Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Dave Nitzel on Barmetrix, Stinger Compliance, and Why the Hospitality Industry Needs to Stop Playing Defense

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Dave Nitzel on Barmetrix, Stinger Compliance, and Why the Hospitality Industry Needs to Stop Playing Defense · 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
0:16
idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:20
today's guest is Dave Nitzel. Dave is a Co founder and
0:24
principal of Dave and Dave Hospitality, also the Fractional
0:28
Chief Strategy Officer of Stinger Compliance and owns
0:32
multiple bar metrics, franchises and coaches, authors and public
0:36
speakers. All these ventures are geared
0:39
towards improving the careers of entrepreneurs with a special
0:42
focus on the hospitality industry.
0:45
Before stepping into hospitality, Dave spent more
0:47
than three decades as a Fortune 500 executive, leading thousands
0:52
of locations and billions of dollars in revenue.
0:55
Since making the jump in 2014, he's opened multiple bar metrics
0:59
franchise offices across the Southeast, spoken at industry
1:03
events like Tales of the Cocktail, BCB Berlin, and
1:08
recently at the India Bartender Show in New Delhi.
1:12
He's co-authored 2 best selling Bix, The Bar Shift and
1:15
Hospitality DNA and just released a brand new book, A
1:19
Tale of Two Taverns. In addition to his hospitality
1:23
work, Dave also coaches professionals outside the
1:26
industry, including positions attorneys, athletes and
1:30
executives on leadership, career direction and decision making
1:34
under pressure. But before we get into all that
1:37
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Back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:35
today, Founder of Dave and Dave Hospitality, Dave Nitzel.
2:38
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:39
Thanks, Anthony. I really like the sounds of your
2:41
business, by the way. It's the first time I've heard
2:43
all that. It sounds like everyone needs to
2:45
be checking that out. I'm going to do a little
2:47
research of my own, but that's a really cool idea.
2:50
I appreciate you calling attention.
2:52
So I so let's get to you today though, let's focus on Dave
2:55
Nitzel. So you started out in big
2:58
corporate America, I mean big like UPS, Office Depot, Advanced
3:02
auto parts. This isn't what I see is the
3:06
typical path for someone who ends up consulting in the
3:09
hospitality world. Help me connect the dots from
3:11
running these multi billion dollar revenue verticals to
3:14
founding a consulting firm for hospitality.
3:17
Yeah, interesting career are to be quick about it.
3:21
I had a bit of a explosive rise in my 30s through the ranks was
3:27
a big growth time in the States. And you know, I just have
3:32
management skills for the most part, Like I'm not the brightest
3:35
bulb in the box, but I'm, I'm decent in a crisis.
3:38
I'm decent with people. And so those skills were in
3:42
demand. Maybe they always are, but it,
3:45
it felt like the demand was high.
3:46
So it allowed for a bit of a quick rise through the ranks and
3:54
cutting to the end, I ended up losing a bit of a, a political
3:58
battle at one of those companies, although I didn't
4:00
know I was in a fight like I, I lost a battle I didn't know I
4:02
was fighting, I suppose. And so at the end of that, I had
4:06
suffered through a series of bosses that just I found
4:13
unacceptable, for lack of a better word.
4:15
It's just bad leadership. And, and I'm not the best with a
4:18
bad leader. That's one of my weaknesses is
4:21
I, I require a fairly competent leader to do my job well.
4:27
And I spun out of that and I was, I wanted to do my own
4:32
thing, but I don't have the creative gene to create
4:35
something, which is frustrating. You know, I take something that
4:39
someone has and I make it better.
4:41
And so then I, I joke about this, I've said it for there's
4:45
three things you don't really want to type into a web browser.
4:48
We know what one of them is, right?
4:51
The second one is insurance, no offense.
4:54
The third one is franchise, no offense.
4:57
Like we're all but those. If you type those things into a
4:59
web browser, you're going to get hit hard with, you know, a lot
5:04
of attention. So I did that.
5:06
Let's say I did two of those three things.
5:09
So I, I typed in franchise because I thought, man, I don't
5:12
have my own good ideas, Anthony. I, I, I don't know.
5:15
So can I do something else? And I got bombed.
5:21
This guy calls me, says, Dave, look, trust me with this.
5:24
We're going to do a personality assessment.
5:25
We're going to fit you with a really good match here.
5:29
Two of them were not really good matches.
5:31
In fact, I thought all three of them weren't.
5:32
But my son heard me on the other line, and it was bar metrics.
5:35
And they were talking about inventory.
5:38
And I'm a supply chain guy, so they were talking about
5:40
inventory. And I thought, yeah, maybe.
5:42
But man, I don't know anything about bars and restaurants.
5:46
My son heard the conversation and he was young at the time,
5:48
like 21 and wasn't going to school, you know, was was really
5:52
getting good at video games. And he goes, hey, you know,
5:56
that's Bar Rescue. And I was like, I have no idea
5:59
what what that is. So he goes to YouTube and brings
6:02
up Bar Rescue episodes. And he was really excited.
6:05
Anthony, like, look at this, you'd be great.
6:08
And I was like, man, I've never seen you excited about any
6:10
business or anything like this before.
6:12
I was like, you really like this?
6:13
He goes, yeah, I was like, you want to do it with me?
6:15
He goes, yeah. And I was like, let's go.
6:17
And like 5 days later I just, I just bought the franchises and
6:21
off we go. Important side note too, I went
6:24
to the, I did my homework. It just didn't take forever.
6:27
And I love the culture of the business straight away.
6:30
So I, I really bought into two things.
6:33
I bought into the culture of the company that was bar or that is
6:36
bar metrics. And I bought into my son's
6:39
enthusiasm for it and just said, man, I don't, I don't care what
6:42
this is. I'll figure it out.
6:45
This could be a pig farm. We're going to make bacon by
6:47
Friday. Like we're just going to go.
6:49
And so that's, that's how I that's the beginnings.
6:52
That's how you got into that. That's how I got it.
6:54
So what was it about the culture of barometrics that you were
6:57
able to witness so quickly? I mean, you met them.
6:59
Five days later, you signed the deal.
7:02
Authentically passionate about helping people, no joke.
7:06
So, and you can go look at that stuff now, although the websites
7:08
been changed a little bit from what it was 1413 years ago.
7:14
There was you can, you can tell when something's, when someone's
7:18
authentic, I think in their belief system.
7:20
So the belief system was very, hey, we care.
7:23
We love this industry, We come from this industry, We want to
7:26
help this industry. And by God, we're going to do
7:28
that. Here's how we do it.
7:30
And I said, man, if you're all in, I'm an on mission guy, which
7:33
are some of the things that I mentioned before would get me in
7:35
trouble. I'm an on mission guy.
7:38
You put me on mission. What is it you want to do?
7:41
I'll go get that done. Clear the decks, like stay out
7:44
of the way. And I'm gone.
7:46
And. And I thought, man, I can call
7:48
my own shots. I can go authentic,
7:49
authentically help people. No one's going to get in my way
7:53
of doing that. And they're going to support the
7:57
hell out of me, though. Like, if I need something,
7:59
there's going to be someone on the other end of the phone.
8:02
Yeah, like that Simple. Not it.
8:04
Nothing really. Not that complicated.
8:07
Really. Point and shoot like that.
8:09
So how did you bridge that gap like you supply chain, like you
8:14
understood kind of inventory controls, but you didn't know
8:17
the bar and restaurant industry, How did you bridge that part of
8:19
the? I was nervous.
8:20
I was admittedly incredibly nervous about that.
8:23
So there was this, you know, training program you go to, you
8:26
don't, they don't just send you software.
8:28
You got to you got to go spend a lot of time getting trained.
8:32
That was great. I hired, I had my son with me
8:34
and I hired a guy from the industry.
8:36
His name is John and he was a general manager at my local pub,
8:39
let's say my hangout, my aunt. And he was done with general
8:43
managing and said I'd love to stay in the industry but do
8:46
something else. I hired him.
8:48
He was a big part of our initial success.
8:51
But interestingly, I got my, we got our first account when I was
8:55
at training. Someone called, you know, it was
8:57
high demand stuff. And then, you know, I'm, I'm
9:00
like, Oh my God, I got to pretend like I know what I'm
9:01
doing here. Yeah, sure.
9:02
You know, we can, we can do that.
9:05
But in the end, inventory management is really elementary
9:10
math. It's what did you have?
9:12
What did you buy? What did you sell?
9:16
What do you have? I can do that.
