Why Great Companies Fail | Greg Hard on Leadership & Culture

Why do some companies thrive for years — only to suddenly collapse?

In this episode of the We Attitude Podcast, David sits down with Greg Hard, a hospitality and restaurant leader who has helped lead and grow companies like Hard Rock Cafe, Lone Star Steakhouse, Joey B’s, and multiple independent restaurant concepts.

Greg shares his journey from struggling academically with dyslexia to becoming one of the youngest Hard Rock general managers in the country. Along the way, he witnessed firsthand how powerful culture, onboarding, systems, and leadership can transform a business — and how quickly profit-first thinking can destroy one.

This conversation dives into:

Leadership and accountability
Building high-performance teams
Why company culture matters
The rise and fall of businesses
Restaurant industry realities
Burnout and work ethic
Systems and repeatable processes
Why human connection matters more than ever

If you lead a business, manage a team, own a restaurant, work in hospitality, or want to better understand leadership and culture, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and real-world experience.

Subscribe for more conversations on leadership, business, mindset, and growth.

00:00 Intro
00:27 Meet Greg Hard
01:27 Finding Purpose Through Restaurants
02:32 Leadership Lessons from Lone Star
04:33 Watching a Great Company Collapse
06:03 Building a Winning Culture
08:04 Toxic Leadership & Company Decline
09:25 Hard Rock Cafe & Leadership Growth
10:27 Why Most People Never Implement
11:45 Getting the Right People on the Bus
13:13 What Real Leadership Actually Means
14:27 The Story Behind Hard Rock Cafe
16:03 Why Culture Must Come First
17:01 The Power of Great Onboarding
18:18 Outworking Everyone Around You
19:28 Restaurants vs “Real Jobs”
21:03 Why Restaurant People Think Differently
22:20 Restaurants as Community Builders
24:47 Leaving Hard Rock & Starting Over
26:08 Lessons from Construction & Ownership
27:18 Covid’s Impact on Restaurants
28:00 Partnerships, Profit & Consulting

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi, welcome back to the Wii podcast where this week I am with my good friend um Greg Hard who uh is a um uh I'm gonna kind of a guru in the restoration and bar business. Is that fair to say? Yeah, uh restaurants and bars have been my passion and hospitality for 35 years, yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. So so we we have people coming on and and we've had people from different uh walks of life, different industries. And the point I always try to emphasize is how does we show up in people's success. I think I think a lot of time people think like, oh, I can do this my own. Like, and I I operate in probably the most independent world out there, the real estate world, right? I'm I'm a real estate agent, I I I do it all, and and um and I'm just a firm believer that collaboration and and teamwork goes a long way in in any industry or or any field that people pursue. So uh I've known you for a minute for a minute now through one of our good friends, Shannon, and and who actually sat in here too. We had a good time doing this, yeah. And uh I just like to, you know, to start, like just kind of I know you you kind of came out with a bang, but how how did you get into that business? And then I want to spend time like I feel like it was like the hard rock up in Michigan somewhere that kind of well, Detroit, yeah, that was a big one, yeah. But how did you get into it first? Like, how did you get into that business first?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

So, you know, as most people, I just didn't as a lot of people, I did not connect with the academic world. Okay. Uh I found out later in life that I had dyslexia. Okay, and that was uh one of the big problems. Yeah, that was it's hard enough as it is, correct. And so I just kind of felt lost in the world. Yeah. And lo and behold, my first job was through a friend of a friend, and I ended up in this small Italian restaurant in South County, and it just fit. And I loved all the drivers of the business, and it allowed me to be passionate and have a lot of personality, and then it just kind of skyrocketed from there. Um, the first real indicator that I was gonna be kind of against the grain is the boss of the place just asked me. He's like, Hey, it's you're 18. It's time to promote you to a server from a busser. Do you want to do that? And I said, You know what? I think I'm ready to run this place. Love it. And so then he just kind of laughed me out of the building, and then I started with a corporate restaurant that was opening up in uh Crestwood, Missouri, was Lone Star. Uh-huh. And they had just a really good pilot program on learning and teaching and collaborating all the way to management, and I just loved that environment. I loved the dazzle of it, I love the new things every day, like the guest interaction. As I started to get into the finances, ironically, I was really good at finances, you know, not strong in the academic world, but then the finances really just made sense to me how everything pieced together. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

So, so Lone Wolf was early into Lone Wolf. That's funny. That's a technology we use. Um, you started there in that in that restaurant roughly what, 25 years ago? Uh probably 30 years ago now. So 30 years ago. So I I'm I want to pause it for a second because back then, like 30 years ago, it wasn't really much like internet orders or reservation, or the POS was probably a lot different. And it was all hand-filled. Like how I like right, you walk around with your pad, and and uh so I'm guessing like even management leading, everything had to be very different than what what we're doing today. Yeah, and ironically, it was much easier.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Okay. So I'm not in the internet bubble that it has made everything better. Yeah. So we're literally reverting back to some of those old checks and balance systems. I mean, it was there was a three-ring binder, you had a budget, you would subtract as you did, and that's how it all worked. Yeah. And so all the money, and they taught us how to read a PL correctly, and and you how to put that together with different um, you know, purchasing activities or how you put together your schedule and things like that. And so, yeah, it was it was just a great system. It was a repeatable process. Yeah. And so they had created it. Um, Jamie Coulter, okay, who was early on in Pizza Hut, okay, took Lone Star to the number one small business in America on Forbes Fortune 500 companies. Oh, wow. Not a restaurant had ever been on that list. Wow. He became obsessed with profit and then destroyed the company within six years. Oh interesting. It was very interesting to watch.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

