Can Gordon Ramsay Teach You Anything About Finance?
Confession time: I’m a Kitchen Nightmares addict.
I’ll search the channel listing menu until I find it. It may surprise you that I’m not interested in cooking. My interest is purely for the financial tips.
Huh?
Kitchen Nightmares is a 30 minute case analysis financial show. Your financial life isn’t just about maximizing how you spend money….it’s about how you create wealth. For these business owners and workers, they’re all trying to maximize the amount they put in their pocket at the end of the day.
A Good Coach
Enter the spawn-demon from hell, Gordon Ramsay. Sure, he isn’t pretty, and his mouth is deplorable. NASCAR pit crews would blush if they heard half the stuff coming out of his mouth.
That’s half the reason he’s a great coach. He lays all the not-so-pretty stuff in graphic terms. You’re going to change because he makes it sound awful to stay the same.
Ramsey helps business owners learn two important lessons:
- You should never accept less than your best.
- Change “tomorrow” doesn’t work. Change “slowly” doesn’t work. If you’re going to make a change, the optimal way to do it is to change now.
There’s a formula to the show that intrigues me.
Building Discomfort
At the top of each show, Gordon Ramsay strolls into the restaurant and eats.
He verbally rips the waiter on the quality of the entire meal, course by course. I’m sure he plans this to draw a contrast later between the “before” and “after” pictures of the restaurant he’s about to makeover. No matter: this method of straightforward it ALL sucks talk helps business owners learn that things have to change.
What does this have to do with you? What do you need to change in your life? What needs to be different right now. If you were the restaurant owner, what would Gordon Ramsay say to you?
I know that you know exactly what he’d say. Write it down.
Digging into the Systems
Ramsay next examines the establishment’s tools. He looks at the signage, dining area, menu and kitchen. No stone is left unturned.
In one recent episode he even shut the restaurant down in the middle of dinner service. The owner was forced to apologize to his dining patrons that he was being forced to close for the night.
Why? They were serving food that was rotten and possibly contaminated.
Your homework? Examine your financial life. How is the ‘signage?’ (your physical appearance), what are things like in the ‘dining room’ (your work)? How is your ‘menu’ (your skill set)? What do you need to improve in your ‘kitchen’(budget and financial tools).
Get Away
Here’s what’s particularly innovative about Gordon Ramsay’s approach in Kitchen Nightmares: he examines the surrounding neighborhood outside of each restaurant for clues about how to help the business succeed. I call this “innovative” because it’s so flippin’ obvious: like you and I, the business owners often don’t see success that’s right in front of them.
Ramsay flipped a high-end restaurant in a farming community into a fresh produce deli and bistro serving local ingredients in all of their dishes. Brilliant! The farmers in the area were ecstatic and mobbed the place on opening day of the revamped venue.
In another, he took the dishes of a high end seafood restaurant out on the street and asked locals if they liked the food. He then contrasted the foo-foo seafood with a basic pot pie. In this blue collar area just outside the doors of the establishment, person after person preferred the pot pie. He lowered prices, flipped the menu to coexist with the already established eating patterns of the local community, taught the manager how to turn tables faster and cut the number of menu items in half so the kitchen could easily manage the increased traffic.
What should you do? Get out of the day-to-day for a moment, if only in your mind. Rather than working “in” your life, what should you do to work “on” it? What opportunities are low-hanging fruit? Are you creating extra work by ignoring obvious synergy with others around you?
Change, Listen and Change Again
Now that he has a plan, Ramsay springs into action. He relaunches the restaurant. That sounds like an ominous, time-consuming task.
He does it in 24 hours.
New menu, new paint, changed dining room. Ba-da-boom-ba-da-bing. Then they open the doors and see how it works.
Most of the time it doesn’t go smoothly. They identify huge bumps in the road. Sometimes the kitchen isn’t ready. Other times servers struggle with presenting new menu items. Often the owners get in their own way.
However, now that they’re armed with direction and a plan of attack when things go wrong, guess what happens when they stumble? The owners and staff brush themselves off and keep plowing ahead.
What does this mean to you? Change now. Don’t worry about the fact that you were a fish-place yesterday and now you’re going to be a pizzeria. Once you’ve completely examined your surroundings and created a comprehensive plan, attack. You’re bound to fall at first, but by listening to clues to tweak your missteps and having the fortitude to stick with your plan, you’re sure to be back on your feet and moving in the right direction quickly.
Is Kitchen Nightmares a primer on financial planning? Nope. However, by looking at Chef Ramsay’s system of coaching and applying his techniques of quick change and obvious innovation to your own situation, you may pick up a few motivational tips that’ll set your financial “business” on the right track.
(photo credit: Gordon Ramsay, upside of inertia; Flickr)
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Very innovative post! Gordon Ramsey’s success coaching tactics are straight-up, on your case, and in your face. Although, his focus is uprooting restaurant businesses, his methods can be applied to other industries. Yet, it’s interesting how you’ve applied his success tactics for restaurant owners to improving one’s finances. Hot stuff!
