Dave Nitzel on Bar Metrics, Stinger Compliance, and Why the Hospitality Industry Needs to Stop Playing Defense

Anthony Codispoti (00:01)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Cotas-Bode and today’s guest is Dave Nitzel. Dave is a co-founder and principal of Dave and Dave hospitality. Also the fractional chief strategy officer of Stinger compliance.

and owns multiple bar metrics franchises and coaches, authors, and public speakers. All these ventures are geared towards improving the careers of entrepreneurs with a special focus on the hospitality industry. Before stepping into hospitality, Dave spent more than three decades as a Fortune 500 executive, leading thousands of locations and billions of dollars in revenue.

Since making the jump in 2014, he’s opened multiple Barmetrics franchise offices across the Southeast, spoken at industry events like Tales of the Cocktail, BCB Berlin, and recently at the India Bartender Show in New Delhi. He’s co-authored two bestselling bics, The Bar Shift and Hospitality DNA, and just released a brand new book, A Tale of Two Taverns. In addition to his hospitality work, Dave also coaches

professionals outside the industry, including physicians, attorneys, athletes, and executives on leadership, career direction, and decision-making under pressure. But before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency. Listen, if you run a business, you’re likely stuck in the cycle of rising insurance premiums. You’re paying more, but your team is getting less, and many people can’t afford coverage at all. We do things differently.

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Dave Nitzel (02:36)
Thanks,

Anthony. really like the sounds of your business, by the way. It’s the first time I’ve heard all that. It sounds like everyone needs to be checking that out. I’m going to do a little research of my own, but that’s a really cool idea.

Anthony Codispoti (02:47)
I appreciate you calling attention to it.

So let’s get to you today though. Let’s ⁓ focus on Dave Nitzel. you started out in big corporate America. I mean, big, like UPS, Office Depot, advanced auto parts. This isn’t what I see as the typical path for someone who ends up consulting in the hospitality world. Help me connect the dots from running these multi-billion dollar revenue verticals to founding a consulting firm for hospitality.

Dave Nitzel (03:14)
Yeah, interesting career arc to be quick about it. had a bit of a explosive rise in my thirties through the ranks. It was a big growth time in the States. And, ⁓ you know, I just have management skills for the most part. I’m not the brightest ⁓ bulb in the box, but I’m decent in a crisis. I’m decent with people. And so those skills were in demand.

maybe they always are, but it felt like the demand was high. So it allowed for a bit of a quick rise through the ranks. And cutting to the end, I ended up losing a bit of a political battle at one of those companies, although I didn’t know I was in a fight. Like I lost a battle I didn’t know I was fighting, I suppose. And so at the end of that, I had suffered through a series of bosses that just, I found

unacceptable, for lack of a better word. It’s just bad leadership. And I’m not the best with a bad leader. That’s one of my weaknesses is I require a fairly competent leader to do my job well. And I spun out of that. I was, ⁓ I wanted to do my own thing, but I don’t have the creative gene to create something, which is frustrating. You know, I take something that someone has and I make it better. And

So then I, ⁓ I joke about this. I’ve said it before. There’s three things you don’t really want to type into a web browser. We know what one of them is, right? The second one is insurance. No offense. The third one is franchise. No offense. Like we’re all, but those, if you type those things into a web browser, you’re going to get hit hard with, you know, a lot of attention. So I did that. Let’s say I did two of those things.

Anthony Codispoti (04:52)
you

Dave Nitzel (05:06)
So ⁓ I typed in franchise because I thought, man, I don’t have my own good ideas, Anthony. I don’t know. So can I do something else? And I got bombed. This guy calls me, says, Dave, look, trust me with this. We’re going to do a personality assessment. We’re going to fit you with a really good match here. Two of them were not really good matches. In fact, I thought all three of them weren’t, but my son heard me on the other line and it was Barmetrics. And they were talking about

inventory and I’m a supply chain guy. So they were talking about inventory and I thought, yeah, maybe, but man, I don’t know anything about bars and restaurants. My son heard the conversation and he was young at the time, like 21 and wasn’t going to school, you know, was really getting good at video games. And ⁓ he goes, Hey, you know, that’s bar rescue. And I was like, I have no idea what, that is. So he goes to YouTube and brings up bar rescue episodes. And he was really excited, Anthony, like

look at this, you’d be great. And I was like, man, I’ve never seen you excited about any business or anything like this before. I was like, you really like this. He goes, yeah. I was like, you want to do it with me? He goes, yeah. And I was like, let’s go. And like five days later, I just bought the franchise and off we go. Important side note to you, I went to the, I did my homework. It just didn’t take forever. And I love the culture of the business straight away. So I

I really bought into two things. I bought into the culture of the company that is Barmetrics. And I bought into my son’s enthusiasm for it and just said, I don’t care what this is. I’ll figure it out. This could be a pig farm. We’re going to make bacon by Friday. Like, we’re just going to go. And so that’s the beginnings. That’s how I got it.

Anthony Codispoti (06:49)
That’s how you got into that. And

so what was it about the culture of bar metrics that you were able to witness so quickly? I mean, you met them five days later, you signed the deal.

Dave Nitzel (06:55)
Yeah.

⁓ authentically passionate about helping people. No joke. So you can go look at that stuff now, though the website’s been changed a little bit from what it was 14, 13 years ago. There was, you can tell when something’s, when someone’s authentic, I think, in their belief system. So the belief system was very, hey, we care. We love this industry. We come from this industry. We want to help this industry. And by God, we’re going to do that. And here’s how we do it.

And I said, man, if you’re all in, I’m an on mission guy, which are some of the things that I mentioned before would get me in trouble. I’m an on mission guy. You put me on mission. What is it you want to do? I’ll go get that done. Clear the decks, like stay out of the way and I’m gone. And, and I thought, man, I can call my own shots. can go authentic, authentically help people. No one’s going to get in my way of doing that. And they’re going to support the hell out of me though. Like if I need something.

There’s going be someone on the other end of the phone. Yeah, like that simple. Nothing really. I’m not that complicated. Really point and shoot like that.

Anthony Codispoti (08:06)
So how did you bridge that gap? Like you supply chain, like you understood kind of inventory controls, but you didn’t know the bar and restaurant industry. How did you bridge that part of the gap?

Dave Nitzel (08:12)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I was

nervous. was admittedly incredibly nervous about that. So there was this, you know, training program you go to, you don’t, they don’t just send you software. You gotta, you gotta go spend a lot of time getting trained. That was great. I hired, had my son with me and I hired a guy from the industry. name was John. And he was a general manager at my local pub. I would say my hangout, my haunt. And he was done with general managing and said, I’d love to stay in the industry, but do something else. I hired him. He was a big part of.

our initial success. But interestingly, I got my, got our first account when I was at training, someone called, you know, it high demand stuff. And, you know, I’m like, my God, I got to pretend like I know what I’m doing here. Yeah, sure. You know, we can, we can do that. But in the end, inventory management is really ⁓ elementary math. It’s what did you have? What did you buy? What did you sell? What do you have?

