Unveiling the Secrets to Hospitality Excellence with Sean Finter

Unlock hospitality's hidden code with bar industry juggernaut Sean Fenter, who joins your host Chris Schneider for a revelatory discussion on navigating the perilous yet rewarding world of bars and restaurants. Discover the secret sauce distinguishing exceptional service from true hospitality, and why it's critical to your establishment's survival. We also dissect the art of hiring staff who mesh with your brand's identity and how to weave an enchanting guest experience that keeps patrons coming back for more.

Venture into the exclusive realm of top bar operators, where Sean and I examine the finesse of balancing a profitable enterprise with nurturing a passionate team dedicated to the craft. We traverse the landscape of community influence, detailing how forging strong local connections can transform your business into a bustling hotspot. This episode is a treasure map guiding you to cultivate a dedicated customer base and a loyal community around your establishment, ensuring your spot at the peak of the industry mountain.

Check out Sean's Social Media and Websites:
www.SeanFinter.com
www.FinterGroup.com
Bar  & Restaurant Growth Accelerator FB Group: www.facebook.com/groups/barandrestaurantgrowthaccelerator
Sean on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sean-finter/

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Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, the ultimate resource for bar owners looking to elevate their businesses to the next level. Our podcast is packed with valuable insights, expert advice, and inspiring stories from successful bar owners and industry professionals. Tune in to learn everything from how to craft the perfect cocktail menu to how to manage your staff effectively. Our mission is to help you thrive in the competitive bar industry and achieve your business goals.

Special thank you to our benchmarking data partner Starfish. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software by using AI to help you make smart data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.

For more information on how to spend less time working in your bar and more time working on your bar:
The Bar Business Podcast Website
Schedule a Strategy Session
Chris' Book 'How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business'
Bar Business Nation Facebook Group

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

You're listening to the Bar Business Podcast where every week, your host, chris Schneider, brings you information, strategies and news on the bar industry, giving you the competitive edge you need to start working on your bar rather than in your bar.

Chris Schneider: 0:18

Welcome to this week's edition of the Bar Business Podcast, your ultimate resource for bar owners. I'm your host, chris Schneider. Today, we have a very special guest with us, sean Fenter. Sean is probably the best coach in the business. He is also my coach. He coaches, coaches and he coaches bars. He has built some of the most amazing companies that provide support for bars and built a great bar group years ago, but I cannot actually do his background justice. So, sean, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and your background?

Sean Finter: 0:48

Sure, well, I'm glad to be here. First off, good to see you, chris. Good to see you. So my background the short version born in Canada, small town, started in the industry when I was 12, at a truck stop, a job that changed my life and decided to stick with it. School wasn't my thing, so I stayed in hospitality, worked my way to the big city of Toronto, then to London, england. I was based there for six years and then decided I wanted to prove myself in the owner's arena, so I did that in Australia. I was in Sydney, australia, for 10 years. I had eight bars and restaurants, loved the challenge, learned a lot, made some money and then got into coaching and consulting. I've been doing that for the last 20 years I guess 18 years and I live here in the US now. So I've been here for 15 years at that time and love still being a part of this industry.

Chris Schneider: 1:42

I know one of the things that you like to talk about and that a lot of your programs are focused on, and you've been doing some fantastic webinars out there. So if you don't follow Sean on things, we'll put all his Facebook groups and all that in the show notes that you can look those up, because he has some really great content that's going out for everybody in the industry. That is just exceedingly helpful. But one of the things you've been talking a lot about recently is that our industry has an 80% failure rate, which is amazingly high when you think about how many bars are out there and how many people are doing this and then how many people fail. So why do you think the number is as high as it is?

Sean Finter: 2:23

Well, the number is staggering and it wasn't until I got into coaching and consulting that I really felt the impact of it. You know my goal as a bar owner and restaurant owner was to not become that statistic, but for the last 18 years I've been working with people to help avoid that and transition through it. And it's heartbreaking. You know, when a hardware store goes broke, your bank's in trouble. When a bar goes broke, you're typically funded by the three Fs family, friends and fools so your phone gets awfully quiet, the invite for Thanksgiving disappears and it's pretty depressing. It's tough to battle out of that position.

Sean Finter: 3:03

When I look online, if you Google, why do bars and restaurants fail? I don't think the real reasons are there, at least not in my experience. You know they talk about location. You know you and I could name a hundred places that are in shitty locations that do really well. You know lack of funding All of my bars started with about 10 bucks in the bank, you know. So there's a lot of reasons that, yes, could bring the average place down.

