Investing in Relationships in Hospitality

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation , the restaurant guest experience podcast , where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five-star guest experience . This podcast is sponsored by Ovation , an operations and guest recovery platform for multi-unit restaurants that gives you all the answers without annoying guests . With all the questions . Learn more at OvationUpcom . And today I am so excited because we have on a gentleman who is just has such an authentic vibe to him you will hear within three minutes like this impressive nature of Patrick Ewers . He is the CEO and founder of MindMaven , an executive coaching firm that has spent the last 15 years working with hundreds of leaders , including unicorns like Reddit , roblox , thumbtack , as well as heavy hitters such as Sequoia Capital , benchmark and Dreesen Horowitz . He's got amazing content . He coaches some of the biggest leaders in our space . I don't know if I'm at liberty to say who . I'll let Patrick decide , but he's the man behind the curtains . Patrick , welcome to the podcast . How are you ?

Speaker 2 1:09

I'm doing well . Thanks for having me . I always get so embarrassed when people put me on a pedestal , like you just did , but I'm really here to hopefully share some really interesting and insightful thoughts to your audience .

Speaker 1 1:20

Well , I appreciate that . I appreciate you coming on and the humility with all the success that you've had . But one of the things that , as I was looking at who you are and what you do and your content , one of the things that you're really about is investing in relationships , and I think how do you reach your fullest potential ? By investing in relationships . Why are relationships so hard for people to invest in sometimes ?

Speaker 2 1:48

Yeah , I mean that's a really good question , Like I was thinking about . Coming on is , like , the first thing I have to say for everybody listening is I'm not an expert in the restaurant or hospitality industry and so I might be making suggestions that could be actually quite common practice and maybe not new . But I also hope that the point of why I'm here , right , Zach , is because I'm not part of the industry and maybe I have some interesting insights that could be relevant for everybody listening in today , and that's what I'm hoping to do or achieve . And as I was thinking about coming here , you know the theme hospitality is , of course , a very big one for you and I was like well , the reality that I believe , and I think most people would agree with me , is that you don't know , a single person has been able to reach the top or reach the fullest potential without help from others . It's a state that doesn't exist . You cannot get there without help from others , Right ?

Speaker 2 2:39

And as I was thinking about is I think this couldn't be even more true than in the hospitality industry in many ways , and the reason I believe that to be true is because in the hospitality industry , it is not just about one-on-one relationships you actually have very often to deal with .

Speaker 2 2:57

You know you being one person , but you have a huge amount of people that come in and out of the venue of your business in some form or the other , and you have this mandate often to basically make the experience for every single one who comes into your experience feel like you're the only one . They're the only one you're caring about , right . The work that I do with my CEO clients is often way more one-on-one . That in itself is already challenging enough , but I figured like holy shit , you know you guys have a real challenge , and so the question that one has to ask ourselves is twofold . Number one why is that so important ? Why is hospitality a thing in many ways ? And second , how do you actually scale it in a more meaningful and more genuine and authentic way ? How can you make that a little bit easier to deal with this one-to-endness that seems to be prevalent in the hospitality industry ? So I don't know , Am I going in the right direction here ?

Speaker 1 3:53

Yeah , I mean when you look at it , because it's the relationship that you have , and that's obviously one of the things that I think is so important we talk about this all the time on this podcast is you can have your convenience right , where someone's going to go and try you out for the first time , and you can have your consistency where you're doing the same thing every time . But if you want to build something that is a generational brand , you got to build some connection right , and that one-on-one connection is really tough to build at times when you're scaling and you're having hundreds of tickets a day . How do you scale that ? But there's also the aspect of your people right . How do you recommend building relationships ? Because there's always this concept of I don't want to be too friendly with my employees as the boss right , I need to be the boss , but I want to be the friend . But how do you invest in those relationships in a way that will get them to invest in the guest relationships ?

Speaker 2 4:53

Yeah , so this is really interesting . I think I want to jump back to your original question , where you asked about you know how can you do this in a better way or easier way , and then basically go to some very pragmatics around how you could do that A not just with guest relationships , but , for example , those people that follow you , and you know , for anybody in this industry , it's critical to your success to get people who want to follow you through hell and back , because the more you do that you know , the easier your life gets , because you're not constantly rehiring people , which you know , I assume , is one of the challenges that many of your people in this industry are facing . So the question we have to ask ourselves is this I think we're all agreeing that , basically , you can't reach the top without help from others , right ? If I were to ask anybody listening in today , right now , are you doing enough to invest into relationships ? I would argue that almost 100% to a T would say no , I should be doing more right . And that's actually a really weird thing , because if you're not doing enough to take care of relationships , you are , de facto , limiting the potential of your vision that you're pursuing right , because you can't get to the top . You can get to some regional maximum , but you can't get to the absolute maximum . So why is that ? Why is this a problem that people don't seem to be able to solve ? It makes no sense . Why would you not invest into more relationships , since that's the only path that seems to be able to get you to where you really want to go ?

