This is fictional story showcasing how Farsight can help businesses in the hospitality industry. Let us write a real story with you!

Samira started Haven Cafe with a dream: offer a creative refuge to those tired of working in stuffy offices, and unable to concentrate at home. She saw comfy leather chairs for those who wanted to relax, standing desks and clean workspaces for those who wanted to be productive, and spacious tables for meetings. There would be coffee, but also cocktails. There would be outlets at every seat. The cafe would open early and stay open late for creatives and workaholics of every type. 

Five years in, Samira found herself frustrated. Her small business loan had quickly run out, and the cafe looked like only a fraction of what she had dreamed. She could only afford a small space in a strip mall, closer to the suburbs than to downtown Washington. Since starting she had never seen enough profit to make any real investments into nicer furniture, more experienced staff, or buildouts within the space. She didn’t want to work on the space because she didn’t want to stay there, but she saw no hope of ever leaving. Haven Cafe was constantly just surviving.

Fed up, Samira hired Farsight Consulting to help her dream again. It was obvious to us that Samira had a grander story in mind for Haven, but the story had been lost in the scramble of survival. After her initial consultation we made a five year plan to get Haven into a spacious, modern space in downtown DC. More importantly, we made a plan to get Samira back to a place where she was feeling excited, successful and fulfilled in the dream that she started with.

1) Develop a Passionate Leader

Farsight’s services always start with mindset change for you, the business leader, so we immediately set up a bi-weekly mindset coaching meeting with Samira. In the first two weeks of coaching, we gave Samira two pieces of homework: 1) Write the story about where her dream came from, 2) talk to three Haven regulars to find out what aspects of her vision were already working well, and 3) write out three moments, no matter how small, where Haven’s vision was fulfilled. These moments would be the little sparks of life that we would spend the next year fanning into flame every time we met–keeping Samira excited, hopeful, and locked in to the vision.

As Samira wrote her story, she noticed that the dream for Haven went all the way back to her college days at the University of Virginia. She never felt she could focus on her studies in a noisy dorm, so she was constantly at coffee shops when she needed to work. It was a stressful and overwhelming time, but she found refuge and creativity in a hot espresso and the buzz of conversation around her. Samira ended up framing a version of her story and hanging it near the front door of Haven as an invitation to others to find what they needed here the way she had in college. 

As we went through more mindset work, Samira noted that a constant source of negativity in her thinking was interactions with staff. Often she expressed frustration with staff when they made mistakes, and a culture of gossip about Samira had formed among many of the team members. Samira felt tense every time she went to work knowing that she would have to work in that environment. Samira needed the confidence that she could lead in ways that would leave people happy with her and excited about her vision. We helped her to develop that confidence through the next step of our work with her: developing passionate staff.

2) Develop Passionate Staff

After mindset change for the leader, Farsight always focuses getting staff on board with the dream. No one will ever care about your business as much as you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t inspire staff to care with you. We performed a series of customer experience visits to Haven. We also interviewed lead staff individually to assess how passionate they were about the vision of Haven as a creative refuge for working professionals. Ultimately we gave Samira a detailed customer experience assessment at the 1-month mark.

We found that while the staff embodied some elements of the “Professional Refuge” experience, many elements of the experience were disjointed from the central vision. Staff were sometimes overly helpful, interrupting guests who were focused on work, even delivering a check for payment in spite of Samira’s policy that paying guests can stay as long as they like. In interviews, many staff articulated “excellent coffee” or “a nice atmosphere” as the central theme of Haven’s mission, rather than a true understanding of Samira’s goal. We also noticed that most of Samira’s conversations with staff involved correcting mistakes or logistical issues, not talking about mission. 

In the next three months, we helped Samira develop and execute a plan to gain staff buy-in. First, we asked her to commit to speak passionately with each staff member at least once a week about a guest story that embodied her dream–not a corrective conversation, but one that showed she was excited to have them on a team doing such cool things. Second, we asked Samira to think of a way that she could give staff themselves the Haven experience. She began holding a quarterly “staff-only” day, where she closed the shop to guests, and hired outside catering to provide food and drinks, allowing staff to rest and enjoy each other. 

Samira found that telling exciting stories to staff got her out of her own negativity, and over the next six months she found staff speaking more openly with her, asking more questions, and offering a more cohesive experience to guests. The staff-only days became an anticipated event, and staff began to bond more than before. Samira was able to identify leadership in individuals that she had missed previously, and the staff began to feel more like a team than a set of employees.

3) Develop Passionate Customers

Samira had an idea in her mind of what the ultimate “Professional Refuge” experience looked like. However, she knew that all of her guests brought unique needs and wants to their experience. She needed to build “Professional Refuge” around the needs of her target audience, and to do that, she needed data. 

Three months in, Samira had already made a habit of telling herself and her staff success stories about guest experiences. In doing so, she had become more mindful of guests and more aware of who her regulars were. Working with Farsight, Samira developed a short guest interview. We encouraged her not to put this interview in an impersonal text or email, but to ask for five minutes of guests’ time while they were in the cafe. 

After 8 interviews with regulars, she started to see the clear themes of guest needs. Most interesting, she began to realize that there were two types of regulars–she called them the day regulars and night regulars. The day regulars were there for coffee, short hours on a laptop, and professional meetings. The night regulars enjoyed a cocktails, and often stayed longer hours working on creative projects. This data freed Samira to change the cocktail service hours, allowing her to allocate staff in a way that cut some costs while still meeting guest needs. 

More importantly, through the interviews, Samira got to know guests stories. She learned of a local author who found their creativity during long evenings at Haven. She learned that several local business leaders met at Haven to discuss a charity project at least twice a month. She had the idea to showcase all of the guest stories she was uncovering on social media, and found that most of them were very open to working with her. Quickly, Haven was no longer just a local business, it was a place where Samira’s community was being built up. 

As she became more connected with guests, Samira got to share her own vision as well. She found that regulars felt even more connected to the dream, and came even more often. The dream started to spread, and seats started to fill. One of her interviews even led to a conversation around investment in spreading the dream beyond the local store–”Samira, would you ever want to open a location downtown? I’d be interested in helping to make that a reality.”

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Farsight would love to work intimately with your business vision and needs. There is no cookie-cutter solution, but we excel in the three steps we have outlined in this story: Develop a passionate leader, develop passionate staff, and develop passionate customers. The grander story of your business is all about people, and when your whole business is working excitedly for the good impact you are having on the people in your community, things start to change drastically! Reach out to us to discuss a partnership.