Day 120 – The Puzzle – We Just Found A HUGE Piece Of Our Puzzle, Meet Bruce!

FINALLY, we have someone who’s really good with a calculator!

Ladies and Gents, please warmly welcome Bruce Nelson, the CFO of America’s Best Restaurants & DRYVER!!!!

Bruce and I first met in November 2020 (see the picture above) when I interviewed him for his book, Myth Magic & Math, for my Restaurant Experts Roundup Podcast.

From the first time we spoke, I knew he was a badass and thought, “That would be AWESOME to have a guy like that in my corner”, never considering a restaurant guy like him would leave the operations side of the biz to come to the marketing side.

For the past 15 years, Bruce has been at the helm of a restaurant group that’s grown from $15 million to $60 million. He had 800 employees and 80 managers.  For the past few years, I’ve dreamed about hiring a CFO, and this past Spring, I realized it was three years TOO LATE!  When I thought about what I’d want out of a CFO, it was a guy like Bruce.  Someone who’s “been there, done that.”  And I thought, “What if we could land someone from the restaurant business that could bring our clients perspective and the financial genius we need.”  

And then, an email came in May from Bruce promoting his blog post of the week titled “Almost Paradise.  It stopped me in my tracks because there’s a song by Stick Figure (CLICK HERE to listen) that I listen to all the time.  It makes me think about where I’m going and what I hope to find Paradise.  

I replied to the email with only a link to the song with no context.  I have this strategy I use to get the attention of people.  I’ll email stuff like a song or picture with no explanation to see if it will start a conversation.  In this case, I had an end in mind.  I had recently put on my goal board to hire our CFO by 12/31, and to do that, and I needed to start nurturing people like Bruce.  

After a few exchanges, Bruce told me he was actively looking for the next step in his career.

I asked if he’d consider that next step being with a restaurant media and marketing company vs a restaurant group, and he replied, “Would it be fun, challenging, and rewarding?”

I recall chuckling and thinking, “Does he know who he’s talking to?”

FUN = HELL YEAH, we have a lot of fun EVERY DAY!

CHALLENGING = Hold my beer. You should see what I get my team into daily with my ideas!

REWARDING = Helping the hardest working people in America, restaurant owners, WIN!  Hell yeah, it’s rewarding.

And with that, we set up a Zoom call, which led to us meeting in person a few weeks later and concluded with Bruce coming to town for a few days to meet the team.  

And just like that, I had my CFO 6 months early!

The lesson I want you all to learn here is simple: USE DIGITAL MEDIA CORRECTLY!  

Over the past four years, I’ve used my email and social media to keep Bruce’s attention.  It all started with my intern Gabe (Meyers Media Now ) finding his book online and connecting on LinkedIn.  The picture from 2020 of the LinkedIn message wasn’t from me; and it was from Gabe.  He used my account to reach out to Bruce and many others :). That strategy also included making a connection with Bruce on all platforms.  

Having Bruce on my podcast to discuss his book was a step, and the rest is history.  Over the past four years, Bruce and I have had many conversations and got to know each other.  

This plan was two-pronged. First, to make friends with the right people in the business.  And second, to build a network of pros I know would love to be part of the journey.

So as you can see, marketing works!

Talk tomorrow,

MP

Day 116 – The Puzzle – This Facebook Ad Had NO Call Offer & I’m Fine With That

For the past few weeks, I’ve written a few blogs on the Facebook ad pictures above. After looking at it a few times, I thought to myself, “Matt, why didn’t this ad need a strong offer to earn your business?”

In episode 628 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, I discussed how brand strength makes customer acquisition easier and cheaper. CLICK HERE to listen!

If you’ve followed me for any time, you know I love a STRONG call to action.  An offer people would feel stupid saying no to.  So why is it that this ad didn’t need that to drive me to visit?

In the long run, the brand will always win.  This brand’s strength with me made a simple ORDER NOW ad enough to get me across the finish line.  I knew who they were. I had an expectation of what I would get from Wing Stop.  And more importantly, I was intrigued.  I didn’t need something free, but that’s 100% due to the brand recognition they have with me from years of marketing.  

This ad is an excellent example of putting a message out there for a long time. As you expand your footprint, you can acquire new customers more easily. Many of you reading this post won’t ever get to this scale nationwide, but you can locally.  This is why it’s important to always be advertising and be present not only online, but also in your community.  

That’s all I got today, see you tomorrow.

MP

Day 111 – The Puzzle – 10 Rocks!

Many hands make light work.

We’ve all heard the saying, but have we all experienced it?

From 2008 until 2017, I ran my company as a one-man show. In 2011, I hired Ashley, my first employee. She was my right hand and made life so much easier. However, I don’t think until 2017 that I realized she and other leaders would be the key to our future growth. Like most founders, I thought I had to do everything and that I was the only one who could do it as well as me or how I wanted it done.  

