CNLP 694 | The Story Behind Unreasonable Hospitality and The Bear, Navigating Control and Collaboration, and Handling Criticism and Praise with Will Guidara AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast

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Episode: CNLP 694 | The Story Behind Unreasonable Hospitality and The Bear, Navigating Control and Collaboration, and Handling Criticism and Praise with Will Guidara

Author: Art of Leadership Network
Duration: 01:22:12

Episode Shownotes

Will Guidara shares the backstory to his book, Unreasonable Hospitality, and his involvement in the hit TV series The Bear. Plus, Will and Carey discuss navigating control and collaboration and how leaders can handle criticism and praise better. 🔗 Show Notes 📩 On The Rise Newsletter 🗣️ Preaching Cheat Sheet

🧠 The Art of Leadership Academy 🎥 Watch on YouTube Follow @careynieuwhof Follow @theartofleadershipnetwork This episode is sponsored by: BELAY This month is your last chance to get your free copy of BELAY’s latest resource, The Power of Productivity, for free. This guide is full of practical tips and plans to help you maximize productivity for you and those you lead. To claim it, just text CAREY to 55123. Accomplish more and juggle less with BELAY. Brought to you by The Art of Leadership Network

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_03
The Art of Leadership Network.

00:00:03 Speaker_00
I am an unbelievably obsessive, compulsive person. I'm anal retentive. It's a superpower and a villain origin story all wrapped up into one.

00:00:21 Speaker_00
When it comes to excellence, I know exactly what right looks like, and I want everyone to do it exactly that way all the time. Yet at the same time,

00:00:30 Speaker_00
I love creating cultures of ownership and empowerment, and I know that people bring their best selves to the job when they feel they have the ability to creatively impact the work itself. And those two things do not go together well at all.

00:00:50 Speaker_02
Welcome to the Keri Neuhof Leadership Podcast. Hey, I hope our time together today helps you thrive in life and leadership. It's Keri here. I'm sitting down with one of my favorite humans, Will Gadara.

00:01:01 Speaker_02
He's been on the podcast before, he's back, and we are going to talk about all things, well, leadership, hospitality.

00:01:09 Speaker_02
Will, if you don't know who he is, is a best-selling author of his book that is iconically in the New York Times top 10 over and over again.

00:01:19 Speaker_02
for two years now, Unreasonable Hospitality, former owner of the number one restaurant in the world, and well, we go behind the story and bring you even more, plus talk about his foray into TV. Any Bear fans out there?

00:01:31 Speaker_02
Yep, we're gonna cover that and a lot more. Hey, make sure you check out the partners for this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Belay.

00:01:38 Speaker_02
This month is your very last chance to get your free copy of Belay's latest resource, The Power of Productivity, For free, if you need some better productivity, just text my name, Carey, that's C-A-R-E-Y, to 55123.

00:01:52 Speaker_02
Accomplish more and juggle less with Belay. So, Will and I talk about the backstory behind Unreasonable Hospitality, what he was attempting to write, why it's taken off the way it has, the TV show The Bear,

00:02:05 Speaker_02
navigating control and collaboration, and how to better handle criticism and praise. We go deep on this one.

00:02:12 Speaker_02
And Will is the author of the national bestseller, Unreasonable Hospitality, which chronicles the lessons in service and leadership he's learned over the course of his career in restaurants.

00:02:22 Speaker_02
He's the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which under his leadership received four stars, the highest ranking from the New York Times, three Michelin stars, and in 2017 was named number one on the list of the world's 50 best restaurants.

00:02:37 Speaker_02
Will is the host of the Welcome Conference, an annual hospitality symposium that brings together like-minded people, and they share ideas, inspire each other, and connect to community.

00:02:48 Speaker_02
He is a graduate of the hospitality school at Cornell University and has co-authored four cookbooks, was named one of Crane New York Business' 40 Under 40, and is the recipient of the Wall Street Journal Magazine's Innovator Award.

00:03:01 Speaker_02
And he's back for round two. Well, hey, I am so glad that you joined us today and want to give a shout out to everybody who's left a rating and review. I'm really, really grateful for that.

00:03:12 Speaker_02
And I want to thank Mia, who says, I took Kerry up on his challenge to preach about the election at my church. Remember that? With this podcast help, it came together as a really meaningful and faith-building sermon series. So thank you, Carrie.

00:03:26 Speaker_02
So glad. That is great feedback. And really want to thank all of you, Seth, for your review, Casper, for your review, and so many others. We read them all. We're so grateful for you.

00:03:37 Speaker_02
And when you share this program and leave a rating and review, guess what? We get to do more of this and bring you the very best guests in the world.

00:03:45 Speaker_02
So, when you think about what it takes to be an effective partner in ministry, you probably don't put productivity at the top of your list, okay? But you should, because productivity means you get more time.

00:03:57 Speaker_02
I talk to so many church leaders who are time-starved, What if you had time to be present, time to serve others, time to lead well? Our friends at Belay are productivity experts.

00:04:06 Speaker_02
And for over a decade, their remote staffing solutions have offered busy leaders like you the time they need to lead well. Belay intentionally pairs you with a US-based virtual assistant

00:04:17 Speaker_02
accounting professional, or marketing assistant based on your specific needs. That way, you can hand off the little things and focus on what truly matters. By doing less, you can show up more.

00:04:28 Speaker_02
And this month is your last chance to get your free copy of Belay's latest resource, The Power of Productivity, for free. This guide is full of practical tips to help you navigate productivity for you and those you lead.

00:04:40 Speaker_02
To claim it, just text my name, Carey, that's C-A-R-E-Y, to 55123. That's Carey, to 55123. And now, my conversation with Will Gadara. Will, welcome back.

00:04:53 Speaker_00
Thank you, man. I've been looking forward to this.

00:04:55 Speaker_02
Oh, I have been too. It's like when you show up on my calendar, I'm like, oh yes, this is going to be a good day. So I'm looking forward to continuing this.

00:05:03 Speaker_02
And as I said to you earlier, the only bummer this year was for once I didn't make it to the Global Leadership Summit where you spoke. And it would have been good to connect in person, but soon.

00:05:15 Speaker_02
Will, your book, Unreasonable Hospitality, when you were first on the show, it had just come out. Surprisingly, even though it's about hospitality, it's become a huge hit in church circles, leadership circles, probably beyond.

00:05:29 Speaker_02
Maybe you had that in mind the whole time. Maybe it's gone a little bit beyond that. I'm curious as to why you think it might be resonating with so many people who are not running restaurants.

00:05:44 Speaker_00
It's interesting because, yeah, it's gone much further than I expected it to go, as far as I hoped it would go. Because when I wrote it, I always assumed that my industry, the restaurant industry, would embrace it.

00:06:03 Speaker_00
But my hope was that other industries would, too, because, I mean, listen, one of my favorite things to say is I don't care what you do for a living, you can make the choice to be in the hospitality industry.

00:06:14 Speaker_00
It simply requires a refocusing of priorities and the choice to be as relentless, creative, intentional, all of that in pursuit of people and relationships as so many successful people are in pursuit of the product or service that they're offering.

00:06:35 Speaker_00
And so it's, it's, been pretty cool. I found myself spending time with hospital networks and retirement home communities and NFL teams and major banks and then, yeah, a lot of time with the church. And I think

00:06:56 Speaker_00
I think that last one, like the church, it does make a lot of sense. I was, I was at a place called Refuge, you know, you know, Brian Carpenter or do you know Refuge?

00:07:06 Speaker_02
I don't think I do know, but probably should.

00:07:09 Speaker_00
Refuge is an amazing place started by this, a buddy of mine named Brian Carpenter. Um, there was just one in Montana for a long time. Now they have a outpost in Montana and in Wyoming and Brian was a youth pastor in San Diego. years and years ago.

00:07:28 Speaker_00
Somehow we transitioned from that to starting this place where pastors would go to get away from their congregations and be with other pastors. And in doing so, just be given, give themselves the grace, be given the grace to actually be fully human.

00:07:53 Speaker_00
with one another and have a little whiskey, smoke a cigar, go fishing, and talk about the things they were struggling with as opposed to only the things that those around them were struggling with. I don't think this is a pastor-specific thing.

