and a flashlight. The list is long.

My second complaint about these miscreants is when you call them on their crap. They will whine and moan about me being rude or disrespectful, all the while they have no problem offering really dumb advice to people who have invested their life savings, kid’s tuition or have their backs against the wall from fighting a down economy for 2 years. They don’t think for one second that people’s lives and livelihoods can be on the line here and that they have, in my opinion, an ethical and moral imperative to be honest about their advice.

Sorry, but being a thought leader is also about challenging bad behaviors or bad thinking and some truths just really are self-evident.

Grrrr. Ok. I feel better now. What’s your take?

Operators Who Are So Off My Buddy List

My email’s inbox is full lately of news reports about businesses closing right and left. The level is no more than usual, but it’s the comments by the operators that get me the most.  Some I have actually seen due to my extensive traveling for clients and I’m pretty familiar with most primary and secondary markets as well. The bottom line is that too many of them simply don’t take responsibility for their situation. So with that, here’s my list of the types of operators who are just don’t get it.

• Operators who say that they never have enough time for themselves or family, but who refuse to hire an operations manage because they do not have the ability to trust in one, or the money, or both.
• Operators who desperately need a marketing plan, business plan, operation plan, strategic plan, etc., but never seem to get around to getting it done – then wonder why success is not beating a path to their door.
• Operators who have high turnover and blame it on their labor market, or the economy, etc.
• Operators who are totally reactive to circumstances.
• Operators who treat all staff the same.
• Operators who think they’re social media gurus but can’t say hello to their staff as they walk in the door for work.
• Operators who cannot think strategically beyond their own experiences, and who refuse to understand that their success will be limited to their level of understanding that restaurants are a unique business entity and is not related to their understanding or experience in other industries.
• Operators who do not understand that if you are not able to differentiate yourself in your market, you become a price-driven commodity.
• Operators who do not do their homework.
• Operators who cheat, lie, steal and abuse any or all of their relationships with vendors, staff, colleagues, guests, etc.
• Operators who, when blessed with a great sales increase, do not know where it came from.
• Operators who, not having a days worth of experience in the industry, never ask for help.
• Operators who, when they get in the weeds, never ask for help.
• Operators who don’t invest in their managers and staff.
• Operators who don’t constantly invest in themselves.
• Operators who constantly ask me, “If I don’t use discounts or coupons, what else can I do?”
• COMPLACENCY.
• ARROGANCE.
• Operators who think that nickel and diming their business, guests or staff, will make them rich. No one ever shrank their way to greatness.
• Operators who take their staffs, guests, vendors or team for granted.
• Operators who do not embrace change.
• Operators who never seem to be ready for change.
• Operators who do not have a meaningful vision of their business or their brand.
• Operators who do not understand the importance of branding their business.

Who did I miss?

The American Standard of Whining!

Adam Smith was a remarkably insightful guy. He not only figured out how expanding trade allows the division of labor, thereby creating wealth and raising living standards, he also realized how hard it is to get people to believe they’re better off than their ancestors. He discovered declinism way back in 1776.

“The annual produce of the land and labour of England is certainly much greater than it was, a little more than a century ago, at the restoration of Charles II,” Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations. “Though, at present, few people, I believe, doubt of this, yet during this period, five years have seldom passed away in which some book or pamphlet has not been published pretending to demonstrate that the wealth of the nation was fast declining, that the country was depopulated, agriculture neglected, manufactures decaying, and trade undone.” “Nor have these publications been all party pamphlets. “Many of them have been written by very candid and very intelligent people, who wrote nothing but what they believed, and for no other reason but because they believed it.”

Sound familiar?

Read rest of article here!