43: 10 Keys to Transform Restaurant Managers into Hospitality Leaders with Jason E Brooks

Can one-on-one meetings truly transform team dynamics and elevate your leadership game? 

Join us as we explore this with Jason E Brooks, a distinguished speaker, coach, author, and founder of Hospivation. Jason, who just launched his groundbreaking book, "Every Leader Needs Followers: 10 Keys to Transform Restaurant Managers into Hospitality Leaders," shares invaluable insights from his extensive experience in the hospitality industry. We guarantee you'll walk away with actionable strategies to enhance your leadership and bridge the gap between customer expectations and execution.

Chapters:
0:08 - Leadership Strategies for Hospitality Industry
15:12 - Effective One-on-One Leadership Communication
20:52 - The Importance of Managing and Coaching
25:48 - Coaching and Closing Customer Expectations

We'll uncover the essence of effective one-on-one engagements and why they are pivotal in building trust and understanding within your team. Our discussion also touches on the nuanced transition from managing to leading, and how introverted leaders can navigate small talk to foster deeper connections with their team members.

Finally, we dissect the distinct roles of managing, leading, and coaching, and how each can uniquely contribute to business success. Don't miss out on these transformative insights from one of the industry's leading voices.

Resources:
Jason E. Brooks
Every Leader Needs Followers : 10 Keys to Transform Restaurant Managers to Hospitality Leaders

More from Christin:

Curious about one-on-one coaching or leadership workshops? Click this link to schedule a 15 minute strategy session.

Transcript

Christin Marvin: 0:08

Listen up. Hospitality leaders, today's episode is going to introduce you to a new resource that can help you strengthen your leadership in 10 different ways. Jason E Brooks is a speaker, coach, author and founder of Hospivation. Jason creates content that helps impact hospitality leaders on their journeys to help others around them fulfill their calling. His first book Every Leader Needs Followers 10 Keys to Transform Restaurant Managers into Hospitality Leaders launched in March of 2024. Jason is a professional speaker and coach speaking on leadership mindsets and techniques in the hospitality industry. Today, we're going to highlight three out of the 10 keys. The first key is going to be key number four, on how to engage with one-on-ones. The second key is key number five managing versus leading versus coaching, changing your mindset for the situation that you're in. And the final key is key number nine closing the gap in customer expectations and operator execution how to see your business from a view of a customer to help drive sales and guest satisfaction. Welcome to the N no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I am your host, Ch kriste Marvin, with Solutions by Christin. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. Hi, J jason, welcome to the show. How are you?

Jason E. Brooks: 1:58

Oh, doing great. It's an amazing week. Spring is fully here and life is wonderful.

Christin Marvin: 2:05

I love it. Well, first off, congratulations on your first book. Every Leader Needs Followers 10 Keys to Transform Restaurant Managers to Hospitality Leaders. I cannot imagine how incredible it felt to hold that book in your hands for the first time.

Jason E. Brooks: 2:23

Like a baby, like a baby that was in my hands for the first time, like a baby, like a baby that was in my womb for six years. No, I wouldn't know what that would feel like, but if I did, when I first did my unboxing and it was the unboxing of the author copy, because many of your listeners may not know, but whenever you go to self-publish your own book, you have the option of getting your author copy first for paperback hardcover, both thinking that that things that you think inside your mind, that you hope that you're not crazy, you've put into a physical form. And you open the box and it's like wow, this is a real thing.

Christin Marvin: 3:17

I love it. I mean, it is such a labor love. I loved you know you and I connected before your actual launch and I was super excited to obviously to get to know you and read your background I mean, over 30 years in the hospitality industry and then to learn about your book. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it and I thank you for that advanced copy. But then I watched. I watched your unboxing video and it was I've never really seen those before and I I didn't know what all the hype was about, but I was so excited for you to just open that Amazon box and, yeah, just such an incredible accomplishment and I'm super excited that we get to talk about it today. So thanks so much for being here.

