
Restaurant Leaders Unplugged
Real conversations with the people transforming the restaurant industry—from the inside out.
Restaurant Leaders Unplugged goes beyond the headlines to bring you raw, insightful, and inspiring interviews with the most respected founders, operators, and executives in hospitality.
Hosted by Sebastian Stahl, former restaurant operator turned growth strategist and founder of Breadth Marketing, this podcast is where real operators get real about what it takes to build brands that last.
If you're tired of surface-level chatter and want to hear how industry leaders are actually navigating growth, tech, culture, and private event revenue—this is the show for you.
You’ll learn how to:
- Build restaurant brands that guests (and staff) love
- Scale without losing your soul or your culture
- Use tech and automation without killing hospitality
- Create “guest-for-life” experiences that drive revenue
- Convert more private event leads without paid ads
No fluff. No hype. Just unplugged conversations with the minds behind the brands.
New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe and grow with us.
Restaurant Leaders Unplugged
You Can't Do It Alone: Building Leadership That Lasts with Matt Rolfe
In this episode of Restaurant Leaders Unplugged, we sit down with Matt Rolfe, leadership expert, author, and coach to the hospitality industry's top performers. Matt shares his raw and powerful story—from growing up with a learning disability to becoming a sought-after leader helping restaurant operators prioritize personal growth, build resilient teams, and lead with intention.
We explore the silent burnout epidemic plaguing restaurant leaders and what it really takes to step back, delegate, and grow sustainably. Matt drops wisdom on mindset shifts, positive conflict, behavioral change, and the real reason your team might not be hearing you. Whether you're scaling locations or trying to regain your balance, this episode is packed with practical tools, real talk, and transformational insight.
Connect with our guest:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matt_rolfe_coaching
Book: https://www.mattroefe.com/book
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattrolfe/
Website: https://mattrolfe.com/
Restaurant Leaders Unplugged with Sebastian Stahl
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YouTube: @SebastianStahlb
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[00:00:00]
I'd want people to, my one want is to make sure that in order to take care of others, you need to take care of yourself.
And I say that 'cause they're, you can probably see the change in my emotion. Like I, I learned that the hard way. I wanna, I do know that leadership is lonely. Yeah. So if I can put the conversation that people take a little bit more care of their selves so we can show up fully to our people and we can strip some of the loneliness away, whether that be peer-to-peer sharing, whether that be inside of organizations, whether it be comfortable talking about our real experiences.
Hear us outside of work. I think we, we talk a lot about the guests. I wanna focus on the humans that serve our communities on a daily basis,
Welcome to the Restaurant Leaders Unplugged podcast, where real talks with restaurant leaders take center stage. Discover the challenges and victories that define success in the culinary world. Dive into essential strategies for marketing to operations, and gain insights that will transform your approach to your restaurant business.
Don't just keep up, lead the way. Join me, your host, Sebastian Stahl, on this journey to excellence. All right, Christy, welcome to the show.
All right, Matt, welcome to the Restaurant Leaders Unplug podcast. It's really a pleasure to have you here. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for the opportunity today. Yeah, Matt, listen, you've done a lot in your career, but let's start at the beginning. All right. So if you could just share with us a little bit about your story, what led you into the hospitality industry?
'cause I know it's a little bit of an unconventional transition for you, so if you could just, walk us through a little bit of that. I'm gonna start pretty early on. 'Cause I think some people can relate to the story, but I actually grew up with a learning disability. So I get, I joke with my kids now, but I failed grade one.
And I failed grade and I was told in public school that I had a learning disability. I wouldn't graduate public school or high school here in Canada. And basically what that meant is go find alternative employment, which meant trade work. And I actually found myself in the restaurant industry and it was the first time where.
Somebody didn't judge me based on my ability to learn at that time. It really, there was a lot of stuff going on at home and it was more about noise than my ability. And the first time I found somebody who looked me in the eye and said, I believe in you and you can do what you put your mind to.
And from there, I fell in love with the industry. I learned to do fun, kind of functional sales as a young kid, and then moved outta college. I got my first co-op job with Bacardi and two weeks in, my boss got promoted to run Western Canada. So at 18 years old I was running a district north of the city.
I love my time at Bacardi. Moved in Anheuser-Busch and then found myself in my own way through my two different companies over the last 18 years, supporting and coaching restaurant operators to either. Initially better their bottom line. But really what I'm working on now is how do they take care of themselves?
That's a really important and huge subject, especially in hospitality business. And what really motivated you, Matt? 'cause you're talking about here, this experience and how to, teach restaurant owners to change behavior, right? And like to take care of themselves.
Is there any particular story about yourself that drove you into this interest and helping other people? Get beyond that. Yeah. The first one that, that, and my coach brought this to my attention. So not only am I coach, but I have a great coach and he said to me one day, Matt, your work is your wound.
So when I'm out coaching and supporting leaders, it really does help me and my own journey. And what led me here is, looking, I, I see a lot of people in the industry, overworked, overwhelmed, and over capacity. I go back to when I worked for the big beer company. They get mad when I tell the story, but they were the number one seller of beer in our entire district.
So 10 reps, entire district, they were selling tons of beer. And I got called in 10 o'clock at night by the owner. Back then, he had a cigarette in one hand and a whiskey in the other. And he was losing his business. The restaurant didn't have a seat in it, but we ba essentially at the time selling beer, taught people to sell stuff at a discount.