9:20
And so we just had to do that. Now, it's not as easy as it's
9:23
set. The the reality is never as easy
9:25
as it sounds, but we can do that.
9:28
So no one asked. I found that interesting too.
9:31
I don't think anyone's ever asked me in like 13 or 14 years.
9:35
Dave, what's your history in the bar and restaurant industry?
9:38
Before we put you to work on our inventory, you know that you
9:42
have a conversation with someone.
9:43
They believe what if you're competent or not, whether you're
9:47
legitimate or not, and whether the value proposition's right.
9:50
And if they believe in that, then they believe in you.
9:55
Go do the work. And and so, yeah, it's, it
9:57
wasn't overly complicated, Anthony, I'm sorry.
10:00
I want to understand that first client that you got, you were
10:03
there at the training and the call came to you.
10:06
How? How does this happen?
10:07
The call came through, you know, the, the website's active and
10:11
someone probably started pinging my, the market I bought, you
10:14
know, saying, you know, and Bing and I was like, oh, Eureka, I,
10:18
I, we, we have to hit the ground running.
10:21
And that guy turned into that client was significantly
10:26
struggling. It was a pretty large, really
10:29
cool sports bar right next to a concert venue.
10:33
They did big numbers and he was losing his shirt in the end, The
10:38
way that story ended, he was my first client.
10:40
And after COVID, Chick-fil-A came along and wanted that space
10:45
next to that venue. And he ended up cashing out for
10:48
about $5 million. OK.
10:50
So it was a good ending to that story.
10:52
We ended up coaching them, Steph, we started off learn how
10:56
to count bottles and and that evolved to I naturally default
11:00
to business conversations like you and I will have.
11:04
And so I would start doing that with my clients.
11:08
I do that accidentally, like it's just my default.
11:11
And as it turns out, there was a lot of value in those
11:14
conversations. So not only were we the folks of
11:17
bottle counters, but that's how I started becoming more of a
11:21
coach and consultant. Interesting.
11:25
So on the bar metric side of things, let's dive into a little
11:30
bit more about the specific services that you're offering
11:34
and then let's come back to that transition that you made into
11:38
more generalized coaching. So bar metrics, you're helping
11:41
folks with inventory, but kind of give us more specifics, maybe
11:45
pull out a client in your head and talk us through?
11:47
It well, look, we could, we could use that one as an
11:49
example. We can stick with him since we
11:51
kind of know him now, big sports bar next to an arena and all
11:55
that and he's doing probably 30 to 40,000 a week in alcohol
12:00
sales, which is no small thing. And I think when we started with
12:04
him, he was losing somewhere around 2527% relative to sales,
12:10
which is a huge number that probably where.
12:13
Should that number be Dave? I look, that's a good question.
12:16
My official stance is 5%, but it really, it really depends on
12:22
what the owner is trying to achieve.
12:25
So it's not for me to say is a better way for me to say we have
12:28
people who want to be zero, 1%. There should be no loss in this
12:31
business. And then there's other people
12:32
that say, no, you know what, we're a little more free
12:35
spirited here. That's what we're built for.
12:37
That's who we want to be and that's what people love about
12:39
us. We're OK with eight or 9%,
12:42
totally fine. We're making money and, and I
12:44
like it this way and I'm look cool.
12:46
Like it's not my job to tell you what to want.
12:49
That's not how I view it. You tell me what you want and
12:53
then I'll help get you there. And that's our approach with,
12:56
that's my approach with all the coaching, not just barometrics,
13:01
but for example, you know, we go in and we, we use scanners and
13:04
scales and we literally weigh the bottles.
13:06
We have scales for the kegs. We literally weigh the kegs.
13:09
It's not very, it's not overly interesting.
13:13
It's very early in the morning. You can be on your hands and
13:16
knees scanning bottles of Miller Lite.
13:18
You know, you got to make sure all your accounts are good.
13:22
You got to reconcile all that stuff, which we do.
13:24
So you're seeing, you know, hey, this is what basically the point
13:28
of sale software says that we've sold exactly right and this is
13:32
what's actually been consumed. And if there's a difference, if
13:36
there's a variance between those two numbers, then you know
13:38
you've got a problem. That's exactly right.
13:41
And one of the things that I also one thing we don't do is we
13:46
don't immediately assume theft or incompetence.
13:49
We try to, we tried to make sure all the data is right first.
13:54
Did we, we assume we made the first mistake?
13:57
Did we miscount? A lot of people don't assume a
14:00
lot of people are doing this themselves, are doing it in
14:02
house, assume that whoever's counting is counting right every
14:04
time. We've been doing this 14 years
14:07
and I'll tell you, there's not a day where we get every single
14:09
count rights never happened. Like you have to go back and
14:11
double check your work because you will miss something counting
14:15
thousands and thousands of bottles of stuff.
14:20
So we make, we assume that we got to check and make sure that
14:23
the data assumptions are right. Are the recipes correct?
14:25
We have to pull down every recipe.
14:27
As an example, are you pouring 2 ounces?
14:30
Are you pouring 3? You're pouring an ounce and a
14:31
half, half oz, whatever that is. So we go through a fairly
14:35
strenuous process of making sure that the data is correct, and
14:40
then we start to do root cause analysis stuff on where's this
14:45
happening, when's it happening, how's it happening, and then
14:48
what do we have to do to correct it.
14:51
And so how do you get there, right?
14:53
So you double check your work. OK, yes, our math is correct.
14:56
We've got a variance. What's the most likely culprit,
15:02
and how do you identify if that's the case and sort of work
15:04
your way down that ladder? Even though we don't assume at
15:06
1st that the most likely culprit is a people pouring problem, it
15:11
usually is, right? But we just don't like to go
15:13
straight from A to B. We have a responsibility to
15:16
validate before before we suggest that people are failing
15:20
at what they do. So we do that work and we write
15:24
everything up and we have some best practices.
15:26
And we also are pinging off of whoever we're working for.
15:30
You know, what's their ability to communicate?
15:32
What's their involvement in the business?
15:33
Are they delegating to a manager?
15:35
Like who's our, who are we interfacing with and how do we
15:40
need to affect change through them?
15:41
And that can vary case by case, account by account.
15:44
But essentially we then have to go into some version of
15:48
informing staff of what's happening, suggesting strongly
15:53
why that's happening. Look, we're either over pouring
15:55
or we're forgetting to bring things in that there's not a
15:58
whole lot could be theft. We try to stay away from that
16:01
because it's very accusatory and unproductive and you better be
16:04
right. And then we have and then we get
16:06
into, OK, let's how we going to improve this.
16:09
And it's a lot of communication and a lot of working with folks.
16:13
Once I liken it to imagine you say to me, Anthony, that you're
16:17
a good driver, right? Let's let's imagine you're a
16:19
good driver and you're going to take a trip, you're going to
16:22
drive somewhere and I'll put you on the highway, but I'm turning
16:24
all your dashboard info off, turning everything off and
16:27
you're just going to drive from wherever you are to wherever
16:30
you're going. And you get, you get pulled over
16:33
by a policeman because you're doing 85 and a 60.
16:38
And you say, golly, I didn't know I was doing 85 and a sixty.
16:43
I thought I, well, maybe I was doing 65, maybe 70.
16:47
I had no idea I was doing 85. Man, I'm sorry.
16:51
Let me fix that. We're the dashboard.
16:54
So we're the ones that tell you where you are and and then it's
16:58
your job to make sure that you drive.
17:02
So like if I'm. If yeah, if I'm the bartender
17:05
and I'm making a drink, I think I'm pouring an ounce.
17:09
Turns out I'm I'm pouring 1.6 oz.
17:12
And over the course of the night, man, that really adds up
17:14
to some, yeah. Lost liquor, Big numbers.
17:17
Yeah, that's right. 'Cause I don't.
17:19
I didn't have the dashboard right?
17:21
I didn't have my speedometer there to tell me.
17:22
I can't fix what I don't know is broken.
17:25
No. So how many franchises do you
17:29
own? Now what?
17:30
What are your locations? 4I sold recently sold to I got a
17:34
little early. You could tell if anyone
17:36
listened to that intro, I was listening to and going, my God,
17:39
this guy's doing too much. So it was even worse.
17:42
I had the Carolina markets and the Georgia markets and, and I
17:45
sold very gleefully sold the the Carolina markets just because it
17:50
was I'm getting my butt kicked. So trying to pare back a little.
