From Burnout to Breakthrough: Transformative Leadership Lessons with Christin Marvin

In this episode of The Leadership Table, host Jason E. Brooks sits down with leadership coach and hospitality strategist Christin Marvin, founder of Solutions by Christin and author of Multi-Unit Mastery.

Together, they explore the tools, mindset shifts, and leadership frameworks that help multi-unit operators grow with intention — not burnout. From managing up and coaching from the middle to letting go of control and building sustainable systems, this conversation offers practical takeaways for leaders who want to scale well.

What You'll Learn:

• How to lead effectively “from the middle”
• Why managing up is a skill — not a personality trait
• Tools for emotional intelligence and delegation
• How to empower teams while protecting your energy
• What Multi-Unit Mastery offers to growing operators
• The power of vulnerability in modern leadership

🎁 Grab Christin's free book + coaching offer: www.irfbook.com

🌐 Connect with Christin: www.christinmarvin.com

📘 Check out Jason's new book: www.jasonebrooks.com/etnc

Chapters

• 0:00 Leadership Table Introduction
• 2:46 Morning Routines & Productivity Habits
• 6:11 Coaching from the Middle Challenges
• 14:33 Shifting Perspectives & Emotional Intelligence
• 21:03 Multi-Unit Mastery Book Discussion
• 25:50 Delegation Strategies & Leadership Inspiration
• 31:52 Vulnerability in Leadership & Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome back to the Leadership Table, where conversations inspire, lead and elevate. I'm your host, jason E Brooks. Today's guest is someone I've had the pleasure of learning from and growing alongside over the past few years Kristen Marvin. She's a leadership coach, hospitality strategist and founder of Solutions by Kristen. She also recently released her second book, multi-unit Mastery, and contributed a powerful quote to my new book Every Team Needs Coaching. Kristen's voice carries weight in this industry because she's lived it from high volume operations to coaching top performing leaders. In this conversation, we talk about what it really takes to lead at scale, how to coach from the middle, manage up, delegate effectively and build the systems that allow you to lead with clarity and not chaos. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2: 1:03

You know. I like to ask just a quick question.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Sure, just so that you know listeners get to know the person before we get into more educational content. But morning person or night owl?

Speaker 2: 1:16

Oh, I am morning. I've been both you know, throughout my life. But I made a commitment to myself. So I was in the brunch world for seven years. So I had to get up at know throughout my life. But I made a commitment to myself. So I was in the brunch world for seven years so I had to get up at 3.30, 4, 4.30 in the morning to get to work. And at the time I hated it because I was a night owl. But I made a commitment to myself when I got out of brunch to start setting aside a few hours in the morning to have my own morning routine, setting aside a few hours in the morning to have my own morning routine. And so 5.30 to 8.30 in the morning is my protected time to take care of myself, eat well, meditate, journal, walk the dogs, work out whatever I need in that moment, and it's just a beautiful way to invest in myself before the world even turns on and gets crazy.

Speaker 1: 2:04

That's what I was going to follow up with was. So like, what time frame of a morning person? But 5.30 to 8.30. So you're up at five, up at, and then from there you have that nice bookend space. Don't have nothing booked, don't ask me for anything, this isn't about coffee, it's about me. And then after that, then work follows. I like that. I'm also a morning person and I don't take naps either. So some morning people at like that 30 to 230, that crash comes hard. I muscle right through that thing comes hard, I muscle right through that thing. And then I end up probably crashing at about when I'm in the middle of some kind of show, right at about 12 pm. That's when I start dozing off, wake back up 20 minutes later, need to rewatch that episode at 6 pm the next day in order to catch back up.

Speaker 2: 3:06

That's how I do so yeah, yeah, I recently I've been studying human design and just kind of understanding how I'm built and how I should be working, based on how you know how I'm designed, and I've realized when I've worked out I got years ago I got into recovery naps and I was kind of you know, I've heard like LeBron James is a big napper post-practice and things like that.

