Jon Murray: Get More Profit From Your People

0:00Jon Murray: This is crazy. Right now, most restaurant owners are using AI to write Instagram captions. That's like hiring a Michelin chef to microwave a Hot Pocket. You've got the most powerful marketing tool ever built, and you're using it to punch up a post that nobody even asked for. Stop underutilizing AI. It could become a full marketing machine for your restaurant. And in this month's five-day restaurant marketing masterclass, I'm going to show you exactly how, step by step. I'm going to show you how to use AI to bring in guests on schedule. I'm going to show you how to turn a first visit into a fourth and how to fill seats on repeat without living inside of your phone.

0:41Jon Murray: We're going to use the same tools you already have and create a completely different result. It's going to be five days. There is zero cost associated with it, but seating is limited. So I want you to go to restaurantbusinessschool.com to register your free spot today. Now here we go.

1:02William B. McDonald: Love isn't always a feel-good thing. Sometimes love is going, hey, I'm drawing a line right here, and you're not allowed to cross that line because I love you. At the end of the day, the word that always comes to mind me is love your people, love your guests, love your community, and obsess over the guest experience too.

1:21Jon Murray: Welcome to Full Comp, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders, and innovators. Served up on the house.

1:35Jon Murray: What if spending more on your staff is the fastest path to a more profitable restaurant? John Murray washed dishes at Applebee's and he spent six years in music before rising to chief restaurant officer at Indigo Road, running more than 20 concepts on someone else's terms. Then he walked away to build NoCo and Kase, in East Nashville on a people over profit model that most of us would call reckless. In today's conversation, we get into why he hands 5.5 % of sales back to his team, how a four-day work week in free therapy dropped his turnover to 15 % in an industry with 80 % turnover rates, and why he believes loving your people is the real driver of profit margin.

2:20Jon Murray: If you think you can't afford to treat your people well, this one is going to change that map.

2:30William B. McDonald: I think people should listen to me because I'm a boots-on-the-ground operator. I've been in the industry for 20-plus years. I started as a dishwasher at Applebee's in 2001. I've been in the music business. I've experienced failure. I've closed restaurants. I've opened restaurants. I started, like I said, in college as a dishwasher at Applebee's because that was the first place I could actually get a job. No one wanted to hire anybody that never worked in a restaurant to serve where all the money was. And I put my head down, had an amazing attitude, worked my ass off. And I think a manager noticed that and said, hey, you said you wanted to serve.

3:08William B. McDonald: Why don't we give you an opportunity? You know, as the years went on, I thought that restaurants weren't a real job, that it was a second rate income, that life had so much more to offer than serving people. And it's funny how the universe works. I grew up wanting to be in the music business. I got an opportunity to be in the music business. That was shortly before 2008. And after 2008, I think a lot of us that are old enough remembered what havoc that wreaked on us. And I ended up back in restaurants and started waiting tables in Charleston, South Carolina at a little restaurant called Oku. and felt like this was just from a point A to point B to my next step.

3:47William B. McDonald: And I fell madly in love with taking care of people. I found value in it. And over time, I found that I could make a living and a healthy living in it. And the rest is history, man. So I think I'm a boots on the ground, real world operator, have been since the very beginning. And I've learned a lot of lessons and a lot of that through what not to do, not necessarily what to do.

4:10Jon Murray: In the research that I do, I'm always trying to thread needles. And I think that one of the most interesting things about your career is this parlay from music into the restaurant industry. Because from an outsider's perspective, you're looking at an industry that is incredibly subjective, right? With a massive failure rate, where there are all of these variables that ultimately control whether you're going to be successful or not. And you're really only able to pull a handful of those levers. I would assume that in music, it's hard to feel like you're able to exert control over your own success.

4:45Jon Murray: And I know a lot of people feel that way in the restaurant industry as well. And so what are the competitive advantages that you feel like you had as an operator in the restaurant industry coming out of the music industry?

4:59William B. McDonald: I don't want to say that my music career, you know, and I was on the business side of it, not like an artist side. I don't want to say it was a complete failure, but it definitely wasn't successful in the eyes of the end user. And I think more than anything, it gave me appreciation for the suck, so to speak, that feeling beaten down, feeling downtrodden, feeling like you're doing everything in your power to be in control and to be successful in not doing that. translated to the restaurant business, it allowed me to not have any expectation of what could or would be. And I think expectation is a rob.