17:54
So just two now in Atlanta. Yeah, OK, so let's go back to
18:03
this guy who ends up selling his location to Chick-fil-A for
18:06
$5,000,000. Nice exit for him.
18:10
And you just discovered like, oh, hey, you know, I've I've got
18:14
this coaching ability and and I enjoy it.
18:17
And so discovering that through that process, then how did you
18:21
move forward with finding more clients that you could work with
18:25
in that way? That's a good, that's a great
18:26
transition. I started developing that skill
18:30
there, but I wasn't, I didn't have a intentional plan on
18:34
coaching. They were just great
18:35
conversations I was having with my clients.
18:38
I, I was sharing that information with a friend of
18:40
mine who's a global coach in hospitality his named Sean
18:44
Finter. So Sean was running this program
18:46
called Accelerate and he was working with a plus talent from
18:50
all over the world and at one point and he was the founder of
18:54
Bar metrics. That's how I know Sean.
18:56
So he, I don't even at some point he invited me to come up
19:02
to be a part of one of his programs.
19:04
But I didn't know he was inviting me as a coach.
19:06
I thought he was inviting me as sort of a learning opportunity
19:10
for me to get more involved with the industry and rub elbows type
19:15
of thing. No, like I got there and all of
19:18
a sudden, you know, I'm on the docket and I'm doing breakouts.
19:20
And I was like, are you, are you kidding me?
19:22
Like I, I was here, I'm taking, I was like, dude, I'm going down
19:25
to the beach. It's in Chesapeake.
19:27
I was like, I got a whole vacation planned and you're
19:29
going to work me. You had no heads up that you
19:33
were on the docket and that you were.
19:35
Absolutely nothing, right? So I just have to dance and
19:38
these are with and I'm when I say I'm talking about people who
19:41
have won best bar in the world, multiple people, best bar in the
19:44
world, best bar in the US. These are legends and, and I
19:47
don't know them because I don't know.
19:50
So they just threw me in the room and it was sink or swim and
19:54
I swam. So I got invited back a couple
19:58
times to be a facilitator and and then start delivering some
20:02
content, which I would love to do.
20:05
And then that led to. One day I was flying home from
20:09
one of those and I thought, man, I keep having the same, I'm
20:11
having the same conversations everywhere I go, whether I'm in
20:14
Atlanta or the Carolinas or thieves.
20:17
And I thought, I'm going to start writing down best
20:20
practices, like just, I'm going to put on paper the most common
20:23
conversations I have and I'm going to give it out as like a
20:25
free Christmas gift. I don't remember the timing must
20:28
have been like, I don't know. But I was thinking like a
20:31
originally it was going to be like the 12 days of Christmas
20:34
type of thing, 12 best practices I was going to do and you know,
20:39
Dave Damsowski. So that evolved quickly.
20:41
I needed an industry. I wanted an industry expert to
20:45
check my work. Like, hey, am I right about
20:47
this? I don't, I don't want to be off
20:50
on the things I say. You know, I don't want to come
20:52
off as clearly this guy's in left field.
20:56
That's how the bar shift started.
20:57
That was how we created the first, the first book.
21:00
Yeah. And that thing.
21:01
And how did you meet Dave themselves?
21:02
He's a fellow. Barometrics No, When I met Dave,
21:05
Dave was the corporate trainer at Barometrics.
21:07
So look, Dave drove me crazy. I found him incredibly
21:11
irritating when we first met. And because we're, we were so
21:14
different and he trained so hard and so technically, and I don't
21:18
like to learn that way. So there was kind of a a bit of
21:21
a clash of personality, but it was my job to learn.
21:25
Like I was paying to be there to learn this stuff.
21:27
And Dave's trying his best to teach me.
21:29
And I'm like, look, man, I may kill you before these two weeks
21:32
are up. Like, I don't know, we're going
21:33
to survive this. And then it's turned out we've
21:35
be, we've become best of friends.
21:38
And and I think that's in large part because of our differences,
21:41
which which there's a ton of lessons in that.
21:44
But yeah, so, so Dave turned out to be my writing partner for all
21:51
three books. But that bar shift book, it's
21:54
that book won't stop selling. Like we almost try stop the
21:57
advertising, like we've moved on to the other books.
22:00
It it just goes, that book refuses to die and it sells all
22:04
the time. And it's absolutely our most
22:06
popular work. And the lesson there is that
22:09
book solves a specific problem for people.
22:13
And if you have, if you know how to solve a specific problem for
22:17
someone, there's a business there, there's something there.
22:22
We get into trouble when and this is working with the
22:25
speakers and entrepreneurs and some of the other stuff I do.
22:27
Now you get a lot of people who want to create something because
22:31
they have a passion for it, but they haven't identified a market
22:33
need. And they just think that other
22:36
people are going to magically realize how smart their idea is.
22:40
And that's not how it works to unless maybe you're Steve Jobs,
22:43
like you could maybe be maybe 1 percenters can say people don't
22:47
know what they want until I give it to them.
22:49
Like that sounds really cool. God bless you if you're that
22:52
person. For the mere mortals amongst us,
22:56
identify a market need and come up with a a really great
23:00
solution for that need and then make it known and improve it and
23:03
blah, blah, blah. And and that's.
23:06
Solving people's problems is a great way to build a business.
23:10
And so the bar shift who should pick this up and what will they
23:14
get from it? The bar shift was written for my
23:16
a lot of my passion is for people in the management role.
23:20
I coach executives and all kinds of that.
23:22
But man, I, I get fired up about helping people in the front
23:26
lines. I worked my way through the
23:27
ranks, so I think I identify with that.
23:30
So if you're a bar manager, 100% if you are a bar owner who needs
23:37
a little help with the basics of running your bar and you're a
23:41
little lost in it, 100%. If you're aspiring bartender who
23:45
thinks that they may want to be a bar manager someday or wants
23:48
to own their own bar someday, 100% like that lane.
23:52
And it's, it's, it's a really easy read.
23:55
It's a it was designed for that bar manager who doesn't have
23:58
time for nonsense, who says, just tell me what I need to know
24:02
and let me go. We wrote it that way.
24:06
Again, targeted audience, you know, you may say, well, that's
24:08
a really narrow audience. Dave, you wrote a book for bar
24:10
managers. How many of those?
24:14
Look, there's millions of bars. So if I can get 1% of bar
24:19
managers to buy the book, we're OK.
24:21
You know, like, so it's, it's something like that.
24:24
So how did that lead into the second book, Hospitality DNA?
24:28
You had some things left unsaid. No, not quite, I don't think.
24:33
I mean, that's probably fair to it's not.
24:35
I have to think about that. It was COVID and I'm not good at
24:39
doing nothing. So we had all these, I had
24:44
established all these global connections through that
24:46
accelerate program and no one was doing anything.
24:50
You know, they're all sitting around on their thumbs when I
24:52
don't know what are we going to do during COVID?
24:54
So I said, let's start making phone calls and let's just talk
24:56
to the people we know we had. No, we did not know what that
25:01
book was going to be. We just started doing what you
25:03
and I are doing now. We just started talking to
25:05
people and let's see what it yields.
25:07
Where's that? Where's that take us?
25:09
And it started taking us down this path of superpowers.
25:13
Like what's the one thing that makes you different?
25:16
These are industry award winners, one percenter.
25:19
So we're we went from writing the first book, which is very
25:22
point and shoot bar manager to a book that said how did the best
25:26
of the best win? And if you want to be elite, if
25:29
you want to be A1 percenter, we're going to we're going to
25:31
carve a path for you to follow. We're going to show you and
25:34
learn from them. So it was a research book.
25:36
And so we canvassed the globe. There's people in there from
25:41
nearly every continent, diverse backgrounds, diverse venue
25:47
types, just lots and lots of unique perspectives with the
25:51
idea being how unique can we get and then still find the
25:56
similarity. Like no matter where you are, no
25:58
matter what you're doing, it's these five things.
26:02
And that's what we were able to boil it down to five things that
26:07
we kept hearing over and over and, and over again.
26:12
And, and that was really cool. That book, I've got a copy of
26:16
it. It's right here.
26:17
This is Hospitality DNA. Here's what's the most
26:20
interesting thing about it. It's our it's our worst selling
26:25
book. Isn't that interesting?
26:29
All right. So I found that was a huge
26:30
lesson for me. We invested 20 times more money
26:35
in that book than the other two. We put way more effort.
26:40
It's easily the highest quality of the three.