I can do that. And so we just had to do that. Now it’s not as easy as it’s set. The reality is never as easy as it sounds, but we can do that. So no one asked. I found that interesting too. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me in like 13 or 14 years, Dave, what’s your history in the bar and restaurant industry before we put you to work on our inventory? You you have a conversation with someone they believe

what if you’re competent or not, whether you’re legitimate or not, and whether the value proposition is right. And if they believe in that, then they believe in you, go do the work. And so yeah, it wasn’t overly complicated, Anthony, I’m sorry.

Anthony Codispoti (09:56)
I want to understand that first client that you got. You were there at the training and the call came to you. How does this happen?

Dave Nitzel (10:01)
Yeah. Yeah. The

call came through, you know, the website’s active and someone probably started pinging my, the market I bought, you know, saying, you know, and Bing, and I was like, ⁓ Eureka, we have to hit the ground running. And that guy turned into, that client was significantly struggling. It was a pretty large, really cool sports bar right next to a concert venue.

they did big numbers and he was losing his shirt in the end, way that story ended. He was my first client. And, ⁓ after COVID Chick-fil-A came along and wanted that space next to that venue. And he ended up cashing out for about $5 million. So it was a good ending to that story. We ended up coaching them. Stuff. We started off, Lauren had account bottles and that evolved to, I naturally default to business conversations.

like you and I will have. And so I would start doing that with my clients. I do that accidentally, like it’s just my default. And as it turns out, there was a lot of value in those conversations. So not only were we the folks who bottle counters, but that’s how I started becoming more of a coach and consultant.

Anthony Codispoti (11:20)
Interesting. So on the bar metric side of things, let’s dive into a little bit more about the specific services that you’re offering. And then let’s come back to that transition that you made into more generalized coaching. So bar metrics, you’re helping folks with inventory, but kind of give us more specifics, maybe pull out a client in your head and talk us through.

Dave Nitzel (11:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Well, look, we could we could use that one as an example. We can stick with him since we kind of know him now. Big sports bar next to an arena and all that. And he’s doing probably 30 to 40 thousand a week in alcohol sales, which is no small thing. And I think when we started with him, he was losing somewhere around 25, 27 percent relative to sales, which is a huge number. That probably meant. I look, that’s a good question. My

Anthony Codispoti (12:09)
Where should that number be,

Dave Nitzel (12:14)
official stance is 5%. But it really depends on what the owner is trying to achieve. So it’s not for me to say, is a better way for me to say, we have people who want to be 0, 1%. There should be no loss in this business. And then there’s other people that say, no, you know what, we’re a little more free spirited here. That’s what we’re built for. That’s who we want to be. And that’s what people love about us. We’re okay with eight or 9%. Totally fine. We’re making money. And I like it this way. I’m, look,

cool. Like it’s not my job to tell you what to want. That’s not how I view it. You tell me what you want and then I’ll help get you there. And that’s our approach with that’s my approach with all the coaching, not just bar metrics. But for example, you know, we go in and we we use scanners and scales and we literally weigh the bottles. We have scales for the kegs. We literally weigh the kegs. It’s not very ⁓ it’s not overly interesting. It’s very early in the morning.

You can be on your hands and knees scanning bottles of Miller Lite, you You ⁓ got to make sure all your counts are good. You got to reconcile all that stuff, which we do.

Anthony Codispoti (13:21)
So you’re seeing, know, hey, this is what basically the point of sale software says that we’ve sold. And this is what’s actually been consumed. And if there’s a difference, if there’s a variance between those two numbers, then you know you’ve got a problem.

Dave Nitzel (13:27)
Exactly right.

Mm-hmm.

That’s

exactly right. one of the things that I also, ⁓ one thing we don’t do is we don’t immediately assume theft or incompetence. try to make sure all the data is right first. Did we assume we made the first mistake? Did we miscount? A lot of people don’t assume. A lot of people are doing this themselves or doing it in-house assume that whoever’s counting is counting right every time.

We’ve been doing this 14 years and I’ll tell you there’s not a day where we get every single count right. It’s never happened. Like you have to go back and double check your work because you will miss something counting thousands and thousands of bottles of stuff. ⁓ So we make we assume that we got to check and make sure that the data assumptions are right. Are the recipes correct? We have to pull down every recipe as an example. Are you pouring two ounces? Are you pouring three? You’re pouring an ounce and a half, half ounce, whatever that is.

So we go through a fairly strenuous process of making sure that the data is correct. And then we start to do root cause analysis stuff on where is this happening, when is it happening, how is it happening, and then what do we have to do to correct it.

Anthony Codispoti (14:48)
And so how do you get there? Right. So you double check your work. Okay. Yes. Our math is correct. We’ve got a variance. What’s the most likely culprit? ⁓ And how do you identify if that’s the case and sort of work your way down that ladder?

Dave Nitzel (14:54)
Mm-hmm.

Even though we don’t assume at first that the most likely culprit is people pouring problem, it usually is. Right. But we just don’t like to go straight from A to B. We have a responsibility to validate before before we suggest that people are failing at what they do. So we do that work and we write everything up and we have some best practices and we also are paying off of whoever we’re working for.

You know, what’s their ability to communicate? What’s their involvement in the business? Are they delegating to a manager? Like who’s our, who are we interfacing with? And how do we need to affect change through them? And that can vary case by case, account by account. But essentially we then have to go into some version of informing staff of what’s happening, suggesting strongly why that’s happening. Look, we’re either overpouring or we’re forgetting to bring things in. There’s not a whole lot.

could be theft. We try to stay away from that because it’s very accusatory and unproductive and you better be right. And then we have, and then we get into, okay, let’s, how are we going to improve this? And it’s a lot of communication and ⁓ a lot of working with folks. Once I liken it to, imagine you say to me, Anthony, that you’re a good driver, right? Let’s, let’s imagine you’re a good driver and you’re going to take a trip. You’re going to drive somewhere and I’ll put you on the highway, but I’m turning all your dashboard info off.

turning everything off and you’re just going to drive from wherever you are to wherever you’re going. And you get, you get pulled over by a policeman because you’re doing 85 and a 60. And you say, golly, I didn’t know I was doing 85 and a 60. I thought I, well, maybe I was doing 65, maybe 70. I had no idea I was doing 85, man. I’m sorry. Let me fix that. We’re the dashboard. So we’re the ones that tell you.

where you are and then it’s your job to make sure that you drive at least reasonably close to the speed limit.

Anthony Codispoti (16:59)
So like if I’m, if

yeah, if I’m the bartender and I’m making a drink, I think I’m pouring an ounce. Turns out I’m, pouring 1.6 ounces. And over the course of the night, man, that really adds up to some lost liquor.

Dave Nitzel (17:04)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah, big numbers, big

numbers. Yeah, that’s right.

Anthony Codispoti (17:15)
Because I didn’t have the dashboard, right? I didn’t have my speedometer there to tell me.

Dave Nitzel (17:19)
I can’t fix what I don’t know is broken.

Anthony Codispoti (17:24)
So how many franchises do you own now? What are your locations? OK.