5:41William B. McDonald: It robs us of a lot of joy. I think that my five and a half, six years in the music business allowed me to realize that resilience is everything. And you just have to keep going day in and day out, even when you don't want to. And that translates to the restaurant business because, I mean, dude, we take care of guests and we can't make everybody happy. And at the end of the day, my happiness is usually dependent on if the guest and the employees are happy. And when we get a bad review or I have an employee that's upset or whatever it may be, it makes me feel like I'm failing. But that's when I sink my heels in even more and try harder.

6:19Jon Murray: There are two other big ideas that I want to surface here and get your opinion on. So you put a big L on the board. And, you know, for those of us that have been fortunate enough to do that, to feel that, I think the biggest aha that comes out of it is it like, oh my God, I'm still alive. Because there was a time that I was like sweating in bed by myself, believing that like, if this dream didn't work, if this business didn't work, if this entrepreneurial venture fails. I'm going to die. And then it does. And then the next morning you wake up and you're like, oh my God, I'm still, I should call my mom.

7:01Jon Murray: I don't know if it's a confidence that comes with knowing that like, you're not going to die, which I think sounds familiar or rings true if you've experienced it. But I feel like there are a bunch of people out there today in our industry that aren't acting in their best interest, that are pursuing something that just isn't going to work. And it's because they're afraid they're going to die, but they won't.

7:29William B. McDonald: Yeah. No, man. I mean, dude, I can't tell you how many times I thought it'd be the end of the world if I didn't make it, even in the restaurant business, just in life in general. It's like, well, if this doesn't happen, I'm going to be unhappy. Well, you know, the other side of that is if this does happen, I'm going to be happy. Well, I've also been fortunate enough to experience that that happening. And guess what? It doesn't make you any happier. Right. And I'm sure a hundred thousands of people have said this, but you learn more from the L's than you do from the W's, but you don't die. You get up the next day and you figure it out.

8:01William B. McDonald: That's the only option you have.

8:02Jon Murray: And the other thing is this, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to like slay all of the sacred cows at the beginning of this conversation. And one of those would be, you know, there's courage and perseverance. And I don't think anyone would argue that point. But there's also courage in saying, you know, this is what I wanted. And this is the direction I pursued. And it's now no longer what I want. And now I'm going to pursue another direction. There's courage in quitting, right? It's in choosing yourself and choosing a new direction. And I just think that that's lost on so many of us in the industry, don't you?

8:38William B. McDonald: Dude, of course, man. A lot of things that I learned from failure in the music business apply to the restaurant business. Because at the end of the day, if we're talking specifically business, business is business. I can play victim or I can be optimistic. I can say I failed at this and I can focus on that failure and let that beat me down even more. Or I can say I tried my hardest. now let's go find something else to apply my passion towards like honestly dude yeah well

9:09Jon Murray: and the reason that i say that is because like as we delve into your career and noco and things like that it seems like you've made it a habit to like break all of the rules in the industry that what this is is like this is a true reimagining of what a restaurant could be a hundred percent man i mean

9:28William B. McDonald: Listen, dude, I actually just came from a meeting before this and we were talking about how tough COVID was, right, as an operator or as a line cook or as a server or a host. COVID was so hard because there was this mass exodus from our industry, right, where people could work from home. They didn't have to do the stressful thing that the regulations were, you know, you can be open. And then two days later was you can't be open. And then people couldn't come in that were sick. So there was just a lot of volatility during that time. And our industry, man, at the end of the day, I don't want to do anything else.

10:05William B. McDonald: I'm thankful that music didn't work because now I really feel like I've found what I'm meant to do. And COVID made me question that. And we backed into it, my business partners and I, and we said, okay, what are the friction points? What are the things that suck about being in the restaurant business? and let's try to attack those things and make them suck less. And so I don't want to say we're reinventing. We're just trying to be better for our people and better for ourselves so that we can be more sustainable and last longer. I've created an amazing life in this business and I want other people to realize that same experience that I'm having.