26:44
So no question. So if I said to you on the
26:46
surface, highest spend, highest quality, most research, most in
26:52
depth, worst seller, what might you say?
26:55
Like, I know that it's not fair, but you know what does it it's.
27:00
Yeah, I go back to what you were saying before about like you got
27:02
to find a problem and you know the deliver the solution.
27:06
You guys were following the sort of that in reverse.
27:10
You had a solution and you were looking for a.
27:11
Problem, that's exactly right. So I now at the time we were
27:17
just kind of bored. So in I guess in fairness to us,
27:20
we weren't necessarily on mission there.
27:21
We were just trying to do something, man.
27:25
We were so hyped for that book. I can't even tell you how proud
27:28
I am of still of the quality of that book doesn't sell because
27:33
people aren't waking up in the morning and saying jeez, I'd
27:36
like to be A1 percenter and I just wish someone could tell me
27:39
how to get there. That feels like too much of A
27:42
stretch for them. It's no, it's, it's just not in
27:45
the. That's not a question people are
27:47
asking themselves. So if you look at the other two
27:50
books, there's a lot of people waking up in the morning saying
27:53
I'm drowning, I'm in trouble, I might not make it, I need to do
27:58
better. What am I missing?
28:00
Bar Shift, Tale of Two Taverns. It it, it, it's this cleaner,
28:04
more simple message where DNA is like an investment and, and you
28:10
have to, and it, it there's not that, well, it makes perfect
28:14
sense. There's not as many people in
28:15
that place. So it doesn't sell as many
28:17
books. There's a lot of people in the
28:19
struggle that sells a lot of books.
28:23
You said though in hospitality DNA you guys distilled it down
28:26
into 5 common threads. What are those?
28:29
So we call it the Helix. Helix.
28:36
So the first, the first one was humility.
28:39
You would talk to these leaders and they would all tell you
28:42
that, aw shucks, you know, it's not my fault.
28:45
Success isn't my fault, It's someone else's fault.
28:48
And you just thought, man, that keeps happening.
28:50
That doesn't mean you're void of ego.
28:53
It just means that you're a pretty good leader and you
28:55
recognize that you multiply through others and you can't win
29:01
on your own. You know, boiling it down, the
29:05
second one was the explorer's pursuit.
29:08
So the explorer's pursuit was really cool because essentially
29:12
the explorer's pursuit was saying were very well travelled.
29:15
They went about learning, they went about learning other
29:24
cultures and diversity, and that led to a certain amount of
29:30
empathy when it came to being in service of others which serve.
29:36
Them. Really.
29:37
Well, like if you read the book, you'll find, you know, you have
29:40
people who started in Denmark, who then had an apprenticeship
29:44
in Portugal, who then got a job in Scotland at a hotel, who then
29:49
bounced over to London, who then opened up a bar back in Denmark.
29:54
I don't even know if they. Realized the value of that or
29:59
how that led to ultimately to their ultimate success.
30:03
But it did. So Explorers pursuit was
30:06
probably the most controversial thing.
30:09
But the thing about controversial.
30:12
Really. Uncommon.
30:14
Like if I. Asked you the five.
30:16
Things, I think the idea of you saying something like
30:19
exploration, that sort of thing would be not on the list.
30:23
You know, we'd probably default to the Mackenzie list of success
30:26
traits. That's not and that's not what
30:30
it is. The third one was a lifetime
30:33
experience over and over and over again.
30:35
It was I started, I started in the industry when I was 12.
30:38
I started when I was 17. You know, I worked at this, I
30:41
did that and I loved it and I never left.
30:44
So school of Hard Knocks and a ton of learning relative to just
30:48
being in the fight and and honestly working, working your
30:52
way up from the ground up, which was super cool.
30:56
The 4th 1 was indomitable spirit, which just means you got
31:01
to suffer through, you got to be able to suffer through some
31:03
stuff. There's a certain ruggedness,
31:06
grit that you have to have in this industry if you're going to
31:10
make it. And then the final one was
31:12
extraordinary culture, very, very common to some extent ties
31:18
back to humble nature. These folks built great
31:21
cultures, whether they were defined or not.
31:23
It's another quest conversation, but every business has a
31:27
culture. It's, you know, whether you've
31:29
defined it, who knows, but these folks are very purposeful about
31:34
how they wanted people to think and believe in their businesses.
31:38
Lots of lots of training, a lot of intentionality.
31:43
And that idea is a little bit of what a Tale of Two Taverns is
31:49
about, which is the business fable, which is a little it's
31:53
it's a it's a deeper, more narrow dive on on the idea of
31:59
extraordinary culture. So you had.
32:03
A a great selling book bar shift right out of the gate, your
32:06
first time doing it, you're like, hey, we're pretty good at
32:08
this. We got an idea for another book.
32:10
That one doesn't work so well, doesn't sell very well.
32:13
Still very proud of the content. But after, I mean, you're on a
32:17
little bit of a roller coaster, right?
32:18
Great book, you know, not so great sales in the second one.
32:21
Did you think about throwing in the towel and like, hey, we're
32:23
just going to be done with this book authoring thing?
32:27
I tend to not. Think like that.
32:29
Like I like to think I like to kind of leave things open for
32:32
possibility. And I'd always said to Dave that
32:35
I wanted, I grew up on business fables like who move my cheese,
32:39
stuff like that, getting naked. These types of books, I I found
32:43
them interesting ways to learn where you could keep flipping
32:47
the page to see what happens next, but you're actually being
32:50
taught a lesson, right? So hey, what happens?
32:53
And I thought, man, it'd be cool.
32:55
There's no, I don't. I did my research.
32:57
I couldn't, I didn't think there would have ever been a business
32:59
fable written with the backdrop of hospitality or the bar and
33:04
restaurant business. So I thought, you know, it'd be
33:05
cool. Let's do the first one.
33:08
I've always wanted to do this anyway.
33:09
And there's just we have all the content in the first two books.
33:14
All we need to do is convert content into a story.
33:17
And certainly we can do that. We're not trying to go broad to
33:20
one of the reasons we stayed narrow was it was good for
33:24
messaging, but it's also practical on the writing side
33:27
because we're not authors. So writing is takes a lot of
33:30
work for us to sort of how how do we how do people speak and
33:34
how do you the editing all that stuff.
33:36
That's hard work, but that's how we ended up with the third one.
33:40
I did always want to write a fable.
33:42
So again, probably a little guilty of something I wanted to
33:46
do and to be fair, but then try to apply the lessons that we
33:51
learned from the previous two books was damn it, write about
33:54
something that people need help with and that they want to read.
33:58
So we tried to use the learning principles of both books. 1 was
34:02
the culture from DNA and then one was the the revenue or the
34:07
the demand of the first one, which is right about things that
34:09
people need help with. And that's how we ended up with
34:11
the third one and the third. One was fairly recently
34:15
released, just the early part of 2026 here, right?
34:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Launched.
34:19
It #1 new release on Amazon, which to some that's well, look,
34:24
it's like, it's like being the fastest kid on the block.
34:28
You know, it's cool to be the fastest kid on the block, but
34:30
doesn't mean that I'm going to be on the track team at Harvard.
34:33
You know, it's so Amazon, you can get pretty narrow in your
34:37
categories. Look, thrilled to be #1 new
34:39
release. Let's not, you know, it's a sad
34:41
dog that doesn't wag his own tail.
34:43
So we're thrilled to be #1 new release.
34:46
But to be fair, you know, it's not like we're not New York
34:50
Times bestsellers here. Gotcha.
34:54
But still feels really good, right?
34:56
You've got some good momentum right out of the gate with this
34:58
book. Are the books for you and your
35:00
partner Dave? Are these money makers?
35:04
Is this brand building for what each of you guys do?
35:08
I'm seeing you nodding your head to the second for sure.
35:11
You don't really make. Caution anyone who thinks
35:14
writing a book is going to yield them profits again, One
35:18
percenters. I'm not.
35:19
We're not. James Patterson.
35:21
Yeah, they're collateral. They're great marketing
35:23
material. And we are.
35:25
I authentically want to help people, so it sort of serves
35:31
that purpose for me internally. My, you know, intrinsic
35:34
motivators. I get a lot out of that.
35:36
I get a lot of motivation out of someone saying, man, you changed
35:39
my life. I don't even, we don't even know
35:41
who they are. You know, we haven't charged
35:43
you. I, I'll just get note, you'll
35:44
get the, you'll get notes on Facebook or LinkedIn or at a
35:49
book signing or something. Hey, I already have the books.
