A discussion with Sean Finter: the man behind Napkinomics
He’s been to 54 countries around the world, and has helped many hospitality companies restructure their operations and improve their performance. I meet him face to face at the Lisbon Bar Show.
Sean Finter, a speaker at the Lisbon Bar Show
Hi Sean, so nice to meet with you here at the Lisbon Bar Show. Your talk will be Napkinomics- what is it in a nutshell?
Napkinomics is a 20-year study that I've done on why some restaurants succeed, while most fail. And in a nutshell, if you were to ask a bunch of children, today, I'm going to introduce you to a new game called soccer or football, and go ahead and play. And they run around and bump into each other and make a big mess of it. If you said to them, listen, these are the parameters of soccer, this is how you play and the objective is to score more goals than the other team… then they’d have a much better chance of success. And that's what Napkinomics is: how do you win in the bar and restaurant business? So we give them the tools, the guidance and the strategy to win customers over.
I heard you were born in Canada and started working at age 12 in a truck stop owned by a Greek couple. Can you tell me the story about your boss and your first day of work as a dishwasher?
So I went to work, of course, very nervous as a 12 year old. And I was met by the owner, who was a very intimidating man, very short, but wide and very muscular. He said very little. But when he spoke, everyone listened. He met me in the dishwashing area and he proceeded to explain how important that position was. He said, the business is circular, everything starts and ends in the dish pit, and that I needed to understand the difference between loading the dishwasher at 90% and wasting capacity, or at 110% and wasting the cleanliness of the load because it'd be overloaded. Talking about electricity cost of the machine and chemical costs and the interactions with the servers, and so forth. It was amazing. He said: This is the most important position, if we don't get this right, nothing else matters. He then took me out on the floor, and helped me see the business through his eyes, the different types of customers, how the staff were interacting with them, telling me why this was important and that was important. He then asked for the keys to a transport truck. He took me outside to one of his customer’s trucks and asked me to sit in the driver's seat and give him my observations. I marveled at how clean it was. And they said, that's why we need to keep our cafè so clean. That there was a bed behind the seat. And he said: these guys are lonely. And that's why they linger a little bit. That's why we never kick them out. You know, they're just wonderful people and this is their home away from home. I saw a picture of a trucker’s family inside the cab. And my boss mentioned again, how important it was that we fill a gap for them. So, in the matter of a few hours, I had a very good understanding of my position, and how our business was important to the customers. And I think that's a better induction than 99.9% of people are getting in their industry today.
One of your lessons from this is “Don’t treat everyone the same”. Can you explain this?
We grew up hearing the golden rule, which is treat people as you'd wish to be treated yourself. I believe that's the fastest way to bankruptcy in bars and restaurants. A 45-year-old customer does not want to be treated like a 25-year old bartender. Two 65-year-old ladies coming in for lunch do not want to be treated like a 21-year old server, right? People want to be treated like they want to be treated, you’ve got read your guests, their energy, respect their age, anticipate their needs. And if you're a smart business, you have a series of playbooks which will really help the staff understand what's possible at this juncture. Now that I've read this situation, what can I do? To get that, right… and you’ll be ahead of 90% of businesses.
You didn’t graduate from high school—what was the issue?
There were a few issues. I really believe the school system is built and performs well for 20 or 30% of kids that go through it. I think the school system does a wonderful job of categorizing people and telling them who they will be in the future based on a silly test that they're doing that day. I felt that I was pigeonholed, and that I should prepare myself for a life of manual labor. It turned out that I have a form of dyslexia that really compromised my ability to learn how to read and retain information… I actually learned how to read when I was 21 years old in London, England. And so school was a very uncomfortable place for me. But now I know better. I've talked to a lot of kids about, not buying into what the school system is selling, and to do your best and to most of all to learn how to learn. Everyone learns in a different way. In school, they're just teaching you the curriculum that they want to absorb, not necessarily how to learn.
Your first “big” job was in Toronto at Hard Rock Café. What is your main takeaway from that experience?
I had a thousand takeaways, but the main one was that you can be “corporate” and still be cool. A lot of small businesses fear documentation, because that's “corporate”. They don't want to have standard operating procedures, they don't want to formalize the business because they think they're going to lose the edge to their coolness. I worked for two gentlemen who became billionaires, being cool and being corporate. So that's what I brought into my life and my business.
After Toronto, you headed to London which you call was your “university”. How so?