10:45William B. McDonald: And I believe the only way to do that is to take better care of our people at a much deeper level.

10:51Jon Murray: and I think there's a lot of context that we could pepper in there you know like the fact that you spent so much time as the chief restaurant officer running 20 concepts on someone else's terms that is conventional success to reach that level of scale you know the joke that I tell on the show all the time hope the people listening don't get tired of it but like all I ever wanted was like one place until I had one and then I wanted two right and then I had two and I was happy and content. And then we opened it and I was like, well, you know, three, three feels like a really good number and so on and so forth.

11:26Jon Murray: Right. Growth for growth's sake. Like candidly, John, I couldn't even thread for you. Like what my expected outcome was personally from opening more places. I just knew like I wanted more. I was just hungry for it. And so like you're running 20 concepts, right? Like this is the game. This is what success and balling looks like. And it wasn't. Right. And so what did you take away from that that you thought was really valuable? And then when you began to reimagine what the industry could look like, what did that look like? Yeah.

12:02William B. McDonald: I mean, I think first the company I came from was amazing and they still are. There are people for a company, but I think for me, there were a few things in first was like I needed to be in control of my fate because what success looks like to one person doesn't look like success to another person. For years, operating 20, 30 restaurants seemed like the thing that I wanted to do. And then you get there and you start doing it and you go, and maybe this isn't for me. And I think for me, ultimately, COVID, like I go back to COVID, I don't mean to keep hitting or beating a dead horse, so to speak.

12:36William B. McDonald: But that made me go, man, we need to do things different as an industry. A stat I read a few months ago was that like only 30 % of restaurants in the United States have health insurance or even offered health insurance. And I'm like, well, dude, that's horrible. Everybody deserves to have the opportunity to be taken care of from a health fund, have their teeth cleaned twice a year, to have their eyes checked, to get a physical checkup without having to feel like they've got to pay an arm and a leg for it. A lot of people in our industry don't get paid time off. I mean, some do, but the ultimate goal, and I may not really be answering your question.

13:14William B. McDonald: I may be off on a tangent now. But the ultimate goal, man, is to change hospitality for the better forever. It's not to have a hundred restaurants. It's not to generate$20 million in revenue. It's about to make change for an industry that desperately needs it. And so operating 20 plus restaurants was great, but what I was in my heart to actually make a change was not, it was not possible in that role for me. And so I had to step out on a limb knowing that it could break any minute. And if it did, I would bounce back up just like I did from the music business and land on my feet that I was a sharp enough cat that I could find another job.

13:53William B. McDonald: And what's happened for us so far is it's been the complete opposite of that. That branch has grown stronger and stronger and it's getting longer and longer, creating more opportunities for us to make change.

14:05Jon Murray: I want to talk about that because this is very much a chicken and egg scenario. So like you're about to dig into like all of the nuances around the employee benefits and all of this, which everyone listening is going to be like, we're going to do that, too.

14:20William B. McDonald: Sure.

14:20Jon Murray: Right. Like eventually we're going to make enough money that we're going to do the thing. I don't know if you ever make enough money to do the thing. You know, I think that it's always right. It's always someday, someday, someday. And like we're going to do it next month in the walk in cooler breaks, floor drains back up. Right. There's a kitchen fire. Dude, there's always something. Right. Like these these businesses, they are problem factories. And so I want to go back to kind of the inception of it. And so how did you bake all of this into the cake at the outset, assuming that you, like the rest of us, right, were over time, over budget.

14:57Jon Murray: Right. And you just you needed to get the thing open. Walk me through your approach there.

15:03William B. McDonald: Well, there's a financial pro forma that before we even talk about signing a lease, we work through. And it's basically an annual P &L and it goes through your cost of goods. It goes through your occupancy costs. What are you going to spend on restaurant supplies, cleaning supplies? And you go, all right, the way we do it is we build it in a worst case scenario. We go, what do we think we realistically can do? And let's do about 20 % less than that in revenue. And I'm not even talking about like knocking it out of the park, just a realistic one. And then we back it back even further, 20 to 25 % less than that.