35:52
Just wanted to say thank you. I I find.
35:57
I get great joy out of that. So that's good for me, that's
36:02
good for my motivation. That's one.
36:04
It's certainly great marketing collateral.
36:07
You know, I'm getting, I, I get to go to really cool places.
36:11
You know, I'm traveling to Europe and Asia and these to
36:13
talk about these things. It's a great vacation, great way
36:16
to get a free vacation. Go do a go do an hour talk
36:19
somewhere. Well, that can be a little
36:21
stressful, but it's a great challenge.
36:23
Like, throw yourself into the fire and see if you burn.
36:25
You know, I, I, I love doing that too.
36:29
So, yeah. Marketing credibility Joy.
36:36
That's it. Money.
36:37
Not so. Much you can make some money,
36:39
but you know, dinner and a movie.
36:43
And A and a free. Vacation.
36:44
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
36:47
So maybe it's. Too early to ask this question
36:49
because the third book just came out, but are you tinking around
36:54
with an idea for a fourth book? Yeah, that's what that's.
36:57
What Damsowski's afraid of So the doors open.
37:01
I, I, I won't say yes or no to that.
37:04
If I get the inspiration or some I see a trend of some kind like
37:08
right now also I should say the third book, I see a shift in our
37:14
industry from Hey, we, when I first started that 13 years ago
37:18
or whatever it was, we're in the bar and restaurant business was
37:21
sort of what I would hear. We're in the bar business.
37:24
Then I started hearing it shifted to we're in the
37:27
experience business. And all the conversations went
37:30
started going towards the guest experience, which I think, I
37:33
think both of those are perfectly credible.
37:36
But now I think post COVID and we're seeing generational
37:39
shifts, we're seeing lots and lots of fundamental shifts that
37:43
we haven't experienced before. I think we need to get more into
37:46
the people business. People have been sort of this
37:49
disposable commodity in our industry for years.
37:51
Like temp work. You run a temp agency in a bar
37:54
and restaurant simultaneously. And there's guilt on both sides
37:58
cuz people would see the industry if you were in between
38:00
jobs and what would you say? I'm going to get a, you know,
38:03
get a job waiting tables until I find my next job.
38:05
So understandably you would have a very transitional workforce.
38:10
You might have you, you know, you're HR people guy, you may
38:14
see folks with 102 hundred 3% turnover in a venue and think,
38:19
man, how are you? How are you executing at a high
38:22
level in that, in that scenario? How are you creating
38:25
productivity and stacking wins in that scenario?
38:29
Really hard to do. So I think you have, we have a
38:33
responsibility as coaches or consultants, however, to look
38:38
over the horizon a little bit and say here's what's coming,
38:41
brace for impact, get ahead of this curve, don't be behind it.
38:45
And what I see as it relates to that is people.
38:49
We need to get better at making this a great career, investing
38:53
in people where they stay and I have 10% turnover instead of
38:57
100% turnover where I have highly competent teams so I can
39:03
behave in the role for which I'm paid.
39:06
I want as an owner, I'd like to work under the construct of
39:15
being an owner. If I'm a manager, I want to work
39:19
in the role that I'm being paid for.
39:20
And what happens is I get a manager role and I end up
39:23
waiting tables half the time and I'm sweeping floors and I'm
39:27
running to the bank. I mean, I ran to the bank for my
39:29
dad when I was five years old. You know, the skill set of
39:32
making a bank deposit, I'd think is around 5 years old.
39:37
I, I don't why is why is why is the owner and the manager
39:40
spending an hour and a half a day making bank runs?
39:42
And you'd be, well, it's the cash.
39:44
Look, you have people handling cash in the restaurant all day
39:48
long, but they can't take it to the bank, you know, or you know,
39:51
silly things like that. And you may, you know, and
39:53
there's plenty there's people who say, no one's messing with
39:55
my money. Fine, but you get the point.
39:57
We have people working outside their roles everywhere.
40:01
The Dumber you treat someone, the Dumber they'll behave, the
40:04
more responsibility. That you give them, the more
40:09
they will respect that responsibility.
40:10
And if they don't, then we need to turn the page and find people
40:13
that do. And we just don't think like
40:16
that. We just don't think that way.
40:20
So do you think it's an? Industry that is capable of
40:23
going from, you know, 100% turnover to 10%.
40:27
Of course it is. Of course.
40:29
Yeah. And you think the key to that is
40:32
just? Treat your people better.
40:34
It's not that people aren't. Treating folks well, I don't
40:37
want to give the impression that people don't care about their
40:41
staff. They do.
40:43
It's just we're not programmed to think, hey, let's go through
40:46
your career path. Let's have a one-on-one every
40:49
every three months. Let's you and I sit down and you
40:51
tell me how I can improve the business.
40:54
You tell me whether you're happy.
40:55
You tell me about your goals and aspirations.
40:58
I can still do performance reviews and that's my
41:00
opportunity to tell you, but we're not having those
41:04
dialogues. We're not investing in people.
41:05
I'm working with folks right now.
41:07
One of the things that we're implementing with great success
41:10
is what I call self funding bonus programs where people
41:14
essentially get a share of the lift.
41:17
So you know, if if you if you're running a bar and restaurant and
41:21
you say to me, Dave here at Anthony's, I'd like to get a 10%
41:25
revenue lift this year and a 5% profit lift this year, whatever
41:29
the numbers are like I can't do that.
41:30
I'm not smart enough to do that math, but whatever that lift is
41:34
and that lift yields a net profit of $12,000.
41:39
AQI want you to look at that $12,000 lift and say, look, how
41:44
much of that are we going to repurpose back to the team?
41:47
And you say, OK, I can repurpose 30% of that lift back to the
41:51
team in the form of a bonus. That's cool.
41:54
Let's do that every quarter. Now if I'm a manager and I'm
41:57
eligible for a portion of that say 1000 bucks and I get a $4000
42:01
bonus at the end of the year, what you create or or net to
42:06
gross it up at the end of the year.
42:07
I get that each quarter. I'm working towards common goal
42:10
with my owner. We're both working towards
42:12
something and if you start changing the way I think from
42:16
hey, I'm a transactional temp employee to look, I'm getting,
42:20
I'm getting part of the cut just like the owner is and I'm
42:22
interested in the same things he's interested in.
42:24
I start doing things independently on my own that are
42:27
in the benefit of the that are in the mutual benefit of what
42:30
the ownership wants. But I also can't mess with that
42:33
top line. Like I can't do things because I
42:35
also I'm accountable to the revenue number, the profit
42:37
number you see, and I have to hit these gateways.
42:40
And we also put employee, we have a three, so we use a
42:46
triangle, right? So it's a 3 point bonus program
42:48
and you have to hit on all three.
42:49
And the third one, we use employee reviews.
42:51
So we we can't, what'll happen is people work to however you
42:55
incentivize them that I don't care who you are, that's how it
42:58
goes. So if I tell you that you you
43:00
get a portion of the profits. That's what you're going to work
43:05
on. Damn the torpedoes, right?
43:07
Everyone's quitting. Everyone's hates you.
43:09
The customers are angry, yeah, but the profits are up.
43:12
Get cut my check, right. So you have to put these fail
43:15
safes in and and that's really awesome.
43:21
Then at the end of the year, you do it again.
43:22
Like the next year, you do it, you do it again.
43:24
And if you're an owner thinking man, I'm not going to give up
43:26
any of my profits first. I I think that's a little daft.
43:30
But then what you have to keep in mind is, look, you're taking
43:33
all that rake the next year. So you're only giving it up on
43:37
the 1st. 4 queues the next year, you're going to reset those
43:41
goals. Now they may be a little lower
43:43
the next year, but you have new goals the next year, right?
43:46
Makes sense. So everything that you just
43:49
gained, that's now the new baseline and you're going to
43:52
lift that 57810 percent and do it again.
43:57
And we've had we've had unbelievable success with that
44:02
for you, I'll give you a real case.
44:04
I'm working with someone who's last year's profits I think at
44:06
the end of the year was a net $20,000.
44:12
That number at the end of this year implementing that stuff
44:14
quadrupled the profits bottom line drop after he paid himself
44:18
and everything else might cash in the bank.
44:21
So now we're reinvesting that stuff back into the business and
44:25
I suspect. We'll probably double last year.
44:30
Off of a quadrupled year? Wow, look.
44:34
That's I mean. So in general.
44:38
Dave, when you take this idea to some of your clients.
44:42
Give me a percentage. Reception, all this is great.
