#50: Why Unreasonable Hospitality Is The Ultimate Competitive Advantage with Will Guidara

Unreasonable hospitality is my way of articulating that we all should invest some of our most relentless intention and creativity into making those moments matter as much as humanly possible. And so unreasonable hospitality is my call to arms. It's me saying that, hey, everyone that has achieved any level of success has done so through being unreasonable in pursuit of the product or service, doing whatever it takes to make it as good as humanly possible. I'm asking people to redirect success, some of those efforts into how they make people feel. Hi, I'm Nick Hague, and welcome to the World's Greatest Business Thinkers podcast. Today we're tackling one of the most powerful, yet often misunderstood drivers of business. And it's not a technology, it's not a financial model, but a fundamental human principle. Hospitality. We're not talking about good service. We're talking about unreasonable hospitality, the kind that transforms customers into lifelong advocates, employees into passionate owners, and companies into beloved legends. My guest today is the leading voice on this very idea. Will Godaro was the co owner of the legendary eleven Madison park, which was, under his leadership, was named the number one restaurant in the world. But more than that, he became famous for his philosophy that turned the industry on its head, proving that obsessive, generous, and yes, sometimes unreasonable focus on the human experience is the ultimate competitive advantage. His first book, Unreasonable Hospitality, was a bestseller that resonated far beyond restaurants. Now he's back with his playbook we've all been waiting for, the Unreasonable Hospitality Field Guide. I hope you enjoy this podcast. I'm sure you will. And if you do, I really would appreciate if you'd subscribe wherever you listen or watch. Welcome to the World's Greatest Business Thinkers podcast. Will. Thank you so much, man. I'm really happy to be here with you. Well, I can't say how happy I am, actually. I mean, I've spoken to so many people on this podcast, idols of mine, Dan Pink, Gary Hamill, Rory Sutherland. People that when I was in business, I really looked up to, but I have a specialism in, or used to, when I was in research of customer experience. I'm a proper foodie. And so, you know, when I received your new book and you know, speaking to you today, it really is a delight. So we're here to talk about your new book, Unreasonable Hospitality, the field guide. But to start things off, I'm interested in in what young Will was really like. I've read the book, so I've got a flavor. But for the listeners, you know, what was your earliest memory of when you first realized how powerful hospitality can be. You know, I do. I went into restaurants because of my dad. My dad was my hero growing up. My mother became a quadriplegic when I was quite young, and my dad worked in restaurants. Anyone who does not know what that means from a number of hours perspective, it's a lot of hours. And he took care of her, which means literally getting her out of bed and showering her and dressing her and getting her ready for the day and doing the whole thing in reverse at the end of the day. And yet somehow, while doing those two things, he also was an extraordinary father to me. And so I don't know that I even fully understood how remarkable it was that he was able to do all of that. But I did understand at an early age that I was in awe of him. And so it honestly didn't matter what he did for a living. That would have been the thing I wanted to do. It just so turned out that I fell in love with restaurants, with the energy of the rooms, with the idea that no two days would ever be the same. Yeah. But I fell in love with hospitality for a different reason. And I delineate the two, because while most people refer to restaurants and hotels as the hospitality industry, I just look at restaurants as the mechanism through which I was able to articulate my approach to hospitality. I fell in love with hospitality through the interchange between my mom and my dad and me. I mean, we were a family that was centered on caring for her, and that was just my. My normal. Like, we took care of this woman. And watching how my dad never felt bad for himself in doing that. In fact, to the contrary, he clearly derived pleasure from it. How that inspired me to also derive pleasure from it. And then watching her, how this woman who could not move or speak through the energy she transmitted to me, which I think is an expression of hospitality. I have never felt more loved by anyone in my entire life. I think this was made more literal because at a certain age, I went to a private school and kids lived kind of everywhere. And so when you wanted to hang out with your friends, your mom had to drive you to go to someone's house. And my dad, always a very intentional person, and that was especially so in how he parented me, was concerned about my confidence, that I would develop confidence issues if I always had to rely on everyone else in order to ever be socially engaged with my community. And so he moved our house so that it was two blocks away from my school. I was the only person in my friend group that Lived a walk from school. And because my mom was in a wheelchair, she had to be in the bedroom downstairs. And the people that he bought the house from, they were like, og work from home, family. So there was like a big office on the second floor where they ran whatever little company they had. That office became my bedroom and my house. That room was where people gathered. So, like, every day after school, if people were hanging out, they were hanging out there. And so through that move, I became the kid that threw the party. I became the kid that had people over. And so it's just been, for a number of different reasons, a big part of my life, always. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know from reading your first book, I. I can honestly say I. I moved to tears. I mean, your mom was one hell of a fighter. She. She lived seven years longer, didn't she, than she should have done with a brain tumor. And the struggle that you talk about, where she held on till you graduated from Cornell and. And. And then woke from a coma. Yeah, I mean, that just. That killed me, Will. So, I mean, fabulous woman, fabulous father, and. And some great lessons in life that you took from. From both of them. You know, she was a flight attendant for American Airlines before she got sick. And this is back in the day when they were called stewardesses, and it was a very, very glamorous position. And I just did a talk at American Airlines, and I want to show this to you. As my gift that they gave me. They found her picture when she was a flight attendant at the airline. Oh, wow. And so that is my mother back in the day, in uniform. Yeah, dude, she was amazing. My dad often says, and I write about it quite a bit in the book, that adversity is a terrible thing to waste. And, gosh, I believe that to be true. When I think about some of the most jarring and disappointing and adverse moments I've experienced in my life, I can now look back at almost all of them with gratitude because I don't believe I would have gone on to do what I did next or become the man I've become absent those experiences. And that is everything from getting my heart broken in my 20s. Gosh, I'm grateful for that. Otherwise, I would not have met the woman I'm happy to raise kids alongside the love of my life. I'm grateful for coming in last place the first year we were added to the list of the world's best, because were it not for that, I don't think we would have gone on to create the culture we created. And, well, Listen, if I could make one change in my life, it would be that my mom never got sick and that she was still alive today. But so much of that season has informed who I've become, and I like to feel gratitude towards her in as consistent a way as possible. Yeah. In today's fast paced business world, ideas are currency, and podcasting is one of the most powerful ways to share them. That's because a podcast allows your business to build authority, reach a global audience, and create meaningful connections and conversations with listeners. I know from experience that when I'm interviewing industry leaders and sharing my own background in business, then the podcast turns thought leadership into tangible influence. That's where Riverside comes in. I love it. 