And we gave them the trips and the credits and all this stuff. And hey, a lot's changed. But the moment in time for me is that person should have been profitable, but not only profitable, I watched them lose their business their relationship and to go through some pretty significant challenges.
And that to this day still brings emotion to realize sometimes we know how to run great restaurants. But what I wanna do is how do we help the leader and leadership team and the staff inside the restaurants to get the experience they deserve? Matt, so when did you first realize that leadership, not just operations, was a missing link for so many hospitality business?
This is a story we were telling. This is, I guess this is one moment, but is there anything, any other time? That you were like, okay, this is more than just like fixing operations. It is. Yeah. So when I, when we were, when I started my career, we were helping businesses become more profitable.
And that was really about mechanics. But we were brought into a lot of businesses where if we didn't help, they were gonna close their doors. So we were saving businesses sometimes successfully, and sometimes they were too far gone cash flow wise. But then I started to see a separation, a pattern.
That I could recognize that showed when I was working with the top 10% of the industry. The real top performing leaders, building, scalable, sustainable restaurants, they were in balance. They had, they were able to get to the golf course, they were able to show up for me in our coaching sessions.
So I saw this divide between operators sitting in a coffee shop, trying to make their independent restaurant work and clues to success for these top performing leaders. And one thing it was very simple to see, not just in hospitality but through my peer groups of business, is they were making investments into themselves and they were making investments in the development of their teams.
And that's not, it's not for everybody but I saw a significant gap of attention. It doesn't always take money, but gap of attention. That, that I'm very passionate about helping. Like I, I want people to stay in our industry. I want them to have careers. I want them to go on the vacation they want to and not be tied to their business.
Should that be what they want? I can't. They want for themselves, Matt. So why do you think that's so prevalent? In terms of like why in the restaurant industry specifically, of course there's other industries, but you know that, that type of behavior. Is common within restaurant [00:06:00] owners. And you mean the behavior of potentially doing the work rather than on the business, not just doing the work and on the business, but also not taking care of themselves, just working like, all these hours and do these things thinking they can't step away from the business.
Wow. Really what a great question, and I'll go back to my own story as an entrepreneur. I, it took me about 10 years of being an entrepreneur to realize I was climbing somebody else's ladder. I was working 80 hours a week. I was looking for anything I could to see be valued and worthy and more hours meant more credibility and more trust and more success.
And I remember right now I'm, I'm a single dad, a two kids, so I remember crossing my, great ex-wife and in the house and we're just crossing paths because the needs are being met at work. And I think the side of looking at, there's just this ability where effort doesn't need to be the results.
A lot of us are taught how to run restaurants, but we're not necessarily taught how to run a business. And this is no judgment towards any like small business or large scale business. There's a leader right now who went from a supervisor who's now [00:07:00] holding the keys to a three or $5 million restaurant.
And man, they can do every single role inside that restaurant, but now they're responsible for. A hundred, 120 people maybe 12 people, doesn't matter. But I think from my own journey it was head down doing the work and do the work meant worse, not investing in myself. And I think the opportunity now is how do we slow down and make sure, 'cause I want the leader to stay.
I want them to enjoy their work and I want them to help and support and develop others. And I think the pandemic, I'd say it was a magnifying glass on preexisting challenges. So I think it, it didn't create new opportunities or challenges for us, but it definitely shone a light on some areas and taking care of ourselves and our leaders is one of them.
A hundred percent. Man, listen I, I've, I can't relate to what you're talking about 'cause I've been there right? My first restaurant just working like crazy all these hours. And I remember the exact scenario I was actually dating somebody. But you know what? The work that I was doing met the needs that I, I was substituting my needs with my partner and then going into the business, and I [00:08:00] remember the exact feeling.
I was like, ah, screw it. I have this. I have work. You know what I mean? And I wasn't taking care of myself. I need the audience to hear like that is when we can create that awareness for ourselves. Everything we're doing is show up. You're showing up watching this episode right now. In a certain way, things are meeting your needs and in other ways there's not.
But especially like I can relate so much that I was getting my needs met at work and that fulfilled me, but I got to a point. During the pandemic where every time the phone rang, it was a problem. I don't share this story often. I'm not trying to overshare here, but I remember I was living in Calgary, Alberta.
I could see the beautiful mountains in Calgary. It was as some of the most sunny days in the country. So I could see this beautiful sunny day and I hung up the phone and I keeled over. I just, 'cause what I realized is everybody else's problems were plugged into. And I was getting my needs met by trying to support listen fix.
But I was empty and I just, I remember being on the ground. I could see tears rolling down my face and seeing the mountain roads. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I could see it in my eyes. No. And going, okay I'm at service and everybody else has boundaries with me. But I didn't know if I could have boundaries [00:09:00] with them.
And I was getting my needs met, and it felt good to fix people's problems, but it wasn't sustainable and it definitely wasn't scalable. Whew, man, lot. You're sharing you're sharing a lot of my stories, Matt. It's, and I'm thinking about that time again.
That's I was going through this and the restaurant wasn't doing that, that at that time, and I was just going home depressed. And because again, it's like I was hoping that the business was gonna meet my needs and I would put it first over everything. And I was at this place of depression, and I would just, throw myself to the couch at night.