Sean Finter: 3:26

But what I now know is that we're in the hospitality industry and many, many people that work in this industry can't even define what hospitality is. They get hospitality confused with service. Service is something you do for somebody. Hospitality is something you do with somebody, and I love the true essence, the true meaning of hospitality is how a guest feels about themselves while they're in your company. Now, if you went to the bank and said, hey, my model is I'm going to hire this or going to start up this company on a shoestring budget, there's a million places I'm going to compete with. We're going to hire people. We're only going to give minimum wage, almost no training I'm going to compete with. We're going to hire people. We're only going to give minimum wage, almost no training, and the name of the game is to have a 26-year-old impact. How a table of 56-year-olds feel, you can imagine now you know why you don't get any money.

Sean Finter: 4:16

So it's tough to do. You have to slow down and really think through it. And then the secret is to kind of bottle your brand of hospitality and then hire people who would get excited delivering it and then teach them exactly how to do that. Coach them on a daily basis.

Chris Schneider: 4:32

So, in that difference between hospitality and sales, and hospitality being about how you make people feel while they're with you what are some ways that you can influence the way people feel?

Sean Finter: 4:45

What are some ways that you can influence the way people feel? Well, there's a lot you can do. So, first off, you know I learned this a hard way when I had eight different properties. Having eight properties is complicated, but having eight different properties and I took my best staff at venue A and had them cover at venue B, and they hated it and they didn't do a good job, right, they didn't love that constituency they were serving, they didn't like the brand, they didn't like the vibe, they didn't, you know, it just wasn't them. So that's first off. Like you know, hiring the best waiter from across the street doesn't mean, you know, he's not a blender, right, that you can just plug in and it'd work the same way across the road. So, firstly, you have to hire people that get high delivering your vibe. Secondly, you have to be able to model for them and show them how to deliver this feeling right.

Sean Finter: 5:35

There's a famous book I think it was Sandler that wrote it that says the title is you can't teach a kid to ride a bike by reading a book. And hospitality is the same way. You've got to see it, You've got to feel it, You've got to have people modeling it, and then you need to coach it on a regular basis and in my experience, if I hired the right person for my business at the right time in their career, we were lucky to have them modeling some semblance of our brand of hospitality in four or five months, Most of them. It took 10 or 12 months to hit their stride and, as you know, in our industry a lot of people are looking for the next job at that point right. So you better be doing something right to keep them on for two or three years, to extract that investment you put into training and have that happy marriage of staff, guests and ownership.

Chris Schneider: 6:22

Just to follow up on that if we're trying to keep employees, then for more than the you know, I think average turnover is about 300%, which means that people are lasting, on average, about three months. What do we do to make them stay with us Not for three months or a year, but for two years, five years, 10 years, and actually be able to build that hospitality into the system?

Sean Finter: 6:47

Well, you know, that's it and that's one of the secrets to success of this industry. So, with all of my clients, you know, I asked them. I said, let's say I'm an A player in your market, I'm a bartender with three or four years experience, or a server or cook, whatever it is you know. And I said, let's assume that they have the courage to ask you a question first at the interview. If they had that courage, the first question would be everyone's favorite radio station, WIIFM. What's in it for me? Right, Like, if I come here and yeah, we're going to trade time for money, right, that's how a job works. I'm going to give you hours, You're going to give me a paycheck, but what would make it worth my while to work here for three years or five years or 25 years, over all my other options and most people I ask that question to don't have an answer, right? So that's why you have a problem, and it's different for every business, and I'll give you an example.

Sean Finter: 7:40

In my case, the only thing that I had in the beginning that was of real value was my own experience in entrepreneurship. So I said to everyone that worked for me if you come and work for me, there were a few conditions to the employment. Number one we did not have dead-end jobs, so you had to progress through the organization. You got pushed out of your comfort zone, that position that you applied for. Number two you had to be a good student and you had to become a teacher. You had to help us bring the people in behind you. And then, number three, you had to start dreaming out loud while you work for us. I'll help you get to your next job, if that's where you want to go. I'll help you get into the career that you really want to be in.

Sean Finter: 8:22

But if you want to stay with us for a few years, you know you've got to become an A player inside of our system. And for me, you know, and our theme to all that was I'm. You know, looking back at my education, which is in the formal system, is nothing but looking back. I've always considered myself a misfit and I said this is a place for misfits to prove themselves. Right. If your dad ever put you down, your last boss, people at school, your teachers, I said you can come and prove yourself on this stage and I said if you stay with me for three years, it will matter that you were here and I had people come in droves to to work inside that system that we built to work inside that system that we built.

Chris Schneider: 9:05

I think it speaks to something I found as an owner too, that too often I feel like in this industry, people want to hoard their talent, not develop their talent, and I always thought it was the coolest thing if I had an employee that was, say, a server and did really well and then was able to get a sales job or something afterwards. The improvement of my employees was always a good thing for me, even when they were leaving Right. And it's that developing of talent that I'm on the exact same page as you. It just builds amazing things and it makes people feel heard and connected and then motivates them moving forward.