Speaker 2 6:14

And the answer is actually very much connected to some fundamental aspects of the human condition , in my view at least , and that is that , basically , everybody agrees relationships is important , hospitality is important , right , but often the things you have to do to take care of that is not urgent , right . And we are living in a world that is increasingly getting urgency driven . You know , just look at the last decade of how our lives have changed . Social media is a thing that distracts us . You know , we had a whole pandemic that basically caused urgency to go through the roof , right . And so , basically , the reality is everybody who's interested in being excellent in relationship management has to first and foremost solve the importance versus urgency problem , right , which is actually a very fundamental thing that doesn't even feel that connected to relationships , right ? And there's only two ways you can solve that One is that you can basically become , you know , become a lot more focused on becoming intentional in how you allocate your time to those things that move the needle most right . We call it intent . Have intent . A lot of people see intent as a attribute , but it really is a skill . A skill you can learn , you know , like a management skill . Become intentional in how you allocate your time . That's very powerful and exceptionally good , and there's also a lot of literature out there around how to do this . We do help with that .

Leveraging Time for Relationship Building

Speaker 2 7:39

But I think the second factor that helps you solve this urgency versus importance problem is basically try to find more leverage . And what I mean with leverage is leverage on your own time , on the responsibilities that you have . You know , for example , as the restaurant owner who is also basically on site a lot let's think of a smaller situation you know , or even the restaurant manager Part of your success is depending to you know , with you connecting with people that come in into your restaurant in some form or the other , very often in day-to-day business . I can only guess that that is important to do , but not always urgent , and often something in the kitchen is happening that basically is distracting the person from doing it that day , and then the neat thing with this is that you can say , well , I didn't do it today , but I can do it tomorrow , or I can do it next week or , like in most cases , not nearly enough , right .

Speaker 2 8:31

And so getting more leverage , freeing up more time , is one of those things that you can do , and the way we do this is basically by introducing executives and managers to a new role . The role is called an EM . Em stands for engagement manager , and the way you should think of it is it's a hybrid of a classic EA , like an executive assistant , and the chief of staff type of role , right ? I don't know how that translates into the hospitality industry per se , but there might be similar roles in some form or the other . The EM is basically taking that role in the middle , like filling that gap , and really has two mandates to pursue .

Speaker 2 9:08

Number one free up as much time as possible , zach of your time .

Speaker 2 9:12

And second , try to increase your ability to deliver great experiences to people that matter most , and so what you will be able to do , if you do this well , is that you can free up 10 to 12 hours a week of time that is currently stuck with doing things that aren't actually providing value , and then , basically , if you have that time , that's 20% . If you think about it , you can dedicate the time exclusively for things that are important , and to me , I would hope that most people listening today would choose relationships and being more proactive on that . So that's sort of like the way I would hope that most people listening today would choose relationships and being more proactive on that . So that's sort of like the way I would think . Now what I would do next is try to basically give you an example of how that actually plays out in some form or the other , of how you can basically free up more time , and maybe the two of us can figure out a way and how that fits into the industry that you are serving .

Speaker 1 10:01

So I'm taking some notes here because , first of all , that is such , I mean , that concept of relationships are the most important thing , but we get so wrapped up in the urgent that we get things pushed off and I mean that's probably why we have such high divorce rates . Right , is my marriage is so important , but I've got so many fires going on that I don't notice the foundation of the house crumbling , right , and I think that's really . I love that perspective . Anyway , I just took a note to talk to my whole team about that , because I don't know if they listen to this podcast . Maybe I'll just tell them to listen to this podcast .

Speaker 1 10:40

But what do you do , patrick , in the case of ? Because in the hospitality industry there's a lot of extroverts and extroverts might tend to be external processors , right , where they're not the type of people that can go sit in a room and like strategize on . Okay , how do I put these things together ? And you know we tend to think as we talk and that connection is really important how do you set time aside for the important things around , like the strategy of meeting with people and the strategy of building those relationships ?

Speaker 2 11:15

Yeah Well , look , I think one thing that we can maybe agree on afterwards is also have a challenge of basically promising a lot but then not being organized enough to execute on the promises and then letting people down , in fact sometimes having a negative impact on that relationship , even though the intent of offering it up in the first place was whole , was holistic , was , you know , well-meant , right . So I think your question is actually very much on point , and so the answer to your question is if you want to solve it as such , you have to basically look at the tactics , look at pragmatics . Don't think about strategy or looking at a certain certain , like time management principles and so on and so forth make it very pragmatic . So what I would like to invoke is maybe an image that you know it's always easy for me to easier for me to describe how to solve it if I have a very specific case . So I'm going to come up with a case that I hope is actually relevant .