15:38William B. McDonald: And if it pencils and we can pay our debt off in our five-year agreement, then we decide to do it. If we can't, we walk away from the deal. We just decided at the beginning, we did the Performa, we plugged in these numbers and it worked. And so we said, we're going to do it. But we had no clue that we would even do the numbers we would do or that we were projecting we would do, but we at least had a worst case scenario that if we could just do$50 ,000 a week in sales, that in five years we could pay back the money we borrowed and still give all this benefits to our employees. But I also had the fortune of the last company overseeing 28 restaurants and seeing how much turnover we had, how much we spent in overtime on a weekly basis.

16:24William B. McDonald: And I took those two numbers and I said, okay, if we can eliminate or cut overtime in half from that company, we will cover every benefit that we have right now. And not only on top of that, we won't have the turnover. So we won't spend the six to$10 ,000 per employee for turning them over. So it just kind of, I was able to have a bird's eye view from a larger company to know that Every decision we make comes at a cost, every decision, even the good ones. In the ones of being short-staffed and running a substantial amount of overtime, the cost was losing great people. And so we just said, if we can cover that cost and do it in employee benefits, we're going to have happier people.

17:08William B. McDonald: We're going to have happier guests. It means we're going to be more impactful and we can give back to the community. So first, I think you have to have a financial performer. You can't just go, man, I got this great concept. It's going to work. You got to look at the nuts and bolts of it, at the numbers. Is it actually going to work? And we've been fortunate enough thus far that it's worked.

17:26Jon Murray: So expectation versus reality. The numbers on the piece of paper, there's just numbers on a piece of paper, right? It's your best guess. How did that translate to week one, month one, year one sales?

17:40William B. McDonald: I mean, I think we were fortunate enough to, I had data from the last company, so I could actually have tangible numbers to grab onto. But honestly, we have given back more to our people than we initially thought. However, we did about 40 % more in revenue than we originally thought. So some of those numbers are predicated on sales. Like we give back 1 % of our total sales to our employees in the form of a travel stipend. So the more revenue you do, the more money that goes to them. Let's talk about the total comp package.

18:15Jon Murray: Can you break it down for me?

18:17William B. McDonald: It varies a little differently. I'll start with our managers. Our managers get a month of paid vacation every year. We pay 100 % of their health, dental, and vision. And then we give them an$1 ,850 travel stipend access every year to help pay for their vacation. So our hourly employees get two weeks of paid vacation every year. They get one every six months. We pay for their health, dental, and vision. We have a gym membership. We do monthly yoga as a team together. They have access to therapy, cost-free to them. We cover 100 % of their costs for that. This is where sometimes we get, we pay people on their birthdays.

18:55William B. McDonald: So let's say your birthday was today and you were a server, you get the day off. And then today is a Tuesday. Whatever you averaged the last eight weeks on that Tuesday, we pay you out on your birthday to take your day off. I think that's a large chunk of it. I might be missing like a thing or two. But last year, five and a half percent of our total sales went back to our team in the form of benefits.

19:23Jon Murray: You say that. And I mean, what are the statistics? The average full service restaurant nets out six percent. It's yeah, it's something like that. It's crazy to think. So again, it comes down to chicken and egg. It's that, I guess, leap of faith where Dr. Phil says, right, someone in every relationship, someone has to be the hero. Right. Someone has to extend their arms first. And in an industry where we believe that our people don't care, maybe the thesis is that it's rooted in the fact that they don't think we care about them. I think your business model is so interesting. I think it's so compelling.

20:00Jon Murray: Talk to me about how it translates to per customer average spend and overall retention and your ability to recruit talent in what is a very competitive market.

20:12William B. McDonald: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I forgot, we offer four-day work weeks. It's just become so normal to me for everybody in our camp that I always forget to mention that. So we have four-day work weeks. Our turnover rate is 15.6 % last year in an industry that averages closer to 80%. We still have people here that have been here since day one, and we're over three years old now. I mean, we've had servers, hosts that are now in management positions. It's been such a beautiful thing to watch people grow with us. And I'm not even talking about professionally. I'm just talking about as like a human being, someone that's becoming more evolved, that's getting more in tune with themselves, that's actually seeking that therapy and finding out things about themselves that they need to work on or like blind spots, whatever it may be.