Dave Nitzel (17:27)
I had four, I sold,

recently sold two. got a little, you could tell if anyone listened to that intro, I was listening to it and going, my God, this guy’s doing too much. So it was even worse. I had the Carolina markets and the Georgia markets and I sold very gleefully sold the Carolina markets just because it was, I’m getting my butt kicked. trying to pare back a little. So just two now in Atlanta.

Anthony Codispoti (17:55)
Both of them in Atlanta. Okay, so let’s go back to this guy who ends up selling his location to Chick-fil-A for $5 million. Nice exit for him. ⁓ And you just discovered like, hey, you know, I’ve got this coaching ability and I enjoy it. And so discovering that through that process, then how did you move forward with finding more clients that you could work with in that way?

Dave Nitzel (17:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

That’s a good, that’s a great transition. I started developing that skill there, but I wasn’t, I didn’t have a ⁓ intentional plan on coaching. There were just great conversations I was having with my clients. I was sharing that information with a friend of mine who’s a global coach in hospitality is named Sean Finter. So Sean was running this program called Accelerate and he was working with A plus talent from all over the world. And at one point, he was the founder of Barmetrics.

That’s how I know Sean. So he, I don’t even, at some point he invited me to come up to be a part of one of his programs, but I didn’t know he was inviting me as a coach. I thought he was inviting me as sort of a learning opportunity for me to get more involved with the industry and rub elbows type of thing. No, like I got there and all of a sudden, you know, I’m on the docket.

And I’m doing breakouts and I was like, are you are you kidding me? Like I was here. I’m taking I was like, dude, I’m going down to the beach. It’s in Chesapeake. I was like, I got a whole vacation plan and you’re going to work me. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (19:28)
You

had no heads up that you were on the docket, that you were part, okay, all right.

Dave Nitzel (19:31)
Nothing, absolutely nothing.

Right. So I just have to dance. And these are with, and when I say I’m talking about people that have won best bar in the world, multiple people, best bar in the world, best bar in the US. These are legends. And I don’t know them because I don’t know. So they just threw me in the room and it was sink or swim and I swam. So I got invited back a couple of times to be a facilitator and then start delivering some content, which I love to do.

Um, and then that led to one day I was flying home from one of those and I thought, man, I keep having the same, I’m having the same conversations everywhere I go, whether I’m in Atlanta or the Carolinas or these. And I thought I’m going to start writing down best practices, like just, I’m going to put on paper the most common conversations I have and I’m going to give it out as like a free Christmas gift. I don’t remember the timing must’ve been like, I don’t know, but I was thinking like a, originally it was going to be like the 12.

days of Christmas type of thing, 12 best practices I was going to do. And you know, Dave Dumsowski. So that evolved quickly. needed an industry, I wanted an industry expert to check my work. Like, Hey, am I right about this? don’t, I don’t want to be off on the things I say. You know, I don’t want to come off as clearly this guy’s in left field. That’s how the bar shift started. That was how we created the first book. Yeah. And that thing.

Anthony Codispoti (20:56)
first book. And

how did you meet Dave Dombzowski? How do you guys know each other?

Dave Nitzel (20:59)
He’s a fellow Barmetrics.

No, when I met Dave, Dave was the corporate trainer at Barmetrics. look, Dave drove me crazy. I found him incredibly irritating when we first met. And because we were so different and he trained so hard and so technically, and I don’t like to learn that way. So there was kind of a bit of a clash of personality. But it was my job to learn. Like I was paying to be there to learn this stuff and Dave’s…

trying his best to teach me. And I’m like, look, man, I may kill you before these two weeks are up. Like, I don’t know, we’re going to survive this. And then it’s turned out we’ve become best of friends. I think that’s in large part because of our differences, which there’s a ton of lessons in that. ⁓ yeah, so Dave turned out to be ⁓ my writing partner for all three books. But that bar shift book, that book won’t stop selling. Like we almost try

Stop the advertising like we’ve moved on to the other books. It just goes that book refuses to die and it sells all the time and it’s absolutely our most popular work. And the lesson there is that book solves a specific problem for people. And if you have if you know how to solve a specific problem for someone, there’s a business there. There’s something there. We get into trouble when this is.

working with speakers and entrepreneurs and some of the other stuff I do now, you get a lot of people who want to create something because they have a passion for it, but they haven’t identified a market need. And they just think that other people are going to magically realize how smart their idea is. And that’s not how it works. Unless maybe you’re Steve Jobs. you could maybe be, maybe one percenters can say, people don’t know what they want until I give it to them. Like that sounds really cool. God bless you. If you’re that person.

Anthony Codispoti (22:49)
Ha ha ha ha.

Dave Nitzel (22:50)
for the mere mortals amongst us, identify a market need and come up with a really great solution for that need and then make it known, improve it and blah, blah, blah. And that’s really cool.

Anthony Codispoti (23:02)
solving people’s

problems is a great way to build a business. And so the bar shift, who should pick this up and what will they get from?

Dave Nitzel (23:05)
Yeah.

The bar shift was written for my, a lot of my passion is for people in the management role. Um, I coach executives and all kinds of that, but man, I, I get fired up about helping people in the front lines. worked my way through the ranks. So I think I identify with that. So if you’re a bar manager, a hundred percent, um, if you are a bar owner who needs a little help with the basics of running your bar, you’re a little lost in it a hundred percent.

If you’re aspiring bartender who thinks that they may want to be a bar manager someday or wants to own their own bar someday, a hundred percent like that lane. And it’s, it’s, ⁓ it’s a really easy read. It’s a, was designed for that bar manager who doesn’t have time for nonsense. Who says, just tell me what I need to know and let me go. We wrote it that way. Again, targeted audience. You know, you may say, well, that’s a really narrow audience. Dave, you wrote a book for bar managers.

How many of those? Look, there’s millions of bars. So if I can get 1 % of bar managers to buy the book, we’re OK. So it’s something like that.

Anthony Codispoti (24:21)
So how did that lead into the second book, Hospitality DNA? You had some things left unsaid?

Dave Nitzel (24:27)
No, not quite. I don’t think. I mean, that’s probably fair to… I have to think about that. It was COVID and I’m not good at doing nothing. So, we had all these… I had established all these global connections through that Accelerate program and no one was doing anything. They’re all sitting around on their thumbs, waiting. I don’t know, what are we going to do during COVID? So, I said, let’s start making phone calls and let’s just talk to the people we know. We had no…

We did not know what that book was going to be. We just started doing what you and I are doing now. We just started talking to people and let’s see what it yields. Where’s that? Where’s that take us? And it started taking us down this path of superpowers. Like what’s the one thing that makes you different? These are ⁓ industry award winners, one percenters. So we’re, we went from writing the first book, which is very point and shoot bar manager to a book that said, how did the best of the best win?

And if you want to be elite, if you want to be a one percenter, we’re going to we’re going to carve a path for you to follow. We’re going to show you and learn from them. So it was a research book. And so we canvassed the globe. There’s people in there from nearly every continent. ⁓ Diverse backgrounds, ⁓ diverse venue types, just lots and lots of unique perspectives with the idea being how unique can we get?

and then still find the similarity. Like no matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing, it’s these five things. And that’s what we were able to boil it down ⁓ to five things that we kept hearing over and over and over again. And, ⁓ and that was really cool. That book, I’ve got a copy of it. It’s right here. This is hospitality DNA. Here’s what’s the most interesting thing about it. It’s our, it’s our, ⁓

worth selling book.