When I got home late, then I was like, man, I can't take this anymore until I got those in. That last that bottom right when I say this is enough, I gotta, something's gotta change. I can't run, I can't be living my life like this. You know what I mean? I just can't do it. Matt, this leads me to my next questions 'cause your book about you can't do it alone.
Because in my case, man, I had to ask for help and I had to, talk to other people and to see how to find a way out. Talk to us a little bit about your book and your message in it. Yeah I looked at the, it came working with the publisher on the title, but we were just, we're [00:10:00] looking around at what's really in, in the book and I think there's an ability for a certain stage of our careers that we do things by leading from the front end force.
But there's a certain size whether you wanna get outta your coffee shop. One of my first clients, their goals was to go to two from 250 million to 500 million in annual sales through store growth. And both equations came down to the same. We can't get more time outside of our restaurant and feel safe, and it's okay if it's an independent.
We can't scale and grow unless we have the right people around us and engaged, bought into our, to our vision, to our culture, to our intentions. It's not about the right managers. It's who believes in what you believe in. As Simon Sinek says, who believes in the, what we believe that supports our growth?
And I think the key thing is I wanted it, I didn't, I never had the intention to sell books, but I get great exposure to great leaders. My goal was to put those experiences in the book and hopefully share them whether I could coach somebody or not. 'cause most of those people I'll never directly coach.
And it was overwhelming [00:11:00] just based on the feedback. Collecting the stories, but people absorbing the stories and acting and anything we can do to get tools in people's hands so they can get what they wanna and need. That's, that was one. 'cause I can't grow my business without the industry and we can't operate a business without a team.
A hundred percent. Man. It's, I think that's it's so important. We are I think any business or as a person, we're just good as we're as good as who we have around us. You know what I mean? Who we surround ourselves with. And so Matt many operators feel like they gotta do everything themselves.
And it's especially the, small operators that are starting out, maybe one or two units or three units or whatever it is. Sure. What advice for breaking out of this cycle would you give to these guys? Yeah. It's a great question, and the biggest thing I work on with leaders is we naturally go back to our habits and what we're used to.
So if we wanna create change, meaning we have, let's just use an example. We have three locations that we want to go to, four. In my opinion, it's not addition, it's multiplication of complexity. So we need to be able to let go of what we've done, what we do, what's serving us, what we're used to.
So in my goal, I wanna create gravity that is [00:12:00] so strong for that leader or their team that pulls them in the direction that they want. So the number one thing that I hear from leaders is, I need to hire somebody to do X. And what I wanna reframe for the leader is putting an additional role. It could be an existing team member or new into your company isn't about the addition of the role.
It's creating space and time for you to do what you need to do to lead the business. The existing team steps forward, then we plug the new position, whether it's internal or not, but wanna take gravity? I need, it needs to be so compelling, so interesting to move them towards what's next. 'cause if not.
We'll gravitate towards what we know. I always say that I had a great leader call me a couple weeks ago and they run a six restaurant group now. So they moved from running the largest restaurant, it's about 17 million in annual sales, monster restaurant. But they moved into the regional director role and he called me and he is every day I come back to the, and I'm basically assuming the world of gm 'cause.
That's where I feel most comfortable. Said absolutely. I said, but right now, when you do that, how's it making your existing GM feel? He's I'm [00:13:00] crushing her. I'm like, yeah, we need a great gravity. We need you to let go of the past and what's exciting and what's the opportunity and how do we find fulfillment in the new role?
I always say when we're, when we become great leaders, we step off the court. Phil Jackson never stepped on the court when Michael Jackson was play. Oh, Michael Jack, Michael Jordan was playing. We gotta let others play at a certain point and step into the background and that's it.
It might sound easy. It's not. It took me 10 years to lead in my first business, and I really impacted a lot of people I got in the way, I bottlenecked my own business. But when I finally had the trust in myself to step back and let my team lead, we had the best results year over year we've ever seen.
Wow, Matt. That's powerful, man. And I'm just thinking here of that's for any business really, right? Yeah. But it's like you can be the biggest bottleneck in your business and not even realize it because you think that you have the answers or because you've done it a certain way.
And you just don't wanna, you don't wanna change. And because change is, seems hard. It's just the belief that we hold onto, that, and it's where it's our comfort zone, we're just what we're [00:14:00] used to. And I did this one, I did a shark tank like experience one time and this incredible billionaire was there.
It was, and it wasn't on tv, it was just with a bunch of entrepreneurs, but 130. So I present, everyone's Hey, great job. And then Warren Rustin's, his name stood up and he said, Matt, what do you think the bottleneck of your business is? My response at the time, I think it's the software. He laughed and the 130 people left my face went purple.
And he said, this caring from the bottom of my heart. He said, Mac, if you could hear me, do you think you could be the bottleneck in your business? And at the time it was hard to hear 'cause I was in front of my peers. But when I warn me and him had a chance. We've connected a bunch since but have dinner that night.
And he said, I share that with you so you could see it. 'cause I know you care. But all that energy, sometimes it's gonna get in the way of others. You have to let others breathe and grow inside the organization. 'Cause you're all power right now. If you just calm a bit and it's about push, supporting others development, not just leading with force, you'll have much more success in that.