So were you there the whole six years? Correct. So I got to see the rise and fall of my first company. So, um, well, let's ask both sides. Like during the rise, what what did you learn? What did you notice? What did the culture was extremely strong?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Okay. They had because they had the systems in place and able to teach everybody what to do and a very documented process, yeah, with do's and don'ts. It allowed people that were completely ignorant to the system to thrive. Uh-huh. And then once we became really good at that, the company, as a lot of companies do, became so focused on profit because they probably love that top seating in the Forbes Fortune 500 company. And then they started to remove the layers of people and operations to you know, to enhance profit. To enhance profit. And what it did was it removed service, it removed uh taking care of people, uh, and then all of a sudden the system started to slack because there's no time to do the planning, the conversations, the relationship building, which actually was the profit maker.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

So so I love the fact that you talk about systems and and repeatable systems. So so give me some highlights that you remember in in that was documented as part of the system if I were to get trained by them at the time. Like what were some of the bullet points that you're like, this is this is how you do it, this is why you're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

All right, well, so I'll tell you my favorite one, and I still have wanted to recreate it. Okay. So we were high performing and we were very invested in culture, and they created a game that reinforced all of the things that great people would do. So if you fished out a piece of silverware out of the trash can, you got five dollars in Lone Starbucks. Okay. And if you found a piece of trash on the ground, you got X amount of dollars. You would build up all of your money, and then every six months we would have a staff party, and then they would you would be able to bid on the prizes that they got with the money that you had collected. Okay. And so they reinforced their systems, not the end in mind. Right. Right? They reinforced the process, the behavior. Correct. And so it was we were just a young bunch of people because they had uh created consistent repeatable processes, you didn't need very veteran servers, veteran cooks, because it was very dialed in, everybody knew what to do, and you didn't have to be the best of the best in order to participate, and you could make good money, and that system was the greatest thing I had ever seen because everyone was racing around to do each other's side work, yeah, to be the best team player, to get these financial rewards, and I ended up buying like a puppy dog that somebody was raising, and that's awesome. It was the greatest process I had ever seen, and I've tried to recreate it since then.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah. So, um, so what about the fall? Like what what happened during the fall of it, and what did you learn from it?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Well, you could start to see the lesser grade managers coming in, people that didn't care too much. Uh, the you know, back in those days, no one was politically correct. So we had large conference calls where everybody was screaming and yelling, and yeah, they would. I mean, I remember specifically like, why is Greg Hart's team letting us down? Why, you know, I mean, like it was high, high pressure. And so when that started to become more toxic and just not very well focused, like it could have been done better. And so it it all just started to fall apart. And then my GM had left to go open up the new Hard Rock in St. Louis, or you know, in downtown St. Louis, and then he asked me if I wanted to come aboard, and I was, you know, a bright-eyed 21-year-old. I had just had my first restaurant that gave me a restaurant when I was 20, 20. I wasn't even 21, I hadn't even been able to work the bar from the ground up, from a punch list and a construction team all the way up. Wow, and so that was a quite a compliment. Sure. But I had gotten myself in way too deep to run a thousand-point punch list with a construction man to a 20-year-old. Not ready. It didn't, yeah, it didn't translate well. And so, but all those experience, all those losses just taught me so much about how to do it better, how to work through it, how I could have prepared myself better. And then I went into hard rock and I started to get heavily involved in leadership, um, how to build culture, like back to the very early on. Like I studied Dale Carnegie, uh, Stephen Covey, and then all the way, and I I've continued that education all the way through. But there's not too much of a mystery of it all. Right. You know, it's the you know, everybody's like, hey, have you heard this podcast? Have you heard this podcast? I'm like, I'm over listening to great advice. Right. I understood at some point they're saying the same things and applying it was what was really important. I don't need to be motivated every day, right? I need to do the work.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, and so so how how when you're surrounded by such great culture, um you know, leadership management training and all this stuff, how does how does the environment promote uh implementation on an effective, like from an effective perspective? Because I say this all the time. Uh I I'm kind of on this mission here locally where to your point, I don't believe there's a lack of knowledge out there. I think at some point your life experiences come combined with your your professional experience give you enough of a knowledge of what needs to be done and accomplished on a daily basis where you may not need like somebody to crank you and motivate you and hey, come on, you can do this, little Johnny. Um But there's but there's still a massive resistance to implementation, and I I I have an opinion, but but it's it's interesting to see the resistance to it considering the outcome that you generate, right? So so how over the years and uh at the time, like how were you um empowering people to because if your process is good, then all you have to do is implement, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Right? Yeah, um so I'll take from good to great Jim Collins. Uh huh. Um getting the right people on the bus is so important. And the reason why is because you need to make it cool to follow the rules, and when those people can outnumber the naysayers, yeah. It's very easy to be cynical and sarcastic. We're perfecting it. I think Jerry Seinfeld nailed it in the night, and then from then on it's just degraded. Yeah. But the truth is that you have to have high performers and visionaries and people that want to motivate themselves outnumber the naysayers. Right. And then what happens is I believe there's almost a tiered system where there's great performers, there's mid-tier performers, and there's low performers. And when the high performers start to outnumber, the mid-performers will gravitate towards the high performers because that's the cool kids now, right? Because it's always been popularized as we were growing up in movies, like to like bash the people that were trying and wanted to put forth energy. And it was always cool to be like skeptical or cynicism. Yeah. Like that's not very hard. No. You know what I mean? And so I think that that's key is to outnumber, you know, to get the right people on the bus to outnumber the lowest performers. And then you that that mid-tier grad gravitates, you're gonna pick off 50% of your low performers that want to try. Yeah, and then you it's very so then it becomes uncomfortable to be a non-performer and they just end up quitting. Right, you know, and so I think it's getting the right people on the bus is really important, and then oftentimes it's leadership and ownership, owning what it means to be the leader. Right. And uh I've mapped it out for restaurants because I've taken you know, uh probably the last 10 years in consulting, uh, which is you need a five-year operational plan, you need a five-year uh financial plan, you need a person that's willing to bleed for the business, and then you need twice as much money as you thought. Yeah. And that's the strategy for creating this kind of culture. But really, it's the leadership being able to take ownership over what it means to be a leader. Yeah. And, you know, something as big as what you're doing right here, like that's a lot of pressure to make sure that everything is crystal clear and that there's a culture of like relationship building. But I only build relationships so that I can tell people the hardest things about themselves.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Well, that's the ultimate caring relationship. Right. Like, if you can't have that conversation, I'd argue you don't have a relationship yet. Agree, right? Agree.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

So, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

So, all right, so um, I want to spend some time on the hard rock journey. So, how long were you with them and how did you end up in Detroit?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So, nine years with them. Um I did a tour of quite a few stores, they were the greatest culture I'd ever seen. Um, so even taking a step beyond Lone Star, the beginnings of Hard Rock were very accidental. Uh, Peter Morton uh of Morton's Steakhouse and Isaac Tigrette, there were a couple hippies that just like to smoke a bunch of pot and sit around. Fitz Hard Rock. They started uh just a burger joint. Ironically, it doesn't fit Morton at all. Correct. Right. He was the rebellious son, you know, uh the prodigal son. He um so they just wanted to bring Americana to London.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

And so that's all it was in the beginning. It was just a burger joint, and it and they were very like fringy and they were the hippies, and so they were kind of ushering in all the outcast to the island of misfit toys, like that was their original thing. The they sponsored a soccer team, and they would then sell the shirts of the soccer team at the business, and that's how the whole retail component started. Oh no. And so what that had what they did is Peter obviously had his dad's like restaurant wisdom and all that stuff, but Isaac was very much like fringe and very much into culture, and they just took all the outcast, and so it was a very welcoming environment where people were they had enough uh care for their people where they would give them their all. And then that just kind of just ripped from there, and they were just always into taking great care of people. And back in those days, you made money at restaurants, and so culture first, yeah, and then it worked because one of the things about restaurants is you know, if you look at some of these services that have started, restaurants weren't intended on being a moneymaker when they started. They were people that cared about making food for other people, people that wanted to bring families and groups and special times together. And so once they focused on that, then all of a sudden they started figuring out how to make a bunch of money from there. And then um just loved the company. Uh, I could tell you the onboarding is what did it for me. So I look back at how hard I worked for them. Yeah, I opened up two stores and two years as a general manager. I probably worked a hundred hours a week for two years straight. Um, and I was like, why would I go through all that paint for them? Right. And and I could trace it all the way back to onboarding. And so when they hired me, I had a three-month training program. Uh it was in San Antonio, Texas, which makes no sense. Like I was in St. Louis, I could have gone to Memphis. Right. But San Antonio, I stayed where the Spurs lived in the off season or during the season. Yeah. They gave me an uh Alexis to drive. Wow. Uh when I pulled up, it was like Final Four on the river walk, and there was a whole like brick deck on top that oversaw the restaurant itself, had nothing to do with it. It was the offices, and all the managers were there, like had a shot ready for me, and then I was just hooked. Right. You know what I mean? It was like the greatest first date of your life. Sure. And I still could trace that back. Like there was still really good culture throughout the business, but it was a lot, a lot of hard work. Yeah. Chicago Hard Rock, you walked up three flights of stairs to deliver food. So it was not an easy job by any means. Yeah. But I take it back to the onboarding and the culture. And so they just gave me a lot of opportunities. I in those days just outworked everybody. There was no there was no secret. I just worked more. Yeah. Uh didn't have didn't have very healthy personal relationships, you know, told my family I'd be gone for a while. But I early on just would outwork everybody. Yeah. I would be at the stores for 70 and 80 hours and I enjoyed it. It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't a drudgery. It was actually fun for me. And so they just kept giving me opportunities. Detroit was projected to do 3 million. It did uh half a million the first day open through pin sales and different other things, and then they ended up doing 10 million. So I was the little darling of the company. I had, you know, I was the youngest general manager, I had it at 24, and so they just hooked me. And so uh over time I kept doing more bigger projects, and then eventually the fatigue set in, mental and physical fatigue, and started to spiral a little bit. And how long were you with them for? Uh about nine years. Okay. Um, I think that's the right number. I might uh I might be off by a little bit. But then I then I took a break from restaurants and then just took some time to myself, did this little odd job, did that little odd job, um, to kind of see where um like how my skill sets worked in the normal world. Like sure. Was I ready for the real world? There's always restaurants, yeah. But like I said, you know, people management, scheduling, profit and loss statements on the floor.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Like I don't know that there's something that's as active as restaurants. And it's interesting, right? To me, like the restaurant business certainly has a um the kind of a reputation that comes with it, right? Like uh and and uh a lot of a lot of assumption of the people that work there, like from an education perspective or from a from an addiction, like it's like it's like if you have a problem, you should go work in a restaurant, right? And then I see in real estate because we have like a stellar reputation in this industry, so so so I see people like, you know, same thing, like we're we're judged for all kinds of reasons, and then I'll see people that they'll say, Hey David, this isn't working. I gotta go get a real job.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