21:01William B. McDonald: But yeah, man, I mean, it's been wild. I don't want to talk specific numbers, but we're highly profitable. We made the commitment, Wilson Jr. and I, my business partners, y 'all was talking about earlier. We made a commitment from the very beginning. We were going to offer these things. And if we went out of business doing it, that we were going to do it. And I think that, I believe the chicken, the egg kind of thing is like, you just have to believe, you have to be resilient, but you have to believe that no matter what, it's going to work. And sometimes working doesn't work out the way you wanted it to, but you just have to believe that it's going to work.

21:37William B. McDonald: And so far it has been. It's been a while, dude.

21:40Jon Murray: I want to talk about you and your life and your business partners and what that looks like. I think that so many of the issues that we have as it relates to compensation and treatment of line level employees is rooted in the fact that we don't treat ourselves particularly well. We're not that kind and that patient and that generous with ourselves. And so like, it's fine that the general manager's miserable because I'm miserable too. It's fine that he's working 80 hours a week. I put in 95 and I pay him more than I pay myself. These are common stories in the industry. And so what does your life look like?

22:24Jon Murray: Is everyone working four day work weeks and you're working seven day work weeks? How is your structure built? Is it an extension of what you offer them? Do you give yourself the same grace you give them?

22:36William B. McDonald: A hundred percent. I would think the three of us probably work a little bit more than the average, but there's a balance. We travel often. We take days off often. And also, you know, three owners, you care for something at a deeper level, usually when you're an owner, when you're not an owner. but no we don't work seven days a week i mean sure we may be working on something seven days a week but we're not in the restaurant seven days a week i mean we're closed every monday i really hate saying that that's a benefit but you know it's kind of like the chick-fil-a thought process like we need one day to shut off completely we don't have deliveries we don't have to place orders whatever it may be but no balance is important dude it really really is i I mean, if we're burnt out and we're assholes, then they're going to be burnt out and they're going to be assholes.

23:25William B. McDonald: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So we have to take care of ourselves at a deep level to take care of them at a deep level. More recently, the analogy that I've been finding is, so you have athletes, professional athletes, dude, and they have cold plunges. You name it, they have access to personal stretchers, like to stretch them to make sure they're ready for game time. These benefits, whether people realize it or not, every single day at five o 'clock, everybody in that restaurant goes on show. They're there for almost a theatric performance. And if you do that five, six days a week for year after year after year after year, eventually you're going to go, screw this, I'm out.

24:10William B. McDonald: And these things that we offer people allow them to not say, screw this, I'm out, going, this is cool as shit, man. I just took two weeks off and I traveled the world. I got paid for it and they helped me pay for that. Or I only have to work four days a week and I'm still making a healthy living to pay the bills. We can't take care of our people if we don't take care of ourselves. And I think that's the problem with our industry. Maybe not everybody, but in a whole is that we're the business of taking care of people, our guests. It very rarely for years have we taken care of ourselves. How can we actually take great care of our guests if we don't take great care of ourselves?

24:48William B. McDonald: And if we don't take great care of ourselves, how can we be present outside of life, not just inside of the four walls of the restaurant?

24:55Jon Murray: I want to talk about marketing and I want to talk about product market fit. And the reason that I do is because this whole conversation would be worth absolutely nothing if you opened a bologna sandwich restaurant in a vegan community. Fair, right? It's not just like, oh, meet John. He's a humanist. It's really more about like, meet John. He's a humanist and a very successful restaurateur in his own right. So what I think you guys have done an incredible job of is create product market fit in a niche, which I think is really difficult to do. When I look at the rooms that you've built, Noko and Case, you define them as affordable luxury, which is like an oxymoron when nothing about the industry is affordable and luxury is very expensive, not only to experience, but also to provide.

25:45Jon Murray: And so how have you closed the gap? How have you been able to honor the commitment to both affordability and luxury in a way that is sustainable for both, right? Because a lot of things are good for the business and they're not good for the guest or they're good for the guest. And as a result, they're not good for the business. How have you squared the circle?

26:07William B. McDonald: I think it's ever evolving. I think it's something you have to pay attention to. What worked three years ago won't work today. So it's forever being a student. You've got to walk into rent structures that are affordable. There's so many deals we've looked at where as soon as we see what the price per square foot is, we just know that it's not feasible to do what we want to do. You know, if you give back five and a half percent to your employees every year, you've got to be highly profitable to make up a difference. Right. And so we look for rent structures that make sense for us. And then we go, we eat at high end restaurants.

