The One You Feed - The Nobility of Service: Finding Magic and Connection in the Smallest Gestures with Will Guidara

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

What do a fine dining maitre d. A magician burying cards in a backyard and a toddler looking for Elsa have in common? They all show us that magic still exists. If we’re willing to care more, than seems reasonable. In this episode, Will Guidara, who’s a former co-owner of 11 Madison Park, which was once named the best restaurant in the world, the author of Unreasonable Hospitality and advisor on the hit series The Bear, shares how he transformed a restaurant into the best in the world not through perfection but through moments of radical hospitality. Whether it was sending out hot dogs on fine China or designing hand signals to pour water silently. It was never only about the food, it was about making people feel seen. This is a conversation about joy, about seeing service not as subservience, but as nobility and the kind of creativity that invites connection.The Tao Te Ching is one of those books I keep coming back to. Ancient wisdom, wrapped in poetry, that somehow feels more relevant every year. Like this line: “If you look to others for happiness, you will never be happy. If your well-being depends on money, you will never be content.“Simple. Clear. Actually useful.I’ve teamed up with Rebind.ai to create an interactive edition of the Tao—forty essential verses, translated into plain, everyday language, with space to reflect, explore, and ask questions. It’s like having a conversation not just with the Tao, but with me too. If you’re looking for more clarity, calm, or direction, check it out here.Key Takeaways:The concept of hospitality and its significance in various aspects of life.Insights from the restaurant industry and the transformation of dining experiences.The balance between kindness and excellence in service.The importance of making people feel seen and valued.The idea of “unreasonable hospitality” and exceeding expectations.The role of creativity in building meaningful connections.The impact of self-care and generosity in service roles.Navigating relationships and managing people effectively.The value of criticism as an investment in personal growth.The importance of community and connection in fostering relationships.Will Guidara: Website | Instagram | LinkedInIf you enjoyed this conversation with Will Guidara, check out these other episodes:How to Connect More Deeply With the World with James CrewsHow to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection with Charles DuhiggFor full show notes, click here!Connect with the show:Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPodSubscribe on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyFollow us on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the same way that I'd rather assume the best in people and be proven wrong, I'd rather give a lot constantly and be taken advantage of once in a while than to never give it all and never run the risk of being taken advantage of. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. What do a fine dining maitre d' a magician burying cards in a backyard

and a toddler looking for Elsa have in common? They all show us that magic still exists. If we're willing to care more, then seems reasonable. In this episode, Will Gutierrez who's a former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which was once named the best restaurant in the world, the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, and advisor on the hit series The Bear, shares how he transformed a restaurant into the best in the world, not through perfection, but through moments of radical hospitality.

Whether it was sending out hot dogs on fine china or designing hand signals to pour water silently, it was never only about the food, it was about making people feel seen. This is a conversation about joy, about seeing service not as subservience, but as nobility, and the kind of creativity that invites connection. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is The One You Feed. Hi Will, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. We're going to be discussing your book that's called Unreasonable Hospitality, the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect. But before we get into that, we'll start the way we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild.

They say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Gosh, that's a beautiful parable. I think everyone has two sides to themselves and our ability to walk the line that separates those two is often what determines our success.

I think in the way that's framed, it's quite binary, right? You obviously want to be the wolf that is focused on kindness and love, not that that is focused on greed and hatred or whichever other words you used in the latter. But I think where it gets more complicated is when there's two sides of your personality where you actually do need each of them to feed your success and where success comes almost because of the tension between them,

not in spite of it. Yes. For me, in the business world, those two sides are on one end. This unbelievable knowledge and passion for creating cultures where I am empowering and trusting everyone on my team, recognizing that unless they feel invited to bring their most fully realized selves to the table, we're never going to be able to connect with the people we're serving in the most authentic way possible. And then on the other side, this perfectionist quality to me, someone that is filled with OCD tendencies that likes to control as many

variables as possible to ensure that as few things as possible go wrong. And without question, I will spend my entire professional life falling off that line in one direction or the other. But when I fall, that is not what defines me. It's how quickly I can get back onto the line with humility and with vulnerability and with the dedication to keep on trying to ride it as carefully and as considerably as possible. Oh, that's beautifully said.

