What does flair bartending and bus dev have in common?

Bartending makes up about 6 years of my work experience, about 40% of my personality, 50% of my confidence, and took hundreds upon hundreds of hours for me to get "good" at. Part of that is because I'm not your average bartender...I'm a flair bartender, curtsey of my time at TGI Fridays.

I love flaring - like seriously love it. It was something that broke up boring shifts (I'm looking at you, Monday night) excellently, and, when I switched from being a music major to a world languages major, it was something that allowed me to still perform. Flairing is fun, flairing is cool, and flairing takes a lot of work...especially at TGI Fridays, because you're not just learning flairing for the heck of it: you're preparing for Bar Champs.

Bar Champs is a competition that you host at various levels, starting with your store/local level, moving on to regionals, districts, all the way to worlds.

The purpose of this competition? To re-validate your bartenders, both in their working and exhibition flair, and, more importantly, in their knowledge of drink recipes, specs, and company core values/theory. It can get a little intense, if you care about it. And for me, I cared about it a LOT.

Something else I care a lot about is business development. Since my time at Moncur started, I've been on a path to improve as quickly as possible. For example, I've been going to events, both in-person and virtual, webinars, and have started going through a sales course, to hone the skills that a good business development professional needs to help, serve, and earn clients.

Yesterday, I was a little stressed, and for the first time in a while, I broke out my flair props + head phones to try to connect my muscles, brain, and breath together, in the hopes of getting that stress/anxiety to fade away. As I was doing this, I started to think...I sucked at this when I started.

Something else I feel like I sucked at when I started? Bus Dev.

I started to think a little more deeper on this: how long did it take me to feel confident as a bartender? Like really, really confident, as in "I know my bar, my guests, my recipes, better than the guy running the store" confident....3 years? 4 years? Either way, it took some time.

I thought to myself: the journey I'm on right now feels very similar to when I was 2 years into bartending, learning to flair, and learning to "own" my bar.

And that thought string lead me down a rabbit hole that I want to share with you, because I realized that flair bartending and bus dev have a LOT in common.

"Like what?"

I'm glad you asked...

Here are 10 areas, complete with anecdote, that flair bartending and business development have in common:

1.You need good tools - and those tools will evolve.?

By good tools, I mean the tools that work best for you. When you start out learning to flair, you don’t go straight for the glass bottles. Most people start with a dummy-bottle, a weighted one made of hard plastic, or, if you’re like me and didn’t have the money for one at first, you get crafty. I took empty bottles of "well liquor" home and used electrical tape to drop-ify them. You’ll also want weighted tins, and, for the love of God, closed toed shoes. When it comes to bus dev, you also need good tools, that are tailored a little to you. Your tools can look like a CRM, your LinkedIn profile, your business cards, or fun surprises in your outreach. They won’t always stay the same: they’ll change as your skill level does, or as you experiment with new things.

2. You need to find your vibe & then use it.

In bartending, and in bus dev, your personality is a huge part of what draws people in, so do things to highlight it. When it comes to your flair routine, pick a song that you LOVE and fits the ENERGY you’re trying to create. Likewise, when doing outreach, infuse your personality into it. Create a vibe that makes your contacts happy to converse with you, and puts energy into their day. One of my all time goals is for people to get a sense of who I am, whether that’s in person, or digitally, like through an email. That’s why I’ll sign off as “Cheerfully, Jordan” or “Carpe diem, Jordan”!

3. You have to practice, until it’s second nature.

In order to be confident the day of a competition, or even confident enough to just do working flair when bartending in front of strangers, you have to practice until it feels like second nature. That goes for bus dev too. Have client objections that you know come up frequently? Be ready to speak to those through conversation, NOT script. Practicing anything like it’s second nature will help save your butt, if and when things get a little crazy. For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve “saved” a bottle as it was falling, because I was able to see the neck, grab it, and use its momentum to turn the fall into flair, to keep it from reaching the floor. I’m also a queen of saving "drops"…whether it’s through my thighs, shins, or using a bottle like it’s a hacky-sack...all those saving techniques came from practicing, dropping, and saving, over and over again.?In bus dev, if you don't know your "stuff" like it's second nature, then you're going to have a hard time saving the bottle if it drops...like in the middle of a cold call that's definitely not going well. Practicing like it's second nature in bus dev also incorporates really, truly understanding your contact's pain points, so that when you are speaking to them, or their objections, you're doing so from a point of service.