Anthony Codispoti (26:24)
Okay.

Dave Nitzel (26:25)
Isn’t that

interesting? All right. So I found that that was a huge lesson for me. We invested 20 times more money in that book than the other two. We put way more effort. ⁓ It’s easily the highest quality of the three. So no question. So if I said to you on the surface, highest spend, highest quality, most researched, most in depth, worst seller, what might you say? Like, I know that it’s not fair, but we don’t…

What does it it’s counterintuitive, right?

Anthony Codispoti (26:55)
Well, I

go back to what you were saying before about like, got to find a problem and deliver the solution. You guys were following the sort of that in reverse. You had a solution and you were looking for a problem.

Dave Nitzel (27:08)
That’s

exactly right. I agree. Now, at the time we were just kind of bored. I guess in fairness to us, we weren’t necessarily on mission there. We were just trying to do something. Man, we were so hyped for that book. I can’t even tell you how proud I am of still of the quality of that book doesn’t sell because people aren’t waking up in the morning and saying, geez, I’d like to be a one percenter. And I just wish someone could tell me how to get there.

Anthony Codispoti (27:37)
that feels like too much of a stretch for them.

Dave Nitzel (27:39)
It’s no,

it’s just not in the, that’s not a question people are asking themselves. So if you look at the other two books, there’s a lot of people waking up in the morning saying I’m drowning, I’m in trouble, I might not make it. I need to do better. What am I missing? Bar shift, tale of two taverns. It’s a cleaner, more simple message where DNA is like an investment and you have to…

There’s not that, well, it makes perfect sense. There’s not as many people in that place, so it doesn’t sell as many books. There’s a lot of people in the struggle that sells a lot of books.

Anthony Codispoti (28:19)
You said though in Hospitality DNA, you guys distilled it down into five common threads. What are those?

Dave Nitzel (28:26)
So we call it the helix. H E L I X. So the first, the first one was humility. You would talk to these leaders and they would all tell you that, shucks, you know, it’s not my fault. Success isn’t my fault. It’s someone else’s fault. And you just thought, man, that keeps happening. That doesn’t mean you’re void of ego. It just means that you’re a pretty good leader and you recognize that you multiply.

apply through others and you can’t win on your own, you know, boiling it down. ⁓ The second one was the explorers pursuit. So the explorers pursuit was really cool because essentially the explorers pursuit was saying these people were very well traveled. They went about ⁓ learning. ⁓ They went about learning other cultures.

and diversity. And that led to a certain amount of empathy when it came to being in service of others, which served them really well. Like if you read the book, you’ll find you have people who started in Denmark, who then had an apprenticeship in Portugal, who then got a job in Scotland at a hotel, who then bounced over to London, who then opened up a bar back in Denmark. I don’t even know if

they realized the value of that or how that led to ultimately to their ultimate success. But it did. So explorers pursuit was probably the most controversial thing. But the thing about doing it really uncommon. Like if I asked you the five things, I think the idea of you saying something like exploration, that sort of thing would be not on the list.

Anthony Codispoti (30:08)
Why controversial?

Dave Nitzel (30:21)
You know, we’d probably default to the McKenzie list of success traits. And that’s not and that’s not what it is. The third one was lifetime experience over and over and over again. was I started and I started in the industry when I was 12. I started when I was 17. You know, I worked at this. did that and I loved it I never left. So school of hard knocks and a ton of learning relative to just being in the fight and and honestly working working your way up.

from the ground up, which was super cool. ⁓ The fourth one was indomitable spirit, which just means you got to suffer through, you got to be able to suffer through some stuff. There’s a certain ruggedness, grit that you have to have in this industry if you’re going to make it. And then the final one was extraordinary culture. Very, very common to some extent ties back to humble nature.

These folks built great cultures, whether they were defined or not, it’s another quest conversation, but every business has a culture. Whether you’ve defined it, who knows? But these folks were very purposeful about how they wanted people to think and believe in their businesses. Lots of training, a lot of intentionality. And that idea is a little bit of what… ⁓

Tale of Two Taverns is about, which is the business fable, which is a little, it’s a deeper, more narrow dive ⁓ on the idea of extraordinary culture to some extent.

Anthony Codispoti (31:59)
So

you had a great selling book, Bar Shift, right out of the gate, your first time doing it. You’re like, hey, we’re pretty good at this. We got an idea for another book. That one doesn’t work so well. It doesn’t sell very well. Still very proud of the content. after, I mean, you’re on a little bit of a roller coaster, right? Great book, you know, not so great sales in the second one. Did you think about throwing in the towel and like, hey, we’re just going to be done with this book authoring thing.

Dave Nitzel (32:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I tend to not think like that. I like to kind of leave things open for possibility. And I’d always said to Dave that I wanted, I grew up on business fables, like Who Moved My Cheese, stuff like that, Getting Naked, these types of books. I found them interesting ways to learn where you could keep flipping the page to see what happens next, but you’re actually being taught a lesson. So hey, what happens? And I thought, man, it’d be cool.

I did my research. couldn’t, I didn’t think there would ever been a business fable written with the backdrop of hospitality or the bar and restaurant business. So I thought, you know, it’d be cool. Let’s, do the first one. I’ve always wanted to do this anyway. And there’s just, we have all the content in the first two books. All we need to do is convert content into a story. And certainly we can do that. We’re not trying to go broad. So one of the reasons we stayed narrow was

it was good for messaging, but it was also practical on the writing side because we’re not authors. So writing takes a lot of work for us to sort of how do we, how do people speak and how do the editing, all that stuff. That’s hard work. But that’s how we ended up with the third one. I did always want to write a fable. So again, probably a little guilty of something I wanted to do and to be fair, but then try to apply the lessons that we learned from the previous two books was damn it.

write about something that people need help with and that they want to read. So we tried to use the learning principles of both books. One was the culture from DNA and then one was the revenue or the demand of the first one, which is write about things that people need help with. And that’s how we ended up with the third

Anthony Codispoti (34:11)
And the third one was fairly recently released, just the early part of 2026 here, right?

Dave Nitzel (34:14)
Yeah. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Launched at number one new release on Amazon, which just, well, look, it’s like being the fastest kid on the block. You know, it’s cool to be the fastest kid on the block, but ⁓ doesn’t mean that I’m going to be on the track team at Harvard, you know? So, ⁓ Amazon, you can get pretty narrow in your categories. Look, thrilled to be number one new release. Let’s not, you know, it’s a sad dog that doesn’t wag his own tail. So.

Anthony Codispoti (34:23)
Not a big deal.

Dave Nitzel (34:42)
We’re thrilled to be number one new release, but to be fair, you know, it’s not like we’re not New York Times bestsellers here.

