In the late 80’s in my early 20’s, I was working at the Half Shell Raw Bar in Key West, FL as a line cook. To get an idea about how much of a fine dining restaurant this was, our unofficial motto was “we don’t take plastic—we serve on it.” It was a great high volume, freezer to fryer type of restaurant. The executive chef was a gentleman named Jeff Polland. After I had been working for 5-6 months with Jeff, one day he came in and said, “I just got a job as the Executive Chef of a restaurant in Stamford, CT called the Sterling Ocean House.” I was sick of Key West after having lived there for two years and asked if he needed any help. He said, “Yes, I need a Sous Chef,” to which I replied, “I’m your guy.” After work that night, I went home and looked up “Sous Chef” in the dictionary because I had no idea what it was. I went in the next day and told Jeff I was going to move up to Connecticut with him.

To quote Richard Branson, “If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you’re not sure you can do it, say yes. Then learn how to do it later.”

Growing up in a lower-middle class family on the wrong side of the tracks, there was no spare money for non-essentials, so at 8 years old I started selling seed packages door-to-door in the spring and Christmas cards packages door to door in the winter. I also had a paper route, I babysat and I even went house to house and offered to stencil house numbers of curbs for $1. I always equated putting yourself out there and hard work with the ability to make money.

Unfortunately, I did not do well in institutional education and graduated at the bottom of my class in high school. I never took SATs, because I knew college was not going to be an option for me. Not only did I not have the grades, but I could not picture myself in a classroom setting anymore. I’ve been blessed with good fortune in my career as I get to own and operate restaurants, be a management company for other people’s hospitality businesses, and tour the country conducting hospitality and leadership workshops. People often ask me what is the secret to my success. My answer is, “Because I could always work harder than anyone else.” Simply put, I could work longer, faster, and harder than a lot of my coworkers as I progressed through my career.

In fact, at fourteen years old, I got my first job in a Greek diner in New Jersey as a busboy and I always got jazzed by the fact that the servers would fight over me to be in their sections because I worked harder than all the other busboys.

There’s a lot to be said about hard work and perseverance and learning from your mistakes. I live by the adage, “Success is the result of good judgment, good judgment is the result of experience and experience is often the result of bad judgment.” The capitalism principle is simple, society rewards those that perform and you can not underestimate the rewards of hard work.

I often do sales and marketing training and find that the number one challenge for sales teams is engaging a perfect stranger in conversation. I train people to look for non-verbal clues in their potential guest or customer that would give them insight into their potential client’s interests or passions. I have found that people are passionate about the following four topics:

1. Their families and, specifically, their children
2. Their pets
3. Their sport teams
4. Their hobbies

If you can identify one of these four touch points, through verbal and non-verbal clues, you immediately have insight to an individual and can immediately begin to build a rapport with that person. I believe that all of us, as humans, have something in common with everyone else on Earth. If you think about it, by just being male or female, you have something in common with 50% of the population.

Non-verbal clues of whether or not someone is a parent are as simple as these:

• Are their children with them?
• Do they have pictures of children on their cell phone?
• Are they purchasing something for a child?

These non-verbal clues can immediately give you speaking points to a perfect stranger—such as, how old are your children, do you have a boy or girl, what’s their birthday, etc. All of these questions begin a conversation with your potential client or guest.

Consider this, the same types of non-verbal clues can be helpful to identify if someone has a pet—for example, if the pet is with them, hair on their clothes, a picture of their pet on a keychain, etc. People are passionate about their sports team as conveyed through their wearing of shirts, jerseys, hats, and even if you don’t know anything about their particular sports team, these non-verbal clues can give you insight to the cities that your client may be from. For instance, if someone is wearing a 49ers jersey, you might not know anything about the 49er’s football team, but you could build a rapport and start a conversation by simply asking, “Are you from San Francisco?”

People are 26% more likely to buy from you if they like you. By identifying non-verbal clues, of what an individual might be passionate about, you can help to begin a conversation and begin to build a rapport.

