What is Unreasonable Hospitality?

Episode 178: Lori takes an opportunity to pitch the book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect,  written by Will Guidara to Vonda and you. When it comes to customer service, Lori knows what it takes as she has a great appreciation for creating superior experience. She shares a few of the many stories and recommends the book for both a good read and source of inspiration. 

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Customer service is black and white, but hospitality is color.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson, and we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda. Good morning, Lori. Good morning, Vonda Sue. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

I'm great. I am great. Did you have a good weekend? I did. The sun is just coming out and we've had a kind of a rainy day. So it's nice that uh getting a little sun always makes us feel better, you know?

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Yeah, yeah. We we I if you could just push that sunshine on over to the great state of Texas, that would be great. Um been raining nonstop here. So um anyway, I had a little fun weekend. I got to go. Uh, we went out to dinner with my aunt and uncle um and my cousins for my aunt's birthday. She would not want me to reveal her age on live radio, but I wanted to say that I made her a big bouquet of fresh flowers and brought them. I decided I know you'd be well, you helped me. We did have to do a little FaceTiming on Saturday, and thank you very much. But um, I brought them to the restaurant, and I have to say, golly, her eyes just lit up, and she was so excited, and ever so many people around, including the servers, were like, oh my gosh, you know, and I thought, why do we not do this more? Why do people not deliver flowers to the restaurants more for birthdays and anniversaries and such? It's so great, it's such a wonderful little celebration.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

It is, Lori. The challenge is as a flower shop, trying to get them at the right time at the restaurant is a little bit challenging. So most of the time you would know what the time of the reservation was and you would make sure it was there before then, and then usually a server would bring it to the table. Sure. No, I had the joy of actually doing it yourself, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Absolutely. Or I would, if I was going to have them made, which I do that 50% of the time, right? I don't always make them a lot of times. No, I would just go and have pick it up myself in the flower shop and and take it. Uh, because I still it makes such a statement, such a statement, and it's so easy and it brings such joy. Um, and it had uh lilac in it because you said you're like, make sure you get that lilac, and older women were coming by and they're like, We smell the lilac.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Oh my goodness, yeah, yeah, and the accelerated um importance of your aunt who was having the birthday, because not only she was enjoying it for herself and the family, but everyone else in the restaurant, it was like a big deal, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah, yeah, and two things that she got very excited about. Number one is, and I did not know this, she said, I I bet you don't know, but when I was a little girl, we had a big lilac bush, I guess, or outside, and she said, This smell and just seeing them brings back so many memories. It's such a and even my my cousin was like, Mom, I didn't know that, you know. And then the other, even better surprise was the server was like, Oh, is it your birthday? And she said yes. She goes, You get a free dessert.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

She was like, Yay! Yay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

My cousin was like, Mom, we have cake at home. And she kind of nudged her and she's like, I'll take it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

That's so cute. But so many times, Lori, as someone in the industry, we forget about how exciting it can be to get flowers.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Yes, exactly. Yeah, my cousin's daughter, who's in high school, uh, she was there, and you know, this this is kind of an unknown for her, that world of of flowers. And she was kind of, you know, like touching them, peeking it through, and she kept going, You made these? Like, I'm like, Well, I mean, God actually made the flowers, I just put them in the vase, you know. Wow. And so it was kind of a cool opportunity to talk to her a little bit about it, too. And and she saw, she's like, Nan, you're so happy. And anyway, it was cute. It was cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

That is well, great. Good for you, Lori. That that made it your weekend, you know.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

It did, it did. Well, you know, it's always fun when you can get with family and eat cake and laugh and share flowers. So, all right, Vonda. So, you and I have talked about every once in a while, we are going to do a podcast where one of us is going to try to convince the other one why they should read a book that we know who the one who reads the book.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

