We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amanda Signorelli. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amanda below.

Amanda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

Family businesses are extraordinarily difficult because of the constant entanglement between personal and professional. Boundaries are often eradicated and the only path to success is through a blackbelt in communication. Like all businesses it comes down to goals and intent. What kind of company do you want to build? A business that happens to be run by a family or a business that only employs family.

Amanda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a techie who found herself leading a restaurant but didn’t want to give up the technology industry so instead I merged them. In 2019, my husband and I left our careers in technology and moved to Vegas to take over my family’s restaurant business – the oldest steakhouse in Vegas. We were inspired by the story, brand, history, and vision. The trouble? I’m not a restaurateur by trade nor can I even cook! Yet, I love a great story and a great brand so I looked at this pivot as an opportunity to apply what I had learned at tech startups to an old school brick n mortar business. The result is a digitally native luxury heritage brand. Since taking over, we have become one of the most viral steakhouses in America on TikTok, launched an eCommerce brand, and started building an integrated customer experience and platform. We’ve now grown to the point where 70% of our reservations are booked more than 2 weeks in advance and we ship 1000s of boxes around the contiguous US. Today, we couldn’t be more grateful for our journey and excited for the future.

Any advice for managing a team?

The number one learning I believe most leaders sincerely appreciated during COVID was that we are all painfully, beautifully, and uniquely human. Everyone was trying to survive their own isolated worlds and the best way to navigate the newfound complexities of everyday life was to lead with empathy, kindness but most importantly purpose. Giving our team big and audacious goals, providing structure, but allowing for flexibility inspired team members without creating a pressure cooker.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When COVID hit like many restaurants we were forced to close. Being located in Las Vegas and on the strip we were concerned that it would be years before the city would reopen and tourism returned. So we immediately began thinking how we could expand our business outside the four walls of the restaurant. We began experimenting and while several failed we found two that stuck – eCommerce and Zoom Master Classes. For the next year, we spent the mornings packing, shipping eCommerce boxes, the afternoons hosting Zoom events, and the evening slowly opening the restaurant up within capacity restrictions. It was wild, exciting, exhausting and so rewarding. The culmination of all efforts led us to transforming the Golden Steer Steakhouse from a restaurant into a broader consumer brand.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://goldensteersteakcompany.com/collections/shop-all
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goldensteersteakco/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@goldensteersteakco