00:08:13 Speaker_00
I think it's a leader thing where whether it's self-imposed or imposed upon us from the world,

00:08:24 Speaker_00
where there's this belief that you're not allowed to be human and you're not allowed to be imperfect and you're not allowed to admit to making mistakes or all of that.

00:08:36 Speaker_00
And if you don't allow yourself to be human, you start to run out of gas pretty quickly. And when you're out of gas, you have nothing left to give.

00:08:43 Speaker_00
And so Refuge was started as this place for pastors to take refuge and refill their gas tanks and emerge. Ideally, better equipped and re-energized to serve their communities.

00:08:59 Speaker_00
And then over time, it still plays that role, but then there's other weeks where just leaders gather. And so one of my best friends from growing up, his name is Adam LaRoche, a retired baseball player. He and I host a trip once a year.

00:09:14 Speaker_00
We were out there and there were a couple of pastors on the trip and everyone knew I was going to do global leadership.

00:09:22 Speaker_00
We were just talking about that, and I was asking them for advice on how to frame my remarks, and one of the guys on the trip, this guy Scott, was like, you know, I'm so glad you're speaking there, because shouldn't churches be the most hospitable places on Earth?

00:09:38 Speaker_00
And listen, I think relationships are relationships. The lessons you learn from those in life can be applied to those in work, and vice versa. Gosh, if relationships are important anywhere, they're very, very important within the church community.

00:09:59 Speaker_00
And I just think this idea of being creative and intentional in pursuit of all the different relationships of all the different stakeholders, it's just a powerful thing.

00:10:11 Speaker_00
And so I have to imagine why that's why people have kind of felt a connection to the book and it's been honoring And it's been just a pleasure to spend time with them.

00:10:25 Speaker_02
I completely agree with you that churches should be the most hospitable place on earth. And if you look at the first century church, that's one of the most plausible arguments as to why it grew.

00:10:36 Speaker_02
It wasn't marketing, it wasn't budgeting, it wasn't incredible preaching, although there was some incredible preaching. It was ordinary people taking people who were different than they were into their homes. loving them, taking care of the castaways.

00:10:52 Speaker_02
I mean, it was a pretty stratified society and breaking down race and class and ethnicity and religion to sort of embrace.

00:11:01 Speaker_02
You can really make the argument that hospitality was one of the reasons the early church actually thrived in the decades after Jesus' resurrection. Fast forward to today, I don't know why this popped into my head,

00:11:14 Speaker_02
When I was looking at churches that I might be able to serve at, there was a church not too far from here that had like 30 people at it on a Sunday morning, and they invited me and my wife to come up, and I was, quote, auditioning.

00:11:26 Speaker_02
I was preaching to see if they would take me on. This is when I was a seminary student in Toronto. And I remember going down to the church basement for coffee hour, And there was a little huddle, Will, of like 15, 20 people who stayed for coffee.

00:11:40 Speaker_02
And it was a literal circle. And I remember standing there with my wife and our two-year-old, 18-month-old, in arms, waiting for someone to talk to us. And nobody talked to us. And you know, when you're standing close to the circle, you try to break in.

00:11:59 Speaker_02
I couldn't break in. And I'm like, wait a minute. I was the guy at the front with the microphone preaching to you and you're theoretically auditioning me. And we literally turned around and nobody talked to us.

00:12:14 Speaker_02
We couldn't break the circle and we got into our car. And as soon as I shut the door, I said to my wife, yeah, we're not going there. I'm withdrawing. I'm withdrawing. And I wish I could say that was an isolated episode. It's not an isolated incident.

00:12:27 Speaker_02
Any idea why people are not hospitable? And I mean, we've had that story. Everybody's had that story in restaurants. You've had it on airplanes where the flight crew doesn't seem to be delighted to be there. But we become very insular.

00:12:41 Speaker_02
We become inhospitable. Why does that happen?

00:12:47 Speaker_00
I mean, so I think it's important to make the distinction that And this is the charitable assumption, because obviously you never know. But they weren't actively keeping you out. They just weren't actively inviting you in.

00:13:12 Speaker_00
And I think there's a big difference between those two, right? I think a lot of I mean, I'm gonna back up, and this is gonna be circuitous, but I'm gonna get to the question.

00:13:31 Speaker_00
My longtime boss, forever mentor, Danny Meyer, used to say, hospitality is a dialogue, it's not a monologue. There are those that speak at people versus those that speak with people.

00:13:46 Speaker_00
There are those whose viewpoints are thrust upon others, and there are those who are curious and engage in conversation. And I think to be genuinely hospitable, you need to be curious. And I have so many friends who are very involved in the church.

00:14:11 Speaker_00
And through them, I've met other people who are not friends, they're acquaintances of that group. When I hear people talk about Jesus Christ, there are those that walk into a room as if they're walking onto a stage.

00:14:33 Speaker_00
And they start talking to the group like, hey, I am here to save you and this is da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da

00:14:54 Speaker_00
And obviously, people are much more inclined to want to engage in conversation with the latter than they are with the former.

00:15:02 Speaker_00
And they are doing that because when they feel someone is curious about what they believe, they are intrinsically more curious than what the other person believes. Back to the circle.

00:15:21 Speaker_00
They might not have been actively trying to keep you out, but they weren't actively trying to invite you in, and in order for someone to be inclined to actively try to invite you in, they need to be inherently curious. What does this person think?

00:15:40 Speaker_00
What do they have to say? Who are they? What can I learn from them? What do they have to offer? And so I don't think it represents But someone's a bad person. They just, for whatever reason, aren't inclined to want to engage.

00:15:58 Speaker_00
And one of the things is, when I was coming up, I would always hear people say that you hire for hospitality and you train for excellence. Almost as if to say that some people are hospitable, some people are not.

00:16:14 Speaker_00
Hire the ones that are trained that have it good. Obviously, when you're hiring someone, hire the most hospitable people you can, but this underlying idea that some people are hospitable and some people are not, I think is fundamentally incorrect.

00:16:26 Speaker_00
I think we all have hospitality in us. We just need to have someone who inspires it out of us. I think hospitality is a craft, it's a muscle you can strengthen, and I think curiosity is too. I think more people and more communities need to be inspired

00:16:45 Speaker_00
to be curious, and they need to strengthen the muscle of curiosity. Because the more curious you are, the more curious you become.

00:16:57 Speaker_02
This is going to sound like a question out of left field, but I'm going somewhere. What was the average age at 11 Madison Park? What was the average age of your staff? I was going to say, they're not 52, right? No. 26.

00:17:13 Speaker_02
How do you train a non-curious, non-hospitable person to become hospitable?

00:17:27 Speaker_00
Well, you don't start with training. I think I was talking about leaders versus managers. Managers train, leaders inspire, right? Like you can't train. someone who doesn't care about hospitality.

00:17:45 Speaker_00
You need to inspire them to care about hospitality and then train them to be hospitable. But you need to start by inspiring them.

00:17:55 Speaker_00
And I think that's like, I've worked with so many companies and they want me to come in and like put together a training program and Almost as if it's like plug and play.

00:18:09 Speaker_02
In two days, you will be hospitable.

00:18:11 Speaker_00
Yeah, and I think what gets talked about is what gets thought about. Passion is contagious. And yeah, it's not dissimilar to what is a preacher getting up there and doing? They're talking about something with every ounce of their passion.

00:18:34 Speaker_00
with every ounce of their being, they're screaming it from the mountaintops, right? In hopes that someone in one of those chairs will be infected by their passion. And yeah, we need to do that with hospitality too.

00:18:53 Speaker_02
So you inspire first, you train second. Maybe if you don't mind, and I know you've got the whole book about it, but I'd love to drill down on it. Talk to me about inspiring a young leader.

00:19:07 Speaker_02
Because, you know, the other thought that really comes with me in hiring, that I think about more and more as I get older, is a lot of us echo the system, the culture into which we were born.

00:19:20 Speaker_00
Right.

00:19:20 Speaker_02
You were fortunate. You talked so much about your dad in the most admiring terms. You were mentored by Danny Meyer.

00:19:27 Speaker_02
I mean, you had great influences in your life that took whatever nascent curiosity you might have had as a child and kind of fanned it into flame. Some people come from the opposite.