Jason E. Brooks: 3:56

Thank you. It's kind of like your first business, first restaurant, first hotel. You go through all of the inspections, all the permitting, all of the back and forth, all the what's on back order, just to get to the first day and it's like, oh my gosh. And then all of the work happens. We think, well, if we build it, it will come. But there is so much more word of mouth, marketing, so much more getting our product, our food, our book into the hands of people that we hope that they will love it, that they will return. Yeah, yeah, it's just like that.

Christin Marvin: 4:41

Yeah, and it's so. You know, just you and I, being in the coaching space to launch a product is a big deal, right? That's a big deal for us, in addition to the services we offer. So it's it's just super, super cool, and I'm just in awe of what you're doing. So thank you so much for your work with the industry.

Christin Marvin: 4:57

I, you know, reading the book, I there's just man. We could talk about this for days. There's so many nuggets of wisdom, there's so much learning, there's so much valuable experience that leaders can take away. But what I loved about the book was because I still have a hard time sitting down and concentrating, and I'll read a couple of pages and then I'll go, oh shit, I just forgot what I read, and then I got to go back and do it again, because my mind's always thinking about something else. You know, I'm always wandering around, so what I love about this book, though, is the way that you've got it structured, with the main course and then the takeaways, and I love that I could just kind of look ahead to chapters and read the takeaway and go, ok, does this apply to me right now, or is this something that can help a client right now Would you talk a little bit about kind of your, why behind the structure there and what your intention was?

Jason E. Brooks: 5:50

You just said the why because of the oh shit moments. It is really geared towards where our managers, multi-unit managers, even owners, are at right now. We have so much that's on our plate we have less time for anything, and it's because of this black box here, this gift from God, cell phone, has just ruined our private lives and we find ourselves encroached with less time and we need to get to the meat of things. People say that you know cause I'm from, I've been in North Carolina for probably 40 years. They always talk about Southern hospitality. Well, since the cell phone came out, people have less patience down here. It's just so crazy how we are always trying to get to what is really important.

Jason E. Brooks: 6:53

So when I wrote the book, first thing is I wanted to make sure I wanted it to be written for the lifestyle of the person that's reading it. I think I'm interesting, but no one wants to hear about my memoir about how I grew up. They want to get to what is my challenge right now? How can I get to it? So, each chapter and I don't have chapters, I have keys. There's 10 keys that are within the book. Each key has the main course and, of course, the pun is intended. The main course is the gut of that key, and even the gut of that key is still a short read. It's getting straight to what are certain examples, certain things you can do right now within this key in order to make your day different, make your week more successful.

Jason E. Brooks: 7:45

Even after the main course, though it's written to be a bit shorter, is the takeaway. Again, pun intended. The takeaway is three to six paragraphs. That gives you that 30,000 foot view of, just like you said, two views. Either I read it and I just want to get back to what did it really cover? That'll make me jog that memory of a good idea that I can implement now. Or is this where I'm currently at and do I need to read this now, or can I skip this and get to something else? And then the last part is three sections. The last part is the angle. The angle are quotes from different people that I've had the absolute pleasure of working with, or quotes that I found online that are absolutely give you a different spin on what that key, what that topic is.

Christin Marvin: 8:40

I love it. Why did you decide to publish the book right now? What's important about this moment?

Jason E. Brooks: 8:46

Oh, we have slipped everyone not we, not just we, meaning hospitality everyone has slipped into a regression. That regression is caused by what I like to call, almost literally, ptsd from COVID, if we think about what happened during COVID. During COVID, the hospitality industry was known. Yes, we have teams, which makes us work well, but there are some that would still consider it families that it was your second family away from the house. You knew you could drop your baggage, leave your stuff at the front door, all your troubles get inside there and in the weeds. In the thick of things, your team had your back. No matter what, late night, early morning, they had your back. As long as you worked hard, you knew you were going to be taken care of.

Jason E. Brooks: 9:47

And then COVID happened. A lot of leaders, managers, multi-units had to make a lot of hard choices. A lot of those hard choices had to cut away people that depended and knew that hospitality would be there for the rest of their life. And they saw something different when that happened, not only for that employee but also for the manager. The manager had to work within multiple roles, more than they already did already, and had no clue what the next day bring, what the next regulation was, and that fear, especially for the owners, knowing that everything you put on the line and you didn't know if the next day you had to sell, you had to close, sell pennies to the dollars. You didn't know what was going on. That caused a whole lot of stress.

