It is with a great deal of pride and excitement that I can finally announce the release of my first book: Tips2: Tips For Improving Your Tips. I have been teasing this big announcement for months and am glad to finally be making it, even though for regular readers it may be akin to Mitt Romney announcing that he is running for President. We all know that he hasn’t been in Iowa and New Hampshire for the last two years because he loves the weather. Today, I am making it official and wanted to take a moment to discuss the book and why I truly think it is something that should be on your bookshelf.
When I was a young server in the nineties I used to pay very close attention to some of my more experienced co-workers. I noticed that when I was in the weeds other servers were handling far more tables, helping me out, and looking completely stress free. I wanted to see what they were doing that I wasn’t. They had a secret and I wanted to know what it was. I would ask them, but no one could really put their finger on anything they were doing differently than what all the other servers did. Over the years, I watched my best co-workers like a hawk. Learning how they phrased things, how they dealt with the dinner rush, and why it was that their guests seemed to enjoy them so much.
As it became more apparent to me that serving was something that I wanted to be able to support myself with, I began to seek out books to help me. I read books about sales, but found that few of the techniques were easily applied to serving. I read books about customer service, but they seemed to all be written for managers. I read the seven habits, found out how to win friends and influence people, discovered the thinking without the growing rich part. All of these books were great, but very little of it could be directly applied to making me a better server.
Over my years of serving I have been through the training programs of a dozen restaurants. Each time I finished training, I made a sincere effort to try to follow their system. It led to disappointing tips straight out of training until I started integrating the techniques that I knew had worked for me in the past. Each of these training systems had the same two flaws. The first was that they were written by someone who had not been in front of a table in years. They were filled with rambling scripts that came across as an infomercial rather than a service oriented interaction. The second problem was that they were written to be easily understood by the least intelligent person the restaurant could hire. They often bordered on patronizing as they explained only the very basics.
Fast forward to two and a half years ago when I found myself relaxing on my couch after training a new server on a lunch shift. The server delivered their “pitch” as the training manual had taught them to. Not one thing about that pitch would have made me want to purchase what they were selling. After following me for the shift, this server seemed excited to learn to do it my way. It reminded me of how I must have looked trying to watch the great servers at the restaurant I started at. They had asked me how I made it look so easy and I didn’t have a better response than the servers I had asked years before. I decided to come up with an answer.
Over the next six months I began outlining and writing a book. I would go into work each day and try to test very specific techniques. I would tweak and fine tune the tricks I used to find out exactly what worked and why. Then I would write about them when I returned home. Once the book was finished it went through numerous rounds of edits and rewrites. With each time I reviewed it, I put the techniques back into the forefront of my mind and started trying to polish them. The finished product that I am announcing today looks very little like the first draft. The first draft was good, but the end result is a book that I think will make a significant impact on server’s income.
I know this book will help any server that implements the lessons in it to improve their service and increase their tips. That is not hyperbole, exaggeration, or bragging. I know this is the case because it has improved my tips. I knew everything in the book because I wrote the book. Even on the seventh round of edits and rewrites I was finding things that I was slipping on and by reintroducing them found my tips improving. It is not all revolutionary and new information. Many of you will know most of the information in it. Seeing it explained in a different manner and choosing to apply it will place it in the forefront of you mind and help you increase your income. Those that have been serving long enough to know most of the information will respect more than anyone how one good technique or trick can improve your tips. I would not put my name on this book if I was not convinced that you could improve your income by more than the price of the book in the first week.
It is not my intention for this post to turn into a sales pitch. Instead, I would like to sincerely invite you to check out the website for the book at www.tips2book.com. There are a number of sample chapters available for you to read and reviews from other bloggers who received advance copies of the book. Take your time to consider whether you feel the book will improve your income. I have every confidence it will and hope you will consider buying a copy today.
Tips on improving your Tips 