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You can find the link and code details in the episode description. Well, like you say, life, what happens in life certainly does shape you as a person. And you went on, you followed your father's footsteps, you went into, to the, to the restaurant game. And in 2006, I mean, I'm skipping a fair bit of, you know, what happened after you graduated, but you, you then were called up and, and went to 11 Madison Park. Yeah. And turned this, how you describe a middling brasserie into, into the number one restaurant in the world. It, it didn't happen overnight. Of course these things don't. They take time. 11 years. But I think for anyone that hasn't read the book, for anyone that hasn't heard you talk before, I think it's just important at this very beginning for you to talk about a story that happened in, in 2010. So quite, you know, early on that created this roadmap for how you obsessed, if you like, over, you know, the, the hospitality, the unreasonable hospitality you deliver. And it involved a Hot dog. It involved a group of tourists from Europe. Can you explain what happened and how this did shape how you view hospitality from then on in? Yeah. So this has become probably the stickiest story from the book, and I think for good reason, because in a simple story, it embodies a lot of my philosophy. This was after I had written the words unreasonable hospitality down on a cocktail napkin as representing the philosophy that I believed would take us to the top. And yet, while we had been at it for a measure of time, we hadn't yet fully understood what those words meant. Right. Which I think is okay. I think some people spend so much time trying to perfectly articulate an idea that they never start doing anything. And sometimes if you feel a connection to a thought, you just need to start running towards it alongside a group of passionate people, trusting in the fact that it will reveal itself to you along the way. And in the midst of this, there was an afternoon. It was a busier than normal lunch service. The team was in the weeds, and I was doing what I always did when I helped out the team. I was clearing dirty plates, and I found myself clearing appetizers from a table of four. They were foodies, Europeans on vacation to New York City just to eat at our great restaurants. In fact, this was their last meal. They were going straight to the airport from the restaurant to head back home. And while I was at the table, I overheard their conversation, and they were raving about their trip. They'd been to all of the four star places, finishing at 11 Madison Park. But one woman jumped in and she said, yeah, but you know what we never got to have? We never had a New York City hot dog. And it was one of those light bulb moments from a cartoon where, you know, the characters had a good idea. And I went back into the kitchen and dropped off the plates, and then ran outside of the hot dog cart and bought a hot dog and then ran back inside. And then came the hard part, which was convincing my very fancy chef to actually serve it in our fancy restaurant. But I asked him to trust me, and I told him it was important to me. And eventually, he cut that hot dog up into four perfect pieces, put one on each plate, added a little swish of ketchup, one of mustard, a little scoop of sauerkraut, one of relish. I'm almost certain he topped it off with a micro herb or something to make it look fancy. And then before their final savory course, which at the time was our honey lavender glazed muscovy duck that had Been dry aged for two weeks. I brought out what we in New York call the dirty water dog. And I explained it. I said, hey, I overheard you earlier. We didn't want you to go home with any culinary regrets. Here's that hot dog. And they freaked out. I bet they did. And, I mean, I'd worked in restaurants my entire life. I'd worked in some of the best restaurants. I'd served lobster and caviar and wagyu beef and everything in between. And yet I can say with confidence I'd never seen anyone react like they did to that hot dog. Plenty of people do innovative things spontaneously or intuitively. What people don't do consistently enough is slow down when those things happen to try to more fully understand why the thing happened such that they can build systems behind the idea and turn it into a consistent part of the culture. And that hot dog moment, because I feel lucky that something in the air that day made me recognize that this was something to systemize, ended up transforming our entire restaurant. We added a position to our team, someone who was just there as a resource to help everyone else bring ideas like that to life. I think that's an important part of the story, because it doesn't matter how brilliant an idea is, if you don't make it very easy for your team to deploy the idea, it will never happen as consistently as you want or need it to. That position was called the Dreamweaver, named after the iconic song by singer songwriter Gary Wright. And once we added that position and started talking about this stuff every single day, the restaurant was transformed. Yeah, yeah, I, Rory Sutherland was a guest of mine on, on the podcast quite a few months ago now, and, and he said that, you know, customer experience in a company is so important, and the person who should be paid the highest in the business should be that person that looks after experience, whether it's the CX director, CX manager. But I definitely prefer the Dreamweaver title. I think it gives creativity to it as well. By the way, Rory is one of the people on the planet who I feel the most aligned with. The way that we look at the world is so similar, in spite of the fact that we historically have done very, very different things. This idea that the things you do that can really move the needle often are not the things where you can easily measure the return on an investment. And yet he has always understood and has inspired me to articulate this in a different way, that sometimes the most impactful investments are the ones that are harder to measure, but just because they're harder to measure doesn't mean they matter less. In fact, in many cases, they matter more. I love Rory Sutherland. Yeah, it's fantastic. I was on stage with him in. In London at the turn of the year. Is. It is. He's very difficult to interview because his mind goes from. From one topic to the next. He's great fun, that's for sure. And he's got a fantastic mind on him. Yeah. I think, you know, what you talk about that story, it is storytelling at its best. You know, it's. It we're still here talking about 15 years later. I think what I really like about it is delivering is. Is listening. It's been in the moment. And I love your saying, you know, this. This one size fits one, as opposed to this one size fits all. And you took this ethos and ran with it. And, you know, eleven Madison park became the best restaurant in the world. But in 2009, you. You. You sold all your restaurants. Yeah. You admittedly say you had a bit of an identity crisis because that's all you'd ever known. Yes. And you were just about to open up a new set of restaurants in 2020 when Covid hit. But this gave you time. Gave you a lot of time. Covid did for. For a lot of us to reflect on your time at eleven Madison Park. And in that time, you wrote a book, unreasonable Hospitality, that went on to become this, this New York times bestseller. Over 1 million copies sold. What. What did you. What do you mean by unreasonable hospitality? And again, you wrote that on a napkin, didn't you? You know, all those years ago when you. You came 50 in the top 50 restaurants in the world. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, I ended up selling the company, as you said, right before COVID in 2019. 2020. And. And after, like, a few days of celebration. Yes, I did have an identity crisis. I think it's something that many people can relate to, this idea that what you do is who you are and who is a restaurateur without any restaurants. And so manically, frantically, I started raising money, putting together a team, signing, getting ready to sign leases. And I was one week away from signing three restaurant leases when Covid started. And I think everyone can point to Covid as, listen, this in no way is meant to undermine the incredible loss and suffering of that season for so many. But most can articulate at least one gift that that season gave them, whether it was the reminder of just how important dinner with family is, how important it is to slow down and actually lean across the table to connect with those you love, or whether it was all the social distancing that deprived us of that human connection, the reminder that it does really matter. And it gave me all of those gifts. But the biggest gift it gave me was that it forced me to stop trying to do new things. That it gave me the grace to, rather than running back and doing the thing I'd always done to take time to decide what I wanted to do next. And the book was really me re walking the road I'd just been down so that I could figure out what road I wanted to walk down next. I never expected that the book would become that road. And it's become that road because, yeah, to your point, it's traveled much further and much more wide than I ever expected. Not just geographically, but also from an industry perspective where so many people from so many businesses beyond restaurants connected with the ideas, understanding that through thoughtful choices, they can also make the choice to be in the hospitality industry. One thing I like to talk about with people is understanding the distinction between service and hospitality. Too many people conflate them as being one and the same, but they're two very different things. Service is the thing that you do in restaurants. It's getting the right plate of food to the right person within the right amount of time. Hospitality is how you make people feel when you do those things. One of my favorite quotes about hospitality is one that many have heard. It comes from Maya Angelou. She said, people will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And I believe that to be so very true and with a bit of thought, I would imagine most people would agree. The experiences that linger with me, they don't linger because of some specific action someone took within the the technical elements of the serving of the product. They linger with me because a human being did something big or small for me that made me feel seen. And if that's the case, if hospitality is the thing that people will remember most of all, unreasonable hospitality is my way of articulating that we all should invest some of our most relentless intention and creativity into making those moments matter as much as humanly possible. And so unreasonable hospitality is my call to arms. It's me saying that, hey, everyone that has achieved any level of success has done so through being unreasonable in pursuit of the product or service, doing whatever it takes to make it as good as humanly possible. I'm asking people to redirect some of those efforts into how they make people feel in, in reading your book. The time. Well, it took me back to a time with my wife where we're in the south of France on a honeymoon, as it happens. Have you ever been to St. Jean Cap Ferrat in the south of France? I've never, I've spent a lot of time in the south of France. I've never been there. Well, I, well, you've got to go there. It's a beautiful part of the world and it's. Well, we visited there on our honeymoon. We, we loved a meal that we had while we were there in the Grand Hotel. So we went back the following year and, and took our friends along as well. And as we walked into the restaurant, the maitre d said, welcome back, you know, it's great to see you again. I remember you from last year. And I thought, really, you know, that, well, it was impressive. And he, he said that my wife has very curly hair. So he remembered her from, from her hair. So I thought that was impressive. But he, we then were sat down at our table and he went on to say, I, I remember you loved this bottle of wine when you dined with us last year. And that blew me away. And I just, you know, it made us feel like we were the most important guests that, that ever dined there. And, and that was. It's my 25th wedding anniversary this year. So, you know, I'm still talking about that story. And, and it's those little experiences that, that, that definitely was unreasonable hospitality in my eyes. Well, and let's just unpack that a little bit. First of all, I just think it's funny that he did not remember you at all. But he remembered me. There's lots of bald headed bearded guys around. He's like, I'm being honest, I have no recollection of you whatsoever. But your wife will never forget. Let's just say for a moment, okay, in one case, this guy, you made an impression on him and he has a remarkable memory. Although if we're being honest, that is somewhat unlikely that that's the case. It's possible for sure. What's more likely is that there they have a system. And when you came in the first time, they put some notes about you into the computer. They remember that you really loved the wine. They created a system through which they held onto that information. And so that when your name popped up in the reservation books the next time you came in, they're able to read the notes they left for themselves a year earlier, refamiliarize themselves with the information, and then Use it to make you feel seen. Does that make it any less impactful? Absolutely not. It's one of the things I run into with people as I talk about this work. All those stories, the hot dog and the dream weaving stories, they are beautiful, and yet they're not scalable. Now, to be clear, if you're intent on creating a culture of hospitality, you cannot limit your innovations only to the ones you can scale. That's the best way to make sure you will not be innovative, do unscalable things for other people all the time. And yet, for something to truly become a part of your culture, it needs to happen as consistently as possible, which means it requires systems. Systems don't make the gesture less authentic. They just ensure that the. Those moments, the way they made you feel, happen more consistently. And so I celebrate the systems that ensure connectivity in a significant way. And it's just like a magic trick. It is. Yeah. You know, like, I was talking to one of my best friends who's my partner in this business, Brian Canlis, and he loves magic. And we were joking. I was like, hey, I don't want to be the one to break it to you. Magic is not real. Right. But they create these moments of awe and wonder through preparation, persistence, and through creating systems that ensure the tricks will work every single time. And I think hospitality is magic. I think magic is hospitality. And that's what they gave to you. And I'd imagine in 10 years, you will not remember a single thing you ate at that meal. Absolutely not. But you will never forget the way they made you feel when they welcomed you back so graciously. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I loved your book. You know, it. It resonated with millions. We know that. And it took on its own life. And I think the magic of the book is that it, you know, you don't need to be in the restaurant business, as you say, you know, you can take the learnings into your own company, no matter what sex you are, and to give you competitive advantage. But your new book, out in April, called the Field Guide. Well, why? Why the format? I suppose what did you feel was missing from the conversation about hospitality that a tactical guide can solve? You know, it's been an unbelievable season since the first book came out. I've traveled all over the country, around the world, spending time with just some of the most remarkable companies, people who were inspired by the ideas in the book and really wanted to work to help bring them to life in their cultures. And yet, one of the questions I've received most consistently is okay, we are inspired by this, but we want a little more help. We want something more instructive in helping us to bring it to life. And those questions became the motivation to write this book because of Unreasonable Hospitality is the why, the Field Guide is the how. It's truly me not following a chronological narrative like I did with the book, but writing about how to step by step create a culture of unreasonable hospitality through building the right team, through creating a culture of hospitality, in focusing on excellence and communication and collaboration and feedback and repair. And then finally, once you've done those things, through making magic in the experience for the people you work with as well as those you serve. And so the Field Guide is. I mean, it's meant to be a book that when someone has gone fully through it, that it's one we've co authored together. I give a lot of new stories and articulate lessons, either differently or articulate lessons I've learned since the book came out. But there's a lot of prompts where the reality of this is that every business is different and how these ideas come to life are different based on those differences. My hope with this book is I can lead a horse to water that collectively we can figure out how to find ideas and motivations and opportunities to take whatever experience people are offering and turn it from a transaction into something more magical. Yeah. One of the things I've enjoyed most about building this podcast is that it's opened up conversations I would never have had otherwise. However, I knew that if the podcast was going to go properly, the best ideas had to travel beyond the episode itself and reach the right people on other platforms like LinkedIn. That was the reason I started working with Triangle. They've helped me use LinkedIn properly, sharing my ideas with founders, CEOs, marketeers, investors, and business leaders before they even listen to an episode. The process feels very similar to the podcast itself. I turn up for an hour, we have a proper conversation, and they pull out the strongest ideas, stories and angles. They're taking the time to understand the podcast, my background in B2B, the guests I speak to, the audience I want to reach, and the reputation I want to build. That's why the partnership has worked so well over the over the last eight months, we've seen real momentum across LinkedIn, YouTube, and the podcast itself. More reach, more engagement, more followers, and the more of the right kind of conversations. So if you're a founder, senior leader, or entrepreneur who knows your LinkedIn presence could be doing more for you, reach out to the Triangle team. They've agreed to offer podcast listeners a free one hour consultancy and strategy session. And they've also got three spots available for new founder clients this month. So if you're interested, just go to the link that can be found in the episode description. Well, I mean, it's as you say, you share lots of different stories from other people as well that have written on from over the years. And there's the tactics in there, there's the learnings, there's tools, there's questions, there's checklists, but there's three key steps that you walk the reader through on how to do that. And step one is about building your team. And you talk about knowing you and your team's strengths and weaknesses as hiring slow and firing fast. One of the questions you say you get asked most is how do you hire for hospitality? So whether you're in the hospitality business or not, people do do business with people. So can you tell the listeners how you go about hiring that right person? Yeah, I think it's easiest to answer this question by talking about how for a long time I was doing it incorrectly. I think whenever anyone who interviews people can likely remember when you first started interviewing people, and it's scary, that first time you were sitting on the other side of the table and you were the person charged with orchestrating that interview. I mean, listen, no one knows how to do anything until they've actually done it right. And the moments where you begin doing something are intimidating. And a natural human response to intimidating moments is to over prepare. And that's how I approached interviewing for a long time. I remember I graduated from college and I was already in the position of interviewing people and I was going online and researching what are the smartest interview questions someone can ask. And I ended up with this whole script of questions that I had learned from extraordinarily smart people. Here's the thing. Relationships are relationships. And the lessons you learn from relationships in life can apply to those in work and vice versa. And if we're being honest, the most important interview of my entire life was my first date with my now wife. Yeah, and if you get that one wrong, the ramifications are much more significant than hiring the wrong person. And yet I can guarantee you that had I showed up at that interview with a list of questions, she would not now be my wife. Rather you sit down across the table from this person and you try to get to know them. Are they someone you can trust? Are you going to get along well? And at a certain point I realized that that's the right way to approach interviews with people that I'm looking to have join my team. Step one is interrogating the list of what someone needs to have done in order to be eligible for the job so that it is as short as humanly possible. I think way too many people over complicate that list of requirements and make it too long and in doing so end up filtering out some of the people that could be best for the job. I always wanted that list to include the things that