44:47
Let's do it versus no way. You have to be ready for it.
44:50
So. I don't have a program, Anthony.
44:52
A lot of people will tell you I I'm not telling you that I have
44:55
a system or a program. It's an idea.
44:59
It's a concept. It's yeah, it's in the toolkit.
45:02
So I try to meet people wherever they are 1.
45:05
So I don't know where you are in in sort of your journey.
45:08
So I need to, I need to catch up to wherever you are Part 1.
45:12
Then I need to learn where you need to go, where you want to
45:15
go. What, what is it that you want
45:16
for yourself? It's not for me to tell you
45:18
that, right? So it's not for me to determine.
45:21
It's not for me to pass judgement on where you are.
45:22
And it's not for me to necessarily tell you where to go
45:24
unless you're, you're asking me for that.
45:26
But I prefer you not ask me that.
45:29
And. Then I.
45:30
Need to start determining what your competencies are.
45:35
From that then I can start. Implementing ideas, concepts
45:38
that work for you. But really, I think some of the
45:42
secret to coaching and getting results, I don't want to say.
45:46
All the time, but. But far more often than not is
45:51
having you discover the solution for yourself.
45:55
Versus me telling you the. Answer if I'm telling you
45:58
answers, my chances of success dramatically reduce if I can
46:04
lead you through. Conversations.
46:08
Where you discover it on your own, you're going to go
46:11
implement sort of like. The Socratic.
46:14
Method you're trying to ask questions to lead folks to
46:17
absolutely right and then. At the end, I'm no longer
46:20
trying. I'm not coaching to convince
46:22
you. I'm coaching to see if you
46:24
followed up on what seemed to be your own good ideas.
46:28
It's a different experience, you know, and it's, it's a great.
46:34
Way to get? OK, I consider these folks not
46:37
clients. A lot of them I consider friends
46:39
like we, we. I'd like to think.
46:42
That doesn't mean I'm coaching them forever either, but the
46:46
relationships really last. And coaching and consulting is a
46:50
referral business. As much as I can post on
46:53
LinkedIn, you know how much? You know how many clients I get
46:56
on LinkedIn off the past three years?
46:57
How many? I'd like you to guess, Anthony,
46:59
can we play again? How many clients do you think
47:01
I've gotten off of all my LinkedIn advertising?
47:07
I'm going to say 30. Absolutely 0.
47:12
And I think we've grown, I don't know this for sure, but I think
47:15
we've probably grown four 500%, OK.
47:19
So it's not. That you're not growing.
47:21
But the growth isn't coming from LinkedIn, It's coming from
47:24
relationships, it's coming from referrals, absolutely.
47:26
I mean. Think of yourself like we scroll
47:28
through LinkedIn. I do this all the time because I
47:30
post on LinkedIn and I'm scrolling like man am I hiring
47:33
anyone off this. And the answer is usually no.
47:38
You know, that doesn't mean you don't do it.
47:40
It's more of a, it's more of a branding exercise, you know,
47:44
letting people know that you're out there, you need to stay at.
47:49
Least for me now where I. Am I need to try to stay somehow
47:52
relevant and known in the marketplace?
47:56
So it's helpful if someone says, hey, I work, I work with Dave.
47:59
And you have seen that guy. I've heard of that guy and then.
48:04
That's almost done. Like, that's almost, you're
48:06
almost assuredly going to get something out of that.
48:12
But yeah, people coaching is very personal.
48:15
You don't just, you know, you don't just make a selection.
48:18
Go, hey, coach me. You have a great 32nd clip, man.
48:23
Yeah, let's talk about. One of your other businesses,
48:27
what is Stinger compliance and tell us about the work that
48:29
you're doing there. Man, it's really sad.
48:31
It's. Fun.
48:32
Wow, you just let up the people. Who weren't watching the video
48:35
version of this? Yeah, he just lit up like a
48:38
great group of. Great group of people.
48:41
It's a small team of five, maybe 6.
48:44
You know, we have some other we have some people helping part
48:46
time and on the side. So cool story again, coaching
48:50
gig and relationship thing I got I got asked to help launch this
48:55
bootstrap startup called Stinger compliance.
48:57
It's a got the founders name is Cliff Kreider.
49:01
Great human being and he had a real passion for being a good
49:06
steward in your community as a bar owner.
49:09
Mostly focused on not serving age restricted products to
49:15
minors. That simple checking IDs, that
49:18
sort of thing. And really he's super passionate
49:21
about that. Well, we started doing that, of
49:23
course, and it pretty local and demand on that is a little here
49:26
and there. But again, what would happen is
49:28
you would, you would do that work and then someone would say,
49:30
hey, you know, you're coming in here, you're checking IDs.
49:35
Can you also do like a service shop?
49:38
Can you do a mystery shop? Can you, can you check our
49:40
stick? Can you do more than just the ID
49:42
check? And so, and we're, we also have
49:44
a really, we have an incredible IT team.
49:48
So it's app based, it's tech and app based for ease of use for
49:52
trying to like uberize the idea of mystery shops versus people
49:56
writing a novel and then trying to do grammar checks and
50:00
charging a small fortune for this write up where you only
50:02
care about a fraction of the information dumping all that,
50:07
making it really quick and lean. So we started doing that.
50:12
And so. Sorry that that service.
50:14
Is also part of like like What are they checking for?
50:18
Did they? Are they checking to see if they
50:20
checked their IDs or are they checking?
50:22
For. Like other customer service
50:25
boxes that they OK both and so imagine.
50:27
ID check and mystery shop. You can do either or both.
50:34
As that evolved, we. Started getting into groups, so
50:38
larger groups and with larger groups, let's say you have a 25
50:43
group chain or ten group chain. You say, look, can you dashboard
50:48
this stuff? Can you aggregate this for me?
50:50
Again, the answer is yes, we can do that.
50:52
So we built that tech and, and now what we're doing, and this
50:55
is where I'm lighting up, getting really excited about the
50:57
evolution we're evolving to where we're becoming a bit of a
51:00
middleware aggregator of customer service stuff.
51:04
So imagine a world where I'm playing in your Google reviews
51:07
and pulling in your Yelp reviews that we we pull in your physical
51:12
shops or those reviews could trigger a physical shop hit it
51:16
you have a review at this number, we come shop you and we
51:20
do your ID checks. We aggregate all that stuff,
51:22
dashboard it, put it into hierarchies.
51:25
And as an owner, if we want to be productive, the person who
51:28
can get the more stuff done the fastest wins.
51:32
So you could spend half a day going through the Google reviews
51:36
of 25 different locations and seeing this, that and the other
51:40
and phooey, like we can make that happen really quick for
51:44
you. We can dashboard it, make it.
51:46
Now what's awesome about that is who isn't that good for?
51:49
So now we're starting to work with retailers, automotive
51:53
retail, like any, it's any anybody.
51:55
Yeah, so the reason I smile and perk up is we're in the middle
52:00
of that fight. Like we're we're knee deep in
52:03
that and I get to be the chief strategy officer for that
52:06
company. So the cool thing is, I'm not
52:12
like. I told you before, I'm not a.
52:13
Very good tip of the sword guy. You know, like I don't come up
52:16
with a lot of my own creative ideas, but with that company,
52:23
it's. It's just sort.
52:25
Of naturally evolving in the real in a really cool way, super
52:29
exciting. So we're sprinting like right
52:35
now with that company. That company and that business
52:37
is in a full Sprint and it's it's just, it's been unexpected
52:43
and a ton of fun for me. There's one thing that you said.
52:46
Earlier, as you were describing it, you're Uberizing it.
52:50
Tell us what that means. Well, so imagine you.
52:53
Have an app on your phone and, and we have to do a, let's say
52:56
we have a client in Colorado, grocery store in Colorado, which
53:00
is a real thing. We need shoppers and we need
53:03
people to go do that. So how we going to reach them?
53:06
And you could put a Facebook ad out and you can do all that,
53:10
which we, we can harvest people that way to get people in.
53:13
But once you're in, we get the app on your phone.
53:15
Your phone just pings and says, we have a job.
53:17
You can you can sort a geofence where you want to shop.
53:22
And so those you know, we need. Shoppers, so if you geofence,
53:26
let's say Denver, you want to you'll do anything within 10
53:28
mile radiance of downtown Denver.
53:30
If we get a job, it's going to ping your phone and you can
53:32
accept that job. Go do the job.