Then, my vision became clear, and I knew I needed another leader to help me reach the next level. With that epiphany, I handed Ashley the keys to her department and our second employee. That was seven years ago, and I think 55 employees ago. 

Well, this past Friday, my leadership team sat down for our quarterly EOS meeting. EOS is a company that has built a proven strategy for structuring decision-making and aligning that decision-making with goals.  I found EOS many years ago through a few books by the founder, Gino Wickman.  I “attempted” to put in place some of the systems from EOS as far back as 2018 but with my own twist.  Then, in 2023, our COO, Doug Smith, became a big fan of EOS and started implementing their teachings.  

We had our first annual two-day. EOS deep dive in January of this.  In those two days, we identified some goals and issues to tackle in 2024, but we also figured out that someone else had to lead the EOS meetings if we wanted to see the true power of EOS.  So, we hired Lyn Askin (Black shirt i the picture above) to be our EOS Implementer.  

Lyn led our April Quarterly and July meetings on Friday. Both meetings brought massive growth from my team and our vision. April was much more challenging, and we left with too much on our plate, but Lyn warned us of this. Last week, we went with a very manageable workload of quarterly goals (called ROCKS in EOS), but more importantly, we left with a massive sense of teamwork.  

In tomorrow’s blog, I’ll cover our ROCKS and what they mean to our vision, but today, I want to cover what hit me hard.  

As I said above, it took me many years to appoint another leader to run side-by-side with me.  Looking around the room Friday, I saw seven leaders in it to win it.  

Seven “ride-or-dies,” and I can’t tell you how great it felt.  Some days, I scare myself with what we are building, but then I look around like I did Friday and realize that I’m not alone.  At these times, I realized how “many hands make light work.”

Talk tomorrow,

MP

P.S. We have a HUGE announcement next week on our 8th horseman joining the RMTW leadership team!!!


Day 105 – The Puzzle – Are You Planning To Fail?

You’re busy, I get it, ME TOO!

The other day I was giving a restaurant owner friend some shit about how he’s slacked on his marketing and he fired back “You’ve got a team, it’s much easier for you.”

So, I fired right back at him “What is 56 people today, was me and Ashley for 10 years.  Everything that employees do for me now, I did on my own. So what I’m telling you isn’t from a person that’s not put in the work for many years just like you need to.”

“You’re right, my bad :)” he said.

It was a great conversation, it was me holding someone I look up to, accountable.  Because, at that time what I was seeing was someone who was putting in place marketing programs for THAT WEEKEND!  

If you’re planning this weekend’s promos today, then you’ve lost.  It’s called PLANNING TO FAIL! 

I get it, you have a crazy freaking job.  But I also know that many of your signed your name on the line of many loans and personal guarantees, so it’s time to buckle up!  Your sales today are not a product of this week or this month.  Your sales today are a product of many months and that’s why I’m such a stickler for having a well-thought-out marketing plan and working ahead.  

So go ahead and get caught up, but by August 1st I wan to see you ALL have 60 days planned out, delegate to your team, and a plan in place!

Day 104 – The Puzzle – Get Great Content For Your Restaurant From Here

Today’s post is quite simple, the comment section is your friend:)

I’m sure we’ve all seen posts highlighting sandwich boards like the one above, in my opinion, THEY ARE GOLD!

You can also find great content like this in the comment section on your Facebook and Instagram posts.  I see if every day, consumers being, well consumers, and throwing shade at you.  Well, USE IT!  Take those comments and have some fun with it.  Heck, just this weekend I had a guy saying my Instagram Post was bad, then I clicked his profile to see who I was about to fire back at and HE WAS A VEGAS STRIPPER!!!  You can’t make this shit up, I’ve got a dude that sells his body for money giving me marketing advice.  

In episode 673 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, I cover how you shouldn’t let these morons ruin your day, have a listen.

But this blog post is about how you should turn that “negative” into a positive like the sandwich board up top. 

Day 97 – The Puzzle – Restaurant Customer Acquisition Continued

Ok, back to how restaurants can acquire customers for their restaurants.

The 3 examples below are very similar restaurants.  They share the same type of food, service, and location.  And, their customer feedback and review scores are really close.  So we are comparing apples to apples here.  