00:19:40 Speaker_02
culture in their, in their family where nobody was hospitable, where people ate TV dinners and stared at the TV and didn't talk to each other and weren't very outward focused.

00:19:50 Speaker_02
So you have a whole variety of people with their incoming stories at 24, 25, 26, starting with you and your restaurant. What does inspiration look like when you have a mixed, mixed crowd?

00:20:03 Speaker_00
Well, I think that, um, I like your metaphor, fanning into flame. Like the one thing just to say is I believe everyone has at least an ember of this in them and maybe you just need a fan longer and harder to get it to ignite.

00:20:23 Speaker_00
But I think that's something just that I believe anyway. I'm pretty sure I'm right. Yeah.

00:20:31 Speaker_02
The metaphor didn't start with me, but it is a good metaphor.

00:20:34 Speaker_00
Yeah. I mean, I, I,

00:20:39 Speaker_00
For me, the greatest opportunity for inspiration comes in a daily huddle, and I talk about the power of a pre-meal in a restaurant all the time, that 30-minute meeting we have right before we open the doors, and try to encourage anyone, no matter what they do, no matter how big their team is, if you don't have some version of a daily huddle, you're leaving one of the most beautiful tools that we have at our disposal off to the side, because

00:21:07 Speaker_00
a daily huddle is an opportunity for a leader to actually like step up and lead and to inspire. And so in the case of a restaurant, you're doing that for whatever, 40 people in a literal circle, like the one that would not let you in.

00:21:22 Speaker_02
The one that wouldn't let me in.

00:21:24 Speaker_00
Yeah. Um, yeah. And, and I always, there's a couple of things I always tell people when they're leading a premium, One is your energy is there to impact theirs, not the other way around. Um, and that's for a very specific reason.

00:21:42 Speaker_00
I always talk about people's facial expressions are not an accurate depiction of how engaged they are and what you're saying. Um, for example, when I'm really engaged with someone's message, I look like this.

00:22:02 Speaker_00
And for people who are just listening, me too, for people who are not watching us, I just gave a facial expression of profound disinterest. And it's just, it's just what my face does when I'm really focused.

00:22:13 Speaker_00
And, um, and one of the things we can do when we're trying to inspire a group is we catch on to someone who's looking at us like that, because we don't think they're into what we're saying.

00:22:25 Speaker_00
We start to second guess our message and retreat a little bit and allow our passion to withdraw. Um, So A, your message, your energy is there to impact others, not the other way around.

00:22:35 Speaker_00
And I think if you really own that, it's one of the most powerful things you can do because you stop caring about what you're feeling from them and you only care about what you're trying to get them to feel.

00:22:49 Speaker_00
But the second thing is you can't, this is not the right way to say it, but it'll make sense. You can't play it in the lowest common denominator. Um,

00:23:00 Speaker_00
I've heard so many times, and I think everyone has this experience, like when you're having a more emotional, intentional conversation around the dinner table, or you're playing one of those games where you're articulating appreciation for one another.

00:23:18 Speaker_00
Even the guy that feels like giving off, I'm too cool for this energy, they're often the ones that appreciate it the most at the end of it. Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:23:31 Speaker_00
Whereas if you play to them, instead of all the people that do seem really engaged, you're not getting anyone excited about what you're trying to deliver. I think the third thing is don't be scared of being cheesy. Don't try to be cool.

00:23:50 Speaker_00
Rather, be the person that defines what is cool. Make your message the thing that's cool.

00:23:58 Speaker_00
Anyway, I guess my point is, yeah, just go out there and allow yourself to be genuinely passionate about what you believe, and if you are, consistently, repetitively, because repetition matters.

00:24:16 Speaker_00
I've always been astounded at the change you see in those around you. I don't know, what do you think when I talk about that?

00:24:28 Speaker_02
I think you're right. I heard years ago that one of the best things a leader brings to his or her team is their energy. And I think that's true, because we have mopey days. I have mopey days.

00:24:40 Speaker_02
You didn't sleep particularly well, or you're just feeling down or something. And it's easy to let that infect and affect the team. And the other thing I think is really important, Will, is what you said is repetition.

00:24:52 Speaker_02
I just got back from a business conference, and that came up again and again. You know, Horst Schulze, who's been a guest on this podcast from the Ritz-Carlton,

00:25:01 Speaker_02
talks a lot about what is it, the 26 mantras that they have, and every day there's a team meeting, the daily huddle. And I think often as leaders, we assume the vision, we assume the mission, we assume the culture, and I think that's a problem.

00:25:15 Speaker_02
So I would echo that. And I think you're right when, you know, what I almost hear you saying is, this is as much caught as taught.

00:25:25 Speaker_02
And if you see other people get infected and affected in a positive way by that hospitality, even the most cynical person in the room is going to be moved by it and go, oh, we have permission to do this, or I'm learning a new system here, or I can bring out that side of me.

00:25:42 Speaker_02
So that really does resonate.

00:25:44 Speaker_02
But it's a reminder to weary leaders, if you've been doing this for a few minutes, that it is your energy you've got to bring to the team, and it is the reminder of the mission, vision, and the culture that you want to create.

00:25:56 Speaker_00
I think it's also, we all want to be inspired. I mean, you look at how many millions of views are on TED Talks.

00:26:12 Speaker_00
TED Talks are successful because way too many people out there don't have anyone who is inspiring them in their lives, and so they go online to find it. Like, we're craving inspiration, and okay, you have that if you're lucky in one of your parents.

00:26:33 Speaker_00
Maybe, maybe you have a friend in your life that is inspirational, and maybe they somehow feel comfortable inspiring you as a friend. And that's a weird dynamic. Um, I just think like we all crave inspiration.

00:26:53 Speaker_00
And if you're a leader, why can't it be you that makes the choice to give it to people? I think it's an opportunity that leaders have. I think it's actually a responsibility that leaders have, but

00:27:09 Speaker_00
Every leader also has some amount of imposter syndrome, and when you do, sometimes you start to question, well, who am I to be the one that inspires them? Well, you are their boss. You're the leader of this community.

00:27:22 Speaker_00
You are in this position for a reason. So seize the mantle.

00:27:29 Speaker_02
Of all the ideas in unreasonable hospitality, and it sold a lot of copies. The hot dog story has really become very well known. We're at the number one restaurant in the world.

00:27:40 Speaker_02
I'll give people the nutshell so you don't have to tell it again for the 80th time. But at this number one beautiful restaurant in the world, business executives are sitting around saying the one thing they didn't get is a dirty hot dog.

00:27:55 Speaker_02
You or the team run out into the street, grab one off a hot dog vendor for literally $2, slice it up against the chef's protestations and deliver it to them, and it makes their day. Right? It's unreasonable. It's hospitality.

00:28:09 Speaker_02
That's become very well known. What are the ideas that have most caught on from the book? And then what are the most misunderstood ideas? You're like, oh, no, that's not what I was saying. I meant this. Every author has that, right?

00:28:21 Speaker_02
Gosh, that's the first time anyone's asked me that.

00:28:25 Speaker_00
I mean, the ideas that have most caught on are the smallest gestures can have the biggest impacts. Hospitality isn't about how much you spend on someone, it's about how thoughtful you are.

00:28:42 Speaker_00
It's about how these philosophies cannot take root in an organization unless you truly empower everyone on your team. Because this is not a one-person operation, it's a team operation. Everyone needs to feel the autonomy to do what's right.

00:29:01 Speaker_00
I think that last one,

00:29:04 Speaker_00
Anyone who's ever called a customer service hotline with a complaint can relate to because it doesn't matter how hospitable the rules are if the people on the front line who you're actually talking to aren't able to do anything for you, the exchange is going to feel inhospitable.

00:29:24 Speaker_00
Maybe better said, it doesn't matter how hospitable the rules are if the people you're engaging with are only empowered to follow a strict list of rules. Um, let's see the things perhaps most often miss most often misunderstood.

00:29:42 Speaker_00
I mean, thankfully this is not easy for me to answer, which means that there haven't been like one or two things that have been like grading at me, but well, that's good. One of the things I remind people of most often is

00:30:01 Speaker_00
I talk about hospitality versus excellence. And I mean, effectively, the book is saying hospitality is more important than excellence, right?