There's so many things in there that I think are worth touching on. I mean, one is that idea that like we all fall off whatever line we're trying to walk again and again and again. And I think the people who seem to stay on the line are the ones who just get back on quickly, right? You just, they're falling off too. You're just not seeing it because their wobble is a little bit less. And then the second thing is I picked that up in your book too, you talk about these tensions that you had. Another one was hospitality and excellence as a tension. And

I want to get into those. Before we do, why don't we just spend a minute or two and give listeners a little bit of your kind of your background to today so they have context for everything we're going to talk about. Yeah, so I am most known or I was most known for the majority of my career for my success in the restaurant industry. I came up in restaurants, my dad was a lifelong restaurateur, my dad who's still with us is my greatest mentor,

my best friend, the person from whom I've been inspired more than anyone else. And when I was growing up, I just wanted to be like him. I would have done whatever it was that he did for a living. It just so happened that restaurants, the thing that he did was something that independently I fell in love with.

I mean, at the age of 12, I always joke about this, because I think it's so funny. My dad has taught me many, many things, perhaps highest on the list is the power of intention. He's a very, very intentional person, to the point that at the age of 12, he asked me to come up with my to-do list for life. And as ridiculous as that sounds,

he was definitively being serious. And I know this because he gave it to me in my late 20s and had three things on it. One was to go to Cornell University and study hospitality. Two was to open my own restaurant in New York City and three was to marry Cindy Crawford. And I'd like to say that I did two out of the three and on the third, maybe even better. And it's literally the say that I did two out of the three and on the third maybe even better. And it's literally the only thing I did growing up. I worked in some of the best restaurants in America.

I did go to Cornell. I did work for Wolfgang Puck and Danny Meyer and eventually worked for Danny at a restaurant called Eleven Madison Park, a restaurant that I bought from him. And over the 10 years following the purchase of that restaurant, I turned that restaurant into the best restaurant in the world. And then I grew an entire company around it. And then I sold that company just a couple months before COVID.

And like many during COVID, retreated from the world for a measure of time. And in that season, I had to decide what I wanted to do next. And sometimes I feel like the best way to decide where you want to go is to re-walk the path you've just been down. And so I wrote the book, Unreasonable Hospitality, and now I do something very different for a living. The book was meant to help me decide what I wanted to do next, and it kind of became the thing that I went on to do, which is spending my work life trying to encourage as many people across disciplines to make the choice to be in the hospitality industry.

Because I don't care what you do for a living, you can make that choice simply through prioritizing people as much as you do product. And so you're catching me on a really exciting season in life. I love that idea of everybody can be in hospitality because early on in the book you say talking about addressing questions you've spent your career asking. How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging? How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves? How do you make them feel welcome?

And I think for all of us, wherever we are, we can aim at those qualities with the people that are around us, whether that be our family, our friends, the people we work with. If we have a big group of people around us, a small group, I think that idea of hospitality can run through everything we do. It becomes almost an ethos. Yeah, the US was a manufacturing economy.

It is decidedly a service economy now. I think three quarters of our GDP is driven by service industries, manufacturing economy, it is decidedly a service economy now. Yep. I think three quarters of our GDP is driven by service industries, which means that it doesn't matter what you do for a living. Let's just start with work. You're in the business of serving other people and whether or not you're in the hospitality industry is solely based on, well, the extent to which you work as hard to make them feel seen as you do in perfecting whatever service or product you're selling them.

And then in life, I mean, we should all be in the hospitality industry of life because I like to define the word often, the word hospitality. And one of my favorite definitions is hospitality is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. And... Wow, that's a great line. In a season where, gosh, there is so much division and people seem to be drifting further and further away from one another.