Leveraging AI for Relationship Building

Speaker 2 12:12

But let's say , some of your listeners are high-end restaurateurs I don't know if they are or not , but basically it's like a one location , you know fancy restaurant Hospitality . There is actually part of the product , almost One could say a lot of ownership of the owner of that restaurant goes into . Be interested in doing is to try to extend the experience , the positive experience , beyond the visit , if at all possible . No-transcript , but one that is personalized , maybe some repetition of what they heard in that short chat that you had in some form or the other . Right , would you agree with that ? Is that maybe worthwhile practice ? So let's take that practice , for example , right ? So what do you say , zach ? How many guests turn over in a restaurant like that on an evening ?

Speaker 1 13:19

Okay , let's say like 300 . 300 , holy shit . Big restaurant Okay , not that big , let's make it oh , okay .

Speaker 2 13:25

All right , let's go 50 . Yeah , exactly 50 . Like really fancy , you know , just because I want to like make it feel like , okay , that still doesn't work , but let's say it's 50 . That's a really good idea . So they're basically 50 emails that this person should be sending . If that person chooses to say I want to send a follow-up email afterwards , if he or she were to do that , of course hospitality is at another level we can agree on that , right . The reality is nobody's pushing for that because it seems impossible to do so , okay .

Speaker 2 13:53

So if we look at that follow-up email , we have to realize three facts about that follow-up email . Number one , nobody has ever valued you for writing an email , has never happened and will never happen . They only value you for sending it , right . Number two , you can talk four to five times faster than you can actually type . And number three , you can talk wherever you are , while you can only type if you're in front of the computer , right ? And so that's particularly powerful in the world of a restaurant where you don't sit in front of the computer , when you're basically serving and helping deliver that experience you're looking for . And so what we can do with these three facts is basically come up with a very simple way of how you can utilize this resource that I introduced earlier , this EM engagement manager , to basically get those 50 emails out . What you basically do is you install on your phone a dictation solution that allows you to dictate your thoughts about this person , this guest , this table , basically formulated almost as an email to that assistant . He or she now gets that dictation , turns that into an email and puts it into your draft folder . At 11 o'clock at midnight , you will have 50 emails sitting there and all you have to do is re-click send , re-click send , re-click send , re-click send , re-click send , re-click send .

Speaker 2 15:10

What would take you 10 minutes or so , maybe five minutes per email on your own time is reduced to a minute , probably less than this particular scenario , because it's going to be relatively fast . The only thing that the restaurateur has to do is that it's a standard , probably a standard text email with certain personalization about reflecting on the conversation they had when he or she came to the table , right . So what would have taken five to 10 minutes is taking about a minute or 30 seconds , and that's an order , magnitude , efficiency improvement that you'd be hard pressed to find in any other way . Right , that's 10x efficiency improvement that you'd be hard pressed to find in any other way . Right , that's 10x efficiency improvement , right . And in the case of a restaurateur , it actually makes it possible because if you take 50 times 30 seconds , we're talking about 25 minutes . It's 25 minutes of investment to send every single person who came that evening to your restaurant a follow-up email with thoughtful notes .

Speaker 2 16:04

And I think the bigger point there is that it actually makes it possible . Right , and now , like , look , it doesn't have to be all 50 , you know , it could be just 10 or 20 of them that you ended up having a conversation . But the whole point is you are starting to outsource what isn't valuable about this experience in terms of production , and you are focusing your energy only on where you're providing value the comments of what you want to say and the experience you want to deliver . And when that email arrives , the email is written in a way that it doesn't feel like one of those form emails that any restaurant could send , because it has a sentence or two in it that is very specifically referencing the conversation you had on that table .

Speaker 2 16:44

And so the way I think about this , this is just one playbook of how you could utilize this concept of leverage using an EM in the hospitality industry , out of which we basically came up with over 50 different ones , 50 different playbooks that either will help you free up time or that will help you increase the experience , and in most cases it's a combination of both . And so I don't want to forget the second question you asked me and that was sort of like how do you do this relationship management , not just externally but also internally ? And of course I have some playbooks that would match to that and we can get to that . But I wanted to see if you wanted to double click on anything I said .

Speaker 1 17:23

That is just . I love that idea , that concept of leverage . Now , I appreciate you sharing that story because leverage makes a lot more sense to me now of like . Let's look at like . For example , yesterday I was talking with my marketing manager and we were talking about the power of AI and about .

Speaker 1 17:42

I don't think that we need to write any content anymore . To start off , let's use ChatGPT as our intern . We can create the content there and let's edit what they wrote , giving them very specific prompts , so you spend a quarter of the time or a tenth of the time , as opposed to writing all the content yourself , by coming up with a good prompt and reviewing it . Right , and I think that's that idea of leveraging it to spend your time where it's most important , cause , yeah , I've got an urgent . You know we have a schedule that we need to post content on and that's urgent . But what's important is not sitting down and thinking and like writing all of that content , right , but leveraging other technologies , other opportunities , other people to do that for us Powerful . I love that , patrick .