As if this is not a real job, right? And it's kind of I feel like there's there's this, there's a bit of that in the restaurant business where you got, I have to go get a real job, where where there's people doing really, really well in the real in the in the real in the restaurant business, just like there is in the so it's interesting the perception that people and the story that people create, whether they're in either business, like either industry, or that we deal with from the outside, yeah. Um it takes there there's a level of of of uh I guess toughness that comes with it, right? Like it's like people, I think there's a huge lack of understanding to what goes into either career. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Uh I've over time have deduced it that it's more that in restaurant, people are more artist types than they are academics. Yeah. And the reason why is because they're always against the grain, they're all they've always thought against the grain, and it brings that out. So there's a lot of painters and there's a lot of actors and there's a lot, just a lot of artists. And because if you could watch a grill cook on a Saturday night and watch how many different things they're tracking, moving by sight, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

And there's not really a take two. There never is a take three. Right? Like it's not like you you can mess it up.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Yeah, I call it um it's a uh it's a job that's on demand, not off demand. Yeah. So like if you put an HR person from like a nine to five job on an expo line on a Saturday night, like they would be like, This is criminal. Yeah. What you're doing, and and it's Every day all the time. Yeah. And so that's where the addictions come in, and that's where where we are looked at. And and the disconnection with family, which when does that typically happen for most people? It's on the weekends, right? Yeah. Those are our days when we're most on. Right. So then the f you lose those family connections, and then all of a sudden you're the you're the black sheep. Correct. And then you play into that role. And so I've noticed over time that it's more that they're just more art-driven and they're just more, I don't know, flow driven than clocking in, punching out. And there's nothing wrong with either way. No. But I do know, and I've tried, and I bring that up often to them. I'm like, like, let's not be what they all think that we are. Right. You know what I mean? Love it. And so I love it. It's one of the reasons I've stayed into it. These last couple years since COVID have been brutal for restaurants. The national average on profitability of restaurants last year was 3%. Wow. So that's crazy. Owners and what consulting will look at me and then be like, well, why am I doing this? And I'm like, I don't know. Because if you decided that you were getting into the restaurants to make money, I'm pretty sure there's a host of people that told you never to do that. Yeah. You know, but there's this feeling of bringing community together. You know, uh, cheers, song, or where you want to go where everybody knows your name. There's that feeling, and I think it's really precious in this world right now where there's so much unrest. Yeah. You know, and I just had a talk with all the team just recently, and I'm like, I view what we do quite differently than the rest of the world. Yeah. We're the place that people come together, share experience, break bread, solve problems, have first dates, have all these great experiences.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Build businesses, right? But a lot of I've had a lot of Natkin talks, you know, sitting at somewhere like, and somebody's got an idea, and you flip the coaster, and like, all right, I got I'm gonna forget this. Yeah. And you know, so so yeah, it's I I love this perspective. I think you're so right, and and and and especially now like bringing people together, like it's uh it's a uh I think it's a need that is that is uh very underrated, right? Like COVID kind of there's still I I feel like there's still a hangover over COVID or kind of this cloud that you know people tend to to it's easy to stay home, it's easy to work from home, it's easy to I can I can Amazon, I can internet, I can call, I can zoom, I can, you know, you can literally make the argument, you can do everything you need, and then you look up and like shit, I haven't talked to someone in four days. Right. Like, you know, like God forbid, I maybe I didn't shower for three, you know? No, no, I totally so all right, so so you you got a nine-year run, then you you kind of regrouped for a little bit. Yeah did you go as straight into consulting after that, or still still uh how what was uh I worked on houses with my uncle.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