00:30:12 Speaker_00
I don't actually say that anywhere in the book, but if someone read the CliffsNotes, they might walk away with that. And appropriately so, because

00:30:21 Speaker_00
I use the Maya Angelou quote, doesn't matter, they won't remember what you say, they won't remember what you do, they're gonna remember how you make them feel. And so hospitality is the thing that will leave them feeling something.

00:30:36 Speaker_00
But in spite of that, it doesn't mean that excellence isn't extraordinarily important. In fact, it's a prerequisite to all the ideas of unreasonable hospitality. You can't have dessert until you eat your vegetables, right?

00:30:51 Speaker_00
And so I think that's one thing where people start skipping the excellence step and in doing so lose the very foundation upon which unreasonable hospitality is built.

00:31:01 Speaker_00
Um, the second one is similar to that, which is, I talk about the rule of 95 five in the book. It's my approach to managing finances, which is manager money, like a maniac 95% of the time, such that 5% of the time you can spend it foolishly. Um,

00:31:20 Speaker_02
That idea has got a lot of traction. I've heard that repeated back to me numerous times.

00:31:25 Speaker_00
Oh, that's cool. That's fun to hear. Yet in spite of that, I think some people like to just jump to the 5% and skip over the 95%.

00:31:35 Speaker_02
We'll manage 5% maniacally and do what we want 95% of the time.

00:31:40 Speaker_00
Or just say like, we can't afford to do this stuff. And well, you know, you need to earn the right to do it and everyone can afford it. You just need to tighten your belt in some areas. That's that you can open up your wallet and other areas.

00:31:52 Speaker_00
And I'd say those are the two things that, maybe require a little bit of reinforcing.

00:32:17 Speaker_02
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00:32:25 Speaker_02
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00:32:38 Speaker_02
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00:32:51 Speaker_02
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00:33:02 Speaker_02
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00:33:15 Speaker_02
That's preachingcheatsheet.com to download your copy for free. And now, back to the conversation. Is there, I mean, I've written a few books myself, and it's funny how people focus in on certain aspects of what you wrote.

00:33:32 Speaker_02
And I can think of my last two books, and it's like, it's the same stuff coming back to me over and over and over again. And part of me is like, well, my favorite, my two books ago, didn't see it coming.

00:33:42 Speaker_02
My favorite was the seventh section on emptiness. How do you overcome, after you've had success, this feeling of emptiness? I'm like, I was so excited writing it. Nobody ever talks to me about that. And maybe they never read to the end, Will.

00:33:58 Speaker_02
I don't know. But I'm like, oh, that was like such a such a work of art. And you guys are ignoring it in favor of cynicism and burnout. OK, that's fine.

00:34:09 Speaker_02
But is there a neglected part of unreasonable hospitality where you're like, oh, I wish this saw more daylight? This is a little gem that even those of you who have read it may have missed.

00:34:20 Speaker_00
No, you know, I think maybe to the contrary, I expected, I expected everyone to talk about like the last third of the book and kind of never really acknowledge that much about the first two thirds of the book.

00:34:34 Speaker_00
But I didn't feel like you could write the last third of the book without the foundation of the first two thirds, not just the narrative foundation, but the ideological foundation.

00:34:46 Speaker_00
And yet, when I hear people talk about the things they feel the most connected with, a lot of them are surprisingly kind of spread throughout.

00:34:54 Speaker_00
I think one of the things that maybe I get frustrated in conversation, frustrated is not the right word, but one of the things that I think is so, so, so important to create a culture of hospitality is

00:35:14 Speaker_00
for a leader to create a culture where feedback is normalized. By normalized, I mean not only And I talk about, yes, praise is a very important part of that. Obviously, you set high expectations.

00:35:33 Speaker_00
When people meet or exceed those expectations, you better be there to praise them. You better be praising your team all the time. People crave affirmation. Again, even the ones that give off too-cool-for-school energy, they crave it too. I do.

00:35:49 Speaker_00
Praise is... such a big part of what makes a culture great. And yet, sometimes I fear that in pursuit of praise, we've lost sight of how fueling an emotion or fueling an exercise criticism can be.

00:36:07 Speaker_00
Because if praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. Criticism is uncomfortable for the giver and the receiver.

00:36:17 Speaker_00
And yet I think there are a few things someone can do that are more generous than being willing to step outside of their comfort zone for long enough to invest in someone else's growth.

00:36:25 Speaker_00
And in the book, I go through all the rules of criticism because I think if you don't follow the rules, it's not actually thoughtful and by definition, not constructive. But something I've been struck by is how many people

00:36:44 Speaker_00
want to tell me to use a different word. They don't like the word criticism because they believe it brings with it negative connotations.

00:36:56 Speaker_00
And that is normally where I will, this is one position that I've had enough conversations around where I will entrench myself in the position because I think that's the reason to use that word.

00:37:09 Speaker_00
I think we dance around criticism to the point where we need to re-articulate it for fear that it will be received in the wrong way. I think you need to call something what it is and then work to deliver it in a way that

00:37:27 Speaker_02
I would love to – that was going to be one of my things that I asked you about is praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. So feel free to look at when you had the restaurant or what you're doing.

00:37:40 Speaker_02
You have a conference now, the Welcome Conference, I'm sure you get. Feedback on that, criticism on that. And we just did our first live event in Dallas in September. And I thought the event went extraordinarily well.

00:37:54 Speaker_02
And then I started to read the survey. I'm like, please, please, please give us feedback. They had feedback. I'm like, okay, all right. Some stuff we missed. I still think it was a home run for our first rodeo. But, you know, it's like,

00:38:12 Speaker_02
How did you handle that as a leader? Because if I have a theory, and I don't know, maybe you have a different theory, it's like a lot of us are a little more thin-skinned than we let on, and it's just we feel too bad about ourselves.

00:38:24 Speaker_02
So therefore, it's easier not to hear the criticism than to read it and start to, you know, navel-gaze and wonder what's wrong with us. So how did you handle that or how do you handle that when you get feedback on something you threw your heart into?

00:38:37 Speaker_02
You know, the meal service, the conference that you hosted, the book that you wrote. I'm sure you probably have a one-star review. Definitely not from me. But what do you do with that? What happens inside Will when you get that kind of feedback?

00:38:53 Speaker_00
Well, different things depending on the dynamic of the relationship between me and the person that's coming from. I mean, I remember when I was coming up, I always craved feedback from my bosses. But I wanted to grow through my career.

00:39:08 Speaker_00
I knew that the only way to do it was for the people above me in the hierarchy to think I was doing a good job. So tell me what I'm not doing well so I can fix it. Um, I'm working with a trainer right now for the first time in my life.

00:39:22 Speaker_00
I've never done that.

00:39:23 Speaker_02
I've never like physical trainer working out physical trainer. Like, yeah, yeah.

00:39:27 Speaker_00
I'm 44 years old. I have two kids. Like I want to be in good shape. Tell me how to be in good shape. And this guy, his name is Sam, he is unbelievable. And if I'm doing an exercise wrong, he's gonna be like, hey, stop doing that. No, keep your body level.

00:39:48 Speaker_00
Stop moving your elbow like that. Tuck it in. And he's not like, hey, if you don't mind, I would really love if you could. He just says it very directly. By the way, then the moment I do it the right way, he's like, there you go, great job.

00:40:03 Speaker_00
You know, and by the way, that's exactly how feedback should work, right? Like in a very unemotional, direct way, call out the problem when they get it right, celebrate it with a bit of emotion, right? That's the, I think the circle of feedback.

00:40:16 Speaker_00
And I, I so get up, I want every little bit of that from him because I'm working with him for a reason. I want to achieve results.

00:40:23 Speaker_00
And I know in the absence of his feedback, I will, when it's something that's more emotional, my conference, my book, the meal, something that I've like, poured myself into the end result is the same.

00:40:37 Speaker_00
Sometimes there's just like a left turn and a right turn and another left turn to get there. Right? Like we got an email the day, like three days after the welcome conference. And I got so many great text messages and emails.

00:40:54 Speaker_00
And this is the actually, sorry for the, um, whatever aside here, but,

00:41:02 Speaker_00
I think one of the things that's so funny when I think about myself and my relationship to receiving feedback is if someone sends me an email telling me that something I did was good, I lose interest halfway through.