Sean Finter: 9:44

Well, you know, I think something that every employer in the hospitality industry has to their advantage, that they really undersell or underplay in their business is there's three critical skills. And especially if you're a front of house employee, you know you're exposed to these things on a daily basis. And firstly, you know, if your job's a bartender or a host or a server, your job is literally to make people smile right, to engage them, to read their body language, to figure out not only what they want. I could walk into a room of adults and interact in a conversation, ask great questions, read body language and work to serve or please that person.

Sean Finter: 10:33

Number two no matter what industry you're in, even nonprofits have to sell something. You have to keep revenue going. I told everyone that came to work for me. I will teach you the mechanics of sales and I'll teach you how to sell with dignity. It won't feel cheap. You won't be upselling and pressuring people. You're going to be a steward of that experience, right? I'm going to show you how to do that and I'm going to let you practice hundreds of times a day.

Sean Finter: 10:56

And then, thirdly, the marketing aspect of it. The best time to market to a guest is when they're inside your business. Right, people are paying for ads on social media. Why don't you advertise while you're there? Why don't you market to them a future event or occasion or a reason to return to that business and then involve your staff in that cycle? You know, operations is smiles, learning to optimize the sale and then give them a reason to return as your marketing aspect. And I said, if you walk out of here after two or three years with just those three things and having practiced them thousands of times, I guarantee you'll be more successful, not only your next job but in life in general.

Chris Schneider: 11:35

No, that definitely is true. And now I know with some of the businesses you coach. You coach some of some very large bar groups. You coach some individual bars that do a lot of sales. You coach some of some very large bar groups. You coach some individual bars that do a lot of sales. You coach some of the top bars in the world. So what is it that separates that kind of upper crust operator, or the operators that are seeing disproportional success, if you will, from the average operator?

Sean Finter: 12:02

Yeah, I, you know and I like that. You brought up the disproportional success. When you get into that top 1%, everything's disproportionate, right? The attention you get online, the amount of A players you get hiring for your business, the amount of money brands want to throw at you, landlords that are offering you a bar and basement discount for prime properties because they just want you on their land Everything's disproportionate. So that's where you want to be an outlier in the industry and that's part of what I do is coach outliers and coach people who want to be outliers and the people that make it into that arena.

Sean Finter: 12:34

I think the thing that's really important to look at is it can't be a singular focus, right. It can't be all about me, the owner, making money. Yes, absolutely. If you're running a good business, you deserve to be making good profits, and good profits. It varies depending on the business type, but some people are happy with 10%. I've got clients that make 40%. It depends where you're at and what your opportunity is. But secondarily to that, you've got to be providing career opportunities for your leadership team. No business outperforms your leadership team over time. You can't have great owners and halfwits for leaders and expect to have a great business. It just doesn't work. So you've got to be cultivating, you know, that group of people and constantly creating opportunities for them so that they can learn, grow and earn. And then at the staff level, again, it can't be dead-end jobs. You have to be an excellent employer. You have to think about that constituency and how do I add value to them as often as possible and make this more than a job for them?

Sean Finter: 13:35

And then the fourth constituency are you a great community member? Most, or not most a few of my businesses in Sydney. We were an inconvenience to the community. I didn't know it at first. People finally started to tell me we were loud, we were dirty, we were by dirty. The rubbish is out front when it shouldn't be. People are out front when they shouldn't be. Cigarette butts, you know, are you know? Are you an asset or detriment to your community? I tell you it really pays being an asset. And we wanted to not only be neutral. We wanted people to look to us as a spoke or the hub for the spoke right. We wanted to loan the property to our neighbors when it didn't cost us much to do so. We wanted to help people out whenever we could. We wanted to volunteer for the local fire department, we wanted to be an A-plus community member and you stack those four things up. If you start to serve all those constituencies, you're going to find yourself headed towards that 1% class.

Chris Schneider: 14:35

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Chris Schneider: 15:04

The link is in the show notes below. Join the league of successful bar owners who found their blueprint to working less in their bar and more on their bar. And a community is something that I've always been really big on, because I think you're absolutely correct the more you build the community around you into your establishment, the more that you can communicate with them, the more you talk to them, the more they like you, the more you're an integral part of what happens in your area. Right, and I've personally had some experiences where that has been very lucrative as far as turning around bars and things.

Sean Finter: 15:40

And I think it's really important when you're talking about being that asset in your community, and I think it's really important when you're talking about you know, being that asset in your community. Whenever I get a chance to actually go to the property, I don't visit all my clients that I work with, but when I can I do, and one of the things that I do when I'm walking down there or get dropped off in an Uber is I'll go to four or five of their neighbors and I'll say, hey, I'm looking for ABC Bar, do you know where it is? I mean, in some cases I'm across the street and they don't know where it is. The people that work there have no idea that it's there. Or I'll say, you know, do you know where it is? And they say, yeah, it's just over there. And I'll say, well, what's it like there?

