Zack: 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. Out annoying guests with all the questions. Learn more at OvationUpcom. And today I am so excited we have Jim Knight with us, who spent over 20 years at Hard Rock Cafe and has gone on to have a rock star career as a prolific author, public speaker. He is a Guy Fiore meets Tony Robbins a beautiful blend. It is the perfect combo. It's like you didn't know that you needed a peanut butter and pickle sandwich until you tried it. That is the perfect combo. It's like you didn't know that you needed a peanut butter and pickle sandwich until you tried it. That is what Jim Knight is like. You're like Guy Fiori and Tony Robbins and you see him and you're like I get it. I love it.

Zack: 0:54

We met when we were speaking together at Kathleen Woods event in New York. And Jim get this. He spoke at the event. He flew down to Florida, was it? Yep, yep, orlando, florida, to speak at another event. Flew back to New York to finish up the event, anyway. So he's a hustler, incredible speaker and I really, really enjoyed and I was like Jim, can I have you on my podcast? And he was kind enough to come and grace us with his presence.

Jim Knight: 1:23

So, jim, welcome to the podcast man. Well, first off, thank you for inviting me and all the super kind words. It is good, I mean. I will start with just saying I was in awe of finally meeting a lot of great restaurant founders that were at that Founders Growth Summit. But I had known of you. You and I had never met this first time that we had met, but I knew of you and I knew your brand and was lucky enough to meet your dad that day, which was a real hoot as well. But I don't mind the comparison between a Guy Fieri what'd you say? Tony Robbins, I'm like I'll take either of their money. That would be cool, but these days I really am resigning to just making peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.

Zack: 2:11

So that's my life, man, but honestly, thank you so much for having me on the show. This means a lot. Yeah, well, it's amazing because I love your whole concept of how do you create a team that rocks, how do you create a culture. And maybe, before we kind of jump in, I do want to talk about how this connects to the guest experience. But kind of give us a little bit about your theory. What do you speak about?

Jim Knight: 2:23

Yeah. So I mean you're already hitting on it right now, I think because of my music degree when I was in college, the fact that I was a middle school teacher for six years, but definitely there's no doubt, like you said, the two decades I spent at Hard Rock International, which to me is probably even though they struggle in some areas is one of the greatest brands in the history of brands, and so I was lucky enough to be there during some very tough but phenomenal times as well, and if you know anything about that particular company their attention to detail, their sense of urgency, their ability to get the staff, these hard rockers, to fall madly in love with them, but then also they parlay that over to the guest. I mean, they're treating guests like they're true rock stars, and it's easy to do, I would guess, if it's in a music environment and there's cool stuff on the walls and it's loud and crazy and fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it really is about this relationship that I think almost every single restaurateur or you would like to think that he or she have hired the right people to develop this emotional attachment with their customers. And so, although I will probably be forever known about you know, at least in my industry, the culture guy.

Jim Knight: 3:33

I speak quite a bit, not just on organizational cultures but on customer service, on building rockstar teams, on leadership. So of course we're all branded. You already started saying it culture that rocks, service that rocks, leadership that rocks building a rockstar team. I've used every iteration of the word rock and roll that you could probably think of. But that's the game. I mean, it's really. I guess it's some of it soft skills if you have to use those words, but I do get a chance to dabble in the things that I have some expertise and definitely some experience. I don't think those things are going away. Everybody could get better with their culture, with their service, with their leadership and surrounding yourself with an army of giants to go out there and fulfill the mission that you want them to do.

Zack: 4:15

And I think that is something that's so powerful, because one of the things we talk about is the employee experience cannot exceed the guest experience. And I actually remember in Hard Rock Cafe when I was a little kid that's where I learned the YMCA and I remember our waitress getting on a chair and doing the YMCA and then grabbing my arms and teaching me how to do the YMCA and it was like one of those moments of I think about that quite a bit and I was just so young. It was like one of my very first memories. What a powerful experience because they trained and got the right people there. And so, when you look at the guest experience, what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

Jim Knight: 4:56

Well, you're already hitting on it and I may have even said it coming right out of the gate. It really is about the humans. It's the people. I guess there's a litany of things that you could do and I've taught creating a new service program, and here are the tactical nuts and bolts that you could do. But at the end of the day, if I hired somebody who was just completely gaga about being around other people, being a servant leader unto other humans, if I had somebody who had the juice running through their veins to say I know that I can rock this person's face off in the short period of time that I have, if I could get more of those people, it's going to completely blow the roof off the joint.

