Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Dave Domzalski on Building Barmetrix Across South Florida, Michigan and Writing Best Selling Hospitality Books

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Dave Domzalski on Building Barmetrix Across South Florida, Michigan and Writing Best Selling Hospitality Books · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. As you listen today, let one
• 0:17
  idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
• 0:21
  and today's guest is Dave Domzalski.
• 0:24
  Did I get it right, Dave? That's it, That's it, right?
• 0:28
  His bar inventory expert with Bar Metrics, the global
• 0:32
  hospitality consulting firm dedicated to helping bars and
• 0:35
  restaurants cut waste and grow profit.
• 0:39
  Founded in 1999, Bar Metrics blends on site specialist, easy
• 0:44
  to use software and ongoing coaching to slash beverage costs
• 0:48
  and recover lost revenue. The company has served more than
• 0:52
  10,000 venues across seven countries.
• 0:55
  They guide owners through detailed inventory audits and
• 0:58
  practical training that deliver measurable gains in just weeks.
• 1:03
  Dave is the author of two best selling books, The Bar Shift and
• 1:07
  Hospitality DNA, and there's another one coming out soon that
• 1:11
  we'll talk about and has spoken at Tales of the Cocktail and Bar
• 1:16
  Convent Berlin on why most bars lose money without ever knowing
• 1:20
  it. He spent over 2 decades helping
• 1:22
  hospitality operators find the profit hiding in plain sight,
• 1:26
  running bar metric franchises across South Florida and
• 1:29
  Michigan. Now before we get into all that
• 1:32
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• 1:35
  Add Back Benefits Agency. Listen, if you run a business,
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• 2:23
  All right, back to our guest today, President, owner of Bar
• 2:26
  Metrics Miami-Dade. Thanks for making the time to
• 2:28
  Share your story today. Absolute pleasure, Anthony.
• 2:31
  I'm excited. So what first attracted you to
• 2:34
  the hospitality industry? How'd you get your start?
• 2:37
  So I think it's kind of a classic, you know, classic story
• 2:42
  starts way back though. When I was 8 years old, my
• 2:44
  mother moved moved us from from St.
• 2:47
  Louis, MO, to Columbia, MD. And part of that reason was be
• 2:51
  close to family. So I would have like somebody in
• 2:53
  the family that was around my age, my brother and sister 8 to
• 2:55
  10 years older than me. So I didn't have any siblings
• 2:57
  around. And she liked that dynamic.
• 2:59
  And so she moved us close to my cousin Mike and his parents.
• 3:04
  And, you know, we grew up together.
• 3:06
  We were, we were very, very close.
• 3:08
  And we had talked about going in a restaurant our entire lives.
• 3:10
  You know, we, we, we're going out and put a bar, it's going to
• 3:13
  the pool, whatever. And when I was 21 years old,
• 3:17
  Mike killed himself, which was which was brutal.
• 3:21
  And, and at that time, I was an engineer working for a company
• 3:25
  called Polk Audio. But it shifted my entire
• 3:28
  perception of what what my world was, what I wanted to do.
• 3:31
  And I was already kind of bored of engineering anyways.
• 3:33
  And so when I looked at the next career, it was psychologically
• 3:38
  just stuck there. I was like, this is I have to go
• 3:40
  open a bar. I've got to learn how to own a
• 3:42
  bar. So I left engineering salary,
• 3:45
  position, all that to wake tables so I can learn.
• 3:48
  And yeah, so worked for a guy named Patrick Russell.
• 3:51
  Took three years for me to understand that I don't have the
• 3:53
  right mentality. And and, you know, the right,
• 3:57
  the right, the right heart and soul to to open and run a
• 3:59
  restaurant. It takes a special character.
• 4:01
  But that's what got me there. You know, it was, it was sort of
• 4:03
  a childhood passion that that I I had to follow that part of my
• 4:06
  dream. And it turned into something
• 4:08
  amazing for me. Wow, how did that person's
• 4:12
  suicide linger with you? If you're comfortable saying
• 4:16
  more about that. Oh, oh, I wouldn't have brought
• 4:18
  it up if I wasn't. So I mean, it still does
• 4:22
  sometimes, right? You don't govern goes your way.
• 4:24
  It's gotten better. But for I'd say for 10 years it
• 4:29
  it really put I'm an extreme extrovert.
• 4:31
  I, I, I love talking to people, being around people, but I
• 4:34
  developed this side of me where I, where after I was out of
• 4:37
  wanting to retreat. And so there was, there was
• 4:39
  probably a bit of depression there sitting, you know, wanting
• 4:42
  to be numb, wanting to not feel that.
• 4:44
  It definitely affected relationships.
• 4:46
  I I didn't want to get as close because we were like brothers,
• 4:48
  like I was closer to him than I was to my own brother and
• 4:51
  probably still AM. And so the idea of getting that
• 4:56
  close to somebody again just wasn't very pleasant.
• 5:00
  So I had some great relationships that I don't have
• 5:02
  any more because of that. And but now it's, you know, I
• 5:06
  process it, I've got through it. I remember and talk, but you
• 5:10
  know, that's it drove me into this industry.
• 5:12
  So in its own way it had a had to have a positive outcome or
• 5:16
  else will be really sad for me. How did you make that transition
• 5:21
  from because what you're describing sounds very normal
• 5:24
  and natural, right? You, you just your, your soul,
• 5:27
  your heart is crushed because the loss of your friend who's
• 5:31
  closer than your brother. And so you don't want to feel
• 5:33
  that pain again. So you withdraw, you retreat.
• 5:36
  You sort of put up walls, right, to protect yourself.
• 5:40
  But it sounds like at some point those walls started to come
• 5:42
  down. How did that process unfold?
• 5:46
  There was therapy, oddly enough, the the woman so I growing up at
• 5:52
  a metro named Stan Whitaker, amazing, amazing human beings.
• 5:56
  And after that happened, I was looking for a therapist not
• 5:59
  having trouble, you know, finding a decent 1.
• 6:00
  He said I want you to talk to this woman and I did.
• 6:02
  I sat down with her and in the first session is an interview,
• 6:07
  right. Halfway through the first
• 6:08
  session, we figured out that her son, his name was my cousin's
• 6:11
  name was Mike. Her son was Mike's best friend.
• 6:13
  And she's like, she kept saying his name Aaron.
• 6:15
  This Aaron's like, are you talking about Dino?
• 6:18
  She goes what? She's like, Yeah.
• 6:21
  And his nickname was Dino. So, you know, we had a
• 6:24
  conversation about conflict of interest and figured out that
• 6:26
  now just it was a perfect day because I was able to talk about
• 6:28
  like, I'm. I'm a very open person.
• 6:31
  So that made it. That's how I, you know, sort of
• 6:33
  started that process. I don't think we actively
• 6:36
  discussed because I didn't figure this out about myself
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  until much later. I looked at some relationships
• 6:41
  that like this, like what happened to those friends?
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  Like why did that happen? I didn't understand like, uh oh,
• 6:45
  I disengage, I pull that and naturally got extreme extrovert.
• 6:51
  So I think I was it was going to eventually get that place.
• 6:54
  I didn't I don't know how much I I actively thought about getting
• 6:58
  there. It just sort of naturally, you
• 7:01
  know. Through the process of the
• 7:03
  therapy, just sort of working through things, understanding
• 7:06
  yourself, under processing what happened.
• 7:09
  Yeah, yeah. OK, so let's move forward into
• 7:13
  Barometrics days. How did this opportunity come
• 7:15
  about? So like I said, I'm working for
• 7:19
  Patrick Russell three years in and he comes up to me one day.
• 7:22
  He says, Dave, I'm going to ask you a question.
• 7:23
  He knew what I was doing. He knew that I wanted to own a
• 7:24
  restaurant. And he says, have I, have I just
• 7:27
  beaten it out of you yet? I'm like, why not?
• 7:28
  He's like the idea that owning a restaurant is a good idea.
• 7:31
  You're like, that's you're done with that, right?
• 7:32
  And I said, actually, yeah, it's not for me anyways, man.
• 7:35
  I don't have your constitution. I don't.
• 7:36
  I don't work that way. And at the time he had brought I
• 7:39
  was just foreign manager and I was telling him like, look, we
• 7:42
  should use scales to the inventory because this is so
• 7:44
  imprecise. And I was showing him why you're
• 7:47
  measuring by, you know, doing this is is complete totally like
• 7:51
  you might as well not because the the human, the human brain
• 7:56
  and eye and and hand are horrifying.
• 7:58
  The bad measurement measurement devices.
• 8:00
  And I was like, I could make a spreadsheet for you and all this
• 8:03
  because you're engineering all that.
• 8:04
  And, and he kept putting me off and I didn't understand why.
• 8:07
  But like a couple months later he brings in bar metrics, this
• 8:09
  guy, Jason Yeager. And I watched them work and I'm
• 8:12
  like, as I'm seeing these guys work for about 6 months, it
• 8:15
  occurred to me, I'm like, OK, I, I can't do engineering because
• 8:18
  I'm too much of an extrovert. Like I just can't.
• 8:21
  It's boring and repetitive. But also it's a different type
• 8:23
  of person, you know, lovely guys, just different.
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  But I love data and I'm and I miss the data.
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  I miss the science, I miss the math.
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  And these two things are brought together with bar metrics
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  because it's a, it's a highly, say, highly coaching focused
• 8:39
  business. So while we're doing inventory,
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  that's not our, that's how we don't see ourselves as inventory
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  guys, even though that is what we are.
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  We're looking at us ourselves as we, we coach our clients to
• 8:50
  success, like we're driving success in the business at least
• 8:53
  in one aspect or a couple aspects of it.
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  So seeing that, seeing that that melded, you know, business
• 8:59
  models like, oh, this is really, this is really cool.
• 9:01
  So your brain was pre wired for this.
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  I mean, you were already sort of throwing out these ideas like,
• 9:07
  oh, we need to use scales to. And were you specifically
• 9:10
  thinking about, you know, measuring liquor or was this
• 9:15
  like, you know, I don't know, cheese and lettuce and beef as
• 9:18
  well? Or was it like just focused on
• 9:21
  the alcohol? It's just the alcohol.
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  I was the bar manager. I wasn't the kitchen guy.
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  I probably would have gotten there eventually because I can't
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  help myself. I like putting my fingers and
• 9:28
  stuff where it doesn't belong. I guess I know, but yeah, I know
• 9:31
  it's just the liquor. I'm like, dude, I can change
• 9:35
  your cost of goods by accident from acceptable.
