John Taffer’s book is a no-nonsense guide to getting rid of excuses. And it's named after his life philosophy:
Don't Bullshit Yourself.
Taffer, gregarious dynamo, is executive producer and star of the Paramount Plus network’s hit #1 show, Bar Rescue.
"I'm about to cross 300 episodes, and 13 years on television. Reality TV can be constructive or destructive. I don’t touch destructive Reality TV. At the end of each week, I get two things: a check and a hug. My attitude is to hell with the check, I’ll give that away. The hug means everything, and it makes me scream louder the next week. Looking into someone’s eyes and knowing I’ve made a difference is the greatest inspiration. I'm gonna give the audience a heck of a ride, but I’m gonna leave them in a better place.”
Just like the bars he rescues.
“My show is very much Shakespearean,” quoth Taffer. “Act One: person in trouble. Act Two: resists change. Act Three: starts to transform. Act Four: redeems themselves. Act Five: happy ending. Classic structure.”
He keeps a tight reign: “the entire staff, producers included, work for me. I manage everything. The onscreen talent should know only my name by the end.”
He does no prep planning for his shows. No table reads.
“I literally get a 60-second brief when I’m in the makeup chair: 'This bar is in debt this much, losing this amount of money, etc.’ Then I go in cold, and I simply react to the environment.”
That’s one of the secrets to Bar Rescue’s ongoing success.
“I am never ahead of the audience. Everything is discovered in real time. Am I aggressive? Absolutely. You know why? I noticed in the early seasons that the bar owners I screamed at the most hugged me the tightest at the end. They say things to me like ‘John, you’re the dad I never had.’ ‘John, I needed that.’ ‘John, I’m talking to my wife again. My children are respecting me again.' The things said to me in those hugs are powerful.”
A wakeup moment happened 120 episodes in...
“I had asked 120 operators the same question: ‘Why is your bar failing?’ Not once – not once – did one of them say, 'I’m failing because of me, John. I’m failing because of decisions that I made.'"
They blamed the competition, their employees, the environment, the facility, the president, Congress, the recession – every excuse. And [one] had the coup de grâce: the Euro in Greece. I realized that night that the one common denominator of failure is excuses."
“You have to own your shortfalls because only then do you have a reason to change. The effect of an excuse is to paralyze growth. It paralyzes learning. It creates a bullshit excuse that you cuddle up with, and you sleep like a baby, bullshitting yourself.”
He approaches every failing bar with the understanding that it’s never about the business – it’s about the owner.
“I have to change that owner’s behavior, and I have four days – literally about 11 hours with them – to do it. So, to me, I consider myself a Gestalt therapist. I go in hard, I go in heavy, I lay it on the table."
He hammers them with challenge after challenge: "So how do you feel about not having any money to buy your children sneakers? How do you feel about your children thinking you’re a drunken fool? How does it feel to know your wife doesn’t respect you? You’re going to lose your house!”
Taffer says he has to find the trigger to change. Sometimes it’s pride, sometimes it’s fear. Then he drills into that trigger, because that causes his bar owners to act.
“My job is to get into their heads, upset them, create emotional turmoil that causes a touch of doubt. I must make them doubt themselves. In that moment of doubt, there’s a crack I can walk through and start to change their behavior.”
Taffer credits the success of the show to the fact that he was an anthropology major: “It’s never about numbers. It’s about changing the dynamic of human behavior. I’ve saved bars. I’ve saved marriages. I’ve saved lives. That’s Bar Rescue.”
Takeaways:
To learn more about Taffer’s process in the “pressure cooker” of turning a bar around; why TV is about “reactions;” how all business should be measured in GRO (Guest Reaction Opportunity) or CRO (Customer Reaction Opportunity); how false gratification and entitlement affect Gen Z workers – and how COVID helped create that; and the importance of human connectivity and tipping culture around the world, watch the video here.
Written by Adam Gilad
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