Will Guidara – Unreasonable Hospitality (EP.492)

So many companies, regardless of how successful they are, reserve their best efforts only to invest in the thing that they sell. Don't invest that same amount of energy into how they make people feel, which to me feels counterintuitive. These companies, they are unreasonable in pursuit of bringing the most fully realized version of the product or service to life. They are relentless. They're willing to do whatever it takes to make that thing as close to perfect as possible. Unreasonable hospitality is just willing to do the same when it comes to people. If it is the stickiest thing you can do

I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is Will Gadera, the author of unreasonable hospitality and the soon to release unreasonable hospitality, the field guide. Unreasonable hospitality has become a New York Times bestseller and a business bible for elevating customer experiences. Will was co owner of Eleven Madison Park alongside Danny Meyer when the restaurant ascended to number one in the world, the co producer of Emmy award winning streaming series The Bear, host of the Welcome Conference, and adviser to business leaders ranging from professional leaders t

I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

One thing I've never asked you about is your path to where hospitality became a thing. I would love to hear your journey to that point in time.

It's a bunch of little experiences and moments in my life that got me here. I'll tackle hospitality in a moment and first just start with restaurants. I bifurcate them only because I believe hospitality is more than restaurants. Restaurants is simply the medium through which I fell in love with hospitality. I went into restaurants because I wanted to be like my dad. My dad was my hero growing up. My best friend, my greatest mentor, all wrapped up in one. He was that for a bunch of different reasons. Chief on the list was my mom was sick when I was a kid, became a quadriplegic. Watching my dad

A lot that you described in your dad caring for your mom that sounds very much like unreasonable hospitality. What does that mean to you, that concept?

My favorite quote about hospitality is one that many have heard. It comes from Maya Angelou. She said, people will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And I believe that to be so very true. When I think back on the experiences that linger with me to this day, those memories are not marked by some detail of the product or service. They're marked by something, whether big or small, that a human being did to make me feel seen, to give me a sense of belonging, to make me feel welcome. A story that they gave me to share, a memory tha

How did you bring that concept into the restaurant?

The foundation of it came from Danny. So much of what I have done started with the foundation that he built. I really tried to build on top of that. Where it started in my restaurant was when we came in last place at the 50 best awards. I wanted to be number one. Like many people, when you set out to achieve a seemingly audacious goal, I looked at those who had been number one before to try to learn lessons from them and figure out how I could make those lessons my own. I talk a lot about the importance of knowing your own superpowers that you can fully capitalize on it. When I looked around t