Anthony Codispoti (34:50)
Gotcha. But still feels really good, right? You’ve got some good momentum right out of the gate with this book. Are the books for you and your partner Dave, are these moneymakers? Is this brand building for what each of you guys do? I’m seeing you nodding your head to the second.

Dave Nitzel (35:09)
For sure. You don’t really make, caution. Anyone who thinks writing a book is going to yield them profits, ⁓ again, one percenters. I’m not, we’re not James Patterson. Yeah, they’re collateral. They’re great marketing material. And ⁓ we are, I authentically want to help people. So it sort of serves that purpose for me internally, my, you know, intrinsic motivators. get a lot out of that. I get a lot of motivation out of someone saying, man, you changed my life. I don’t even.

We don’t even know who they are. We haven’t charged. I’ll just get note. You’ll get the you’ll get notes on Facebook or LinkedIn or at a book signing or something. Hey, I already have the books. Just want to say thank you. I I find. I get great joy out of that, so that’s good for me. That’s good for my motivation. That’s one. It’s certainly great marketing collateral, you know.

I’m getting I get to go to really cool places. You know, I’m traveling to Europe and Asia and to talk about these things. It’s a great vacation. Great way to get a free vacation. Go do a go do an hour talk somewhere that can be a little stressful, but it’s a great challenge. Like throw yourself into the fire and see if you burn. You know, I I love doing that, too. So, yeah, marketing credibility. ⁓ Joy.

That’s it. Money, not so much. You can make some money, but, know, dinner and a movie.

Anthony Codispoti (36:40)
And a free vacation if you’re given a speech. Yeah, so maybe it’s too early to ask this question because the third book just came out. But are you tinkering around with an idea for a fourth book?

Dave Nitzel (36:42)
Yeah, yeah, that’s yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s what that’s what Domskis afraid of. So the doors open. I won’t say yes or no to that. If I get the inspiration or some I see a trend of some kind like right now. Also, I should say ⁓ the third book, I see a shift in our industry from Hey, we when I first started that 13 years ago or whatever, it was we’re in the bar and restaurant business was sort of what I would hear. in the bar business.

Then I started hearing it shifted to we’re in the experience business and all the conversations when started going towards the guest experience, which I think both of those are perfectly credible. But now I think post COVID and we’re seeing generational shifts, we’re seeing lots and lots of fundamental shifts that we haven’t experienced before. And I think we need to get more into the people business. People have been sort of this disposable commodity in our industry for years, like temp work.

You run a temp agency and a bar and restaurant simultaneously. And there’s guilt on both sides because people would see the industry if you were in between jobs. And what would you say? I’m going to get a job waiting tables until I find my next job. So understandably, you would have a very transitional workforce. might have your HR people guy. You may see folks with 100%, 200%, 3 % turnover in a venue and think, man, how are you?

How are you executing at a high level in that scenario? How are you creating productivity and stacking wins in that scenario? Really hard to do. I think we have a responsibility as coaches or consultants, however, to look over the horizon a little bit and say, here’s what’s coming. Brace for impact. Get ahead of this curve. Don’t be behind it. And what I see as it relates to that.

⁓ is people, need to get better at making this a great career, investing in people where they stay. And I have 10 % turnover instead of a hundred percent turnover where I have highly competent teams. So I can behave in the role for which I’m paid. want as an owner, I’d like to work under the construct of being an owner. If I’m a manager.

I want to work in the role that I’m being paid for. And what happens is I get a manager role and I end up waiting tables half the time and I’m sweeping floors and I’m running to the bank. I ran to the bank for my dad when I was five years old. You the skillset of making a bank deposit I think is around five years old. I don’t, why is the owner and the manager spending an hour and a half a day making bank runs? And you’d be like, well, it’s the cash. Look, you have people handling cash in the restaurant.

all day long, but they can’t take it to the bank. Silly things like that. And there’s plenty, there’s people who say, one’s messing with my money. Fine. But you get the point. We have people working outside their roles everywhere. The dumber you treat someone, the dumber they’ll behave. The more responsibility that you give them, ⁓ the more they will respect that responsibility. And if they don’t, then we need to turn the page and find people that do. And we just don’t think like that.

We just don’t think that way.

Anthony Codispoti (40:18)
So do you think it’s an industry that is capable of going from 100 % turnover to 10 %?

Dave Nitzel (40:25)
of course

it is. Of course. Yeah. Absolutely.

Anthony Codispoti (40:28)
And you

think the key to that is just treat your people better.

Dave Nitzel (40:32)
It’s not that people aren’t treating folks well. I don’t want to give the impression that ⁓ people don’t care about their staff. do. It’s just we’re not programmed to think, hey, let’s go through your career path. Let’s have a one-on-one every every three months. Let’s you and I sit down and you tell me how I can improve the business. You tell me whether you’re happy. You tell me about your goals and aspirations. I can still do performance reviews and that’s my opportunity to tell you.

But we’re not having those dialogues. We’re not investing in people. I’m working with folks right now. One of the things that we’re implementing with great success is ⁓ what I call self-funding bonus programs, where people essentially get a share of the lift. So if you’re running a bar and restaurant and you say to me, Dave, here at Anthony’s, I’d like to get a 10 % revenue lift this year and a 5 % profit lift this year, whatever the numbers are. I can’t do that. I’m not smart enough to do that math.

But whatever that lift is and that lift yields a net profit of $12,000 a queue. I want you look at that $12,000 lift and say, look, how much of that are we going to repurpose back to the team? And you say, OK, I can repurpose 30 % of that lift back to the team in the form of a bonus. That’s cool. Let’s do that every quarter.

Now, if I’m a manager and I’m eligible for a portion of that, a thousand bucks and I get a $4,000 bonus at the end of the year, what you create or the gross it up at end of the year, I get that each quarter, I’m working towards common goal with my owner. We’re both working towards something. And if you start changing the way I think from, I’m a transactional temp employee to look, I’m getting a

I’m getting part of the cut just like the owner is, and I’m interested in the same things he’s interested in. I start doing things independently on my own that are in the benefit of the, that are in the mutual benefit of what the ownership wants. But I also can’t mess with that top line. Like I can’t do things because I also, I’m accountable to the revenue number, the profit number, you see, and I have to hit these gateways. And we also put employee, we have a three, so

use a triangle, right? So it’s a three-point bonus program and you have to hit on all three. And the third one, use employee reviews. what’ll happen is people will work to however you incentivize them. I don’t care who you are. That’s how it goes. So if I tell you that you get a portion of the profits, that’s what you’re going to work on. Damn the torpedoes, right? Everyone’s quitting. Everyone hates you. The customers are angry. Yeah, but the profits are up. Cut my check, right? So

You have to put these fail safes in and that’s really awesome. Then at the end of the year, you do it again. Like the next year, you do it again. And if you’re an owner thinking, man, I’m not going to give up any of my profits. First, I think that’s a little daft. But then what you have to keep in mind is, look, you’re taking all that rake the next year. So you’re only giving it up on the first four cues. The next year, you’re going to reset those goals. Now they may be a little lower the next year.

but you have new goals the next year, right? Makes sense? So everything that you just gained, that’s now the new baseline, and you’re going to lift that five, seven, eight, 10 % and do it again. And we’ve had unbelievable success with that. I’ll give you a real case. I’m working with someone whose last year’s profits, I think at the end of the year was a net $20,000.

that number at the end of this year implementing that stuff quadrupled the profits. Bottom line drop after he paid himself and everything else, cash in the bank. So now we’re reinvesting that stuff back into the business and I suspect we’ll probably double last year off of a quadrupled year. Look, that’s, mean,

Anthony Codispoti (44:34)
So in general, Dave, when you take this idea to some of your clients, give me a percentage reception. ⁓ All this is great, let’s do it versus no way.

