What You Control as a Restaurant Owner

If you weren't fully aware of how many challenges there are in running a restaurant before, 2020 and 2021 were a big wake-up call. While there were product challenges, labor challenges, customer challenges, regulation challenges, and many more, the biggest challenge of them all was where you spent your mental and time capital. A lot of these things were out of your control but that didn’t stop you from worrying about them. Going forward, how you lead your business is critical to taking advantage of everything you learned these last two years. In this video, I'm going to share with you what you can control as a restaurant owner so you can start spending your mental and time capital in the most productive ways.

Let's start off with what you cannot control.

• You can't control bad customer reviews.
• You can't control your food prices.
• You can't control the labor market and the challenges that we face.
• You can't control government regulations or restrictions.
• You can't control the weather.
• You can't control what others do or don't do that affect your life and business.

These are all challenges a restaurant owner faces almost daily. You can allow all these challenges to bring you down and put you in an endless spiral of depression, or you can focus on what you can control.

What you can control:

• You can control your reactions.
• You can control your actions.
• You can control your feelings.

What do I mean?

Let me share a lesson my father taught me about choosing your attitude. Let’s say you wake up and it’s raining, and you look out outside and think it’s sad. The day is ruined. But my dad taught me that you also look outside, see it raining, and choose to be happy. It's going to rain. It's out of your control. What is in your control is how you choose your attitude for the day.

As a restaurant owner when it’s raining, metaphorically, you can control how you react to that, what actions you take because of that and how you feel about it.

• You can keep a positive attitude.
• You can find a solution to any challenge.
• You can choose to be happy.
• You can think strategically about your business.
• You can ask for help.
• You can do anything you set your mind to.

The beautiful part of running a restaurant is that you get to do all the good stuff and all the bad stuff every day. And your restaurant is a direct reflection of how you choose to lead your business and your personal outlook on the future. You are in control of you.

You can choose to allow things to control you or take control of what you can control and lead your business to success.

Here are three steps to taking control of your business:

1. Learn every day. You're already one of those people. You're watching this video. You can read books and articles, listen to podcasts, watch videos, go to workshops and seminars. Join a group. Get a coach.
2. Run your business proactively instead reactively. These are all things that I talk about on my channel. Putting budgets in place is a proactive system. It’s your plan for success. What systems are you going to put in place? How quickly? What changes do you need to make to achieve success? Train your people and hold them accountable so you have time to do the most important thing: take time out of every week to work strategically on your business so you can move it forward. Be the leader your business needs.
3. Choose your attitude. You can have one bad day. You can cry, complain, feel sad, angry, tap into your vices, whatever you need to do to cope. But for one day. What you do the next day defines you.

As a restaurant owner, the leader of your business, you cannot focus on what you cannot control. You must focus on what you can control. Choose your attitude. Learn how to overcome the challenges, and you will just crush it. This is the difference between a successful, satisfied restaurant owner and one who struggles.

If you would like to learn how to own a restaurant that doesn't depend on you being in it to be successful, sign up for my free video course that teaches you three key principles to running a successful restaurant. If you're ready right now to make some serious changes in your restaurant, you can also book a 60-minute call with me where we talk about your challenges and figure out exactly what is holding you back from having a restaurant that doesn’t depend on you being in it to be successful. 

Be sure to visit my YouTube channel for more helpful restaurant management video tips.