I'm gonna read the book. We know who would be asking the other.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Well, I also have I have kind of a little bit of a posse on my side because a lot of our members have read this book too.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yes, I've heard you talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yeah, we've been talking about it a lot, and um, the good thing about the book is it's it's definitely worth the buy because it's something you can refer back to regardless what industry you're in, even if you don't own your own business. I just I think it's a good book. So I wanted to talk about the book called Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect. And it is by a man named Will Gadera. He has been in the restaurant industry his whole life. He basically grew up in it. His father, I think his name was Frank, he was in the industry, and he wrote a really good book, not only about the importance of customer service slash hospitality, but it's a very good story because he talks a lot about his life. Um, he had a wonderful mother, his mother was also a quadriplegic to at one point, and his mom and his dad cared so lovingly for her, and just it's a great book slash story about humanism, um, relationship, caring, and leadership. And so, you know, me, any book that has all of those things and a lot of heart, I'm I kind of dive in instead of me spending three hours or more, because I know I have right now I only have about 20 minutes. I just did like a couple of bullet points, not a couple, like probably 10 bullet point sentences that really struck me in this book. Um, some of them are exact quotes, and some of them are paraphrased that I got that I highlighted from the book.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Okay. Question let me ask you, how long is the book? Um, these are very important questions for me to know.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

I know it is. Um, the other thing while I'm looking for that is let's see, it is 257 pages. So it's a medium size, it's a medium-sized book. It is a book, though. You could easily sit down and be lost in it on a weekend and really read it because it is like a good story, because he goes back and forth about you know, when he was in college, there are some really funny moments, too, about some college drunken nights and some. I mean, there's some, it's good. Um, but then there's some sadness too about his mom. Um, so it's good storytelling, it's a good story lessons, right? But I what I don't want people to think is I'm not in the restaurant industry, I don't need to know this. Because the bottom line is we all can learn about how to be more hospitable in in life in general, right? Correct, yes. So the premise is he is so he is a general manager, he was he ran a um restaurant in New York City called 11 Madison Park. And it was voted the world's best restaurant in 2017. Wow, and the book starts out where he and his chef are at the world's top 50 restaurants, which I didn't even know was a thing, somewhere over, I don't know, we're gonna say it's in Paris. I don't remember where it was, so don't quote me on that. There was somewhere over there, and they are there because you're you're gonna be, you know, they that's where they rank you. Well, they were number 49, which is like the most embarrassing number to be. And it was at that moment that they were like, okay, never again. How do we change this? And within however many years they became number one. Here's how they did it. That's that's how the book starts. Okay, got it, got it, and so it wasn't that they changed the food, like the recipes, right? It wasn't that, so it was um customer service. So, number one bullet point that hit me customer service is black and white, but hospitality is color. Okay, and so you think of it this way customer service is you do all of the right things, please, and thank you. And it was my service, and have a blessed day, and it was my pleasure to serve you and all of the things. Examples of color are these are their examples. Keep in mind, listener and Vonda, my realist boss. Okay, keep in mind, these are Madison Park restaurant, their examples. We can make our own examples, it doesn't have to be the same, right? So their examples were there was a couple that came into their restaurant that had been to New York, it was the first time in New York City, and they were getting ready, they had like a red eye out that night, and they in talking with their server, they were saying, What a great time. They got to see, you know, every show that they had they did everything on their bucket list. The only thing they hadn't done was gotten a hot dog from a street vendor. Like that was the only thing they didn't get to check off their list. They were like, ah, you know, oh, maybe next time. Like, oh man, that's kind of a bummer. So they ordered the fruit. I mean, they're at a very nice restaurant, yeah. Right. While they're waiting, their server goes back and tells Will. Will runs over to the street vendor, gets two little hot dogs, New York style, just the small ones. Oh no, actually gets one because they just ordered dinner, has it cut up, served on their famous china, served to them.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Yeah, that's the color. That's the color. And so that's the whole premise of the book. Listening to the story of your customer and thinking, how can I turn this in from black and white to color? And I'm like, you know, from the minute I read it, I'm like, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. This is this is this is so cool. So that's it. Um, the next one, which I giggled when I read this, it's like, okay, this is the one Vonda would struggle with the most. But hear me out because we'll, first of all, I want you to know he is a very profit-minded, like he's a numbers guy. Okay, that was why he was already flourishing in this industry. He was working for, I can't remember all of the different big restaurant companies, you know, because he names them in the book as if you should know. We should know these, you know. I don't know these people, I don't know these companies. Um, but he said, manage 95% of your money down to the penny, spend the other five percent foolishly. Yeah, I know that right. So he gives a couple of examples. One example he gives from a perspective of um managing the restaurant, so of course, you manage nine 95% on everything exact, and then with that five percent, he said, you throw a hell of a staff Christmas party, you just go all out, you do, you know, or whatever you there is because it is so important to build into your people and to let them know, yep, I went over budget, but man, it was worth it, wasn't it? You guys are worth it, like that's money well spent. He also gave another example that I thought was really interesting, and I'd love to think through trying to figure out a good way to do this in a flower shop. Um, so he was given an opportunity in the New York Museum of Natural History, the museum, he was in charge of that restaurant there, or like a little bistro type thing. And they have, I guess one of the things they were famous for is this gelato that everybody had. So he had that 95% budgeted down. But one of the things that he would not uh budge on is he was obsessed with these little gelato spoons that you could only get like somewhere over in Europe. I don't know. I I can't remember the details, but people literally flocked to get the gelato because of these spoons. Wow, so it was like a thing, you know, it was their thing, and it was uh it was just what you did, and he's like, We it's kind of the why they do it, so it makes sense. I I kind of like that, and he said it also makes you really even more of a stickler on that 95% because you want to have that other fun five percent, because that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Yeah, that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah, yeah. I liked this one. Set your lofty goals, but don't forget to bring your team along, like include them, make sure they're in on them, right? Yeah, because you can't achieve them without them.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, we've talked about that before, it's been all teamwork, yeah. So that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Absolutely, and that goes right into the next one that you we talk about all the time. Share the credit, share the credit. It's not your job to be seen as the ultimate authority figure. That's not that's not gonna get you too far in your life. It's your job to build your team and keep your morale high. Look for inspiration in the unlikely places, so keep your eyes open constantly, look around you and see what am I not seeing? He talks about even looking at employees that um others would get really frustrated. He he talks about um sitting down with some because they weren't getting along with others or there was issues, and in talking with that employee, it became very apparent to him that that employee was in the complete wrong position. What he loved was extreme detail and execution. He didn't want front of house, he didn't want, you know, so where he moved him to back of house and he became like the liaison between the cooks and the servers, making sure every execution basically, and it was a game changer where everybody else wanted him to be fired. Wow, and he's like, No, he that's where he needed to be.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