I think the world would be a better place if we were all just a little bit more unreasonable in pursuit of those relationships. Yeah. You say in the book that the moment you start to pursue service through the lens of hospitality, you understand there's nobility in it. And I just love that. I love that word in general, nobility, because I think we can all act noble in our lives. You know, it's not about kings, it's about a state of being. But I think that's a beautiful way of reframing serving others, right? Because we could look at serving others as not good, demeaning, wish I didn't have to do it, you know, but we all serve others. I mean, whether we

know it or not, and whether we want to embrace it or not. And it's far better to do it nobly and gracefully. I host a conference in New York City called the Welcome Conference, which has become, I'd imagine, the biggest hospitality conference in the country at this point. But years ago, perhaps in our first or second year, there was a guy who spoke.

His name was Charles Masson. His family had for many, many years a restaurant in New York City called La Grenouille. It was this famous old school French fine dining restaurant. And in his talk, he acknowledged exactly that. That, I mean, when you're growing up, no parent ever says, I really hope you're a server one day, right? They always, you know, every parent, at least for a very long time, like you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a banker.

And there's almost this culture where we look down on people who give their life in pursuit of serving others. But the truly great among us are those that have the confidence to, well, to serve and don't require the external validation of others to feel like they are the person they always wanted to be. But I also think that to really impact the world leverage is one of the biggest things you need. And he described it in this way which I thought was beautiful

and very easy to understand that literally if you are trying to pull something and if you are standing over something trying to pull it up you don't actually have that much strength with which to do it but if you get underneath that thing and you push it up you can actually exert so much more force. I think there is no ability in service in answering that call to, yeah, just show up for others instead of, well, only showing up for ourselves. And I think if you do it well with creativity, with grace, I think you can also make a really good living doing it. Yeah. There's a line that gets used in the yoga meditation world a lot that has always rubbed me the wrong way. I understand what people mean by it, but they will often say, you know,

let go of anything that isn't serving you. It's said all the time. I get it. Like, let go of the things in your life that are problematic. But just the framing of it for me has always bothered me because I've always thought about like, well, hang on, shouldn't I be putting at least as much focus on like what I'm serving? You know, I talk often about self-care and its role in hospitality. I use the metaphor of a water pitcher. If you've decided that you want to pursue a career in service and hospitality, regardless of industry, whether you're selling cars or insurance or you're a banker or whatever,

you're effectively constantly pouring water out of your pitcher into the glasses of others. And if you don't pause every once in a while and refill your pitcher, you're gonna run out of water to pour very quickly. So I believe in all of that. And yet, and never in a million years did I think this conversation would take me here, at least this quickly. I feel like some of these self-care industries with language like that, gosh, I think it's just been manipulated to the point that people are using it in order to give themselves the grace to be selfish.

That every single one of your relationships, they all better benefit you entirely, and if they don't, get rid of them. And honestly, that's just not a world I want to live in. Like we're creating fancy language that makes selfishness permissible and I think it's devastating. Yep. I just finished my first book and I just turned it into the publisher a couple weeks ago and in it, I talk about this idea that there's this phrase that's always haunted me and it's that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time around.

And it haunts me because on one level, I think it's true, right? Like who I'm around influences a lot about me. But that assumes that the people I surround myself with are there as instruments to make me better versus relationships that I have. And so again, it's another one of those self-help phrases that sort of makes sense.

But when I examine it more closely, it troubles me a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. It's also funny for me because I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old. And so I'm trying to figure out if they are two-fifths of who I am, then.

They probably would be a good two-fifths of who I am, then... They probably would be a good two-fifths, to be honest. By the way, I mean, you know what? I will say, I have always brought a certain amount of levity to the way in which I try to show up in the world, but relearning how to look at life through the lens of a toddler to appreciate so many of the things that we invariably begin to take for granted is a pretty beautiful thing. I agree. My toddler is now 26 years old, amazingly. But my friend, and who's the editor of this podcast, Chris, has a three-year-old. So I get to re-experience some of it through him.

And it is a beautiful thing. Something else that you say you learned, I believe from Danny Meyer, although you can correct me if I'm wrong, was that you want to let your energy impact the people you're talking to as opposed to the other way around. Hmm. Yeah, that was probably a mix of Danny Meyer, but also Randy Garudi, who was my first boss when I worked for Danny's company. Randy went on to be the CEO of Shake Shack and is in my view, one of the great leaders

out there, full stop. I've gotten to spend plenty of time with many of them and he still sits very close to the top of that list. Randy was always just one of these guys that was unabashed in bringing all of his passion and enthusiasm to the team every single day. I think there's this thing in both work and in life, honestly, where there's a certain amount of us that will never cease being our high school selves.

