An Introduction 22 May 2017, 10:51 am

I met Josh Jamieson playing pick-up soccer a couple of years ago. He was the only Brit among us, had pretty good skills and hustled harder than anyone else on the field. I liked him right away. I grew up playing soccer, and though I was never the most skillful player, I was always known to be a tenacious player – especially after giving the ball away. We had that in common.

When I first asked Josh to hang out and have a beer after a game, I was quite certain from his manner and maturity that he was over 21. I didn’t really think to ask. When he did come over to my house that first time, I believe he was telling my friends (one of the prettier girls, if I remember correctly) that he was 24, which seemed about right. It turned out that he was 20. Oops.

As we got to know each other, he told me more about what he was focusing on in school. He had a keen interest in computers and programming. When I told him that I ran a digital marketing consultancy, his ears pricked up. He wanted to know more. I told him all about my business, and very quickly, we made an agreement to work together – he offered to help me out with any projects I needed, so he could learn the ropes of my business. He didn’t want payment, he just wanted to learn. How could I say no to that?

That’s how we got started, about six months ago. One month ago, we made a more formal agreement – Josh was going to scale back his hours working at a local winery and work with me for 32 hours a week. I was going to pay him for his time, and he would assist me with running my business.

After this first month, we have learned and accomplished a LOT.

I started this project/blog/whatever in order to share what we’re doing together and how our relationship evolves over time. Josh isn’t just my assistant – he is my protege and it has been a great pleasure to see him jump headfirst into creating his own business.

When we first started, I figured it would be fine to pay him cash under the table. When I was meeting with one of my business advisers – Sandy Stelter

My Four Step Process For Counter-Service Restaurants To Increase Their Online Reviews 3 Dec 2016, 12:43 am

Let’s start by identifying a very clear trend. Each year, more consumers are relying on online reviews in order to determine where and what they do.

Data thanks to Bright Local’s annual Local Consumer Review Survey

This is more true for restaurants than any other industry:

So we can be certain beyond a doubt that online reviews are hugely important for restaurants. So how should a restaurant go about getting positive reviews?

Priority number one is really obvious: offer great food and service. Guh.

Beyond that, what can restaurants do to help positively effect their “Net Promoter Score” and online review outlook?

Over the last six years I’ve worked with a variety of restaurant clients and have developed a fairly simple, repeatable process for consistently increasing positive reviews. Here’s my four-step process…

Step 1: Create A Monthly ‘Contest’ With Very Simple Rules

You’ve definitely seen this technique employed before, but the point here is in how we will be leveraging it…

First, set up a clear container (like a fish bowl) on the counter where folks will pay for their meal. Affix to the bowl a sheet of paper that will indicate the contest rules. For example:

“Drop your business card for a chance to win a free large pizza!”

Print it out or use a sharpie — make it look nice and professional if you can.

The point here is to offer something enticing enough to get people willing to put up with the small hassle of fiddling in their wallet and dropping that card.

Be sure to prominently place the bowl and contest rules along the counter. Ideally, train cashiers to point out the contest to customers.

Step 2: Collect business cards for a month.

You can also allow people to fill out a form that includes their name, number and email address… however, this will require more manual work later.

Step 3: Digitize the data that has been submitted

For this step, I use an awesome service called Shoeboxed. For $29.95 per month, they will process and digitalize 150 documents. Alternatively, have a staff person write the submitted contact information into an Excel spreadsheet or any software that allows exporting in .csv format.

Step 4: Leverage the customer data to request online reviews

I use a service called GetFiveStars for this part. Once emails are added to that system, it will drip out 1-5 emails per day to customers explaining to them, “Thanks for entering our contest… we’re sorry but you didn’t win the pizza prize this time! We do hope you had a great experience at our restaurant, and would like to invite you to leave a review for us below”.

There’s a lot of room for creativity here. You could be uploading these emails into any email service provider and simply ask for reviews with messaging on that platform… but be weary of trying to send review requests to all of your new contacts at once – review sites are more likely to accept customer reviews if they come in over a longer period of time.

These are the basics of my Restaurant Review System. If you have any comments or questions about how to set something like this up, don’t hesitate to jump in below.