Dave Nitzel (44:47)
You have to be ready for it. So I don’t have a program, Anthony. A lot of people will tell you, I’m not telling you that I have a system or a program.

Anthony Codispoti (44:56)
It’s an idea. It’s a concept.

Dave Nitzel (44:58)
It’s yeah, it’s in the toolkit. So I try to meet people wherever they are one. So I don’t know where you are in sort of your journey. So I need to I need to catch up to wherever you are. Part one. Then I need to learn where you need to go, where you want to go. What is it that you want for yourself? It’s not for me to tell you that. Right. So it’s not for me to determine. It’s not for me to pass judgment on where you are. And it’s not for me to necessarily tell you where to go unless you’re you’re asking me for that. But I prefer you not ask me that.

And then I need to start determining what your competencies are. From that, then I can start implementing ideas, concepts that work for you. But really, I think ⁓ some of the secret to coaching and getting results. don’t want to say all the time, but far more often than not is having you discover the solution for yourself.

versus me telling you the answer. If I’m telling you answers, my chances of success dramatically reduce. If I can lead you through conversations where you discover it on your own, you’re going to go implement.

Anthony Codispoti (46:11)
sort of like the Socratic method. You’re trying to ask questions to lead folks to the answer.

Dave Nitzel (46:15)
Absolutely

right. And then at the end, I’m no longer trying, I’m not coaching to convince you, I’m coaching to see if you followed up on what seemed to be your own good ideas. It’s a different experience, you know? ⁓ And it’s a great way to get, look, I consider these folks not clients. A lot of them I consider friends. we, I’d like to think, and that doesn’t mean I’m coaching them forever either. ⁓

But the relationships really last and coaching and consulting is a referral business. As much as I can post on LinkedIn, you know how much you know how many clients I get on LinkedIn off the past three years? How many I’d like you to guess, Anthony, can we play again? How many clients do you think I’ve gotten off of all my LinkedIn advertising?

Anthony Codispoti (47:04)
I’m gonna say three.

Dave Nitzel (47:06)
zero. Absolutely zero. ⁓ And I think we’ve grown, I don’t know this for sure, but I think we’ve probably grown four or 500%.

Anthony Codispoti (47:16)
So it’s not

that you’re not growing, but the growth isn’t coming from LinkedIn, it’s coming from relationships, it’s coming from referrals.

Dave Nitzel (47:23)
Absolutely.

mean, think of yourself. We scroll through LinkedIn. I do this all the time because I post on LinkedIn and I’m scrolling like, man, am I hiring anyone off this?

And the answer is usually no. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it. It’s more of a branding exercise, letting people know that you’re out there. You need to stay, at least for me now where I am, I need to try to stay somehow relevant ⁓ and known in the marketplace. So it’s helpful if someone says, hey, I work with Dave and you have seen that guy. I’ve heard of that guy. And then that’s almost done. ⁓

You’re almost assuredly going to get something out of that. But yeah, people coaching is very personal. You don’t just you know, you don’t just make a selection and go, hey, coach me. You have a great 30 second clip, man.

Anthony Codispoti (48:19)
So let’s talk about, yeah,

let’s talk about one of your other businesses. What is Stinger Compliance and tell us about the work that you’re doing there. Wow, you just lit up for people who weren’t watching the video version of this. He just lit up like a bulb.

Dave Nitzel (48:28)
Man, it’s really fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great, great

group of great group of people. It’s a small team of five, maybe six. You know, we have some other, we have some people helping part time and on the side. So cool story. Again, coaching gig, again, relationship thing. I got, I got asked to help launch ⁓ this bootstrap startup called Stinger Compliance. It’s a, ⁓

The founder’s name is Cliff Kreider, great human being. And he had a real passion for being a good steward in your community as a bar owner, mostly focused on not serving ⁓ age restricted products to minors. That simple. Checking IDs, that sort of thing. And really, he’s super passionate about that. Well, we started doing that, of course, and it’s pretty local. And demand on that is a little here and there.

But again, what would happen is you would do that work and then someone would say, hey, you’re coming in here, you’re checking IDs. Can you also do like a service shop? Can you do a mystery shop? you check our stick? Can you do more than just the ID check? so we also have a really, ⁓ we have an incredible IT team. So it’s app based, it’s tech and app based for ease of use. We’re trying to like, Uberize the idea of mystery shops versus

people writing a novel and then trying to do grammar checks and charging a small fortune for this write up where you only care about a fraction of the information, dumping all that, making it really quick and lean. So we started doing that. Where we’ve evolved.

Anthony Codispoti (50:11)
And so

sorry, that service is also part of like, what are they checking for? Are they checking to see if they check their IDs or are they checking for like other customer service boxes that they, okay.

Dave Nitzel (50:20)
and

Right.

Both. And so imagine ID check and mystery shop. You can do either or both. As that evolved, we started getting into groups, so larger groups. with larger groups, let’s say you have a 25 group chain or 10 group chain.

You say, look, can you dashboard this stuff? Can you aggregate this for me? Again, the answer is yes, we can do that. So we built that tech and now what we’re doing, and this is where I’m lining up, getting really excited about the evolution. We’re evolving to where we’re becoming a bit of a middleware aggregator of customer service stuff. So imagine a world where I’m pulling in your Google reviews, I’m pulling in your Yelp reviews. That we pull in your physical shops or those reviews could trigger.

a physical shop, it, have a review at this number, we come shop you and we do your ID checks. We aggregate all that stuff, dashboard it, put it into hierarchies. And as an owner, look, we want to be productive. The person who can get the more stuff done the fastest wins. So you could spend half a day going through the Google reviews of 25 different locations and seeing this, that and the other and. Fooey.

Like we can make that happen really quick for you. We can dashboard it. Now what’s awesome about that is who isn’t that good for. So now we’re starting to work with retailers, automotive retail, like anybody. ⁓ the reason I smile and perk up is we’re in the middle of that fight. Like we’re knee deep in that. And ⁓ I get to be the chief strategy officer for that company. So the cool thing is ⁓

I’m not like I told you before, I’m not a very good tip of the sword guy. You know, like I don’t come up with a lot of my own creative ideas. ⁓ But with that company, it’s, it’s just sort of naturally evolving in the real in a really cool way. ⁓ Super exciting. So ⁓ we’re sprinting like right now with that company, that company, and that business is in a full sprint. And it’s, it’s just, it’s been a

unexpected and a ton of fun for me.

