In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the Leadership Coach and Strategic Advisor of Quiet Advisory, David Dressler

One of David’s starting business ventures was in the restaurant industry with Tender Greens. They worked to create a stable and good environment for workers as the restaurant industry can have a rough culture behind it. David explains that through working in the restaurant industry, he and his partners learned how not to be to their team members. They decided they would be whatever the team members needed such as a guiding hand or dad figure to promote interdependent relationships within the business.

David advises that working with everyone in a business and having a conversation about building a better business is something all industries could take from the restaurant industry. Strategy is an important aspect of business, however, culture can determine how well a strategy can operate. David explains that having a better work culture can help make the strategies work much better for a business. In many businesses, they will present their work culture in one way publicly and in a completely different way internally. David explains that when employees can agree with how the culture is perceived publicly, that is a positive for the business. However, many times employees disagree with how the culture is perceived as it is not accurate to how they are treated. David explains that conversation aids in honesty and transparency within a company because it gives an idea of what needs to be improved in a company. Quiet Advisory works with clients in many industries such as manufacturing, law, and restaurant industries. David explains he works with them in two primary ways as either a leadership coach to aid his clients as a whole or as a culture coach for the entire team of a business.

Key Points from the Episode:

David’s impact in the world
Restaurant culture
Lessons from the restaurant business that could aid other industries
The balance between strategy and culture
The hypocrisy of culture
Honesty and transparency
Who and how clients are worked with at Quiet Advisory

About David Dressler:

David Dressler grew up in Montreal, Canada. From the age of six, he spent his summers in benign indentured servitude, washing dishes, hauling suitcases, and pouring coffee at his family’s hotel in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. At 18, he moved to Switzerland to study hotel and restaurant administration at the Ecole Hôtelière in Lausanne. Forming connections with fellow students from over 40 countries, he happily shared the cost of gas and travel throughout Europe. His catering pay financed “educational tours” of North Africa and Asia. After completing the 4-year program, Dressler moved to California and joined Hyatt Hotels. In his 4 years with Hyatt, he worked every conceivable food and beverage management position before moving to New York to open the Four Seasons Hotel on 57th Street. He soon became the Four Seasons’ go-to career guy, in key markets such as Dallas, Beverly Hills, Carlsbad and Newport Beach. After falling in love with the woman who would become his wife of 20 years, Dressler decided to plant roots in California. It was there, as Director of Operations at Santa Monica’s famed Shutters on the Beach, that he met and befriended his future business partners. The three restaurant professionals, close in age, tired of the rat race, and ready for an adventure, left Shutters in 2004. After cobbling together $900,000 in friends and family seed money in 2006 they opened their first Tender Greens restaurant in Los Angeles. Over the next decade, the partners built a market-defining, heart-centered,...

1325 – The Ten Year Plan with Quiet Advisory’s David Dressler

The Thoughtful Entrepreneur

1325 – The Ten Year Plan with Quiet Advisory’s David Dressler