[00:00:00] We've made a lot of progress as a society in many of the areas that we needed to in the last few hundred years. But one thing that has not changed enough is money. If we want to be able to tip the scales towards the favor of marginalized people, we need to understand the secrets to making money in small business. The more we talk about money and the secret. That usually stay at the golf club, the more likely we are to be able to make money. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good people, specifically good business people like you. This is Money Secrets, the place to learn about the money secrets of successful small business owners.Because I believe small business can change the world, and in order to do that, we need to be making lots of money. Let's go.
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wie people of the KO nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and [00:01:00] custodians of this land and water that I live. Work and play on. I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present. And note that sovereignty has never been seeded.
This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Hi, it's Fi here, the host of the Money Secrets podcast. And today I'm coming to you with what might sound like a TV review, but is actually me talking about one of my favorite TV shows of all Time, the Bear, and talking about it through the context of all of the lessons about small business that exist in the TV show Now, unless you've been living under a rock for the last few years, you've heard about The Bear.
You've watched The Bear, you've probably loved the Bear, just like I did. Of course it's won lots of awards. I'm pretty sure it won an Emmy and a Golden Globe, although I'm not really one to keep up with Hollywood style TV award shows, but it is one of my favorite TV shows. [00:02:00] Is that because of the soundtrack?
I'm not sure. I'm such a music lover, and the soundtrack to the Bear is absolutely incredible. Before we dive in, let's get a little synopsis of what the TV show is about. So The Bear is an American TV series. It's set in Chicago. It was created by Christopher Stora, and the main character, Carmi Beato, is played by the incredible Jeremy Allen White.
I loved Jeremy so much in his role as lip in the American version of Shameless, which I'm sure lots of you have watched and loved. It's also one of my favorite shows, and the setting for this show is that. Kmi is an award-winning chef who returns to his hometown of Chicago to manage the chaotic and absolutely crazy kitchen of his deceased brothers Italian beef sandwich shop.
The cast is amazing. The script is amazing. The soundtrack is amazing, [00:03:00] and I'm one of those people who usually likes shows and films that are really character driven as opposed to being plot driven. I think the thing that I love about the Bear is that it. Both. Somehow all of the characters get to have a real depth to them, and because there's already four seasons, we actually get enough time with each character to be able to get to know them better.
But there's also a crazy plot going on behind the scenes. Yeah, I love that. It's both plot driven and character driven. It's quite a deep TV show. Something else to know about the show is that it's filmed in a really unusual way. I don't know how they've pulled this off. Maybe some of you listening might know the answer, but there's something about the way that the show is filmed that you actually feel like you are there in the conversation with the people.
Of course, the fact that they are actors melts away very quickly and you feel like they're real people and you are literally in the restaurant, in the kitchen, right alongside them. [00:04:00] It is quite a stressful, chaotic tense TV show, particularly the second season is really stressful and chaotic, so that might be something to consider if you haven't watched it yet.
And then season three and four do go in a slightly different. Slightly less chaotic direction. I'm gonna try not to give any major spoilers here and I'm gonna focus on season one and two rather than, um, going as far as season three and four. There is actually a lot of mental ill health discussed in the show, and I'm going to actually bring that up as one of my points around mental ill health in small business.
Okay, so setting the scene, wherewith. Carmi who has inherited the sandwich shop after his brother Michael has passed away. He has to leave the world of Michelin star restaurants and he's left to deal with a really messy business with lots of unpaid debts, a rundown kitchen, and a [00:05:00] staff that are pretty unruly, and he's doing all of this while dealing with his own pain of losing his brother.
His pain of leaving this. Incredible chef career behind him, and he's also going through a lot of pain and family trauma, which kind of, um, becomes more obvious as the show goes on. What I wanna do now is I wanna take you through what I noticed as some of the. Lessons or business principles that I saw as I was enjoying the bear.
And, uh, yeah, let's dive right into them. The first thing that I wanna highlight is that Richie, who is cami's, kind of pretend cousin, it doesn't really matter, but throughout the story, they often try to work out where Richie actually fits in. So let's call him a family friend that gets the title of Cousin and Richie has been working at.
The restaurant for a really long time. So when Kami comes back from his big highfalutin chef career and he's got all of these things that [00:06:00] he wants to change, Richie does not like it. Richie does not like change. He wants to keep things as they are, and he is not interested in upsetting any of the OG or original clients.
So this Beef Sandwich shop is one of those institutions that's been there for decades. My understanding is it's actually based on a real sandwich shop, and it's got a really loyal client base. The beef sandwiches sell out every day. It's absolute chaos. Getting the menu together, the food prepped, and getting everything out and ready for these huge cues that line out the door.
And so when Kami comes in and. Starts wanting to change things. Richie does not like it. He's not interested in changing anything about the way the system works because that's the way it's always been done. But when you look at it from an outsider's perspective, it is absolute chaos. There are bills unpaid, there's broken [00:07:00] equipment.