Well, London's the first place that I made a decision to learn, I also gave myself permission to let go of my past and the shame that I had in the school system. And London was going to be the place where I could start a new chapter. I was committed to learning in a way that I could absorb. So that meant learning how to read, and it meant formalizing mentorship relationships. Entering into apprenticeships, money was not important. What was important was proximity to people doing great things, who were willing to teach me some of those steps. And I spent six years doing that, and it was definitely my master's degree. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Next, you headed to Sydney, Australia. What was your takeaway from that part of your life?
So that 10 years of my life had a lot of beginnings, I began a marriage family, a couple of businesses--- it was incredible. And you know, it was a blank canvas, I was going somewhere that if I failed, it wouldn't be as public. It felt right, it was a canvas I wanted to paint on. And what I took away from Sydney, is that you can do anything-- it doesn't matter where you're from, what your upbringing was, it doesn’t matter even what age you are-- I met people that were starting businesses for the first time at 60. So I love the lesson that you just decided what you want to do, and then gave it all you got. And Sydney was a place that allowed me to do that.
You thought your next step was to own a bar/restaurant at age 27. Tell us about that experience.
So what I tell a lot of people today is that, you know, it seems like the natural progression is
bartender, bar manager, bar owner. And it turns out, there are a thousand different jobs in the industry that suit me better than bar owner. So to be clear, I was successful as a bar owner on certain fronts. Financially, I started a business from zero and grew it successfully, had hundreds of staff and all those things. But personally, I lost my health, some relationships. I thought I wasn’t good at balancing it. But it turns out that bar owners have this certain DNA, some of the components of the DNA that I'm missing, are enjoying the ride while it's going. I like to build and launch and then I get bored and move on. A mentor of mine used to say, “You’ve got to milk your cows”, in that you have all these cows and they're bursting with milk and you don't milk them. So, patience wasn't one of my strengths. Another thing is I had a hard time of letting go the bars. Some of what I coach today is that you've got to do your two hours a day or eight hours a day, whatever it is, and then be just as invested at home. There were many things that were part of bar ownership that didn't suit me, but I just thought that that was the next step. In hindsight, I would have just stayed with consulting. I really love that. Although the bar ownership experience certainly gave me a different perspective. But the messages is that it's not for everyone. There's lots of other things to do, other than own a barif that’s not in your DNA.
What made you shift from being a business owner to helping others improve their businesses.
Two things, one was opportunity, you know, I got that knock on the door one day, someone wanted to buy my business. And luckily, I had prepared it for sale as part of the process of formalization. And, when that knock came, my marriage had suffered from all the hours involved with opening eight properties. I was 300 pounds, and did a physical—I thought I was going die of a heart attack. And I looked at myself in the mirror and said: You're not happy, you know, so maybe it's the bar business, making you unhappy. And the reason I got into consulting was more to do with helping people avoid the pain than to teach what I knew, to be successful. So I, decided that I would share both in the coaching process I have today.
As a younger man you were always seeking mentors. How do get past their gatekeepers, and how can you find a mentor?
I often get approached by people who claim to want mentorship, but it's just a fleeting interest. People that are worthy of delivering mentorship typically have lots of options. They're not sitting around waiting for something to do. So what I learned was that you have to be persistent, and you have to be specific. And you have to make it risk free for them and say, we'll try it out for a couple of sessions, two months in a row and see how it feels. But it wasn't beyond me to ask somebody to mentor me and to help me 40 or 50 times. And I guess on the 50th time, they know you're serious.
When did you first realize that you had become a mentor?
Sean in the agave fields of Mexico
Having a lot of staff, I was always asked for advice. But that's different than doing a formal mentorship. I think to be a mentor, you have to have acquired some wisdom and not just experience. When I was in my early 30s, I was asked to sit on a board of a company. And I immediately declined because I thought, how can I be more valuable than someone who's twice my age? But it turns out that I did have wisdom in the area that they needed. And as I started to formalize mentorship relationships with individuals or companies, I began to learn that for everyone, if you sat in a pocket of experience for a certain amount of time, experienced the good and the bad, and are willing to share it with people that want to get to where you've been, it's a pretty cool thing.
Today’s hospitality is in crisis. It is nearly impossible to hire and retain good staff. How do you attract the right people for your business.
Everyone's looking for the best staff, which usually means experience, because we don't have an induction program. The key is know who the right people for your business are. And there's three elements to that. What character traits do they have that match with your business and with your current or past top performance, value alignment, and then the work environment. When I eight properties, I would take my best staff member at venue 1 and them to cover a shift at venue 3, and they’d come back and say, “Never asked me to do that, again, I didn't like the customers, I didn't like the management..” It’s just a different vibe-- you can take your best person at one venue and put them in another and they will fail. So you're really looking for an intersection of those things. And that depends on the strength of your induction program. If you can take somebody off the street with no experience and get them to 70% competency in six months, you're never going to be short of staff, because there's always people looking for work. A lot of people don't feel confident to apply for your job because they don’t have any experience in the industry. But they're hard workers, they’re friendly, they are great at hospitality. And you're losing out on getting them today because you don't have an induction process.
