By Matt Plapp
Every day, every week, every month, I question my sanity! I doubt myself, and I know many of you do, too. I wonder: “Can I do this? Am I right? Are we (my team and I) on the right path?”
This week, I want to take a break from marketing talk and tackle the topic of mindset and self-belief.
Why? To properly market—or, honestly, to do any of the high-level operations in your restaurant—you must create an insane amount of self-belief in your journey, so you can step out of the day-to-day and rise above the chaos.
More from Matt Plapp: Why Most Pizzerias Are Failing at Marketing (and How to Fix It)
You must have a short memory, like an NFL quarterback. Even if you throw an interception in one play, you need to be able to throw a touchdown the next.
I’ve seen it firsthand. I do my best work when the day-to-day goes great, allowing me to think big-picture. But when those bad weeks creep up, it can undo a lot of positive momentum. Learning to push through those moments and believe in your journey will help you find the massive success you deserve.
Recently, I was in Chicago for the National Restaurant Association Show. I visited a client of ours who just opened his second pizzeria. Part of the business wasn’t going as expected, and he was disappointed in how it missed the mark. I could tell he was beating himself up—without a doubt, he was thinking, “What did I do wrong?” And, being an outsider, seeing the magic he’d created, I knew he was on the right track. But business is tough, and to find the good times, you have to experience the bad ones.
Our conversation made me think about my journey over the past five years, especially the past three. There have been some brutal moments. Growth can get to you. You go into things knowing you’ll fail, but when you do, it’s human nature to think that you messed up.
Matt Plapp Is a Featured Speaker at PMQ’s Pizza Power Forum, September 2-4 in Atlanta! Click to Learn More!
It brought me back to a song I listen to often: “Chasin’ Echoes” by The Lonely Biscuits. One of the lyrics always hits home:
I’m wondering if the path I chose is too complex?
So what comes next?
People are telling me to let go
But I just can’t stop the echo
Here’s what I’ve found out personally over the past few years: What allows this self-doubt to creep in are the bad times, the failures. Even though most of us have many more great weeks than bad ones, those off weeks really throw us for a loop.
The chart below is what we all want; it’s what we all envision—a chart that rises smoothly. This chart shows the sales growth of one of our divisions, which we opened in 2016. When you see it zoomed out, it’s a thing of beauty, right? Almost nothing until to the right side, then up!
But the truth is much bumpier. This second chart, below, is what causes us to question our sanity. This is a snapshot of a few years. In no way was this up and to the right. It’s more like one step forward and two steps backward!
So, this week’s message is more about motivation than marketing. To become a trained marketing assassin, you must have a clear mind. We must know that in order to have great weeks, we have to accept the bad ones. We have to be strong, push the echoes to the back, and know that we’re on the right path.
My name is Matt Plapp. I’m the CEO of America’s Best Restaurants. I’ve worked with thousands of restaurants since 2008 when I started this company, and over the next 12 months, we will help 2,500-plus restaurants with their marketing. This is the latest article in a new weekly column for PMQ to help restaurant owners understand the gold mine we have to market in 2025—and beyond.
