Hey restaurant owners. Today I want to teach you about how to avoid stress and overwhelm in your restaurant. My name’s Ryan Gromfin. I’m an author, speaker, chef, restaurateur and the founder of The Restaurant Boss and I have a question, “Do you ever feel like you have too much to do but too little much time to do it? Have you ever felt like your to-do list just has everything on it that needs to get done?”

Well that’s what causes this stress and overwhelm in our restaurants and in our lives. It’s when you’re completely overtaken in mind or feeling covered or buried beneath a mass of something.

Well that something is our to-do list and so today I want to show you how to avoid that stress and overwhelm in your restaurant and the way that we’re going to do that is through organization and action.

A little while back, I put out a great training video about setting up a theme in your restaurant, a theme for 90 days.

We think that we’re going to get all of this stuff done this year and the list just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and we never actually accomplish anything. So in that video I talk about setting four 90 days themes for your year and at the end of this video I suggest that you go back and watch that, but for now kind of taking that to the next level, we have projects where we break down our theme into a project and then we break down our project into massive action steps.

What kind of action steps?

Massive actions steps.

The kind of action steps that get us results and then we want to further break down those massive action steps in the activities. Now these activities are things you can actually put into your calendar and schedule and so I want to run you through an example of how to do this.

Plus, in that video that I have, that theme video, I offer for free, a 90 day restaurant planner.  So again, when this video is over, below this video somewhere down here in the description, there’ll be a link for you to download that theme, that 90 days project planner, completely for free but at this point I’m going to assume that you already have your theme.

So now let’s look at how we break that theme down into a project. So here’s an example, if you were a restaurant owner and you wanted to focus on growth right now in your restaurant and you wanted to focus on growth with your current customers, I find that, generally speaking, projects get broken down into three areas:

1. The planning phase
2. The execution phase and
3. The adjustments phase, where you go back and fix things.

Since we’re doing this over a 90 day theme and since we’re planning this out over 90 days, usually that planning phase is the first month, that execution phase is the second month and then that adjustment phase is the third month.

So now that we’ve got our three kinds of projects, let’s focus in on that planning project. Let’s move on using that planning project as an example. So now we’re going to break that planning project into massive action steps and let me show you an example of what some of those massive actions steps might be.

It might be gathering ideas. It might be talking to others, like other restaurant owners, might be talking your customers, it might be kind of seeing what’s out there, what’s available to you, it might be doing some research either through restaurant magazines, websites, etc. and it might be then actually scheduling sales calls to actually then figure out what technology you’re going to use to help you with your theme. Your theme is growth. Remember the project right now, this first month project is planning out and so here are some of those ideas.

Now let’s break this down even further. Let’s look at that research, that research project. I’m sorry, that research action steps and let’s break that down into activities here and so one of those activities might be to actually do some research on ZenReach, which is one of my favorite technology pieces right now to help grow restaurants or Moving Targets, which is another great piece of kind of a technology and consulting where they’ll help you find customers and send reminders out to customers.

So if these are the two that you sort of narrowed down to, then what I want you to do as your activity is to actually schedule it, actually put this in your calendar.

You can see I’ve got a date here and I’ve got a time here, where you’re going to actually block out the time to go online, do your research and decide which one of these pieces and technology you’re going to put into place in your restaurant to help with your 90 days theme, which was growth and focusing on current customers. Then remember the project we’re in right now, the project was planning the massive actions steps that we’re focusing on here was research and now the activity is we’re going to do our final research on ZenReach and Moving Targets. We’re going to schedule time into our calendar to actually do that.

By the way, these two are amazing friends of mine and if you want to work with any of them, I’ve got contact information for both of these companies below this video, over at my website at The Restaurant Boss.

I want to give you a warning as we go through this. I know it seems like a lot. It might actually seem a little overwhelming to you but again use that 90 day planner that I offer for free below this video.

You’ll see a link for that but here’s the thing, most people say this is too much work, I’m just going to go out and do it and they do. They’ll find a piece of technology, they’ll order it, they’ll get it going, they’ll dabble in it a little bit but 30, 60, 90 days later, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months later, it’s never a system. So we’re still overwhelmed in our restaurant because we as the owner are still the ones actually executing on this project day in and day out. We’ve never actually taken it through that whole 90 day phase that I’m talking about here which was, you know, from research to execution and then to adjusting and training and teaching your managers how to actually do this or how to use this new piece of technology in your restaurant so then you can move on to your next 90 day theme.

Whatever that next 90 day theme is and know that this whole project is complete because you organized it so well from the beginning to the end its now completely taken care of and in someone else’s hands. So my warning for you is, don’t be overwhelmed by this process; don’t not partake in this process because it feels like a lot of work.

Yeah, it’s probably going to take you a half hour to an hour to plan out your 90 day theme from start to finish using this is a system, but like my good friend Alton Brown over at The Food Network says,

“Organization will set you free.”

Now he probably didn’t coin this quote but he’s probably most famous for saying it.

If you do the work right now, if you plan ahead of time, if you get organized, it’s that organization that will set you free.

I had a ton of fun making this video for you today. If you enjoyed it then I encourage you, below this video there’ll be a Like button, go ahead and smash that Like button and leave me a comment, tell me something that you learned today that you’re going to implement into your restaurant and let’s keep the conversation going.

If you have any questions or anything, I’ll be actively participating in that conversation. Let’s keep this going. Let’s have some fun. My name’s Ryan Gromfin with therestaurantboss.com. I really enjoed bringing you this training today. I hope you have a wonderful day.