My uncle was doing houses, and I hadn't had any kind of real practical experience doing that. So I took some time to learn that. It was very valuable, and just even now, like you could just fix things on your own as opposed to asking everybody. I ran a small construction company. Okay. Uh it was a fencing company that did wrought iron fencing and so on and so forth. And that was it was super interesting and almost easy because the pace is so much different than restaurants. So you have time to like think about things. And what I figured out is that if you let a truck go out with all of its without all of its pieces, that project is now dead and is not profitable. Yeah. And so working with like longtime iron workers was really interesting because still I was young and you know, just real always playful and just always trying to be a cheerleader. Yeah. Um that worked. Uh we I think we erased like $300,000 in debt in one year. Nice. Um, it just was I typically get I end up getting to the end of my rope with owners and their lack of vision or not seeing what we're doing is working and then wanting to double down. I always want to, when it's working, I want to double down. Sure. Like, oh well, we're not making any money. And I'm like, yeah, well, we're about to. Um you know, and so with that, I came up with this theory of you need to take all the money you have to build a machine that makes money as fast as humanly possible. Don't spread it out over seven years, slow build. And so then I started taking my skill sets from the corporate environment and getting into independence. And then I met uh Joey Barcheski and Tony Gianino, and then that was the Joey Bees on the Hill, which they took over from the Bartolinos. That was their first full-scale restaurant, they had had a little bar hangout, and then I uh worked with the Gianino family off and on for like nine years and did a bunch of restaurants with them. Yeah. And then, let's see, I did my own. I finally did my own, which is something I didn't know that. Yeah, so I took over the Joey B's on the landing and had the loo. We meet me and my partner created the loo downtown. This is when LaCleed's Landing was kind of just you know fading away into distance. And uh we put down some hard work and you know, did a bunch of the work that I had learned from my uncle. Yeah, and I started fixing everything myself and put in a lot of hours, and it was working. It was a very dead environment, LaCleed's Landing in Ghost Town, but we were finding a way. And uh we doubled profit in a year, we um increased uh sales by 30 or 40 percent. Uh the battle hawks had just come down, okay, right? So then that was feeling very much like Rams Sundays down there. So I was like, like, we did it, like we did it. Yeah, and then COVID. Uh okay. Yeah. I learned a lot about partnerships during that run, yeah, but I eventually had to put it away. It just wasn't, it was gonna kill us. Our partner and I didn't necessarily agree on how to proceed forward, and so then I took that and I went into consultant.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

So I was gonna say, so what what was this what was like the first 18, 24 months of your COVID experience? Besides COVID itself, like you, your industry, your world was was challenged at a really, really high level.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Yeah, so one of our deterrence from making us successful is it wasn't in a neighborhood. So LaClee's Landing was a destination you had to go down. Yeah. And that's ultimately where my partner and I disagreed. I the government was very generous with a lot of small businesses. I wanted to use that money to go forward, so driving like whether it be delivery or to go or whatever, because it was very unsure about how it was all gonna play out. Right. Um, but I didn't want to sit on it because I felt like that was just gonna become a debt that we were, I wanted to use it to move forward. And so it was really challenging. Nobody knew what was the right way to do, everybody was doing things that were illegal to make it by, and some of the different counties were doing different things, and so it there wasn't a real clear path on what to take. Um, my my partner had another restaurant, so she could divert a lot of her attention, time, and resources down there. I wasn't a part of that, and so I would have just been left out in the cold. And so there was just a good opportunity for me to just say, hey, listen, you take this, you do the what you want, I'm gonna jump out. And then I jumped out and then I started to consult. But COVID just, I mean, it just rocked us. Yeah. Um, all of a sudden we became so remember the stereotypes we were talking about with the restaurant industry, then all of a sudden we became like indispensable. I forget what the term was. Oh um essential. Essential, essential. So we were all of a sudden essential to everybody, and I was just like thinking to myself, I'm like, man, for talking crap on us for so many years, and then all of a sudden we're essential because you guys want a cocktail in the afternoon. And so a lot of people were diving into cocktails and uh and everybody, yeah. I mean, I mean, we were pivoting everywhere. Distilleries were doing uh alcohol because uh uh sanitizer, yeah. I mean, everybody was like doing all kinds of pivot, and that's the true strength, I think, of the restaurant industry is there wasn't too many industries that could just completely pivot. Yeah, and we completely pivot all over the place, and and a lot of restaurants did a lot of things that were people would be like, oh, I don't agree with that, or that wasn't in law, but the laws wouldn't even catch up with what we were trying to do with. And so it was just a very telltale sign of how adaptable and adjustable uh we were to do. And you know as well as I do that it's key to be able to pivot quickly.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

I was just gonna say, I think, I think, I think any industry learned a lot from the restaurant industry during COVID because those who survive and thrive through it, from a business perspective, there are there's a ton to learn from, to your point, like adapting to change and pivoting and changing this making decisions that that are not maybe for the whole or or for today, but based on where we're going, this is you know, like uh I think I think there's a ton to learn from from from from that perspective.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