Jason E. Brooks: 10:42

And then, during that time, there were a lot of promotions that were being done out of sheer this is what I have left or soft skills that we tended to have that actually ended up shifting from a soft skill we focused on to what do I need to survive? And so, when I looked at the book, what made it sense right now to really get it finished? Because, since it is a six-year project, it actually started back in 2018. But when I saw COVID happening and I was like, okay, I really got to get this book done. It helped to put a lot of the key elements of what do I need to do to rebuild teams, and that's why it made sense for it now.

Christin Marvin: 11:32

I love it. I mean there's so many good nuggets in what you just said, but the lines have just been so blurred. Like you said, you used to be able to leave your shit at the door, come in, grind with your teams. Now leaders are looked at in not just needing to be able to run a smart business, but also to manage their people and coach their people from a mental health perspective. Right, because they're bringing all of that into work now and the new generation that's coming in want employers to be skilled in handling those things and offer benefits around that. Right, which adds just a whole nother layer to the restaurant industry. But, like you said, during the pandemic, everybody was operating from this scarcity mindset. How do we survive? How are we going to make it through the next day? Having to make decisions every day that weren't necessarily they weren't empowered to do? They were being told what to do, right by the world and what was going on. And now I think I agree with you it's so important that some have been able to shift their thinking and think differently and been able to look at okay, we survived. Now how do we build on this? But some are still having a hard time getting out of that and still talking about, oh, the pandemic, pandemic, pandemic. It's like, okay, we've got to move on. We've got to move on if we're going to be successful. So I love the book, love everything that's in it. I think it's so timely, it's so important and I can't wait to jump in. So we're going to talk about three of the keys today. We're going to talk about key number four, which is engaging with one-on-ones. We're going to talk about key number five, which is managing, leading and coaching and changing your mindset for the situation that you're in. And then key number nine, which is closing the gap in customer expectations and operator execution. So how to see your business from the view of the customer to help drive sales and satisfaction.

Christin Marvin: 13:19

Hello to all of you amazing leaders in the restaurant world. Before we dive back into today's episode, I want to take a moment and let you know about one of the incredible ways that you can further your team's leadership development. If you've been listening to the show, you've already experienced the passion I have for enhancing leadership skills. Did you know that I also offer exclusive leadership workshops tailored for restaurant management teams? These sessions focus on strengthening leadership abilities, fostering effective communication, crafting a unique leadership style and developing robust business strategies and visions for the future. If you or anyone you know in the restaurant industry is looking to treat their team to a customized multi-day leadership training that will improve every aspect of their business, please reach out to me at KristenLMarvin at gmailcom. Thanks a million for being awesome listeners. So let's jump into key number four engage with one-on-ones. I'd love to hear, I'd love to hear, how, like when in your, at what point in your career, did you first learn how to execute a really great one-on-one?

Jason E. Brooks: 14:39

I learned that from Mark and Mike from Manager Tools. Manager Tools oh, you talk about podcasts. This is back whenever podcasts was still rare. Manager Tools Mark and Mike actually started Manager Tools to give managers the ecosystem and the tools for any industry to be able to lead people better, and they use the term called O3s. O3s so 0-0-0 or 0-0-0. And that's one-on-one, and one-on-ones is one of those things that I fully agree with. It's non-negotiable. It's non-negotiable. It's non-negotiable. We spend so much time data dumping on our team. I mean we can dump with the best of them, left and right, all day, early morning, late night. We know how to drive data down people's throats or information, and it just leading from the manager to the team. But how much time do we take for them to dump on us and not just dump on us? How much time do we take for them to give us information, for us to get to understand how they think, how they would react, the challenges that they're going through, not just what's coming down the pipe next?