From 1990 to 1997, I lived and worked in the British Virgin Islands. I worked for a rum company called Pusser’s Rum. Pusser’s was a rum that was given out aboard the British navy ships for over 300 years. In the days of wooden ships and iron men, the purser would dispense a tot of rum to the sailors, thereby dulling their senses and making a difficult life at sea more bearable. In the early 1970’s, with the modern computer era, the British navy discontinued the process of giving out rum as there could be no margin for error. The gentlemen that I worked for,

Charles Tobias, purchased the rights to produce the rum from the British navy. Thereby, Pusser’s Landings were born. Because we were based in the British Virgin Islands, our board of directors was made up of some industry titans who had vacation houses in the BVI.

One such board member was Bill Cheney who, at the time, was Chairman of the Board of Tiffany’s & Co. In 1995, as we were preparing for the US expansion of Pusser’s, I sat in on a board meeting where we discussed our first opening in Annapolis, Maryland. Charles was concerned that the name Pusser’s would not resonate with the US consumers and put the idea out about changing the name. He and Bill began to argue, as Bill thought that Pusser’s was the only name to roll out, because that was our heritage and it was steeped in British tradition. As the argument got heated, Bill abruptly turned to me, pointed at me, and said, “Kelley, you have the flu. You just sneezed and snot is running down your face. What do you grab for?” to which I replied “A Kleenex.” To which Bill replied, “Exactly, Kelley didn’t say ‘facial tissue,’ he called out Kleenex by name because they own the facial tissue category.”

Bill then said, “Charles, if you were to buy your wife a diamond bracelet, and you gave it to her in a jewelry box, and if she was to open that jewelry box and see this wonderful gift, she might actually cook you dinner and you’d have a lovely evening. But, if you give your wife a little blue bag with little white ropes and inside that little blue bag is a little blue box wrapped in a white ribbon and she untied that ribbon and inside that box, on a cloud of cotton, was a little blue felt bag and inside that bag was the exact same diamond bracelet, she would cook you dinner every night for a month. All because you gave her Tiffany’s.”

At that moment, I truly understood the power of branding and how important your brand is to marketing your product. Twenty years later, I still remember that lesson like it was yesterday.

It still amazes me how tuned out people are to each other. What I find even more amazing is that this happens all the time in the service industry.

How often have you had an experience like this…

You go into a retail store and you’re ignored by the clerk. You stand in line at a rental car place, bank, airline ticket counter, and you’re the next to be called. Two or three people behind the counter ignore you because whatever they’re doing on their computer is more important than you.

I train my teams with this simple question, “What is more important than the guest or customer in your place of business while you’re working?” The only answer is NOTHING!!

I can wait a long time if someone just looks at me, acknowledges my existence and says, “I’ll be right with you.” It’s when you ignore me, knowing full well that I’m right there in your place of business, and you can’t simply look at me and acknowledge me. I can see you’re busy, and I get that. But that still doesn’t give people the license to not acknowledge the people paying their salaries.

I learned a long time ago that in a goods and services economy, the people paying for the goods and services are ultimately the people you work for. Give us some courtesy, greet us with a smile, and you’d be surprised how long we would wait for you.

When I train service teams, I always inquire, “What is a first impression and how important is it?” First impressions are critical in the business world. It takes ten seconds for a person to decide if they like you or they don’t when they’ve never met you before.

A good first impression, which is made up of your facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, and overall attitude, conveys your enthusiasm or lack thereof. There is never a second chance to make a good first impression. Be conscious of your self-awareness when meeting and greeting new guests.

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” –Thomas J. Watson

I love that quote because I believe that people learn much more from their dismal failures than they do from their screaming successes. Failures typically sting more, which necessitates changing your behavior so you don’t repeat your mistakes.

Thomas Watson started a little company called IBM and back in the 1950s, Tom had a manager at IBM that made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No small sum, if you consider how much that would be in today’s dollars. When Tom was asked if he was going to terminate the manager, he asked why he would terminate him, as he just spent $600,000 to train him. Why would he want his competition to have the benefit of that experience?