4. You have to make “it” an experience.

If you’re not making someone smile at the end of the day, or go “wow!”, then you’re not doing it right. I don’t think this one needs a ton of explaining, so I’ll just say this: if you’re trying to sell or further a business relationship, you can’t do that unless they like you. And, the fastest way to get someone to like you, is to make them smile. From there, keep up the momentum, and give them an experience they’ll never forget…even if they choose to not go with your offer, or even don’t like the drink you made.?

5. You have to have fun.

Flairing is hard, and sometimes you’re stuck practicing the same move hundreds of times. If you’re not having fun with it, it will quickly become monotonous…just like with bus/dev or sales. If you’re not having fun it can feel a little soul-sucking…seriously. And, not to give anyone social anxiety or anything, but your guests and buyers can tell if you’re not having a good time. “Having fun with it” can look different to everyone. There’s times when I’m flaring that I have a GIANT smile across my face, and there’s other times where I’m giving off mad RBF, because I’m concentrating really hard. That doesn’t mean I’m not having fun while doing it! Do what makes you feel happy: pick a song you like, use moves you like, pick a drink you like. From the bus dev side of things: write out a cadence/sequence that brings you joy to send out, and infuses joy or humor into your contact's day. Create an experience that is fun for both you, and them.

6. You will fail.

They say sales is 90% failure, and believe it or not, I didn’t know that “they” said that when I started in bus dev…so my first year was pretty tough. I’m a perfectionist, to a fault, and I also hate feeling like I’m disappointing anyone. Continuing to learn, while continuing to “fail”, felt like an endless, dark pit at times. It was sad, it was painful…and it was a lot like trying to land a *stall for the first time, either on my hand, or on my elbow. I had a ton of bruises to show for the work I was putting in, but I did not have the skill mastered to show it off. It was frustrating, to say the very least. But, that first time I hit a stall, a real, bonafide stall, I felt amazing. The same thing can be said when I landed my first client. The accomplishment brought me happiness, joy, and, I’m not going to lie, tears. Failing sucks, but, when you get things to go right, through learning, time, and working through the failure, the accomplishment at the end of the road is so worth it.

*A stall is a move where you flip the bottle, and land it right side up on the top of your hand/elbow.

7. Know your top 25 drinks.

After winning my local bar champs I went on to districts, in Orlando. The day before the actual event (flair show), you go in to take a written test, which sets about half of your score, moving into the final event. It consists of drink recipes, garnish specs, and TGI Friday's theory…it was pretty legit and you have to know your stuff going into it, because if you tanked this part of the test, you had no hopes of winning with flair. In The BCBIT Manual, there’s a couple hundred of drinks, and each season a new manual comes out…so how do you know what you’ll be tested on?

Well, at your store level, you’ll be tested on that season’s top 25 drinks, and then at the regional level you’re tested on the top 50 drinks. When you’re tested, you have to write out each drink, like so…

The BFM: Glass, Double Old Fashioned. Procedure: Salt ? rim, Mixer w/ Ice, Strain. Ingredients: 1.25 oz Patron Silver Tequila… all the way down to the garnish and type of straw.

That’s a lot of detail, and you have to know that level of detail for more and more drinks, per each competition level you proceed to. That 50 turns into 75, which turns into 100, and I think goes all the way up to every drink in the book, when you’re at the World Competition. It’s insane! But…very doable, if you start small, with those core 25 drinks.

For me, I had to study hard, whether it was through visualizing my bar, and saying out loud what I was “pouring” into my glass, or literally handwriting the recipe hundreds, if not thousands, of times. It’s a LOT of work, but it makes you a better, faster, more competent bartender.

In bus dev, you also have to know your top 25 drinks, aka your core service/offering, like the back of your hand. Whether that means hard studying, practicing talking about them in a mirror, or creating business cases for each of them. You have to know every detail, and then be ready to put it to the real life test, whether that’s in a demo, a proposal meeting, or the flair round.?

