The Importance of a First Impression

I often ask people that I train how long does it take to create a first impression. I often get numerous answers from 20 seconds to 30 seconds to a minute. The reality is it takes 10 seconds to make a first impression. It takes 10 seconds for somebody to decide whether they like you or they don’t. That’s it! A first impression is critical in the hospitality industry because your guest decides immediately whether they feel that you are for them or against them.

First impressions are black or white, they’re not gray. Never has somebody looked at you and said, “I’m not sure how I feel about you. Let’s start this all over again.”

First impressions are critical because often times in hospitality, whether it’s restaurants, retail, entertainment venues, nightlife bars or airports, all you have is a first impression with your guest. Quite often our only interactions with our Guest is for less than 30 seconds so first impressions http://www.cialispharmaciefr24.com/cialis-generique-indien/ are critical in guest satisfaction.

What kind of a first impression are you showing your guests? Are you smiling, making eye contact, verbally greeting them, making them feel warm and welcome? That is what a great first impression is all about. There’s no such thing as a second chance to make a great first impression.

Growing up with the Grateful Dead

I was first exposed to the Grateful Dead music when I was 14 years old by my older brother. I fell in love with their harmonies on the “Working Man’s Dead” album. Although the band had been playing together since 1965, I did not get to first see them until their Shakedown Street tour in 1979, as a 15 year old.

Going to my first Dead show was a life-changing experience. Of course, the band, which is known for its improvisation and extended jams, was certainly on point, I realized I didn’t know more than half the songs they played. What really amazed me were all the “Deadheads” dancing and twirling to the music. The whole scene was something you can only experience first-hand, as if someone told me what I was witnessing, I probably would not have believed it. The communal vibe and the genuine humanity of people interacting with peace and love was overwhelming. I actually became a twirler and started dancing with everyone else, where the music became the catalyst for the dancing.

Over the next 16 years, I saw the Grateful Dead over 100 times, often going to the shows without a ticket to scalp. In 1995, Jerry Garcia died and I’ll never forget the day it happened, as I was living in the British Virgin Islands and I had one of my best friends and multiple Grateful Dead concert companion, and still lifelong friend, Shawn Dagon, visiting me. We came back from the beach that day and I had over a dozen messages on my answering machine informing me that Jerry Garcia had died. Shawn and I broke into a bottle of 150-year old Grand Marnier, put on a Dead album and talked about all that the band had inspired in us over the years. Back when Shawn and I graduated high school, we lived in a van together, following the Grateful Dead and here we were in 1995, 13 years after we sold the van, and had both done well for ourselves in our careers- yet still lived by the ideals of peace, love and community that the Grateful Dead always sang about.

Since then, I have seen over 100 shows of the various iterations of the Grateful Dead including Further, Rat Dog, Phil Lesh and Friends, The Dead. I remember seeing The Dead at the Nokia Theater in NYC four years ago. I went two nights in a row and didn’t have tickets, and my business partners couldn’t believe that I would

  1. Go to a show that I didn’t have tickets
  2. Go my myself
  3. Go multiple nights in a row

I tried to explain to them that no two shows were ever alike, that they never repeated any songs from night to night and that its as much about the vibe and scene as it is about the band. Sadly, they didn’t get it until, on the second night, I convinced one of my partners to come with me. Needless to say, he is now a Deadhead.

I just saw Dead & Company at MGM Grand both nights last weekend and I’m happy to say that I’m certainly not the oldest hippie at the show, but I’m definitely not the youngest anymore. Good old Grateful Dead.

Dead & Co

What a great time at the Dead & Co. concert this past weekend at MGM Grand! Check out

these pictures I took

at the show. IMG_0724 IMG_0721 IMG_0720

The Restaurant Coach Podcast

What does your company Kelley Jones Hospitality focus on?

Kelley Jones Hospitality is a multifaceted hospitality consulting and management company specializing in freestanding and mixed-use food and beverage complexes, entertainment venues, nightlife, hotel and facility operations. Kelley Jones offers a wide range of personnel, professional and business solutions for the hotel, restaurant, night life and hospitality industries. KJH provides turnkey solutions, managing existing properties, revitalizing struggling outlets and delivering new concepts, all of which create the opportunity for hotels or marquee commercial property owners to offer their guests the most desired brands in the marketplace.

A public speaker and corporate trainer, Kelley is often retained to provide training programs, team building and speaking engagements to companies looking to gain a competitive edge where strategies are developed to accommodate market conditions and achieving the goals of our clients.

Your Experience with the Ailment

“Kelley, what is the effect of not having a strong employee engagement and leadership?