So let’s see what the journey can look like for a restaurant.   And see why one has a 19% redemption rate and an acquisition cost of $3.44, while one is 10% and $25 🙁

RESTAURANT #1

RESTAURANT #2

RESTAURANT #3

There are 2 factors I look at here to tell the story:

1st – Redemption %

2nd – Acquisition Cost

3rd – Review Rating

Review Rating

Let’s start with #3, the review ratings.  These are private reviews the customers leave after they visit.  It’s a quick survey in Messenger that is simply meant to identify bad experiences and get that to a manager, or deliver a link to Google for people with 4 and 5-star ratings.  This is important to me because the success of all marketing depends on the products you serve.  You’d think this is known by all, but we’ve had clients with 3.5-star ratings through our system and wonder why their redemption % is low.   I’m like seriously!  If these customers are giving you bad reviews, that means others have many times as well, and that in turn means the word on the street is your restaurant sucks.  So, how good, or bad you deliver your product will affect results. 

Redemption % 

#1 is the redemption percentage and this is a funny topic to talk about.  Direct mail companies have always talked about success being a 2-5% redemption rate and that was accepted by all of you.  Meanwhile, I get restaurants upset with a 10% redemption percentage.  This number is reflective of how you are viewed in your region.  It’s 100% a product of the amount of “know, like & trust” you have with the community.  

We aim to get all clients to a 30% to 35% redemption percentage. BUT, that might take 2-3 years for some restaurants.  I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you reach a consumer in your neighborhood who looks like your other customers and you give them a high-value offer, say a free burger, and they don’t take you up on it, YOU HAVE A BRANDING ISSUE!  

But not all is lost.  This isn’t a huge deal, it’s just a sign that you need to keep putting irresistible offers in front of the people around your restaurant and retargeting them with other content that pushes them over the hump.  I’ve personally had offers for businesses around me that I’ve not used for 12 months.  The timing isn’t right, I forget, I’m not sold yet, etc.  There are many reasons people don’t take you up on your offer, but the #1 reason is typically that you’ve not made a compelling sales pitch for them to.  You might have given me a free pizza, but am I going to drive past my regular spot to give you a try?

Acquisition cost

Now let’s talk about how much it’s going to cost to acquire customers and why this number is typically much lower than customers realize. I say this number is much lower because of the lifetime value of customers.  

Let’s look at an average scenario.  Restaurant #3 above, the program is 1 year old.  It’s a heritage restaurant with new ownership.  The old owners never marketed so the new owners have some lifting to do.  They have a 20% redemption % and $3.44 acquisition cost.  This means that 1 out of every 5 customers who are acquired visits and that 1 visit costs the restaurant owner $3.44
 

SAMPLE MONTHS STATS
– You acquire 500 new customers into your database
– You convince 100 of those customers to visit
– You spend $344 to gain 500 customers into your marketing program and 100 of them to visit.
– They spend $2,170

Now I’m not going to get into profit from this SINGLE visit by your customers, because that’s not how you look at this.  But it’s pretty damn easy to see that you just funded next month’s ad costs with the profit from this $2,170, it’s a freaking no-brainer.

The VALUE with these 100 customers is their future visits. Here’s how I see that going for most restaurants

– 30 will be one and done, they won’t come back anytime soon

– 50 will become occasional customers, visiting 5 times per year over the next 3 years: 15 visits x 50 customers = 750 visits

– 20 will become hard-core customers, visiting 15 times per year over the next 3 years:  45 visits x 20 customers = 900 visits

So this restaurant stands to gain 1.650 visits at $21.70, which is $17,175 in sales.  

So you just gave out $500 in free food (your cost) and spent $344 and got close to $20,000 in sales with the first visit and the following 3 years.

How it WORLD are none of you freaking doing this?  I just don’t get it. 

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

 Don’t forget about the 400 customers who gave you their contact info who did not visit immediately.  10-15% of them will follow the same path as above, adding another $17,000 in sales. 

 

IN CLOSING

All three of these restaurants have a story of their own and every restaurant’s marketing journey will be different.  

Restaurant #3 has solid results due to it being a heritage restaurant in their community, but weak everywhere else.  They also have new owners who are starting to do more, and if they stick with that, this 20% could be 40% within a few years. 

 The #2 and #3 are strong brands, but they are just now laying their foundation.  They are newer brands that the masses don’t know about.  The word-of-mouth marketing hasn’t had time to take hold and they’ve not advertised enough to build their following.

As I’ve said, acquisition marketing is 100% a product of their brand strength in the community and it’s just not there yet.  So it’s all about taking a strategy like this and sticking with it along with what we’ll talk about in tomorrow’s blog. 

Tomorrow we discuss the funnel these customers are, or should be put into, so they follow a very specific marketing path catered to their journey with the restaurant.  

MP OUT


Day 91 – The Puzzle – Let’s Go That Way

New notebook to start a new chapter.

When I get back from vacation we officially launch our new digital restaurant marketing platform DRYVER powered by Repeat Returns and the next level of America’s Best Restaurants.

So, I thought it only made sense to start with a new 🍊 planner.

Paige & Cole saw the price tag after I bought it and said “show us what an $80 notebook looks like.”