Anthony Thompson recently posted..Self Manager – You Must See Yourself as a Success Coach (Here’s Why)
I think it’s funny how similar our posts are today. Anyone looking for more on this topic should click the link to Anthony’s post today…
I read somewhere recently that one of the keys to having a successful business is to be your own mystery shopper. This involves looking at your own business from an outsider’s perspective, and to look at what your competition is doing. Good post.
James recently posted..Shopping with Food on The Table
I’ve never heard of it as “mystery shopper.” That’s a great analogy, James. Of course, it’s kind of like that other show where the CEOs pretend they’re the “new guy” at work and see how the company really operates. For some reason, I don’t get the same lift with that show that I get from Kitchen Nightmares.
I love Gordon Ramsey, I do, but I actually preferred Restaurant Impossible because Robert had a budget for the make over and you could see where he chose to let things slide and where he chose to spend the money.
What I didn’t like, though, was that Robert through the owners out at some point and kind of did the make over for them (not that I don’t think Ramsey does the same thing, but you don’t see it). I think the real key to change is that you have to be willing to be in there and doing the work yourself.
shanendoah@the dog ate my wallet recently posted..Sunday Evening Post #38
I love Gordon Ramsey and loved this post. I do like how he has them change–because sometimes you need to change it up in order to succeed not just barely break even.
bogofdebt recently posted..Pet Peeves
I agree, Bog. These places (as you know) aren’t even breaking even…and sometimes they’re so clueless I feel bad for the people when he hits them over the head. It’s ugly, but effectively wakes them up.
Very nicely done Joe! I don’t watch the show regularly, but I’ve seen a few episodes.
Next time I won’t be able to watch one without relating to this post!
MoneyCone recently posted..In Pursuit Of The Most Rewarding Rewards Card
I’m far better looking than Gordon, MoneyCone. Besides that, I’m very comfortable with you thinking of this post every time you see the show!
Excellent article! This is a marvelous piece of wisdom.
Your homework? Examine your financial life. How is the ‘signage?’ (your physical appearance), what are things like in the ‘dining room’ (your work)? How is your ‘menu’ (your skill set)? What do you need to improve in your ‘kitchen’(budget and financial tools).
Wow!!
Shilpan recently posted..The Buffett Rule: Does it make sense?
Thanks, Shilpan! It’s a fun show with some fairly easy-to-emulate systems.
I’ve never seen the show. I’ve heard he’s pretty tough. That first paragraph where you described him eating at a restaurant (the before)reminded me of my oldest son unfortunately! We recently discovered that he’d been entering these peer-developed levels on Little Big Planet and leaving mean comments like my favorite–”sucks like poop!” What does that even mean?!
Personally, I like a little more constructive with my criticism, so I made him go through all the comments he’d left and replace them with comments telling the developers what he liked and disliked about the levels. Helping him go through all the comments sucked like poop, but I survived and he learned his lesson.
I think, in our own lives, we do get caught up and often neglect to take a step back and evaluate ourselves as if looking from the outside. We need to talk aloud about what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do, and why it is or isn’t working. We need to be a little critical of ourselves sometimes. We all know other people are, if they say it or not!
Michelle recently posted..Pampering Your Baby Without Using Pampers
Michelle, the 11 year old boy in me SO wanted to tell you that your comment sucks like poop.
But (sigh) it doesn’t. It’s actually on the money. A good lesson for him, I’m sure.
I’ve actually never seen his shows, but maybe I should start watching based on this post
I’ve heard a lot about him, though, based on how he acts on the shows that he’s on – he has two, right?
He has at least two. The other one, Hell’s Kitchen, is a cooking competition. I’ve watched portions of the show with my family, but I’m really not interested.
His show is genius. He handles financial situations outside of cooking in a very specific way. I think his show, if looked at with the right intentions, is very helpful financially.
Yeah, Jai! To someone watching their first show it appears he’s just flying off the handle sometimes, but you’re right: it’s very specific and usually well played.
What a great connection and points! I am a little jealous right now because we can’t have cable and I REALLY want to watch this show now. This weekend I’ll be house-sitting for my dad (who has cable) and I’ll be sure to check this out (along with my other fav show: house hunters international).
I wonder if I can get Kitchen nightmares on Netflix….hmmmmm….
WorkSaveLive recently posted..Recipe: The Green Monster
Kitchen Nightmares isn’t a cable show. It’s network. Fridays at 8pm in Seattle. I think Fox. (Fox is who carries Hell’s Kitchen>) Don’t quote me on the network, but I’m pretty sure on the time, as I watch Supernatural at 9pm.
shanendoah@the dog ate my wallet recently posted..Micro-Investing
Erin, while that’s good news for Jason, I never watch it on Fox. I usually watch it over lunch on a cable network. I’ve caught it on at least three different networks during the day. It seems to be widely syndicated on cable t.v. At night my kids are home and I rarely watch television unless it’s the soon-to-be World Champion Detroit Tigers. (I’m nothing but a homer….)