Jasmine Star (00:00:01) - Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, where we talk about life, business, mindset and today we are talking about the difference between service and wait for it hospitality. Now, before you think that this is a podcast about restaurants or hotels, you could not be more wrong. And I cannot wait to blow your mind with the things that you could start implementing in your business that sets you apart from your competition, that has people raving about you and the experiences that you've created, and has them telling their friends about what it is you do and or offer. Just as a reminder, I am so excited to welcome back our guest co-host, Amy Porterfield, who has hand-selected people to join us in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. Will flew in from New York City, will welcome to the Jazmin Starr Show.

Will Guidara (00:00:46) - I'm so excited to be here. I mean, good, it's so fun to be with you, to see you again. Nashville is quickly becoming one of my favorite cities in the world.

Amy Porterfield (00:00:54) - Yes, it's such a magical place.

Amy Porterfield (00:00:55) - And I heard you've just been eating your way through Nashville today. Yes, which is so fun.

Jasmine Star (00:01:00) - Okay, so if we could start.

Amy Porterfield (00:01:02) - Yes.

Jasmine Star (00:01:02) - Talk to me about how you met. Well. And then what? When I said, hey, let's get five incredible people who are going to blow people's minds about business. What made you think of. Well, okay, so how did that start?

Amy Porterfield (00:01:13) - Dawn Miller did an author's day, an event, a little event, and he brought all these authors from so many different markets and industries and niches to the one room. And I got to sit next to Will. I didn't know Will. However, instantly I fell in love with them, like everything about this man. And then I started to hear his story more. And what he does and what his book is in his book is very, very popular. So unreasonable hospitality. You ask anyone about this book and they're going to know about it. So that's when I started to dive in and I read his book and I thought, first of all, every single person on my team needs this book.

Amy Porterfield (00:01:53) - So I started to call everyone. And then I realized that you came from, obviously, the restaurant world, but this book is so much more. And you everybody is in the hospitality industry, in my opinion, and I learned that from Will. So I thought, let's bring them on. We gotta talk about this in more depth.

Jasmine Star (00:02:09) - I love this. Okay, so right now people are listening and entrepreneurs, many of us have a customer success team or customer support team, a customer service team. So we're dealing in this terminology, at least in our neck of the woods and our business realm as a service. And one of the things I found so fascinating about your view of the world is that there is a difference between service and hospitality. Yeah. For this conversation, can you describe the difference between service and hospitality and then how they relate to the business structure of it?

Will Guidara (00:02:38) - You know, back in the day when I was interviewing people for a long time, I had like that list of questions that I'd ask every single person when I was deciding whether or not to welcome them onto the team.

Will Guidara (00:02:47) - And eventually I decided to stop doing that, because I think relationships are relationships, and the lessons you learn from those in life can be applied to those and work. And you would never go on a first date with someone and break out a list of questions, right? That would never turn me. So I decided eventually to just let conversations flow, to connect with people as people. But when I did have that list, one of the questions was that what's the difference between service and hospitality? Because way too often I think people conflate them. The best answer I ever got came from a woman I ended up not hiring, regrettably, actually, in hindsight. But she said service is black and white. Hospitality is color. See, service is the thing that we do. It's a part of the product. In my world, service is getting the right plate of food to the right person at the right time. That's a part of the product. Hospitality is how you make people feel when you do that thing.

Will Guidara (00:03:42) - It's the extent to which you are being creative and intentional, and pursuit of a genuine relationship with the person you are serving. It's the thing that transcends and experience from, well, like a transaction into it actually being an experience, a connection.

Jasmine Star (00:04:01) - So when people are listening and they're saying you're creating service is getting a plate of food to the right table. And so what I didn't do is set the context of what it is like, how you got that. So your objective for service is getting the right plate of food to the right table in the right amount of time. And so somebody is listening. And you are the former co-owner of 11 Madison Park and under your leadership was named the best restaurant in the world. Yes. Can we start there and talk about that origin story and how you were sitting at a bar with your co-founder over a dark spirit of some sort? Yeah, actually the dark spirit above. And then a dark spirit in your cup.

Amy Porterfield (00:04:42) - let's go back to that story.

Will Guidara (00:04:43) - Yeah.

Will Guidara (00:04:44) - So we had been at the restaurant for a few years. I got to the restaurant in 2006, and at the time it was like, kind of popular but generally mediocre restaurant. But the dining room at that restaurant is truly, like one of the most beautiful in the world. And I was. Brought in as a part of the team that was charged with elevating the experience such that it lived up to the room. And at the beginning, I did what anyone would would do right when charged with making something better. I doubled down in pursuit of excellence in the product and it worked really well. We got a bunch of stars and all these accolades, but then eventually we got invited on to the list of the 50 best restaurants in the world. And the first year that we were on it, we came in last place. That's my favorite stuff. And you.

Amy Porterfield (00:05:27) - Expecting something a little bit.

Will Guidara (00:05:28) - Better? We were like, I thought maybe 30 or 35. At this point, we're one of the best restaurants in the country.

Will Guidara (00:05:33) - And so 50 in the world coming for America, obviously, we're going to do well and it's a longer story. But yeah, it was mortifying. We came in last place and what I did is what I think any mature professional would do. In a moment of profound disappointment, I left the party early, went back to the hotel, grabbed a bottle of whiskey and started going through the stages of grief as one does, as one does, which ultimately brought us to acceptance, because the reality is, is, well, it's patently absurd to say one restaurant is the best restaurant in the world. There's too many restaurants. It's too subjective. When when you earn the top spot on that list, what it actually means is that you are the restaurant having the greatest impact on the world of restaurants at that point in time. And listen, at that point, our food was unbelievable. Our service was as close to technically perfect as possible. Our dining room was still one of the most significantly beautiful out there, but.

Will Guidara (00:06:25) - Those are the reasons why we got on the list. When we pause for long enough to really think about it, we hadn't done anything impactful. I don't know about you, but any time I've tried to accomplish something audacious, I like to study those who have accomplished it before me, take lessons from them, apply those lessons. And so I started thinking about the chefs that had been number one before, they were chefs. They were the ones cooking the food. I'm not a chef. I'm a dining room guy. And each one of them was unreasonable in pursuit of their product, the food and relentless and pursuit of innovation, new techniques, new ingredients. That night, I decided that I wanted to be number one, and our impact was going to come through not being unreasonable in pursuit of product, but in pursuit of people and being relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never change, which is just the human desire to feel seen, to feel cared for, to feel a sense of belonging, or honestly our collective want to feel loved.