Sean Finter: 16:13

And they're like and they often say, well, I've heard, you know, I've heard, I can't believe that these are your neighbors and that people are walking by and they don't have a firsthand impression of your business because you haven't invited them in.

Sean Finter: 16:32

We did once a quarter at every property we had a community dinner or a community event where we could do things for free to have people come in. But even if we did things at cost or whatever and we'd invite people in and I'd make a point, we'd give people name tags when they came in, we'd fill them out the door and we connect the guy from the hardware store, the guy from here to there and get people talking. And you know so many people said to us I've been doing business here for 25 years. I never met that person before. So you can be that person that connects your community. Or you can be the person that people have stories about, secondhand stories that they've heard things. Or you know they're pissed off because a beer bottle was on their doorstep and they know it didn't come from the bakery right Might not have come from your place.

Sean Finter: 17:15

But hey, now the assumption's there. But if they know you and they know you know, they know your heart, they know you want to be a valuable member of the community you got a shot at getting their staff in and getting some recommendations when that's one thing that I've always found to be amazingly beneficial in the bar business is when you get the staff from other bars and restaurants coming in Right Right.

Chris Schneider: 17:42

Having that industry sort of late night I've always found to be a key component of most bars that are really successful Right, because they're good customers. They tip well, they tend not to fight. Let's be honest. Late night you get a lot of issues and the industry folks are not that.

Sean Finter: 18:01

Yeah.

Chris Schneider: 18:02

Generally speaking.

Sean Finter: 18:03

Yeah, you know that when it, because, as I mentioned, I grew up in the industry, so I know how valuable it is to to to be able to go do another business, not one that you work at, but another one in your community and get some sort of benefit from being in the community. And I'll give you a few examples. With us Daily. We had our staff meal for staff, and I always want to change it up to be healthy. Where it could be high value, we'd buy things in bulk, of course, and really try to put together something worthwhile at a cost, price or close to cost, and we would issue a certain amount per day. So once our staff at eight, or once we knew how many we needed for our team to be portioned out for other people in the community, and we had on our chalkboard at one place that was really popular for this, we had the number and they would cross off and it gets that. So bartenders would be walking by or a cook could be walking by and they'd see, oh my God, they got eight of these meals left and they were usually great. They'd come in, and so that's one thing. Secondly, we did education every month and it alternated, so it was called our Inside Out series. So inside was inside the industry, so things on profitability, hospitality, sales, all that and then out was on things outside the industry, like how do you get your first home mental health?

Sean Finter: 19:22

We had a room that fit I don't know, 55 people and we had 25 staff and we had an email list of people in the industry and we would send out say we've got 20 spots left. If you want to attend this, no cost, just come and see us, and that sort of thing. And then the third thing that we did whenever we were changing our menus over and people you know what it's like, people want you to try this and try that We'd say, all right, you bring all these samples in wine, food, beer, whatever it was and we'd invite some industry people in and they would we'd say, hey, this is what we serve now, this is what we'd be looking to replace this with. Which do you like better, whatever this would be, or, if we put this on and have to be a dollar more, would you pay that for that?

Sean Finter: 20:09

I tell you, people that work in the industry have valuable perspectives on this stuff and they got to come and eat, drink, meet some people and have their opinion valued. So we did as much as we could for the community and I can tell you this wasn't a ploy to lure staff from the places, but that happened right, because there are venues that weren't doing this. We always had people say you guys take better care of us in the place that we work at, and that kind of broke my heart in a way. I felt bad that they weren't being taken care of. But I'd say to my team we need to do more of this right, they deserve it. These are good people.

Chris Schneider: 20:45

Yeah, and I think something that happens unfortunately far too often in our industry is that we look at employee benefits as kind of the traditional set of employee benefits with health insurance and 401ks and those things, and a lot of smaller operators obviously can't do that. 1% folks, the folks really kicking it out of the park they can do that, but a lot of folks can't. And all these things that you're bringing up don't require a large budget. They don't require spending thousands of dollars, but they're significantly better than what the guy down the street is doing to your point, right, right, yeah, and I think that becomes really key.

Sean Finter: 21:26

You know it's interesting and everyone wishes they could pay more, and some places do pay a little more, but at the end of the day, the term employee benefit like we are trying to benefit an individual right, and so our thinking always was like what could we do? That's low cost and high impact, right. That was a key for us. What could we do that would cost very little but would have a high impact for them. So, for example, we had different properties, different days of the week. We would have English as a second language to get someone in back then that could teach and have this conversational, fun group environment to teach people. And I said listen, I can't force you to learn conversational English, but I don't know anyone in Australia that runs a multimillion dollar business that doesn't speak it. Right, you, just you have to communicate with suppliers and negotiate, and so on and so forth.