00:41:16 Speaker_00
I'm like, okay, I'm not learning anything in this. Like, great. Thank you. Let's move on. Like, tell me something that can make me better.

00:41:23 Speaker_00
That's going to be the thing I'm really, which by the way, I'm trying to work on because I do think you need to allow yourself the grace to celebrate the the good stuff. Then someone tells me I did something bad.

00:41:35 Speaker_00
This email I got about Welcome Conference, I read it and it was forwarded to me by someone on my team and I was on a plane and I just deleted the email.

00:41:46 Speaker_00
And then five minutes later I said, well, and then I went into my trash and undeleted the email and I knew I was going to undelete it the moment I deleted it, but I needed to like it just a little, and I'll tell you what the feedback was and I'll tell you what I learned from it.

00:42:01 Speaker_00
Um, that there were too many speakers that were not speaking directly to hospitality. And I deleted the email because I was like, well, this person's wrong.

00:42:20 Speaker_00
Because I spent so long, everyone on that stage was speaking about hospitality, and the entire way in which welcome has evolved is it's not as literal.

00:42:30 Speaker_00
It's not like, here's how you decant a bottle of wine, and here's how you welcome someone into your restaurant. It was the leading child psychologist talking about empathy and assuming the goodness in others. That is profoundly hospitable to me.

00:42:44 Speaker_00
It was Don Miller talking about being the guide, and that is profoundly hospitable to me. So that's why I deleted it. The reason I undeleted it was everything I'm talking about.

00:42:59 Speaker_00
I want to get better, and if that was their perception, something in it is real. And I'll tell you what I'm gonna do next year. As a result of that person's critical email, which I'm so grateful for,

00:43:14 Speaker_00
is I've in the past, I would go up on the stage every couple speakers and summarize my takeaways of those speakers to bring it back to the core. And I didn't do that this year.

00:43:29 Speaker_00
And I can tell, and I did it organically before from this point forward, I will do it with intention. Like there needs to be a tie back where

00:43:39 Speaker_00
Someone is leading everyone to the point that we brought them up there to make if they don't get there on their own. Next year's conference will be better because of that email. That person took a risk in sending it, and I'm grateful that they did.

00:43:55 Speaker_02
I think there's a lot of leaders who are probably relieved that you still have the emotional journey and haven't figured it out. Interesting what you said, though. I tend to stop reading compliments halfway through, too.

00:44:09 Speaker_02
I think that's probably a therapy session for you and one for me, separately, that we have to chase down. Why do we not believe the praise but we're so quick to go to the criticism? And I think you're right.

00:44:21 Speaker_02
When I was reading the spreadsheet where all the reviews were, were cataloged for me. I'm like, but what you don't understand is what I was trying to do. And then I'm like, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't play that game. Like, just listen.

00:44:34 Speaker_02
And, and my group, I let them, it was 200 hand-selected leaders. We wanted it really small. And I'm like, you're adults. I'm going to ask a lot of questions, not give a lot of direction. You're going to figure it out.

00:44:46 Speaker_02
And the number one piece of feedback was we want more content from you. And we want a few more practical things along the way. And I'm like, Okay, that's fair. And so when we do it again next year, we're going to make adjustments.

00:45:00 Speaker_02
But yeah, that emotional journey is hard. And I guess as long as you undelete the deleted email, you're probably still going to win it this long term, right? But it doesn't get easier. That's really good.

00:45:14 Speaker_02
You were on Craig Rochelle's podcast and I was listening. And that was one of the things you talked about, criticism as investment, praise as affirmation. But you said a couple of other things, high creativity and high competitiveness.

00:45:27 Speaker_02
Can you talk about that pairing? High creativity, high competitiveness.

00:45:32 Speaker_00
I don't remember the context that I was talking about. Can you give me context to make sure I'm talking about it the way that you want? I wish I could.

00:45:43 Speaker_02
I'm just looking at my notes. So let me give you a couple of pairings that I thought were interesting. High creativity, high competitiveness. Control and collaboration was another one that I picked up on. Because you're right.

00:45:54 Speaker_02
I mean, if you're dealing with a whole lot of people who, as you point out, are in unreasonable hospitality, are not making six figures a year. Just by definition, the industry can't support it.

00:46:04 Speaker_02
You need a lot of collaboration, a lot of ownership, but you also have to have control so the restaurant doesn't go in a whole other direction or get way off base. So that was a really interesting pairing.

00:46:15 Speaker_02
Maybe we can focus on that collaboration versus and control.

00:46:19 Speaker_00
Well, I think so now you're starting to bring me back a little bit to it. So I think like The whole conflicting goals thing, I think is just so important. I mean, excellence and hospitality, conflicting goals, right? Those two things are not friends.

00:46:39 Speaker_00
It's easier to be just excellent, easier to be just hospitable. Harder to do the two at the same time. Think about it.

00:46:48 Speaker_00
I could manage a restaurant where everyone in the dining room is super, super happy and extraordinarily warm if I didn't care about them executing the details at a high level. Right?

00:47:00 Speaker_02
All I need to do is... We all love each other, but we're so mediocre.

00:47:03 Speaker_00
We're so mediocre. The joke is if all you do is give your team back rubs in the service station, they're going to be great on the floor. The moment you have to be like, Hey, you need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this.

00:47:13 Speaker_00
You didn't do this. Similarly, it's easy to be excellent. If you put the fear of God in your team that they're gonna get screamed at if they make a mistake.

00:47:29 Speaker_00
They're probably gonna make a lot less mistakes, but you cannot be your most hospitable self if you're living in a place of fear, right? Doing the two things simultaneously is just harder. I think there are plenty of creatives.

00:47:42 Speaker_00
There are plenty of creative people, and there are plenty of competitive people.

00:47:47 Speaker_00
But if you really look around, a lot of the people that you would consider to be the most creative aren't necessarily so competitive, and the people that are the most competitive aren't necessarily the most creative.

00:47:58 Speaker_00
When you can be both creative and competitive at the same time, when you can allow yourself to believe that both of those sides of who you are are decent and awesome and necessary. You can feed and indulge both sides of that.

00:48:18 Speaker_00
That's when you become the kind of person that changes the world. Steve Jobs was creative and competitive. Michael Jordan was creative and competitive. And there's plenty of creative people who think competitive people are jerks.

00:48:35 Speaker_00
And there's plenty of creative, competitive people who think creative people are wusses, right?

00:48:41 Speaker_02
Functionally useless.

00:48:42 Speaker_00
Yeah. I think you need, I think you need a little bit of both to, to really, to rise to that next level. I think control versus collaboration. I mean, that will be my, uh, the thing that torments me, um,

00:49:01 Speaker_00
And I think controlling collaboration is hospitality and excellence a little bit. I think there's a ton of parallel there. I am an unbelievably obsessive compulsive person. Like I'm anal retentive.

00:49:19 Speaker_00
It's, it's a superpower and a villain origin story all wrapped up into one. Um, When it comes to excellence, I know exactly what right looks like, and I want everyone to do it exactly that way all the time.

00:49:35 Speaker_00
And yet at the same time, I love creating cultures of ownership and empowerment. And I know that people bring their best selves to the job when they feel they have the ability to creatively impact the work itself.

00:49:52 Speaker_00
And those two things do not go together well at all. And It's a real balancing act to understand what things need to be consistent. And interrogate that list down such that it's as short as possible.

00:50:13 Speaker_00
And then empower people to make the rest of it their own.

00:50:17 Speaker_02
Yeah, so I'd love to explore that journey a little bit more, Will, because normally what would happen, obviously there's a lot of self-awareness and self-regulation happening in getting to the place where you're able to scale this, build a restaurant that became number one in the world, because most people who are obsessive, compulsive, micromanaging details, you have a restaurant with two staff who don't have other options.

00:50:44 Speaker_02
And a few clients, right? You can micromanage your organization into nothing so quickly. Just scale it down.

00:50:53 Speaker_00
Or you have a big, big staff with a ton of turnover.

00:50:56 Speaker_02
Exactly.

00:50:57 Speaker_00
Yeah, that too. People are fine putting themselves through that for some measure of time and taking what they can from you. But then they don't want to have anything to do with you anymore, and then they move on.