Will Guidara (00:07:22) - And that's where unreasonable hospitality came about. Now. In the beginning, I had no idea what those two words meant. But I think that's kind of fun. And and okay, I think far too many people, we put this pressure on ourselves to fully understand or define an idea before we ever start pursuing it. And because we do that, we never start pursuing anything. I think we need to trust in the fact that if you feel a connection to a thought, just start pursuing it and it will reveal itself to you along the way. And that's what set out the journey that ultimately unpacked what this idea was, how it could be applied and, and became the thing that brought us to the top.

Amy Porterfield (00:08:03) - So if someone's listening right now and they're thinking, okay, so you you were 50 and you wanted to be number one that night, you decided we're going to figure that out, but you didn't know how you would do that. So someone listening, can you give, let's say, three tips to how to figure out how to move toward greatness.

Amy Porterfield (00:08:22) - Yeah. Especially if they've never seen it done in their industry. We're talking to a lot of online marketers and coaches and course creators, so it's different for us than it was for you for sure. So what are some tips you have?

Will Guidara (00:08:34) - Well, okay. I think the first thing that I'd say. Can only be described once you identify what it means to be a great leader today. It's okay. Once upon a time, great leadership. I'm like talking Braveheart days like it was the guy and I said, guy with intention. There's a long time ago with the confidence and conviction to say to a group of people, this is where we're going, and people crave leadership. They'd follow them. And then at a certain point, and probably Simon Sinek books start with why like really kind of put an exclamation point on this that was no longer enough. People wanted to be told where they were going and also inspired why they should want to go there. Yes, that is also not enough anymore. I believe a great leader says the what? This is where we're going.

Will Guidara (00:09:20) - They say the why? This is why we're going to do it. How are we going to get there? Why there's importance in it. But they then invite everyone on the team to join them in helping identify the how. I believe that no one is capable of investing all of themselves into something if they don't feel they have some small bit of ownership in contributing to how you get there.

Amy Porterfield (00:09:45) - Absolutely.

Will Guidara (00:09:46) - And so the first step was to go home and connect with the entire team and say, hey, we are going to be number one. We're going to do it through unreasonable hospitality. All of us together. We're going to figure out what that means and how we apply it.

Amy Porterfield (00:10:00) - So as the leader, you didn't go back to the team and say, this is what we're going to do. No. And is it scary? I'm going to speak for myself. It's scary for me to let go of that control and give it to my team. And I love my team. But how do you get past that obstacle of trying to control it all?

Amy Porterfield (00:10:17) - Well.

Will Guidara (00:10:18) - I mean, I'd say two things. I believe in collaborative work environments. I also believe in everything having a point of view. And so it actually isn't scary because at the end of the day, it's still comes back through you. Right? Right. But what you're doing is saying to your team, hey, I recognize that the collective brainpower and creativity of all of us will always be so much greater than that of just me. And you're showing trust and you're showing respect. And by the way, the more trust you give people, the more trustworthy they become. The more responsibility you give people, the more responsible they become.

Amy Porterfield (00:10:57) - I also think that.

Amy Porterfield (00:10:58) - You are, and I want to hear your other two tips, but you one thing that's special about you that I know is you let go of the ego. And I think a great leader has to. So reading your book and learning more about you, you never really lead with ego. You're the charge. You're the big cheese. Is that something that's always been with you, or have you seen it done another way and didn't want to do it that way?

Will Guidara (00:11:20) - I mean, I came up with like from the industry, right? I waited tables, I bussed tables, I wash dishes, I did everything all the way up and.

Will Guidara (00:11:28) - I get embarrassed, honestly. Like when I was at the restaurant and people would want to write articles about me. I'd feel like, like, imagine if you're with a group of friends and everyone wants to just write an article about one person in a group.

Amy Porterfield (00:11:42) - You really.

Amy Porterfield (00:11:42) - See yourself as part of.

Will Guidara (00:11:44) - That team. It makes me uncomfortable. And I just like. And by the way, there's plenty of leaders that love that. And I can't relate to it because. I feel like the more on a pedestal you allow the world to put you, the less your team has the ability to feel connected to you. and so I've always actively worked to not keep myself down, but create opportunities for all of us to rise together.

Amy Porterfield (00:12:12) - I love that.

Will Guidara (00:12:13) - Okay, so the first tip. Yes, express the what, the why, but invite the entire team to be a part of the how. I think consistency in communication is also everything if you're trying to really grow. And one of the things that I believe that we do in restaurants, that has the greatest ability to benefit so many other people in so many other industries is what we call premium.

Will Guidara (00:12:35) - Anyone who's worked in a restaurant knows what premium is. It's that 30 minute meeting we hold right before we open the doors and start welcoming our guests for the night. I just.

Amy Porterfield (00:12:42) - Know it from the.

Amy Porterfield (00:12:42) - Bear. There you go. Yeah, exactly.

Will Guidara (00:12:45) - For those, every restaurant basically does it. Most of them waste it. Okay. A premium is wasted when you spend the entire time talking about things that could very clearly be communicated via an email, a new dish, a new wine by the glass, a new policy. The power of a premium comes when a leader actually seizes on it as an opportunity to lead, to share moments of inspiration they've encountered out into the world, to invite their team to do the same and return. Where a leader prepares every single day and takes that meeting very, very seriously, understanding what they want to get out of it, what they want to communicate into it. I believe when that meeting is done well, it is when a collection of individuals comes together as a trusting team, unlocking the creative capacity and creativity required to do anything of greatness.

Will Guidara (00:13:34) - I believe that if everyone in any business that interacts with any people ever implemented some version of a daily huddle, it would transform customer service and hospitality as we know it. Because I just believe that leaders need to be as disciplined and systemized and how they inspire their people as they already are, and how they train their people, and consistency and communication through a daily huddle, I think, is one of the best levers at our disposal. If we are aligned in trying to do that. And then number three, it's creating a culture where feedback is normalized. And when I say feedback, obviously, I mean praise. Yeah, if you're reaching for the stars and trying to do something incredible, you're raising expectations and the people around you constantly, right? And when someone on your team lives up or surpasses those expectations, you better be there to catch them doing something right. Yes. To celebrate them, to to give them that feeling of satisfaction that you've set an impossibly high bar and they've reached it and they deserve celebration.

