How Gordon Ramsay Can Teach Us Some Solid Business Advice

If you’ve ever watched Kitchen Nightmares, I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a very entertaining show

Whether you love him or hate him, there is no denying that Gardon Ramsey is a particularly successful entrepreneur and business expert.

He demonstrates his ability every week on the show to be able to go to different restaurants that are failing, and then successfully turn them around.

This is all based on the same business principles and therefore is able to use these in any restaurant he goes into

You can use these same principles in your own business

• Stop doing everything: The owners on Kitchen Nightmares are doing everything. The ordering, the customer welcoming, the cleaning, and sometimes even the cooking!
• Does this sound familiar with your business.
• Ensure you are delegating task appropriately, you’re job is to strategically grow the business, not to do all the work!
• Simplify your offering: The owners on Kitchen Nightmares usually have a very complicated menu, in the hope they can cater for everyone. When Ramsay enters, he ensures they reduce this from 100s of items to simply a handful. Does this sound familiar with your business?
• If you have too many products and services, not only will you struggle to fulfil orders, you will struggle to find the right talent to help deliver your solution. Look at your offerings and choose a handful that are easiest to fulfill as well as most profitable.
• If you shift your focus, you’ll suddenly be seen as the expert in these handful of offerings and will find that you suddenly see your customers queuing for your solutions.
• Get the right processes in place: 9 times out of 10, Ramsay will implement a new POS system in the restaurants. Prior to this, the owners are frantically running around taking orders on paper, completing orders in a notepad, hand delivering orders to the chiefs etc.
• Numerous manual processes which were inconsistent and inefficient. Does this sound familiar with your business?
• Technology is amazing in this day and age and is able to automate and systemise a number of your business processes.
• The great thing is, this data all sits within the same system which all staff are familiar with to use. As a business owner, you will be able to extract key information and KPIs to help understand and grow your business.
• Team building: In Kitchen Nightmares, there is always that one member of staff who is lazy, not a team player or who does not agree with the business core values.
• Ramsay immediately identifies these and convinces the owner to sack them. Does this sound familiar with your business?
• Team building is so key to ensuring you build a successful business. You need to get the right people around you that support the owners, share the same visions and culture and want to help grow the business.
• Anyone not aligned with these unfortunately need to go. Don’t forget that these individuals are representing your business, would you like your customers to associate your business with being lazy, incompetent or unwilling to help?
• Enjoy what you do: At the end of the Kitchen Nightmares programme, we catch up with the owner who is no longer struggling, stressed or ready to throw the tail in. Does this sound familiar with where you want yourself to be in your business?
• By following the above steps, you too can get into a world where you can start to enjoy your business and enjoy the process of growth. The reward at the end is to create wealth and you will enjoy the journey if you have the correct systems, staff and solutions in place.

When you start treating your business as a business, and not simply a job that is paying you a salary, let me know — I’d love to connect with you (and answer any questions you have getting started!).

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