Preparing for Stagflation

Market volatility has certainly caught everyone’s attention recently. The Dow Jones is down over 5,000 points year-to-date, purchasing power is down over 8%, and the economy shrunk 1.4% in the first quarter. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, as well as an alarming number of economists, are now…
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Mystery Shopping to Beat Inflation

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a dollar from January 2020 has the same buying power as a $1.12 today. While twelve cents doesn’t sound like a lot of lost value, we have to remember that 12% adds up to a lot when it’s impacting every single purchase. Worse…
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The Fake Check Scam

An NBC News affiliate in Pennsylvania posted a video about how scammers are using fake checks to lure would-be mystery shoppers. Check this out: Here is what you should keep an eye out for: Unsolicited Checks Under no circumstances will a legitimate mystery shopping company send an unsolicited check to…
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Building a Customer-Centric Foundation

The most successful companies are the ones that place the customer experience above all other considerations. Yes, that even means over maximizing profits or emphasizing growth. Those customer-centric businesses understand that you need a strong foundation before you can build the rest on top of it. They understand that profits…
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Stop Wasting Your Time

When you’re in a position of leadership at your company, your time is precious. There aren’t enough hours in a day for you to handle everything yourself, and you can’t afford to shorten the day further with poor productivity. Dayshift supervisor, store manager, or business owner—or something in-between—it doesn’t matter.…
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How to Manage Your Boss

Managing your own boss sounds oxymoronic, at first. We often think about management as being a downstream action, with someone above managing you, and you managing those further down the chain. As it turns out, the most effective leaders do both: they take the responsibility of making sure tasks get…
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Principles for Great Management

Last blog, we discussed the qualities of great leadership, the personality traits someone has to either possess or develop to be effective at managing others. Today, let’s add some principles to these qualities. For inspiration, we’ll refer to an article at RunningRestaurants.com, which is geared towards restaurant management. As always,…
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Leadership Qualities

As a business owner or general manager, one of your most important tasks is delegation. On its face, delegation sounds like the opposite, like you’re trying to avoid a chore because you don’t enjoy doing it and would rather someone else deal with it instead. However, great leaders understand their…
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Empower Employees to Feel Safe

We’ve long stressed the importance of empowering employees to be the best representatives of your company as possible. Historically, this has meant allowing them to make decisions on the frontline for the sake of efficiency and timeliness—huge boons for your customer experience, as well as your employees’ own job satisfaction.…
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