Jason E. Brooks: 16:06

So a lot of people take one-on-ones as time for me to speak with you with what I want you to work on, and one of the non-negotiables on one-on-ones is you speak for only 30% of the time and you listen for the other 70. That's why we have two ears and one mouth and the actual structure of that should be it should be 30 minutes, within my opinion. It should be weekly yes, weekly opinion. It should be weekly yes, weekly. I know it sounds crazy, but anyone that actually reports directly to you, you should have a one-on-one with them every single week. The first 10 minutes is for them talking to you about anything, and when I say anything, I mean about life, about baseball cards, about their kids, about their hobbies, about whatever, because you are getting to know that individual that's on your team. Second 10 minutes, second 10 minutes, is for you to report back to them on any questions that they had from a prior one-on-one and if there is any true, pertinent information, that must be told to them during that segment. Yes, you can cover it during that 10 minute timeframe, but you better only use just a touch of that time for that. The rest is you coming back to them with any questions that they had. The last 10 minutes, the last 10 minutes, is for them to talk to you about challenges, successes, things that they need to know for their personal development within their role.

Jason E. Brooks: 17:56

But whenever you structure it like that, you get to know your team a lot better and for them to understand how to make the right choices, or you knowing what choices that they will most likely make whenever you're not in the building, and that's how you tend to build trust, that's on your team. If you think about it, we typically don't trust our team because we don't know them. We don't know them because we don't ask. The more we ask, the more we find out about them. There are managers that work in buildings that you ask them three weeks later. Hey, what's that person's name? I don't know. They've only been here for three weeks. That's terrible. You should know your team. But making or having that structure with your team to get to know them, that is one of the strongest pillars to actually getting to the goals that you need to get within your business.

Christin Marvin: 18:57

I love it. I wish I would have had this structure when I was earlier in. You know, early on in my career. There was a point for me. I'd been managing for probably five or seven years and then I joined a company and they said we want you to do one-on-ones when I was transitioning into a restaurant. I didn't understand the value. I didn't. I thought I work side by side with them every day. You know we have all kinds of little tiny conversations.

Christin Marvin: 19:26

I'm also an introvert, so small talk used to be really exhausting for me. I've had to learn now how to have those conversations and balance my time and energy. But it just took so much practice. I didn't even know and really understand that what I was supposed to talk about when I sat down with people, you know, and then when I started hiring people, I thought well, I got to know them enough during the interview process, why do I need to continue? But I love what you said about taking small amounts of time building that trust.

Christin Marvin: 19:48

You know I was designing a leadership style with a client this morning saying what do you, what do you want your leadership style to look like? And he's like well, I want to be trustworthy and I want to trust my team. It's like well, are you doing one-on-ones? No, I'm not. Well then, how are you going to do that? Right, besides just working shoulder to shoulder and showing up for shift, right? So, yeah, it's, it's. I agree with you. They're so invaluable. Once you start to get the hang of them and you start to feel comfortable, they're, they're just magic. And I think that some leaders think that they need to go into those conversations having answers or coming with solutions, or or they're afraid of what's going to come up during that conversation. And I think, if you can just really let that conversation sink in and sleep on it and think about it, that's all you need is the information.

Christin Marvin: 20:30

Sometimes, and the connection that you get out of that is just priceless. So I love that key. That's great. Let's talk about key number five. So managing versus leading versus coaching. Just a little insight into what's in that one.

Jason E. Brooks: 20:44

No, that is the gospel there, Christin. All right, so managing first. Managing gets a bad rap. It really does People. Whenever they hear the word manager, they're going to micromanage me or I hate my manager. Half the reason why managers get a bad rap is because managers are not consistent. I'm sure you've watched Despicable Me. They have Kevin and one day in one of the movies he gets injected with this syringe and then he's half like evil Kevin. That's how most managers are pictured. Some days they come in, they're just high-fiving, they're having fun. Yes, this is great Woo-hoo. Good job, billy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Kevin comes in three days later. No one else has changed, but Kevin is just grumpy. He's flipping tables, slamming ketchup, all on the wall. It's evil Kevin. And that's where the managing aspect gets a really bad rap, plus managing. To be honest, managing really is managing systems. Yes, but there are people that are a part of those systems, so you still have to manage people as well.