The facilities are absolutely worn out. The team are pretty wild and all doing things their own way. And so Richie is so confronted by the idea of change evens. Simple things that he not only shares his frustration with Kami, but he also kind of infects the rest of the team as well. And this is something that often happens.
I see this in small business so often when there's either a change in the direction that the business owner wants to go down, or perhaps a new owner has taken over, or perhaps. Somebody in the business is stepping up into a new role. Sometimes it also happens when a new role that's quite high in the organization is recently created.
So this often happens. We don't wanna change. Like change is annoying and awful. But unfortunately it's also, it inevitable when we as business owners and our teams. So resistant to change. It really gets in the way of being successful in small [00:08:00] business. This idea also about not wanting to upset the apple cart or not wanting to do anything that the original clients might not be happy with.
That's also a surefire way to stay unprofitable and chaotic in business. Often when I start working with a small business, I'll be looking at pricing and, and what sort of clients that business is working with. And what I see with the bear is that they haven't evolved. They haven't evolved their menu, they haven't evolved their marketing.
Their marketing is all word of mouth, and they've still got this client base who's been coming there for years and years and years now. Their loyalty is incredible and should be rewarded, but in order to be able to keep up with. The modern state of small business, we need to be innovating. We need to be innovating our products.
We need to be increasing our prices. We need to be increasing the quality of our marketing and our positioning and our communication to be able to attract a more premium client who is willing to [00:09:00] pay premium prices. So that's something that I would love to have been able to talk to Richie and Carmi about is that yes, you may upset some of your original clients when you start to change the menu or you start to change the processes.
But there are plenty of ways to go about doing that in a really safe way that. To keep those OG clients on board while also bringing in new clientele who are looking for more premium clients. The next little business lesson or thing that I wanted to highlight is, one of the things that, uh, KMI is trying to do is he's trying to make things efficient.
So he comes in, he's got all of this incredible. Experience from these Michelin star restaurants that he's been working in, and he comes back to the sandwich shop where everything is just so incredibly inefficient and slow and being done the way that it's always been done. Most of the staff at The [00:10:00] Beef, which is the name of the Sandwich shop, most of the.
Staff are fairly untrained. A lot of them were hired as unskilled people, and they've basically learned on the job, which I think is an excellent way of hiring people when you've got the right uh character, the right culture, and the right team dynamic. But when you have unskilled team members who don't bring.
Skills from outside of the small business that they're working in, trying to change the way that they're doing things to make things more efficient, can feel like drawing blood from a stone. One of the things that I think Kami could have done a lot better is to really communicate what he was trying to do and why.
I think what he needed to do was bring the team along for the ride with him a lot more than he did. It's obvious that his intention is good, like what he wants is. For the beef to be successful, he wants the legacy of his family and his brother who started the restaurant. He wants that legacy to be honored with a [00:11:00] successful business, but instead of bringing the team along for the ride, he actually just comes in and starts changing things really fast without giving them a lot of notice and without giving them a lot of input.
I think that if Kami had been able to. Slow down a little and actually communicate with the team. You know, this is what we're trying to do and this is why we're doing it. And also to share some appreciation for them and the way that they have developed their skills and to acknowledge that they are the experts in what they have been doing, while also making suggestions for how things can be made more efficient.
The other thing that happens is he brings in. Sid, who is an amazing character, and I absolutely loved watching her character develop through the Four Seasons. But Sid is a very highly trained chef. I think she's a sous chef, and she comes into the business and almost as soon as she comes in, she's part of Cammy's team trying to change things and make things more efficient.
[00:12:00] Essentially what they're wanting to do is turn this high-paced sort of high volume, low price business into working like a Michelin star kitchen does. Now, is that the right way to go about it? I'm not sure, but I do think that Sid is really dropped in the deep end. She's a brand new employee and essentially all of the team.
Hate her because she's the one tasked with basically changing every single thing that they do. I also want to highlight how well the bear portrays the stress of small business. Anybody who is in small business, which is everybody listening to this podcast, knows that the stress of small business is kind of unlike anything else.
When you have bills piling up, you've got thousands of decisions to make every single day. Maybe you have a team relying on you. You have customers that you are supporting or serving in some way, and things aren't going right. The stress can be [00:13:00] enough to make you feel at your head is literally going to explode, and the way that they have created the bear, that stress, you can almost.
Smell the stress through the screen. Honestly, it's the most stressful, chaotic show that I think I've ever watched. Like I said earlier, I think a lot of it has to do with the filming, but I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that the scripting and the characters were actually so perfect for the roles and the story that they are telling.
So the stress of small business makes us do things. Sometimes we make really terrible decisions when we're stressed. I think Carmi is so stressed, particularly in season one, where he's just getting his head around the fact that his brother has passed away, he's taken over this business, it's in a dire mess.