Sean Finter: 22:20

Secondly, we would seek out community colleges or online courses that were very low cost or no cost and we would advertise those and we'd talk to them. And then we'd have people on staff, our team, that would act as tutors. They'd volunteer to help their coworkers, to help them through these courses right, if people wanted to learn and grow. And then a third example is we would have workshops for resumes, right? You've seen a lot of resumes, man, I'm surprised. I just saw a resume a couple of days ago of a young guy graduated his MBA and his resume is garbage.

Sean Finter: 22:54

Like I'm like, dude, you would not get a sniff into a company that I know. Like this is like I don't know what you did at university for six years, but clearly none of this. So let's look through the lens of an employer. What are they looking to see? How do you interrupt the pattern? What do you say without going too far, what? How should your language read? You know? And so we would do things like that for our team. And people would say well, are you trying to prime these people to leave? I'm not trying to prime them for the rest of their life. They're going to leave at some point. So am I. We might as well take care of each other while we're here.

Chris Schneider: 23:28

Yeah, that's just awesome. It is so different than how a lot of people approach things but, at the same time, so how we have to approach it in order to not be in that 80 that fail. Right, right, because that's what everything we've been talking about, whether it's you know what makes an outlier, or the different employee benefits, all this stuff, stuff, it all goes into that 80% where we started the conversation. Now, pivoting a little bit from employees and why people fail, let's talk a little bit more on the money end of things. What are a few things, or one main thing that a bar could do to help them increase their profits are a few things, or one main thing that a bar could do to help them increase their profits, you know, if I was.

Sean Finter: 24:23

To reword that conversation this is what I do when I'm talking to staff is to say how do you win in hospitality? And try the exercise. For those that are listening, that are in management or in ownership of bars and restaurants have a quick sit down or stand up conversation with 10 of your staff and ask them one-on-one how do we win in this business? And you will likely get 10 different answers, which would make you no longer wonder why you're not winning anymore. If you said to a basketball team how do we win? Or to a soccer team, they would tell you how you win. You have to stay inside the lines, you have to get more points in there, you have to defend your net. They're very specific, but at the end of the game on that scoreboard, you need more points than them and that's how you know you've won.

Sean Finter: 25:08

In hospitality. It comes down to having a person who drops in for a meal. That gives you a shot and you convert them in to a regular guest and then you convert those guests into raving fans. That's how you win, right? So how do you do that Now, if we can reverse engineer? Well, what's a raving fan? Right? And we all know raving fans, and, as a, as a recovering owner, my God, I knew a lot of them and some of them drove me absolutely mental. I love them, but they drove me mental. Like people thought they own the business. They talked about the business nonstop. They dragged their coworkers in. They never stopped talking about this place. They knew every aspect of the business. They drove everyone mental right. But they love the place and they and they transferred this enthusiasm. That's what sales is, right. People are like I better go down and see what the hell Pete's talking about and go check this out. So we would say to our staff we're going to show you with this constituency and that's the other thing in our industry Like I think if you want to go bankrupt quickly, just apply the golden rule right. Like treat everyone like you want to be treated. I've got four kids that range from 20 to 14. None of those humans want to be treated like the other None of them. You've got customers that go from 90 years old to nine. Trust me, none of them want to be treated the same way. We want to read people and treat them like they want to be treated in that moment. Think about how hard that is to do. So if we can figure that out and then develop some very basic playbooks.

Sean Finter: 26:35

I was working with a client right before this call and I said let's get down to three basic groups. To start with, people who have never been there before. Right, let's call this our white group. It's your first time. They're a blank canvas. Then we've got people that come in from time to time. Once in a while we'll call those our gray group. And then our black group are the experience group.

Sean Finter: 26:57

These are VIPs. They come in regulars. They come in all the time, right, even on that alone, if someone asks for a recommendation, people that I work with don't hear a recommendation. They hear I want you to tell me, given the constituency that I'm in, what I should have, right? They don't want to hear what the waiter's favorite thing is. No one gives a shit what the waiter's favorite thing is, or that he or she's a vegan or they're from the Midwest and they think the food's better there. No one cares, right. What they're really asking is it's my first time here. All I want to know is what allows you guys to keep the doors open. What made you famous? What makes you relevant is?

Chris Schneider: 27:33

what allows you?

Sean Finter: 27:33

guys to keep the doors open. What made you famous? What makes you relevant? I want to taste that.

Sean Finter: 27:36

Go to the other end of the spectrum, the people there all the time. They already know they're the ones that made the place famous. They're tired of what. So tell us what's new and exciting. And the people in between, somewhere in between Right, and then we might look at occasion, right, when people come in. Or is it just Tuesday night? We're just having a meal, is it that we're celebrating something? It's Friday night and then we're matching for those things.

Sean Finter: 28:01

And that's how you build regulars. You meet them where they are and we always say, with younger people especially, I'd say you see that group walking in A table for four just walked in the door and they'd say, yeah, I see him. I said, okay, look at that group, I want you to rate their energy. They'd watch them for a few seconds and they'd go a six and I'd say, look again. And then they'd see a bit more jovial, be able to say I'm a seven. Okay, I agree with you, that's a seven. Good, now our job is to mirror that right.