Jason E. Brooks: 22:01

Lastly, managing is what we do first. If you really think about it any business owner out there you are in a managing mindset more than any other mindset throughout your entire day. The managing mindset is you have a group of people. You want to keep them in certain guard rails to reach a certain point by a certain time. You have a certain budget for it and you want to make sure that these same things happen on a progressive basis and on a scheduled basis. That is managing. There's nothing wrong with that. Whether it's a bar, hotel, bed and breakfast or restaurant, you have to have a very strong business aspect first, because it's a business first, and then we serve food or make beds or clean toilets, but it's a business first.

Jason E. Brooks: 22:53

Leading is a bit differently Now. Leading is understanding the overarching goals of your entire business, how you're thinking through how to get it to the next three months, next six months, next nine months. What are the most important goals? If it's a bigger company, who are the ones that help to make those decisions? Who has influence? What are some of the strategies and step change that needs to make in order to shift culture? Is it going to be successful? What are the challenges that may lay ahead in the industry that other people around you may not foresee? There are several great leadership styles, from authoritative to persuasive to visionary. The visionary leader oh man, they can paint a picture so vividly. People will absolutely do it as their words form into pictures and you can see it and you're like, yes, we are going there. So you have managing aspect for the business, you have leadership aspect for the people as a whole or for the whole industry, and where you're trying to go or foreseeing that future, even before you know that they need to get there. But coaching, coaching is that mastery of small goals.

Jason E. Brooks: 24:18

I like to tell this story. My son plays AAU basketball. He's been playing sports since the age of seven. Now, at the age of seven, you can play AAU. It's just someone's parent just saying run down the court, don't worry about traveling, Just toss the ball up, smack the arms, don't worry about it, hopefully it goes in and you can do that and you are getting coached. It is by someone's parent, but they are getting coached at the age of seven. Now, once you get into middle school, you now have a actual school coach teaching you basketball skills, drills, different tactics. You can. You can, at that level, get coached by two areas, both by the school and by AAU. At this age, kids are getting coached for nine out of 12 months of the year If they continue to play sports. Have you ever played any school sports?

Christin Marvin: 25:17

Yes, basketball and tennis yeah.

Jason E. Brooks: 25:19

Excellent, excellent, good, good, good. Yeah you, you look like you were really mean at basketball. Huh, I bet you would foul some people.

Christin Marvin: 25:27

No, yes, I did Good job.

Jason E. Brooks: 25:32

Okay, so let's say you take it to high school. You now have a team of coaches coaching you on same basketball. You can still play AAU and high school ball, getting coached nine out of 12 months of the year. If you're just that good, take it to college. Do you have a favorite college team?

Christin Marvin: 25:53

I don't.

Jason E. Brooks: 25:55

My favorite is Duke. Don't judge me. All right, good, all right. So now at college there is no more AAU. They train you nearly year round for six to seven hours a day. It is grueling, but it's getting the very few ready for the WNBA or the NBA.

Jason E. Brooks: 26:16

Now in the NBA you have players getting paid tens of millions of dollars a year. There's 82 games in a regular season 82, not counting preseason, not counting playoffs. Some of these players have been getting coached since the age of seven, and yet still there's a person on the sideline screaming at them who to cover, when to fall back. And at the break of every play they're pulling every player off the bench, even the ones that aren't playing, to go over the next play. And all of that for a ball and a hoop.

Jason E. Brooks: 26:57

But yet still in some of our work lives that we've been doing maybe the last four years, getting paid our money and we don't feel like we need to be coached, yet still our kids get coached nine out of 12 months of the year. It's just crazy to me how we think that coaching is only reserved for executives, coaching is only reserved for the top 1% of people within a company. But coaching, to be honest is a means of communication. It is a way to train. Everyone needs coaching, just like we need managing and leading. They are three separate things. You need to know the three different mindsets and that's what that key is leading with the right mindset.

