Melanie Koch

I would say that I'm passionate about what I do, and I really love it, and so that kind of is infectious with everything that I do, and it helps me achieve things that normally, I guess people would be like, oh, that's not possible, but I'm so determined and passionate about what I do, like, I make it happen. People have always told me that I care too much, but that passion is what drove me to start my own business. Now I get to travel around for different restaurant concepts and do my own thing, which I absolutely love.

I would say to give everything you do 100%. Another piece of advice I was told was, like, at the end of the day, like, it's just food, type of thing. The underlying message was don't overthink it, because it's not going to help if you're stressed out for any problem you're trying to solve. You need to stay calm and know, like, at the end of the day, like, it's all going to be alright. Tomorrow's a new day.

The advice that I would give is to soak up all the knowledge that you can and find a mentor, somebody that can show you the ropes. I didn't have that, really, and especially with restaurant marketing, I had to figure it all out. There's so many different parts to it that you need to know, and if you can find somebody that's knowledgeable to just take in all the knowledge that they have, bring a notepad, really invest yourself full-heartedly in it. Make sure that if restaurant marketing or whatever you're going for is what you want to do, to make sure you go full in with both feet and know it's going to be a lot of information up front, but it's going to be super helpful in the long run to definitely find somebody that has that knowledge. I wish I had a mentor back then to tell me all the stuff that I know now.

I feel like there's just so many different restaurant concepts, and so it is hard for restaurants to kind of break the mold and be different and successful. It's just a very oversaturated market. There's restaurants everywhere, and there's so many options for people. So that's a challenge, but it's an exciting one, because you get to figure out what makes these restaurants them and different, and why people should go there, as opposed to the thousands of other options out there.

I would say honesty and integrity, so really making sure you put your best foot forward with what you do. If you feel like you didn't do the best that you can do, be transparent and say, hey, like, you know, I feel like this could have been done differently. I'm pretty transparent with my clients. I'll tell them, hey, I feel like this campaign could have went better, here's what I suggest for the next time, or this or that. I like to be that type of person that they can trust, and they're not just fed numbers or things they want to hear. I'm pretty blunt and honest, and I feel like they really value that.