Will Guidara (00:14:49) - But when I talk about creating a culture where feedback is normalized, I'm not just talking about praise. I'm also talking about criticism because of praise is affirmation. Criticism is investment. I fear that we're in this day and age where everyone's talking about like creating cultures of positivity and silver linings and all that stuff. And in doing so, by the way, which is awesome, I fear that we've let go of criticism a little bit too much. I don't believe there is anything more powerful that a leader can do than to step outside of their comfort zone and invest in someone else's growth, and that comes through criticism. Because if you are hiring people that want to grow and be the best, they're never going to grow and become the best. If someone isn't telling them when they've fallen off and nudging them back in, or where they're falling short and could do better.

Amy Porterfield (00:15:39) - Yes.

Will Guidara (00:15:40) - But. I can't talk about criticism without outlining a few rules that are required.

Amy Porterfield (00:15:45) - To say, I knew you.

Amy Porterfield (00:15:46) - Were gonna have some rules, okay.

Will Guidara (00:15:48) - To deliver it.

Amy Porterfield (00:15:48) - Thoughtfully. Yes.

Will Guidara (00:15:50) - First. Okay. You can praise in public. You can never criticize in public. It always needs to be in private. Because. Well, criticism is a form of communication. You criticise someone in public. The wall of shame goes up. They're not going to hear it.

Amy Porterfield (00:16:06) - Okay?

Will Guidara (00:16:06) - You criticize the person's behavior, not them as a person. Oh that's big, because when you criticize an individual, it becomes emotional. If you bring emotion into it, they're going to bring emotion into it, and you're ruining the entire point of the exchange, which is just to say, hey, you're great. Stop doing that and start doing this.

Amy Porterfield (00:16:24) - Yes.

Will Guidara (00:16:25) - Criticize consistently. You can't pick and choose when to address a behavior, because we do. It's not clear to the people around you what right looks like. And if you're not careful, people think you only criticize when you're in a bad.

Amy Porterfield (00:16:42) - Mood.

Will Guidara (00:16:43) - Which then colors the entire exchange in a way that you do not want it to be colored.

Will Guidara (00:16:48) - And then finally you need to bring to it the charitable assumption, which is something I learned from my mentor and longtime boss, Danny Meyer. The charitable assumption means give people the benefit of the doubt. Another way to say that. Ask the question before you say the thing. Believe the best in people. And if someone is having a behavioral, if someone's coming in late, is everything okay? Before you say, why are you late? You can't be late. I need you to be here on time. Yes, but if you want to be the best at anything, it is. I don't believe it's possible. Unless you have a culture where feedback is normalized. And when I say that, I mean not only that, it's well received by everyone in the organization, but also that it sort out.

Jasmine Star (00:17:33) - Can I repeat back what I heard? Yeah. And so I do this because number one, I learned the most when I listen I write and then I repeat. And I'm doing this for I'm doing this because there's listeners who are so entrenched in their dream, their passion, while also cooking dinner, waiting in the carpool line, grocery shopping.

Amy Porterfield (00:17:53) - Working out a treadmill.

Jasmine Star (00:17:54) - Absolutely, absolutely. And you're.

Amy Porterfield (00:17:56) - On.

Will Guidara (00:17:57) - The treadmill right now. I just want to say I believe in you.

Amy Porterfield (00:17:59) - Don't stop. You only have a little while to go.

Will Guidara (00:18:02) - Like, don't keep pushing. We believe in you.

Amy Porterfield (00:18:04) - I feel like we could clip that out as, like a wheel.

Jasmine Star (00:18:07) - Are you having a bad day? Listen. For good. Okay, so in the context of and the context of leadership, we hail and we applaud the land of Braveheart. This is where we're going. Where. And then Simon Sinek introduced the why and what you are also bravely introducing is this idea of leadership in 2024 is made up of three things. Collaborate in the how. Consistency in the communication because this empowers you to connect with your team. And three creating a culture where feedback is normalized, both positive and criticism. But the framework for giving criticism in the workplace is to praise in public, criticize in private, to criticize behavior, not the person to criticize consistently.

Jasmine Star (00:18:50) - And lastly, the charitable assumption giving the person the benefit of doubt. So we went through leadership. Then we went through.

Will Guidara (00:18:56) - Such a good.

Amy Porterfield (00:18:57) - Editor. Not so true. Oh.

Jasmine Star (00:19:01) - We have to. Because here's the thing to many of us, I am in this. Too many of us listen to podcast and we walk away with a dopamine hit and the dopamine of doing and hearing or of almost equal proportion. So what I don't want people doing is listening to your sultry voice. On the podcast. You were inspired to go ahead and implement this culture.

Amy Porterfield (00:19:19) - I'm on the end of a cold right now. It's probably a little more sultry. I just want to say don't distorting, don't distort, don't distort the dream right here, will.

Amy Porterfield (00:19:26) - And so what.

Jasmine Star (00:19:27) - We have here is this very clear framework that you cannot listen to this podcast without understanding if you want to lead. There is the cost of leadership and leadership changes. And do you want to be on the forefront of that changes? And so Amy and I, we've been talking about this theme like what is our throughline for this podcast? And one of the reasons why Amy carefully picked everybody was this idea that every single one of our guests has gone against the grain.

Jasmine Star (00:19:50) - And so when we ask you going against the grain, when we look in in the terms of your experience, which, yes, is from the restaurant world, but then you're applying the principles of creating an experience, not just service in the business world. And then you say you're going against the grain. What does that mean for you at this point in time?

Will Guidara (00:20:12) - How did I go against the grain? What does it mean to go? Okay.

Amy Porterfield (00:20:16) - Well, actually, both.