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  He was his acceptable was 20% to your unacceptable 23 just by
• 9:43
  changing at the bottles by .5. So, so if I say, oh, this is a
• 9:48
  1.5, that's a 2.5. That's I said.
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  If I just say that's a 2, that's a one or vice versa depending on
• 9:54
  the beginning and ending inventory.
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  All of a sudden your numbers become great or they become bad.
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  And I've done nothing intentionally to, to do that.
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  However, on the other side of it, you're telling me that I
• 10:06
  have to produce numbers that my job depends on.
• 10:10
  I'm not firing myself, but so if I know that, hey, this is
• 10:15
  imprecise, Oh no, it's imprecise.
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  I'll make those numbers like, well, it's a 2 or a 2.5 or a .25
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  because that makes my numbers just good enough that I'm not
• 10:25
  getting yelled at. And so I had that conversation
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  with them. I was very open, honest with the
• 10:30
  time, but that's, that's, that was that was where it started,
• 10:33
  where it was always going to go. OK.
• 10:35
  So walk us through what Bar Metrics does is are you teaching
• 10:40
  your clients to put each shot on a scale and then pour it in, or
• 10:45
  there's got to be something more streamlined here?
• 10:47
  Yeah, yeah. So we're we're back at.
• 10:50
  So we come in this morning. I had two teams out, one at a
• 10:54
  place called Gordo in in Southeast Miami.
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  And then the Blue Lagoon Hilton new new client has started.
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  And so each team goes in and we've got handheld scanners,
• 11:06
  little, you know, Android computers.
• 11:07
  It's Bluetooth scales. They're weighing every single
• 11:10
  bottle of liquor down to 100th of an ounce accuracy.
• 11:13
  They're counting all the full bottles, they're weighing the
• 11:15
  kegs, but there's batches, they're weighing those and
• 11:18
  converting that back into alcohol.
• 11:19
  So it's the best way to track that process.
• 11:22
  And so they, they pull this information, they're comparing
• 11:24
  portfolio, their sales information, right.
• 11:26
  So point sales files from your POS and we're mapping it in
• 11:29
  based on their recipes and their data and their information.
• 11:32
  So it's, it's, it's very customized to each client we're
• 11:35
  entering in all their invoice information, updating their
• 11:37
  costs constantly. It's just one thing that goes by
• 11:40
  the wayside a lot in bars and restaurants.
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  It's very time consuming to keep accurate on your costs and you
• 11:45
  know what you're actually paying.
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  So we do all that and at the end of the audit, we're going to
• 11:49
  create a, what we call just a double check report and it will
• 11:52
  say, hey, you're missing 2 cases of Heineken this that, the
• 11:56
  other. And we tell our guys, go double
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  check the book. We won't leave until we believe
• 12:00
  it's as close to 100% accurate as humanly possible.
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  I mean, we're human, so we make mistakes, but we mitigate that a
• 12:05
  lot. And once that's done, we have a
• 12:07
  report and that report goes out to the client and then we
• 12:10
  coached him on it, discuss it, ask questions.
• 12:12
  I just had a meeting last this notes this week.
• 12:15
  Phenomenal meeting with one of my clients and, and and and they
• 12:18
  were going all over the place. I'm like, let's focus on Ron.
• 12:20
  We got to a place where like, let's focus on Ron and they a
• 12:24
  lot of five Y kind of stuff. So that we're like, I asked why?
• 12:28
  How can I possibly missing 9 bottles, Ron?
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  I was like, OK, well, let's take what does that really mean?
• 12:33
  That's less than half an ounce before average, right?
• 12:35
  So we just average out of on all your parts.
• 12:37
  OK. And then as we're going, we're
• 12:40
  digging into, well, how could that possibly happen?
• 12:42
  And one of his guys jumps and says, I watched yesterday, one
• 12:45
  of our guys doing the drag, drag pour.
• 12:46
  I'm just trying to remember that term for like a week.
• 12:49
  Sorry. It's my own internal excitement.
• 12:50
  It's called a drag pour. So I got my jigger and I pour
• 12:53
  and then I start pouring the jigger and I'm still pouring the
• 12:55
  bottle. No, that's not how you pour it
• 12:58
  or the bounce pour like they do and then they bounce up and
• 13:00
  that's going to. So he said, I watched him do it
• 13:02
  and I grabbed it afterwards, I measured it and he was, it
• 13:05
  should have been 2 1/2 oz. It was 3 ounces and and then
• 13:09
  they got further and further in and the answer that they got to
• 13:12
  after asking why, why, why was, is our is our team train gather
• 13:16
  training on it. OK.
• 13:18
  And one of them is like, you can't see the line on the
• 13:20
  trigger. So because it's too dark behind
• 13:23
  the bar. So let's get some lights.
• 13:24
  So their idea right now that they came up there like we're
• 13:26
  going to get some lights so we can see.
• 13:28
  And if that doesn't work, we'll try something next, next.
• 13:31
  So that that our process is to gather data for measurement, but
• 13:36
  to set the goals against which we're measuring.
• 13:39
  And they're going to try certain things until they get there.
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  And there's a thousand ways you can do that.
• 13:42
  I'll give them like 10 ideas and they're going to get none of
• 13:44
  those sucks. Like great, as long as you say 1
• 13:46
  idea is good for us or you come up with your own, even better.
• 13:49
  We're, we're moving forward. So it's it's, it's good
• 13:51
  progress. Are there any mechanical things
• 13:55
  that can like enforce A strict poor?
• 14:01
  Yes. So one of them is a, there's a
• 14:05
  very fasting little piece of technology.
• 14:08
  It's a jigger with these ball bearings and it'll cut on.
• 14:11
  Problem with those is the moment you use it on a sticky liquor
• 14:14
  like Kahlua or Bailey's, it's almost impossible to get them to
• 14:17
  work with your bite again. And sometimes it goes mechanic.
• 14:20
  We aren't perfect in there. And so they fail.
• 14:22
  So they're, they're not perfect. There's also, you know what it's
• 14:26
  called, there's a technology out there that the rings, if you go
• 14:29
  into an airport, you'll see them sometimes and the bottles have
• 14:32
  these weird, really tall long bore spouts.
• 14:34
  And there's a ring and the bartender rings up whatever.
• 14:36
  They take the bottle and it's and they put it into the ring
• 14:39
  and it's got its cord on it and they'll turn it and the ring
• 14:41
  activates it. It opens up the spout and forge
• 14:44
  me it closes it the other the last one is called optics.
• 14:49
  They use them in Europe a lot and you'll see them sometimes in
• 14:51
  Irish or British bars here it's the bottle hanging upside down
• 14:54
  and there's this little black spoke wheel and they push the
• 14:57
  glass up on the wheelbill and then force an exact shot.
• 14:59
  Those were problem is in our in our market in the US in the
• 15:03
  states, most most owners don't like the idea of most of those
• 15:07
  things right, because if it looks tacky make people think
• 15:10
  we're whatever it just doesn't look good.
• 15:12
  The perception isn't, isn't like and then they're right because
• 15:15
  most of you going to a bar, you want to see your bartender doing
• 15:17
  the making a drink. They're crafting my cocktail.
• 15:20
  You know, there's part of that culture and it takes away from
• 15:22
  that a lot. For some people, I think it's
• 15:24
  brilliant, But for most people I've talked to like, no, I don't
• 15:27
  want to do that. Which is why us in the
• 15:28
  background be like like, oh, I can train my staff.
• 15:31
  I can have my staff to practice. I can treat this as a profession
• 15:36
  and, and hold my, my staff to a professional standard rather
• 15:39
  than saying, oh, they're just, you know, transient bartenders
• 15:41
  and whatever. And so they they sort of take
• 15:43
  that into the culture of their business or they already had it
• 15:46
  to start. So is most of your work focused
• 15:48
  around hard liquor, or are you also working with wine and beer?
• 15:53
  Oh, everything, anything. Wine, beer, liquor, red bowl.
• 15:56
  But it's expensive, man. And it goes missing like crazy
• 15:59
  expensive water if they want. We've had clients say, hey, we
• 16:02
  want to track our cocktail cherries.
• 16:04
  There's $0.60 a cherry now that is like, I can't lose a chip,
• 16:07
  right? I know the fancy ones.
• 16:10
  The the really, really good ones.
• 16:13
  Yeah. So it's anything, anything you
• 16:15
  could try. And we do food as well.
• 16:17
  It's just not as well developed to a program.
• 16:18
  We're actually reworking that whole thing to the liquor side.
• 16:21
  We got down to a science. And so, yeah, whatever it is, if
• 16:23
  it's, if it's on the bar, I'll help you with.
• 16:26
  It and so how often are you going into a client location?
• 16:29
  So about half of our clients are weekly and about the other and,
• 16:33
  and the other mostly half are bi weekly and then we have a few
• 16:36
  monthly. The monthly clients are, they're
• 16:40
  looking for a stock on hand. It's really hard to affect
• 16:43
  change when you're just looking, when you're measuring once a
• 16:45
  month, like what happened over the last 30 days.
• 16:47
  I don't know where this bottle of Jamison go, who knows?
• 16:50
  6 to 30 days weekly gives you higher resolution, shorter
• 16:54
  reaction time and tends to drive numbers lower faster and keep
• 16:57
  them there. The biweekly it's possible.
• 17:00
  We have plenty of clients that do a good job with biweekly, but
• 17:03
  it's it's tougher and it takes a lot longer because you're just,
• 17:05
  you're waiting for two weeks and then you're thinking what
• 17:07
  happened the last 14 days? What percentage of time do you
• 17:11
  think the loss is from truth theft?
• 17:14
  Somebody grabbed a bottle. Talking to questions so much,
• 17:17
  very little in my 20 years of doing this.
• 17:20
  Yeah, I know, right? I so I do a staff presentation
• 17:24
  and as part of it I, I, I, I love studies and I want I'm
• 17:27
  pretty sure it's from the Khan Institute.
• 17:29
  They, they've done all these studies on will people steal,
• 17:31
  are people honest? And we've, we've distilled it
• 17:34
  down to some religious broad numbered like, OK, I got to ask
• 17:37
  the team, how many people do you think inherently come in here
• 17:41
  and are like, I can't wait to RIP off the owner.
• 17:43
  I got a bar at home, I'm going to stock it up.