It was he will was like, it was my fault, I didn't have him in the right place, yeah, yeah, and he was miserable, and everybody else was miserable, but he was the perfect employee for that other position, and for Will to be able to see that was key.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Exactly, exactly. Um, another thing he talks about a lot is there is no such thing in unreasonable hospitality. It is not one size fits all, it is one size fits one. Every customer is different, yeah. You have to listen to what their story is, to what they need, and then help them specifically. So I liked I liked that one.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

One size fits one, yeah. Although there's a lot of similarities between each one of them, you can't listen. You might have to tweak, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yeah. Another um, you know, somebody just like the hot dog vendor, uh, another one he tells there was a couple there, something about their parking, and they were freaking out because they were their meter was gonna run out. Well, they the people the server ran out and put money in. He's like, Where are you parked? Blah blah blah. They ran out and put money in. I mean, little things like that. Another story. When I first heard this one, I'm like, no way, there's no way this is really. I almost stopped reading the book until I realized again, this is a high-end, high, high-end restaurant. We all have to take it and apply to our own industry. There was a family there visiting, they were from another country, and I cannot remember which country, but it was a warm country, like a warm climate country, and it had just started snowing, or it had been snowing that day, and their children had never seen snow. They had two kids, and they were just like kind of freaking out, you know. Sure. And so their server went back and told Will, or told whoever they got surprised that family after their dinner with two sleds and tickets. I guess you have to get tickets to Central Park to go sledding. Oh, wow. That family. Wow. I mean, like this is this has to be orchestrated.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Which leads me to I'm sorry to tell you the next thing, which is my dream job, my dream title. If I was to ever live in New York City, they actually have someone on staff whose job is called the dream weaver.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

