As business owners, we are always trying to do more – make more hours in our day, find more customers and offer more choices to our customers. As hard as we try, however, it seems like we always have the “we should be doing more” cloud hanging over us. Does that sound like you? If so, would it surprise you if I told you the key to success is to actually do less?
I love “Kitchen Nightmares,” the show featuring well-known chef Gordon Ramsay as he works to revive failing restaurants and develop young chefs who meet his incredibly high culinary standards. While extremely entertaining, Gordon is known for his vulgarity and loud, in-your-face confrontational style. What I love most about him, however, is that, hidden beneath that gruff exterior, he uses simple business and marketing principles we can all learn from.
The most common theme that Chef Ramsay finds in these restaurants is that they are doing too much in an effort to be everything for everybody. Because of this, one of the first things he does is determine a restaurant’s signature dish. After doing so, he typically removes half of the other offerings on the menu – a move that is usually met with enthusiasm by the staff and customers.
Is this counterintuitive to what you might think? Why would removing choices make people happy? The answer is simple: Too many food and beverage choices leaves diners confused and lacking in direction. It also over-complicates what is required in the kitchen, resulting in inferior quality on the customer’s plates. Inferior quality leads to declining sales, and we all know the rest of the story.
If this sounds familiar, it’s simply because many of us fall into the same trap. We try to offer too many choices, thereby leaving our customers and employees confused as to why we exist and what we offer. We try to do too much and be good at everything we do. In doing so, we’re like the restaurants that Chef Ramsay visits – we’re not leaving ourselves enough time to address problems that arise, and we’re distracted from our primary goal. Unfortunately, this, in far too many instances, negatively affects our signature dish.
My challenge to you this month is to DO LESS and focus on being remarkable. Each of your businesses has something unique it offers that no one else can duplicate. Pinpoint your signature dish and focus on it; you probably won’t be surprised to find that it’s what led you into business in the first place. Reconnect with your initial passion and let it show in everything you do. You’ll soon find your passion is contagious – your employees and customers will get as excited about your business as you do. Now wouldn’t that be fun?
If you take on this challenge, e-mail me at wendy@athena-marketing.com or participate in my blog at http://wendylieber.wordpress.com/; once I hear from you, I will send you a copy of a “Seven Step Formula to Turn Your Business Around” (Gordon Ramsay Style).
As always, I can’t wait to hear from you!