• 17:45
  And this guy sucks versus they come and say, I I love this
• 17:48
  place to have a job to do. I want to do it well and my
• 17:50
  intentions are good. I might give some stuff away,
• 17:52
  but I think that's how it works. And the the answer is 8020
• 17:56
  unintentional. And, and if the science and the
• 18:00
  math gets way, way, way more deep and interesting than that.
• 18:02
  But when you break it down, that's, it's really it.
• 18:04
  Most people, most people inherently want to do a good job
• 18:09
  and, and, and want to take the like who they work for.
• 18:12
  They're not trying to steal a rob.
• 18:15
  And so, and, and frankly, capitalism doesn't work really
• 18:17
  well without that in place. So what we found is over the
• 18:23
  years, I've caught some thieves. It happens.
• 18:25
  We've helped owners catch some thieves.
• 18:27
  It's happened sometimes internal, sometimes external.
• 18:30
  The most part, like the most common.
• 18:33
  The most common factor for increasing loss it is forgetting
• 18:38
  to re stop it. So I don't forget what?
• 18:41
  To bring things in. So, so you had a question and,
• 18:45
  and you sent me these three questions, which thank you so
• 18:47
  much that helps me out a lot. 1 of them was like, you know, what
• 18:50
  was one of the most common things that foreigners could do
• 18:53
  today? Ring and bring it.
• 18:54
  Make your Staffs ring in every single order before they make
• 18:58
  it. First off, they don't go faster
• 19:01
  when they take more floors. The amount of time and footsteps
• 19:05
  and all that is the same. So that that's, that negates
• 19:08
  that idea. However, on the backside of it,
• 19:11
  if I take 3 orders and let's say it's just three or four items
• 19:14
  each, when I go back to my computer after I've made all
• 19:17
  that a lot of times past and the human memory is garbage.
• 19:20
  It is really, really bad. Fascinating.
• 19:22
  There's a lot of stuff out there.
• 19:24
  And so when I get back to the terminal, best case scenario, I
• 19:28
  just pop a bunch of stuff in and I forget to ring one thing.
• 19:31
  And worst case scenario, I do that and I'm standing there
• 19:33
  going, I have some wasting time thinking about what it was.
• 19:38
  And if, if I, if I have a guest and he ordered 5 beers and I
• 19:43
  can't remember if it was four or five, I'm not going to err on
• 19:46
  the side of of charging him too much for the most part because
• 19:49
  that guy's tipping me and he gets his feeling goes, why is
• 19:51
  your neck should be up. He doesn't tip me as well.
• 19:53
  So I'm going to err on the on the side of caution for the
• 19:55
  guest. Bring it, bring it.
• 19:56
  You won't make that mistake. It goes away.
• 19:58
  And I have tons of stories on examples.
• 20:01
  Brian had 360 missing bottles of beer.
• 20:03
  Went through this process with his team.
• 20:05
  He figured it out because he had three bars. 4 bar tuners for bar
• 20:08
  sports bar, great space. In in Northern Virginia.
• 20:12
  And when he went through this process with them, at first
• 20:15
  they're like barometrics is wrong.
• 20:16
  He is. What if you forgot 5 beers per
• 20:19
  shift on a Friday, Friday or Saturday when we're doing games,
• 20:22
  they go, Oh yeah, two weeks later, 36 beers out of 6000
• 20:27
  served. It went from 360 to 36.
• 20:30
  And it's just remembering to and he's like ring and ring it.
• 20:32
  That's it. You're going to ring it, so ring
• 20:34
  it up for. Yep, yeah.
• 20:36
  Because the human memory is garbage.
• 20:38
  It's garbage. So what is an indicator that
• 20:41
  something has been stolen rather than an honest mistake?
• 20:46
  Oh, oh man, I've never. That's a fascinating question
• 20:51
  that I don't know if I can answer.
• 20:52
  Let's see. Maybe think to like a an example
• 20:56
  of a client where that happened. You're like, oh, they stole
• 20:59
  something. Breaking up patterns.
• 21:03
  So once. Once it's an anomaly, so we do
• 21:07
  these reports, right? So once as an anomaly, twice as
• 21:09
  a coincidence, 3 times as a pattern.
• 21:12
  Most of our clients, their reports are fairly consistent.
• 21:15
  Some are are crazy, like the more complex content places can
• 21:18
  be all over the place. But that the chaos is created by
• 21:21
  the by the culture and design of the business.
• 21:25
  I had a client, Winwood, Winwood in Miami, beautiful
• 21:29
  neighborhood, the art district and nothing.
• 21:32
  No problems, no problems, no problems.
• 21:33
  They're always consistent, like 5% loss, 5% loss and or less.
• 21:38
  And one day I'm I this is back when I was doing the actual
• 21:41
  counts. They're like they're missing a
• 21:43
  bottle of Johnny Walker Gold in 1942.
• 21:45
  Don Julio. Like these are $100 plus
• 21:47
  bottles. But you're you're not, you're
• 21:50
  not selling a lot of those shots each night.
• 21:52
  So it's. They were, but they were not
• 21:55
  missing. Oh yeah, this is this.
• 21:57
  This is Miami, man. They sell all sorts of crazy
• 21:58
  expensive things here. I'm just a Midwest boy, What do
• 22:02
  I know? Dude, I, I say, let me say I was
• 22:05
  Mid-Atlantic and I come down here and they have these things
• 22:07
  called spray parties at the Hyde and on South Beach where you buy
• 22:12
  $10,000 worth of champagne. Don Perignon, you're not allowed
• 22:15
  to drink. You can only spray it in the
• 22:16
  air. And if you drink it, they kick
• 22:17
  you out or they charge it. Yeah, it doesn't cost it.
• 22:20
  Don't. It's Miami.
• 22:21
  It's a different, it's a different culture, my man.
• 22:24
  So, so, so the owner called, she said, Dave, there's no way.
• 22:27
  There's no way. I said, look, I'm telling you, I
• 22:29
  know this is right, but here's what I'm going to do next week.
• 22:31
  If it's over and it turns out I missed it, I'll, I'll discount
• 22:34
  your audit because if I screwed up that badly, I, I think you
• 22:37
  deserve some money back. So what I'm going to do is I'm
• 22:39
  going to start photographing all those bottles for you everywhere
• 22:41
  under business. And I did that missing, missing.
• 22:43
  Turns out there's a homeless guy.
• 22:45
  His name is Willie. He's famous in Miami for the
• 22:47
  people who know him, he was, they have this huge gate with
• 22:50
  the spikes or the top. He was shimming through because
• 22:52
  he got really skinny. He was shimming through and he
• 22:54
  had a bag outside and got to the back and he figured out they had
• 22:57
  this cabinet locked in the front.
• 22:58
  Whatever. And but Willie's persistent.
• 23:00
  So he, he would put his hand all the way back.
• 23:02
  Well, the back of the cabinet wasn't closed because they had
• 23:05
  this massive cooler there said that we don't have to seal this
• 23:08
  thing completely. We just have to make sure people
• 23:09
  can't get in the front of it. He would get in there and all
• 23:11
  the expensive bottles are in the back.
• 23:13
  So he's just grabbing whatever's there.
• 23:14
  And then he goes to the gate and he puts them through the fence
• 23:16
  and he puts them in the back and then he gets back through and
• 23:20
  takes his back and, you know, walks off and they, she sent me,
• 23:23
  she's like, you're never going to believe it.
• 23:24
  She sent me the video of this guy.
• 23:25
  And I'm like, wow. The determination for people to
• 23:28
  steal alcohol when they really want it is fascinating.
• 23:31
  So breaking the patterns would be would be one piece of it.
• 23:34
  But usually honestly, it comes down to eliminating everything
• 23:37
  else. First.
• 23:39
  I tell every client I work with us like First off, I'm not going
• 23:41
  to accuse your staff being thieves.
• 23:42
  In fact, when I do the staff presentation, I say I'm looking
• 23:45
  in this room based on that 8020. After that part, I say, look,
• 23:48
  that tells me that most people in here are honest people and
• 23:50
  I'm going to assume all of you are.
• 23:51
  You look like great people. So that's where I start.
• 23:53
  And then we start digging in. Well, do we need to put a wipe
• 23:56
  behind the bar? Are jitters properly calibrated?
• 23:59
  Does everybody know the recipe? Does everybody know the port?
• 24:01
  That's it. We'll go through all that first.
• 24:02
  And if the problem persists and if there is a thief who doesn't
• 24:05
  realize this is about to get serious, we can do spot ONS.
• 24:08
  So the client today, I'm actually setting up, they're
• 24:10
  going to count their own beer on our app.
• 24:12
  It's going to send it to us. We'll do all the rest of the
• 24:14
  math because the math gets crazy.
• 24:15
  And we'll tell them what they're missing per ship and they'll be
• 24:17
  able to say, OK, this ship, you're missing a case of beer.
• 24:19
  They start investigating into it.
• 24:21
  So that's, that's where that's the usual.
• 24:23
  It's boring. It's honestly boring hard work.
• 24:26
  What does your sales process look like?
• 24:29
  All right, So like to get a sales meeting or once I'm in a
• 24:35
  sales meeting? Walk us through both, Yeah.
• 24:38
  How do you prospect? And then once you're there, what
• 24:40
  does that conversation look like?
• 24:43
  All right, so prospecting. Most of it's the traditional
• 24:48
  hard work. There's a book that every
• 24:51
  franchise is told to read. I said they think they give it
• 24:53
  to us now there's two of them and they describe each side of
• 24:56
  it. Once called The Ultimate Sales
• 24:57
  Machine by Chet Holmes and it is the idea that book basically is
• 25:02
  it's a numbers game. So before the sales, obviously
• 25:05
  marketing I do, I do hard mailers, I do all that stuff.
• 25:08
  I do, we do the online stuff. Head office does optimization
• 25:12
  online and SEO and all that things.
• 25:14
  I'll go research. I'll use like AI tools like
• 25:17
  Apollo to go find owner e-mail addresses, whatever.
• 25:20
  I can set up emails. So I'm I'm pushing hard on all
• 25:23
  those aspects. Honestly, he's one of the best
• 25:27
  possible ways for me to get a non refer estimates.
• 25:30
  That's number one. But one of the best ways to get
• 25:32
  a non referral sale is it's just going in and meeting people.
• 25:34
  So part of the reason I'm sitting here at the Cafe and not
• 25:37
  in my office will want it's under construction.
• 25:38
  It's really dusty and messy, but there's a place down the road
• 25:41
  here that I want to get and I've been everyday.
• 25:44
  Then I'm here, I lunch there and I asked more more questions.