needed to be on it and not a single thing more. Because at the end of the day, if we're being honest, very few jobs are ones where you can't teach people how to do the job. Then once I had, then you put a job out into the world. And if I was sitting across the table from someone, I never brought a resume to the interview. I assumed that if you had gotten this far, you had the requisite experience. And my job then was just to get to know you. Do I think you're going to work hard? Do I think I can trust you? And in the beginning I would look to see whether I thought I would get along with that person. But then even that changed because the reality is, at its peak, I had 2,000 people on my team. It didn't matter whether I got along with them. They don't need me to be their friend. In fact, to the contrary, they need me to be their leader, not their friend. What mattered more was whether that person was going to get along with everyone else on my team. I think we oftentimes over index on capacity and way under index on chemistry. If the people on the team really enjoy working with one another, if they have the capacity to navigate through moments of tension, to enjoy the good moments and hold one another during the difficult moments, that is when you can unlock greatness. And so I mean, my answer to the question, just make the process more human. Yeah, it totally resonated with me. Back in my agency days recruiting, we were market research, so we were looking for analysts. We had a whole mix of people, introverts, extroverts that came along and we used to give them a data set and say analyze that from a research manager perspective and then presented back the findings. And in the end, like you say, it was the best way to do it, was just have a conversation, understand where they came from as a child, what they were looking for from the job. And also did they believe in where we were going as a company because, you know, building that trust and work together, it's in the end we had a bomb proof culture when Covid hit and you know, the team would walk through walls for me and for the leadership team to do what we needed to do. It was, it was, you know, it's, it's so important that first step in terms of hiring and obviously firing the, the bad eggs, the bad apples that within there. But once you've done that then you've, it's about creating the right culture. And you just said you don't hire for hospitality but you do need to inspire it. And so creating this culture of hospitality, you talk about five distinct cultures. Can you talk me through those five cultures and how they interlock with each other? Yeah. And the one thing I'll just say just to close the loop on building a team in the field guide, I go into much more depth on that. Right. I think having a balanced team, understanding that if you're over indexing on the extroverted, warm, bubbly people and under indexing on the thoughtful, more slow paced analyticals, you need to actually seek out the right people because the balance of a team is such a part of its success. But the extent of that is probably too much to get into in this conversation. But I want to make sure for listeners, I think at the end of the day the ANSW actually remarkably simple and yet there is nuance that sets someone up for greater success in terms of the cultures. Yeah, there are five. So it's excellence, collaboration, communication, feedback and repair. And until you've created each one of those cultures, I don't think it's possible to create a robust culture of hospitality excellence. Because while excellence is table stakes, it's also a prerequisite for so many different reasons. Until the people on your team actually feel an amazing sense of confidence in their ability to dot every I and cross every T, they don't have the capacity to be fully present when they're doing those things. The more you have excellence on lock, the more you can focus on connection. Also, I mean, listen, if I were engaging with a business and they overheard me talking about a hot dog and they gave me one in the middle of my experience and yet they got every other detail of the technical experience wrong. That's not joyful now, it's just annoying. Right? Like that does not ring true. Excellence is a prerequisite. That is the foundation. Not to me. And that you can't start building a culture of hospitality until you've achieved perfection with excellence because perfection is unattainable. It just means you need to make sure you have. You got to eat your vegetables first. Effectively, yeah. Communication, which takes many forms, but I'll focus on this part of it for this conversation. A lot of people try to train hospitality, and yes, there are many elements of it that you can train. I just talked about creating systems that ensure consistency. Systems do need to be trained. And yet far too many companies focus so much on training and not nearly enough on inspiration. Because I don't care how well you know how to do a job, if you are not inspired to want to do it remarkably well, you never will. And communicating with passion, understanding that passion is contagious, recognizing that. Listen, the reason TED talks, I think, are so popular is because very few of us have someone in our lives who has answered the call to inspire us. And yet we all crave inspiration. And so creating a culture where you are articulating the importance of the work, where you are inspiring people to get fired up, to want to go out and do their best every single day, I think is unbelievably important. Feedback. Well, because it's impossible to create a culture of excellence or hospitality absent a robust culture of feedback. And what I mean when I say that is that you've normalized it where it's not just well received, but actually sought out. And when I talk about feedback, obviously I'm talking about praise because, well, when you set high expectations and someone on the team either meets or exceeds those expectations, you better be there to praise them. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because the more praise you receive, the more you want to receive, and the more others on the team want to receive a piece of that too. But sometimes I feel we are so focused on praise that we forget about the fueling power of criticism. Because if praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. And listen, you can never grow unless you have thoughtful and trusting people around you showing you how to get better. Then there is collaboration, because at the end of the day, and this is a quote from the first book from David, in too many organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority. The only way to build a proper culture of hospitality where you are obsessed about the people you are serving, is to bridge that gap between authority and information. And that happens through collaboration and then finally repair. You know, there's all this data that if you were to come into my business and have a perfectly good experience, you'd talk about it so much. If you Have a bad experience, you're going to talk about it even more. If you come in, you have a bad experience and then I am willing to do whatever it takes to turn around that experience and make it a good one. That's the experience you will talk about the most. Repair is an opportunity. You can almost make a business case that there should be a business developed where they intentionally mess up with every single guest just so that they have the opportunity to turn it around. Yeah. Once you've created those five cultures, then you've created a culture of