00:51:08 Speaker_02
Right. So you see it. I still remember my first conversation with Horst Schultz on this podcast, where he talked about the blessing and the curse of seeing everything, right? Founder of the Ritz-Carlton.

00:51:20 Speaker_02
He notices every detail, where the napkin was laid, how the cutlery is laid out, exactly what side they serve from.

00:51:27 Speaker_02
And, you know, I go to restaurants like it was good or bad, but I go to a church, I can point out every mistake I see, particularly in my own work.

00:51:37 Speaker_02
How did you manage that very natural tendency with collaboration where the whole team felt empowered and you got that list to be a very, very short list? Because I think that's a tension. So many people listening to this struggle with Will.

00:51:54 Speaker_00
Well, okay. The first thing I wanna say is at the end of the day, you can have both, right? So every time a knife is put down, I wanna see it put down the same way.

00:52:11 Speaker_00
Every time we plate the duck, it better be facing you in the exact same way, and the puree better be exactly here on the plate. And every time we do all these different things, the consistency is, is a very, very, very big part of a winning formula.

00:52:30 Speaker_00
I think controlling consistency is important. I don't, however, think that I need to be the one that decides how all those things are done.

00:52:44 Speaker_00
I think if you open up the doors to collaboration and making decisions, then it's not like designed by committee every single day, everyone walks in the door, right? It's just about inviting

00:52:58 Speaker_00
more people, as many as possible, to sit with you around the tables so that you can collectively decide what right looks like. And to be clear, even then it's not designed by committee.

00:53:11 Speaker_00
I think the way I believe collaboration should work in a big group is you sit down at the table, you let everyone speak their mind, you allow for a reasonable amount of time for debate and discourse and engagement.

00:53:26 Speaker_00
At the end of the day, people do crave leadership and someone needs to make a decision at the end of that meeting. People want conviction. They want to know that things are actually getting done and not just endlessly debated.

00:53:37 Speaker_00
Then on the other side, I think there's, okay, the plate needs to go down in the exact same way. The knife does need to go down in the same way. How the food is described, well, that shouldn't be the exact same way for two reasons. One,

00:53:56 Speaker_00
Then a server is becoming an actor. They're just reciting lines as opposed to being a human being using their own words.

00:54:04 Speaker_00
Two, you're actually giving a worse version of service because part of great hospitality is reading the people you're serving to identify what they want from you in that moment. Some people want you to say, here's the beef medium rare and leave.

00:54:20 Speaker_00
There's someone else that wants to say, this is the beef medium rare. It was, came from a cattle farm in Montana. The farmer's name is Duke. He plays the cows, Beethoven, every single, like whatever. Some people want the entire chapter read to them.

00:54:42 Speaker_00
I think really what it comes down to is when the thing actually influences the human experience, You probably want to work super hard to control as little about it as possible.

00:55:00 Speaker_02
Oh, that's interesting. When it impacts the human experience, can you say more about that? What does that mean?

00:55:12 Speaker_00
the words that we are using to engage with one another, the little things that I am going to be doing for you that are reacting to the things I learned about you as a human.

00:55:24 Speaker_00
I guess you're right to push me to explain it more because the human experiences could be, everything could be a part of the human experience. I mean, when it's less, logistical and it's more emotional.

00:55:40 Speaker_00
And emotional, let's frame that word, describing the beef tenderloin on a plate is not emotional, but the way in which you're doing it is reacting to some emotion you're receiving from the people you're doing it for.

00:55:56 Speaker_00
Whether you're doing it succinctly or elaborately, whether you of a serious look on your face or a smile on your face, right?

00:56:06 Speaker_00
Like you're reading the emotion and the energy at the table and you're responding to that in a way that you believe will make the people you're serving feel the most served.

00:56:18 Speaker_00
will give them the ability to feel the most connected to you and by definition with one another as well. When you, like, okay, I'll give you an example. At most restaurants, mine in the beginning, there were a list of words that you don't use.

00:56:38 Speaker_00
You don't use the word dude. You don't use the word bro. You don't say are we still working on it. We tried to interrogate that list of words that you didn't use down to be as small as humanly possible, because here's the reality.

00:56:55 Speaker_00
If someone on my team just uses the word dude, if he calls people dude, then every, if that's like part of his vernacular on a regular basis, every moment that he's actively trying to not say a word that he always uses every minute that he's not in the restaurant, he's less present with the people he's talking to.

00:57:16 Speaker_03
Right.

00:57:18 Speaker_00
Rather, I would say to the team, hey, if you use the word dude, I'm fine with you saying dude here, but you need to earn informality with the guest before you do.

00:57:32 Speaker_00
So you need to like, and you know, I wrote this metaphor in the book, but when you meet your partner's father for the first time, you call them Mr. Whatever. And then eventually one day they say, please call me by my first name.

00:57:47 Speaker_00
Then, you know, you've earned informality. You need to get there with the guest as quickly as possible. And then just be you, just be profoundly you.

00:57:54 Speaker_00
Because if I'm giving you a set of rules, that's not allowing you to be you, you're spending so much time trying to follow those rules that you're not actually fully you, right? And that is part of the human experience, that's being uniquely human.

00:58:10 Speaker_00
I don't know, I'm all over the place here, so tell me if it's not making sense.

00:58:16 Speaker_02
This is making a lot of sense, and it is never easy, and it's a constant dance. If you were starting all over again, what would you do differently?

00:58:37 Speaker_00
Gosh, I mean, honestly, not much.

00:58:40 Speaker_02
That's fun. It's a fun answer.

00:58:43 Speaker_00
Well, the reason for that is because I mean, yeah, I could answer like, well, I wouldn't have done this because man, that was hard. And that took us down a side road for a while.

00:58:53 Speaker_00
And then we had to double back and we made this mistake, but I mean, I'm of the camp that every mistake you make helps you become a better version of yourself. And

00:59:06 Speaker_00
It makes me nervous to think about all the great things I learned, like how many of the great things I learned I wouldn't have learned had I not made the mistake that prompted them.

00:59:22 Speaker_02
Was there anything that took too high a cost? Because I'm thinking, the biggest defining point of my life was burnout that I hit around the age of 40. And it was deeply painful. I look back on that now, almost 19 years ago.

00:59:39 Speaker_02
And I'm like, yeah, but it paved the way to all the progress I've made in my life since then. And it's a big part of why I do what I do and what I do. So I mean, I understand that.

00:59:50 Speaker_02
On the other hand, looking back on it, I'm like, the chip was too expensive for my family and my wife and the people closest to me. And so if I could rewind the tape,

01:00:02 Speaker_02
I would have taken my personal health and wellbeing more seriously and my boundaries more seriously. I'm just saying, if not, well, I got lots of other questions.

01:00:11 Speaker_00
Well, no, but even there, like, let me, let me, let me ask you something. Um, cause you seem like you, you're living in a pretty beautifully balanced way, or at least the energy you put out into the world would make people believe that to be true.

01:00:29 Speaker_02
I think it's true privately and publicly. I'm not saying it can't get better, but I'm at a place where nine days out of 10, I'm in a pretty good place.

01:00:41 Speaker_00
On a scale from one to 10, where would you rank yourself?

01:00:44 Speaker_02
Yeah, I would say I'm an 8 or a 9. 10 is for heaven. So I would say most days I'm an 8 or a 9. And at my worst, I actually didn't have a good week last week. Variety of things happening. Personally, I was a 5 or a 6.

01:00:58 Speaker_02
But I led for a number of years, maybe with a 3 or a 4 at times.

01:01:03 Speaker_00
Yeah, so if you were to ask your family, A, what would you prefer? Would you prefer that for my entire life, I was at a six?

01:01:21 Speaker_00
Or would you prefer that I had to go down to a three for some measure of time such that for the rest of my years, I can live between an eight and a nine? What do you think they'd say?

01:01:36 Speaker_02
I'm a bit emotional. That's a great question. And I've had that conversation with my adult sons who are 32 and 28 several times.

01:01:48 Speaker_02
And you've helped me clarify something that is really important because I feel very bad about me not being as attentive in my 30s as I might have been as a dad. And I didn't skip all their games.