I see that in myself still today, and I see it in other leaders, but sometimes we gotta, wow. See ourselves in the mirror. [00:15:00] Make the change a hundred percent. Matt. So I think you touched on two things here that is that I I think are extremely important and sometimes it's they're overlooked or we can't see it.
Like one is humility, right? Yeah. Because to be, to even realize that. You gotta be humble enough to accept it. And and I guess business at life has a way of putting you in experiences that will humble you because sometimes things get rough and then you're, you're able to see it.
And the second is you're talking about growth, right? Because we to be able to, set a team in place, delegate, do all this stuff, empower them and get them to the, and so you can get to that next growth stage. Yeah. Can you. Talk a little bit about those two things. Humility and growth. Yeah. I think the, I think we'll all be, as you shared there and when you were sharing, I reflected as thinking I'm a visual person so I could see it.
I think we'll either be humbled, we'll have the opportunity to step back and get ahead of. And, I think, business is hard. Yeah. I think when we get to a point [00:16:00] to realize we can't do it all that there's always gonna be a mountain decline, there's always another email even to reframe it.
There's more opportunities for every person watching this than you can wrap your arms around this year. You need humility to be able to step back and say, what do we commit to? What matters most right now? Because the rate we're in a world of abundance. The news might not say that, but we really can step into abundance.
But abundance doesn't mean taking on all things. You need to be able to say no, realize what we can accomplish and what we can't as a team. So we set realistic goals. So I think the key thing there, and then the second part of the question was growth. Yep. 'Cause you just touched on that if you are delegating, you're getting a team you're doing this is going to help you get to the next stage of growth.
But that also requires, of course. Growth mindset in a way. This is what we're talking about here. So that's, yeah. That's the next step. Yeah. Yeah. I think the side of growth too is we, we wanna look at it. 'cause, part of my job as a coach is to find resistance in the leader. Somebody out, there's thinking growth I don't wanna grow to another location, so it's not growth.
Growth might be grow revenue, growth might be grow [00:17:00] time where I can step out. Growth might be scale and grow the organization. So I think the key thing, we need to define what's possible. Or what we really want we need to really get into that conversation. It's not as easy as just growth for growth sake.
I had that conversation with a client this year. They're being pushed to put up store over store, but it's actually eroding profitability and happiness organization. But I think the growth mindset is what fulfills you for this stage? And I don't think we talk about legacy enough.
Legacy doesn't need to be at the end of our careers. You could be a great GM right now. Who's gonna step into a new role? What's the legacy you're gonna leave for the team behind you? So it succeeds with that. If you're an owner, there is a point where somebody once said, nothing grows in the shadow of an oak tree.
When are you gonna step aside and let the leaders leave for your own sake? And what's working? What are you doing right now that's working? What do you love? What do you enjoy? And what are you doing right now that doesn't, isn't, you're not best at? And I think that the, I'm always going back to that again.
Growth mindset is either, if we're gonna grow, we're gonna be like, I don't wanna do this anymore. It [00:18:00] hurts. Or I can do this. And it could be more sustainable for everybody. My hope is to get away as somebody who's felt enough pain, especially you've just shared on your side, like to look at the pain that we feel.
I want my leaders to get, close to the toes get warm, but I don't want the feet to be on fire if I can sometimes.
Growth mindset is number one, defining. The question I would ask you is how do you win this year as a leader or for your team? And then I would challenge the crap outta that answer to make sure you really believe it. And that's not a marketing statement. We have to start there. How do you play to women's plan and not to lose?
That's my coach said that to me and I almost we've never wrestled, but we've become close 'cause he's pretty hard on me. Matt. Matt, this is this is great stuff Matt. This is great stuff. And Matt, just another question. It's, in leadership, POS position. We're talking about humility as well, but feedback is a hard thing to, to do sometimes because, so how can owners, and manager and managers, have real productive conversations with their teams [00:19:00] without creating conflict?
Or it's conflict part of it, and it should be, it should actually be in a way accepted as part of the process. Yeah, I think I think all business growth has prickles or a little bit of what I call passionate positive conflict. I think before we go into that, you need to get clear with your team on how they're covered level with conflict or even feedback.
I think the thing that helps feedback is the consistency of the message and aligning back either to company goals and their goals. And that might sound rigid and corporate, but why should somebody hear you? We all have a lot of points of feedback, whether that's at home. IGI got some fun feedback from my 8-year-old daughter on the weekend, which got a good laugh about, it's happy to hear it.
But I think on the side of feedback consistently if you're looking, there's an incredible book, the Coaching Habit. Or the advice trap by Michael Boey. Stainer. I use the one-on-one. I've asked Michael to be able to use it. We've got worksheets if anybody, like one, happy to send it to you. But I think there's a way to change feedback from us [00:20:00] giving one way directional management feedback to create a consistent, constructive conversation that supports the development of the person.
Nobody likes somebody shows up and gives them gives them shit. That's, I don't like it. I just, to be honest, I just had a call like that earlier today and I had to step back and go, okay, I need to hear them. 'cause they're helping really. It's a new business partnership. Great feedback.
But I had to go. Okay don't listen. Don't get emotional about it. It was really good feedback. Hear it. This is what I do for a living and I've gotta exercise that muscle and just did before this call. On our side, I think the challenge is what is your meeting rhythm to supply feedback?