Sean Finter: 28:30

Someone coming in from a funeral that's a two doesn't want a clown greeting them at the door, high energy clown, right, right. So you want to mirror their and then you want to take them two levels up. That's our job. So we've got a lot of formulas and and playbooks that we teach staff one at a time, and build their arsenal to turn drop-ins into raving fans, and that's how you win in the bar and restaurant game fantastic, and I think I think that's it's too often, and I'm guilty of this.

Chris Schneider: 28:56

I'm an accounting guy by background, right, and so I look a lot at dollars and cents. But the dollars and cents come after you have people that come in on a regular basis. It comes after you have those regulars. It comes after you've created a great experience. Because if you only optimize the dollars and cents which again I love to talk about but is not at all the main thing If you only optimize those, the hospitality can suffer. And you have to start with the hospitality first.

Sean Finter: 29:26

And one way to look at it, you know, is the dollars and cents comes down to, that's a scoreboard for the hospitality you're delivering, right? Businesses that are running away, when they're busy on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, can't help but have some extra cash in the bank, right, like once your expenses are covered, this cash stuff just starts to stack up. But it's those people that you know. People come in and give them a shot and they don't come back again. Right, people that people come in and give them a shot and they don't come back again. There's a book that I read after I sold my restaurant group that would have made me a lot better as an owner and the book is called the Ultimate Question. And the Ultimate Question comes down to this. It's genius.

Sean Finter: 30:08

The guy used to be a real stats geek. I think he worked for Gallup organization running surveys 40 or 50 question surveys and he thought to himself what if I could ask one question that would give me most of what I needed to know? And he developed it. He came up with it and it's as simple as this Right after someone dines in your restaurant or drinks in your bar, on the way out the door, or shortly afterwards, maybe they get the digital survey on their phone and the question is this how likely are you to recommend friends or family to ABC Bar based on your recent experience?

Sean Finter: 30:45

And the breakdown is this If they rate you and the rating is just from 0 to 10. If they rate you from 0 to 6, they're a detractor of your business. They've just told you I paid you some money, it did not meet my expectations and I will actively tell people to stay away from your business. If someone mentions it, I'll just give them a different recommendation. So yeah, I've been there. I wouldn't go there. Try this instead.

Sean Finter: 31:09

Here's where it gets interesting If they write you a seven or eight. Given my formal education, an eight out of 10 would have been a dream for me. I used to think that was a really good mark. Sevens and eights are entirely neutral on your business. They're saying to you we had a nonverbal deal. You give me experience, food and drink, and I give you money in return and I got what I paid for and I'm done with you.

Sean Finter: 31:35

Only nines and tens are promoters of your business, and tens particularly are raving fans. But nines are also promoters of your business. So if every team member that worked for you got in. The mindset that I try to get my clients and their teams into is every person that walks through the door. We're trying to get a nine or 10 when they leave and we have to run all of our playbook executions while they're here and we have to be human and kind and jovial and be in the right mood and not come to work hungover and do all the basics in order to have a shot at getting that score. And if we do that enough times, we win in business. And when the business wins, in that case, the management win and the staff win.

Chris Schneider: 32:25

Hey there, bar owners, it's Chris Schneider, the bar business coach. Are you tired of the daily grind and ready to skyrocket your profits? I've got the solution. With my coaching and consulting services, we deep dive into menu management, team empowerment and business optimization. Instead of slogging away in your business day in and day out, washing dishes, covering for employees and working 60 plus hours a week, picture this A thriving business that runs like clockwork, whether you're there or not, letting you enjoy the successes that you've dreamed of. Let's make it happen. Visit barbusinesscoachcom to schedule your free 30-minute strategy session with me, or you can book a session just by clicking the link in the show notes below. Together, we will turn your business into a profit powerhouse, Because at the Bar Business Coach, our only goal is to help you spend less time working in your bar and more time working on your bar.

Chris Schneider: 33:19

That NPS score, I think, is one of the things that everyone should be doing, but unfortunately, most people aren't. You know it's. It's a, it's a simple question. It's not a difficult thing necessarily to execute, but it's something that far fewer people are doing than should.

Sean Finter: 33:39

Well, I I feel for the people that are waiting to get their news from poor reviews on social media. Right, like the stats of how many people actually do complain on social media. Most people just vote with their feet. Right, they came, they paid, even if they were disappointed. They're like, you know, sorry for you. I'm just never coming back here again. The people that do complain online you know a percentage of them have a reputation for complaining online. It's what they do. They're professional complainers and how valid you know. Maybe some of their complaints are very valid, but who knows?

Sean Finter: 34:11

You need to talk to your customers in the right arena with the right short survey and get the right data and then do something about it.