Speaker 2: 3:30

So I started to nap for about 20 or 30 minutes and just lay down, not set any alarm, right after I go have a really intense workout, and I would wake up feeling like a total champion, I could conquer the world, I could go do that workout again. And so when I started this business, I realized, with all the mental fitness and all the you know athletics that we do with tech and everything on a daily basis, I started to need those naps and so I will take a. I will literally. It's hilarious. My girlfriend makes fun of me but I just lay down on top of the covers with my arms straight out, stiff as a board, and close my eyes and 20 minutes later I wake right back up and I just get on with the rest of the day. It's amazing. So I do that like two or three times a week. It doesn't need to happen every day, but oh, I'm a serial napper now. It's awesome.

Speaker 1: 4:20

I might need to do that because sometimes it is the struggle bus and not just because I want to watch the whole season finale of whatever. But I actually do need to explore taking that, you know, instead of muscling through everything just knock it out for about 20 minutes and then get back to it.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Give it a shot. It's been a secret weapon for me. It's awesome.

Speaker 1: 4:55

I now know what's in your tool belt. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:58

All right.

Speaker 1: 5:00

All right, okay, so let's get to the educational part. But that was actually quite educational too, so I just recently wrote an article for Q there how difficult it is to coach from the middle. You have your team in different regions, like I told you, so you know what is it. Do you think that operators sometimes get wrong about leading from the middle, and how can they shift that lens in what the difficulty is?

Speaker 2: 6:06

Yeah, I mean this just really lands and hits home for me. I'll share my experience and obviously my experience has led to what I'm coaching some of my clients on, so that they don't make some of the same mistakes. When I was in the middle and I was a regional and I was working for a rapidly growing group that scaled from six to 48 locations in seven years, I did not understand or even had heard the concept of managing out. I was confident at managing. My teams loved rolling out new systems, but the pace of how fast everything was coming at us and how, like you said, corporate was just like we need it, we need it, we need it, we need it. It was tech systems, it was training systems, it was new initiatives around culture, around sustainability, around community facilities. It was coming from every department and at times it felt like wait a minute, is the leadership team here to support operations or just tell us what to do and roll all these things out. And so I think for me what the struggle was was, again, not understanding that I could manage, that I could really seek to understand from my bosses. Could you explain the why? Why are we doing this and why is this pace necessary. Because if I would have helped, if I would have better understood that, I would have taken that energy to my teams because it caused friction for me and for my immediate boss, right, and then it would. That energy showed up with my teams and showed up in the way that I rolled out those new programs and systems and the way that I chose to either hold them accountable to those new systems or not hold them accountable to those new systems.

Speaker 2: 8:02

So I think you know I have a client now who's in a new regional manager position. She's worked her way up from the company. She's working with a group that's going from three to six and her boss it's just her and her boss, and her boss is the owner of the company and he's a visionary. He's you know, he's you and I right. So nine out of his 10 ideas are shit, like ours are right.

Speaker 2: 8:24

That's just the role of a visionary. So we have implemented quarterly reviews so that we can focus on three to five things each quarter and then that helps her kind of advocate for herself and go back to him. And when he has all these ideas that are coming in, coming in, coming in every time, they meet every week and go wait a minute. Does this align with what we said we're going to do this quarter or is it a distraction? And so I think at the corporate level that's a little bit more difficult, because you hope your leadership team has that structure in place where they're looking at the rollout for the entire year, they're looking at the pacing, they're making sure that those KPIs are in line with where the vision of the company is going. But if those things aren't in place, then sometimes it feels like there's just a tornado of information around you all the time.

Speaker 1: 9:16

You are absolutely spot on. I mean, most people believe that their direct supervisor is in the know of everything that is on their plate, that they have this super dope, uh, computer-like memory that everything that they've ever asked us to do, they know exactly everything that we're working on and, to be honest, nine hours later they don't. They have no clue as to what they told us. They're just trying to drive through that vision and drive to get some kind of results and do both as quickly as possible. And so, whenever you do, I do love that tool the personal quarterly business review. Now, whenever most listeners hear that like, oh my gosh, I got more homework, I'm doing some kind of business review. Now, whenever most listeners hear that they're like, oh my gosh, I got more homework, I'm doing some kind of business review with my team and they're gonna get upset because I'm scrutinizing them.