How does your interviewing process work? What are you looking for in a future employee?
I think that the traditional interview process is seriously flawed. I've never met anybody that loved being interviewed, and very few people enjoy interviewing, because it's a forced situation where one person has all the power and they are granting somebody's future; the person being interviewed feels that they need to “dance” for the other person. And sometimes even lie. Say what the interviewer wants to hear in order to get the job. So I like to change things up. I like group interviews where people can be comfortable and join in the conversation. If I have to do one on one, I'd rather do a walking interview, go walk into a park, walk down to a coffee shop, get a takeaway coffee, walk back. You know, what am I looking for? It depends on the business that I'm hiring for. But obviously, the basics. First off, I want to hire a person that I would want to take home to have dinner with my family. If they don't attract me in that way that I think: man, I'd love for my kids to be exposed to this person and that sort of thing, then they're not going to get very far. Then when I talked to them about, the best work experiences that they've had, what they liked, what they hated, was trying to find the match with the business that I'm putting them in. And then of course, the individual traits. Some of my businesses had amazing storytellers, waiters and servers and hosts. So I get them to tell me a story. And very organically, I'd ask them abou, their favorite relative and what's your best memory about that person? I make the determination. Are they telling me about that person? Are they putting me in the story? Is it about the story? Or am I in the story? And of course I'll have a few trade qualifications, ask them some questions around it and see if we find a good match.
At a speaking engagement
You have said you have often felt like a misfit and like to hire people that feel like misfits. Can you explain this?
Well, that's my own personal experience. And I still feel that in a lot of cases. I live in a neighborhood where I don't, don't really have much in common with anyone that lives here. And that's okay. The reason I hired people that we're like minded or had had a similar life experience, is that I think that every bar needs a theme and a stage and that kind of common bond. I have friends that have restaurants that they're all in pursuit of a Michelin star. That wouldn't get me out of bed in the morning. I think it's cool that they're doing it, but it's not for me. I have other friends that like the rough and ready bar, living the lifestyle-- and they want to hire people that can party and serve and bring it all together. Again, that's not for me. I was given an opportunity to prove myself in a bar/ restaurant environment through discipline, and following a system, in following a rank, I started in one position, I worked my way up. So I set up a business to attract other misfits to come in and use the stage to deliver world class hospitality. And, you know, once you know who you're looking for, hundreds of them who will come your way if you're true to your values, and, and the experience you're delivering
What challenges have you found in working with different cultures? (work ethic, tipping culture etc)
This is an interesting one, because when I went to Australia, I heard from so many people saying “You’re gonna have a hard time being Canadian and getting Australians to work for you because life's too good here. And people are lazy. That was nonsense. Are there lazy people in Sydney? Sure. But I found 400 really hard-working people that in many cases worked harder than me. So I think that the cultural differences are always interesting. And you must adapt to those. If you're used to working in a tipping culture, you have lower wages, and people are making tips, well, you've got to figure out how to make that work for everyone who works for you. Then there are other cultural differences-- customers expect things a certain way. And you've got to concede to those. That's why people live there. It's what they honor, it's what they know. But for the main part I just ran my model everywhere I went, I've run businesses in the UK, for a short time in South Africa, the Greek islands, Australia, Canada, the US, and it works everywhere. It works for the people that that enjoy that sort of thing. The cool thing about a bar/restaurant is that it’s a small ecosystem in the middle of a massive ecosystem, and you don't need to make everybody happy. You just need the smallest viable audience, right? A group of 50 staff and 500 raving fans, and then you get a lot of transitional guests that will come through and you've got a vibrant business
What is one key strategy to keep your team motivated?
People often confuse me with a motivational speaker or someone who invests heavily in in motivation. I don't think that I can motivate people-- I know that I can demotivate people. So I what I like to do is hire people who are already motivated, and help increase their motivation. Their personal motivation--where do they want to go? What do they want to do? Who do they want to become? And work to serve that rather than some “rah, rah” motivational talk. It's more powerful for me to hear from a leader rather than get a pep talk, hear them asking the question, Are you willing to fight for yourself today? Are you willing to do what it takes to get to the next step today? Or when it gets hard, hear a reminder that: this is where most people quit. If you want to go further, you have to do the work now. That to me, is more motivating than any sort of pep talk.
You like to bring people onto a team based on their personality traits rather than their experience. How does that work within the team dynamics?