26:44William B. McDonald: The three of us, we go out to eat four or five times a year in not like here in town, but we'll go to New York City. We'll go to Chicago. We'll go to L.A. We'll go to Miami. me and we go, okay, let's look at what this two Michelin star restaurant is doing and let's see, or is there anything that we can do and apply it to a more approachable and affordable price point? And so like the meeting I had right before this podcast, we spent two and a half hours just tasting beef, literally going, let's find the best beef. We have a new concept that we're opening here in a few months. And how can we take that, find the best beef and bring it in at the most affordable price.

27:23William B. McDonald: So it's also like, you know, we're spending an arm and a leg on our menus for the new one. So when you touch it and you feel it, it feels like luxury. When you go to the bathroom and there's Le Lavo hand soap and you're washing your hands with Le Lavo, there's these touch points where the guests, whether they realize it or they don't realize it, subconsciously, ultimately they are. And then you get the bill and it's not cheap, but it's not what it would cost to go to the restaurant a mile and a half down the road. We could charge more at Kase in a heartbeat. Like we definitely could. But why would we?

27:58William B. McDonald: If we're just doing it to be rich, then we're doing it for the wrong fucking reason, man.

28:03Jon Murray: But that's the thing is by working through these fundamentals, you're way more likely to become rich. Are you not?

28:09William B. McDonald: I mean, yeah. I mean, here's the thing, dude. It doesn't matter how successful you are. Tomorrow is not promised. for us as humans, for us as a business, one day if we make enough critical errors in the guest experience or consistency of food, whatever it may be, we could be out of business in months. So sure, I think that's a byproduct of having a pure heart and working your ass off is money. But money, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but for me, if money is the focus, then we're going to fail. Obviously, we need to make sure we can pay back our debt, right and we could pay our bills and our rent and our people but beyond that that's all a byproduct of just being having a pure heart working your ass off and being great to your people and to your guests and your to your community as you look at this new location what have you learned from

28:59Jon Murray: opening the first two that's going to inform and make this a little bit different than the last

29:06William B. McDonald: we've learned a lot man we signed this lease almost two years ago it is an old historic building in Nashville. The bones are beautiful, but man, not only us, but the landlord, we have just encountered issue after issue after issue. I believe the universe does what the universe does for reasons that we don't always understand. What I'd say we've learned is to get more systems in place to make sure that when a manager starts at NOCO or a manager starts at NOCO Yaki, that they have this exact same training experience from the moment they walk in the door. I'm fortunate enough to travel often. And the two things that I see when I have a bad experience is either training related or lack thereof or facilities maintenance, meaning that people aren't dusting or paying attention to the small details that guests notice.

29:56Jon Murray: And so when it opens, once you get there, is that it? What's your approach to growth?

30:04William B. McDonald: So Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, he's the founder, Here's his book. If you've never read it, it's called Let My People Go Surfing, Dude. And it has been paramount for how we've shaped this company. He has a saying, he says, I wanted to always grow strong. I never wanted to grow fat. And so we are very particular in the things that we want to or are willing to do. We want to grow and we're going to continue to grow as long as we're successful. And the growth is not to grow to make money. The growth is that hopefully there'll be this small domino, hopefully not small, but a domino effect of where other operators go, man, these guys are crushing it.

30:43William B. McDonald: And they do, they take care of their people at such a deep level that I want to aspire to take care of my people the same way because they think the byproduct may end up being success. Our goal is to change hospitality for the better forever. And I feel like a fraud or an imposter saying that at times, but it's really to make our industry people to realize that you can have an amazing life if you're just provided basic human decencies in a workplace.

31:11Jon Murray: And let's talk about Nashville specifically. Red hot market. It's a very exciting time to be in Nashville. Nashville is also this really interesting place. So I was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Okay. And so I know what it's like to be in the deep South, right? And Nashville has Southern influences. And yet at the same time, I think it's evolved to become very metropolitan. And I think that these influences are both complementary and opposing. What people want is they want warm and familial, but they also want cosmopolitan and elevated. And so how are you meeting the expectations of a market that's evolving in real time?