And I think 70% of our results are driven by our physical state. Not even what we're saying, but how we show up. And a lot of leaders see yourself as other people see you. I would think, what do you need to change first? And sorry for the rant here. Yeah. But what do you need to change in order for your people to hear the feedback they need to grow the organization?
Matt, these are some tough things, right? Because when you're talking to managers or operators. People in general, man, really, because, [00:21:00] you're talking about this stuff and it's okay, yeah, you get excited. You talk about the change and what they need to do.
How do people sustain this? Because again, change doesn't happen over one conversation. It's practice and it's constant. So how do you help, people really get to the other side, if you may. Yeah, I think you, you broke it down. Perfect. There to say, it's so often we're looking at the finish line.
The biggest thing I'm trying to do with teams, if we take ourselves out of our conversation, we've all heard of New Year's resolutions. I think the average New Year's resolution is done by Feb 21st or 24th, whatever the date is. Yeah, it's because we wanted to lose 15 pounds. We only lost four, which is incredible project progress, but it wasn't 15.
So we quit most from sustainability of goals. We need to check our progress in the direction of our goals consistently. So if here's the finish line. Or the goalpost, it's what does progress in the direction of our goals look like? And there's some, there's a lot of great content around habit change.
It's recognizing those [00:22:00] small, consistent deposits in the direction. Behavior that we want. We can't always celebrate, we did it, but what you're doing is going to lead us there. And if organizations or leaders can choose to recognize progress in the direction of your goals, rather than recognizing the gap.
Because if we're just talking about the shortfall, I could, I've seen it so many times. It looks like your people are with you, but as soon as you leave the room, 'cause I get to talk to them, they don't feel seen, valued, or heard and they're frustrated. 'Cause they're working their butts off. So I think if you want to create consistent momentum, you've gotta put, we have to have accountability towards growth.
'cause growth is hard. Growth is a bottleneck. Yep. But we wanna track pro those. What are the little wins? Who did you recognize today and what for, it's what? What and this is great Matt, by the way, 'cause I'm listening intently, but how do you and of course this is great progress because that's really I remember when we were, I was part of this big restaurant group in Miami, we talked about this.
What was, [00:23:00] what would really motivate us, what it was progress, right? Because what would make you happy, right? And then you're like, in business, that's satisfied, fulfillment, talking about progress, in whatever we're doing, and we have this tendency to focus on all the negative crap.
And again, we magnify that and we don't see the progress that we're making. And for business owners, I believe in my case, it's happened like that as well. That you do all this stuff that's good, but you haven't gotten to this side, to this place where that you're looking for. So you're you're, I can get frustrated, angry, all this stuff.
And that reflects then into my team. To everybody that I have contact with. So it's just like a bad effect. So what system can people implement in operators implement like a tangible system? I don't know if it's a chart or whatever it is. It's okay. This is our track of this is our goals. This is what we're shooting for and this is the progress that we're making for, even if it's small.
Yeah. So one thing we usually do is, and again, another worksheet that we've drafted up is just called a bypass pass. So to get for the ops minded people here's not the WOOWOO stuff, here's the tactics. The one [00:24:00] pager on the one pager ask, like, how much fuel does a plane use when it takes off to get to its cru altitude?
I'm gonna do this quick. It's 70% of the fuel because we need torque and force to get the plane up off the ground. So what I do is I work with my clients on a hundred day plan, but I want a lot of clear, consistent behaviors or actions. Inside those initial weeks and they don't need to be big. It's not home run hitting.
It could be okay. Every, we want to have a more positive culture. Every leader on this decision needs to reconci recognize somebody daily and we're gonna come back and talk about how it infected culture, or we need to, reset our, there's a lot of conversation around our front door being Googled to our restaurant.
Okay, someone in the next seven days has gotta go. Make sure that when somebody googles us in our restaurant, that the proper information is available in there. But I think it's getting to the granular progress. 'cause then people see, okay, I did it. Check. Okay. And the question after, it's like the black box on a flight is, did what we do created the result we want?
First thing we didn't want, we need a lot of rapid activity out of the gate and we [00:25:00] need to commit. The biggest thing I see for teams is we have great conversations, but when it comes to down, who committed to do what by when? That conversation is awfully rushed in the restaurant industry and it's incomplete.
So when we come back to the meeting, there's already friction. 'cause hey I'm 20% short on my team. I'm not doing that. I agree we should, but no, I didn't commit to that. And then we're not in agreement. So I think the key thing, if you just map out a hundred day chunks, what's the theme? And you need to get detailed and then you need to celebrate.
We need to reward our minds, our teams, ourselves. We committed and we did. Because then the brains, the simple triggers in the brain said, I did that. It felt good. Let's do more. Man that's good stuff, Matt. So Matt, you talk about a lot about mindset, right? 'cause we're talking about it here.
A little bit of that progress and doing these things. What's one mind shift mi mindset shift that you believe every hospitality leader needs to make to see real results? Yeah. I like, and this is part of my repetition and my message is intentional. Just so the audience hears. [00:26:00] Yes, we can no longer create sustainable behavioral change by focusing on what we're doing wrong.
So we see, and I'm sure through Miami I got a chance to meet him a couple times here in Toronto. I met Gordon Ramsey. I've met John Taffer who are, they have media personalities. They're beautiful human beings be behind the scenes. That's not leadership, but giving our staff craft for what they're not doing.