That would be you, yes, that would be me.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

You would truly. Their only job is to be the person who the servers come to and say, Hey, I need two sleds and some tickets to Central Park sledding, or hey, I need this. You and Ellie would be oh my god, Ellie and I would be you would just be in love with that. Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine. Like, can you even imagine how cool that would be? That'd be a great job. He uses an example, um, because I know people listening going, how could that, how could I even do that? Right, but I thought this was a good example. He goes, for example, let's say you're a realtor, okay, and you just sold a new house to a cute little couple, and they go into the house the first day, and you have the keys there. So you could leave a bottle of wine and keys, you know, that's pretty normal or whatever. Or as you've been visiting with them for however many months while you're house hunting and been actively listening and getting to know them and what they love. Maybe you picked up on the fact that the wife or the husband likes to do yoga, or maybe she's a book reader, or maybe there's something you know they love. So maybe somewhere in the house, it could be in the laundry room, it could be in the corner of the bedroom. You've just set up a little yoga mat, maybe a little water bottle, just something simple just to show hey, this is where your dream can take place.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

And I was listening.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

I was listening. That is hospitality. Love it. That is that is just it, isn't it? It is that extra little glitch. I will give you an a real life flower example. A couple weeks ago, I was ordered, I ordered flowers for my friend, um, whose father-in-law passed from one of our flower click members, which you know love when I get to do that. And I was telling them what I was ordering, and I was like, um, you know, where he went to school. And I was like, you know, this color because you know he's a big, that's his alma modern. She's like, I got you, I got you. Anyway, sent the flowers. Uh the next day, my friend sent me the picture, and she's like, oh, g they were huge, so much purple. I mean, beyond what I could have even dreamed, which was the color I needed. And what was so cute, what I loved, is when they sent me the receipt, they emailed me the receipt on the notes. It said, um, additional notes, it said, ask so and so. She knows the details. And I was like, she know, like, yeah, yeah. Wow, she listened. It just was so meaningful to me. And like she listened, like that she understood the assignment, is all I could think of in my mind. Like, she totally got it. Yeah. So anyway, it made it makes a big difference. This is another one. I know we're running out of time here. People will never forget how you made them feel for sure. Right. Well, think of that.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

What the just with your flower example, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Right, right. I will, I might forget what those flowers look like, but when I saw that email receipt and the the writing on there, the affirmation of wow, it's gonna, it's gonna be perfect. Yeah, because she is making sure the designer goes straight to her for my details. Oh, that's great, that's so cool. Yeah, um, I love this one too, and you know, I feel like I could have written this one. Let your energy impact the people you are talking to instead of the other way around. Do not let their energy, because it could be negative.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

That's exactly what I was thinking of this morning, Lori. Is we're thinking of shops going into busy times, right? Just such a busy time, and there's so much negativity out there. It's exactly what I was thinking is you know what? You have to be the one with the positive energy because if you allow the negative energy to get you down, everybody's spiraling. So, yes, I love that. I love that your energy should impact who you're talking with, not the other round.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