Anthony Codispoti (52:43)
There’s one thing that you said earlier as you were describing it, you’re uberizing it. Tell us what that means.

Dave Nitzel (52:48)
Mm-hmm. Well,

so imagine you have an app on your phone and we have to do, let’s say we have a client in Colorado, grocery store in Colorado, which is a real thing. ⁓ We need shoppers and we need people to go do that. So how are we going to reach them? And you could put a Facebook ad out and you can do all that, which we can harvest people that way to get people in. But once you’re in, we get the app on your phone. Your phone just pings and says, we have a job.

You can sort of geofence where you want to shop. And so those, you know, we need shoppers. So if you geofence, let’s say Denver, you’ll do anything within 10 mile radiance of downtown Denver. If we get a job, it’s going to ping your phone and you can accept that job. Go do the job. Everything you need to do is right there in the app. Complete. We pay you quick. Bang. You’re going to get paid quick. We don’t want to hold money. Another crappy thing that happens. Like get these are

This is gig economy. Get people their money. We don’t need to hold your money and

Anthony Codispoti (53:50)
So

this is a great strategy, right? You don’t have to carry the overhead of full-time employees because it’s going to be sort hit or miss where you need folks. And like you said, it’s the gig economy. So folks who are doing Uber, they’re doing DoorDash occasionally, this is another thing they can do. And I get to go to a bar and order a sandwich. And you guys are paying for the sandwich or whatever it is that you’re having? OK. So they get a night out on you, and they’re to get paid a little bit extra to do it.

Dave Nitzel (54:12)
I’ll try.

⁓ That’s

exactly right. Isn’t it? It’s just really cool. So we’re having a blast with that.

Anthony Codispoti (54:20)
That’s fine. Okay.

Dave Nitzel (54:28)
Sky’s the limit on that.

Anthony Codispoti (54:29)
That one, and I understand why you’re saying that you’re sprinting right now because you’re focused on first age restricted items, right? Like, hey, you’ve got to make sure you card somebody if they’re buying beer or maybe at a gas station, you’re carding if they’re buying cigarettes or something like that. And now as you’ve become in the process of becoming this middleware for all this customer service data, you’re like, wait a minute, retail.

Dave Nitzel (54:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (54:57)
is

another enormous sector. And so where are you guys in that trajectory? You’re moving towards these ideas. Are you ready for those retail customers yet? OK.

Dave Nitzel (55:00)
Yeah.

Starting them. mean, literally

right now we’re in a final test phase and we want to do some beta work. So we’re going to go and make some offers to folks if they’ll let them, if they’ll let us experiment on them a little bit to make sure everything works. You know, some trusted folks that will afford us that. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. You’re right though. In a two year, in about a two year stretch gone from we’ll check IDs to being a full service middleware aggregator.

Yeah, I mean, we’re that we’re Olympic sprinters here. So that’s but it’s great work. It’s been what a great team to like the thing that makes it to people. It always comes back to people. You know, it’s a it’s an amazing, fun group of folks, very small, like Special Forces unit, all charging to common goal. I love that. Like, I’m in I don’t care what I don’t care what we’re doing. I’m in for that.

Anthony Codispoti (56:05)
That’s fun. I want to go back to the coaching just for a moment because I, you know, the coaching example that we use was that, you know, one bar restaurant owner that ended up selling it Chick-fil-A, but in the intro, we said, you’re coaching folks across all kinds of verticals, know, high level executives, athletes, you know, physicians to say more about what you’re doing with these folks.

Dave Nitzel (56:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

How

did that happen? That’s a good question. So ⁓ I wrote the second book. We ⁓ used a publisher, which is why that one cost so much more money. And it was just bigger than our skill set. So we needed a publisher. And a natural outcome of writing your book is that it’s not going to sell. So then what happens is you say, well, I wrote this book and it’s not selling. How do I sell my book? And then

⁓ The answer you have to put yourself out there. What’s the point of this thing? What we’re doing right now is largely in part because we wrote the third book and I need to put myself out there. ⁓ The publisher created a speaking company that said, look, get on stage, make an offer. If you’re going to write a book, you’re not going to make a fortune on the book. then you’re naturally going to end up doing some public speaking, probably.

or podcast, know, put yourself out there. And then that’s probably going to lend itself to some sort of coaching or consulting. Most likely, like that’s the most obvious track. There’s others, but I’d say 95%. That’s how it goes. They put a call out for coaches for the speaker company and it was in and around that COVID time. So I wasn’t that busy yet. We hadn’t picked back up on the barometric side of things.

And I thought, I’m a decent coach. Does it translate? I don’t know. Let’s find out. Right. So again, just throwing yourself into the fire. did like a call for coaches and I answered it. And there was a bunch of people on the screen and they were, they were all dressed like a job interview and I was dressed like this. I’m like, I could take it or leave it, know, which is the absolute best. The best part of coaching is not needing the work. That’s the best coach.

in my opinion is you don’t need it. Not to say I don’t need to work, but I know that I’m at my best when I can be a fearless coach, when I’m not afraid of you firing me. If I coach in fear for the gig, I start getting safe. I start contemplating the things I’m about to say to you, not because it’s best for you, but for what’s best for me. Bad coach. Don’t hire that coach. So with this,

I didn’t want to do that much, but I mean, I was so curious. really wanted to try. So I sent up, yeah, I submit a video. So I submitted a video and I said, look, I said a bunch of things that I thought were witty. And ⁓ I said, look, I can kind of take this or leave this, but here’s what I know. I’ll only coach three people. It’s all I have the time or desire to do, but I only want your worst people.

I want the folks that make you lose sleep at night. I want the worst of the worst offenders. Give me those folks. That’s what I want to do. So if you’re in for that, I’m in for it. And that was the video I sent them and they hired me to do it. they gave me the three worst is the rough, you know, the toughest, let’s say toughest. want the three toughest, the most ⁓ disgruntled upset folks that you’ve got. Give them to me.

Anthony Codispoti (59:40)
And why did you want the toughest? Just give me Mount Everest and then give me the next biggest mountain, right? Like just

Dave Nitzel (59:42)
I don’t know.

Yeah. Yeah. Look, if I can do this,

I could be really good at coaching. It doesn’t do me. I’m not going to grow as a coach coaching you, Anthony. That doesn’t mean I can’t help you, but I can’t grow with you. ⁓ You want to hear the story of my first, the first coaching episode I had? Is that interesting for the podcast? All right. So I get the most disgruntled person and I’m on at first because they don’t just trust me one on one. So it’s me, the founder of the company and the client.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:02)
Yes, yes, please. Let’s dive in.

Dave Nitzel (1:00:16)
And I do my homework on her and she’s a black belt in martial arts and a real estate like guru and she’s not happy. So I get a little bit of the download from the owner of the company of why she’s not happy. Got it. I go online. I research her to find out things about her. Got it. So we sit on a podcast like this and I had gone out. Hang on. How do I tell the story? No. Okay. Hang on.