I think that I could I figured out during that time that you didn't need to make the right decision, you just needed to make a decision and go behind it. And so I would start to develop this idea of like even bad decisions fully aligned in a group moving forward will work much better than the greatest idea that nobody likes. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Or that no one is implementing. Correct. Or just we're just gonna talk about this, correct, right? Like, what do you how how do you feel about this? This is that shit sends me to the moon. I'm like, who cares? Is it gonna work or not? Correct. And we can't determine that until you try it.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Correct. And then I think that it's the pivoting and the adjusting quickly, is why it's more important. Yeah, and then I you know, I do listen to some people now, but they're talking a lot about like just get your idea going and then figure it out. And so I see a lot of people get analysis paralysis to not do anything. Yeah, and I'm more you know, so I have a pretty really good team that I'm working with now, uh, and I've put a lot of the right people over the last 18 months. We've changed out eight of nine leaders in this company. Wow. And so um there's a lot of you know turmoil, and and there's a lot of people that are like, well, we're gonna get this right before we get before we get going. And I'm more prone to just be like, let them go. Yeah. Um, all the metrics of the company are moving forward, so I don't I don't really feel like there's anything that's gonna put us back. Yeah. So just I am more prone to say, get out there, go make some mistakes. I'm not gonna chastise you because if I was honest, I've made a hundred and fifty mistakes myself.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

That's why I am now wise. And you can make you can make adjustments without having movement first. Correct. Right? And and to your point, so many people are just analyzing and planning. And well, I'm gonna start on Monday and and I'm gonna do this. And but but without doing, there's nothing to adjust, there's nothing to learn from, there's nothing to get better from. There's no there's nothing to do, right? So to your point, I would rather like I would rather somebody say, All right, I'm gonna do it, and then you're like, wow, that was a flop. Yeah, and then let's figure out why, right? Correct, and then let's do it again. But but just sitting around and planning absolutely sends me to the mood.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Yeah, I feel like it's more ego-driven to where I don't want to look bad. Yeah, and so I've just given up with looking bad a long time ago. Like, yeah, I'll sure I'm I look bad, whatever. Let's go. Yeah, like let's keep doing it. So I have a particular team member that I'm putting, I'm working with right now that has like a military background, and so everything is measured. And I love that because it's a great balance for me, who's just out there just yeah, whim-wamming around. Um, but trying to teach them to just get out there, do it, and then um, you know, I like to show people how I walk them through failure, which is like, listen, like get up, like come on. I did something just like that, but let's keep going.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah, and is it really failure? Like, if you now know that it doesn't work, you know not to do it again. Yeah, right. So I it's interesting how people frame failure when when you start going to this. So so now as a consultant, yeah, um you you you you get hired like six months. I because I'm just thinking, like as a consultant, there's gotta be a a certain length of time, there's a commitment made to to actually see and feel the change you want to create. So how how does that how does that work in that industry? Well, it's been a rough road.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Okay. Um it's very hard. Why? Well, because we just talked about those three percent profit. Right. So, first of all, you're gonna take that three percent and you're gonna pay me. Right. Number two, nothing is gonna come from just me saving money. I don't have a magic wand walking and save money. I'm gonna spend more of your money than you would like. And so basically, I have kept pivoting and adapting for the restaurant people. And I do some very ill-advised things. Uh, I don't get my worth typically because there's just not enough money in the system to get my worth. Okay. And uh because I want to help out independent restaurants. Yeah. Uh, if someone doesn't actually help them out, we're gonna just have a bunch of corporate restaurants and that's gonna be terrible. Yeah. Um, and so I keep tailoring different, you know, first I almost would first go in as the general manager and just run it like I was running it, uh, trying to take the weekends off. But if I'm working for people, I'd be like, yeah, all right, well, I'll cover that shift. And so that really didn't work because I never could give them the measurable results that they wanted in the time frame that they wanted. So then I started pivoting, and then I made these like small packages of like, here, there's these three things I'm gonna work on over this amount of time, and I'm only gonna work here two days a week. And so the cost to them for two days a week wasn't very big. In the same regard, it just wouldn't work well enough. I'd still end up there on the week, I'd still end up giving more hours. Yeah. And so, and and my true passion is finding the young Greg Hards that did not fit into the academic world, yeah, and and letting them know that this is a place that is, you know, you can be respected and it's a high level of business and uh, you know, you can make money, just maybe not this decade. Yeah. Um, so, and then now I'm doing like a long stretch with a group uh as kind of like the CEO DO of the company, and uh you know, based off of that strategy I told you earlier. So five-year operational plan, five-year financial plan, I am the one who's going to bleed for it. And then he's gotta have a lot of money or she's gotta have a lot of money to make this work. And that's just something I say up front. I just tell them like this, I'm not gonna save you any money at the beginning. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Um, and then that's well, there's there's a cost to cleaning things up, correct, right? I mean, there's a reason why you're there, yeah. And and the reason is others weren't doing what they were supposed to do, and there's a cost beyond just your time, there's there's an actual cost to put things back together. And correct.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