Speaker 1: 10:13

No, you should be doing your own personal business review every quarter of the three to five things that you're working on, because it does a few things. One, it kind of gives you your own personal record of what did I accomplish, what was I tracking, what should I have been working on and where is that goal heading towards. It also gives you a slight first right of refusal. Slight that whenever something rolls down and saying well, I know that we're now saying this, but what about these three to five things that align with this? Does that mean that these things stop or this thing stops? That may put pause or put some attention to what may or may not be conflicting within those goals.

Speaker 1: 11:03

So I actually love that you said that, because the next thing that I was moving towards was coaching tools. You know you have built up a very strong clientele because you are a no-nonsense tell them like it is, that's bullshit and fix it right now type of leader you know. So what are some of those tools that you use whenever coaching others in order to help them elevate some emotional intelligence, whether to delegate, whether to give feedback. But what are one or two tools you use while coaching to help people get a clearer understanding of the big picture?

Speaker 2: 11:54

Yeah, I think a couple of the things that are really coming to mind for me are challenging that person to get really curious, yes, and having empathy for their boss. So I'll give you another example. I was coaching a GM the other day on how he was getting feedback from his director of operations about something that he had just rolled out and it didn't go well. And he read the email of feedback and immediately had this perspective of I'm being micromanaged. This feels awful. Immediately had this perspective of I'm being micromanaged. This feels awful.

Speaker 2: 12:33

And we talked a lot about what different mindsets and perspectives he could look at that email through. He could look at it like he was right, I'm being micromanaged, this feels awful. I feel like I've been asked to do this and now I've rolled it out and now they're not happy. There's no middle ground here. I can never please these people, right? Or this boss, or he could look at it from a perspective of you know what this is feedback.

Speaker 2: 12:55

My boss is sending me this because he wants to support me and he wants to support the team and he wants to support the business and the guests, and we talked a lot about those two different perspectives and how the energy shifting with those and what it felt like to lead through the lens of those two perspectives. And then I had him choose one. Which one do you want to show? How do you want to show up as a leader in this moment? And he's like I want to look at this as feedback. It's like, okay, so we dug more into that.

Speaker 2: 13:18

How do you want to collect feedback going forward? Maybe it's not email, maybe it's one-on-one conversation, maybe it's an email first and then it's a follow-up one-on-one conversation in person with that boss to clearly understand what's happening. But when I help them also understand the role of their boss in the cog of the wheel of the entire organization and help them look at that boss with empathy of what are they trying to do, what's the ultimate goal here, what do they want to accomplish, and pull that emotion and pull that personal attack away from them. It helps them be able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of the organization.

Speaker 1: 14:02

You know, if you ever really want to have a visual of what happens, of what happens outside of your own circle, I always say the best school watches and, like you said, that cog, there's this little wheel that's all the way on one side and that is our circle, your circle, the GM circle, the district manager, the regional, that's your circle. But as you start looking at every other wheel that is connected, that's shifting, that's moving, there's times that we feel like and I fully get it, our guest, the guest most important person besides our team and ourself, so that's actually three very important people. But we think that everyone understands and it moves around this wheel that we see every single day. And you're right, we have to think outside of my boss's wheel has things going around it that I never see because I am that flat wheel within my world. It's a big world, but I never get to see what's pulling and pushing on the other side.

Speaker 2: 15:27

So that's a great example of shifting that lens look to present something like a clock and the wheel and how it all or that watch and how it all works together and pulling people out of their current situation and again being able to look at the big picture of why they're doing what they're doing. We lose sight of that when we're so deep in it and when something emotionally comes at us like that yeah, I mean, we do naturally get on defense.