Jasmine Star (00:20:17) - I mean, that's like whatever comes up for you is like the truest thing. It's like when we talk about going against the grain, it takes a lot of emotion, it takes courage, it takes resilience. And so we look at people like, you know, like, yes, of course leadership. Yeah, it's amazing. But going against the grain is hard. Yeah. And I also thought about going against the grain in me in the kitchen. Are we using flour. Are we using.

Amy Porterfield (00:20:37) - Machinery.

Jasmine Star (00:20:38) - Yes. You know come on.

Will Guidara (00:20:39) - And yeah I mean okay how did we go against the grain.

Amy Porterfield (00:20:42) - Yeah.

Will Guidara (00:20:43) - Like listen and we can go deeper and tell the story. Is that really explain what we did. But we became number one.

Amy Porterfield (00:20:52) - She loves Lori. I tell you, we learn as.

Jasmine Star (00:20:55) - Humans, science shows. We learn more through story because we project ourselves in that place. That's my favorite part.

Amy Porterfield (00:21:00) - Yeah.

Will Guidara (00:21:00) - Well, so okay, I'll get to the end and then I'll back up. We became number one, not because of the excellence of our product.

Jasmine Star (00:21:08) - Oh, wait. No, sorry. Hold on. I'm gonna turn to the camera. They became number one. Not by being the best of their product. So if the story you are telling yourself is the reason why you are not winning is because you are not number one. What we have here is somebody who just looked at you in your face and said, we won. Not because we were number one. Okay. Carry on.

Will Guidara (00:21:30) - We became number one because we made the choice to be as unreasonable in pursuit of how we made people feel, as every other restaurant on that list was solely in pursuit of the product they were selling.

Will Guidara (00:21:41) - Those people, you know, to the people that you just did the camera look to, to, to address. This is one of the ways I think about it. Every company, whether this is an active pursuit or a passive pursuit, is seeking to identify their competitive advantage. Yes. Right. What is the thing that is staving off a future competitor from coming in and eating your lunch? In the tech world that's called what is your moat? Right? We hear that all the time. And whenever anyone talks about that, they're talking about the strength of their product or their brand. But here's the thing I don't care how good the product is, I don't care how strong the brand is. I don't care how talented you are, what is inevitable. And this is not an opinion. This is a fact. History has proven it to be true. Someone is going to come around and they're going to build a better product. They're going to create a stronger brand. They are going to be better than you.

Will Guidara (00:22:32) - Amen. It's just a matter of how long it takes. they might be younger and therefore bring a new creative perspective. They may be more capitalized than you are. They may just be smarter. The only competitive advantage, I believe, that truly exists, like over a very, very long term comes through hospitality. It comes through consistently and generously investing in relationships because those take a very, very long time to build. And if you build them in the right way, they take an incredibly long time to erode. And so that's what we did. We focused on that stuff. I mean, there's a quote by Maya Angelou, people will forget what you say, they'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. If you are as relentlessly focused on how you make people feel as anyone who's achieved any margin of success invariably is in pursuit of whatever the product is that they've built. I believe you have the capacity to do unbelievably remarkable things, things that you probably don't even think are possible.

Will Guidara (00:23:41) - And so at our restaurant, I mean, we had positions on the team. We had a position called the Dreamweaver, named after the iconic song by Gary Wright. This person was in our dining room every single night, just there to help everyone else on the team bring these crazy ideas to life. So we inspired our team and it came through this hot dog story, which I can tell. It's the story that's been made.

Amy Porterfield (00:24:06) - Okay, well, well.

Jasmine Star (00:24:07) - I mean, we can't just wave our hands and say the hot dog story because it's like all capital letters and it's been featured on shows. And okay, so I'm sure and it's Ted talk. Exactly. But I think it's important like to say the story.

Will Guidara (00:24:20) - Well, tell that story.

Amy Porterfield (00:24:21) - Okay. the.

Amy Porterfield (00:24:23) - Fact that I'm in the room with you and you're telling the story, and it was on the bear, just for the record.

Jasmine Star (00:24:27) - It was. Yeah. Amy's obsessed with America.

Amy Porterfield (00:24:29) - She's obsessed.

Amy Porterfield (00:24:29) - So. Okay. I'm ready. Go.

Amy Porterfield (00:24:31) - Okay.

Will Guidara (00:24:32) - So at that first awards at the 50 best, when we came in last place on a cocktail napkin, I wrote, we will be number one in the world. And underneath that, I wrote Unreasonable Hospitality. And then it was just a matter of with my team identifying what that meant. And eventually, about two years later, we had a breakthrough, which came when I was in the dining room helping out the servers because we were getting crushed. It was just a busier than normal and service. Anyone who's ever worked in the restaurants knows the phrase we were in the weeds. And so I did what I do when I'm helping out the team. I bussed tables, which, by the way, there's another lesson there, which is when you're at the top of the totem pole and you want to chip in and help do the thing all the way at the bottom. a because it gives you the best sense of what's actually happening in your business. And it's a meta signal to everyone that works for you that no matter how big you've become or how highly regarded you might be, that you don't consider yourself to be too good to do the most menial tasks.

Will Guidara (00:25:31) - Because that's always the thing I did. I would just clear plates, and I found myself clearing appetizers from a table of four. They were foodies on vacation from Europe to New York, and they were just there to eat a fancy restaurants. Places like Le Bernardin, Daniele, Jean-Georges per se. And if you don't know those restaurants, just the fanciness of the names.

Amy Porterfield (00:25:50) - Should give you a sense. Very thank.

Will Guidara (00:25:51) - You. and now they're at a live Madison Park. They like the trip of a lifetime. But then one woman jumped in and said, yeah, you know, we never had we never had a New York City hotdog from one of those street carts. I was saying, you know, that, like light bulb moment and a cartoon when, you know, they've had an idea as calmly as I could have walked back into the kitchen, dropped off the plates, ran outside of the hot dog cart, bought a hot dog, ran back inside. Then came the hard part, which was convincing my fancy chef to serve it and our fancy restaurant.

Will Guidara (00:26:19) - But I asked him to trust me. I told her it was important to me, and he cut the hot dog up into four perfect pieces, added a little swish of ketchup, a swish of mustard, a little scoop of sauerkraut and relish to each plate. We made them look very fancy. Then, before their final savory course, which I like to joke at the time, it was our signature honey lavender glazed Muscovy duck that had been dry aged for two weeks.

