The greatest gift of leadership is a boss who wants you to be successful.
Jon Taffer
The simple things can be really powerful.
Pushing for excellence is a fight. You have to fight to hire the right employees, fight to get the supplies you need, to move line items around. Being a great manager means pushing to get those few extra inches every day. It's almost like a football game - the team that wins sometimes wins by just inches.
I think success is a relative term. If you're a caveman, success is capturing an elephant. Success is achieving better than the norm. Success is being exceptional. It's exceptional reputation, exceptional income, and exceptional respect.
Failure is an awful thing, and when I look at the common denominator of failure, it seems to always be the same thing: excuses.
You ever see a bar with 200 beautiful women go broke? But I've seen a lot of bars with great DJs go broke.
When you're on-stage, you're expected to perform in the bar business. You shake hands. You smile. You're all positive energy: you add to your environment. When you walk in the door to the back of the house, that's like a stage door. You're off-stage now.
Leadership is a trait; it's not a skill.
Don't open a bar if you think all you need to be is social and greet the customers. You have to run a business.
Make no mistake: confrontation is unavoidable in business.
A plate of food hits the table, lands right in front of you. One of two things happens. Either you sit up and look at it and react to it, or nothing happens. If nothing happens then that restaurant is stuck in mediocrity forever.
The word 'mixology' adds $3 to the price of any drink.
Bars are about experience and interaction; so often, the people make the bar.
In the bar and restaurant industry, you're always one idea away from your next quarter-million.
Bars need to be conceived and built for the local audience, not the personal tastes of the owner. Huge mistakes are made with regard to market research and concepts. Research and capital are paramount!
There has been a black hole in the bar business in Las Vegas, particularly on the Strip in tourist areas.
When I was running the Troubadour, there was this transition from the classic singer/songwriter Jackson Browne types to bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Fear. Those are just some that come to mind. Oh, and Adam Ant! The Fear fans wanted to 'crush' the Ants. These guys hated each other.
A bar is a factory, a marketing organization, and a service organization all in one.
Too many bar owners built a bar for themselves... when they should have built what their market and demographic demands!
I think the greatest mistakes have been my greatest lessons.
In the worst of our recession, bars were making money. Every bar can make money. If they're failing, it's not because of the president or Congress or Ukraine. It's because of them. And if you own failure, then you'll own success.
If I'm your boss, and I truly want you to be successful... I'm inherently going to teach you. I'm inherently going to correct your mistakes. I'm inherently going to spend time with you. I'm inherently going to lead you.
Excuses destroy success every time.
Putting somebody else in crisis mode and causing them to make quicker decisions, urgent decisions, rather than prolonged, more logical decisions can be very advantageous. So, to be successful in business, you have to understand the power of confrontation and how to use it correctly.
On 'Bar Rescue,' failure is not an option. I have to try to turn the business around.
When I meet with people who are ineffective managers with failing businesses, I can't change what they do - I have to change the way they think.
People see themselves on camera. They're ashamed of the things that they do, so they have a choice: Either they accept responsibility for it, or they blame the show for it. It's a human reaction.
You can tell within a second of entering a bar if it's a place you should spend your time.
My company was based in Palm Beach, Florida, but when 'Bar Rescue' took off, I knew I had to move west. It was a choice between L.A. and Vegas. I have a lot of friends in Vegas, and it became my choice. I'm so glad because I love it here. There's a real sense of community. It's a big town that feels like a small town. Everybody knows everybody.
The right personality with a weak resume can be filled in. That's the employee who will become great.
The Knack were a very, very powerful band, and you got to understand, when they came in, all the punk stuff was still going on. There was an amazing conflict within the scenes.
The infusion of technology and social marketing to bar spaces is a big opportunity.
I've traveled the world, and as an America,n I get insulted when people say American businesses aren't respected overseas. Look at how our food and beverage companies do around the world. We are regarded as the best at this. A lot of what we do here is exportable, and I don't think there's anybody that does it better in the whole world.
The fact of the matter is that the most important responsibility a bar owner has is public safety and the safety of the people in it.
If you can't build a relationship with your customers, you're in big trouble. If you can remember the numbers from the reports and spreadsheets you spent hours poring over in your office, but you can't picture the faces of your customers - you're in big trouble.
Honestly, if I could be anything, I'd love to be a small-business authority type of person.
Revenue cures everything in the business world.
Bars can't be everything to everyone. They must be everything to someone.
When my company does a good job, we make people happy. They laugh, they smile, they have a good time - that's what we do for a living. Any business doing that is making a noble effort.
The gift of giving and paying it forward has always been traits I consider to be invaluable.
Bar owners tend to be social rather than operators. Most bar owners do not manage their numbers. They do not have spreadsheets or reports to manage their budget, cost, or inventory. I would say 90% of independent bar owners do not even have a budget.
People connect to a good bar very personally.
Human interaction is something that I believe, as humans, we crave for. And that is where bars and social environments come into play.
Don't build a bar for yourself. Build it for your customers. It's all about them: the walls, the finishes, the textures, the food, the beverages, literally everything has to be for them.
Keeping a bar clean is basic in this business. Having a staff that speaks adequate English is basic.
You have to connect with your market and your employees. First, understand that what your market says is fact and what you say is opinion. Then, take the time to create a good connection with your employees. Without those two key connections, your business will be stuck in mediocrity forever.
I've always said that my greatest crises are my greatest opportunities to prove my own character to myself.
I really was going to run for Congress.
I believe that a cook in a kitchen isn't producing an entree: he's producing a reaction. The product is the reaction; the entree is just the vehicle.
I'm a businessman, not a bartender.