Speaker 1: 16:02

That's what we do. Why? Because the restaurant world is an emotional world. I always say, um, I think food is tied to the first emotion on the planet. Whenever we were born, um, uh, we were placed on our mother, who loved us, knew that we were good, and the first discomfort that we ever had as a baby, she cured it with food and every single time we felt some kind of discomfort from being hungry. The person that loved us cured it with food. So that food world, that realm, is tied to the very first emotion that everyone shares at dinner, at business luncheons, cocktail parties, you name it. So whenever people do explode or we are like, oh my gosh, why is it so crazy in the restaurant world? Because it is tied to emotion. It really is, and we have to find ways to not bury that thing down, because that takes you to a very deep, dark place, but how to work through those things with different lenses in order to come out on the other side, showing true hospitality.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Yeah, love it.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Now it is. It is just like it's new movie season and boy, they are dropping movies left and right. There's all kind of records being broken. It's also new book season, so tell us about your new book, multi-unit Mastery.

Speaker 2: 17:42

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk about it and congrats to you on the second book too. Super, super fun.

Speaker 2: 17:50

This, I don't know about you, but this process was completely different for me. This was, you know, after coaching for a few years and working in the restaurant industry for 20 years, I recognized a common theme with my clients. There were a few things here that were missing in order to help them be really successful and to scale successfully and to eliminate the chaos a lot of the chaos of the day-to-day, so they could focus on what they wanted to instead of feeling like they were putting out fires all the time, which we hear a lot. So multi-unit is an independent restaurant framework that helps restaurant owners do all of those things that I just described.

Speaker 2: 18:31

So it's about making sure that you've got the right leadership team in place and figuring out how to know what that leadership team looks like and who they are. Making sure that you are measuring the people that you've got on your current team effectively with your core values, your mission and your vision. And then, once you've got that team in place, the tools are in the book to help you nurture them, develop them and help you grow in a very sustainable way without burning out, so it's a super fun project. I really am excited to get it out in front of everybody and, yeah, it's just an honor to get it out there. So share it with the world.

Speaker 1: 19:12

Well, I want this book to do well, because our multi-unit leaders are the ones that get the least formal training for their role. It's very known that you do really well at being a GM, even creating mini GMs within your four walls, and you will have a system for everything. You will have people owning that one closet that's in the front of the restaurant. It's always a mess, but you made a mini GM of that jacked up closet and now they keep it pristine. You have clipboards all over the planet. They're always being filled out. You have your little mini me's or mini GM's running all around making sure things go well.

Speaker 1: 20:01

But what's crazy is the moment we shift to more than one location. We think I'll just walk in there for five minutes and then I can tell you what's wrong. We have no clipboards, no systems, pure gut check. And we're walking into three, four, five, 12, 15 locations five, 12, 15 locations. And then we wonder why we go batshit crazy. And it's because we have left behind everything that we created whenever we were a very successful GM Systems, processes, people owning stuff, people taking over stuff for you. We like try to hoard it as multi-unit leaders and that's not true mastery.

Speaker 2: 20:51

Yeah, the book follows the story of Jason, who is a made-up person based off of a few of my clients. But Jason's struggle from going from two to three. Right, it's easy to be in two restaurants in a week, it's easy to be able to coach and call the shots right, answer those questions. But when you go to three, everything changes and I've watched clients like Jason try to sit through an hour meeting and be blown up on their phone with text message after text message after text message. Where do I get this sausage from? Are ACs out? Who do I call? I had a staff member call in sick today. Can you come work a shift?

Speaker 2: 21:31

None of that stuff should be at that level where you've got three locations or even two locations. That stuff should not be coming straight to the owner. It's about making sure that your team is fully empowered and developed and has the tools and the resources that they need within their four walls so that you can support them from afar, no matter where you are, and empower them to be really, really strong leaders. That's what this framework is all about is giving the restaurant owner the quality of life that they want, because sometimes the motivations to scale are different for everybody, right.