unreasonable hospitality. Yeah, yeah. And I think, well, on that repair piece, if they don't get it right as well, you know, I am. I went to a gorgeous hotel in Oxfordshire in England two weekends ago to celebrate one of my friends wife's 50th and it's a fantastic place. It's been recommended to us called Estelle Manor. It is and it's, it's gorgeous. You know, you have a look on the website, amazing. But the service just didn't match either our expectations. But, but on, on the day and you know, so we got there, we went for lunch. It's service was slow. We had to keep remind, we had to remind five times to get some of the drinks. It was just awful. So they apologized and then they tried to repair it and said we'll have free cocktails in the evening. We went down for our evening meal. No space in the bar, so they had to rush us through to the table. The cocktails came after the starters. And so we complained at the end of that meal and they said, oh well that's fine. You know, they were, we won't charge you like. No, no, they, they should have been free anyway from the, when you messed up at the lunch and it was just a catalog of errors that, that we, we ended up going back and what an amazing weekend we had. But it was the serve the poor service and the poor repair job that they did that, you know, we kept on talking about. And that's the thing, that's the piece that sits with me still. But, but I mean, you think about that experience. Had they, when you went back that night for cocktails, had they just gone far above and beyond and been willing to do whatever it take took, not just to give you some free drinks, but like just to make you feel like the most important people in that room. To show you how seriously they take what they do. The worst thing was, well, one of the guys, there was six of us there, he only wanted a bottled beer. He got it last and it took half an hour to get the bottle beer. So I mean it wasn't like they even had an excuse there. Yeah, yeah, that's hard. The final step, which is the most interesting one we talked about in a hot dogs is making magic happen. And to do that you need to map out the customer journey. I've done hundreds of these customer journey workshops over time. You did that 11 Madison park and sort hundreds of touch points the way you could make a difference. Each touch point is this opportunity to delight. But I'd be interested whether you think from a guest journey the most critical time to deliver that world class experience. It's all important. But do you think the first five minutes or when leaving delivers the best last impression? I mean anyone who's a student of the peak end rule? The peak end rule for those not familiar means that the two moments of an experience that stick with people most of all or that help define their memory of the experience are the peak and then the very ending. The peak being the moment that is furthest from zero, by the way, for good or for bad. Which by the way is another point of comfort for me when it comes to repair that no matter how negative the peak is, you can always redefine the peak by doing something even further in the upward direction and then the end that last impression. And so yeah, if you were going to only focus on one moment, I would focus on the end and then also trying to create one thing about the experience that truly has the capacity to stay with people. But don't just focus on those, focus on more. I think the distinction in how we approach journey mapping and how I talk about the approach to journey mapping is when I've watched other people do it in the past, they invariably focus on just the most obvious touch points in the guest journey. And yet the smallest enhancement to the most overlooked touch points can have the greatest impact on the experience as a whole. Because it is you saying very clearly to the people you serve, we're willing to care about things that no one else has ever paused for long enough to consider. What if you work in an office and clients visit you in that office? What's happening in the elevator? Or what's the experience of walking from the car to the front door to the elevator? I think it's when you actually take a wildly detailed look at these things and recognize that there are opportunities even in the most insignificant moments. That's when you can do remarkable things. I'll give an example. I signed up for a meditation app a couple Years ago. And you know how most of these apps work. You Click for a 7 day free trial and then they start charging you and you kind of forget you're even being charged. And then you now even think about it again until a year later, you look at your phone and you see a charge just came up for $95 to an app that you haven't used in eight months. Right? Yeah. And then you get angry and then you go charge it. But now you're paying for something for another 11 months that you're not going to use. Someone at that company saw that moment, the re up moment, as an opportunity to just be better. And I got the email, I got an email from them three days before the resubscription was going to happen and said, hey, we just want to set your expectations. In three days you're going to get another charge on your card and that will signify that you've signed up for another year. We don't want you to do that if you don't want to do it. And so this is your heads up. Cancel it if you don't want to continue, but obviously we hope you do. And if you don't, thank you for your support. I got that. I had not used the app in six months. I also didn't cancel it. I was so touched by the way they approached it that I re upped and actually started using it. And I've told that story to so many people who have gone on to sign up for it for themselves. That is someone who saw that as an opportunity to be better, to try harder, to go further, to recognize that yes, they might lose a few sales along the way, but the investment in goodwill far outweighed the potential loss of revenue. And the more people that really analyze the experience they're serving, the more magic will be created in the world. Yeah, I mean, that's so refreshing, isn't it? When people are so open like that in terms of what they're delivering. I, I don't know whether you know what carahillo is. It's. It's Spanish. So I've got a place in Spain. I visit and just, just on the, you know, the most important maybe is the end, you know, but when, when you often go to meals and certain restaurants, they, I order carahello, which is an espresso with a small shot of brandy or cognac within there and you talk about it with the, at the end, you know, when you deliver the bill with giving us a cognac. But they do this in Spain. Quite regularly, they. They deliver the cara hello and they put the bottle next to you. And the. The routine is. Or the culture is that, you know, you need to wash the glass once. You. And a lot of restaurants do leave that. It's very similar to what you've done. Maybe they've learned from your lessons there will. But they, you know, they don't charge you for that. And like you say, you don't normally polish the bottle, although if there's a big group of lads there, then, yes, it may be different. But that obsessing over that end is. Is. Is truly important. Well, I'm sure. I mean, I. There's no way that was inspired by me. I'm sure that's something that existed there for a very long time. I think the distinction. It's all about the exact way in which you bring an idea to life. We put down the bottle of cognac at the exact moment that we dropped the check. The two things hit the table at the same time. And