Christin Marvin: 27:49

I love it. You and I were talking about this before I hit the record button, but it's so important to have it. Doesn't matter, like you said, where you're at in your life or what you're doing. It's so important to have somebody that can help you increase your self-awareness and say, look, I'm just going to show you what you're doing right now, or I'm going to point out what you're doing or how you're showing up and let's talk about how we can change it a little bit. Right, and I and I, again, I love this key and I love the takeaways here, because I mean, just imagine what the restaurant world would look like if every single leader changed their title or their mindset from manager to leader to coach. That's all you're doing all the time is just coaching, coaching, coaching, right, like?

Christin Marvin: 28:28

Yes, I agree with you that when young leaders come in and they want to start managing, they need to learn how to run the business. They need to learn how to run really great shifts. Then they can take on additional responsibilities and learn how to balance those between running a great shift and still incorporating in some admin work. But I have found that the best leaders are the ones that can walk away from a restaurant and it runs better than when they're in the room, because their team feels empowered and inspired. And it's because partly because they want to do a really good job for their coach right when the coach is out of the room and show off their skills. But they also have that camaraderie and have that teamwork because the coach has done such a good job of building that team morale. So I love it.

Jason E. Brooks: 29:15

And that's not natural. Some people think that they can just walk in and after six months it just happens and they think why? Whenever I worked for Susie, it was exactly like that she would leave and then things would just run. It's just amazing and it's like, yes, but Susie coached you. You seem to forget that she took the time, the investment to make it a very intentional thought, to sit you down and get to understand you, get to learn you, and then other people started to do the right things. Have you taken the time yourself to be just like Susie, or do you just want Susie's results?

Christin Marvin: 30:05

Absolutely A hundred percent. So let's talk about key number nine here, so closing the gap between the customer expectation and operator execution.

Jason E. Brooks: 30:14

Okay, closing the gap. Uh, also one of my favorites, um, and the reason why I say that is because most, most restaurant managers live the two-wheel life. They live the two-wheel life that although their vehicle has four tires, that they're pulling in the parking lot so fast, they may as well be on two wheels. Just doors open, bigfoot's dragon. They're jumping out the car, they're trying to get inside and the first thing that they're thinking about doing is putting out fires. And I was just coaching four district managers right before this session here about the difference between being a fireman, firewoman and a fire chief. That when you're a fireman or a firewoman, that you are always standing in front of the flame but can only see the building burning from one side. But when you're fire chiefing, you have firemen and women working for you and you're looking at the fire from a 30,000 foot view and then directing people around that fire. But the two wheel life. So you're running in, you're going to go put out these fires, and you run to the back like, woo, yes, let me knock down the slide, I'll get the truck order in, I'll fix payroll. And at this point your heart's pumping 100 miles per hour. You're like, yes, so I'm now going to walk through. I'm going to check all my customers. Look for dirty things, get all this going. You work a triple-double. Finally get home lay down and then you're like man, I really rocked it out tonight.

Jason E. Brooks: 31:52

You wake up the next morning and then your phone starts going off and it's customer complaint and you got a two and you start flipping your nightstand like, oh, they're lying. I was there all day. I was on fire. What are they talking about? But what you see whenever you're walking a hundred miles per hour and when you're racing into your parking lot and what your customer sees two different views Managers listening, dms listening, regionals, owners listening is it strange? Can you even picture your last half mile into your business? I guarantee that you can almost never remember the last half mile in to arriving to your business, the last half mile in to arriving to your business, because, one, you're either on the phone or, two, your brain goes into fighter mode and it's going into straight up. I'm going into battle and things just shut down until you get inside and you are the terminator.

Jason E. Brooks: 32:55

But your customer's view of the last half mile in is very different. Their last half mile in they're paying more attention. Is it busy? Are there cars in the parking lot? Is there trash in the parking lot? Are there weeds? Does it look like the door is unlocked? And then they pull up and then they walk in, and when they see that that door is unlocked it's like, oh my gosh, this is so great I don't have to eat out of my car for my dashboard. So then they walk in and it's a much different, slowed down pace.