There is proven science in the neuroscience. This we create sustainable change. By focusing on what we're doing wrong. So the one thing I've wanna encourage as a shift for as leaders, the mindset shift is how can every day I make a commitment to recognizing behavior in the direction of our goals.
If we can do that and then we start to reward. 'cause it's cultural. Your people will mirror you. We've all had that boss we admired and we mirrored. Or maybe we've been that boss, we start wearing the same clothes and having the same conversation. If you start to recognize recognition and leadership starts at the top, do not ask your people to do something you're not willing to do.
Don't ask them to recognize, show up to meetings and give 'em crap for what they didn't do last week. We've gotta look at the. That's my belief. I'm not right. But I spend my [00:27:00] days fighting that we need to have a positive view on our progress. Yeah. Not the gap. Yep. No that's fantastic Matt.
I think that, we start all our meetings. We follow the EOS system and so you know, we start with wins. Every single meeting that we have. Recognizing the good things that just sets us in a positive mindset that we can continue to talk about the other stuff, yep. US is an incredible system. A bunch of systems that come into that one, but it's a brilliant, simple system that if you follow it, it will change the conversation. Yeah. A hundred percent. So Matt you just mentioned, we just talked about culture as well. And all these things that we're talking about here, and I've experienced it, firsthand myself as well as, we were going through this.
Acquisition, you were a small group. And then when the company acquired this other group of restaurants and basically we doubled triple it size from one day to the next. Yep. And then that combination of cul culture was a, it was a shit show to, to be honest. And then we, we were trying to preach these things and we were still young and we didn't know what the hell we were doing, but.
And it was very difficult, and we would go into, manager [00:28:00] meetings and all these things to executive team, like trying to come up with this, things, talk about culture and talk, talk about the way we should behave, values, all this stuff. But man, it was so hard to make that trickle down, especially when you have multiple units and you're not at the restaurants anymore all the time.
'cause you're at an office and doing all these things. How do you make, sure. I don't know if it's possible to, that the culture that you're creating trickles down from the top to the bottom. I think, and you shared a great question there, right? And so we can go back. I think anybody out there has really dedicated time to leadership or anybody out there as a coach.
We probably all learn from Patrick Lin, I think I still say his last name wrong. Five dysfunction team. One of his questions is how do we behave? But one of the concepts in Five Dysfunctions, did I have to give him credit for this? 'cause it's in all of our work, it's cascading communication. Yeah.
So I think when we're leaving a meeting the, here's the biggest step over communication downwards is are so often when I go in a meeting. We just merged. We'll use your example. We merge cultures, two [00:29:00] incredible restaurant teams coming together. Top talent. We'll come to a table, might have a little bit of edge 'cause we just had a takeover.
But what I want, what we discussed here, are we in agreement. So what the biggest mistake I see is both sides share their experience, share their position, but in agreement as to what the expectation is. Leaving is often left, misunderstood meaning exactly what are we gonna do. So when it comes to getting buy-in, it's what did we discuss today?
And who do we who and how do we communicate that to our team? Because you might think we're just gonna go communicate. One person emails, one person texts, one person calls, one person gets there when they get there, right? Four leaders come back with completely inconsistent, and no one path is right.
'cause we didn't agree. But on my side it, I said like, how are we going to communicate this message? And here's the one thing I'll leave on if we want to get by it. And we did a post on this on the weekend. You need to communicate for three to six months. That same message. I think we communicate [00:30:00] once we've all worked for leaders who said something and didn't follow through.
So your people's impression doesn't need to be, it's not you. They've been told things before that weren't followed through on. Your team should be able to do an impression of your core messaging of you, where they can stand up in front of a boardroom and do a little joke. 'cause you say it so much and if they can't, you're not saying you're messaging enough.
So if we want the communication, we've gotta get it. We have to repeat it relentlessly before we can even ask or expect a behavior to happen. That's, you just, I think you just hit it on the nail, Matt. We actually, that's what we ended up doing. At some point we realized that we just had to repeat ourselves.
A million times and it was okay, which is part of the process. And I remember our director of operations, great guy, we're good friends. And of course the CEO and CFO great guys as well. And that's what we used to talk about a lot, but they would repeat the message and they would repeat the message and they would just, Hey, have patience.
We gotta continue repeating. Because sometimes we get frustrated. It's man, why are they not getting this? And it was just part of the process. And I was curious, this is story 'cause to bring it back, but everybody [00:31:00] knows Anheuser-Busch, but I worked for them. Carlos Brito came into Canada and took over.
So the Brazilian group who took over Interbrew and Labat and bought, they bought America. They bought Anheuser-Busch. Yeah. Every, no matter where. And Carlos Bri was just rated the top CEO of the last a hundred years before his retirement Van Eiser Bush. He made $22 billion in profit last year.
More than all consumer packaged good companies combined. Wow. They repeat three things on a daily basis, no matter the country or the metric. There's three core priorities and they do them every single meeting. They leave sticky notes every room they leave, so leave them on your desk. If it's not going in the direction of the priorities, we're not focused on the right things.
