Key Note

Ron was in town last week and whenever he is in town I never seem to have time to make an entry, yeah Ron, it's your fault! His visit, has really paid off. It amazed me how many places he was able to see where we could make cost cuts, and therefore make more money! What ceases to amaze me is how razor thin the profit margins are. The difference between making money and not making money comes almost down to labor and food costs. Now once volume peaks out these things tend to not to be so much of an issue, but when volume is a little lower these things are magnified. Which really is a blessing in disguise...of course there is a silver lining to every cloud! Don't get me wrong we are doing some strong numbers, but I know we can do more. But with lower volumes we can really see what is driving our costs and we can really focus on how we can cut those costs. And that is exactly what we're doing. We are looking at many different costs and how we can lower them or eliminate them. Had our sales been say twice as high many of these things would be unnoticable. But this is allowing us to cut down costs to the most lean and efficient model possible. It may sound like we are slow but we are on pace to do around $1 million this year in sales...ideally I want to be pushing $1.3 or 1.4 million, so that's why I'm saying we're slow. So not bad for a restaurant that has not done any marketing!

Last week was also my birthday! I turned 23! We went out to Smith and Wollensky's for my big day and had the seafood tower! It was amazing! But other than that it wasn't too exciting. But I did finish out the week by being the key note speaker for the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity. I ended up speaking to around 100 people. We also catered the event, which went a little less than perfect, but it was our first attempt at large orders. Actually, much of the product came out not nearly as good as things in the store, so there is definitely some need for tweaking our catering capabilities. I think we have a good idea, but we're not quite there yet. But as for my speech, it went spectacular! I did start writing a speech several days before the event, but I ended up running out of time to finish it. I was planning on finishing it up on Friday morning, right before the event, but due to the chaos of putting the catering order together I wasn't able to do that. So, as usual, I had to go in there and wing it! I actually think I do better when I just wing it. I did my standard keynote/motivational speech...isn't it great that I have a standard speech now! I'm really starting to get it down. Each speaking engagement I hone it and it gets better and better.

My biggest problem with public speaking initially was reading the crowd. The first thing they tell you to do when public speaking is to "know your audience." But I was ignoring that for the first several times. Then I spoke to a high school class. Much of the things I was talking about weren't relevant to students in high school and I think I bored them to tears. But, thanks to my high school business teacher, whose class I spoke too, I quickly learned how to adapt. I spoke to two of her classes. The first one went ok but not as well as I had hoped. The second one went substantially better b/c some how she had told me or I inferred from her comments that I needed to adapt to the audience. So I did and the second speech was substantially better. And that is what I am focusing on now when I do public speaking events. Before I would just go in and speak without thinking about who the audience was and what they wanted to hear. I would just talk and tell my story. Now I think about my audience ahead of time and try to put myself in their shoes. I try to think about what I would like to hear from this kid who started this restaurant. And man does it help! I am getting more attentive listeners and many more good questions at the end of the speech. Perhaps my greatest measure of how I am improving is how many people come up and talk to me after I speak. I figure that if I have anyone approach me after I speak that at least some were listening. This past speech I would say I had about ten people that approached me after I spoke. That's about 10 times more than my first speech, 5 times more than my second, and about twice as many as my last! Of course I am taking into account the size of the audience as well.

But I love the public speaking. I get a high from it and I love watching people reactions and getting their feedback. My stock key note speech is basically my story. I simply stand up there and tell my story of how I got to where I am today. And it seems to work. People can follow a story. There is a plot and a point and it can be interesting. I'm sure not everyone is interested, but I know that when I hear the word lecture I am bored already. But when I hear the word story, I want to learn more about it. Stories work and that is what I am going to stick with. Plus it all happened to me so I can pull the story from my memory. I don't have to go back to my notes and try to remember a certain phrase or theorem or someone elses story, I just tell my own. Man does that make it easy. I can stand up there for hours if I needed too. But I usually keep it to about an hour. To me it is just so cool that on a whim if someone asks me to come speak without any notice I can go up there and speak for an hour to an hour and a half without even thinking about it! Imagine standing in front of 100 people for an hour and they are all listening to you and then asking you questions! I could never imagine doing that when I was back in my high school speech class. I would dread that day when I had to go in front of the class and speak. But I didn't know the stuff inside and out when I was up there. I know my story and I know how to get reactions from it. Now I want to learn to control the audiences emotions a little more. To get them excited or involved or motivated. But I have yet to finish my story on RawPesto so I will get back at it tomorrow...