Speaker 2 18:36

Yes , we're living in an exceptionally exciting time , where the possibilities of making these things happen become way , way easier , but I also have a few words of caution , especially for the hospitality industry , right ? So , for example , I would say , don't give up on the idea of , like , having some human be your quarterback , because AI isn't there yet for one , and so , for example , currently , the prompt writing will take you more time than typing up the email itself , right , right ? So what's the point ? Right , but that's going to change Eventually . It's going to get better and better and better . That's fair enough . But , for example , if you have an EM that is backing you up , teach that person to use AI for you , you know , to basically come up with something that is way better than basically what the two brains yours and the EM's brains would have come up together by using it as an assisting tool in that place .

Speaker 2 19:34

And the reason why I think this is so important numerous studies out there have proven that humans will always put a premium on something that has been made by a human . You know , we had plenty of . You know , new York had these restaurants that have robots doing the burgers . Where are they ? Why are they gone ? Right , even ChatGPT I mean OpenAI did a study where they basically showed images generated by ChatGPT as art to a group of people and they said rate this art please . And they raised , basically with two groups of people . One the group of people were saying this was done by AI and the other one was like this was done by humans , and basically it was 10% to 90% in terms of rating . Oh , wow , but I'm paraphrasing the data . You have to look at it . Yeah , yeah , probably not quite 100% what I'm saying , but it was a dramatic that basically those that thought it was done by humans rated it really well , the same images , while those that thought it was done by AI rated the images pretty crappy . We humans always will want to live with an experience that was created by humans . For me , because by the fact that the effort of a human went into it , the value of that experience goes up , and so AI is great , but you've got to , especially in the hospitality industry , be very , very careful .

Speaker 2 20:54

I don't know if you notice I've been getting emails that were clearly written by AI and it's like destroying relationships . Like , dude , what are you doing ? Why are you sending me this email ? Like , am I not good enough for you , right ? So what I love that you pointed out to is use AI , but then edit it , and edit it in a way where , basically , ai could have never written that email . For example , ai doesn't know about the context of the conversation that you , as a restaurateur , had when you walked up to the table to see how they're feeling , what they're feeling , right , like , hey , how's your family doing ? Oh , my grandma is the hospital right now . Right , that sentence that way . You then say and I hope that your grandma comes out and can spend more time with her grandkids soon . Ai doesn't know that information , only you do , right ? So , generally speaking , embrace AI as much as you can , because nothing's gonna stop it , but do not what do you call that word ? Don't let the humanness be diluted by it . That would be- .

Speaker 1 21:50

Yeah , I think it's so powerful and I think I know we're at time right now . But what this is reminding me of is a conversation of that I love to have about Tony Stark . I'm not big into superheroes , but the thing I love about Tony Stark is that he doesn't send a robot out to do his work . He gets in the suit , right it's just a man , but it's a man with no superpowers , but he has the suit .

Speaker 1 22:12

That's how I look at technology and AI , which is don't let it do everything for you , but let it empower you to do the things that you know you need to do . I'm going to let you in on a little secret .

Speaker 2 22:24

My EM is called Grace Stark . She's the daughter of Tony Stark . How cool is that ? Gray Stark , she's the daughter of Tony Stark , how cool is that ? So it's a funny thing . But basically we work with the virtual identities , meaning I have a bank of EMs I work with I think right now three because I have so much going on . For example , if you want to send 50 or a hundred emails out a day because of your restaurant business , you might end up needing more than one person and it becomes a no brainer . And so we created a virtual email called Gray Stark , and literally Gray is a name , that is , you know , can be male or female . That's why we picked that and Stark , because , like exactly what you said is like hey , I want to have the daughter of the daughter of Tony Stark working with me . In that sense , that is awesome .

Speaker 1 23:10

Well , patrick , I am just so honored that you come onto this podcast . I know we didn't get to everything we wanted to chat about , but this has been such a powerful podcast , not just worth a listen , worth a re-listen , and really appreciate you coming on , and so for giving us the keys to unlock the door of efficiency to the room of relationship , today's ovation goes to you , patrick . Thank you so much for joining us and giving ovation . All right , thank you .

Speaker 2 23:37

It was awesome . I enjoyed a lot and hopefully I get to do more work with people in hospitality , because it seems like there's a lot of good stuff that could be done .

Speaker 1 23:45

Amen . Thanks for joining us today . If you liked this episode , leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen . We're all about feedback here . Again , this episode was sponsored by Ovation , a two-question , sms-based actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants . If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience , visit us at OvationUpcom .