53:35
Everything you need to do is right there in the app complete
53:39
boom, boom, we pay you quick bang, you're going to get paid
53:42
quick. We don't want to hold money.
53:44
Another crappy thing that happens like get these are this
53:47
a gig economy, get people their money.
53:49
We don't need to hold your money.
53:52
And so this this is a great. Strategy, right?
53:55
You don't have to carry the overhead of full time employees
53:58
because you know, it's going to be sort of hit or miss where you
54:01
need folks. And like you said, it's the gig
54:03
economy. So folks who were they're doing
54:06
Uber, they're doing DoorDash occasionally.
54:08
Oh, this is another thing they can do.
54:09
And, oh, I get to go to a bar and, you know, order a sandwich
54:12
and you guys are paying for the sandwich or whatever it is that
54:15
you're having. OK, so they get a night out on
54:17
you and and they're going to get paid a little bit extra to do
54:20
it. That's exactly right.
54:22
That's fun, isn't it? It's really cool.
54:24
So we're having a blast with that.
54:29
Sky's the limit on that. That one and I understand.
54:32
Why you're saying that you're sprinting right now because, you
54:35
know, you're focused on first age restricted items, right?
54:39
You know, like, hey, you got to make sure you card somebody if
54:42
they're buying beer or maybe at a gas station, you're carting if
54:46
they're buying cigarettes or something like that.
54:48
And now as you've become in the process of becoming this
54:52
middleware for all this customer service data, you're like, wait
54:55
a minute. Yeah, yeah.
54:58
Retail. Is another enormous sector,
55:01
Yeah. And so where are you guys in
55:04
that trajectory you're moving towards these ideas?
55:06
Are you ready for those retail customers yet starting them?
55:09
Yeah, I mean it literally. Right now we're in a final Test
55:12
phase and we want to do some beta work.
55:15
So we're going to go and make some offers to folks if they'll
55:18
let them, if they'll let us experiment on them a little bit
55:22
to make sure everything works. You know, some trusted folks
55:25
that will afford us that. Yeah, yeah, you're right though
55:29
in a two year, in about a two year stretch, gone from we'll
55:31
check IDs to being a a full service middleware aggregator.
55:38
Yeah. I mean, we're that.
55:40
We're Olympic sprinters here, so that's but it's great work.
55:44
It's been a what a great team to like.
55:46
The thing that makes it's the people.
55:48
It always comes back to people, you know, it's a, it's an
55:51
amazing, fun group of folks, very small, like special forces
55:57
unit, all charging to common goal.
56:00
I love that. Like I'm in, I don't care what,
56:03
I don't care what we're doing. I'm in for that.
56:06
Yeah. That's fun.
56:07
I want. To go back to the coaching just
56:09
for a moment, because I, you know, the coaching example that
56:12
we used was that, you know, 1 bar restaurant owner that ended
56:16
up selling it Chick-fil-A. But in the intro, we said you're
56:19
coaching folks across all kinds of verticals, you know, high
56:23
level executives, athletes, you know, physicians to say more
56:28
about what you're doing with these folks.
56:30
How did that happen, right? That's a good question.
56:32
So I wrote the the second book, right?
56:35
We used a we used a publisher, which is why that one cost so
56:38
much more money and it was just bigger than our skill set.
56:41
So we needed a publisher and a natural outcome of writing your
56:47
book is that it's not going to sell.
56:50
So that's so then what happens is you say, well, I I wrote this
56:53
book and it's not selling. How do I sell my book?
56:55
And then the answer 10 you have to put, you have to put yourself
56:59
out there. You know, like, what's the point
57:01
of this thing? Like what we're doing right now
57:03
is, you know, largely in part because we wrote the third book
57:05
and I need to put myself out out there so.
57:11
The publisher created. A speaking company that said,
57:15
hey, look, get on stage, you know, make an offer.
57:18
If you're going to write a book, you're not going to make a
57:21
fortune on the book. So then you're naturally going
57:23
to end up doing some public speaking probably, or podcast,
57:27
you know, put yourself out there.
57:28
And then that's probably going to lend itself to some sort of
57:32
coaching or consulting most likely.
57:35
Like that's the most obvious track.
57:38
There's others, but I'd say 95% that's how it goes.
57:42
They put a call out for coaches for the speaker company and it
57:47
was in and around that COVID time.
57:49
So I, I wasn't that busy yet. We hadn't picked back up on the
57:54
barometric side of things. And I thought I'm a decent
57:59
coach. Does it translate?
58:02
I don't know, let's find out, right.
58:04
So again, just throwing yourself into the fire.
58:06
They did like a call for coaches and I answered it and it was a
58:08
bunch of people on the screen and they were, they were all
58:12
dressed like a job interview and I was dressed like this.
58:15
I'm like, I could take it or leave it.
58:16
You know, which is the absolute best.
58:18
The best part of coaching is not needing the work.
58:23
That's the best coach in my opinion is you don't need it.
58:26
Not to say I don't need to work, but.
58:29
I know that I'm at my. Best when I can be a fearless
58:33
coach, when I'm not afraid of you firing me.
58:36
If I coach in fear for the gig, I start getting safe.
58:41
I start contemplating the things I'm about to say to you, not
58:44
because it's best for you, but for what's best for me.
58:47
Bad coach. Don't hire that coach.
58:50
So with this, I didn't want to do that much, but I mean, I was
58:53
so curious. I really wanted to.
58:56
I really wanted to try, so I sent up.
58:59
You had to submit a video. So I submitted a video and I
59:02
said, look, I said a bunch of things that I thought were witty
59:06
and I said, look, I can kind of take this or leave this, but
59:09
here's what I know. I'll only coach three people.
59:12
It's all I have the time or desire to do.
59:14
But I only want your worst people.
59:16
I want the folks that make you sleep, lose sleep at night.
59:19
I want the worst of the worst offenders.
59:23
Give me those folks. That's what I want to do.
59:25
So if you're in for that, I'm in for it.
59:27
And that was the video I sent them and they hired me to do it
59:30
and they gave me the three worst is the wrong, you know, the
59:34
toughest, let's say toughest. I want the three toughest, the
59:37
most disgruntled, upset folks that you've got.
59:41
Give them to me. And why did you want?
59:43
The toughest? I don't know.
59:45
Just you. Give me Mount Everest and then
59:48
give me the next biggest. Yeah, look, I can do this.
59:50
I could be really good at. Coaching it doesn't do me I'm
59:53
not going to grow as a coach coaching you Anthony that
59:56
doesn't mean I can't help you, but I can't grow with you you
1:00:00
want to hear the story of my first the first coaching episode
1:00:03
I had is that interesting this podcast yes please let's.
1:00:07
I get the most. Disgruntled person and I'm on at
1:00:11
first because they don't just trust me one-on-one.
1:00:13
So it's me, the founder of the company and the client and I do
1:00:18
my homework on her and she's a she's a black belt in martial
1:00:23
arts and a real estate like guru and she's not happy.
1:00:29
So I get a little bit of the download from the owner of the
1:00:33
company of why she's not happy. Got it.
1:00:36
I go online, I research her to find out things about her.
1:00:39
Got it. So we sit on a podcast like this
1:00:42
and I had gone out Hang on, how do I tell the story?
1:00:45
No, OK hang on. So she's doing her thing and
1:00:48
I've got a a snap button shirt on with a tshirt underneath.
1:00:52
Kind of like this but it's but her.
1:00:57
One of her. Idols was Bruce Lee.
1:00:59
It was really cool, right? She's the martial art, cool butt
1:01:03
kick and type. So I say look, I hear you.
1:01:06
I'm in this. I give her my look.
1:01:07
I'm all in. I don't know anything, but I'm
1:01:09
here to help. We're going to win Da da da.
1:01:11
And I want to show you one really big thing.
1:01:14
And I start unbuttoning my shirt.
1:01:16
As I say, I'm going to show you some really big thing, right?
1:01:18
And they're both mortified on the screen, you know, two women.
1:01:22
And I start unbuttoning my shirt and I RIP it open and I've got
1:01:26
the Bruce Lee T-shirt on where he's the one that Tony Stark
1:01:30
wears an Avenger, where he's got the turntables thing.
1:01:33
I was like, man, let's go, let's Bruce Lee this thing and man,
1:01:37
she's. They're both crying.
1:01:39
Laughing like it brings the whole thing to like a ridiculous
1:01:42
halt and and she was like, listen, Dave.
1:01:47
Let's just go, man, like. Whatever, Forget that.