Amy Porterfield (00:26:40) - Wow.

Will Guidara (00:26:41) - Okay, I brought out what we in New York call a dirty water dog to their table.

Amy Porterfield (00:26:46) - Dirty water dog.

Amy Porterfield (00:26:48) - And they.

Will Guidara (00:26:49) - Freaked out. I mean, I'd served millions of dollars worth of food and my career and the fanciest stuff to write, like Wagyu beef, lobster, caviar. And yet I'd never seen anyone react to anything. I'd served them like they did to that hot dog. You know, athletes go to the tapes and they've had a bad game. They do so to see what they did wrong, identify those mistakes, trying to make sure they don't repeat them.

Will Guidara (00:27:13) - They don't often enough go to the tapes and they've had a good game. See what they did right and try to make sure they keep on doing that thing. That's how you put intention to intuition. It's how you take these moments of seemingly accidental brilliance that happen and grab on to them and hold on to them and put systems behind them to make sure that they become a part of the fabric of of who you are. And so I went to the tapes and the hot dog. What happened to make that happen? What do we all need to start doing to make sure it start happening all the time? And it was three things. First, being present, just way overused these days. But in a hospitality it's everything. For me, being present, it just means caring so much about where I am and who I'm with that I stopped caring about everything else I need to do. It's really hard these days. Cell phones to do lists. Everyone believes that multitasking is the most efficient thing we can do.

Will Guidara (00:28:05) - I don't actually think anyone has the capacity to multitask. When you're actually doing. Is doing a bunch of things less good than you would do any of them if you focused entirely on that one thing. If I had not been present at that table, if I'd been thinking about what other tables needed to be cleared and in what order did I need to clear them in order to get my team out of the weeds as quickly as possible? I never would have heard that throwaway line about the hot dog. Second record, this notion that, yeah, we should take what we do seriously, obviously, if we want to be the best. And also every one of us, all three of us today, everyone listening to this just varying degrees needs to stop taking ourselves so seriously. Yes. I don't spend so much time curating these beautiful, fully articulated brands and brands are important. They're your bumper sticker to the world. But way too often we let our brands tell us we are not allowed to do the thing that will make one of our key stakeholders happy.

Will Guidara (00:29:02) - And when that happens, the entire relationship is out of whack. A hot dog could not be more off brand in a four star restaurant, but when you look at how it made them feel, who cares? And third. Well, I believe hospitality is about making people feel seen. If that's the case, we should not be approaching how we serve our customers at a one size fits all way. I really do believe I could have given that table like a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon and like a big bucket of caviar. It would not have had the same impact as the $2 hotdog because it would not have been specific to them. That was our big breakthrough moment. So unreasonable hospitality. The hot dog is the new trend. Be present. Stop taking yourself so seriously. One size fits one.

Jasmine Star (00:29:47) - Oh, you didn't even allow me to edit you this time because I was out here keeping notes. Okay, so this is me, the storyteller. But I like.

Will Guidara (00:29:54) - When you do it better.

Amy Porterfield (00:29:57) - But I.

Jasmine Star (00:29:57) - Need to lower my voice and take a little bit.

Amy Porterfield (00:29:59) - Slower.

Jasmine Star (00:29:59) - I'm fascinated. I'm watching you podcast and I'm like, wow. I feel like I'm watching a true athlete in slo mo being like, oh, so this is how one does it. So okay, so the storyteller in me is okay, great. But let's just like let's just strip this away. I want to go back in the kitchen. I want to be a sous chef. I want everybody to know they're in the weeds. If Will is bussing tables. And then in addition to that, what you're going to say is, I know it's Harry. And listen, Guillermo, I'm going to take care of you. But coming up this hot dog and then you're going to take the hot dog, and then you're going to come back and be like, hail the conquering hero, because you could have served $1,000 worth of caviar. But no, no, no, we didn't. And so then the next day during the pre meal, you're going to be like so one reasonable hospitality is this.

Jasmine Star (00:30:43) - And everyone's just like yeah bro four pieces of hot dog. What what do you want us to do with this. Right. So like we stand in these Ted talks and we look back at this golden plated beautiful ness, but what was the resistance getting there? Like, how do you get the chef on your side to be like, I know you're stressed. We're going to do something that's throwing out. Then you go back to your team and be like, we did this thing. And now in the future, we're going to create this thing called the Dreamweaver. And they're only responsibilities. How do we create magic inside of this restaurant? Beautiful. Amazing. But what's going on? Because we as leaders face that.

Amy Porterfield (00:31:13) - I love.

Amy Porterfield (00:31:13) - This question. The resistance, because also you talk about in your book that you do those meetings. I guess they'd be the premium maybe, but or maybe it was different. But your team's like, we don't have time for this. Yeah. And you were so serious like, no, we're doing this.

Amy Porterfield (00:31:25) - Like, how do you get that team on board? So I love that question, Jasmine, I think.

Will Guidara (00:31:29) - Well so okay with that I want to I want to just zero in on something about what you just said. I wanted to have a 30 minute daily huddle every single day. And the team was like, we don't have time. We have too much side work, side.

Amy Porterfield (00:31:42) - Work applicable to those listening.

Amy Porterfield (00:31:44) - And leaders wanting to do something their team doesn't. Okay.

Will Guidara (00:31:47) - And so side work is the stuff that you do to get ready for service in restaurant. It's polishing glassware, getting your silverware ready, ironing the tablecloths, doing the butter, all the stuff. And at a fancy restaurant, there's more side work than there would be at another time kind of restaurant, because we have all these little flourishes. This is what bad leadership looks like. I don't care, figure it out. We're doing my 30 minute meeting. Good leadership is okay. I understand that I've surrounded myself with top performers.

Will Guidara (00:32:21) - If they are saying we don't have enough time, it means that I am asking for too much. And what I need to do is decide what my priorities are, and then what is ever at the bottom of that list. We need to stop doing it so that we do have the time to do. The thing that I've decided is the most important thing to do. And so in that situation, I said, all right, then those five things, we're not going to do them anymore until we have our systems dialed in enough that we regain some bandwidth and capacity, then we'll add them back in. The way I say in the book is do less and do it better. To many leaders, they they believe like it's like gung ho, like convicted strong leadership to like you can get more out of your your team is capable of more than they think they are. And you just need to like call them to greatness. That is true. And you need to be a reasonable thinking human being that also understands their situation enough that you know whether you're calling them to a point, a reasonable greatness, or you're asking them to do something that is just completely impossible because we want to push people to be the best versions of themselves, but we also want to set them up for success, not for failure.