• 25:47
  I know the GM, the bar manager, it's a franchise.
• 25:50
  I've met the head of franchise development for them of VP level
• 25:55
  woman. I've got all this information
• 25:57
  and and emails like sometimes the owner comes to this
• 26:00
  location. So I'm I'm scoping this out.
• 26:02
  It's just the, it's a hard long work, right?
• 26:05
  But knocking on doors, creating relationships and asking for the
• 26:08
  sale, right? So it's saying, Hey, do you know
• 26:10
  anybody please put me in touch? We're on trying to get to so and
• 26:13
  so. Do you know that person?
• 26:15
  So that's, that's getting my foot in the door.
• 26:17
  If it's not, referrals are the easiest way to sell.
• 26:19
  It's, it's, it's nothing like it.
• 26:23
  So once I get in, though, there's, there's sort of two
• 26:27
  things that that I do and I don't, I don't have a script,
• 26:31
  but one is I'm, I'm asking a lot of questions about their
• 26:34
  business to, to get the information I need to determine
• 26:36
  whether or not it's a, it's a good fit.
• 26:38
  And then the second is I, I do everything I can to consult a
• 26:41
  bit while I'm there. So that's from the book Getting
• 26:43
  Naked by Patrick Lencioni. And the idea is you give away,
• 26:47
  you give away the the product while you're sitting there.
• 26:50
  In worst case scenario, I get somebody who goes, wow, you're a
• 26:53
  really nice person. Thanks.
• 26:54
  So I look at what's behind their bar.
• 26:56
  I look at the classic, the classic potential pitfalls and
• 26:59
  issues that I might be able to point out or discuss with them
• 27:03
  asking about the cost of goods and where they are.
• 27:04
  And they'll say, oh, what's the industry average?
• 27:06
  And I'll explain why that's a fallacy and how to really dig
• 27:09
  into it and know what that means for you.
• 27:12
  Sometimes I don't even talk much about inventory, you know,
• 27:17
  because they're like, look, I want to have somebody in my
• 27:20
  business who understands stuff and is smart about it, and it's
• 27:22
  nice to me. It's relationships, right?
• 27:24
  I've got sales anyways. But in our industry, it's even
• 27:28
  more. It's more of an elevated
• 27:30
  cultural ideal. This is the hospitality
• 27:32
  industry. You better learn to be nice if
• 27:34
  you so, so that that's that's a piece of it.
• 27:38
  But then you know, I'll get into the debt, the data, how we do
• 27:41
  it. Make sure they understand that.
• 27:42
  And if they want to usually say you want to see the reports, you
• 27:46
  want to talk and they're like, sure.
• 27:47
  Other times like Nope, I can see, you know what you're doing.
• 27:51
  I need this done. Let's do it.
• 27:53
  So it's a pretty it's a concentrated process.
• 27:56
  I say more than anything. Is the biggest resistance in
• 28:01
  that sales process from folks who are considering a competitor
• 28:05
  of some kind, or just the status quo, just not using a service at
• 28:11
  all? #2 our industry is, I think,
• 28:18
  famously resistant to to technology and and and change.
• 28:23
  A lot of places believe my bar lands was higher, and that's
• 28:29
  great. I get it.
• 28:30
  I totally understand it. That's how I was hired.
• 28:33
  And the owner that I worked for, Patrick, was a bit homogeneous
• 28:37
  in some of those senses. But I mean, he was like, yeah,
• 28:39
  this is the way to go. So part of what I'm getting past
• 28:42
  there and yeah, that's probably my biggest objection is that why
• 28:44
  would I? Why would I bring you?
• 28:45
  And I already got I got to do it.
• 28:47
  Part of that that that conversation comes down to, you
• 28:52
  know, discussing is that the right person to do this job?
• 28:55
  And not to say that they're, you know, they're not good at a lot
• 28:58
  of things, but most, most bar people are hired because they or
• 29:04
  do this because they like people.
• 29:05
  They like to create a process. They're not looking to count
• 29:08
  stuff at 234 in the morning after running a long shift.
• 29:11
  So that's the second piece. It's like they're doing at a
• 29:13
  time when they're already exhausted, done and wiped out.
• 29:16
  Then you have that the fox guard in the hen house, right?
• 29:18
  So the person who inherently is creating those numbers is now
• 29:21
  reporting on those numbers and the best person in the world.
• 29:25
  Again, I'm not going to fire myself.
• 29:28
  I don't like getting yelled at. That's human nature.
• 29:31
  And then the others, the other, the last piece of it in that
• 29:34
  conversation, which again, yes, is the biggest objection, is we
• 29:38
  do this and nothing but this. I've got guys who we get there.
• 29:41
  I find that people who actually like counting stuff and your bar
• 29:44
  manager doesn't. My guys do it tracks to
• 29:47
  constantly. They're doing this three to five
• 29:49
  times a day, five days a week. And we know what to do with the
• 29:53
  data and we can help you get there and then and the
• 29:55
  information we can help you get there.
• 29:56
  And there's so much more information than they realize
• 30:00
  that's available to them to help them guide and make decisions in
• 30:03
  their business than than they, if you're just counting for
• 30:07
  ordering, like most places, they're counting to place an
• 30:09
  order. They don't even know why they're
• 30:11
  ordering as much as they are, right?
• 30:12
  They don't know if it's because somebody threw away 10 bottles
• 30:15
  or something, or they poured it for a gas.
• 30:16
  They're just going out. I don't have enough.
• 30:18
  I'm going to order it. And and that's where that's
• 30:20
  where it ends for most people where we're going, OK, let's
• 30:22
  optimize your profitability. So in that sales process, you're
• 30:27
  obviously trying to talk to the owner.
• 30:28
  That's your preference. That's sort of your your target
• 30:31
  and is the person who is responsible for that role
• 30:37
  technically now usually a part of that conversation.
• 30:41
  Depends because it. Seemed to maybe get a little.
• 30:44
  Uncomfortable. It could, yeah.
• 30:48
  But here is great point. So the other side of that is
• 30:53
  I'll ask a part. First of all, ask for a major
• 30:55
  like, do you really want to do this?
• 30:57
  Do you really want to keep counting stuff?
• 30:59
  What if I could show you exactly what's happening in your
• 31:01
  business and instead of doing the owner and saying the cost of
• 31:05
  goods are 23% this month. Why hell no saying yeah, our
• 31:10
  costs are here and it's because the bottle of beer and we work
• 31:12
  for our metrics and we're going to do spot counts and we're
• 31:15
  training staff on proper chlorine of Dennis and this that
• 31:18
  that that that we're going to have the gas lines check because
• 31:21
  there's a problem there. And have a drama free
• 31:23
  conversation with your with your boss about what you're going to
• 31:26
  do rather than I don't know and please don't yell at me.
• 31:30
  We work with managers really, really hard.
• 31:32
  In fact, I mentioned earlier referrals being our number one,
• 31:35
  our number one sales process. We just last week had a manager
• 31:41
  tell us his buddy is going to call us because he used us at
• 31:44
  one place, took us to another place, told his manager buddy
• 31:48
  that they're going to bring us in.
• 31:49
  So we've created a very strong culture of respecting that level
• 31:52
  of that unemployment level. Like those people who are, you
• 31:55
  know, we're going to make sure that we're not going to increase
• 31:57
  your ability to yell that. And then if there is a place
• 31:59
  where it looks like you've made a mistake and we're going to let
• 32:02
  you know first, we're not going to just throw you under the bus.
• 32:04
  So you'll be prepared for whatever's going to happen.
• 32:06
  That happens. We say, hey, man, so sorry, this
• 32:08
  is this data, this data here, this didn't happen.
• 32:11
  I have to put it in the e-mail. They're like, thank you for
• 32:12
  telling me. So we just make sure they
• 32:14
  understand we're not we're not a guest.
• 32:15
  So we ally with every level of business, top to bottom.
• 32:18
  You're on the same team, ultimately.
• 32:20
  Yeah, that's right. I have drama three conversation.
• 32:24
  Did I hear that correctly? What is that?
• 32:26
  Drama free. Drama free.
• 32:27
  Oh, drama. Free.
• 32:29
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's levels to
• 32:31
  these conversations. It gets more dramatic as they go
• 32:34
  along. That's right, yeah, screaming
• 32:37
  matches. And so you, you own a franchise
• 32:41
  and your franchise is specifically South Florida,
• 32:43
  Miami. Miami-Dade, Broward County and
• 32:47
  then I also own all of Michigan except for Detroit.
• 32:51
  So you spend a fair bit of time going back and forth.
• 32:54
  I do, yeah, I have. I have a partner down here,
• 32:57
  actually invited him last year, Ryan Lagos, he's my operations
• 33:01
  manager and we invited him to be a partner in 2025 and he runs
• 33:08
  the operations here. He's he's amazing.
• 33:10
  So I don't have to be here all the time.
• 33:12
  So is most of your focus now in the state of Michigan?
• 33:17
  No, no, actually it's still here we are.
• 33:22
  We are in the middle of doing a redesign of a of a critical
• 33:26
  position in our business called the account manager.
• 33:29
  And we've split it into multiple positions sort of to match a
• 33:33
  standard professional services firm that was a book called
• 33:36
  Managing Professional Services Firm by David H Meister.
• 33:40
  And effectively so our, our business is very much akin to
• 33:44
  accounts here, right. So auditing is a, is a, is a
• 33:47
  subset of accounting, but it also goes along with lawyers,
• 33:51
  accountants, insurance, rate of service.
• 33:53
  And the way that our business was built is kind of like having
• 33:58
  an attorney and saying you're going to do all the research for
• 34:01
  your case, build the case, file all the paperwork, litigate it
• 34:04
  with the judge, then file the paperwork afterwards, do all the
• 34:08
  payments, do all this and then go get more, go get more
• 34:12
  clients. It's that level of ridiculous
• 34:15
  amount of weight on their shoulders.
• 34:17
  And so we split that apart and. So many different skill sets
• 34:20
  like. Yeah, two different personality
• 34:22
  types, right? I got data guys and I got
• 34:24
  coaches and they don't, they're not like me, which I made a
• 34:27
  mistake. I'm like, oh, I'm an extrovert
• 34:28
  who loves data, everybody stupid.
• 34:30
  It's a classic owner mistake, right?
• 34:32
  If I could do it. So, so right now we're, we're,
• 34:36
  we're launching now we're in the middle of launching it.
• 34:38
  And so I'm I'm, I'm focused almost 100% of Miami.