And in high school, you want to be cool. And the people that are celebrated for being the coolest ones are generally those that don't try too hard. Right? Like when I was in school, the ones that tried too hard, they were called nerds. The ones that were cool were the ones that like were a bit more laissezaire about everything. And it's sad. And I think this is actually changing a bit generationally. But gosh, I want to celebrate the people that do try hard. I want to celebrate the people that are passionate. And it takes an amazing amount of confidence and self-assuredness to just allow yourself

to wear every ounce of your passion, to bring all of your energy to the table every single day. And when you're able to do that, well, you can, you can infect everyone around you with that passion. Public speaking is a big part of being a great leader. Yes, we should inspire people through our actions, but words also do a lot of the heavy lifting in restaurants. We have this meeting we call premil. We do it every single day, right before service with our entire team, before we unlock the doors. And that's an opportunity to inspire, to get people fired up, to invigorate them. And too many people

gauge what they give to that meeting based on what they are receiving from their people in that meeting as opposed to recognizing, no, my role is to energize them with my passion, not to become less energized because I'm not feeling as much passion in return. Yeah. Well, I think that that goes for that sort of situation and lots of things in life in general, which is where how we treat somebody is tied to how they treat us. And I'm not saying that we should take this to some like, I was going to use the word unreasonable but you're the wrong guy to use the word unreasonable with not to take it to the point where like, you know, we're a doormat to people or we're in abusive relationships.

But I think there's something to be said for here's who I want to be. This gets back to your dad and intention. This is the person I want to be, regardless of what I met with. Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you this. And this is definitively one that I learned from Danny Meyer. One of my favorites of his isms, and Danny was a master of isms, these like little ways that he articulated

the things that mattered to him in doing so, not only made them easier for us to communicate to one another, but in creating an ism around a core value or a tenant of his belief system, it was a meta signal to everyone that that was something that mattered to the culture at large. One of them was the charitable assumption, which is a fun way to say give people the benefit of the doubt. Here's the thing in, I'll use a restaurant metaphor for obvious reasons. If someone comes into the restaurant and they're just acting like a jerk, you're waiting on someone and they're acting like a jerk, it happens obviously.

It's completely natural, profoundly human to decide that that person no longer deserves your most gracious hospitality. The charitable assumption, rather, though, would have you think this instead. Maybe that person is acting like a jerk because, gosh, on their way to the restaurant, they found out they'd just lost a loved one or they learned that their spouse was cheating on them or some other thing like that. Maybe this person that's acting like a jerk actually needs our love more than anyone else in the room. Now, sometimes the person was just a jerk. But the idea is, my dad always says, ask yourself what right looks like and then just do that. I'd always rather err on the side of assuming the best in someone and be proven wrong than to assume the worst in them

and be proven wrong. Agree 100%. There's a story from a book, maybe you've read it, maybe you haven't, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And Covey tells this story of being on a New York subway car. And there are a couple of kids running just wild through the car. They're kind of like the worst example of what a two and a five-year-old would be. And he's getting frustrated with this dad who's just sitting there. And he can tell that everybody on the car is frustrated and upset. And finally, it just gets to a point where he's like, sir, I hate to bother you,

but your children are kind of running wild. Maybe you could try and bring him in a little bit. And the guy looks up at him really dazed and says, oh, I guess they don't know how to behave. Neither do I. We just left the hospital and their mother died. And in that moment, I mean, he tells it as a story of how quickly your paradigm or perspective can change because in that you instantly, no longer is he a bad dad, you just want to help this guy. But that's an example of the charitable assumption. And I love what you said about I'd rather think the best of somebody and be wrong. Because I always think that if you think the best of people and you're wrong, as long as you're not getting horribly taken advantage of, no huge loss.