I have on one of my little post-it notes, you know, I have them all over the place, but it says, When you speak kindness into people's lives, they look forward to seeing you. Oh, yeah, just so simple. They don't go dread when you call or see you coming. They're like, Oh, there's so and so, because they know you give off a good energy when you're around, absolutely, right? Um, find the balance between control and creativity. I think that can be really hard in our industry. I think it can be really hard in the restaurant industry. He talks about that a lot, especially from a chef's perspective. Sure. It's one of the hardest things he's had to butt up against. Um, because a chef has to be controlled and precise, right? And creative. And so does a floral designer, right? So does a designer, but they also have to relinquish a little bit and be open to hearing what the customers really want. Right. Even if they're like, yeah, I don't, I don't want to make that. Yeah. You know, so he talks about that. So um it's really good. Uh hospitality, bottom line, it's all about relationships. It's just for sure about relationships. So um, one other theme of the book that I talk about a lot with our flower shop owners is there was a disconnect in his front of house and his back of house for so long in in so many restaurants, and his whole goal for however many years has been to try to fuse that together, right? And so I think if anything, in for our art industry, reading this, there are some really good tips on how to do that well.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah, you've talked about that so much in sales prep school about always going back to the designers doing this, doing that. So yeah, that's good. There will be other tips in there. So, bottom line, you think it's a book that will be well worth my time to read.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

I do, I do, but here's the other thing I want to say, and I've I've seen this on the internet also. There's a ton of great YouTube videos out there, okay and TED Talks. He's done some good TED Talks. If people aren't readers, I think just watching those would give you a lot of good insight, even before you read the book. I was watching one, I don't know, a while back of a guy that was doing a book review on it. And he said he actually started reading the book, and then he kind of put it down, and he's like, Yeah, you know, I don't really because he thought it was a little too restaurant-ish. And then he started watching the videos and he got a better understanding of who Will was. Okay, and then he went back to the book with a different mindset and he understood it better because of the respect that he gained for Will through some of that video, understanding it, yeah, and was able to apply it to his life as a leader, because the bottom line is the whole book is about leadership and how to serve others well, no matter what industry you're in, even if you are a volunteer, yeah, it doesn't matter, just how to serve others. He says, you know, his intuition and his father taught him this. It feels good to make other people feel good. Yep, yeah, that is the premise of the whole book, and that should be our starting point every single morning is wake up. When you know what it makes me, it should be selfish, right? I want to make other people feel good because it makes me feel good.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

It's interesting, Lori, because that that this is a restaurant book, because there's always been comparisons between flower shops and restaurants, because they both work with the perishable, right? So a perishable with food, a perishable with flowers. And they say that the second most difficult business to run because of that is like flowers or food is the worst because you have to throw them away, but flowers as well, right? You know, nobody's gonna get sick if you don't send out older flowers, but those similarities. So what when we're reading a book that's about a restaurant, that would make sense because it's all about presentation, it's about how to serve the people, it's about how making people happy, you know. So that this really would be a good book.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Yeah, yeah. I will tell you, I've highlighted quite a bit in it, so I will probably go back to it. So it would, it's it's a good book to me to keep on my bookshelf.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yes, so that you can refer back and go back to it.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yeah, it was one of those, you know, like once every six months I'll clean out my bookshelf because I run out of space. And I'm like, yeah, I'll never look back at this one, or this one is timed out, it's outdated. A lot of the marketing books and stuff, you know, that we have, but this one I'll keep for a while.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Okay, I probably will at least start with the videos.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Start with the videos. That's what I would say, and that's what I would tell anybody. And yeah, I will tell you, you know, I love Ellie and I both use the Libby app, which is a library app on our phone. You can get it from your library, and they also have it on audio if you guys like audibles. I know Cameron from Norton's, he listened to it on Audible.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

I had a friend tell me about an app called Blinklist. Have you seen yes? Yes, and she re uses that all the time because I kind of like gives you the most important part. Yeah, yeah. So maybe I'll pull it up on Blinklist and see if it's do you have a monthly membership to that? No, but I will. Okay, let me know if you like it. I've you know me, I don't like to read the whole book, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

She keeps saying to me, you need to do this, and I'm like, okay, well, I've been thinking that one of us needs it for this exact reason. Um, when it comes to these kind of books, because some there are other books that I'm like, we need to blink list this one to see if this would be a good one for our members. And then if it is, then I could be the one that does the full read. There we go.

unknown 32:24

There we go.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Fair. That's fair. I'll take that. Fair. That's a deal. That's you blink list it, I'll read it.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Okay. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa. We look forward to seeing you next week.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

So please come back and join us to discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.