Everything is crazy. And on top of all of that, it's a really fast paced business too. So he really doesn't have much time to kind of deal with any of that sort of stress or trauma or pain that he's [00:14:00] going. Through without having to jump straight in the literal fry pan of the kitchen and try to make the best decisions he can to get through this stressful time.
If I had the chance to talk to Kami back in season one, what I would want to tell him is that he needs to try to slow down. It would actually be better to be closed for a day and have the team. Sitting around having a calm and considered conversation about how they were gonna turn things around, the amount of money that they would lose in that one day of trade would absolutely be worth the amount of benefit that would come from bringing the team together, getting them on the same page, slowing things down, and allowing the team to help him make great decisions.
I suspect that if the bear had increased the price of their sandwiches, even just by 50 cents or a dollar, everything would've been different about the business. And that leads me to the next point. Pretty much everything [00:15:00] in the bear is the definition of doing things the hard way. So for example. Uh, there's one stage where they're trying to get the restaurant ready to be inspected by somebody from the local council.
And rather than hiring proper tradespeople, they continue trying to fix everything themselves. So they're literally trying to tape a kitchen back together with masking tape and blue tack and, you know, super glue using somebody who even after watching the show for four seasons, I have no idea what the fact.
A guy was supposed to be doing, did he work there? Did he have any qualifications at all? I'm absolutely not sure. But instead of seeking out the right service providers to help them pass this kind of health check certification that they needed to check, they tried to do everything that. Cells, which all that that does is put them under even more pressure and stress.
There's so many examples of how they are doing [00:16:00] things the hard way. One of the reasons everything is hard is because the business's finances are in such a mess. It's difficult for them to even find suppliers, so they're often having to pay really high prices, high delivery prices. They're getting small orders because none of their suppliers will extend credit to them.
Everything is hard. The way that they're running the business is hard. Everybody's shouting at each other all the time. There's just so much craziness happening and the fact that they have. Such a loyal customer base is the part about it that I find so fascinating because having a loyal customer base that is.
Coming every day to buy something from you. I mean, that business should be absolutely thriving financially. And I think back to the old pricing question, I think if Carmi and Richie had had the courage to increase the price of their sandwiches, even just a little, that financial situation would. [00:17:00] Started to clear itself much earlier, but I suppose it wouldn't have made for such a, an amazing and dynamic TV show either.
The next point that I wanna talk about is this idea of going viral before you are ready. So there's a situation in, I think it's in. Late in season one, but it may be early season two, doesn't really matter where. It is actually an accident that Sid ends up giving this incredible meal that she's basically creating test meals in the kitchen.
They're not ready for the menu, just. Yet, and she's made this incredible meal and she doesn't wanna throw it out. So she walks out to the restaurant, sees a random customer there sitting at a table and says, Hey, I'd love to give you this meal. I've just made it, and it's something that will be on our menu in the future.
Would love for you to enjoy it. What she doesn't realize is that person is a food writer. You know, wouldn't we all love this to happen to us or would we? So what ends up happening is this. Food writer who Sid [00:18:00] doesn't even know is a food writer, ends up writing this incredible review about the business, but he is writing it about a meal that isn't even on the menu.
Not only that, Carmi and Richie have no idea that it's happened. Sid doesn't even know that it's happened. As you know, there's a lot of industries where the media commentators and influencers of that space have. So much power and hospitality is absolutely one of those industries, and definitely it is like this in Australia.
So think about what would happen if Broadsheet or Timeout or one of those publications did a huge writeup about your cafe and sent huge amounts of eyeballs and people to your business, and you didn't know that that had happened. That's essentially what happens to the bear. So they rock up. For what they think will be a normal day of work and as soon as they turn the machine on, there's also been some kind of a fault where they've turned on orders before the [00:19:00] venue was open.
Essentially they get absolutely reamed. There are so many orders flying through the, uh, little receipt dock that's. Spinning out the orders that the printer can't even keep up. They all start absolutely losing their minds. They are not ready for this. They have not prepped enough food. They have not got the resources, the skills, the calm.
They have not done. Any preparation for this absolutely Tuan day of trade. And so this is what happens to all small businesses when we go viral before we're ready. And it's also an example of what happens when you go viral for something that isn't actually what you want it to go viral for. I've actually seen that happen with lots of businesses where they might go viral for a particular menu item, but it's something that either isn't profitable or, uh, they don't actually have a lot of.
Stock of, and what might've been better is if they had actually gone [00:20:00] viral for their beef sandwiches, which would've actually driven a lot more of the clientele that they were wanting, which is people looking for a really delicious beef sandwich as opposed to the beautiful spare rib dish or whatever it was that Sead unknowingly served this food writer.