• 34:41
  And once that's launched, the other side is it's, it's
• 34:43
  designed to help us scale better.
• 34:45
  So I will be marketing and selling aggressively here.
• 34:48
  However, once that starts, I will do it in both markets.
• 34:50
  And then I'll be shifting, shifting attention to Michigan.
• 34:55
  So that's mostly. All of Michigan except Detroit
• 34:58
  and then was it 3 counties in South Florida?
• 35:01
  2 Miami-Dade is so Miami is called Miami-Dade here, all
• 35:05
  right. And then Kevin Broward, it's a
• 35:07
  lot of space. And and which has more
• 35:13
  customers? Which has more potential?
• 35:16
  I mean, I'm gonna guess. I mean, yeah.
• 35:18
  I mean this is, this is. Not even close, right?
• 35:21
  Not even close. This is like some of the
• 35:23
  franchisees. They we love each other, but
• 35:24
  they're like, I hate you for having a territory like that,
• 35:27
  like insufficient a barrel. Man.
• 35:28
  There's so many places here and the mentality here is different
• 35:31
  than I've ever seen. They accept, they accept
• 35:34
  outsourcing in Miami more than like I did Baltimore.
• 35:37
  DCI actually sold there. And it was sometimes a struggle
• 35:40
  to get them to like get the idea of like, I can outsource this
• 35:43
  like I do other things here. They're like, do tell managers
• 35:46
  are like, oh, can you please come in?
• 35:47
  I don't want to do this part of the job.
• 35:49
  They're not they don't even care that I'm going to like make,
• 35:51
  expose, whatever. So that mentality is, is very,
• 35:54
  very different. The culture, and this is, I
• 35:56
  think it's a Latin influence, but the culture here is very
• 35:58
  much, hey, let's get the right person to do the job and
• 36:00
  outsource it too. What's a good target for you?
• 36:06
  Is there like a certain size bar that is like, oh, if they're I
• 36:11
  don't and I don't even know how you measure it, but like what
• 36:14
  what's what's a good target for you?
• 36:17
  So my ideal, like Juicy client, I would love to have they have a
• 36:21
  they have a simple bar, they've got about 200 different skews
• 36:25
  and they've got a liquor room. And, and if, if I'm, if I'm
• 36:29
  getting my wish list, no kegs, I have to get guys have to put
• 36:32
  those kegs. And that's, that's difficult and
• 36:35
  can be dangerous. And they're doing 20 to $30,000
• 36:41
  a week minimum. That's that's my deal starting
• 36:43
  for me. I can get in out of those.
• 36:44
  They're great. They're thoughtful for me.
• 36:47
  However, I have like Sweet Liberty on South Beach.
• 36:50
  They've got, I mean, you just go there and count.
• 36:52
  It's like 708 hundred SKUs. They have this massive back
• 36:55
  where you have to get out of ladder to count.
• 36:58
  They batch a lot. You can see on the background.
• 37:00
  There's all these batches back there, very much more complex.
• 37:03
  Still a great client, love to work, they're fun to work with,
• 37:05
  but but I wouldn't say they're in terms of like, you know, the
• 37:09
  back end of my profitability and all that stuff.
• 37:12
  They're not my ideal, but I love working with them and frankly,
• 37:15
  it's a bit of prestige. They're in the top 100 bar list
• 37:18
  often and they have a storied history.
• 37:21
  So when I say people like, oh, we're super wow and they give it
• 37:24
  so. Is there a minimum size under
• 37:28
  which it just kind of doesn't make sense for everybody?
• 37:31
  You go into this, you go into a sushi place and they're doing
• 37:35
  beer and a little bit of wine. I'm not going to be able to make
• 37:38
  you money. And I've all like I said.
• 37:41
  So in 2026, we're launching our new food program.
• 37:44
  The problem with food is so liquor, we count everything and
• 37:47
  then they then we do that in class like, Oh, count on my food
• 37:49
  and well, that doesn't work. It's it's not cost effective for
• 37:52
  you. It's too much stuff, It's too
• 37:54
  complex. So our head office, one of our,
• 37:57
  our head office guys, one of the owners is obsessed with getting
• 38:00
  food working properly. So they're redesigning
• 38:02
  everything, which is great. I love it because that opens me
• 38:05
  up to that sushi bar because where I couldn't make you money
• 38:07
  on your liquor. If I do your liquor and your
• 38:09
  food and it's, it's fish, it's sushi, great fish.
• 38:12
  I think I'm making you money. And that's the thing, like I
• 38:14
  don't, I don't like working with people.
• 38:17
  I can't make money. I've actually had two sales
• 38:19
  meetings I can remember where their variants are so tight.
• 38:21
  So we we do a process called discovery view.
• 38:24
  Part of it's free. Some different options operate
• 38:26
  differently for us. We have a database set up fee we
• 38:28
  have to charge actually have to cover our cost.
• 38:30
  But then the audit, the fee for the audits were like, hey, at
• 38:33
  the end, if you like this, pay that.
• 38:34
  If you don't, don't pay that. And by the way, if you think
• 38:37
  this was stupid and I'm and I'm a total scam, I'll give you back
• 38:40
  the rest of my 2 whatever. Like I'm not sitting here trying
• 38:43
  to nickel die people. And it's kind of like they say
• 38:46
  with drug dealers, right? They give them a taste.
• 38:48
  It's rare that I do that and people don't go please take my
• 38:51
  money. I'm actually, I just said like
• 38:52
  this doesn't work, but please save my money because that was
• 38:54
  interesting. So I've had two clients where
• 38:56
  like they're variants to like 5 or 7% losses.
• 39:00
  And I said I can't. But if you, if you just want the
• 39:03
  and actually 1/3, I forgot about him, an Irish guy in DC, his he
• 39:07
  was at 7%. He's like, I want you.
• 39:09
  I just want to know. I always want to know like, OK,
• 39:11
  fine, but I'm not going to make you money.
• 39:12
  He's like, that's fine. That's not what I'm paying you
• 39:14
  for. Cool.
• 39:15
  I like making people more money, though.
• 39:17
  That's my, that's my personal target.
• 39:19
  So how are you guys going to wrap your arms around the food?
• 39:23
  So our process already kind of is we do a subset high, high
• 39:29
  cost, high volume items. So that could be steak, it could
• 39:34
  be French fries, a burger place, and I've done this, I have done
• 39:38
  food in the past. A burger place is going to be
• 39:39
  losing around 250 lbs of French fries and not even realize how
• 39:44
  it's happening, why it's happening.
• 39:45
  It's all simple stuff. Dropping through your fries at
• 39:47
  the end of an order, having too many fries go out, you see like
• 39:49
  plates coming back half full while you're putting a lot on
• 39:51
  there. So, so we're going to continue
• 39:55
  that. But what what do they know?
• 39:58
  What are what most owners want is the result.
• 40:02
  They don't necessarily want to know how many bushels of parsley
• 40:06
  are in their block in cooler. They want to know their food
• 40:09
  cost is properly maximized and their plate costs are properly,
• 40:13
  properly calculated and maintained, especially with the
• 40:16
  fluctuating cost of everything. So we're we're working on a on a
• 40:19
  platform that allows us to do that, that part of it.
• 40:22
  And I could do it today because there's other platforms out
• 40:26
  there. I'm a natural learner.
• 40:27
  I'll learn whatever. But in terms of scaling, I'm
• 40:31
  waiting for head office to finish that process.
• 40:33
  And they're putting together a package that'll explain it well,
• 40:37
  so that when I sit down with somebody, say here's they say,
• 40:40
  can you count my foot and say, you don't want me to do that.
• 40:42
  I know what you're asking, but let me show you what you really
• 40:44
  want. And they'll go, oh, yeah, that
• 40:45
  makes more sense. Got it.
• 40:47
  Just focusing on those higher ticket items it sounds like.
• 40:50
  Higher ticket items. Plate costings and then just,
• 40:53
  you know, monitoring the the cost as they come through.
• 40:56
  Yeah. Interesting.
• 40:58
  Talk to us about the inspiration behind writing the first book,
• 41:02
  Bar Shift. I love, I love your I love your
• 41:05
  your topic switches. By the way, if you see me keep
• 41:06
  smiling like that, I'm like, oh, great, new one.
• 41:09
  So so the first book, the bar shift.
• 41:14
  So I was, I was starting my I was in my first year, I think,
• 41:18
  yeah, yeah, yeah, my first year is around November and Dave
• 41:21
  Mitzel, who owns he owns the Atlanta market, calls me up.
• 41:26
  He's like, hey man, what do you think about writing like a 12
• 41:28
  tips for Christmas kind of a thing for our clients?
• 41:30
  I'm like, sure, why not? I was a new owner.
• 41:34
  I was, I was honestly caught up in caught up in in what I think
• 41:38
  is classic of, you know, I went from employee 20 years, whatever
• 41:42
  to owner. And I'm like, oh, freedom.
• 41:44
  And looking back in terms of I should have been selling more
• 41:49
  instead of writing a book. It was not the right decision.
• 41:52
  But now I've got this best selling book that I can use as
• 41:54
  my I go and I'm like, I'm like, why should I listen?
• 41:56
  I'm like, well, read this book if you agree with this.
• 41:57
  That's my head. So that worked out well for me,
• 42:00
  I guess. But he says, why don't we do
• 42:02
  this? I said, OK, so we write down.
• 42:04
  I said, well, first thing we have to do, because I'm the
• 42:05
  organizational one. He's very much the people
• 42:07
  creative guy. We're a good team through this
• 42:09
  stuff. I said, let's write down
• 42:11
  everything, all the tips that we could do and we got to like
• 42:13
  4142. Oh no, no, we got to like 4546.
• 42:17
  I realized there's some, there's some extra ones in there and he
• 42:19
  goes and we, we got it down to 41.
• 42:20
  He goes look instead and again, super successful.
• 42:25
  I was like, that sounds like fun.
• 42:26
  I could do whatever I want. I owe my business.
• 42:28
  So we did. I started writing out writing
• 42:31
  out chapters. If you read the bar shift, it
• 42:34
  is. So it's our best selling book.
• 42:36
  We sold around 10,000 cop No, we sold over 10,000 copies now over
• 42:40
  the last eight years and it remains on the the top like
• 42:43
  generally top 100 usually, but it peaks up in like the teens
• 42:46
  frequently, which is really cool to see because I'm not an
• 42:48
  author. It is a practical book that
• 42:52
  salsa needs. The the tagline is 41 management
• 42:55
  lessons. You don't have to learn the hard
• 42:56
  way. And we either get the feedback
• 42:59
  we get is either this taught me so much because I never run a
• 43:01
  bar. I didn't manage a bar.