Sean Finter: 34:19

You know you've got to coach your team towards nines and tens and in my experience, you know it takes a business about a year to get set up. To do that properly, right, you have to have a great attract program that's attracting people that are likely to deliver your brand of hospitality with excellence. You have to have a killer induction program that acts as a final filter. Right, we typically set up eight or 10 different behaviors that people have to not only learn but demonstrate in front of their peers before they kind of make it through the final phase of the hiring process, which is the induction process. And then you have to have an ongoing coaching program on site that's working in a feedback loop with this, and again, it only takes a couple of months to set it all up and design it, but to get it working properly anywhere from eight to 12 months. It's not easy, but once you get there it is so worth it.

Chris Schneider: 35:14

Well, I think that's something that a lot of people run into, especially owners in this business. It's so easy to get pulled in a thousand directions all day, with reps giving you calls and you know your water heater went out or you have some plumbing problem or a piece of equipment's not working right. But once you get that stuff that matters right, you have way more time in general right. It's kind of a front loaded experience, I feel like in bar ownership you have to work really, really hard to get it right, but then once you have it there, everything becomes easier moving forward.

Sean Finter: 35:54

Yeah, you're absolutely right, and making it easier is the name of the game, right? Anyone who's opened a bar restaurant knows that it's like doing your first marathon, right? And the problem is it develops a lot of bad habits in people because you have to do everything in order to get open and they keep trying to do everything and no one can do that over a long period of time. And so you know, when I ask a new client what matters to them, you know. And they start telling me and I'll say well, show me that you know. Show me in your day planner where this matters over the last month, where did you spend time on this? Show me in your daily, weekly and monthly reporting where you're measuring this and show me who the captains are that are driving this for you.

Sean Finter: 36:34

Captains, what do you mean? This is tough in this industry and my managers are already overloaded. Yeah, they're overloaded because you're overloaded, you haven't dispersed the weight here. My businesses each of them had a captain for profitability, so we looked at all the costs. We got these people involved in the P&Ls, the balance sheet, on a regular basis. I learned to read one when I was 14. We had a hospitality captain. Right, we had a score we wanted to hit. You need a captain to drive that and help you get there to communicate with the team about why this is important and where we're going and how we're trying to transition. You know anything that you want to grow, you need reporting around and you need support around it. Otherwise, it's just an owner who's endlessly shouting priorities that have nothing attached to it and it doesn't go anywhere.

Chris Schneider: 37:18

Yeah, something we mentioned earlier on, but I kind of want to get back to you. You brought up social media quickly. Obviously, most bars, I feel like they are basing a lot of their marketing on their social media. What do you tell your clients to do as far as maximizing that outreach?

Sean Finter: 37:46

few things. So, firstly, you know, I think that social media is the most underutilized tool that we have. Right, it's not exactly free and it's not exactly as it seems and I'll explain that in a second, but it's there and you need to have a strategic formula to optimize it. Social media, for me, is this like external silo that we're driving people to, to drive them to our internal silo, so that you know if you don't know it yet, you don't own your database and Facebook, you don't own it. Instagram you don't own it. On any social platform they own it, but once you get an email or a phone number, you own it. Right, you can talk directly on the algorithm set up and how you're rated. You put up a message. You might have 5,000 or 50,000 followers. Maybe 4% to 8% are going to see that that's it. That's all they're going to give you. The rest of it just gets lost and it's blind and you're out there thinking I've just communicated with 50,000 people, unless you're pushing directly to email or to a cell phone. That's the case.

Sean Finter: 38:46

My philosophy on social media is that it's just the ideal tool for the storyteller. The problem is, most bars and restaurants aren't telling a very good story. Most of them are auditioning for the Food Network. How many recipes can I see? How many sexy shots of you pouring sauce on top of something. Like my God, I've seen food before, right, and, believe it or not, a lot of people do it better than you. So don't try to compete with the Food Network. People want to know the real story, right.

Sean Finter: 39:16

So I coach my clients to say, hey, it's the good, the bad and the ugly right. In fact, the more courage you have to tell the downside of this industry. I have a client that I was just looking at their social feed before I jumped on a call with him earlier. And there he is Guy's worth a lot of money, owns a bunch of venues and he's underneath something because the plumber couldn't fix it. And he's there. He's saying this is the life of a borrower and people love that right, they like to see the aspects of it. His manager said hey, normally we get X amount of people in the spring when we advertise and this year we got 40% less right, and then you see all of their guests engaging that, but they're not talking about his problem. And people say I'm going to get my nephew to come down. So the more you can tell your story and diversify it.