Going viral before you're ready can actually have a really negative impact on your business. There's really no way to prepare for going viral, but it's also something that I think we should consider as something that's not necessarily what we actually want in our business, and that going viral may actually be something detrimental to us.
So yeah, just something to consider and point out there that often virality or a huge. Surge in business can actually end up being, you know, can actually be a terrible situation for a small business. And in the case of the bear, they were not ready. The team absolutely folds. Everybody is going absolutely mental.
Sid [00:21:00] ends up walking off the job. Carmi nearly has a heart attack. He's so stressed out and the day, which could have actually been really incredible if they'd known it was coming the day ends up being a total disaster. That nearly completely breaks up the whole team. The next thing that I wanna point out about the bear is what is happening in that kitchen before they undergo a kind of transformation of sorts, where they actually start operating as though they are a Michelins.
Star restaurant crew. But before that, what's happening is that the team are actually all working on their own priorities instead of working as a team. I see this happening in small business so often, and this can even be when there's just one or two team members in a business. I think it is so important to connect with our team really regularly, and your team might just be you, but being able to be in a position where we know what our priorities or our priority for that week or for that month or for that quarter or [00:22:00] year when we actually know what our.
Priorities are, and we've communicated that to the team. Now, we actually have a way of actually achieving our goals as a team. What happens in the bear is the opposite of that, where each team member is working on prepping or creating some new dish or working on something in the restaurant that actually is not what Kmi is wanting to work on, and so that happens in small business.
All the time. I think the best way to try to deal with it is to communicate much more often with your team about what your priorities are and how long or how deep you want your team member to go into each of the tasks that they are working with. The next thing that I wanna highlight from the bear is this idea of dealing with.
They do such a good job in the show of showing what pressure feels, looks and smells like. And sounds like you can't actually smell anything, obviously, but it sort of feels like you can because the pressure and stress that [00:23:00] Carmi and all of the people in the restaurant are under is huge. And I wanna note that.
Pressure that we go through as small business owners, it actually doesn't get any smaller as our business goes on. Some of my clients have been in business for one year, and some of them have been in business for 30 years. Unfortunately, I wish I could tell you that the stress and the pressure starts to get less, but in my experience it actually doesn't.
As your business grows and gets bigger and perhaps your team gets bigger, or your impact, you know, kind of platform gets. Bigger, you'll be dealing with a different kind of pressure as your business goes on. I think it's something that is a real skill for small business owners to get our heads around is how do we deal with pressure?
What are the tools or techniques that we use to try to become more resilient? Yes. But also how do we actually deal with pressure in the moment? How do we stop ourselves from shouting at our team or acting in ways that aren't in alignment with how we want to [00:24:00] act? How do we actually deal with the moment by moment pressure that comes with small business?
Especially if you are physically in a customer, al customer service kind of capacity, like a restaurant or like a health practice or anything where you are literally interacting with clients. We really need to make sure that we're able to deal with pressure. Now, there's lots of different ways that we can deal with pressure.
I'm going to list a few. Pretty much all of these things I'm going to list are the things that are obvious. We know we should be doing these things, but we don't. So the first thing that I think, how to deal with pressure in the really short term, grab some ice and put it in your hands, or take your shoes off and get your bare feet onto some sand, some dirt, or some grass.
That can reduce your blood pressure and reduce your stress levels really quickly. It's going to be short term, but that might be what you need in that moment. Some other things to consider would be going for a walk, making sure that you are exercising [00:25:00] as often as you can, spending time with friends as often as possible, friends and family and loved ones when our business becomes our whole personality.
It just becomes even more difficult to deal with pressure, and the antidote to that is getting around people that we really care about and being able to sort of connect and form those bonds and stay connected to the people we care about. There's plenty of other things you could be doing, including trying to eat as well as you can.
Drink water. Get yourself around other business owners, get support. See a psychologist or a mental health professional, get yourself to the beach as often as you can or, or a lake or mountains, or any kind of nature or wilderness is going to help you to deal with the pressure of small business. The next thing that I wanna note from the bear, and I really hope you're enjoying all of these different angles that I'm bringing from the show.
The next thing that I wanna bring up is what it's like to have a family business. [00:26:00] So in The Bear, the sandwich shop was started by Cami's parents, and they ran it for a long time when he was young. And then his brother Michael, took over until he very sadly passed away. And then Kami comes in and he has.
These kind of legacy team members that were hired by his brother and that he really, you know, had very little input into. He hasn't even been at the restaurant for years before he takes over. So when you're operating in a family business, there are so many more dynamics at play than businesses that aren't family businesses.
I see a lot of pressure can come when we have multiple generations of a family working together, especially when usually a younger member of the family is wanting to either get into a bigger role or take over or kind of increase their level of responsibility in the business and. All young people, we've all been young.
