[00:00:00] You're not overworked. I just think you're doing the wrong work.
[00:00:05] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:00:36] Today we're going to talk about the busy trap, because busy is not the same as being productive. If you don't know me, my name is Chip Close. I'm the founder and CEO of Restaurant Strategy. So I host a podcast, I give talks, I wrote a book, and I'm here every single week to share tips, tidbits, tactics, frameworks, ways to help independent restaurant owners and operators level up and run a more product profitable business. Why profit is nice because profit means money for you. That's what I care about, helping you make more and work less.
[00:01:08] Now, if you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you've heard me talk about Kickfin. Because they've been a trusted partner of mine for years and I genuinely believe in what they do. For restaurant operators, managing tips has always been a headache, right? There's never enough cash in the drawer. At the end of the night, managers are stuck making bank runs and doing spreadsheet math at 1:00am Tip pooling regulations keep chain managing getting more complex. It's just not fun. And that's exactly why Kickfin exists. With Kickfin, restaurants can calculate tip pools automatically send instant payouts directly to employees existing bank accounts. No cash, no predatory pay cards, no glitchy employee apps required. Your team gets paid their tips fast in the account they choose, right when their shift ends. Kickfin integrates with all major PoS players, including Toast Square, Skytab, Genius Union, and many more. So you get a fully automated endtoend tip management system. It is fast, it is accurate, and it gives you a clean digital record for accounting and compliance. Kickfin powers tip payouts for every type of concept, from mom and pop shops to regional hospitality groups to national brands like Walk On Sports Bistro and Marco's Pizza and Toasted Yolk Cafe. Great hospitality starts behind the scenes when your people feel valued, when they are paid fairly and paid fast, I promise everything improves. Kickfin makes that possible. So if you're ready to save hours every week, eliminate cash runs, streamline accounting, and make tip payouts the best part of everyone's day, visit kickfin.com demo.
[00:04:19] So let's talk about how we do this right the hustle culture Especially in restaurant ownership is deep and wide and is all encompassing. But I think busy is a trap. Mostly what I try to help my clients do, right? So I run a coaching program called the P3 mastermind and I work with the owners and operators in that group to help them make more and work less. I want everyone to be able to go live on a beach somewhere and just cash the checks. That's what I want for you.
[00:04:48] Sounds counterintuitive, but working harder does not get you there faster. Right now there's a life cycle. There's a period of time in your restaurant when, yeah, you gotta grind it out and you gotta make it happen. But for Most of you, 99% of the people watching this video, you are beyond that. You are still pretending like you're in infancy and you're not. You're a young adult. Your restaurant is all grown up and what it needs from you is different from what it needed from you back then. So I call this the busy trap. It's easy to feel wanted. It's easy, easy to feel special, like, oh, my restaurant's better when I'm there. But there's this saying, right? A lot of people, you'll hear a lot of people on the Internet say this, right? The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. One of the things I say to restaurant clients all over, especially when they're looking to grow, they say, I got three locations, man, and I want to blow this thing up. Or better yet, when they've got one location, they say, man, things are really humming along. I want to open a second location. The thing I always say to them is, that's great, open that second location. But not until you take a 90 day vacation.
[00:05:55] 90 day sabbatical, 90 days where you don't walk into your restaurant and they say, well, why? Why do I have to do that? I've got momentum. I just want to open up the new one. I was like, what do you think is going to happen when you go over to that new location? That new location is going to be an infant, a baby. It's going to need you all the time. It is going to be one all encompassing again. We talk about the life cycle of a restaurant. You will not be able to step foot in your restaurant. So to make this really tactical, really actionable, anyone out there who's got one restaurant is looking to go from one to two. The piece of advice I give everyone is you have to take a 90 day sabbatical. Now, every single week you can give four hours to that previous location, right to your one existing restaurant. But you can't walk in the front door. It's four hours on phone or zoom max. Because when you open up the new location, four hours is going to be the absolute most you're going to be able to give the original existing location. So if you want to open up a second location, it's fine, but you got to take a 90 day sabbatical without walking in the door. And if you do ever walk in the door, it's probably to jump behind the line or to, you know, to deal with some inventory or payroll issue, then that means you are not ready to grow.
[00:07:07] This is where so many restaurant owners get it wrong. They are stuck in the restaurant. I gotta do payroll, I gotta do inventory. Well man, sometimes I still gotta jump back on the line. I gotta, I gotta work expo, I gotta. Then your restaurant is not ready yet. It is still in infancy. So if you want that next step, if you want bigger things, which I want for you, then you've gotta be willing to take yourself out of the operation. Now the hardest thing is, and I work with a lot of members in my coaching group do this and they say but, but now I have this ident crisis really. And they don't say it in those terms, but they have an identity crisis. Says I've always been the chef, always been the owner, I've always been the operator. This is what I do. I am here. I said great, then we got to figure out what you do now. So the way to get out of that busy trap is stop to stop doing all the stuff that you just have to do, quote unquote, and instead focus on the high value, high leverage tasks that you simply don't have time for or really the things that only you can do or you are done desperately that you desperately want to do.