• 43:03
  I didn't know what I was taught and and that's why we did the
• 43:06
  first why I did it in the first place.
• 43:08
  When he when he pitched this idea, I said, well, you know, I
• 43:10
  was a bar manager. I know he taught me.
• 43:12
  I had to learn most of this either by realizing he didn't
• 43:14
  know something and asking a question or screwing it up and
• 43:17
  going, well, what should I have done?
• 43:20
  So that was part of the part of the purpose.
• 43:24
  But it's, it's incredibly approachable and quick to read.
• 43:27
  So, so people sit down. I, I call it a bathroom book
• 43:29
  because you can read a chapter like 5 minutes.
• 43:32
  It's there or less. And, and it, and it's, it's very
• 43:34
  light. It's all, it's what you call it,
• 43:36
  all the bacon out of the fat. But the writing is, it's not
• 43:41
  great. It's fine, you know, like it's
• 43:43
  not a point. It gets a point, but people buy
• 43:46
  it. They're like, oh, dude, I don't
• 43:48
  care about the right. This is I get it now.
• 43:49
  OK, so that's, you know, that was it.
• 43:52
  You know, Dave asked me to do it and I said, man, I wish I'd had
• 43:55
  something like this when I was starting the industry.
• 43:57
  And now I when I started hiring an employee to get a copy, I
• 44:00
  start to decline. I give him copies.
• 44:01
  I give away probably as many as I sell.
• 44:05
  How about the second book, A Tale of Two Taverns?
• 44:08
  Oh, that's the third. Oh, that's the third book.
• 44:10
  Oh, sorry, I just gave that away.
• 44:11
  OK, Hospitality, DNADNA. And then we'll get to the new
• 44:14
  one. Yeah.
• 44:15
  So hospitality DNA was that's our baby.
• 44:22
  That was a three-year research project.
• 44:24
  And yeah, so after after the bar shift, Metzel said we got to
• 44:28
  write another book. I was like, dude, I'm busy.
• 44:30
  And then COVID hits. He goes, you got time now?
• 44:32
  Well, my wife and I start another business.
• 44:34
  I was like, I'm busy. He dragged me kicking and
• 44:36
  screaming. He's like, here's the deal, I'm
• 44:38
  going to start writing and doing the interviews.
• 44:40
  You're going to catch up because he knows me.
• 44:41
  It's, it's annoying. And he was right.
• 44:43
  I did. So what we originally conceived
• 44:47
  it as was we're going to interview all these top industry
• 44:50
  professionals and we're going to distill how they do hospitality.
• 44:54
  That was going to be it Like it was going to be, how do you
• 44:56
  create hospitality? And as we started going through,
• 44:59
  we realized they all have the same damn answer and they don't,
• 45:01
  they don't 100% articulate it in the in the way that we wanted
• 45:05
  them to. But as we were discussing our
• 45:07
  first like four or five interview interviews, which were
• 45:09
  all amazing and fascinated and like, because people had time,
• 45:11
  they were like 1-2, three hours. It was brilliant.
• 45:15
  We realized what we had was we started realizing these we were
• 45:19
  getting to like their superpowers on how did they do
• 45:22
  what they did, like get to where they were because these are we,
• 45:25
  we had access just because of what we do.
• 45:27
  We had access to these award-winning people.
• 45:29
  And, and the entire concept of the book changed from how do you
• 45:35
  do hospitality 2? What does it take to become
• 45:40
  number one in your field in hospital?
• 45:42
  And we call it the Helix. And I won't spoil the broth, but
• 45:45
  Helix stands for you, though. It's Helix.
• 45:48
  And they're these, these five things.
• 45:50
  And then there's a, there's a bunch of other subtraits that go
• 45:52
  underneath that, that drive to it.
• 45:53
  My favorite of those is humble nature.
• 45:55
  We found that and that was one that's that surprise.
• 45:59
  It actually surprised us. You approached this like good to
• 46:00
  great you you Jim Collins, great book.
• 46:03
  We we approached it more as a research thing.
• 46:05
  We didn't know we were if we didn't have it at that point,
• 46:07
  right at first we did, but they were like, well, there's just a
• 46:09
  thing. We we decided to go through and
• 46:12
  say, OK, well, let's let's let's look at what we get from each
• 46:17
  person and just still out and teach out lesson.
• 46:19
  So humble nature came about that almost every single one of these
• 46:23
  people. We said, well, what, how, how do
• 46:26
  you attribute your success like almost to a man was like, oh, my
• 46:29
  team. Like what about you?
• 46:30
  Like, ah, no, no, that's not me. That's my team.
• 46:33
  But you see these big crazy personalities on TV like Gordon
• 46:36
  Ramsay or Barb Italic or whoever, and it's like they
• 46:40
  don't seem humble at all. It turns out if you dig into it,
• 46:42
  Gordon Ramsay's a really nice guy and he says he's like, no,
• 46:45
  it's my team. Like so it's like, that's my TV
• 46:47
  for a sound. That's not who I am.
• 46:49
  And so that, that one's kind of support me, like I, I personally
• 46:53
  love that one. And it surprised us a bit.
• 46:55
  So it's, it sees those things. What does it take and see
• 46:57
  stories and journeys and, and, and we, we took a lot of effort
• 47:01
  to make sure that we did service to the people that we
• 47:03
  interviewed to tell their stories well.
• 47:05
  So we spent a lot of time on it. So it was a year of interviewing
• 47:07
  about 27 people. And then it was a year of
• 47:10
  research, like, what do we get out of this?
• 47:12
  And then it was a year of writing and editing and writing
• 47:15
  and re editing. And we spent, we actually spent
• 47:18
  a lot of money on a, on a company like the sort of a, we
• 47:21
  call it publishing company to, to help us with the book and
• 47:27
  writing the book. And it sells significantly less
• 47:29
  than the barship that cost like 2 grand to do.
• 47:32
  But I love it. It's my, I think it's like my
• 47:35
  openness, but it just doesn't solve a need.
• 47:37
  I don't think. I don't know.
• 47:38
  OK, so that was going to be my question.
• 47:40
  Were you hoping to make money from this?
• 47:41
  Was the Scratching an itch like a passion project for you?
• 47:45
  Yeah, it's more of a passion project, but we're like, hey, we
• 47:47
  think we can we can write something that'll make some
• 47:49
  money. And the guy at the post come and
• 47:50
  tell us you're not going to make money off your book.
• 47:52
  This is a marketing tool. That's what it is.
• 47:53
  It was the beginning of that. Like, you know, everybody writes
• 47:55
  a book now for marketing. It was the beginning of that
• 47:57
  era. And so, you know, they told us
• 48:00
  we didn't believe them. We didn't care.
• 48:02
  So, but yeah, it it sells, like it sells about 4:00 to 1:00,
• 48:07
  which is I'm happy those numbers compared to the barship, but the
• 48:11
  barship sells a need super approachable.
• 48:14
  We attended an interview the other day and the guy was like,
• 48:17
  yeah, he's like, I love hospitality DNA.
• 48:18
  But that book, you got to read it and then reread it and think
• 48:21
  about it. The barship, you just go just.
• 48:25
  It's just much more like quickly digestible.
• 48:27
  You can do a chat 2 hours 5 minutes and.
• 48:29
  Yeah. And each chapter you're pulling
• 48:31
  like an idea from like, oh, that might be OK, that's what I'm
• 48:35
  already doing. But that one I'm not doing yet.
• 48:37
  Like OK. Let's well, I used to do that.
• 48:38
  Why don't I do that anymore? Yeah.
• 48:41
  OK, now let's talk about the new book that, by the time this
• 48:45
  interview comes out, hopefully is available on Amazon.
• 48:49
  Tale of Two Taverns. What's behind the title?
• 48:52
  So the behind the title, the title.
• 48:55
  So this is a business fable and we think it's the first business
• 48:59
  fable written for the restaurant industry.
• 49:01
  We're pretty sure I haven't been able to find one.
• 49:03
  So I'm like, I'm kind of proud. That's kind of cool.
• 49:06
  It's a story about a guy named Jim who is corporate and just
• 49:09
  like I did, he's like, I'm going to start a restaurant.
• 49:12
  I can do this if I can, if I can be AVP of what I think.
• 49:15
  I can't remember its exact position of corporate sales.
• 49:18
  I I can, I can open a restaurant and across the street and he
• 49:22
  opens up a restaurant. He's called, it's called
• 49:24
  scheduled maintenance because again, we think we're clever.
• 49:27
  Across the street is the Wonderland owned by Alice.
• 49:31
  We're clever. It's it, you know, it's business
• 49:34
  available. So it's just not cheese and
• 49:35
  there's a lot of cheesiness and, and, but it's, it is a, at its
• 49:40
  heart, I see it as a culture book.
• 49:43
  It doesn't teach you how to do culture, but it's a conversation
• 49:45
  about a particular aspect of culture going into like a people
• 49:49
  first mentality, but internally inside the business.
• 49:52
  So our industry, there's two pieces to it.
• 49:55
  One, our industry has gone through some major shifts in the
• 49:58
  last 20 years. When I started a car, a fancy
• 50:01
  cocktail was a cosmopolitan. tgi Friday's was the epitome of
• 50:05
  cocktail. They were prestigious.
• 50:07
  You went there to learn. Then we went through the revival
• 50:11
  of Prohibition cocktails and and molecular gas gastronomy and all
• 50:18
  this like really crazy amazing content and that became the
• 50:21
  culture. It was like the cocktail better
• 50:22
  be best because if it is then your test, then it went to
• 50:25
  experiences. We need to go to the guest and
• 50:28
  my writing partner, Dave Metzel. And I believe that another shift
• 50:33
  is happening and those who get ahead of it are doing very, very
• 50:36
  well. And you can see it.
• 50:37
  And if you look at the back end of operations, which is I was
• 50:39
  telling you, I was looking at your, your catalog, and there's
• 50:42
  quite a few people that you've interviewed who have a really
• 50:44
  strong HR focus and, and working with their people and focusing
• 50:47
  on the people that is, that is the space that we see coming up.
• 50:51
  And our clients who are embracing that and doing that
• 50:54
  are actually not having the issues that a lot of people are
• 50:56
  with. Like my sales are way down
• 50:59
  because they're, they're basically by taking care of the
• 51:03
  people behind the bar, that gives them the mental space
• 51:05
  capacity to just easily and naturally provide that
• 51:08
  experience and taking care of the guest.