My response…

“I’ll make $8 million the next few years off the notes in there, so $80 is a solid ROI 👊

🧡🚀🌙

Stay hungry my friends!

Day 88 – The Puzzle – Doing What You Don’t Want To Do

I knew this time was coming, and I was dreading it.

As much as I love the daily podcast, it’s days like this where I question my sanity.  It’s days like this where I think “What if I take a week off”, people would understand.

I’m getting ready to head on vacation and for this trip, a microphone isn’t traveling with me, which means I need to knock out 12 podcasts in 2 sessions over 24 hours. 

Two weeks ago I had this great idea “Matt, if you do two episodes per day for the next week or so you’ll be ahead enough!”

GENIUS right?

Well, that didn’t happen and as I sat at my house on Thursday, July 4th around 9 pm I realized I had to do that day’s podcast to do STILL, and “OH SHIT” I need to get another 12 done on top of that 🙂 I thought “I can do them all tomorrow, but then I thought “That’s going to make for a long day” so I sucked it up and knocked out 5 more that night.

And then on Friday I went into the office and got uncomfortable, and knocked out the other 7 podcasts.  Let’s be honest, there are things we love to do that some days we simply don’t want to 🙂 And what I’ve found on those days is the energy you have after you do it is awesome.  You realize “That was brutal, but I did it.”

And something I realized many years ago about taking tough tasks, is it makes easy stuff, REALLY EASY in the future.  I think that’s why doing 1 or 2 podcasts some days is light work because I’ve had plenty of days where I crank out 5 pods.

My friends, there is scientific proof that shows the part of your brain that’s activated in instances like this, ONLY GETS STRONGER, when you do what you don’t want to do.

So get off your ass today, and do something that SUCKS!

Day 87 – The Puzzle – It’s Time To Change, Your Competitors Aren’t

This one is quite simple, GET TO IT!  The video above links to a quote from David Goggins that is so TRUE

“It’s so easy to be great these days because most people are weak “ 🤯🧡
Now before you read any further, CLICK HERE to watch it and then come back for the rest.
OK, for real, CLICK and watch.
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Ok, now that you’ve heard that, I want to you realize one thing, it’s 100% true. I promise you, most of your competitors SUCK, but unfortunately so do you right now.
 
From 2017-2020 I was pulled into coaching a few hundred marketing companies from around the world.  I had written a book that had training for restaurants and it ended up attracting over 700 marketing people “just like me.”  
 
I put that in “QUOTES” because even though we shared the same business category and had some of the same thoughts, they were nowhere close. 
 
I recall the moment that it hit me, that I was canceling the coaching program.  To put this in perspective, I made $425,000 NET PROFIT in 2019 from this program, and at a moment’s notice, I canceled it.  

WHY?  Because I realized 90% were never going to listen to me and do what I said.  They simply were not built to run.  And on top of that, I was getting dumber talking to most of them since I was simply banging my head against a wall.  
 
Now I tell you this story today so that you realize the opportunity that exists.  YOU as a restaurant owner are probably running too slow.  But the good news is, so are all of your competitors, THEY ARE WEAK!  So now is your time to shine, your time to be different, your time to dig deep and become what you were meant to be.  

Step your game up my friends, I believe in you 👊

Day 76 – The Puzzle – Be The Business That Would Put You Out Of Business

“Be The Business That Would Put You Out Of Business.”

Wow, that really really really HIT HOME!

Meet Bri and Jonathon of Wooden Paddle.  They own what I’d call a higher-end casual dining restaurant that leans towards pizza, but to say they are a pizza joint would be under selling the magic their chef Patrick creates that’s not pizza (which is a lot).

This dynamic couple that will soon have a restaurant EMPIRE (mark my words) have an awesome podcast that every restaurant owner should know about, CLICK HERE TO LISTEN and subscribe!  It’s called “The Fire Ready Aim” podcast and it’s FIRE!  To hear from a duo that’s been there done that on EVERYTHING in the restaurant biz and then to be able to convey that message is video and audio, WOW! 

But the reason for this post wasn’t to only hype the podcast, it was to showcase one line that hit me today while listening.

At the 31:29 mark Jonathon says “be the business that would put you out of business” was a great tip they’ve gotten along their journey.  

WOW, that’s impactful and now I’m sitting here not listening to their podcast anymore, but making a list of WHAT and WHO could put us out of business.  I heard Alex Hormozi say one time that a great practice to make your business bullet proof was to think of every way you could go out of business and then figure out how to do the opposite.  When you take these two ideas and make them one, it could give you the most powerful business plan EVER!

Ok, now I’m going back to my list of what and who could put me out of business and then I PROMISE I’ll go back and finish listening Bri & Jonathon 🙂

MP OUT!