Will Guidara (00:33:32) - To the point of resistance. I believe in this idea of relationship capital that you're always investing more than you are withdrawing. With the chef. When I asked him to cut up the hot dog. He didn't want to do that. But I had for years leading up to that moment showed that I would always be there to support him and do things for him, even if I didn't totally agree with those things, because that's what it is to be in a relationship with someone else, not to. Similarly to in a marriage, right? You do things that you don't want to do in your marriage because you want to pursue the other human being, and that means that the other person's going to be willing to do the same in return. We had a thing in our world. It was that this is important to me card that if we were ever really arguing, either one of us could play it and it was an invitation to the other person that if that meant more to you than it did to them, they should just let you have your way.

Amy Porterfield (00:34:29) - Oh, I love that.

Amy Porterfield (00:34:31) - That we kind of talked about that in our interview together. The person making the decision in the relationship. If one person is more passionate. Yeah. You don't even know how much that means to me. That's oh, that's cool, really cool.

Will Guidara (00:34:42) - By the way, note to listener, if you do decide to employ that this is important to me card and either your work or your marriage. The underlying rule is you're not allowed to abuse.

Amy Porterfield (00:34:51) - So it was crucial because I think my.

Amy Porterfield (00:34:54) - Husband hobby might abuse it. Like if I have to talk about wrestling one more time with him, I might just.

Amy Porterfield (00:34:59) - Lose my mind.

Amy Porterfield (00:35:00) - You know, you were talking about the resistance and it made me think of sacrifices. Can you think of a time that to get to the greatness, to get to number one, what sacrifices did you need to make along the way? And also I'm going to I'm going to ask a follow up question after that. Those that are listening, that haven't made those sacrifices or need a kick in the pants, what would you say to them to encourage them to make them as well?

Will Guidara (00:35:24) - I mean, gosh, there's so many different types of sacrifices, sacrifices within the walls of the restaurant when I talk about like, do less and do it better, there's plenty of things that.

Will Guidara (00:35:34) - Over the years, like ideas that were very personal to me that I loved. And ultimately had to stop pursuing because they were a distraction from what we were ultimately trying to accomplish. There's sacrifices you make in life. There's. Listen, I am like a firm believer in creating sustainable work environments where not only me, as a husband and father, can succeed in both life and work simultaneously, but also that I can create an environment for my team to do the same as well. But. When you're. Trying to be the best at anything. There are seasons where things fall out of balance.

Amy Porterfield (00:36:13) - Absolutely.

Will Guidara (00:36:14) - And there's no way around that. The only thing you can do is make sure that it's like a pendulum, that if you let it fall out, a balance in one direction for too long, you need to really double down in your investment on the other side of your world for a measure of time after that.

Amy Porterfield (00:36:29) - Was there a time.

Jasmine Star (00:36:30) - Through the lens of unreasonable hospitality that somebody was too hospitable, that it wouldn't? You're like, okay, guys, like we can't bring an elephant to the restaurant.

Jasmine Star (00:36:39) - We heard it. We heard a diner. Want something specific? Like at what point or did it ever get there?

Will Guidara (00:36:46) - I mean, I want to answer that. I want to say one thing just about sacrifices in life. Yeah. I like to redefine the word hospitality often. I think that's a good thing to do. If an idea is very important to you, redefine it. Re articulate it as often as you possibly can because the better you are at articulating it, the better you become a compelling those around you to embrace it. One definition I love for hospitality is hospitality is setting expectations. And so if you find yourself in a season where you do need to sacrifice life for a measure of time, don't just start sacrificing it. Communicate to the people in your life that you are going to be less present for a measure of time, but that that season will end, and then you'll be right back to where you were.

Amy Porterfield (00:37:34) - Yes.

Will Guidara (00:37:34) - Same thing is true for a culture of criticism. If you're listening to this and you're like, oh my gosh, we need to implement a culture of normalized feedback.

Will Guidara (00:37:43) - Don't just start doing it one day. Spend a month talking to your team about the fact that this is something that you are now asserting as a priority, why you are asserting it as a priority, and then start doing it. Setting expectations is so important. Did we ever push too far with hospitality? I would not say we pushed too far. I believe there's always a yes. If a guest were to come in and say, I want an elephant in this dining room, great, you're going to get an elephant in the dining room. It's going to be a real elephant, right? But we may have, like, a four foot stuffed elephant from afar. Schwartz, on your table by the end of the meal. I would say we got it wrong sometimes. I think sometimes with the style of hospitality that I'm talking of, like athletic hospitality, right? Like, I mean, think of it like people step up to the plate. They're trying to hit a home run. Sometimes they strike out.

Will Guidara (00:38:31) - Sometimes you need to make these hospitable leaps of faith. I'll give you an example.

Will Guidara (00:38:37) - Who?

Will Guidara (00:38:38) - The moment that someone walks into the restaurant when they're being welcomed. Welcome is a very important word. We have a conference called the Welcome Conference. I think that's like everything about what we do. And yet in most restaurants you walk into the restaurant, there's a person standing behind a literal barrier. They ask you for your name. Code for? Do you belong here? You give it to them. They look at it down at a computer screen. They start stabbing away at the computer screen. Eventually they're like to their colleague, hey, take them to table 35 and you're herded through the room like cattle. I hated it, and so we said, hey, how do we make this feel? More like you've just been welcomed to a friend's house for dinner. So we got rid of the podium. It was still there. It was around the corner. We had another maitre d. They use sign language to communicate, and we changed it so that people came in every 15 minutes instead of every half an hour.

Will Guidara (00:39:27) - So only a few people would come in at a time. The maitre d would google every single person that came in. If you ever had a picture on the internet and you looked anywhere close to that picture, you would be greeted by name. No, Amy, welcome. It's so nice to have you. Your guest has arrived. We'll bring you right in. It felt like a magic trick. It wasn't magic. It wasn't even hard. It just required us trying harder. And every time it happened, people would be blown away. Well, now, 1% of the time, maybe. It's so happy to have you.