Culture starts at the top. There is a great quote by Maya Angelo, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” It how you make people feel.

Reverse your organizational chart. In my company, my partners and I are on the bottom…our team comes first.

Remember the 4 Golden Rules of Hospitality:
1. Look at me
2. Smile at me.
3. Talk to me.
4. Thank me.

We need to stop using the word “customer”. Customers equates a transaction. Amazon has customers. Restaurants have guests and while the guest is not always right, they do need to leave feeling satisfied.

Your “Prescription”

What are some key points to increase employee engagement?

1. Training – it starts with the interview process, checking references, making sure you value their time.
2. Have a succession plan. You have to have a plan for your team to grow.
3. Stay engaged with the team. “Managers light a fire under people, while leaders light a fire within people.”
All these things are easier when you start a restaurant. “It’s easier to birth than to resurrected.”

How can a restaurant turn people into leaders?

1. Help you team get better skills (coaching is a great way to develop managers into leaders –db)
2. Explain the Why & the What – lead by example
3. Get constant feedback.
4. Recognize the good. “Find what’s right & reward it. Find what’s wrong & fix it.”

Self-awareness is the key! How are you showing up?

Take This and Call Us in the Morning

“What one piece of advice would you tell your younger self?”

To listen more and talk less.

Understand emphatic listening.

DB – Here are 5 tips for Emphatic Listening

Empathetic Listening is a technique which can help you manage and avoid disruptive and assaultive behaviors. The foundation of the technique can be summarized in 5 simple steps.

1. Provide the speaker with your undivided attention. This is one time “multi-tasking” or “rapid refocus” will get you in trouble.
2. Be non-judgmental. Don’t minimize or trivialize the speakers issue.
3. Read the speaker. Observe the emotions behind the words. Is the speaker angry, afraid, frustrated or resentful. Respond to the emotion as well as the words.
4. Be Quiet. Don’t feel you must have an immediate reply. Often if you allow for some quiet after the speaker has vented, they themselves will break the silence and offer a solution.
5. Assure your understanding. Ask clarifying questions and restate what you perceive the speaker to be saying.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. – Stephen R. Covey

“If success was a recipe. What 3 ingredients would you say have to be in there?”

Well, I would start off by saying, “Success is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is

the result of experience. Experience is the result of bad judgment.”

1. Learn from your mistakes and don’t be afraid to make a few. Look at your online reviews and react. Make improvements that can improve the guests experience.

2. Educate yourself. (you can tell by Kelley’s ability to recite quotes and his wealth of knowledge that reading and continuing to improve himself is a big part of his success. –db)

3. Be nimble. If it does not work change it. If that does not work, change it. If that does not work, change it. Keep making adjustments until you get the results you want.

Wrap Up

Any upcoming projects? You do public speaking and seminars how can people contact you?

Lots of new projects in Vegas, one with Chef Alex Stratta.

Compound Marketing

I like to describe “compound marketing” as the ability to influence numerous guests, creating amazing experiences for them, thereby utilizing them to market your business.

The best example of how compound marketing works is to use a golf analogy. As a horrible golfer myself, I would invite a seasoned golfer to play a game of golf and, being as I live in Las Vegas, I would propose to make it interesting by betting on each hole. Given that there are 18 holes on a golf course, I would propose betting a dime per hole. Any scratch golfer would look at that bet and take it, as the worse case scenario would be to lose $1.80 for the entire round of golf. After the first hole, I might propose to increase the bet by doubling it after each hole. Most people would agree and take the bet. At this point, I would point out that you’d better be a fantastic golfer because by doubling the bet after each hole (ex, 10 cents, to 20 cents, to 40 cents, to 80 cents, etc), at the end of 18 holes, the loss would be $13,107.20. That is the magic of compounding. It’s not just doubling—it’s multiplying.

Let me give you an example of how this works for my business. I opened a restaurant in 2008 in San Diego called Suite & Tender. We opened it to great reviews from San Diego Magazine, 944 Magazine and Riviera Magazine. Within three weeks after we opened, one of my cocktail servers approached me with a business card from a gentleman who was a senior executive at Qualcomm. She said he was down in the lounge and asked if I wanted to meet him. Considering that Qualcomm was one of the largest employers in San Diego, of course I wanted to meet this gentleman. I went into the lounge and there sat Houman Haghighi, who was the corporate venture capital and business development at Qualcomm. I introduced myself to Houman who was visiting our lounge with two coworkers, chatted with him and thanked him for visiting. He had a cocktail menu in his hand and asked which was my favorite specialty cocktail. I proceeded to the bar and had the bartender make one of each of our six specialty cocktails and send them to Houman. I also instructed the chef to send down a sampler plate of our appetizers for Houman and his guests to try. As Houman was preparing to leave, he asked me how much he owed. I thanked him for coming to Suite & Tender and told him the drinks and appetizers were complimentary and to please come back and see us again. He thanked me profusely and left. My cost on sending the drinks and appetizers was probably about $30.