It's just uh so to create a culture, it's not just from walking around and saying good job every day. You're gonna have to have tangible results, people are gonna have to, you know, it's not that there's a ton of money in our system to pay managers, but just anything that's monetarily uh out of one person's pocket into another is a is a statement of I appreciate you. You know what I mean? And so even if it's not gonna make you rich, just sitting down and saying, this is what you're doing good, this is what you're doing bad, and then financially, here's a reward for you, um, is it and that's what it is. It's culture creation. Yeah. And so I typically pick a system, and the system I set up is uh I loved good to great and Jim Collins and all of his books, and then that was a feeder program for EOS and traction, yeah. Um, which is kind of like a system that's used a lot. And basically what it is is what are the tangible steps that you can change things? Like everybody, you know, all these influencers are like say all the flash and bang, here's a bunch of forms, and that's great. And and and a lot of those are relevant, but there's a particular prescription for every business, like a particular, just like a writing code for something. That's what I say, write code for restauranting. Yeah, and so um I picked EOS, and that's here's the plan, here's what we're gonna do in five years, here's what we're gonna do in three years, here's what we're gonna do, you know, just reverse engineering, yeah, and then this is to what we're doing today. Yeah, and um, we just follow all those normal practical things, and then they do it, and then I have a driving energy to make culture the most important. This last piece I'm telling you, which is do it fast, just that is has to be done because you're gonna spend a lot of money, so just quickly fix it and don't drag it out over a long period of time. So I was down on the landing and there was a developer that came in, and he was like, Hey, can you help me develop this situation? And he was like, Can you bring in this, this, this, this, and this? You know, the people see me as a conduit to other restaurant tours, which is true and false at the same time. But the gist is it got way too big. I super complimented that they asked me to do it, sure. But I was like, this is way beyond. You need like a development company, like a Cordish or something like that. That's yeah, you know, they did Ballpark Village and all those things. You need somebody to come in and do that. Yeah. Well, they didn't do that, they followed their piecemeal plan. Seven years later, yeah, my friend is renting lofts from them, and and then they call he calls me and goes, Hey, can you help me come down here and get some restaurants? He asked me the same question that that guy did seven years later, and that's what put the final nail on the coffin that it's do it quickly. Because if they would have spent a million dollars then and got a development company to come in and do it, they would have been done by year three, and that area might be completely developed. And so that's kind of how I see that now.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

So you you you've used the word culture several times, yeah. I feel like that's kind of one of your big things. So beyond that, what what would be two other three other pieces of advice you would give really to any business person, right? Because the reality of it is I mean, I value culture at a high level. It's a I I it's something I try, we we we focus on building, developing, protecting all the time. Um so beyond that, well I'd love for you to explain a little bit maybe like what's your definition of it, like currently where you are and who you're serving, like like how like what's different in the culture that you've created since you've started, and when and then what are maybe like two or three other bullet points you would advise somebody to say these are things I focus on when I come in and turn something around.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Yeah. So I mean, culture, I would believe, is a a feeling from leadership down that an organization can trust the persons above them to make wise and prudent decisions that have everybody in mind. Yeah, and so then I practice that there's no being a hypocrite as a leader, and that we have to be above reproach. And so a bit of a perfectionist as far as that goes, knowing that perfection is never possible. But that doesn't change the goal. Sure. Right? So everybody's like, well, I'm not perfect, I'm like I know, but you aren't trying to be. You know what I mean? So that's kind of what which is set on a goal that we all can agree on that's beneficial to the entire group, and then really credible uh character and integrity-driven um leaders that people I say can make it a safe environment to give their safety, yeah. Right? So, like I think it's getting skewed a little bit to where people are like, you know, somebody like looked at me wrong. To me, it's I want to make sure that my people know that they're never gonna be taken advantage of. Right. So I don't want my people to work too many hours. I want to give them an environment where they enjoy to work too many hours. Oh that's what I mean by safe to give their best work, like it'll be rewarded. Yeah, you know, it'll be seen, it'll be recognized. Yeah, we won't be chastised for making mistakes because that's dumb. You can be talked to and penalized for making mistakes, yeah. But for to for people to get super arrogant about them and it doesn't make any because they all know you made a ton of mistakes yourself. Sure. Right? So, like that is a hypocrite in my mind. And so I think uh having a leadership that wants the best for the company is making wise and prudent decisions for everyone, knowing that I think what I've learned over time is that the lowest level of people need to have the most. Power and making change. So, like people sitting in their ivory towers that have not been on the ground level in quite some time, I see why would they be able to make the decisions correctly? And so yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Well, you can you can make the argument that that environment is is driven by more of a top-down leadership than a inclusive one. Correct. Doesn't mean you have to agree, but at least if you give an opportunity to the team to speak to it, correct. They at least have an opportunity to be heard. And and listen, we may go a different direction, but but even if we do, I I I think it creates a very different environment, different culture, right? But if I just made the decision from from the ivory tower, like you said, I I I think you you're you're you're starting to create your own turnover basically.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Well, I think it came the most relevant, it came is when I opened up a really busy restaurant. It was seats about 500, super popular in St. Louis right now. But in year one, we were busy seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Seven days a week. And that first year we did, let's say, I'm making up numbers, uh 4.5. Okay. All right. So year three, we were busy seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. And then that year we did 7.5. Now I was there the whole time. Yeah. I watched it every single day. Yeah. How did three million dollars sneak in the door? Yeah. I wasn't doing it, I wasn't driving any sales protocols, I wasn't doing any kind of no contests or it was just we were trying to get wrangle this thing. Yeah. And then I started to realize, oh, it's because the host sat 30 seconds faster. The server greeted 30 seconds faster. The bartender made the drink 30 seconds faster. The server put the order in 30 seconds faster. The cook made the food a minute faster, the expo expedited the food two minutes faster. Server, and then all of a sudden, that time is what created that extra money. And then I started to like play that all out, and then I started to realize they weren't doing it to make the company better, they were doing it to make their job easier. And so ironically, the biggest gains in the business came from people actually being selfish to some extent. Yeah. And so that's when I started to become convinced that I was pressing all my ideas down to the lowest level. And so, how can I do this for you faster? Yeah. What can I get you to make your job easier? What kind of people do you need to work with to make the food better? And then that's where it all, that's the culture, you know, uh combined. And then to come back to your question is it's really strong financial discipline and wisdom that you know how to articulate a PL correctly to that industry. And then what are the drivers of that? Whenever I go into a uh consulting restaurant, um, they are usually beholden to their bookkeeper and their CPA. And a restaurant's PL is derived a totally different way. I think we talked a little bit about it the other day. And the reason why is because 70% of our cost is food, liquor, labor. That needs to be at the top. Right. That's called our prime cost number. And if that number is not in line, there's nothing below us ever gonna fix it. Yeah. And so, and then the last thing is a five-year operational plan, which is clearly lined out on the things that are important for the next stages, and that's just reverse engineering where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