Jim Knight: 5:34

When it comes to the experience, I still got to pay attention to product. I got to pay attention to the atmosphere and the environment. I got to pay attention to the price per value. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Atmosphere and the environment I got to pay attention to the price per value. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the end of the day, I think by a landslide and all the work that I ever did with the National Restaurant Association, all the data I would ever see proved that service trumps everything. It trumps product price, convenience, team, you name it.

Jim Knight: 5:59

And so when I look at service, what's the root cause? What's the common denominator? It's all about human behaviors, and so you know it sucks. For, you know, an entrepreneur, a restaurateur, a general manager when they're out there looking, because some of that stuff is really hard to train. You can do it if there's some raw commodity there, but it's probably easier if I can just hunt for them. They're out there in the public domain. They're probably working for somebody else right now, but you got to go out there and have the eyeball constantly looking who is the most interesting, perhaps a little bit irreverent, unpredictable, authentic person I can find to put them into my world, because I know that unique people create unique experiences.

Jim Knight: 6:40

So when you ask me the broad question about guest experience all day long, it's going to be who have I surrounded myself with? Who do I go out there and hire? Because if I hire some lip syncer, they're going to be revealed, they're going to be unmasked. They're just going through the motions to put in the time and cut corners and punch the time clock and go out and do whatever they're going to do on their own time. But if I can find the right people that are so completely passionate about the business, as close as I can to me being the owner of the thing, they become brand ambassadors.

Jim Knight: 7:13

They will talk about you. They will get more people to come in. They'll probably attract more people like them. So I think until we get into cloning, you're going to have to go out there and mine for some people, but at the heart of the guest experience listen, I'll put a bunch of stuff in my book. I'll talk about a lot of things in my talk, but you're going to hear a red thread throughout the whole entire thing it is about the humans. If I get the right people maybe I just start with a couple rock stars I think that I could probably produce some world-beating results.

Zack: 7:44

And I think in theory that makes a lot of sense. Now there's the reality of number one. I'm already squeezed on margins right now. I mean, my prime costs are hurting, my end-of-day profit is single digits. My traffic count is down. I've taken price as much as I can. How do I afford to more people? And then, from the tactical side, how do I train the people I have? How do I create the culture that rocks, create the kind of culture that lets someone get up on a chair and teach a kid how to do YMCA? How do you work with what you got if you can't afford the A plus talent?

Jim Knight: 8:25

Yeah, it's the toughest industry to be in, isn't it? Because of the margins. I mean you really have to have a love for it. I don't think people go into it. I can't do anything else. I think they really love the industry and they want to make a go at it. And some people want to do multi locations and some are mom and pop. They're just. They want to try and crush it with their one. It doesn't matter to me.

Jim Knight: 8:44

What I've learned is that you look at a P&L and it's so easy for us to measure all the different things that jump off of a P&L. I can see when a number is off, whether it's cost of sale or labor cost or food production, whatever. I can make some adjustments on that. Where I think we falter and there are some companies out there, like Black Box Intelligence, who used to be part of People Report and it's exactly what you think. There is a people report If you actually look at the people that you have currently on board.

Jim Knight: 9:15

Here's where I think you could afford to actually not necessarily bring on more people. I know that's not your intent when you worded it that way. I'm saying have the right people, I think probably will spend more money. They're a monumental pain in the butt. You might have to do some customized benefits. You're going to have to love on them some more. You're going to provide them some more development. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that stuff costs. But I think if you could reduce turnover turnover, in my mind, is almost the root of all evil in the restaurant industry If I could reduce that down, let's just say 5%, there's a ton of money that's out there that I could put into the rock stars.

Jim Knight: 9:48

Am I going to have the perfect crew? Will I have the right staff? 100% rock stars? No, but let's say I can get to 20, 25% of them. So now you're looking at sort of the 80-20 rule. I'm going to focus on the ones who can absolutely produce the result, knowing full well the ones that aren't. They're going to come and go. I probably can pay a little bit less. These awesome rock stars will run the others out. They'll vote them off the island. For me, I don't have to manage the process as much and all of a sudden I see less accidents, less incident reports. I see less people complaining from a guest standpoint.

Jim Knight: 10:23

There are so many things that people just don't look at the quantifiable metric. What they're doing is looking at their traditional P&L and the people side sort of gets pushed aside. Everybody wants an awesome group I get that but I think if you look in terms and go, let's see where we could actually save money, so I could put it into the ones, because they probably are going to cost a little bit more, but I would rather get rid of two people that are just mediocre to bad to find the one rock star. I'd rather pay that person a lot more. Now, having said that, there are companies now. They don't think in those terms and they'd rather replace the people. So you're getting into kiosks, you're getting into automation.