Three hours later, Houman walked back in with five gentlemen dressed in suits and ties, greeted me and said they had plans to have dinner and he recommended Suite & Tender. As I escorted the gentlemen to their table, I overheard one gentleman in the party say, “Look, they have oysters here.” I went into he kitchen and had the chef prepare two dozen oysters and had the bar send out a round of Prosecco with the oysters, my compliments. My cost was about $35. The gentlemen had a great time and spent over $500 on their dinner tab that night.

Two days later, one of the gentlemen in Houman’s party came into Suite & Tender with his fiancé for dinner. His fiancé had such a great time and enjoyed the restaurant so much that she booked her rehearsal dinner at Suite & Tender for two months later and brought in 60 people. The night of the rehearsal dinner, the group had such a good time that over the course of the next few months, I recognized numerous guests who came back into Suite & Tender with their friends.

The power of compound marketing is like that shampoo commercial where someone tells two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on.

All things being equal, in that you provide exceptional service and a high-quality product and treat your guests like the most important people that they are, compound marketing is utilizing your guest experience for them to do your advertising and marketing for you.

The Benefits of Strategic Partnerships

My training and consulting company, Kelley Jones Hospitality, has recently partnered with Goodwin Hospitality to add value to each other’s scope of services. Goodwin Hospitality is a leading provider of mystery shop and recruitment services to the hospitality industry. I am often asked to recommend mystery

shop companies to my clients and recommend Goodwin Hospitality to provide those services. Also, I am regularly contacted by companies in need of high-performance executives to fill positions in their companies. Having used Goodwin Hospitality for years, they are the leader in providing the most qualified candidates.

Goodwin Hospitality is often asked by their mystery shop clients if they provide training for the areas of opportunity to improve identified by the mystery shops. Obviously, Goodwin Hospitality cannot directly provide these services, as it would be a conflict of interest. Therefore, they recommend Kelley Jones Hospitality to their clients for all of their training needs. Kelley Jones Hospitality is then provided all of the mystery shops performed by Goodwin and identifies the areas of opportunity to create training to improve the guest experience, creates the training content and then delivers the training workshops to Goodwin’s clients.

Strategic relationships such as this benefit not only our respective clients, but also our ability to grow our network.

 

 

When Two People in Business Always Agree, One of Them is Not Necessary

In my career, I have had many roles in organizations and partnerships to draw my experiences from. I believe collaboration is paramount in any high—performance organization. I believe “that none of us are as good as all of us.” None of us learn from people who agree with us but rather, people that will challenge us, provoke us and offer up a different viewpoint. In fact, to this day, my partners and I have “spirited debates”

in that we will challenge each other, often passionately, but always respectfully, in an effort to continuously improve our business. Quite often, this takes compromise and faith that we have each other’s best interest at heart.

I am glad that my partners and I don’t always agree, as this gives us all an opportunity to teach and mentor each other and grow.

You Can’t Argue With How Somebody Feels

When performing hospitality workshops, I often ask my audience “Can anyone argue with how you feel?” The answer is always a resounding NO. Of course you can’t argue with how someone feels, because that’s their personal emotion. You’ve never had anyone walk up to you and say “how do you feel?” and if you answer with “I feel great!” you never hear them respond “No, you don’t.”

I often teach my managers to tap into their empathy. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes, see through their eyes and feel what they’re feeling. If your team member is feeling particularly good or bad about a situation, it’s incumbent upon leadership to understand why. At the end of the day, your legacy will be made up of how you make others feel. To quote Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made the feel.”

 

 

Smiling is Contagious

When I conduct hospitality seminars, I will typically pair people up and give them the simple instruction, “Stare at each other.” The odd result is that within a millisecond, the stare spreads into a smile within seconds, the smiles turn into giggles and, for some people, a full-on belly laugh.

At this point, I ask the group “How is it that a simple instruction of ‘stare at each other’ turns into smiles and laughter?” I’ll ask the group, “Is smiling contagious?” to which I always receive an enthusiastic YES!

I tell my audience that, if you smile at someone, one of two things will happen.

  • They’re going to smile back at you
  • They’re going to turn away

There’s never been an instance when you smile at someone that they just stare back at you, because if that happens, you might want to walk away quickly—they’re probably not balanced!

All kidding aside, it’s amazing how a smile can break down barriers and add warmth to a perfect stranger.