1:01:49
Let's just go. And I was like, yeah, let Bruce
1:01:53
go. Yeah.
1:01:54
So look, people can. And it was up.
1:01:57
And by the way. We crushed it so and So what
1:02:02
Were you able to help? With man, I don't know I.
1:02:05
It's hard. What did I help with?
1:02:07
Had to get her on track again. You have to get, when it comes
1:02:10
to authors and speakers and stuff, you really have to get
1:02:14
focused on three, three things. Who do I help?
1:02:22
What problem do I solve for them?
1:02:25
And how do I solve it? You're very.
1:02:28
Clear on that I. Could tell right away with your
1:02:30
intro, you're very clear on who you help, what problem you solve
1:02:33
and how do you solve it. You know that with great
1:02:35
clarity. So then it for you, it's just a
1:02:38
matter of executing that, getting it out there, putting
1:02:40
the about getting the value proposition right and and just
1:02:43
really hitting the market relentlessly with your offer.
1:02:48
What happens with what I, what I learned I didn't know at the
1:02:50
time with these folks was they weren't, they weren't even clear
1:02:54
on number one, who do you help? And the answer would be I can
1:02:57
help anybody OK? If you help everyone, you're.
1:03:03
Helping no one. Like there's no audience for
1:03:05
everyone. You got to niche it down.
1:03:07
You got. To niche it down and.
1:03:09
And way tighter than you think. So then, then she might have
1:03:11
said to me, well, I help women, OK, well, that's cool.
1:03:15
There's only like 5 or 10 billion of them running around
1:03:18
like, I don't know, no good. So we had to, we had to get
1:03:21
really, really narrow. And one of the ironies too is a
1:03:25
lot of the folks I had a lot of people that I coached in that
1:03:29
space where they wanted to be experts outside of their
1:03:32
expertise. So I may meet someone who says
1:03:37
something like, you know, I've spent my entire career as a
1:03:45
what's a good exam as an actor? I've spent my whole career
1:03:49
acting and I was in a car accident.
1:03:54
And so I wrote a book about my recovery from my car accident.
1:03:58
And I want to teach people about what I went through and if
1:04:01
they're in a car accident, how they how they can facilitate
1:04:05
their recovery. And you may say on the surface,
1:04:09
well. Dave, that sounds perfectly
1:04:10
reasonable. Yeah, but you're not, you're not
1:04:12
a, you're not a doctor, you're not in physical therapy, you're
1:04:16
not an automotive, you're not a you're all you're really expert
1:04:20
in that is your unique experience.
1:04:24
And you think that that unique experience of yours translates?
1:04:31
To a larger audience and. Almost always it does not.
1:04:36
So when people are looking for help, like the kind of help
1:04:39
we're talking about, they're looking for a certain degree of
1:04:42
depth of knowledge and expertise.
1:04:45
So when you say to me, Dave, you know, how do you coach these
1:04:47
people? And I go, look, man, I'm leaning
1:04:48
on like I'm leaning on 38 years of managing people.
1:04:55
And that's why I don't have a program because I can, I can
1:04:58
find you where you are. I can relate.
1:05:01
To that figure. That out tell me where you want
1:05:03
to go and I can get you there If if you're for the most part like
1:05:07
I I could. I haven't bombed out yet, but I
1:05:10
I will someday. But I'm leaning on a degree of
1:05:13
expertise. If I went and had a snowboarding
1:05:15
accident and then wrote a book on snowboarding.
1:05:19
What the hell? What the hell does?
1:05:20
That have to do with anything. And so who's your audience?
1:05:24
Who you writing to? What problem do you solve for
1:05:26
them, for the audience? So again, these books, this was
1:05:30
my problem and here's how I solved my problem.
1:05:33
And then here's some things I learned, but it's really not
1:05:36
targeted to anything. And then, you know, what's my
1:05:39
system or approach to helping you like you're in, you got it.
1:05:44
That's how I helped. Like it's really those three
1:05:45
things. And that may seem simple, and
1:05:49
maybe it is. But it's a lot tougher than it
1:05:54
sounds. There's beauty and simplicity,
1:05:57
and just because saying the words and having the sort of the
1:06:01
framework is simple to say doesn't mean that the execution
1:06:05
is going to be simple. Yeah, that's for sure.
1:06:08
And a lot of personality stuff gets in the way too.
1:06:10
You end up, I end up doing a lot of unqualified therapy, I think
1:06:20
just one. More question for you today,
1:06:22
Dave. But before I ask it, I want to
1:06:23
do 3 quick things for the audience.
1:06:26
First of all, to get in touch with Dave, We've got a few
1:06:29
options here. First of all, all three of those
1:06:31
books that he mentioned are available on Amazon.
1:06:34
We'll give out the names. Again, we've got the Bar Shift
1:06:37
Hospitality DNA and the brand new 1A Tale of Two Taverns, all
1:06:42
available on Amazon. If you want to e-mail Dave, his
1:06:46
e-mail address is dave.nitzel@barnmetrics.com.
1:06:50
dave.nitzel@barnmetrics.com. And Are you sure you've given me
1:06:57
your cell phone number to hand out here?
1:06:58
I just want to double check one more time.
1:07:00
Throw yourself in the fire, brother.
1:07:01
I'm not. Scared.
1:07:03
All right, here we go. If you like anything.
1:07:04
I've said, and you think I can help you, you can text me.
1:07:07
I'd rather you text than call because I won't pick.
1:07:10
I'll tell you this, I don't pick up random.
1:07:12
I won't pick up random calls. But if you text me and say, hey,
1:07:15
heard you on Anthony's podcast and I might be crazy enough to
1:07:19
want your help. Yeah, go ahead.
1:07:20
That's fine. I'll give it.
1:07:21
I'll let me do it. I'll do it.
1:07:23
You want me to do it so you don't have to go for it.
1:07:24
My cell number is 404-4335 5368 and you can text me and I will
1:07:30
respond. Go ahead and give it again 40.
1:07:32
4. 433-5368 E-mail and we'll have all that in the show.
1:07:40
Notes Yeah, yeah, no problem. Reach.
1:07:42
Out today, yeah. And, you know, do a favor for
1:07:45
the show today if you're enjoying, a quick comment or
1:07:48
review on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards
1:07:52
helping others discover our show.
1:07:53
So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now.
1:07:57
And as a reminder, you can be the hero advisor that helps
1:08:00
clients give their employees access to therapists, doctors
1:08:04
and prescription meds while paradoxically increasing their
1:08:07
net profits, real gains that can change how a business is valued.
1:08:10
So learn more today at adbackbenefits.com.
1:08:13
So last question for you, Dave. A year from now, what is 1 very
1:08:17
specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?
1:08:20
Jeez. Look, I'd like to.
1:08:23
I'd like to double my coaching business yet again.
1:08:26
I'd like to get more. I'd like to do that.
1:08:28
The reason I'd like to do that, not just selfishly that that
1:08:31
would be good for me, but also it says that I'm helping people
1:08:35
because it is a referral business.
1:08:36
So if if I can double the coaching business, I'm really
1:08:39
happy. I need to continue You, you
1:08:44
picked up on this. I'm kind of glad you didn't ask
1:08:46
me about it. I got, I got maybe too many
1:08:48
irons in the fire and mixed matter.
1:08:49
You know, I got a it's hard for me.
1:08:52
The marketing is almost impossible for me.
1:08:54
So I I think these are very tough times in hospitality.
1:08:59
So I have to keep the bar metrics business growing and
1:09:03
doing well. I need that.
1:09:05
I want that Stinger business to go crazy.
1:09:07
I'm unbelievably excited about that.
1:09:10
And I'd like to double my coaching business, which sounds
1:09:12
like a lot, I guess, but so far the bandwidth is there to do all
1:09:17
the above. I have great, I'm surrounded by
1:09:19
great people, not, not just good people, but I'm surrounded by
1:09:24
real talent. And that makes all the
1:09:27
difference. If I wasn't, I guess I shouldn't
1:09:30
be writing those books. So I'm, I'm very, I'm very lucky
1:09:34
with the people that I, that I'm around.
1:09:36
So that's what I like to do. I want to grow.
1:09:37
I want to grow. Anthony love it.
1:09:40
Dave Nitzel. Want to be the first to thank
1:09:42
you for sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:09:45
I really appreciate you being here.
1:09:46
Yeah, it's been a been a blast. Thank.
1:09:48
You for having me folks. That's a wrap on another.
1:09:50
Episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:09:53
Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put
1:09:57
that into action today.