Jim Knight: 11:00

As AI and robotics come along, you're going to have to make some tough decisions and there will probably be fewer people on any given shift. So if you're a brand that had 20 people and now you're going to get out to 10 because you can, you're going to spend the money on all this other stuff for the long haul Well then those 10 ought to be the absolute best you can find in the industry and you can no longer tell me there's not good talent out there. I don't care what generation you want to look at, there are awesome people. They just happen to be out there working for somebody else and you're going to have to peel them off from those particular brands. So I'm not resorting. I hear what you're saying. I'm not going to come off of my opinion. I think if more companies focus on the people and surrounded themselves with that, you will absolutely produce these Herculean results year on year, not just in a one-time year. I think their trajectory looks like a hockey stick and I'll end with this too.

Jim Knight: 11:52

I think there's too many companies out there that swear now. The only reason they are where they are is because of their culture. And when you really ask them, when you deep dive and go and look underneath the hood, what they're saying is my people, you can copy my product, you can copy the environment, you can come in here and steal everything that I have. But if you can't get my people, you're never going to be able to recreate my culture. And there are too many companies like the Chick-fil-A's of the world or Southwest Airlines. If we're coming out of the industry, that will go as long as I have these cool kids. You're not going to be able to do what we do. Go ahead and copy everything else we do. But good luck with that until you get the right people on board.

Zack: 12:31

I love that concept of getting the right people on the bus and I think a lot of it is putting them in the right position and sometimes what I found is making sure they have the ability to succeed. I think this is something that us, as leaders, so often forget. It's hard to be perfect at it, but in order for someone to be a rock star, they need to know what song you're playing. And it's really tough when you get out there and you're like, okay, go put on a killer performance, and yet you didn't do the marketing to get the people at the venue, you didn't tell them what the set list was, you didn't let them practice with their band, and then they don't do a good job and we say, man, that person sucks.

Zack: 13:14

And it's like I think there's some accountability there in terms of are we, one, setting the right expectation that from the beginning, they understand what does success look like, what does done look like? And, number two, do they have the tools and timeline and training enabled to get them there? And three, do they have the systems and processes that they could be held accountable for that and that you could help them through that, to ask them questions? And I feel like, without that expectation, without the tools and timelines and without the systems, we need to look at ourselves before we say oh, we hired the wrong person, right yeah 100%.

Jim Knight: 13:55

Yeah, so my background, as we talked about, was running, training and development. So you're speaking my language, because I think there should be a system in place for every single area of the employee lifecycle. How do you even think about going out and finding them, recruiting them, interviewing them, hiring them, onboarding, orientation, communicating, training, developing, rewarding, recognizing, even terminating them? There should be a system in all of these, and I have become a system guy, in fact, working for Hard Rock, we operated in the gray quite a bit. It was t-shirts and burgers and rock and roll and you open the door and whatever happened happened. And then something happened along the line where I started to see a lot of these things that these awesome rock stars were putting into place managers and staff, that I could systematize the thing and I just said in my mind why not make that a part of the training? So when I first started with that particular company, there were only 12 locations. When I left, there were like 250, and then they were into hotels and casinos and live music and everything else.

Jim Knight: 14:56

But that stuff didn't happen by accident and I think part of what you're talking about is there is nothing worse. I almost equate it to the same as a guest. There's nothing worse than somebody in marketing spending a ton of money commercials, billboards, social media beating on our chest Look how awesome we are only to put people into an environment that it's not that awesome, it's just meh at best. I equated the same way from an internal standpoint. My entire career has been below the surface, not focusing on the guests but focusing on the team member, and I'm going man, if I could not just have a really good orientation which, by the way, zach, I got to be honest with you, the more times that I spend with restaurant companies, I think they've gotten better, but for so many they're doing a pretty piss poor job of orientations. I see sometimes two, three hours, they kind of tell the story, but then out comes the handbook of what you can and can't do and what will get you fired. And now let's do a tour and let's have an employee meal and oh, in the afternoon, here's the spatula. Get to work Like that in their mind. Half day orientation is good enough and I think you're missing the boat. And there are too many great, awesome companies again in this industry that are spending sometimes an entire day on just the story, the mission, the values and what you were just talking about, the service philosophy. If I never tell you what the service philosophy is, other than a sentence or two in a manual somewhere, and I never measure against it I never talk about it again. It isn't a part of our value orientation. I'm not doing it in our stand-up, pre-shifts or whatever it is. I think I'm missing the boat on all that.

