Ideas in the Wild: How Matt Rolfe is Helping Those in the Hospitality Industry Find New Success Post-COVID

Large independent or multi-site business operators in the hospitality industry who made it through the pandemic are now primed for growth. But now what? With a new outlook and mounting responsibilities, how do they keep the success going?

They have too many opportunities and too little time. In a world where indecision only leads to failure, how do they make the right decisions that will help them achieve their goals?

This is where the real work begins. In You Can’t Do It Alone, renowned hospitality coach Matt Rolfe shows readers how to maximize profit and scale their business with solutions focused on the people behind their company. Matt shares how to build a strong team and delegate effectively, with focused goals, inclusive strategies, and open, impactful communication. I recently caught up with Matt to learn more about how this book came together.

What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment when you realized these ideas needed to get out there?

We started writing the book prior to COVID based on the fact that I had the opportunity a few years ago to be coaching some of North America’s top restaurant groups and their senior restaurant leaders. I got to a point within one week where I met with three leaders/leadership teams that I highly respect. One was in a casual, fine dining space, one was in a pub space, and one was in a large, quick-service restaurant. They were all growing, scaling, profitable, and seeing success. But when I met with the teams and the owners, they also had this in common:

They were all overwhelmed, overwork, frustrated, and burnt out. They were falling out of love with what they were doing. That was the hardest thing to hear and to see — these celebrities within this space all struggling and hurting. That’s when I recognized the opportunity.

I thought “we have to get this into a book and get it out to a larger audience.” I want to help the industry I care so much about with this issue of managers, leaders, and owners feeling burned out and leaving. The average restaurant has 120% annual staff turnover. It’s just this vicious cycle, but if we can slow it, we create consistency for our staff and for our leaders.

What’s your favorite specific, actionable idea in the book?

This isn’t the sexiest idea, but it’s the most important: What’s your execution-focused strategy? I find that most leaders of high-performing teams are doing a monthly strategy session, or a weekly meeting, or possibly they’re doing some offsites. And what happens? They go to these offsites or they have these meetings and they feel good. Everybody’s got great ideas and we’re all excited… then we come back to that meeting next quarter to have the same conversation.

We had great ideas, but we didn’t follow through on them. I call that strategy entertainment and strategy creation. The #1 concept we want to drive home is: keep it simple. We’re not talking about fully detailed plans, but we do need to ground our teams in a mindset of strategy and execution. When we do commit to something (and not over-commit to everything), who needs to do what and by when? There are reasons for this: not just to get a clear plan, not to be tactical, but to create clarity, focus, and momentum in the direction of our goals.

Then, as we are growing and scaling, we take the opportunity to stop, recognize, and celebrate our people who are producing success. When we can do that, amazing things will happen.

What’s a story of how you’ve applied this idea in your own life? What’s it done for you?

We have two companies, the first of which is Results Hospitality, which helps restaurants maximize profitability inside their operation. Then we have our coaching business, Westshore Hospitality Group, through which we’ve worked with hundreds of leadership teams throughout North America. What I did was I stepped out of the CEO position for both my companies.

Here’s why. With my personality type, I am best sitting with people, creating a vision and strategy, and moving us forward. But in my own business, I was getting bogged down in the details. I was getting involved in things that I shouldn’t. I was frustrating my people and getting in their way. Even though I coach it, I saw the development of some codependent relationships, people having to come to me for answers when they already had the answer themselves.

As a result, we weren’t moving forward at the pace I knew we could, so I stepped out of the CEO position. We adjusted our roles and responsibilities and key people in the company. I’ll admit: it was hard. But I had absolute trust in my team, and since these changes, we’ve made the most progress in the last 24 months (especially in the last 12 months) that we have ever made in our 14-year history as a company. We let other people do what they’re best at, and also step into their opportunity, step into their growth, step into their power.

As a result, great things happened. After all, leaders can’t do it alone.