Amy Porterfield (00:39:56) - My name is Sally.

Will Guidara (00:39:57) - My name is Sally. We knew that. We knew that that was going to happen. Yeah, right. In excellence, perfect is perfect. And hospitality, well, you're just trying to be as perfectly imperfect as possible, because humans are perfectly imperfect. And I'd rather reach for the stars and try to do the craziest gestures that will make people feel incredible 99% of the time and mess up 1% of the time, then lower my ambition to the thing I know I will accomplish perfectly at 100% of the time.

Will Guidara (00:40:31) - Not to mention the fact that every misstep is an opportunity, right? Like Danny Meyer, to quote him again, the road to success is paved with mistakes well handled. And when you make a mistake, what a beautiful opportunity that is to go above and beyond.

Amy Porterfield (00:40:45) - Quote the.

Amy Porterfield (00:40:45) - Road. Say it again.

Amy Porterfield (00:40:46) - The road to.

Will Guidara (00:40:47) - Success is paved with mistakes. Well handled, well handled.

Amy Porterfield (00:40:51) - That is a good one. You know, you had me thinking when you were talking about the fact that sometimes you miss but you're still going for it sometimes. Well, this is kind of a weird turn, but you've got this rule, the rule, the 95 five rule. Right? And the reason I thought about that was because people are listening and they want it. They want to make sure that they keep their business responsible, and they spend the right kind of money to get to where they want to go. Oh, I know I was thinking this, sorry. I was like, how did I get here? Because we're talking about greatness and the road to greatness, and you've got to be really responsible with your money to get there.

Amy Porterfield (00:41:26) - Yeah. And in the restaurant industry. But we can apply this to online businesses that are listening, is that they need to be careful about the money they spend. But you've got a little caveat to that. So can you talk about the 95 five rule?

Will Guidara (00:41:38) - Yeah. No. And this is important because I imagine some people listening to this started to tune out like, okay, stuffed elephants and hot dogs and all this stuff. Yeah, you could afford to do that. You were a fancy restaurant, right? And I actually question if you're if you're on your way to the top, you can't afford not to do this kind of stuff, but that's a separate thing.

Amy Porterfield (00:41:59) - We had a rule.

Will Guidara (00:42:00) - It was called the rule of 95 five. It's how I manage businesses. What it means is you manage your money like a frickin maniac 95% of the time. Every single penny. There is no expense too small to be scrutinized and studied. And every around, every corner is an opportunity to save a few pennies.

Will Guidara (00:42:19) - And every penny matters. Raindrops make oceans. If you're focused enough on the little things, it starts to add up to a big thing. But you do that in order to earn the right to spend the last 5% of your money foolishly and foolishly in air quotes. Right? Because I actually don't think it's foolish spending at all. I think that is the investment in the long term dollars that actually yield the most unbelievable success.

Amy Porterfield (00:42:46) - Give me an example.

Will Guidara (00:42:47) - Well, I mean, the that position, the Dreamweaver, their salary was the 5% that hot dog would fall into the 5%. We it fell the way I manage my team, like we did not have overtime that was not allowed in my restaurant. And yet we threw the most absurdly over the top holiday parties for our team, with Dom Perignon flowing like fine.

Amy Porterfield (00:43:08) - And why is it important? Why is that 5% important? Why did you say it's the most important?

Will Guidara (00:43:12) - Well, here's the thing. Every dollar I ever spent on unreasonable hospitality, it was far more impactful than any dollar I ever spent on traditional marketing.

Will Guidara (00:43:23) - Because you give people stories like this to tell. What do you think they're going to do? Yeah, they're going to go out there and tell them over and over and over again. And one day you wake up with legions of ambassadors out there singing your praises and doing your marketing on your behalf far better than you could ever do it yourself. And by the way, marketing is not just something you are doing for the people you are trying to serve. It's also something you should be doing for the people you hope to one day employ. And so if you're creating these kind of memories for people you work with and the people you serve, the the payoff is unbelievable. And this is something a lot of people don't get, because there's this old adage, and in the world of economics, what gets measured, gets managed. It's harder to calculate the return on investment for the stuff I'm talking about. But just because it's harder to calculate doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In fact, I think it's so.

Will Guidara (00:44:17) - The return is so vast, it's incalculable. So I think the 5% is everything. That's when you create memories and listen like. Of all the people we served over the years, reminding Almighty like we had some of the best food on the planet. When I talked to people that ate there, they don't remember what they ate. The Maya Angelou quote. They remember how we made them feel when we did these things that were so specific and personal to them.

Jasmine Star (00:44:48) - So there's somebody is listening. And as we tie up the conversation, we went through hospitality and how it applies to business. We also spoke about leadership, and we spoke about the the positive feedback loop. And we talked about implementation over a prolonged period of time. We also talked about how things that are very important to you could be denoted by a card like that's like Amy's biggest takeaway, like I'm going to I'm going to send you a box of them. I mean.

Amy Porterfield (00:45:17) - You and Hobi like I love it.

Jasmine Star (00:45:19) - Here's this is what you get to use in 12 months.

Jasmine Star (00:45:20) - Like use them sparingly. I'm gonna use it with my husband as well. But when we talk about somebody who's listening, and I always come through the lens of a listener who's saying, that's nice, but. Right. So if I put myself in the shoes of a small business owner, somebody who's doing less than $1 million a year, and they probably have a service of some component and a digital offering of some component, and when they talk about their version of scale is how do I possibly make somebody feel seen? How does it actually work for somebody in small business, not mainstream, not Main Street America, but like Main Street. Com how are we making how are we taking this really physical, palpable human connection and scaling it online? Have you found a way or. Yeah answers for that.

Will Guidara (00:46:05) - So okay this is a fun exercise. And I think it's like the the gateway into all this. Do you do an exercise I call pattern recognition of recurring moments. So get together again with everyone on your team.

Will Guidara (00:46:20) - Take a two hour block, get every single person on your team together and identify some recurring moments. And by that I mean the things that happens sometimes. For some people in a restaurant, that could be someone's coming in and getting engaged in your restaurant, it could mean that someone, a table of four, shows up as a party of three because someone's spouse is home sick with a cold.