Speaker 2: 22:07

Sometimes it's ego, sometimes you just you open that first one and six months or a year in it's doing really well and you start to get a little bored. Or somebody comes to you and says, hey, I've got a great location, you should come, you know, and you weren't even thinking about it until the location popped up and you take it on. But you don't think about what infrastructure you need first in order to do it. It's not about getting it open and then figuring it out. There's a better way to do it and there's a smarter way to do it, and that's what this book provides.

Speaker 1: 22:35

So how do you help leaders let go of control? Because letting go of control is something that we're not trained to do. We are trained from essence, from our first days of washing dishes. Get in there and get it done. Time is every second counts, all that stuff. How do you help leaders let go of control while still helping them to drive performance, Because performance does matter?

Speaker 2: 23:08

Yeah, I'm laughing because I'm going through this right now with my own business and we often say you know we're best at teaching. What we still need to learn right. So one of the tools that I love using with clients is when they say I'm working too hard, I'm putting out too many fires, I want to get out of the business, I need a succession plan or whatever the case is, or I want to grow, but I can't do it where I'm at right now. We do an energy audit, so I simply have them write down on a piece of paper left column what's giving you energy in the day-to-day tasks that you're doing and right column, what's draining you of your energy. And we check in on those drainers and we start to go one by one.

Speaker 2: 23:48

What do you want to get rid of first? What's going to have the biggest impact on your quality of life, your mindset, your time, your life? What you want, where you want to spend your energy and who are we going to go delegate that out to? Is that a person on your team? Is it tech? Is it a micro outsource? Is it a virtual assistant marketing team? What is it right?

Speaker 2: 24:13

So we just start there. We just start knocking them down one by one, because you can't just say, right, well, let's give up these five things or let's give up these 10 things. It's chaos. So we got to start small. You got to take tiny steps. You've got to work with your team to make sure that things are being implemented to the level that you want, that there's no negative impact to the business. You've got to find, you know, as Dan Sullivan says, you've got to find the who right. When you talk about how not how am I going to go do this, but who's going to do this with me and find that perfect, who to take on that next challenge. And then, once you get some experience with that and you start to get comfortable with letting go, well, then watch out, because then all the other things on the list are going to start flying off, you know, as soon as you can possibly get them off the list. So it's pretty fun.

Speaker 1: 24:55

Yeah, delegation is key and the right way to delegate and train is the biggest unlock, because there's times we will delegate as soon as someone messes something up. Give me that back. I knew it. That's why I never gave you the schedule Totally. I've always made the schedule perfect my whole life. I've never scheduled someone when they requested off. I've never scheduled overtime, I've never had a gap. I've been perfect right in the schedule. The whole damn time Lies that's lies, we tell ourselves.

Speaker 1: 25:30

So I have two more questions for you, kristen. I know you're very busy, but I got to get you these two questions. If you could sit at a leadership table with three others, whether alive or from history, who would you choose, and why?

Speaker 2: 25:49

do they have to be in the restaurant industry?

Speaker 1: 25:53

that nope. They can be anywhere, doing anything, at any time in the world steve jobs, danny meyer, and I'm gonna say dan sullivan let's go back to steve jobs. Why?

Speaker 2: 26:06

yeah, and the level of innovation, understanding, looking at something like an iPhone and looking at what people were carrying around and trying to figure out a product that could not be something extra but that all tie into each other, with the computer, with the, with the watch, creating a brand like that that was so different than what other people were doing and and was he was such a risk taker. I really admire that and as I'm continuing, you know, coming into the third year of my business, I just really really admire that level of risk and challenging. When people around him said no, you know, digging his heels in even deeper.

Speaker 1: 27:00

Danny.

Speaker 2: 27:00

Meyer. I mean, he's the GOAT right. I heard he just if he's listening to the show that'd be great. But you know I've been obsessed with Danny since I was in my early 20s. Setting the Table was my first leadership development resource. I bought copies and trained all my team on it. You know we're both from Missouri, so I felt a cool connection to see what he did, moving to New York and raising a million dollars I think he was 27 at the time and the success that he's had and I just read, like what I saw on LinkedIn last week or week before he's a billionaire now. Congrats, danny, if you're listening.