Great question. I think that I much prefer to bring people without experience. It's very hard to unlearn a process in which you've had success in the past. Even if it's a terrible technique, it's always worked for you, people appreciated it, they laughed, they applauded. It's very hard to unlearn that, and not go back to it. So when I hired people without bar restaurant experience, we did really well. And we had a philosophy that, induction took approximately six months, and everyone started at the same place and worked their way up. And we not only wanted to forge a bond between novices and experienced people, we wanted to have a circular flow to the energy. And the learning commitment is that, you were expected to learn your position in six months, to start to understand another position over the next six months, so that you were going to be valuable to us in a cross-train situation. And then at the one-year mark, to help start training people in your position. Because I don't believe you truly know something until you can teach it to somebody else. They say you don't know something until you can teach it to a sixth grader.
What concrete tips can you give a hospitality business owner on making a great team?
Number one, is have something to fight for. With my businesses, I asked people to fight for themselves on my stage. Do the work, and investing in yourself for three years with us will matter. Number two, realize that you are never going to be everything for everyone, they say, no one's certain how to make everybody happy. But the one way to make everybody miserable is to try to make everybody happy. Focus on your audience. I once worked for somebody who said, If we deliver our brand of hospitality with excellence every night, 20% of the audience is going to absolutely love it- they are our raving fans. 60% will appreciate it. And 20% will hate it. And he said, Man, I love those numbers. You can constantly build on those numbers. But if you're trying to make everybody happy all the time, you probably won't have anything. And then finally, I think that constant feedback is important. A mentor of mine once said that if you're running a bar restaurant, at any time, someone should be able to walk in tap somebody on the shoulder, ask them where they rank in the pack with their colleagues. They can say to themselves I am in the top 20% of cooks in the kitchen, the middle 60 or the bottom 20. And the second part to that is: what three things they need to do to improve to move up into a higher group. You have to care in order to coach. It's easy once things are up and running to back away-- the business plateaus and eventually deteriorates. But if you care about people and you want constant progress and development, then you've got to have the courage to do that on a regular basis.
Tell me about your headquarters, Franklin House
Franklin House
Franklin house is a beautiful historic mansion in Annapolis, Maryland, where you can see the sailboats going by from the from loft, it has two full bars, boardrooms, breakout rooms. I really feel like the caretaker of the Franklin House—it’s a magical place. That's it’s mine for now, but not forever. And it's a place where people can celebrate, communicate, commiserate, and educate. So that's what we do there with the property. And I hope for anyone that's reading, if you're a hospitality leader, we'd love to see you there at some point.
It seems you have improved your work/life balance. How did you achieve this?
I don't believe in work life balance, I've never had it. I don't really know anybody that has-- what I do believe in is work life momentum. So if I do things really well, and structure things really, really well in my, my business life, I push the pendulum this way, it swings back and I get more time in my personal life. If I get my personal life, right, it swings back and brings good things into my business life because I'm not dragging my troubles, stress and drama into my work. You know, life is about time and getting control of your time. And the more time you can spend with people that you love in places that you want to be in. So that's what I strive for. And, you know, my formula isn't for everyone, but I'd be willing to put my head down and work really hard for two or three years, in order to have a couple decades of with a lot more freedom on the back end for having done the work.
You are working on a second book: what will the title be?
We're working on the title, actually, the book that I'm working on now is getting split into three books because it got too big and I want to be very specific with these books, to inform about a complicated subject like hospitality--how do you define it? How do you bottle it? How do you teach it? How do you deliver it? So I'll let you know as soon as I we pick the title.
Sean on camera
Rapidfire questions:
If you were a bar tool, which one would you be?
A bottle opener, because I can open a conversation quickly. And I can get people to open up.
Anyone alive or dead you would have wanted as a mentor?
My grandfather, he gave me a lot of valuable advice. He passed when I was young, so I wasn't able to absorb it. So never take these people in your life for granted.
A dealbreaker in the working environment?
The speakeasy bar at Franklin House
Drama; that drama, negative energy just robs everybody. There was a sign in Oprah Winfrey’s green room that said: Be responsible for the energy you bring to this place. For people in the industry, you’re supposed to be delivering positivity. And that can work for everyone.
Your favorite place to go on your downtime?
Anywhere I can go on my Harley. Allie, and I love to travel. So we always have our backpacks loaded.
What are you dying to experience in Lisbon?
I had an opportunity to go to Portugal when I was younger for my birthday when I was 21 but it didn’t work out. So I've been saving Portugal for many years. And hopefully it's going to be like a beautiful bottle of Port that got better with time. I can't wait to check it out.
Thanks Sean, and enjoy your first trip to Lisbon!