We all, you know, [00:27:00] some of you listening to this are still young. When you are young, you have lots of ideas and you wanna be able to make changes and try different things, and that can cause a lot of animosity between family members. And I think this idea of family businesses, like it sounds so wholesome, but when you see it from the perspective of the bear, you've got cammy's dysfunctional parents who probably ran a very dysfunctional business.
His brother has then taken over and run the business in a pretty dysfunctional way as well with a really dysfunctional team. And then Kami has to come in and try to make sense of it all. Some of the things I think about family businesses that that can really help with some of that animosity that can build is making sure that if you have a family business.
That you actually have independent advisors, consultants, coaches, or whoever it might be to actually help mediate and moderate any of those really difficult questions that come when you are part of [00:28:00] a family business. I think it's also really important for family businesses to. Treat the owners of the business the same way that they would treat their staff in terms of having KPIs, having if possible job descriptions and lists of responsibilities that each member of the family has under their kind of list.
And actually having a maybe once a year or perhaps more often having a performance review with each other. This can be a really great way to keep things professional, and you may need a mediator or a kind of moderator to be there, one of those independent advisors you work with. To actually help keep those sort of conversations on track.
There are so many things about family business that are amazing. I've actually worked with lots of family businesses and I have worked with lots of families who've been in a transition time in their business where one generation was taking over from the generation above and it [00:29:00] can be really. Exciting, but it can also be really quite stressful and scary because it's your family and you really don't want the business or the money to get between those family relationships.
Yeah. I think the best thing you can do if you have a family business is to make sure that you have external support that is objective, that each of the family members has some kind of job description or roles and responsibilities, and that you all have a formal performance. Review maybe once a year, just like the rest of your team does, and that might be how you stop problems from happening.
Yeah, before they happen.
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Can't wait to meet you in there. The next thing I wanna bring forward from the bear is this really difficult thing that happens when mental ill health mixes with a failing business. So I think it's fair to say that Carmi and Richie and uh, Michael who passes away before the show begins, they are definitely dealing with mental ill health.
I'd say there's probably some mental ill health going on in the team as well. But what happens when this mental ill health mix. With a [00:31:00] failing business is it's absolutely, um, can be diabolical for a business and for the founder of that business. Unfortunately, I see this happening so often. Sometimes the failing business is what causes the mental ill health.
Sometimes mental ill health is what's creating the failing business, so it can be a real catch 22. I see this happening so much in small business where whether your business is doing well or whether your business isn't doing well. Being in business is just a much bigger mental burden than being an employee.
I think we really need to recognize and acknowledge that being a business owner as. Especially being a business owner in hospitality like the bear, you know, he is shot in. It can be incredibly difficult to stay mentally well. Like I talked about before with dealing with pressure, I do think there are actually things that we can do to try to keep our mental health or our mental fitness better.
One of the things is to get support, [00:32:00] whether that's from a mental health professional or whether it is from a GP or another health professional, that might be your preferred modality. It might be about getting support with your business. So it could be about engaging a business coach like myself. It could be about getting a life coach.
It could be about outsourcing your marketing. It could be about getting advice about how you could change your business to make the business work better, or strategies that you could put in place to try to keep your mental health. Better when things are feeling really stressful in business, we often lean into that by overworking, or a lot of us lean into it by avoiding and pretending it's not happening.
So maybe this is just a little reminder that your mental health is really important and it's something that needs a lot of ongoing input and effort. We don't stay mentally well, just. By pretending that anything bad isn't happening, we stay mentally well by putting effort into it, [00:33:00] getting support, and actually prioritizing it.
What I find is that often when our mental health is better, our businesses start to work better as well. There's also something that we don't talk about a lot, which is alcohol. So a lot of small businesses rely on alcohol. Absolutely admit to using alcohol lots of times through the course of my business life to try to dampen the stress of being in business.
Sometimes the stress is because your business is failing, but sometimes the stress is because your business is growing and that can feel really overwhelming and scary. So sometimes our mental health is actually declining because our business is growing and it's becoming overwhelming. Maybe it feels like it's taken on a life of its own that we feel that we don't have.
Control on, but just like anything else in life, nothing gets better unless we actually put some time and effort into it. I really encourage you to, yeah, consider mental health support, business support, and anything that helps you stay well as a [00:34:00] necessary and really important part of being a business owner.
The next thing that I wanna talk about is the Bucks Party. You might remember if you saw the show, but essentially Kami is finding it so difficult to pay the bills. The finances are so stretched and stressful. He's getting absolutely desperate in terms of how he's gonna keep the doors open. So what he does is he decides to take a booking for a bucks party, which is a terrible idea.
And what ends up happening is it's the disaster that you expect it to be. The buck. Party trashes the venue. Somehow Richie and Carmi end up getting involved in some kind of punch on. Richie ends up being in the lockup overnight. It's an absolute terrible disaster. And the reason they did it is because they're desperate.