• 51:11
  That's not to say it's a magic pill.
• 51:14
  So that's sort of the concept without without spoiling the
• 51:16
  book. There's a there's a plot, a
• 51:18
  subplot. We've had a couple people read
• 51:20
  it saying this is brilliant, fascinating.
• 51:22
  It's about an hour and a half read and you come away some with
• 51:25
  with some really good stuff. The concepts basically come from
• 51:29
  not basically the concepts come from hospitality, DNA and the
• 51:33
  bar shift, but they aren't taught out like that.
• 51:35
  The bar shift is is lessons. Hospitality is research and
• 51:38
  data. This is a story so you can you
• 51:41
  can grab, which is how I think, you know, culture books work.
• 51:44
  I mentioned earlier getting Naked by Patrick Poncione,
• 51:48
  that's a culture book. It's a, it's about a cultural
• 51:50
  ideal of, of coaching and giving away, giving away while you're
• 51:54
  selling rather than trying to do this transactional thing.
• 51:58
  That's a cultural ideal. So in the same sense that's
• 52:00
  that's what this book is and I think it works best for the
• 52:02
  business people that concept. It's interesting to hear what
• 52:05
  this concept is about, Dave. And I think you're right from
• 52:09
  the conversations that I've had, there's increasingly a focus on,
• 52:14
  yeah, I hear lots of people, you know, tell the stories about,
• 52:17
  you know, in the old days, you know, talking about sort of, you
• 52:21
  know, back of house in the kitchen, you know, they're
• 52:23
  throwing plates. They're, you know, it's, it's,
• 52:25
  it's sort of like what you see on the right on the, the, the,
• 52:28
  the crazy TV shows and they're like, that doesn't fly anymore.
• 52:32
  Like people, they don't put up with that.
• 52:34
  Like, you know, there's, there's a big shift that has happened
• 52:38
  and is continuing to happen. And it's like you've got to be
• 52:41
  more receptive to what people are experiencing it in their
• 52:46
  personal lives. And you have to do a better job
• 52:50
  of making this a place that they enjoy working at.
• 52:54
  Yeah, and I think I think that's something lovely that the
• 52:56
  younger generations have brought us.
• 52:57
  I'm Gen. X.
• 52:58
  I'm like, do your job. It's black and white.
• 53:00
  You're here to do a job and shut up.
• 53:02
  Like why it's a job. I know parts suck about it and
• 53:06
  I've had to learn to soften and I have I love my team now and
• 53:09
  I've embraced that. And I think we got pushed by the
• 53:12
  millennials or the OR the gents ears to be like, Hey, you need
• 53:16
  to be nicer to be like, please care about what I feel And, and
• 53:21
  you know what the culture of the company is.
• 53:22
  And you know, I don't see that as a bad thing.
• 53:25
  And that coming from a guy who's like, do your job.
• 53:27
  But that's how I produce myself, right?
• 53:29
  That's how I I worked. I like it.
• 53:32
  I got to say I like it. I'm embracing my own business.
• 53:35
  That's awesome. You know, Dave, in my
• 53:38
  experience, behind every success story there is usually a chapter
• 53:42
  that almost broke somewhat. Can you share a serious
• 53:46
  challenge that you've gone through, personal professional
• 53:49
  and how you got through that? Sure, yeah.
• 53:57
  The I'll start, I'll start with the time and then and then I
• 54:00
  guess how I got through. So for me it's, it is, it's a
• 54:02
  classic and so many people say, and it's almost cliches, it was
• 54:05
  COVID. But what everybody knows is the
• 54:09
  restaurant industry was shut down to, to whatever degree in
• 54:14
  Florida. It wasn't shut down for that
• 54:15
  long. But once it was opened up, it
• 54:17
  was, you know, the restrictions. So Ron DeSantis was like, I
• 54:20
  think it was like 2 to three months.
• 54:21
  He's like, OK, we're open it back up, get get out there and
• 54:23
  do whatever. But 25 percent, 50% this, this,
• 54:27
  this, this, this. So while people get that the
• 54:32
  secondary service industry to the to the bar and restaurant
• 54:36
  industry actually had to wait longer because they they start
• 54:40
  up, We need not to get to let them ramp back up and get enough
• 54:43
  revenue where they can afford to do stuff like what we're doing.
• 54:47
  And so it was, it was really tough.
• 54:49
  And I am of the mentality that I don't break, I bend, but you can
• 54:55
  bend me really hard where it hurts, like it really, really
• 54:58
  hurts. And going from, so going into
• 55:01
  COVID, I was doing about $4300 a week.
• 55:04
  That's how we, we do everything in our business.
• 55:06
  That's how we think about our, our revenue because it sees
• 55:09
  weekly audits or by weekly audits.
• 55:10
  So I was seeing about 4300 and I was about to close a new client
• 55:13
  that would put me at 4700. I was approaching this magical
• 55:16
  benchmark in our company, which is 5 grand a week.
• 55:18
  That's like a tipping point in part measures and that client
• 55:22
  that I was supposed to do, I'm literally in the business and I
• 55:24
  knew the guy well. I'd known for a while and he'd
• 55:27
  open up this new place and I'm I'm counting the bar and we're
• 55:29
  watching the TV going bars closed, they're shutting down
• 55:33
  restaurants. I'm like, and I went from
• 55:37
  growing my business. I had two employees to zero.
• 55:42
  And of course my landlord was a piece of human garbage.
• 55:44
  And I was like, you're going to have to pay me with what?
• 55:49
  Like I got some reserves, but they ain't going to last money.
• 55:52
  And I said, what happened to all people kick you out?
• 55:55
  And and so that was that was existential.
• 56:03
  You know, like I said, I I don't see, I never saw that as like
• 56:08
  I'm going to fail here now. I had backups.
• 56:10
  I called my mom. I'm 40 something.
• 56:12
  I'm like came on. This is like, girl, come back in
• 56:14
  with you. It's like Sarah, like bring my
• 56:16
  wife and dogs like it's fine. I'm like, OK, so we gotta you
• 56:19
  know, I had a safety net. Some people didn't have that.
• 56:22
  So that made it easier, I guess. Well, I guess I'm sure that made
• 56:25
  it easier than took a lot of people.
• 56:27
  But I'm, I'm a big opportunities are or sorry, challenges are
• 56:31
  opportunities in disguise. And I also I have a tenacity.
• 56:35
  I cannot, I don't see failure. I will not fail.
• 56:37
  I refuse to fail. I don't have a reverse in my
• 56:40
  gearbox. And so I, I just started digging
• 56:43
  into all the government programs, figuring out, making
• 56:45
  sure my guys are taken care of. That was how I, that was the
• 56:47
  main way I focused through it is to say, OK, I'm going to take
• 56:50
  care of my family, obviously, but I had reserves, but I
• 56:53
  didn't, my guys did. And I said, I'm going to my
• 56:55
  first focus at PPPERCS. And then at one point I said,
• 56:59
  I'm laying you off so you can go get so you can go get
• 57:02
  unemployment. Go get it.
• 57:03
  It's amazing. It's too much money to ignore if
• 57:06
  you won't be fired enough. As soon as I can rehire him, I
• 57:09
  did. And so that was, you know, that
• 57:14
  was it. I think it's classic.
• 57:15
  A lot of people have that exact same story.
• 57:18
  But I like it was I made asleep in 2017 and then three years
• 57:24
  later, it's like, was this a stupid decision?
• 57:28
  So on the beauty is 2021, I grew by 560% and by the end of that
• 57:33
  year, I was double when I was going into actually more than
• 57:36
  double going into COVID. So I had hit the tipping point.
• 57:39
  COVID paused it. And then it was just like I
• 57:41
  freaking shot to the moon in 2021.
• 57:44
  Why do you think you found that rocket fuel after COVID?
• 57:50
  Referrals, So I mentioned earlier on today, I can't
• 57:52
  remember if you're recording, if that's what you're not, but so
• 57:55
  there's a there's a concepts by a guy named Oh, I can't remember
• 57:59
  his name right now, but I'll remember.
• 58:00
  It's called the four referability habits and Vern
• 58:03
  Harnish. Vern Harnish out of out of
• 58:05
  Sydney, Australia break a smart guy.
• 58:07
  He's ACEO coach. I tell people, if you haven't
• 58:10
  heard of Vern Harness, it's probably because you're not as
• 58:11
  CEO yet, because he's the real deal and he's sitting around
• 58:15
  with the seal buddies one day. He's like, what's the easiest
• 58:16
  way to sell? They know all the answers.
• 58:17
  They're like referrals. The easiest way to close the
• 58:19
  sale is getting referrals. Of course.
• 58:22
  How how do you hire people to get referrals?
• 58:24
  So they started digging into like a year investigating the
• 58:26
  top performers, bottom performers, talking to their
• 58:28
  clients. And I figured out it was 4
• 58:30
  simple things, four really, really simple things.
• 58:33
  They show up on time. They're top performers at a, at
• 58:35
  a near 100% success rate. They show up on time.
• 58:39
  They do what they say they're going to do.
• 58:40
  If they say you're getting a report on your desk at 5:00 on
• 58:42
  Monday, it's going to be there for they finish what they start.
• 58:45
  And that's not to say like, oh, I started doing this report, I'm
• 58:48
  going to finish it. If they start a process, whether
• 58:50
  or not they're accountable, responsible for do it.
• 58:52
  But if they start it, they make sure it gets done, even helping
• 58:56
  the clients get through their parts, pulling them accountable
• 58:58
  to making sure this thing gets completed and finally say please
• 59:02
  and thank you, right? It's a short way to say they're
• 59:04
  respectful. They treat people with respect
• 59:06
  and kindness and so on. And those 4 concepts work
• 59:10
  because, well, First off, not a lot of people do all for and
• 59:14
  understand and hold them safe. But we do in our company.
• 59:16
  It's one of our core values. We are referable.
• 59:18
  But what it does, it creates trust.
• 59:21
  A lot of people I think that I've talked to in my life
• 59:24
  confuse trust with big things. I'll invite my buddy over and he
• 59:28
  can stay in my house because he's not going to try and make
• 59:30
  out with my wife and drink all my liquor and put a hole in my
• 59:32
  wall. That's, I mean, sure, that's
• 59:35
  trust, but that's not the type of trust we're building a
• 59:38
  business. Trust in business is built with
• 59:42
  the schedule's going to be out on time.