So she’s doing her thing and I’ve got a snap button shirt on with a t-shirt underneath. Kind of like this, but it’s…

her one of her idols was Bruce Lee. It was really cool, right? She’s the martial art cool, butt kicking type. So I say, look, I hear you. I’m in this. I give her my look. I’m all in. I don’t know anything, but I’m here to help. We’re going to win. And I want to show you one really big thing. And I start unbuttoning my shirt. As I say, I’m going to show you some really big thing. Right. And they’re both mortified on the screen, you know, two women. And I start unbuttoning my shirt and I rip it open.

And I’ve got the Bruce Lee t-shirt on where he’s the one that Tony Stark wears in Avenger, where he’s got the turntables thing. was like, man, let’s go. Let’s Bruce Lee this thing. And man, she’s they’re both crying, laughing like it brings the whole thing to like a ridiculous halt. And and she was like, listen, Dave, let’s just go, man, like, whatever. Forget that. Let’s just go. And I was like, ⁓ yeah, let’s just go. Yeah. So, people can.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:29)
you

Ha ha ha ha.

You had her at Bruce, huh?

Dave Nitzel (1:01:55)
And it was up, and by the way, we crushed it. Man, ⁓ I don’t know. What did I help with? Had to get her on track. Again, you have to get when it comes to authors and speakers and stuff, you really have to get focused on ⁓ three three things. Who do I help?

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:00)
And so what were you able to help with?

Dave Nitzel (1:02:19)
⁓ What problem do I solve for them? And how do I solve it? You’re very clear on that. I could tell right away with your intro, you’re very clear on who you help, what problem you solve and how do you solve it? You know that with great clarity. So then for you, it’s just a matter of executing that, getting it out there, getting the value proposition right, and just really hitting the market relentlessly with your offer. What happens with

what I learned, I didn’t know at the time with these folks was they weren’t even clear on number one, who do you help? And the answer would be, I can help anybody. Okay. If you help everyone, you’re helping no one. Like there’s no audience for everyone. You got to niche it down and way tighter than you think. then she might have said to me, well, I help women.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:04)
You gotta niche it down.

Dave Nitzel (1:03:13)
Okay, well, that’s cool. There’s only like five or 10 billion of them running around. Like, I don’t know. No good. So we had to we had to get really, really narrow. And one of the ironies, too, is a lot of the folks I had a lot of people that I coached in that space where they wanted to be experts outside of their expertise. So I may meet someone who says something like, ⁓ you know, I’ve spent my entire career as a ⁓

What’s a good exam? As an actor. I’ve spent my whole career acting and ⁓ I was in a car accident. And so I wrote a book about my recovery from my car accident. And I want to teach people about what I went through. And if they’re in a car accident, how they how they can facilitate their recovery. And you may say on the surface, well, Dave, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Yeah, but you’re not you’re not you’re not a doctor.

You’re not in physical therapy. You’re not an automotive. You’re not. All you’re really expert in that is your unique experience. And you think that that unique experience of yours translates to a larger audience. And almost always it does not. So when people are looking for help, like the kind of help we’re talking about, they’re looking for a certain degree of depth.

of knowledge and expertise. when you say to me, Dave, you how do you coach these people? And I go, look, man, I’m leaning on like.

I’m leaning on 38 years of managing people. And that’s why I don’t have a program, because I can find you where you are. I can relate to that, figure that out, tell me where you want to go, and I can get you there, for the most part. I haven’t bombed out yet, but I will someday. But I’m leaning on a degree of expertise. If I went and had a snowboarding accident and then wrote a book on snowboarding, who the hell?

What the hell does that have to do with anything? so who’s your audience? Who you writing to? What problem do you solve for them? For the audience. So again, these books, this was my problem and here’s how I solved my problem. And then here’s some things I learned, but it’s really not targeted to anything. And then, you know, what’s my system or approach to helping you? you’re in you got it. That’s how I help. Like it’s really those three things. And that may seem simple and maybe it is.

But it’s a lot tougher than it sounds.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:54)
There’s beauty in simplicity. And just because saying the words and having the sort of the framework is simple to say doesn’t mean that the execution is going to be simple or easy.

Dave Nitzel (1:06:03)
Mm Yeah, that’s

for sure. And a lot of personality stuff gets in the way too. You end up, end up doing a lot of unqualified therapy, I think.

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:18)
Just one more question for you today, Dave. But before I ask it, I want to do three quick things for the audience. First of all, to get in touch with Dave, we’ve got a few options here. First of all, all three of those books that he mentioned are available on Amazon. We’ll give out the names again. We’ve got The Bar Shift, Hospitality DNA, and the brand new one, A Tale of Two Taverns, all available on Amazon. If you want to email Dave, his email address is dave.nitzel at barmetrics.com.

Dave Nitzel (1:06:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:48)
Dave.NITZEL at BarMetrics.com. are you sure? You’ve given me your cell phone number to hand out here. I just want to double check one more time.

Dave Nitzel (1:06:58)
Throw yourself in the fire, brother. I’m not scared. If you like anything I’ve said and you think I can help you, you can text me. I’d rather you text than call. Because I won’t up random calls. But if you text me and say, heard you on Anthony’s podcast, and I might be crazy enough to want your help. Yeah, go ahead. It’s fine. I’ll give it. Let me do it. I’ll do it. You want me to do it so you don’t have to? My cell number is 404-433-5368. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:01)
All right, here we go.

All right. Go for it.

Dave Nitzel (1:07:27)
and you can text me and I will respond. 404-433-5368. Email’s great. Okay, yeah, no problem. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:29)
Go ahead and give it again.

And we’ll have all that in the show notes. Yep. Reach out today. ⁓

And, you know, do a favor for the show today. If you’re enjoying a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards helping others discover our show. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, you can be the hero advisor that helps clients give their employees access to therapists, doctors and prescription meds.

while paradoxically increasing their net profits. Real gains that can change how a business is valued. So learn more today at addbackbenefits.com. So last question for you, A year from now, what is one very specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Dave Nitzel (1:08:17)
jeez. Look, I’d like to I’d like to double my coaching business yet again. I’d like to get more. I’d like to do that. The reason I’d like to do that, not just selfishly that that would be good for me, but also it says that I’m helping people because it is a referral business. So if I can double the coaching business, I’m really happy. ⁓ need to continue. You you picked up on this and I’m kind of glad you didn’t ask me about it.

I got maybe too many irons in the fire and mixed, you know, got, it’s hard for me. The marketing is almost impossible for me. So I think these are very tough times in hospitality. So I have to keep the bar metrics business growing and doing well. ⁓ I need that. I want that stinger business to go crazy. I’m unbelievably excited about that. And I’d like to double my coaching business, which sounds like a lot, I guess, but ⁓

So far the bandwidth is there to do all the above. have great, I’m surrounded by great people, not just good people, but I’m surrounded by real talent. And that makes all the difference. If I wasn’t, I guess I shouldn’t be writing those books. So I’m very lucky ⁓ with the people that I’m around. So that’s what I’d like to do. I want to grow. I want to grow, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (1:09:37)
Love it. Dave Nitzel, I to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being.

Dave Nitzel (1:09:44)
Yeah, it’s been a blast. Thank you for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (1:09:47)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.