They're desperate for money. And often what happens in business is we let the wrong client in because we're so desperate that we think that any money is gonna be better than none. The Bucks Party is a [00:35:00] really good example. It's a physical example of what can happen when you let the wrong client in. You actually end up worse off than if you didn't take their money.
Kami would've been much better saying no to the Bucks party rather than. Letting that money come in, but also having these huge costs in time, money, stress, and emotional issues that came along with having this horrible group of people in the venue. So what can we learn from that? Even when you are absolutely desperate for money, you still really need to.
Whether letting the wrong client into your business is a good idea. Often the best way through a difficult financial situation is to prioritize your marketing and to make sure that you are prioritizing getting the right clients in the door of your business. The next issue that I saw happening in the Bear that I wanna talk about is what it's like to change business models.
So at the end of season one. [00:36:00] I won't spoil the whole thing, but essentially the beef ends up closing its doors and becomes the bear. We enter season two at the start of the bear essentially being created. So what's happening in the show is that we have the beef, which is the sandwich shop, turning itself into more like a Michelin Star restaurant, which is called the Bear.
Now, there's a huge cost in this time. First of all, they shut their doors to their existing clients. While they're renovating the venue and turning it into the bear. Now, that doesn't happen with all small businesses. Sometimes when we change business models, we're able to kind of have a little hybrid period in the middle where we are changing from doing things one way to doing things a new way.
But in this instance, the change of business model is really dramatic. They change the product really dramatically from being kind of take away sandwiches to sit down. Come and stay for two hours. Really [00:37:00] fancy Michelin star level looking to become a hatched restaurant, kind of a venue. What's happening there is that now they need to actually consider who is the client that they are trying to bring into the business.
What kind of product would that person be looking for? They need to change so much about the business in order to move from this. Sandwich takeaway. The food looks incredible, by the way. I am sure they are like the best beef sandwiches ever, but moving from being a takeaway sandwich joint to a really fancy restaurant comes with a lot of teething issues.
One of the things that I really encourage you to do if you are considering changing your business model is slowing down getting some advice from somebody like me who is a business model expert, or somebody who can really help you talk through the financial implications of the new. Structure or the new model that you are trying to operate under.
Somebody who can talk to you about how your role as a business owner is likely to change [00:38:00] depending on the business model that you are operating under. So operating a sandwich shop as opposed to a restaurant is completely different. Different clientele, different expectations, different marketing requirements.
The kind of training and skills that your team needs to have are completely different. It's all about. High level service, whereas getting sandwiches out the door quickly is what a sandwich shop is all about. Consistency and speed is what the sandwich shop was all about. I think a lot of business owners actually change business models without really considering properly.
What are the financial implications? How will my marketing change, how will my team change, or how will the skills that I need in my business? Change and how will my role as a business owner change? Say for example, you are moving from one-to-one client work to a one-to-many online course or program. The amount of marketing compared to the amount of [00:39:00] service delivery you do to your clients is completely different in those two business models.
So those are things that we need to consider before we change our business model as small business owners. The next thing that I wanna bring forward is actually a related topic. So what ends up happening is that once the bear opens, they actually then have the beef and the bear. So the beef remains as a really tiny little kind of tiny window sandwich shop that's existing on the smell of an oily rag.
It has a small team, a very simple offering, and it continues to be able to service. The takeaway sandwich market that the beef had always serviced. Then we compare that to the bear. Both of these are running from the same venue. The bear is extremely high cost, uh, trying to make meals that are worthy of being photographed and where the people eating them are booking months in advance and looking forward to the event.[00:40:00]
The kitchen needs to be really big and very high quality. This. Skills of the kitchen staff need to be really high. The customer service for the guests arriving at the venue need to be extraordinary. They're just completely different businesses. And what actually happens is that the bear is the one that's getting all the praise, all the attention.
Kmi barely even knows that the beef even exists, even though the team is over there delivering the sandwiches every single day through this little window. And this happens all the time. Do you wanna know which of those two businesses is actually profitable? The beef. So when you actually have a really simple business model, like a sandwich bar with a window, you don't actually need many staff.
There's not a lot of wastage. You can turn things around quickly and you can actually make a really profitable little business. A little hole in the wall style business can be really profitable, really [00:41:00] consistent, really low risk and low overhead can actually make a little business like that, really profitable.
And then we have the bear, which is continues to lose money because the strategy going into it is very haphazard. Sometimes they deliver great meals, sometimes they don't. Sometimes their customers are really happy. Sometimes they're not. And the costs of delivering that level of quality, consistency, and service are completely different to what's required for the beef.
So the bear is losing money, the beef is making money, but everybody is focused on the bear because it's the flashy, it's exciting, dazzling, shiny part of the business. So is there any example of that in your business? Maybe there's actually a service that you offer that's really low key and really low effort, but it's actually really profitable.
