Last week, I was in Las Vegas for the Vault Conference at MGM Grand. Don’t worry, this post isn’t about that. While in Las Vegas, I met up with a family member who owns three restaurants. She shared some of the challenges she’s facing as the business grows.
The number one challenge, which every growing business eventually faces, is leadership and team alignment.
The business is doing fine. But she’s not excited. She worries about losing quality as they grow. She worries about the team’s enthusiasm. And she worries that if her own excitement is fading, maybe it’s because she’s no longer pushing the business forward.
After listening to her, I told her what I thought:
It seems like you, your business partner, and your leadership team aren’t aligned on what kind of company you’re trying to build. You see possibilities and opportunities. Your CFO sees costs and risk. You want to push the team toward exceptional. Your CFO wants to protect what already works.
Neither perspective is inherently wrong. Controlling costs matters. But if the default answer to a new idea is “too expensive,” without asking what it could create, eventually people stop bringing ideas. That’s what’s killing your enthusiasm. And eventually, it’ll kill your team’s.
The underlying philosophy becomes: If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
That’s the problem.
Controlling costs matters. Restaurants have notoriously tight margins. But sameness also has a cost. When you become another place where people go to eat, you become more of the same. And when you become more of the same, you become forgettable.
Then you have to constantly remind people you exist. Exceptional experiences don’t need reminders. People talk about them.
Of course the quality of the food matters. But people remember more than food. They remember how a place made them feel. They remember the unexpected detail. The story. The service. The atmosphere. The thing they didn’t see coming. And this is Las Vegas, a city practically built around exaggerating experiences.
We can all remember products, services, restaurants, and experiences that felt otherworldly. Some required enormous budgets. Most didn’t. Because here’s the thing: The gap between average and amazing isn’t always as big as we think. It takes intention and commitment to doing what most won’t.
Often, it’s a hundred small decisions made differently. It’s noticing what others overlook. It’s caring when you could get away with not caring. It’s doing the extra iteration. It’s asking, How could we make this remarkable? It’s refusing to let “good enough” become the standard.
That’s why exceptional isn’t primarily about money. It’s about intention.
Anyway, she wants her restaurants to become known for being exceptional. She’s got some work to do. The day I left Las Vegas, I sent her this message:
Exceptional is not an accident. It’s a decision. It’s a commitment. It’s a mindset. Average happens by default. Exceptional requires intention. It means refusing to accept “good enough” when you know better is possible.
It means caring about the details other people overlook. Holding the standard when nobody is watching. Doing the extra iteration. Asking the harder questions. Choosing craftsmanship over convenience. And doing it consistently.
Exceptional isn’t something you become once. It’s a standard you choose to uphold every day.
Bottom line: Average is the natural result of optimization without aspiration. Exceptional requires somebody to deliberately keep raising the standard