Jason E. Brooks: 33:30

Most dining rooms have dimmer lights and although it's dimmer, your eyes naturally open wider to take in more. So the manager is always viewing from a 20 foot wide, 20 foot deep view, walking very quickly at an average height of five foot six. But the customer is sitting down and taking in more detail at that three feet and three feet and closer view, and they tend to pick up more. And so closing the gap walks managers, owners, multi-unit managers through how do you close the gap between what the customer expects and what the operator actually executes, and it gives you tips and tricks of how to close that gap and then train your team on what a one star, three star or even five star visit, clean or interaction is throughout your restaurant.

Christin Marvin: 34:28

I love it. One of the things that we I used to do with my managers when I was a GM or regional was was and it was multi-purpose. But sometimes we just when the restaurant was humming and we were on a wait and everything was great, we would take a second step outside and A get some fresh air and B have a conversation with each other that maybe we didn't want to have inside the restaurant. But C stand back and look exactly what you're saying. Let's look at the sign, let's look at the trash, let's look at the entryway, let's look at the guests. Are their eyes in the middle of the table? Are they looking around? What's the staff doing right now? Do they look happy? Are they hurried? And then walk right in and know exactly what adjustments we needed to make, and we would do that maybe two or three times a shift.

Christin Marvin: 35:12

It wasn't super, super frequent, but just taking maybe a minute to just get that fresh perspective. It was just so beneficial and on the shifts that you knew that that couldn't happen, like when we couldn't get outside. Those were the ones at the end of the shift we'd go. Okay, let's talk about what happened today because we weren't able to fully do the job that we wanted to do and that we intended to do, so those are some great learning moments.

Jason E. Brooks: 35:38

That is actually perfect, because most people do their walk at 8 am 9 am and I'm like why are you doing the walk whenever there's nothing that's happening, that is, whenever it's the least amount of advertising? Take the walk at peak volume, when most of the people are parked, walking through your lot. What do they see then? Not at the most optimal time keys that we could cover. But I want to leave something here for the listener.

Christin Marvin: 36:23

Tell the listeners where they can find the book. And then let's talk a little bit about your business too. Who's your ideal client, who do you want to work with, and how do people get in contact with you?

Jason E. Brooks: 36:33

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter, but I'm highly active on LinkedIn. Please reach out, even just about some ideas, please do. You can find the book on Amazon, on paperback and on hardcover as well as ebook. The audio book will be launching here soon, next three to four months. The book is also on my website at jasonebrookscom. You can also find the book on iTunes Books as well and on Kobo.

Jason E. Brooks: 37:09

Coaching is what I love to do, and so is being a professional speaker, working with restaurants for the last 30 plus years. Working with restaurants for the last 30 plus years. My ideal client anywhere between five and 20 restaurants, a few multi-unit managers doing about one to 1.5, that really gives me a great understanding of what true potential that brands have, and brands meaning mom and pop as well. What brands have in order to get to the 1.8, 2.4, 2.83 million dollar AUV range and not just building sales but building profitability and having a strong team to help make that happen. The professional speaking side I speak at several associations.

Jason E. Brooks: 38:03

You can look me up on LinkedIn. I'm always on stage speaking some kind of gospel, some kind of restaurant gospel, but please do order the book. If you order the book from me from my website, I will actually sign the book and send it to you. So don't be afraid. I know that Amazon has fast shipping. I'm not Amazon, though, but they won't sign the book for you. I'll tell you that now. But, yes, I would love to hear from your listeners, especially on insights from the book. Any feedback is great feedback, because I will be doing new versions every two years with 10 keys that make sense for that. Now, to keep this model going, I love that.

Christin Marvin: 38:50

I can't wait for the next one, Jason, thank you so much for being here. So everybody, Jason E Brooks, go find him on LinkedIn, grab a copy of the book Every Leader Needs Followers 10 Keys to Transform Restaurant Managers to Hospitality Leaders and please leave a review. They are super, super important for us to help spread the word and make an impact in hospitality leaders everywhere. So, Jason, really appreciate your time. Thank you again for being here and can't wait to connect with you again very soon, my friend.

Jason E. Brooks: 39:23

Thank you.

Christin Marvin: 39:24

All right, everybody. That's it for us this week. Please share this episode with any industry leaders that you know that would benefit, and we appreciate you listening. Talk to you soon.