01:02:01 Speaker_02
I mean, I was there as them, but you know, when you're there, but you're like, I'm thinking about other stuff. That was me. And they have said ad nauseum, dad, it wasn't that bad. Dad, it wasn't that bad.

01:02:12 Speaker_02
And I think, honestly, without hesitation, they would say, we'll take you at a three for a few years so that you can be eight or nine for most of the rest of our lives. Wow. What a framing. Thank you.

01:02:27 Speaker_00
Oh, thank you, man. It's my pleasure.

01:02:29 Speaker_02
That's a gift, man. That's a gift, Will. I'm sorry. You caught me in a good way. That's a very good, and you know, Christians, we're really good at beating ourselves up with guilt. So, you know, thank you.

01:02:45 Speaker_00
I don't know. A lot of my closest friends are Jewish, and I think they might say they got you guys beat. Maybe they got me beat.

01:02:51 Speaker_02
Maybe they got me beat. Fair, fair, fair, Will. Yeah, but you know, that is a really interesting framing. So, thank you. What a gift. Anything else on that, or else I've got a few more questions. Let's talk about reinvention.

01:03:08 Speaker_02
So, Eleven Madison Park, you left after a number of years, becoming number one in the world, and you've reinvented yourself. These days, as far as I know, last time we talked, you're not running a restaurant day-to-day. Is that fair? That's fair.

01:03:23 Speaker_02
You're doing the Welcome Conference, you wrote a book, you're doing a lot of public speaking. What are you learning about reinvention?

01:03:32 Speaker_00
I'll tell you, this has been the most wild ride. And gosh, I think there's so many people. I lost a couple of really, really good friends during COVID. I lost some money during COVID. I think a lot of people lost a bunch of different things.

01:03:58 Speaker_00
And yet I do not think I'm alone. that there's something I feel incredible gratitude to COVID for.

01:04:06 Speaker_00
I think the pandemic gave a lot of people different things, whether it was a collective kind of reminder of our innate need for human connections, and let's not take some of those relationships for granted as much as we may have before, whether that's just setting aside time to pursue the friends or family

01:04:32 Speaker_00
that we love, or even with our intimate family, just the beauty of sitting around the dinner table together on a regular basis. When I sold the company, I had about two days of unbelievable celebration, and then an immediate identity crisis.

01:04:59 Speaker_00
Like, wait a minute, what did I just do? Who am I? I'm the restaurant guy who is a restaurant guy without restaurants. And then started frantically, aggressively raising money, building a team, getting ready to open restaurants.

01:05:15 Speaker_00
When COVID hit, I was literally, this is not a bombastic statement, it's literal, a week away from signing three restaurant leases in New York City.

01:05:30 Speaker_00
And then I moved, it was just me and my wife at that point, our dog, up to our place in the country for what we thought was gonna be a few weeks, that turned into a few months.

01:05:43 Speaker_00
For the first couple months, I was keeping all those deals warm, talking to my team, talking to the investors. And then one day I said, wait, what am I doing? COVID gave me a gift.

01:05:58 Speaker_00
The gift of rather than running back to do the thing I'd always done, to rather take a little bit of time and decide what I wanted to do next.

01:06:12 Speaker_00
By the way, I could have taken that time and gone back to doing what I'd always done, but I still would have been making that choice again, which is powerful.

01:06:21 Speaker_02
Yes, it is. Choosing free agent.

01:06:24 Speaker_00
Yeah, like choosing to do it as opposed to just reverting to it. And what's funny is I wrote the book to help me make that choice. I was like, maybe I should write this book. I've been thinking about writing it.

01:06:43 Speaker_00
Maybe this is the right time to write it because, A, no matter what I choose to do next, if I force myself to articulate For others, what my non-negotiables are, I'll be better at embodying them going forward.

01:07:01 Speaker_00
I'll be better at compelling my team to embrace them. The better you are at articulating an idea, the better you become at compelling those around you to embrace it. And just based on the way I wrote the book, it was a narrative structure, right?

01:07:15 Speaker_00
And so if I walk back down the path I've just been on, it'll help me choose where I want to walk next. And in a hilarious turn of fate, writing the book, well, that ended up becoming the thing I did next. And it's given me, that's the story.

01:07:44 Speaker_00
I haven't answered the question yet, though. What have I learned about reinvention? It's never too late to re-invite yourself. I used to say, a piece of advice I always used to give people is don't run away from something, run towards something.

01:08:06 Speaker_00
And people I would talk to, It's funny, you get older and you regret advice you've given in the past that were unhappy in their jobs. I'd be like, don't just quit your job. Like start thinking about what you want to do next.

01:08:18 Speaker_00
And like, when you know what you want to run towards, then quit your job and run towards it. And I'm sure that's pragmatic advice. And I think it's probably still good some of the time, but if

01:08:33 Speaker_00
If you believe in yourself, if you work hard, like here's the thing with the book, I gave everything to that book in the same way I gave everything to the restaurants, right? Like you need to approach everything in the way that you do. Well, anything.

01:08:51 Speaker_00
Um, but if you believe in yourself and you work hard and you understand what you're passionate about and you lean into those passions, there's always another chapter. ahead of you if you're open to reading it.

01:09:06 Speaker_00
But I would just say for anyone out there who's maybe not happy or not finding fulfillment in what they do but feeling like they're wearing some golden handcuffs and they can't leave because they're in a place that too much of their identity is wrapped up in what they do or they're making too much money or people think they're cool for it.

01:09:31 Speaker_00
You can find all of those things again, and if you do and you find just profound fulfillment along with it, highly recommend it.

01:09:46 Speaker_02
One of the things you've done in the reinvention is you got involved in TV, The Bear. I mean, it was a show my wife and I watched in season one before anybody had heard of it, and then it really took off in season two.

01:10:02 Speaker_02
And you and another podcast alumnus, Brian Koppelman, are on the show. I had the chance to interview Brian a few years ago through Mutual Friends, and you're on the show, and I'm looking at the credits going, Will's on this. This is amazing.

01:10:15 Speaker_02
How did that happen? How did you get connected with The Bear, which is, I guess, now the most award... It's not a comedy. That's its category. I guess it is. It is funny. But the most awarded comedy in the history of television.

01:10:26 Speaker_00
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. So, I spent a little bit of time with Chris Storr, the showrunner, the director, the creator of the show, before season one came out.

01:10:37 Speaker_02
Okay. How did you guys connect?

01:10:39 Speaker_00
Mutual friends? Someone introduced us.

01:10:43 Speaker_00
But sometime, I mean like one 90-minute phone call, where someone was like, hey, if you're doing this show, you should just spend some time with Will, ask him a bunch of questions, let him say some stuff, just so that you are steeped in restaurant-y stuff.

01:11:01 Speaker_00
And then I didn't even think about it again. And I actually found a deleted email from him, which is strange because I'm very disciplined with emails and somehow I missed this one.

01:11:13 Speaker_00
years later, that was like, hey, bud, that show we talked about this first season's coming out in a couple of weeks. Click the link below if you want to get a sneak preview. And it was him sending me season one of the bear.

01:11:24 Speaker_00
And I just totally missed it. And so I didn't, um, and then season one came out and I didn't watch it because for me, television, I love, love television. and television for me is an escape at the end of the night.

01:11:43 Speaker_00
It's like me putting the world on pause, and you can't put the world on pause if you're watching a show about your world. But then someone introduced us, like reconnected us, and Chris and I started to become friends. And so then I watched season one.

01:12:04 Speaker_00
I was like, oh man, this is really good. I like this show. Then, Right before season two came out, he called me and said, hey, they were working out of New York City. They were doing the post-production in New York City.

01:12:17 Speaker_00
He said, can you come out to our offices next week? I want to show you something. I was like, yeah. So I went out there and he showed me episode seven, Forks, which is the one based on the hot dog story that my book is featured in.

01:12:28 Speaker_00
He showed me the whole episode. I had no idea what I was walking into. And it was wild. And I think he was showing me because he was excited for me to see it and also to be like, Hey, is that cool?

01:12:37 Speaker_03
We kind of, because your book, your books featured in it and it's based on the hot dog story. Yeah.

01:12:44 Speaker_00
And I was like, yeah, this is amazing. Of course it's cool. And then that same day he told me that season three, it was no longer going to be the beef shop. They were making it into the proper restaurant.