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[email protected] as always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
[00:09:09] Those things I want you to do the things that you absolutely have to which there are very few. And I want you to do the things that you actually love to do. Because what's the point of owning a business if you don't get to interact with the business in the way that you want? The first thing you do here is make two lists. On the first list is here's all the stuff I do actually absolutely have to do, or here's the stuff that I love to do. That's the first list. And hopefully it's very, very thin. What happens is going to have more on there than you realize than there should be on there. You're not going to realize that yet, but make that first list the stuff you have to do no one else can do, or the stuff that you very much want to do, the stuff that you love to do. On the other list is all the tasks you do over the weekly basis. And what happens. You're going to make this list. It's going to be hundreds of items long. Hundreds of items long. And the next step you're going to do is you're going to start coming up with who you can delegate those tasks to. What you'll realize is that those tasks can be delegated. You just are not in a place yet to delegate them. When you have the list there and you look in black and white and you start saying, okay, well, this person can do this and this and this and this and this, this. And then this person can do this and this and this. This, this becomes the roles and responsibilities for that position.
[00:10:18] When you figure out how to delegate or outsource everything, what you're left then with, right, you crumple up that second page, you throw it out. What you're left with is that first page. Now, after having delegated so much of your tasks, you're going to look back at that first list and you're going to go, oh, oh, actually, also this and this and this I can also pass off. You're going to realize how easy it is to pass things off. And then what becomes left on that list, I hope, is stuff that can be done in about four hours a week. Now, I want to get to the place where your restaurant does not need you in order to operate. And if the only place in the world you want to be is your restaurant. You just want to be on the floor. You want to be at the front desk, you want to be behind the bar, you want to be at the pass. Fine, then go do it. I want you to be where you are, where you are most happy. But I want to get it to the place where you don't have to walk into your place for 90 days, it can run without you. That's how you figure out if you can go live on a beach somewhere. That's how you can figure out if you're ready to franchise. That's how you figure out if you are ready to expand. You've got to be able to pull yourself out. We are trying to be more intentional and more strategic. We're trying to get out of firefighter mode, right? All we do all day, I hear this all the time. All I do all week is put out fires. People are always tapping me on the the shoulder, are always coming into my office, are always asking me this, that. They're always texting me, they're always emailing me, can you do this? Can I do that? Hey, how do I do this? Hey, how do I do that? Hey, what do you think should we do? And it's unending.
[00:11:41] What happens is when you give people the responsibility and then when you give them the authority to actually make decisions about the things that they're responsible for, you realize you are less and less needed in your business. And that is an exceptional place to get to. Really what we're trying to do is we're putting systems into place. A system is a repeatable set of actions. We're trying to accomplish this. We do this and this and this. We're trying to accomplish that. We do this and this and this. We do the following things to accomplish the following goal. That's all a system is. It's a repeatable set of actions. You have a series of actions that you repeat. You just don't realize it. So what you're going to do is delegate that and by virtue of delegating it, you're going to have to tell people what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why it's important that it's done in that way. Way. We're talking about the busy trap and talking about how to get you away. Here's how we take a baby step into that 90 day sabbatical that I talked about. And I really do believe you should say sometime in the next 12 months, I'm going to take 90 days off. I dare you. To do it right. The way we begin here is you take a day to yourself and you do not bring your phone with you, you do not turn it on, you do not answer, respond, nothing. And again, I really think you go to the beach for the day and you leave the the phone in the car. It's really what I believe you should do.
[00:12:58] Start by taking one day a week where you are totally off the grid. No one can reach you and you can let the team know, hey, just so you know, on Sunday I'm going for a hike so I'll be totally unreachable and that's fine. Whether you go on a hike or not. In their heads they believe you're going for a hike or hey, I'm going to be at the beach all day or hey, I'm going to go wherever you're going, I'm going to be in an all day leadership summit. You can make stuff up or you can actually go do these things.
[00:13:23] But I dare you for the next X number of months to take one day completely yourself, totally off the grid. Number one, I think it's really good for you to sort of rejuvenate yourself, reconnect with friends, with family, whatever, or just be alone. But really it's going to teach your team to start swimming right in this sink or swim world. You're going to teach them how to swim.
[00:13:46] I don't think you're overworked. I think you're just doing the wrong work. And I think when we get all that crap off your plate and get you focused on the work that really matters, I think you're going to be energized again. I think you're going to be rejuvenated. I think you're going to be creative again. I think you're going to get better ideas that that is how you start changing your life and your business. That's how we get out of the busy trap. And if you want to learn how to work with me directly, the link is down in the notes. P3 mastermind is my group coaching program. I help restaurant owners and operators all over the world to dial in profitability so that they can make more money and work less in their business. That sounds interesting to you? Click the link, grab time on the calendar and I'd love to chat with you. Thanks again guys. See you next time.