Now THAT is progressive leadership.

I ask this question often in my hospitality and guest service training sessions. I get a plethora of answers from my audience, including smiling, greeting, making eye contact, saying hello, et cetera. I let my audience know that all of these things make people feel good—but not important. Invariably, I will get someone to give me the answer, which is: to call someone by their name. My next question is, “how do you get someone’s name without asking ‘what’s your name?” The obvious answer is to introduce yourself.

If you introduce yourself to someone, more than likely they will tell you their name. If not, it’s as simple as saying “Hi, my name is Kelley…. And yours is?” Human beings have an innate desire to be recognized by their name. Therefore, it is the best way to make someone feel important.

I can tell you this, as I hated my name the first 15 years of my life. I would always get “Kelley’s a girl’s name.” And for the early part of my life, I hated this until one day, I realized that I had nothing to worry about because I had it better than my brother… his name is Courtney.

All of us grow into who we are and our personal identity as we grow older, which includes embracing who we are and our name. If you want to make someone feel important, find out their name and use it.

I learned this principle a long time ago and it has served me well over the years. There is an old saying that the customer is always right. Ask anyone in the service industry and I’m sure they would give you countless examples of their experience where this was not the case.

I opened a restaurant in Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas in 1999 called Red Square. Red Square’s claim to fame was that we had the world’s largest vodka list in North America. We had over 140 different vodka brands including many that we directly imported from Russia that could not be obtained anywhere else in the United States. Our staff was incredibly well-versed on all the different vodkas, ingredients, and distillation processes.

After we had been open about six months, three people came in and sat at the lounge and ordered three Ketel One vodka martinis. Our bartender made them, the cocktail server served them, and five minutes later, the martinis were brought back to the bar. The bartender inquired what was wrong and the cocktail server said “The guest says that they drink Ketel One all the time and these martinis were not made with Ketel One vodka.” The bartender grabbed the bar back, put a tray in his hand, put three martini glasses on the tray, a shaker cup, a bottle of vermouth, and a bottle of Ketel One. They proceeded to the table and, while the barback held the tray, the bartender proceeded to make three new martinis tableside. When the guest looked up at the bartended and asked what he was doing, the bartender replied, “I wanted you to see that we were using Ketel One to make your martinis as you requested.” The bartender completed the martinis, set them on the table and walked away with the barback.

A manager, who was working the room and table touching, happened by the cocktail table and inquired how everything was. The guests began to berate the manager about how he felt embarrassed by the bartender’s action. The manager apologized profusely, comped the three martinis at $36. The guests finished the martinis and left the restaurant happy….. right? ……WRONG!

Three days later, I received a two-paged letter of complaint from the guest. A two-paged typed written letter of complaint…….. Do you know how pissed off you have to be to write a two-paged letter of complaint? A typical guest that has a great experience in a restaurant might tell someone. A typical guest who has a bad experience in a restaurant will tell everyone.

I responded to the guest in writing, apologizing profusely and sent them a gift certificate for dinner for 4 to please come back and re-try Red Square. Because the dinner was free, the guest ordered $95 Beluga caviars, $75 lobsters and bottles of wine. The bartender, in his infinite wisdom to train the guest, cost me over $600 and who knows if the guest ever came back to Red Square after that “free” visit.

When I pulled the bartender aside and inquired as to what he was thinking, he asked me what he should have done. I replied, that he should have made the Ketel One martinis and just sent them to the table. He asked, “What if they sent those back as well?” I replied, “At that point, you get a manager to visit the table.”

I have learned that the guest is never someone to argue or match wits with. Just give them what they want. I tell my cooks all the time, “If a guest orders a medium rare steak and you cook it perfectly medium rare and send it out, and they send it back and say it’s raw, then it’s raw to them. So cook it medium well, call it medium rare and send it back out to the guest.”

The guest is clearly not always right, but they must be satisfied. The guest perception of their experience is the only perception that matters, even if they are not always right!