8. You have to be able to adapt.

At both my store level and regional bar champs, I made my own music mix (something my time as a music major helped me do). I carefully curated it, making each fade in/out, and selected the songs I wanted to add the energy I needed to make it a good time. I practiced to that mix incessantly, and heard the music in my sleep: I had my routine down, and it was because of the music. At my store level, they just hit play and let me do my thing. In Orlando, the DJ had a different idea… I was in the first part of my routine when he did some weird DJ stuff and spliced my mix...and it threw me off, so hard.

For a split second I froze, confused, and that knocked my timing off.

At bar champs, you only have a set amount of time to make 5 drinks, complete with flair, for a trio of judges…timing is everything! In the time it took me to come out of the fumble, I had to adapt my routine on the fly. He messed with my mix throughout the rest of my routine, and oh boy was I mad. But, after the first “splice” I was prepared, and was able to adapt. I tuned the music out, and just focused on the drinks, the moves, and let muscle memory take over. I'm not going to lie though, it was hard, and it resulted in "not my best" performance.

Sometimes in bus dev, you might have what you consider a perfect routine, whether it’s in your outreach, your cadence, or your meeting conversation. But, the great thing about people is that they’re all different, and not one is going to fit into your perfect routine, perfectly. Because of that, you’ll have to be ready to adapt, and tailor the experience you created, to be the experience they deserve.

Adapting here means personalization, and personalization is king.

If you try to stick too hard to something, you risk coming off as robotic, or worse, scripted, and no one deserves to be put through that type of an experience. So, make sure you adapt your routine when appropriate, to give them the experience they need, and deserve.

9. You have to have discipline.

If you want to get better, both with flair bartending and bus dev, then you need to be disciplined. That means planning accordingly, creating a practice schedule, and sticking to it, in the name of improvement. That might look like making 6:00 pm your time to practice a bottle toss, or chunking out 1-2 hours of your day for professional development, cold calls, etc. Either way, you have to set aside dedicated time each day, week, month, to make sure you're constantly improving.

Having discipline here also means that you should be looking at smaller increments of improvement, rather than trying to do everything all at once, as enticing as that might be.

For example: you're looking up a really cool transition that consists of 3 moves, for your routine. There's been times where I've been so excited, that I've tried the full transition all at once, rather than learning it move by move. I'd get frustrated because I just couldn't seem to get the transition down, but that's because I was trying to do the full thing all at once, rather than breaking it down into smaller steps.

The same can be said for bus dev. You have to allow yourself to not only work, but also detail, the smaller parts of the bigger picture, in order to improve your process, outreach, or knowledge of your products/services. Breaking things up into these smaller chunks to practice also helps you feel less overwhelmed, when learning something new.

10. You can’t forget the straw.

At TGI Fridays, there are some cut-throat rules in bar champs. You can “scratch” a drink if you forget an ingredient (obviously), a garnish (not as obvious) or, a straw, once you present your drink to the judges as “finished”. When I won bar champs at my local Fridays, I didn't receive points for each of the drinks I made. I made a mistake at last minute with the Barbados Rum Punch…

I forgot to put the straw in it.

I had just made this perfect drink, complete with entertainment, and then my guest couldn’t even drink it, theoretically.

The lesson here is that if you want to give a great experience, you have to end on a great note. You can’t forget something as simple as a straw––especially right at the end.

In bus dev, you got to keep up whatever energy, correspondence, or expectations you set at the beginning, all the way through to the end, otherwise you risk running the whole experience for your buyer. Don't start on an awesome note, only to end in a lukewarm experience, because your buyer, or your guest, deserves better than that.

And that's where this rabbit hole ends. I hope you enjoyed learning a tiny bit about flair bartending, bar champs, and these 10 connections that I felt both bus dev and flair bartending had in common.

I chose flair bartending to write about, because it's something I know, however, I'm certain that there are other crafts, skills, and practices that you could also compare to bus dev. If you have any that you'd like to share, feel free to comment! Also, if you're a bartender, or a flair bartender, and feel like I missed anything, please add it to the list––I'd love to read it :)

Cheerfully,

Jordan