The Owner is in the Store

     This past week, we had client meeting in Atlanta.  After the client meetings concluded, we spent a couple of nights at Reynolds Plantation, a golfing community about 100 miles East of Atlanta.

      We checked in, met the client and went to dinner at a small, local restaurant downtown.  Nothing fancy, just a simple meal in East Central Georgia.  As we were eating, a lady came around asking how everything was.  We told her fine!  One of the members in our party asked if she was the owner.  She said that she was!  What she told us next was amazing to all of us at the table!

        She said that she had been in the restaurant business 30 years– and she was 50 years old.  She said that her daughter was her bartender and that she paid her staff real well.  Well, the service and the food were real good, so that seemed to track.  As the owner, she told us she paid the cooking staff well, the waiters got the $2.14/hour plus tips, however, her best servers, she only had 5, made upwards of $1000 per week waiting table!

          As we visited over dessert, she said that she had Master’s and PhD level employees who “just could not leave” because working in food service and going to school was the only thing that they knew!  She said that she “fired” some of them to get out and find a real job– after all, they had gone to school, learned some material and were now ready to use what they learned!

           Change is the factor here that caused her to “fire” some of her best employees!  The owner said that change is dynamic, fast paced and different all the time.  Her logic was that change makes each of us a better person.  We agreed!

            What have you done that had changed your life?  What changes have you made that have improved your life, your career or your business?  Tell us, we are interested!