that was done with an extraordinary amount of intention to say, hey, your bill's here. You don't need to worry about asking for it. It's ready whenever you are. But we're putting down an entire bottle of alcohol at the same time so that you don't think in any way, shape or form. We are trying to rush you out by giving you the bill. And I think that's what's wild. When you approach anything with equal parts intention, what are you trying to accomplish? And creativity. What is the most awesome way to accomplish that thing? That's when you can nudge the world forward. There are so many examples that you talk about in your books. So to conclude, Will, what is the best unreasonable act of hospitality that you and your team have delivered or did deliver at 11 Madison park, that sticks in your mind all these years later, other than the hot dog, I mean, you know what it's. That's like picking a favorite child. So what? Maybe the better way for me to answer it is something that's happened to me recently, which I was touched by. I went to. I go to Vegas with some frequency to do talks there. It's where a lot of the big companies gather their teams. And I was there just a week and a half ago, eating at a restaurant called Super Freako. It's an Italian restaurant that was opened by this guy, Ross Mollison, who has a show in Absinthe called Absinthe, which I think is the greatest show in absinthe by a significant measure. And this restaurant has like an entertainment element to it as well, given the person behind it. And I brought my friend, one of my best friends from college, who just so happened to be in Vegas at the same time I was. And his presence there took a work trip and turned it into just an amazing experience because he's someone I love, and I try hard to find time with him. At a certain point, Corrine, on my team reached out to me, like, a week before that trip to say, hey, who are you going. Who's the friend that you're going to be in Vegas with? What's his full name? And so the person that runs that restaurant knew I was going there with a friend, reached out through my team to figure out his name. Kevin is in the liquor business, but on the side, he also makes music. He creates his own. He records albums. Not for profession, for passion, but that's good music. And we sit down in this restaurant, and we're having an amazing meal, and they started us off with a great drink. The welcome was warm and gracious, all these things. And it's a Vegas restaurant. It's a vibe there. There's a dj, the whole thing. And then about halfway through the meal, the DJ just starts spinning his music for the rest of the time we're there. And I looked at my friend, and the look on his face, the pride, it was unbelievable. I bet when you write a book called Unreasonable Hospitality, one of the perks is you are on the receiving end of quite a bit of hospitality. Yet this one stood out for me because it was not for me. But sometimes the best way to love on someone is to love on the people they love. And the coolest thing they could have ever done for me in that meal was to do something amazing for him. Love that story. Yeah, well, yeah, I can totally get that. And, yeah, he'll dine out on that forever. And. And you're telling it, you know, on podcasts and. And on stage as well. What a. I need to get to Vegas and visit this restaurant. Yes. I'll say I'm coming with you and just see what. What happens. I'm not bringing you. I'm bringing your wife. They'll remember her. Will. I could. I mean, there's just so much to talk about. We haven't even touched on the Bear, which is one of my favorite programs, but thank you. We'll leave that for another time. But to conclude, I just want to quickly run through some questions I ask all my guests. So my previous guest was Simon Jeffries. He's a former Royal Marine and Special Boat Service operator, served three times in Afghanistan, and he now transitioned into the corporate world. Help business leaders overcome stress, align their priorities to sustain higher performance. So Simon's question to you is, in such a hard and competitive industry like the restaurant business, what are the. The three key things he said that played a critical role in getting you to be the best in the world? I mean, I will be. Some of this will be redundant with our conversation, but I think the first is investing as much of yourself in building the right team as you invest in anything. I think most leaders don't spend a high enough percentage of their life just trying to build the right team. Number two, recognizing that no team will ever be called to greatness if they aren't inspired every single day to be the best versions of themselves. And a leader's responsibility. The difference, the reason there's a distinction between the words leader and manager is that exact reason. You need to be passionate and you need to allow your passion to infect those around you. And then finally, the very reason that I wrote the book that we made the choice to be as unreasonable in pursuit of how we made people feel as most others were solely in pursuit of the products they were selling. Yeah. Couple of questions from the listeners, firstly from Gaston Boone. So he's in the Randstadt in the Netherlands, and he asks. Every exec I know agrees that hospitality really matters. They all say time well spent, customer centricity, and mean it genuinely there in the moment. But then they walk back to the building where an NPS nobody has the budget to actually fix the thing customers hate most. So his question to you, Will, is what breaks first? Is it courage, Is it budget, or is it middle management? When a company reads a book and nothing changes, where does it die? Oh, my longtime mentor, Danny Meyer, one of my favorites of his isms that he would use with frequency was constant gentle pressure that all it takes is one person with enthusiasm to change a culture. But it requires constant, gentle pressure to do that. Listen, budget is essential. You need someone to make the choice to invest even the smallest amount to bring this kind of thing to life, because nothing will ever take root in the absence of resource. And yet oftentimes you just need someone who has the authority to make that decision to buy into these ideas. But that doesn't mean you need to be that person to evolve a culture. You just need to be enthusiastic enough and have a willingness to apply constant, gentle pressure on the people that can make that choice. Yeah. Yeah. And the second one is from Balva. Baines in Bristol in England here. And who asks if you were starting again today with no brand, no reputation, and tighter margins, what's the one unreasonable act you would still prioritize because it delivers the biggest return? Well, I would depend on. I have no brand, so I'm not even sure what business I'm building. I mean, listen, it would definitively depend on the experience, but. But I just really love finding moments in an experience that no one else is thinking about. And then through just a small investment and making those a little bit more awesome, watching the outsized and asymmetrical impact they can have. So it would start there. One of the biggest pieces of advice I give to people is, hey, in the next month, identify one touch point in the experience you serve that you've never even thought about, make it just a little bit more awesome, watch the impact it has, and that on its own will be motivation enough to keep going. You've given us so much advice with your book and, you know, just today with the podcast. What's the best piece of business advice you've ever