It's operational, includes um like hiring, removing, all this stuff. Like, because you I I would assume you have a pretty healthy turnover in that world.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Yeah, yeah, and uh that creates so I think that the figures are up to something like 15 times your annual salary if you lose a key employee. Wow. Now I've heard different numbers all through my career, but the last one I've heard is 15 times, and that's just trying to like play out, you know, how many different employees or guests you lose because you know, you know, realtor to the other place. Correct. All those kind of things. But um, yeah, that's one of the key indicators. Our uh industry is usually like 100 to 120, and so within the first year of being in this last project, we reduced it down to 50. So that means your entire staff is turning over in the course of a calendar year, you know. Now that's not always your key players or whatever, but the rest of the bottom team is turning over so fast, and so like consistent repeatable processes, it's not gonna happen when you're constantly turning people over. Training is the largest expense in any organization. Yeah. So if you can just stop that, yeah, you should be able to do it. So yeah, I have a bunch of stuff. So I use, like I said, I use traction and EOS, and then I have a bunch of subsystems under there, which are all like I call my 12 SOPs. And so it's uh it's a training program. It is the documentation of how we document people and what happens when we document people, right? And then it's reviews and it's one-on-ones, and then and then there's all these different tools in the different sectors. So there's people, operations, sales, and profit, and then I have tools inside of each one of those. Does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_00 49:12

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, a going back to making changes and and having the ability to pivot and and moving fast, yeah, you can't do that without having the ability to make um educated decision through documentation or data or things like that, right? Otherwise, if you're just running on your gut and your feeling, yeah, at some point uh they they they both let you down. Right. And then and then your spreadsheet reminds you why this was a bad decision. So yeah, yeah. So that's awesome. Yeah. Do you uh do you ever see yourself doing anything else?

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Uh yeah, maybe. Um I really want to devote this time to restaurants right now. It's really it'd be very easy for me to leave. I think that my skills are transferable and a lot of different, but everybody is leaving. Yeah. And uh what I why I'm consulting and why I do more than I probably should is because if I don't support independent restaurant owners, then the corporate takes over, and then we have the whole Walmart effect where it just chokes everything out. Yeah. And so, and I believe that, you know, I don't have any uh political affiliations and I hate all of politics. Yeah. Uh, but if I'm paying enough attention from the outside, I realize that everything is just follows the dollar. And so one of my goals in life is to get independent businesses to uh have the uh higher balance than the GDP, and so that's this is just my little drop shirt to do it, you know, because it's actually not as far off as people think. I think it's something like uh 55, 45 to where independents are like 45 and corporate is 55. I wouldn't have thought it was be this close. Correct. It is, it's a lot closer than you thought. And so I just always wondered if like if you could make the independent supersede, then they would control the dollar, and then the dollar could make the political thing move. And sure. That's just what you know, my little, you know, yeah, that's how I'm gonna make a debt in the world. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

I appreciate your time, man. Yeah, what a great talk. And um, I hope people I people should get a ton of information out of this, and um we may not be good at golf again, but we should definitely go do it again. You know, it's good. Thanks, David. Thanks, buddy.