Sean Finter: 40:04

Um, I can give you a few assets for your listeners if they want it. We've got this one um called a hundred dirty reps and it's getting a hundred posts in a hundred days. That's diversified right. There's about 20 different subjects, from operations to yeah, put in some of your uh ingredients. To uh, you know your your most experienced bartender making your your house favorite drink. To you know a hiring fair that you've got coming up to a special event to a guest that comes in that you want to honor. They've agreed to be, to be shown, but this person has been coming in for eight years. You know they do this and that we love it. They're part of our community. We've got like 20 different subjects that get over a hundred days and it gets people out of their fear and out of their bubble of just posting food pictures.

Sean Finter: 40:51

So I think social media, you know, can be an incredible thing. I have clients that you know. This is like next level for me because we didn't have social media when I had my restaurants, but I can literally be with them. They'll take their cell phone and they'll have their team, will have this promo for something and they'll put the details in, they'll upload it into social media and we just watched the counter go up. 110, 115, 120 people on a Tuesday night. I think, oh my God, imagine that if I could drive 120 people, because they have a database of 50,000. 120 is not that many, but it's a lot more than eight people that are normally in the room on a Tuesday night. So that's how you can use it. If you own the data, if you're a great storyteller, if you're brave and if you mix it up, they'll keep coming back.

Chris Schneider: 41:41

Well, and I think, something that you hit on at the very beginning, talking about how a good social media reaches 48% of your followers actually seeing something and something that I will share that you actually told us when I was doing your consulting course don't be afraid of posting multiple times a day, because I think there's a fear from a lot of bars they're going to overload their guests with too much information, but if only 4% of people see it, you post four times a day. Okay, 16% of people saw it. You're still not hitting everybody four times in a day.

Sean Finter: 42:14

Yeah, and on something like that. So again, we have this external database with all your socials there. Yeah, I'd suggest you know, get the numbers way up. You know, guys, that I study with guys ins there. Yeah, I'd suggest you know, get the numbers way up. You know, guys, that I study with guys in my business group like Alex Ramosi. He's got a big team, but he's posting between 40 and 50 times a day A day.

Sean Finter: 42:36

Right, and the algorithm works it out. They're not showing the same person the same thing 50 times a day. That's not in their interest either. But where, if I post multiple times a day the same thing, let's say I have the copy here and I have three different images and I'll be testing that be split testing to see which is getting more pull, which is getting more reach. And then it's different with your direct mail, because that you'd only want to do once with one message. Right, because they got it, it landed in their inbox, or you sent it to their phone, and that's where you can abuse it, doing it too much. But on social you can mix it up and have some fun.

Chris Schneider: 43:10

Sean, I have to say thank you so much for your time. This has been a super engaging conversation and, like I said at the beginning, we'll make sure that under the video in our show notes we'll have all the links for everyone to be able to get in contact with you. And I will tell you guys right now. I've worked with Sean. I've been one of his clients. He is a fantastic person to work with. So if you're looking for somebody to help you out, Sean is a wonderful resource and, like I said at the top too, he's also great to follow, just because of all the webinars and different stuff he's putting out there for free for everybody to use, which is hugely generous of you. But thank you for your time and, before we go, is there anything else that you wanted to say?

Sean Finter: 43:54

or anything you wanted to talk about. Well, I wrote something I'm writing I'm almost finished, I might finish it this afternoon in mind for this interview, because I know you're a numbers guy and so recently I've been working with clients that you know. Every business kind of got their North star on what they're trying to drive towards, and prime costs are an important one. But I'm kind of writing the argument against the devil's advocate, against why investing too much in prime costs and not understanding where those numbers are coming from can be harmful to a business. So I'll write it up, I'll give it to you first, then you can share it with your audience if you think it's uh, if it has merit, oh, that'll be great.

Chris Schneider: 44:32

I'm sure I'll be interested in that too, cause I am I love prime costs. Like I'm not gonna lie, I'm a numbers guy, um, so it'll be interesting to see, uh, how you're saying and what I'm saying fit together, because I have a feeling we're on mostly the same page, but we're probably attacking it from a different angle.

Sean Finter: 44:49

Yeah, I think it's always interesting to me. Yep, so I'll, I'll get your, uh, get your feedback after you have a look.

Chris Schneider: 44:56

All right, very cool. Well, with that, guys, that wraps us up for today. If you enjoy the conversation today, make sure to like, subscribe, leave a review. We're going to have more guests on, but Sean is just a wonderful guest and hopefully we can get him back sometime in the future. Make sure that you join the Bar Business Nation Facebook group. Sean's Facebook group, if I remember, is Bar and Restaurant Accelerator on Facebook.

Sean Finter: 45:22

Yeah, we're going to put the link. Everything's being switched over now to FinterGroupcom, so I'll give you all the links. So you've got them in the thing. And then there's also SeanFintercom is another site with a bunch of resources in there as well.

Chris Schneider: 45:38

All right, so we will have that all in the show notes for anybody that wants to look all that stuff up.

Announcer: 45:53

And with that I hope everybody has a great day and we will talk again later.