Amy Porterfield (00:46:40) - In my world, it's someone had their first launch and made $5,000. Exactly.

Will Guidara (00:46:45) - Yeah, everyone has them and identify three and then take the next two hours in the meeting and with your team, invest some creativity and intention into how you are going to respond the next time that happens, come up with the idea. Invest whatever amount of money you have decided is reasonable for your business to invest in developing whatever assets are required for your reaction, and then the next time that happens, do that thing and watch the impact it can have. And if that doesn't get you hooked, I don't know what will. I mean, I did this, that's cool.

Will Guidara (00:47:21) - I've done this with so many different people and so many different businesses and and it's really, really fun.

Amy Porterfield (00:47:27) - It's so fun for.

Amy Porterfield (00:47:28) - I love when my team gets lit up because we did something good for one of my students. That to me is the biggest gift ever. So I can see that.

Will Guidara (00:47:37) - And steer clear of birthdays and the annoying low hanging fruit that everyone does.

Amy Porterfield (00:47:41) - Like something special and.

Will Guidara (00:47:42) - Find a recurring moment that's specific to your business or your company or your industry.

Amy Porterfield (00:47:47) - And every time you see it happens, that's when you're doing that thing.

Will Guidara (00:47:50) - Make it easy to deploy, make it systemized, bake it into the system. And by the way, what you'll see is the more people operate within a company where hospitality has been systemized into some of those touchpoints, the more people get addicted to finding creative ways to do it in a more impromptu nature as well.

Amy Porterfield (00:48:08) - Very cool, I love that.

Jasmine Star (00:48:09) - I love that in closing, we hear this story of a very successful restaurateur. We hear a success story of a restaurant.

Jasmine Star (00:48:17) - We hear changing an industry. We hear a book publishing, we hear a Ted talk, we hear you on podcasts. And so what is the business of your business now? Like if you were to sit down with a glass of whiskey and write on the back of a napkin again, where is Will?

Will Guidara (00:48:34) - You know, it's funny. I when I was 12, my dad, who was a very intentional father and like an amazing man, still is. he said, hey, Wil, I want you to write down your three goals in life at 12. And I said I wanted to go to Cornell and study hospitality. I wanted to open my own restaurant in New York City, and I wanted to marry Cindy Crawford at 12.

Amy Porterfield (00:48:56) - He said, yeah. No. One, two, three. And then the third. I think it could be a bit better.

Will Guidara (00:49:03) - and from the age of 12 until. Four years ago, when I sold my company, I was laser focused. On on a very, very specific outcome.

Will Guidara (00:49:15) - I'm giving myself the grace right now to wander and to just dabble in different formats. I'm doing stuff with television. I'm writing another book, we do some consulting, I'm helping friends do different things, a little bit of stuff in restaurants. But I have two kids now, and I'm in a season where I'm kind of, I've done one thing my entire life, and now I'm looking to experiment with different things, to see what sparks a new level of joy that I haven't experienced before, by the way, that is paralyzing and liberating. And and I'm loving the ride.

Jasmine Star (00:49:58) - HMMs are. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to the Jasmin Starr Show. What we spoke about today was unreasonable hospitality. And then we closed it in a slightly unexpected way. That had nothing to do with my notes. And I think that many of us listen and we are at a place of a pivot, a new beginning and an opportunity. And yet to be able to extend the grace, understanding that it's absolutely terrifying is so empowering, because I think that this version of, well, might not be 12 years old, and I'm definitely not his dad.

Jasmine Star (00:50:28) - If he were to be sitting in Tennessee on his way home to his beautiful wife and children, and he were to ask himself, what are the three things? The minute those three things hit game over, he's applying the same principles that he has in his business, and I feel very empowered to do the same. And I hope you do too. You have plenty of homework from this episode, but more than anything, can you identify one thing in your business that is repeatable that you might be able to surprise and delight and spend that 95 that 5% recklessly with intention to drive people to talk about your business in new and different ways. Well, thank you so much for being here. How can people connect with you?

Will Guidara (00:51:05) - I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram, I have a newsletter that I do every two weeks called Pre Meal.

Amy Porterfield (00:51:12) - Which by the way, where do we go? Where do we.

Will Guidara (00:51:14) - Have this newsletter because of Amy.

Amy Porterfield (00:51:19) - when we when we met.

Will Guidara (00:51:21) - Everyone was on my newsletters and I said I didn't.

Will Guidara (00:51:23) - And everyone at the table looked at me like I just literally killed a puppy in front of the room, this huge business.

Amy Porterfield (00:51:28) - But he didn't have an email list and now he does.

Will Guidara (00:51:32) - Pre mail. You can go to Unreasonable hospitality.com to sign up and on a bi weekly basis, I write what I would be saying to my team at the restaurant in our daily huddle.

Amy Porterfield (00:51:44) - Yes. Oh my god, I.

Amy Porterfield (00:51:45) - Just have Chip.

Amy Porterfield (00:51:46) - Oh my god.

Jasmine Star (00:51:48) - Okay, so number one, shout out to Amy for being the queen of list building. And I want you as your as your homework assignment. May I give you a homework assignment?

Amy Porterfield (00:51:55) - Yeah. For for criticism. Yes. Are we in a safe space? Yeah. We're good.

Jasmine Star (00:52:00) - can we, can we do unreasonable hospitality.com/premium.

Amy Porterfield (00:52:04) - Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:52:05) - Because that way you get that subscriber instead of them getting distracted or clicking on something else, like going to a video or a related article, and then they don't sign up, but we want them to do is sign up.

Will Guidara (00:52:14) - Well, so yeah, I believe that's what it is. It also has a pop up window the moment you go to unreasonable hospitality.com.

Amy Porterfield (00:52:20) - Great. There's a pop up window. Great great great. But but I'm.

Will Guidara (00:52:24) - Sure but I received that homework and I'm going to get on it.

Amy Porterfield (00:52:26) - I see every student.

Jasmine Star (00:52:28) - Making his dad proud all of these years later Cindy Crawford. Yeah. Lost out. Big thank you for listening to the Jasmine Starship.

Will Guidara (00:52:35) - Thank you.