been given? Oh, I quote my dad often in the book. One quote that he had never said out loud to me, or at least that I hadn't remembered him saying out loud until the book was already published, was, you're never too young to be a mentor, and you're never too old to have one. I think mentorship is just essential. And that reframe I found very, very helpful for me. He's very, very wise, your old man, isn't he? Who would you like me to reach out to and invite to come on this podcast in the future? Who would you like to hear on the show? Golly, Who would I like to hear on this show? There's a restaurateur in Brooklyn named Sean Feeney. He has restaurants, Missy, Lilia Feeney Pizza. And he has just a ton of passion and. And he has a lot of really interesting insights, not just about hospitality, but about business and how all of the new technologies can help ensure more consistency. I think he's a remarkable guy. I will lean on you, but I would like to get Sean on the show. That sounds good, Will. And finally, my next guest, sir, are Judas and Rick Gehring, who they founded East Bay and redefined the sneaker market industry, especially in the States, but globally after that. What question would you like to ask Art and Rick? I mean, I think what's happening in that world is fascinating to me, whether it's their success, the guys that on, like, all of These new sneaker companies that just did not exist all that long ago when. And it felt as if Nike and Reebok and just a handful would have control over that entire industry for the foreseeable future. And yet they exist in part because of their innovation and in part because of those giant companies doing something wrong. They made a mistake that gave these guys an opening. And so what is the mistake that these other companies made that you want to make sure you never make? Yeah, Will, this has been truly energizing from my side of things. You know, I've read, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, I read many, many books. But I can honestly say that An Unreasonable Hospitality is, is my favorite. So, you know, thank you man, for, for writing it. I mean, your philosophy, it's, you know, whether whichever business you're in, it's about, you know, not being just nice, it's necessarily strategic, it feels the right time. Especially in a world of technology these days where the human side of business has been eroded in so many companies. So you finish your book with a chapter called Win Win Win. And I'd like to finish this podcast on on the same note because hopefully listeners, it's clear that Unreasonable hospitality, it's non negotiable. It's great for your customers, your bottom line and your team and making people feel happy. It really does give you the energy like nothing else. So go and buy the field guide today. Buy the other book, Unreasonable Hospitality as well. Other than the book, Will, where should listeners go to learn more? I mean, just to understand our whole little ecosystem, go to unreasonablehospitality.com I have a newsletter that comes out every other week called Premeal. Short, bite sized little moments of inspiration that have helped me approach my work more hospitably. And it's one of my favorite things I get to do. So go onto the website, sign up for that, and you'll see me every couple weeks until you decide you don't want to anymore. No, you really should do that because there is so many stories and so much learning. So thank you again, Will, and hope to catch you in person maybe with the Carahillo in the future. Right on, dude. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Will. Where to start with these three key learnings? From my conversation with Will, I think probably the easiest way is to break it down into the three key sections of the book. Firstly, about how to build a team. Will says hire slow and fire fast. It's crucial to get the right people. So hire that person and not the Resume. Take your time to understand that person you're interviewing. Have a conversation with them, understand who they are and if you could work with them. Key questions to ask are do you trust this person? And does this person have the ability to one day be one of the best people on your team? And if the answer is yes, then just don't hesitate. Hire them there and then remember, your team needs to trust you. So if you do keep someone on the team who's poisoning the culture, that bad apple, or failing to properly support the rest of the team, then they definitely need to go. At the end of the day, your obligation is to the business as a whole and to your entire team, not to a single individual within it. If they're not up to the task assigned to them or threaten the culture you're working hard to build, then you'd need to fire them. Secondly, Will talked about how to create a culture of hospitality. He talked about paying attention to the five distinct cultures. First was the the culture of excellence. Without excellence, there can be no hospitality. When it's recognized as a core value and a daily aspiration, your team will feel confident in their skills and proud of what they're offering. Secondly, with communication widely recognized as non negotiable for a high functioning team, yet very few companies have these truly effective systems in place for ensuring necessary conversations. Easy ones and hard ones take place. What gets talked about is what gets thought about. So let's ensure you have lots of opportunities and avenues to share what's important to you. Thirdly, is collaboration, because I've yet to meet a single individual who won't give more of themselves to help something succeed once they feel they've had a genuine hand in helping to determine what it is. So really important that one and then aligned with communication is feedback. Both affirming and corrective is crucial if you want to operate at the highest level. And then finally the fifth culture was around repair. Mistakes are inevitable in human powered organizations, both when you're managing other people and when you're serving them. So skillful recovery doesn't mean fixing what went wrong, it means fighting for the win such that you earn their loyalty for life. And finally, in the book we talked about Making Magic and Will talked about the importance of the peak end rule where a disproportionate amount of the experience is shaped by the most intense experience and also the final experience. And Will talks about many experiences in his book. My favorite has to be probably the Spanish family visiting New York for the first time and it started snowing whilst they were in the restaurant. They had two young kids and they'd never seen snow before, and they were bubbling with excitement throughout the whole meal. And then at the end, they were presented with two sledges that the team had gone out to buy and they had an SUV waiting for them to take them to Central park to sledge. An amazing story and one that does remind us that the experience doesn't always need to be refined to the four walls of our place of work. And I think specific to the peak end rule. A reminder, what Will talked about at the end of a meal at 11 Madison Park. He'd present the bill along with an entire complimentary bottle of cognac. And this ritual was designated to replace the typical transactional end of a meal with a gesture of unreasonable hospitality, solving that dilemma of making guests feel rushed versus, you know, making them wait. Next up is Art and Rick talking about how two friends and a catalog changed the sneaker business forever. You will love this story. Until then, thanks for tuning in.