1. My dad used to say that the customer is always right, especially when he is wrong.
Never forget that!
2. People tend to support what they help create.
Learn to rub all over your staff. Form the team and make it fun. Consider this especially given the current economic climate. The available workforce we have today will continue to improve as the labor market continues to shrink. In this job market, especially in fast food, hospitality, and most retail establishments, you really need to learn to love your staff. That minimum wage group usually leads to a troubled life. They are a disaster; their lives are a mess; and you need to make the work environment better than the home environment. If you do, the work environment becomes their escape and they will never want to leave you. That is what helps us retain staff. We have one of the lowest turnovers according to industry statistics.
3. Be pessimistic: the glass is always half empty.
As Intel’s Andy Grove once said, “Only the paranoid survive.” I think being bearish helps you keep your edge when you’re trying to work your way up to keeping the glass full.
4. Remember to hire both your strengths and your weaknesses.
Acknowledge your weaknesses. Ever since I was raised and brushed at my dad’s restaurant, I consider myself a pretty strong food and drink guy. So I always hired someone I could coach in that department who wouldn’t necessarily give me an argument on everything I had to say from a management perspective. However, my weakest link tends to be maintenance. After all, what the hell do I know about cleaning a coil?
What the hell do I know about changing a compressor? I’d be lucky to know where one was. Consequently, I find the most outrageous engineer who possesses all those necessary talents and pay the required salary because that engineer is gold to me. I recognize my weakness and I know that I am vulnerable. Never lose sight of your weaknesses when building your management team.
5. Greet customers enthusiastically as soon as they walk in the door and celebrate their arrival.
Use the “WOW Factor”. As my mentor told me 20 years ago, “Cold eggs will always seem a little warmer.” There’s a postscript to this: do the same with your staff. After all, there’s not much glamor in the hotel business about making beds, cleaning bathrooms, or washing dishes. As I see it, my job, your job, anyone’s job in managing people is nothing more than coaching and encouraging. Never forget how to be a cheerleader.
My mentor also told me… “Coupons will only convince the customer that they were charged too much to begin with.” Look what has happened to all of us. We wouldn’t think of buying a car without a rebate…coupons have become a way of life…and he told me this over 35 years ago!
6. Our job is not to be perfect but to recognize when we are not.
Over compensating for mistakes in the eyes of the customer. Remember, if you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not trying hard enough.
7. Train your staff.
An error made in executing a goodwill decision to resolve a customer problem will far outweigh the cost of the error. For example, take the guest who yells at 2:00 AM. The night auditor decides to “ruin the room” and sends him to the security guard. If it’s a family, orange soda and some ice cream are sent to the room. Hopefully the night auditor has sent a bottle of wine that is only $5 or $10 and not one that is $30 or $40. Even if they made a mistake and sent the most expensive wine to the room (because they didn’t know anything better or because they thought that was the right decision), at least there weren’t any screaming guests at the front desk the next morning. and you don’t end up having to make up your entire stay because of a problem that could have been resolved by a trained staff. If you follow this rule, you only have to work 10 percent harder than the competition to get a leg up on them. Take advantage of your management style through your people because the chain mentality is usually overwhelmed with too many rules and manuals. By training your staff, you will eat your competition’s lunch. As Ray Kroc once said at McDonald’s, “When the competition is drowning, shove a hose down their throat.”
8. To create a winning partnership with your staff, remember that the power of partnership is mutual respect both at home and in your business.
I have no morals, I have no ethics, but I exude integrity in everything I do. If you’re a son of a gun to work or a son of a gun to live, at least be gracious. Along these same lines, when it comes to managing people, the best book I’ve read on managing people is Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. I implore you to read the book, but not when your relationship is in trouble. Read it when you are ready to apply your principles of mutual respect.
9. I have an interesting philosophy that compares business to sports.
If you ask most people if Michael Jordan is perhaps one of the greatest players to ever play basketball, most would agree. What is his rate of fire? Answer: 48 percent. If you ask most people if Pete Rose was perhaps one of the greatest players to ever play baseball, most would agree. What was your lifetime pass rate? Answer: not even close to 350. Consequently, he failed to execute 65 percent of the time. Michael Jordan doesn’t execute 52 percent of the time. If you think it’s different in life, you’re crazy. In my business, when I win 50/50, I am breaking even. When I earn two-thirds, I am making money. When I’m over 75 percent, life is wonderful. After all, “happiness is positive cash flow.”
10. Don’t burn your bridges.
It’s hard to swim back in a small world like bears. Our industry is an even smaller world. Please remember your roots and what it was like to crawl before you walked or ran. Egos are very fragile and very expensive. Remember when you do and we all will, “The good Lord gave us all two hands: one to take and one to give. Never forget the last.”
As published. Florida Hotel and Motel Magazine.
“Only the paranoid survive.”
“The operative word is focus. You have to put all your effort behind what you do better than other people in the business and then not hedge your bets. If you’re hedging, you’re much more likely to lose; and even if you win, you win.” in a mediocre way. If you focus and get it wrong, you lose, but if you get it right, you win big.” “Never let success stop you from worrying.”
Andy Grove – Intel
“When worms are scarce, what does a chicken do? Does it stop scratching? It doesn’t. It scratches even harder. Many businessmen have been showing less sense than a chicken since orders were scarce. They have fired salesmen; they have stopped or reduced their publicity; they have simply resigned themselves to inaction and, of course, pessimism. If a hen knows enough to scratch harder when worms are scarce, surely entrepreneurs…must have enough courage to scratch even harder for the business”.
BC Forbes
“We have to get over the notion that we have to be average… It robs you of the opportunity to be extraordinary and leads to mediocre.”
Uta Hagen
“Wisdom is knowing what is right. Integrity is doing it.”
Unknown
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about it, you’ll do things differently.”
Warren Buffet