• 59:44
  And I know as an employee, I, I know that my shift is what it's
• 59:47
  going to be in two weeks. I know that I'm going to get
• 59:49
  paid every, every other Friday. And if something does go wrong
• 59:53
  with my pay and I tell my boss, he's going to jump on it and
• 59:56
  make sure that it's fixed and that that I'm OK.
• 1:00:00
  Trust is repeatability. It's doing what you're say
• 1:00:03
  you're going to do. It's, it's making sure people
• 1:00:05
  know that you're going to be there when you're supposed to be
• 1:00:07
  there. And so we did that.
• 1:00:09
  I I embraced that 100% all the way through up until COVID until
• 1:00:14
  now. So of all those sales, I'd say a
• 1:00:17
  minimum, a minimum just off the back of my head, like 9:50 to 20
• 1:00:22
  were referrals. One of my clients was shut down
• 1:00:25
  by the city of, of Miami. It was rude.
• 1:00:29
  Of course I'm gonna take her side.
• 1:00:30
  I like her, but sure her, she sent her managers all over the
• 1:00:34
  place. She had, she had four managers
• 1:00:35
  and she told them all bring in bar metrics.
• 1:00:37
  And so we got, we got 4 clients. One of them was a group.
• 1:00:40
  There was 3 venues off of that right away and then I had, you
• 1:00:45
  know, accountants who were moving from place to place.
• 1:00:47
  They're like, we're opening here, you're going to be in
• 1:00:48
  here, you're going to be here. So as the industry had to re
• 1:00:51
  sort of redistribute itself, these people who I had proven to
• 1:00:55
  that you can trust me when I say you're getting an ROI, getting
• 1:00:58
  it when I say I'm going to make sure that I'm always there to
• 1:01:01
  count your stuff. I'm never going to not show up.
• 1:01:03
  I'm never going to be hungover. I'm tired.
• 1:01:05
  I'm going to get the job done right.
• 1:01:07
  They knew they can trust that if I make a mistake that's too big
• 1:01:10
  and you and I agree that audit wasn't wasn't worth the money
• 1:01:13
  you paid, I'll give you a discount or whatever I need to
• 1:01:15
  do. And that allowed me to frankly,
• 1:01:18
  I didn't sell. I didn't sell a single thing
• 1:01:20
  that year. It all just came, keeps flooding
• 1:01:23
  in because of how I treat my customers and other people,
• 1:01:27
  their staff. Yeah, that's phenomenal.
• 1:01:29
  I want to go back to, though, how you got through that
• 1:01:32
  uncertain period. COVID shuts everything down.
• 1:01:35
  Even when state of Florida is opening up sooner than other
• 1:01:38
  people, there's all these restrictions.
• 1:01:41
  Your customers are not at their full capacity.
• 1:01:44
  They don't have the money to pay you.
• 1:01:45
  You don't know how long this is going to last.
• 1:01:48
  You don't know what this is going to be the way it is for
• 1:01:51
  the next 10 years. How do you get through that
• 1:01:53
  uncertainty? So I noticed in in in what I do
• 1:02:01
  and in life that when people hit a crisis, they fall back to
• 1:02:05
  default, whatever that default process or setting is, minus
• 1:02:09
  dated numbers. So the first thing in research
• 1:02:12
  data numbers research. Are you familiar with the book
• 1:02:16
  or concept called Strength Finders?
• 1:02:18
  Yes, but please explain. Donald Clifton so guy comes back
• 1:02:22
  from World War 2 and he and he saw all these like metric tests,
• 1:02:26
  the Myers Briggs and this and that and it was all, you know,
• 1:02:28
  what's your weakness? And, and it was very negative
• 1:02:31
  and he hated it. He just really didn't like it.
• 1:02:32
  So he, he went out and started doing his own research and he
• 1:02:36
  determined and I agree that everybody has a series of
• 1:02:39
  strengths and they're different. Every person's different.
• 1:02:41
  And if you play to your strengths and you focus on most
• 1:02:45
  of your time, right, Obviously we need to learn certain skill
• 1:02:47
  sets that we might not be very strong and, and we have to get a
• 1:02:50
  basic level. But if we just get that based, I
• 1:02:52
  want to go back to, OK, let me, let me invest in where my
• 1:02:56
  strength lies, then you'll rise to a level that you've never
• 1:03:00
  ever would have achieved otherwise.
• 1:03:03
  My strengths are my number one is Wu, right?
• 1:03:05
  Extreme extrovert. When I say extreme extreme, Wu
• 1:03:07
  is literally Wu, the person who goes out.
• 1:03:10
  I'm going to get a room going. I would go to parties in
• 1:03:13
  college. I would get there early so I can
• 1:03:15
  meet everybody as they can then. And then people thought I lived
• 1:03:17
  there and I was throwing the party.
• 1:03:18
  I'm like, Nah, I dislike people. My number 2 is achiever, right?
• 1:03:23
  So that helped drive me. But three and four are learner
• 1:03:26
  input and those two combined together with me to, to be very,
• 1:03:29
  very strong thing. So the moment I the moment this
• 1:03:31
  starts happening, I'm doing research everyday.
• 1:03:33
  I'm researching, researching, make sure what project or what,
• 1:03:36
  what government program is going to help me.
• 1:03:38
  I started doing work for my clients.
• 1:03:40
  I'm like, OK, you're all sitting on this product like you have
• 1:03:43
  too much in stockholding. Let's look at how we can move
• 1:03:46
  that out in your business and what we can do when you open
• 1:03:47
  back up. Let's prepare for that.
• 1:03:49
  Let's plan. So I, I, I reinvest in those
• 1:03:52
  relationships and let them know, hey, wants to on my butt here.
• 1:03:55
  I'm still working for you even though you're not paying me.
• 1:03:58
  I was, I was invested in the idea that this will end.
• 1:04:05
  It has an end date. So my research, by the way, went
• 1:04:07
  back to the, the, the Spanish flu.
• 1:04:09
  That was part of my research. I went, what happened then, by
• 1:04:12
  the way, same shit. They had people wear masks.
• 1:04:15
  People hated the mask, the mask, kill us, close down the
• 1:04:19
  restaurants, social distancing, like that's all that happened.
• 1:04:22
  Like that playbook was written. And so I looked at them like,
• 1:04:26
  OK, restaurants open up and wow, that was different around the
• 1:04:29
  country. So I was like, OK, and I know I
• 1:04:31
  have a very conservative governor here and, and he was,
• 1:04:35
  he hated, hated a lot of protocols coming out.
• 1:04:37
  I was like, I don't want to keep my stand.
• 1:04:38
  He was making noise. So I'm watching him, researching
• 1:04:41
  him. What does he like to do?
• 1:04:42
  I'm like, OK, he's probably going to open this up quickly in
• 1:04:44
  other states. Georgia was first and I think
• 1:04:46
  Florida. So I had faith that it would
• 1:04:49
  come through. I had I had faith that we had
• 1:04:51
  done, we had done the right thing by our clients and they
• 1:04:54
  would come back and sure enough, if they they could open.
• 1:04:57
  I had people call me on day one. And now I couldn't hire my guys
• 1:05:00
  back right away, but I did. I started going out and
• 1:05:03
  counting. I had five guys come back to
• 1:05:04
  like, Dave, we're open, I need you in tomorrow.
• 1:05:06
  Like done, done because they saw, right.
• 1:05:09
  That's incredible. Yeah, it was, It was great.
• 1:05:13
  And our people in our, in my client is who will not open a
• 1:05:16
  restaurant without us, who will not open day one without us
• 1:05:18
  counting stuff like they've understood, we've helped them
• 1:05:21
  understand what the value of what we do is and therefore they
• 1:05:27
  just fought us right back in. Dave, I've just got one more
• 1:05:30
  question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:05:32
  do 3 quick things. First of all, anybody who wants
• 1:05:35
  to get in touch with Dave, visit their website, barmetrics.com,
• 1:05:40
  and I'm going to spell it for you to make sure you get it
• 1:05:42
  right. BARMETRIX Bar, metrics.com,
• 1:05:47
  BARMETRI, x.com, and we'll have it in the show notes.
• 1:05:51
  If you missed that. If you're enjoying the show
• 1:05:54
  today, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you're
• 1:05:57
  listening. It sends a signal that helps
• 1:06:00
  others discover our podcast. So I appreciate you taking a
• 1:06:03
  quick moment to do that right now.
• 1:06:05
  And as a reminder, if you want to get more restaurant employees
• 1:06:08
  access to therapists, doctors and prescription meds that, as
• 1:06:12
  paradoxical as it seems, actually increases your
• 1:06:15
  company's net profits, reach out to us at adbacbenefits.com.
• 1:06:19
  So last question for you, Dave. A year from now, what is 1
• 1:06:22
  specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?
• 1:06:25
  I'm going to ask that question. After saying this, I would like
• 1:06:28
  to book an appointment with you for you to look at my business
• 1:06:30
  for your for your products. I appreciate it.
• 1:06:32
  When you said the first time, I was like, I've been trying to
• 1:06:34
  get my guy's health care for a long time.
• 1:06:36
  I don't know how to do it financially.
• 1:06:37
  So I'm hoping there's a solution there for us.
• 1:06:39
  So I'll make. Sure.
• 1:06:41
  We take care of that. Thanks for throwing it in.
• 1:06:43
  Excellent. So celebrating next year.
• 1:06:46
  So like I said, we're launching this new, this new protocol in
• 1:06:51
  our business. We're redesigning our entire
• 1:06:52
  business structure. So at the end of 2026, the goal
• 1:06:56
  is to be able to start scaling and scale at a rate you've never
• 1:06:58
  been able to before. So my hope is I'm, I'm
• 1:07:00
  celebrating AA2X growth in a year, which would be
• 1:07:04
  unprecedented in our company. Nobody ever have done it before.
• 1:07:07
  And that's, that's, that's if it all goes perfectly and my
• 1:07:11
  theories are correct, then I'll be looking at double my revenue
• 1:07:14
  by the end of the year. Oh, we're going to have to
• 1:07:16
  follow up with you to see how that comes along.
• 1:07:18
  That's exciting. Dave Damsalski from Barometrics
• 1:07:22
  Miami, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your
• 1:07:25
  time and your story with us today.
• 1:07:27
  I really appreciate you being here.
• 1:07:29
  Thank you, Anthony. It's an absolute pleasure.
• 1:07:32
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:07:34
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us.
• 1:07:36
  And if one thing stood out, try putting it into action today.