And how does that compare to the other services or products in your business? That actually might be a lot more complicated, maybe a lot more. [00:42:00] Expensive, they might be more difficult or really specialized. And is that meaning that even though it's the thing that looks great from the outside, actually internally, maybe that's actually not what you should be focusing on in your business?
The truth is, if Kami had a, just changed a few things about the beef increase the prices invested in the kitchen, help the staff to become better at what they do, the beef could have always been a profitable business. But instead he wants to go down the really exciting route. And this is no jade on hospitality venues.
I think people who create high level dining experiences are absolutely amazing. But the point that I'm trying to make is that often we're ignoring the most. Profitable part of our business and giving all the attention to the part of our business, which is actually draining our money. The next thing that I wanna bring forward about the bear is this concept of workaholism versus passion.
So almost [00:43:00] every business owner that I've ever met calls themselves passionate. So everybody is passionate about what they do, they're passionate about this. Passionate about that. Obsessed with this, obsessed with that, and I think that having passion and excitement and desire for the kind of work that we wanna do as business owners is really essential.
But when does that become workaholism? There are lots of scenes in the bear where Kmi and Sid and Richie are working. Such long hours, they're neglecting their personal lives. I don't think that any of them has any time to be exercising or really taking care of themselves, and they're just absolutely working themselves into the ground.
I think this is something that we don't talk about enough. As small business owners work can absolutely become an addiction. Work can become an addiction because it's really satisfy. And fulfilling. A lot of people get a lot of dopamine from either [00:44:00] completing tasks or being able to complete a project or to be able to get something right.
There's a lot of dopamine hits happening when we're working, when needed, and that can feel really good. Also, when we are working generally, even if we're working on something quite difficult, we can actually see a way. Of solving it or a way through it, which can be different from the personal challenges we might be having that aren't as simple to work through, or as simple to kind of solve.
I see this with a lot of small business owners. We are using this word passion or obsession to mask the fact that we are actually addicted to our work and that we have a problem. It might be about the amount of hours you are working, it might be about the level of perfection that you are. Expecting from yourself or your team.
And it might be that it is a lack of self care that you are noticing in yourself. I really think it's important for us to consider when you are burning yourself [00:45:00] out or working really hard, do you actually have a way of working out when it's gone beyond passion and it's moved into workaholism? I think it's a really great question to ask.
Something that comes off the back of that is that excellence doesn't come easy. So I think a lot of business owners are striving for something called perfection, which actually doesn't exist. There's no such thing as perfect in any. You know, in any, any piece of work, any conversation, any person, any bit of marketing, any product, there's no such thing as perfect.
But there is excellence and there is an excellent outcome. But when we are pursuing excellence like they are in the bear, so Cami is so hell bent on the fact that this team, this restaurant, this establishment is going to be led by excellence. That he is pretty much pursuing it at all costs. And he's willing to be disliked.
He's willing to be hated. He's willing to be the [00:46:00] bad guy in order to lift his team to the level that he wants to get to. Now, because it's a TV show, the team does start to lift and they absolutely get very close to excellence. There becomes a culture of. Excellence in the business, in the delivery, how they do everything in the business starts to lift, and I think that, yeah, a lot of us are chasing this idea of excellence, but it doesn't come easily.
We really need to be okay with being disliked either by our team or even sometimes by our customers in the pursuit of being really excellent at what we do. The next thing I wanna bring forward is something that Sid brings to the show. So Sid is this incredible young chef who's so inspired by Kami that she really wants to work for him, even though she's stepped into an absolutely crazy environment and she's reading this.
Book. I think her dad gave her the book and it's like a football coach or something. It kind of has [00:47:00] like Ted lasso vibes, this coach who has written this book about leadership. And so Sid is obsessed with this book. She's trying to get everything that she can out of this book, and she's trying to implement what he's telling her in the book about leading.
And one of the things that she gets from the book, which I totally agree with, is that we lead by listening. This is something that Kami, he could have done a lot better by leading with listening right back at the start of the bear when he was trying to change the way that the team was doing things. He could have led that whole process by listening, by ask.
Asking and consulting the team why they do things a certain way and trying to understand how they got to that process or how they got there instead of listening. He just basically goes hell bent on changing things to look a certain way, and in the end it is successful, but he really does it the hard way by not bringing the team along for the [00:48:00] ride with him.
So I love that. Sid, who is the less. Experience. Chef is the one who is really trying to lead the team by listening. She's trying to listen to their concerns, listen to how they think about things, what their perspective is, and she's really trying to lead by listening and then supporting them to be, you know, the best they can be at their role.
I love Sid's character, and I really love her approach to learning and development. What I've noticed with the small business owners that I work with is that the business owners who really seek out new education, new advice. The people who are really proactive with getting the right mentors, the right coaches, the right advisors around them, they absolutely go further in business than those business owners who try to do everything themselves.
