Restaurateur’s Guide to Working Less and Making More

Reaching a certain level of success gives you the ability to create even more success.

Recently, a restaurateur came to me and said he would like to figure out how to work less and make the same amount of money.

I challenged him. I asked, “Wouldn’t you rather work less and make more?”

I believe the goal of any restaurateur should be to live life the way they want to.

Freedom Is Priceless

Most people would love to have the opportunities that successful owners of multi-unit independent restaurant companies have.

I was thinking of my client who bought a house in Maui and didn’t have time to go — until we set up his company so he could.

And another who decided he and his wife were going to work like dogs for 10 years and then enjoy themselves — until we decided to give them a reprieve from that 10-year sentence by bringing a new level of talent to their organization.

And yet another who could not stop checking her phone when she was with her kids — until we worked on her changing that annoying habit and letting other people handle it.

In each case, there was a business solution: a commitment to finding and educating the right people to bolster their organizations to give the owners the lives they wanted to live.t

At first, none of these people believed that was possible. They were squandering their opportunities for a flexible life. But why?

They didn’t yet know that the compromise they assumed was necessary — the tradeoff between the time spent at work and money made vs. time spent with family and friends — was dead wrong.

The Biggest Change I Have Ever Seen

The most monumental thing that has changed in the more than 35 years I have spent advising growing restaurant companies is that, today, people are much more interested in closing the gap between how they want to live and how they do live.

Making money is still important, but quality of life now has a greater attraction.

I have one client who is much more excited about the personal freedom we opened up for him than the extra three points dropped to the bottom line.