Sometimes success leaves clues. It could be how to pour the perfect latte or how to greet a guest that you're host in, but consistency in messages, no matter the scale matters. Matt, I have another question about this stuff. You know it. I think it takes a very, 'cause you just shared about, talking about brittle here and it takes a very specific type of personality, I would assume, an emotional state to be able to [00:32:00] be that good of a leader.
Do you find a certain pattern that differentiates great leaders or is it something or is, or you think it's a skill that people can learn? Because being a leader, you're gonna go through. A rollercoaster of emotions. You're gonna get a lot of stuff thrown at you so that if, fears can jump up and you can start reacting instead of acting, you can go into these, fight or flight, whatever, and they're just putting out fires or what and then you just, you can't lead that way.
So do you think that, again, leaders are born because of their certain personality or they grew up or whatever? Or do you think it can really be taught? I think in my experience, I think that it can be a learned skill. I think there's celebrity leaders that we can all reference. There could be somebody we played on a sports team with as a kid who you could just see them, as a 15-year-old who had presence and could inspire a team.
And I, I think people need to learn their natural abilities. But I invest a lot in my own development and I've watched as I go with my own peers, into my own [00:33:00] courses or week long workshops, i'm a significantly different person based on the investment in my personal development. I've also watched some incredible leaders around me that chose to make the, they realize that I can't manage my way to the next stage, and usually there's a forcing function where I need more time.
So I can't just work harder. I need to be a better leader. And some people. They can stay the management track. Not everybody should move to leaders leadership until they're ready, but I think it's that mindset that this isn't sustainable for the quality of life I want anymore. Not that I'm not great at it, what's gonna shift to being a leader, but you have to want it.
Just because there's a, we could all go, we've all gone to courses. I, a lot of people who didn't do anything with it. Yeah. And I don't, and I own my part of it, but I can't own the other side. So how do you act? Yeah. So you're talking about here, Matt, about, when you can learn certain things, but to really become a great leader, this is my belief, I think there's real transformation that needs to happen.
And that can come through difficulties, struggle, all these things that motivates you to take the action. And change. So besides that, [00:34:00] that we're talking about here of learning all these things I think a key component is spirituality for me. Yep. So have you found in your own experience that plays a role in helping leaders have a more stable presence and a stable stability that allows 'em to become better at what they do?
Yeah. And I think as somebody who didn't grow up around a lot of faith this has been a big question of mine for the last few years and there's a reason for it. So one thing I do every year is I'll take a significant period of time to study what I would consider the kind of top performing thought leaders in a space.
One thing I did find a few years ago, and it really put me back in my chair that everybody that I was looking up to, from Brene Brown to Eric Thomas. To Tony Robbins all have completely different faith practices to Simon Sinek, to, to all, I'm saying names that people will know. Right now. There's a whole actually, and Dan Martel, if anybody hasn't followed Dan, you should.
Oh, he's great Dan. So Dan, I sat with Dan. I said, Dan, what's the difference is that a Tony Robbins event? And Dan was [00:35:00] actually there in the audience for that event. Me and Dan and Matt. I said what's the one thing Dan? And he said, everybody in my circle in Colonna has got a high faith practice.
Every one of them. So they do the founder psych every week, and he, Eddie, he's Hey, I'm not projecting that on you. You make your own path and your own decision. And faith can be described spirituality in so many different ways. And I know it can be a touchy subject. One thing I know is that we're working with a purpose bigger than ourselves.
And I've hit some really hard, like I had the most challenging year of my life last year. I def I defined my faith. And it looks, my spirituality is probably a better word. And it's a lifelong journey. But I think when we're focused on something bigger than ourselves, I think that's where you see people really.
Really grow. And I think these are wonderful questions. As you can see I'm not responding. I'm thinking in the response. I think they're beautifully crafted, no bs, they're beautifully crafted questions. And if anybody out there feels resistance towards faith, it's just what's driving you that's bigger than yourself.
And I will stand there. I strongly believe in it. And if you want to do, look at anybody you admire, athlete or not in that frame or leader or [00:36:00] celebrity you'll find something motivating for 95% of them. Oh yeah. Yep. Yeah, that's a great answer, Madeline. And for me, that's it's crucial because it's just life again, will put you in a place where you realize that you have no power in many ways.
And again, you can't do it alone. And so that's what was, that's what we need that. Matt let's shift gears a little bit here. Sure. And and just lastly, I just wanna hit really on, on business growth and industry trends a little bit. 'Cause all this stuff is going on in the restaurant industry and owners will come to you, Matt, and say, Hey Matt, I can't make a freaking profit.
It's, my margins are freaking thin. Food cost is high, real estate is crazy. But you still see some operators doing pretty well. Yep. And, but concepts are shifting. Menus are shortening. There's all these things that are happening. What, what do you see, Matt?
You're talking to a bunch of restaurant owners. From your side, what are you seeing in, in trends and how can restaurant owners navigate this in a better way and still be run a great business? Yeah. I think in [00:37:00] my belief that the focus, most operators that are listening this are, have good financial visibility and health and process.
So we need to make sure that our foundation is strong. But my belief is we can't cut our way back to profitability in today's day and age. Who's somebody who spent a decade helping restaurants become more profitable, and that's the hill that I stood on. I think we can do great work, but when we look at the indicators, even like Starbucks had their first quarter results recently to say that transactions for Starbucks in North America declined by 8%.