Speaker 2: 27:35

Wow To be able to grow his business the way he has and still be humble. I met him a few years ago or many years ago in Denver when the first Shake Shack opened here and just sees what you get with him. He's just approachable and he's kind and he just lives hospitality all the way through. There's an authenticity and a genuineness to him and a charisma. I think that comes as a result of that. Why wouldn't you want to sit down at a table with Danny Meyer?

Speaker 1: 28:13

And Mr Sullivan.

Speaker 2: 28:14

As I'm entering this third. You know I've been coaching my entire career, but as building a business. As a coach, in the last two and a half years I'm more I've been studying Dan Sullivan's materials, so his books are you know. I'm sure he's got many more than I've explored, but who, not how, and I'm just reading 10x is easier than 2x To see somebody that's been coaching for 50, 60 years and who's still showing up with passion and who's been able to build something I talked to one of his teammates last week that is making such an extraordinary impact in people's lives and challenging people to really think bigger. That's the type of person that I want to be surrounded by and that's the type of environment that I want to also create for my business. So I find him to be very inspirational to be very inspirational.

Speaker 1: 29:10

I love Kristen's board of directors. Now, last question what's one conversation and I know you've had plenty of conversations, but as you're growing through leadership, growing through managing, growing through coaching, what's one conversation that you constantly reflect back on, that you're like that one right there, that one helped reshape how I show up as a leader. What's one conversation that comes to mind that you know helped you reshape how you show up as a leader?

Speaker 2: 29:48

well, I think that's a great question. Thank you for asking that. This conversation came late in life, later in life for me, when I was 40. I was talking about writing my first book and I was terrified to tell my story because it's wild.

Speaker 2: 30:07

There's a lot of realness about the industry. Lot of realness about the industry sex, drugs, alcohol all the things burnout and I had a really hard time showing up as a vulnerable leader in my career. I always was the strong, armored one came in, had to be strong for the team, positive front all the time. Nothing ever, you know, thick skin. I was proud of that when people said that and my coach told me and really challenged me to just let it all go in this book and be as vulnerable, more vulnerable than I'd ever been. And when I thought I was being vulnerable, take from telling those stories and putting that out into the world has really helped me get rid of some of that armor, soften it and get rid of some layers and has really transformed the way that I look at myself and the way that I look at other people when they're going through challenging times as well.

Speaker 1: 31:09

You know it's crazy. We think that people love us because they see how strong that we are, but they truly love us whenever they can see the core of who we really are. So, yes, peeling off those layers is what it takes and it's the opposite of what we think that we should be doing. But I'm glad that you did, because the response you have gotten from your Book and Now books has been amazing. Now you've got your newest book, multi-unit Mastery, out now and your podcast, your coaching work and leadership tools that are helping people in our space. So where can folks connect with you, get your books or learn more about working with you?

Speaker 2: 31:52

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking. If anyone would love a free copy of the book. Please go to wwwirfbookcom that stands for Independent Restaurant Framework Bookcom. You can grab a copy there and join my ecosystem of resources. Anybody that's listening to this. Episode two I would love to gift you a coaching session and talk about where you're currently at with the framework and what tools and resources you need. So if you're interested in that, go to my website, kristinmarvincom. You'll find all of my resources books, podcasts, all the things there. If you go to kristinmarvincom contact, send me a quick note, say hey, I heard you on Jason E Brooks' show on the leadership table. Let's dive into the framework and I'd be more than happy to spend an hour with you.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Well, kristen, thank you for not just the work you do, but how you do it, your presence. You coach with heart and you model what you teach. Yes, there are things that we are all still coaching ourselves on and that we're getting coached on, but you are scaling leadership the right way. So, to our listeners, if you're growing your team, managing multiple locations or trying to build something that lasts, this conversation is your playbook. Share it, bookmark it, start leading from clarity, not chaos. Until next time, keep showing up with intention and remember manage, lead, coach, repeat. Kristen, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 33:34

Thank you.