Embrace The Suck Blog
Day in and day out you are dedicated to the grind. You breathe in stress and breathe out hospitality. You get knocked down one day and get back up the next. Welcome to the world of restaurants and bars. It can be a brutal lifestyle if (and it’s a very big if) you allow it to control you.
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Rules, rules, and more rules. Do this. Don’t do that. Does it seem like you spend most of your day like a babysitter at work telling the team more of what not to do? Welcome to management by numbers.
You’ve probably seen that list of rules in your restaurant, and each one has a number...
“You’re obsessed!”
If someone said that to you right now, how would you feel?
Uneasy? Pissed? Shocked? Relatively pleased?
The word obsession gets a bad rap. Granted that obsession can be destructive if taken to extremes like anything. However, when it is focused like a laser...
So, what is your title? Are you a manager or a leader?
Before you jump on the “I’m a leader bandwagon”, we should have a talk. You might be suffering from Leadership Delusion. It’s fairly common in this industry. We have a lot of preconceived notions about what a leader...
How has this year treated you and your restaurant? How has your quest to find staff been?
If you are like the majority of restaurants, it’s been a big challenge. Here’s the bad news, it’ll probably will not get much better in the coming year.
But don’t get all sad about...
What is going on with you? Seriously. Why haven’t you started taking action on those big goals for this year yet?
- Still, waiting for a couple of key elements to fall into place?
- The position of the moon not favorable for this grand venture?
- Do you need to hire that one person who will...
I was very honored to be interviewed by Tony Chapman at the recent Restaurants Canada Leadership Conference in Toronto.
Tony is a super dynamic speaker and host across mainstream media. His knapsack is filled with thirty years of experience, as an entrepreneur whose agencies developed award...
I have a friend who is a badass scientist (I mean a real badass).
What lights her up is when she is talking about her passion. If you listen to passionate people talk about what they love, it’s contagious and inspiring. Great conversations get that one pound piece of grey matter sitting on...
Let me share with you what I know for a fact from working with restaurants around the globe. Business problems are people problems no matter where you are in the world! On a recent trip to Bogota, Colombia where I was speaking at a conference called Expo La Barra, I had the great opportunity to...

Step into the office and have a seat on the couch. Let’s talk about what is going on in your restaurant. Actually, let’s talk about what’s going on within your own mind.
The precipice of all business problems (at their foundation) are people problems. Those people problems are...