And I think Sid is like the personification of someone who is really open to learning. She's open to [00:49:00] challenging herself. She's always trying to be better at what she does. And as a business owner, we can actually take on that. Same idea of trying to be open to new ideas and open to coaching, open to advice rather than thinking that we know everything and letting our ego get in the way of us being successful in business.
The last thing that I wanna talk about is something that really comes across in the bear is this idea of acts of service. So I really think that small business owners, or at least the small business owners that I know and work with, we are not just in business to make money. Although making money and being profitable is a really essential part of small business.
It's not everything. What I love about Kmi and the whole team at the Beef and the Bear is that they really are driven by taking care of people. They're driven by this idea of acts of service, whether that's [00:50:00] making your beef sandwich as delicious and as quickly as possible to get that into your customer's hand, or whether it's about.
Setting the table so that all of the places are perfect, the crockery is perfect. The vase on the table with the flowers on it is really considered asking people as they come through the door, are they celebrating something special that night? Is there anything I could do to make your experience better?
That real hospitality idea of nothing is too hard. You know, my whole business is about being of service. And I think that this idea is such a fantastic concept to take into small business, which is that we are here to take care of our customers. We are here to make their lives better. We are here to make their businesses better.
We are here as business owners to meet their unmet needs or their unmet desires. The more that we remind ourselves that our businesses are for our customers and not for us. [00:51:00] Not only the better will we be at business, but the more effective and simpler our business and our marketing becomes. So just to recap some of the ideas that I brought forward from the Bear, when we wanna make changes to our business, we need to be prepared to upset our existing or long-term clients.
Sometimes making things efficient needs to happen with the whole team rather than us just going at things like a bullet, a gate. We need to be able to manage the stress of small business, making sure that we are actually taking care of ourselves. We don't need to always do things the hard way. Sometimes we are actually allowed to take the easy road in order to be successful in business, often going viral.
Is not a good thing for our business. What we wanna do is make sure that our whole team is working on the same priorities instead of their own. We need to have strategies to cope with pressure from deep breathing, to [00:52:00] walking to whatever your preferred way of releasing cortisol from your body. We need ways to deal with pressure as business owners.
If you're in a family business, treat yourself the way that you would treat all of your team and give yourself a performance review and make sure that you have objective advisors around you. A lot of us experience mental ill health, and that can often lead to or be caused by a failing business. So I want you to see investing in your mental and physical health as being just as important as investing in any other part of your business.
The next thing we talked about was that sometimes letting the wrong client in when you are desperate actually ends up costing you money. When you are changing business models, for example, from a sandwich shop to a fancy restaurant, you really need to consider the financial implications. You need to consider how your marketing is going to change, and you need to consider how your role in the business is likely to [00:53:00] change.
The next thing I talked about is that sometimes the shiny object in our business. The restaurant in the bear is actually draining profits while something really simple that we are already doing really easily and profitable is being ignored. So make sure that you are actually looking at the different things that you are doing in your business really objectively.
The next thing I brought forward was this idea of workaholism verse passion. It's really good idea to have a way of understanding, am I leaning into being a workaholic or am I just passionate and obsessed? The next thing was that excellence doesn't come easy. So pursuing excellence can be an incredible way of running and leading, uh, a really high performing business, but we need to be prepared to be disliked along the way.
The next thing that I brought forward was this idea that we lead by listening and when we actually listen to our team and our customers and our [00:54:00] suppliers, and we lead through. Actually allowing people to be part of the decisions that we are making. We are actually more likely to get ahead as a business owner.
And the last point that I raised was this idea of acts of service. That small businesses are all about taking care of people. Small businesses are about improving people's lives and improving people's businesses, giving people fantastic experiences, meeting their desires, and doing more than just making money.
Those are the different lessons and ideas that I got from watching the Bear, mainly season one or two. I'd really love to know what you thought about this episode. Have you watched The Bear? Do you agree with the different points that I brought forward? Has anything in today's episode really resonated with you?
Is there anything that you think you might change in your approach to your business, or are you gonna rush out and watch the bear and see if you agree? What I want to tell you about [00:55:00] The Bear is the soundtrack is absolutely amazing. You are going to hear from Pearl Jam, one of my absolute favorites.
You're gonna hear from Ian Stevens. You're going hear from Smashing Pumpkins Led Zeppelin, Radiohead. So many incredible songs and tracks from our Wilco as well from the eighties, nineties, and two thousands. It's an amazing soundtrack, and music is just so important to me. That's probably part of why I love the bear so much.
I'd love to hear what you think about it. If you watch it after this too. See you later.
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners. If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it if you subscribe to the podcast, but leave us a review or share this episode with one of your friends. I hope you learned something. I hope you got a new perspective and I really hope you enjoyed [00:56:00] the listening experience.