Jim Knight: 16:34

I think if you hire some phenomenal people in lieu of leadership, I'm going to do the best I can, and if I've got a great rock star out there, they're going to do it the way that they want to do it and it might be contradictory to what I was planning and their idea might be good. But now, like you said, we're not on the same sheet of paper. I'm telling you we need to be heading in this direction and this really good person is doing the best they can because I haven't informed them. Shame on me as a leader, but the reality is we probably hire some pretty good people out there, but we as leaders are not spending enough time and energy saying this is what I want to have happen or, even better, let's have some discussions.

Jim Knight: 17:13

I'm going to have an hour workshop around table 36 on Thursday. I need all the servers, bartenders, whatever and we're going to talk about what is it that we're trying to do here? And I'll listen. People have a voice but at the end of the day, I need us to push back from the table going. This is our true north. This is what we're going to do to rock people's world, and if we don't do that, then I think you have to just assume you're going to get the same results that you've always been getting.

Jim Knight: 17:37

So I think there's a lot with communication ongoing, not just the first day one and again hoping that you've hired the right people. But we as leaders you're right have to provide them with the right tools, have to communicate with them on a regular basis, have to hold them accountable. If you're talking about these things and it's never it might be in the job description, but they don't put it really in the performance appraisal. The performance appraisal becomes this fuzzy thing and they've been here another year and they're going to get a little bit more money. I don't even like appraisals anymore. I like performance discussions and it should be around what you're doing for the guests. What are the end result that we're trying to get here?

Zack: 18:12

I love focusing it on the guests. That makes so much sense, and from beginning to the end of, we start with the guests and even performance is all based on the guests and just powerful man. So, jim, I know we're out of time here, but who is someone that deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry?

Jim Knight: 18:32

Oh man, there's some good ones. I have a local one here called Yellow Dog Eats. They're amazing in Central Florida, very eclectic. It's really because of the owner. This guy almost has no filter, which is hilarious on its own, but he sort of has allowed his team to take on those personas and the product is great. The environment's awesome. I get bummed out when I'm not having an emotional attachment to people whenever I go in there. But I think from a national standpoint I have become really big fans of a couple Big Chicken, if you're familiar with them Josh Halford, I love them. Shaquille O'Neal, I think they're really starting to hit it really well.

Jim Knight: 19:04

I'm a huge fan of Bonefish Grill. I don't think they're around forever, but I find them extremely consistent, again, not just in the quality, the price point, the food and beverage from the people. These people know my name and I sometimes won't go in there four or five months. They still know what I eat, what I drink. They know my first name. It's not just this one particular Bonefish Grill, I've seen it a lot, but I also think Jim that's partially you.

Zack: 19:31

You are a memorable guy.

Jim Knight: 19:34

Yeah, maybe, but hey, there's mistakes being made all the time out there. I'll say one more brand too, and it's in your world. Let's talk pizza for a hot second too. You know, I write about and talk about Mod Pizza. I really like those guys. I think they might be struggling right now, but from a culture standpoint I really dig what the founders have done, but I'm starting to like the number two fast casual out there Blaze Pizza. I've been going into a lot and whatever they're doing from a training standpoint. I'm getting direct eye contact. I'm getting a lot of smiles. I'm getting people bending over backwards. Sense of urgency again. There's a couple that I can go through, whether it's on the high end or fast food, and what you get with me when those happen is loyalty. I'm going to come back, spend more money and talk about you positively and, zach, isn't that what every restaurateur, I think, wants, right?

Zack: 20:23

Amen, Love that man. Well, Jim, where can people go to?

Jim Knight: 20:27

follow you. Yeah, they can check me out and my website's probably the best place. All roads lead to nightspeakercom. So night, my last name K-N-I-G-H-T. Speakercom, and I do weekly videos and monthly blogs and I'm doing all kinds of stuff out there if you're interested. But thank you so much for having me on the show, man. I can't wait till we get to hang out and have a few laughs again in person at some point.

Zack: 20:50

Dude love that, jim Looking forward to it too and for giving both my hair volume and public speaking something to look up to. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation, jim.

Jim Knight: 21:02

I love it, man, you're the best. Thanks, Zach.

Zack: 21:04

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.