31:57Jon Murray: I mean, the Nashville market, candidly, today is very different than two years ago when you signed the lease.

32:03William B. McDonald: A hundred percent. It is completely different. I think ultimately we like to pride ourselves on being neighborhood guys, meaning we're all about locale, like the local people. There's a part of town called Wedgwood, Houston, which large developers come in and sunk. I don't even know how many millions of dollars into it, but you've got Steven Starr. You got Kevin Boehm from Boca. You've got all these restaurateurs from out of town that are coming in that have such a brand awareness. We've had so many people transplants from New York City, from California, from Texas, from Chicago. So over the last three years, our city has become even more experienced diners.

32:46William B. McDonald: But I think ultimately, we're going to be ourselves. We're going to be as authentic as we actually are. And that's either going to resonate or it's not going to resonate. and we're trying to bring things to market that are just a little bit different than everything else. And that differentiator with great service and great hospitality and consistent food, we feel like will set us up to be successful.

33:09Jon Murray: How does marketing play a role? How do you approach new customer acquisition, customer frequency? Because again, to your point, you look at like Kevin is an entrant into the market and I'm sure he looks at the lease rates in Nashville relative to New York and goes, man, this is great. And so you've got people moving from primary markets into smaller primary or secondary markets and marketing has to become a driving engine, I would assume. What's your approach to marketing?

33:41William B. McDonald: So we have a PR and marketing person in-house. Every year, we also donate 1 % of our net profits to a local charity called Nashville Children's Alliance. And every year we run a full page ad in the best of edition here in town for them. Aside from that, and we pay a hundred percent of that cost to promote what they're doing. We believe in word of mouth. We believe in telling the story to the media outlets locally and letting them do what they do. And then we just producing a great experience when guests come in. So we have a PR person. We obviously send press releases if we feel like there's something, a story worth telling.

34:24William B. McDonald: We do that with the openings, but we don't do traditional advertising. Obviously, we lean into influencers. We don't pay influencers, but you know, we have people hit us up all the time. And I think fortunately and unfortunately, we eat through Instagram. We find out where we want to go through Instagram and TikTok. And I think it'd be silly not to lean in that. But other than press PR and some social stuff, it's really just word of mouth, man. We also, Danny Meyer was a big influence for me over the years. And one of the things they do is they gift their guests. So we give our employees the autonomy that if, say, you were coming in and it was your birthday or you were coming in and you just got a job promotion and we overheard that in the dining experience, we teach our employees to eavesdrop tastefully and then try to create impactful gifting moments to let people know that we're actually paying attention to them.

35:23Jon Murray: What should we steal from you? When you look over the course of, you know, obviously the last few years, but the last several years, you've got this track record of proven success in the industry with executing other people's models to perfection at scale and then building out your own model. And again, as I said in the beginning of the conversation, in an industry that is so rooted in failure, what do you think has separated you? What are the tactics, the tools, the strategies that have served you well that we could internalize, we could execute on that would benefit us in our lives as well?

35:58William B. McDonald: Man, there are so many things. I hate one, love. But I think for me, I feel like taking care of your people, making them feel valued, listening to them, leading from a place of grace and forgiveness, leading from a place of love. and love sometimes, love isn't always a feel good thing. Sometimes love is going, hey, I'm drawing a line right here and you're not allowed to cross that line because I love you. At the end of the day, the word that always comes to mind me is love your people. Love your guests, love your community and obsess over the guest experience too. Your guests need to come in. Like we call every single guest the next day and personally thank them for dining with us.

36:44William B. McDonald: It's an hour to two hour exercise that we do every single day. That phone call going, hey, thank you. We grateful you being here. And that also gives us the opportunity that maybe we had some missteps to open up the conversation of how their night could have been better. And so it's teaching moments for us too. But man, take care of your people and your people will take care of everything else.

37:09Jon Murray: That's John Murray. To learn more about his restaurant concepts, visit noconashville.com.

37:41Jon Murray: There you will find a ton of free templates and tools and all of the details on upcoming learning events so you can keep building momentum. I know you're busy, and so I don't take your time for granted. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.