But even off a great foundation, they were able to offset that by 4% by increasing average chicken. Ticket or average check, and they're, third place. You look at the sim as a guest when you go in there, and I'm not promoting Starbucks. We've worked with them, but not promoting them. They've got, in, in restaurant cups, they've got a different experience.
They've got a different sampling program for their staff. We need to be focused relentlessly on the guest experience and increasing average check. If we're going to bring health back to our industry in the next 18 months, it's gonna be a fight. And I think if we're not [00:38:00] having weekly conversations and creating visibility around, we can talk all about leadership development.
We want, you need to be relentlessly focused on how do you measure positive experience for your guests That drives average check. 'cause the data shows people are going out list, but they're willing to spend more should you optimize their experience. And QSR are fine dining and everything in between. But you have to know what that looks like and be guiding behaviors towards what the ideal guest experience is. I can unpack that so much more, but that is, we've gotta, we've gotta start there. Yep. Yeah. No, a hundred percent we're seeing that trend. Of course. People focusing on that are just creating different experiences, just creating more value.
Perceived value that is right. So Matt, what's next for you? Are there any projects, books, initiatives? Is anything that you're excited about? Yeah. Yeah. I'm really like, I'm, I've got more and apologize to be listening for my energy. This, I'm this excited, like I'm not jacked up just outta this conversation.
We've got, there's a, there is a new book coming [00:39:00] out in the next couple months. Based on the publisher. We're gonna make some updates. To the first version. It's the first time I shared that publicly which we're really excited about and we've gone and really looked at what's changed.
Book's only been out for four years but there's been significant shift in the market. So we have some extra content. I'm also just, it will be announcing in the next two weeks I've partnered into a technology based company that's incredibly proven to create sustainable behavioral change in large retail environments.
And globally, like hundreds of other shifting behaviors, hundreds of thousands of users, I'll share more. We're bringing that solution to try to support operators on how they create sustainable change. We're bringing it to hospitality and to emerging the franchise market. We'll be announcing that fully publicly.
I'm sure by the time this episode goes live we'll have it out. But that announced, we just put a bow on it. We've been working really hard. I've been working really hard on that for the last year to bring it to our industry. And finally, technology's made it cost effective. So it's not just for the big ones big enterprise, we can bring it to an independent operator or franchise organization.
So I'm really excited to share that. More comment [00:40:00] on that. Any Daniel? Yeah. Very cool. Matt. So Matt, in 20 years from now, if people you know, look back at your work and said, you changed hospitality in a big way, what would you want that to be? I'd want people to, my one want is to make sure that in order to take care of others, you need to take care of yourself.
And I say that 'cause they're, you can probably see the change in my emotion. Like I, I learned that the hard way. I wanna, I do know that leadership is lonely. Yeah. So if I can put the conversation that people take a little bit more care of their selves so we can show up fully to our people and we can strip some of the loneliness away, whether that be peer-to-peer sharing, whether that be inside of organizations, whether it be comfortable talking about our real experiences.
Hear us outside of work. I think we, we talk a lot about the guests. I wanna focus on the humans that serve our communities on a daily basis, man. So that's, I that's a beautiful thing, man. I couldn't I just relate to it so much. Matt. Is there a community? Is there is there a Facebook group, [00:41:00] something that you've, that, I don't know if you have it or not, but like where people can join in.
And support each other, help each other because I think it's a crucial man. Yeah. We, that's part of the roll out in two weeks. There'll be one of the large industry partners who has reached to develop industry leaders. So part of the, like my wanting and coaching. Is to like, I gotta work with a small amount of people, but if we can start a peer-to-peer conversation to realize we're not alone in our experience, that we can celebrate our wins as much as our challenges.
But right now we do, like on LinkedIn, we're putting out content every day to try to help the industry. Videos. We're on YouTube. I've got all of my coaching contents up there for free. You can plug and play it. Some people pay a lot of money for it and when they're in their life. But my side is we have a philosophy of giveaway everything we got.
If I can help you, any resources, I'll give it away. Reach out. I'd be happy to share. Matt, that's fantastic man. We're gonna have all the links and everything on this episode for sure, so everybody can find you. Is there anything else that we can do to help you, Matt, to spread the message?
I just think having that conver check in with your team, one thing I'd want you to do is show up to your [00:42:00] next team meeting and not talk about the business. So there's an exercise that I ask people to do and how to create human to human connection. So I'm curious about the person. So one thing, if anybody saw value in anything I shared, take 10 minutes of your next team meeting to check in and just ask people where they're at.
No work context at all, and we're human before, we're coworkers, before we're inside positions with titles. Support each other in a human to human way, and I promise your results will celebrate, or at least we'll have more fun doing it. A hundred percent. Matt, we just had a, we did a coffee happy hour last Friday because we dedicated a whole hour just to talk about whatever.
No, we don't talk about work, but and that's it, man. And it's a it's, again, yes, you're a hundred percent right. It's, relationships and people over tasks. That's what I try to remember, yeah. 'cause I was like go. So anyways, Matt, so that was a fantastic conversation. Matt, thank you again so much for being here for sharing this with me and our audience.
It's really great Matt. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So anyways, no, thank you, Matt. I hope to meet you in person at some point very soon. [00:43:00] Absolutely can't wait. All right, Matt. All right, thanks. Thanks Matt.