01:12:53 Speaker_00
He asked me to come on as a writer and a producer. Um, and I said, of course it's kind of, It's funny, this question dovetails in the last one. The first season of my life was very, very goal-oriented.

01:13:13 Speaker_00
When I was a kid, I wanted to own a restaurant in New York City. Once I had a restaurant in New York City, I wanted it to be the number one in the world. It was very, very linear. Every choice I made was in pursuit of a goal.

01:13:28 Speaker_00
In this new season, my second mountain, if we're using David Brooks' language. I'm actually less focused on single goals and more just open to whatever life puts in front of me, so long as it checks three boxes. I feel like I can learn something.

01:13:47 Speaker_00
I work alongside people I like having fun, and I make money. If it's those three things, then it's for sure something I want to do. And so this one came up, I was like, that checks all three boxes, let's do it. And it was just a blast.

01:14:08 Speaker_00
I love learning, to your point, or the question before about high competitiveness, high creative, from people who embrace those two approaches, and obviously, you don't become the most award-winning comedy, in quotes, show.

01:14:29 Speaker_00
in history if you're not both creative and competitive, right?

01:14:34 Speaker_00
To just learn about how they approached the culture of that show, not just on set, but in the writing room, how collaborative it was, how there's a lot of people who deserve to have really big egos who check those egos at the door and come in looking to learn from one another and work alongside one another.

01:14:54 Speaker_00
It was a really cool experience. And it made me, I learned that I could impact a lot more people through books than I could restaurants. And you can impact a lot more people through TV than through books.

01:15:12 Speaker_02
I guess so. I guess so. How true to life is a scenario? Like, you know, part of it, there's a lot of conflict, a lot of family dynamics. Addiction is a big part of that show. And conflict. Honestly, high conflict.

01:15:27 Speaker_02
You don't strike me as a high conflict person. Any thoughts on how that portrays reality or is it just very well dramatized for television?

01:15:38 Speaker_00
I mean, I think it's everything in it is rooted in, in, in reality. And I think some of it is dramatized to a point, but there are restaurants.

01:15:45 Speaker_00
I mean, my restaurant was never that dramatic, but there were moments that were very dramatic, not dissimilar to what's portrayed there.

01:15:53 Speaker_00
I mean, the thing, man, I'll tell you the thing that I loved the most about episode seven, the one where my book was in, it is one of the things that I try so hard to communicate through the book, through the written word.

01:16:06 Speaker_00
And it goes back to our conversation around this idea that everyone has hospitality in them.

01:16:11 Speaker_00
It's just a matter of someone inspiring it out of them is that once you do it, once you feel that unbelievable feeling of seeing the look on another person's face when they receive a gift, you're responsible for giving them, you can get hooked and it can unlock the best part of you and make you want to do that over and over and over again.

01:16:31 Speaker_00
And it's hard to fully paint that picture for people, but watching Richie start that apprenticeship at that restaurant. So jaded and over it.

01:16:48 Speaker_03
Not exactly a reader either.

01:16:53 Speaker_00
And then doing the thing with the deep dish pizza, their riff on the hot dog and seeing the look on their face and then racing home, listening to love story by Taylor Swift. So the pastry house department, read the book, like that's real.

01:17:06 Speaker_00
And I've seen it happen to so many people before and they did it in a way that is so perfect and so beautiful. And, um, and I'm grateful to them for, for painting that picture better than I was able to paint it myself.

01:17:22 Speaker_02
Well, we've covered a lot, uh, so far. Is there anything you would, a message, a thought you want to get out to leaders before we wrap up? It's been so rich.

01:17:34 Speaker_00
I guess this is the thing I'd say. I've talked to a lot of companies from pretty much every industry over the past two years.

01:17:49 Speaker_00
And everyone believes in everything I talk about until the part of the conversation where it comes to resource and investment. And yes, like I said before, It's not about how much you spend on this stuff, it's about how thoughtful you are.

01:18:09 Speaker_00
But anyone who's ever done anything of consequence understands that no big idea will ever take root absent resource.

01:18:21 Speaker_00
And when anyone is thinking about how to make a product better, it's obvious and understood and very intuitive that you invest in better things, better ingredients, better parts to make the product better.

01:18:39 Speaker_00
And yet as much as everyone wants to have better hospitality to improve their customer service, people are so reticent to put resource behind it. And I've seen this for years. I've seen restaurants

01:19:05 Speaker_00
that spent $30 million on their construction and then cheap out when it comes to the people or the training or inspiring of those people. I've seen it with real estate developments where they spent hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:19:25 Speaker_00
And then you walk in and the security guard is wearing a cheap suit. How proud can you be? of the job you're in if they're not even willing to buy you a nice suit to wear while you're in it.

01:19:37 Speaker_00
When you know that the marble you're standing on costs you 10 years of a salary at the least. So for a leader out there, if you're inspired by this stuff, being inspired is only gonna get you so far.

01:19:51 Speaker_00
And I would just encourage people to put their money where their mouths are. And I'm not saying you need to mortgage the house

01:20:03 Speaker_00
But if you agree that no plant will ever grow without water, then you understand that no new idea will ever take root in the absence of resource, and I encourage you to water the flowers a little bit with this stuff, and look at the impact it had, because by the way, I believe it's some of the smartest money you can spend.

01:20:27 Speaker_02
Oh man, that is a great thought. And not divorced from church world, there's more than a few leaders listening here who are on teams where we just spent $10 million on a new facility, but we can only pay the kids ministry director a pittance.

01:20:42 Speaker_02
And I think that's a mistake. I think you got to invest in your people. You got to invest in the whole project, in the environment, the culture you want to create.

01:20:53 Speaker_00
In 30 years, nobody, and I can say this with absolute confidence, zero people are going to remember how expensive the stone on the entrance was. They're not going to care where the wood came from.

01:21:08 Speaker_00
They're not going to remember if that doorknob was some gorgeous brass one or something from Home Depot, but they are going to remember the impact that that pastor had on them. So are you investing in the things that actually impact people?

01:21:24 Speaker_00
Are you investing in the things that don't? And if you're not, you need to stop and ask yourself why.

01:21:31 Speaker_02
Well, people are going to want to track with you. I subscribed to your newsletter. Where's an easy place to find you these days?

01:21:37 Speaker_00
Um, yeah, my newsletter premium comes out every two weeks. You can sign up for that at unreasonable hospitality.com. And then I'm at, uh, W good era on Instagram and LinkedIn. Yeah, this was so fun.

01:21:50 Speaker_02
Well, this was great. Yeah, we did manage to fill an hour and a bit on round two, didn't we? Yeah. This is great. Thank you so much, man.

01:21:58 Speaker_00
I look forward to the next one. Me too.

01:22:01 Speaker_02
Man, I love that conversation with Will. If you would like more, you can go to kerrynewhoff.com slash episode 694.

01:22:08 Speaker_02
We will get that to you and you can get the show notes, links to everything Will and I talked about and also connections to our sponsors today.

01:22:17 Speaker_02
This month is your last chance to get your free copy of Belay's latest resource, The Power of Productivity. You can get it absolutely free. To claim it, text my name, Carey, C-A-R-E-Y, to 55123. Accomplish more and juggle less by using Belay.

01:22:32 Speaker_02
Well, next episode, we've got Chad Veach coming up. We are also going to hear from Bob Goff, Zach Zender, J.P. Pakluta, Jenny Allen, Noah Herron, Ramit Sethi—so excited to have him back—Craig Groeschel, and a whole lot more.

01:22:47 Speaker_02
That's all coming up soon on the podcast. If you subscribe, you never miss an episode. And I would love for you to check out a free resource, because you listened to the end, my preaching chi-chi.

01:22:58 Speaker_02
You can visit preachingcheatsheet.com to get your copy for free. Over 30,000 leaders use it on a regular basis. That's preachingcheatsheet.com. Download it for free. The link is also available in the show notes.

01:23:11 Speaker_02
Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Hey, in addition to maybe, you know, being more hospitable, you learned a few things in this episode. If you did, please share it, leave a rating and review.

01:23:20 Speaker_02
And I hope our conversation today helped you identify and scale a growth barrier you're facing.