But you begin to consistently be suspicious of people, there's a huge loss. And that loss is to your own heart well, not only to your own heart and Obviously not only to just how you're impacting people in an unnecessarily negative way But the implications are almost endless it holds back our creative output It holds back the the flow of beautiful ideas that come into the world I was doing a talk not too long ago and we were talking about some of the stuff we used to do for people and someone said, didn't anyone try to take advantage of you when you

were doing this stuff though? And yeah, of course they did. But gosh, if you limit what you're willing to give to the world out of a fear that a few people are going to take advantage of your generosity. Like, what a lose-lose to let a couple bad apples ruin it, not only for everyone else, but also for you. In the same way that I'd rather assume the best in people and be proven wrong, I'd rather give a lot constantly and be taken advantage of once in a while than to never give it all and never run the rescue being taken advantage of. I think this would be a good moment to pivot to the title of the book, which is

Unreasonable Hospitality. So I think up till now, we've been talking about hospitality as a way of being in the world and of relating to other people. But you've tacked the word unreasonable in front of it. Talk to me about what that means. Michael It really became my call to arms early in the evolution of the restaurant as I endeavored to take it to the top. I mean, here's the thing, you look across disciplines, the people that are the most successful in every single one of those did so by being unreasonable, by being willing to do whatever it took to bring the most fully realized version of their product or craft or service to life. You think about everyone from Steve Jobs to Walt Disney to athletes like Michael Jordan.

I mean, like they're unreasonable. They're going to do whatever it takes. That's all I'm saying here. I'm just redirecting it towards how we make people feel. My favorite quote about hospitality, most people at this point have heard it, is by 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. Unreasonable hospitality is just being relentlessly intentional and creative and willing to do whatever it takes into those little moments. The moments that sit in the in-between, the moments surrounding not what you're serving someone, but how you're serving it to them.

The opportunities to create a genuine and meaningful connection with the people that work with you and the people that you are collectively serving. And I think the big paradigm shift of unreasonable hospitality is, it's not just about being really nice. It's about recognizing that to achieve any significant level of success, you need to develop practices and systems and a very thoughtfully considered approach. The same is true when it comes to hospitality, that you can systemize graciousness through creating the right framework and the right culture and making gestures of hospitality as easy as humanly possible for the people on your team to deploy.

And if you approach all of those things as unreasonably as humanly possible, what you have the capacity to do is nothing short of extraordinary. Give us some examples of some of the things that you guys did at the restaurant that came out of this unreasonable hospitality mindset. There's a position that I added to the restaurant that has certainly received the most fanfare for lack of a better word and is one of the stories in the book that people have resonated with the most to the point where I've now seen this same position added to NFL teams and hospital systems and retirement homes and like multinational banks.

The position is called the Dreamweaver, named after the iconic song by Gary Wright, which has always been one I've loved. This was a position added to the team who had no operational responsibilities. They had nothing that they were actually charged with doing to power the service or the product or anything like that. They were just there serving as a resource to help everyone else on the team bring crazy ideas and gestures of hospitality to life. And so they were there every single night with us, just as a resource. And the stuff that we did with that person, it was wild. You know, little things that cost a little bit of money. Talking about Danny Meyer, Shake Shack was right in the park.

And so it could be one of our servers overhearing one of the tables talking about as they were consuming like a caviar course that they smelled Shake Shack on the way into the restaurant and they couldn't stop craving it. Easy enough. The Dream Weaver runs across the street to Shake Shack, gets its Shack Burger. And then as their pre-entree before whatever their 30-day dry-aged ribeye, we serve them a little slice of a shack burger. You tell a great story about how a guest mentioned coming to New York and, you know, hitting all the big restaurants they wanted to hit, but the only thing they didn't get was a New

York hot dog. Yes. And what you do is you run out and get them a hot dog. But my favorite part of that story is you bringing it into the kitchen and trying to get this Michelin Award chef to plate up a hot dog in an elegant way. Well, by the way, like you talk about how hospitality and excellence are not friends. And in the beginning of our conversation, you reference the inherent tension between them. And that moment is a beautiful illustration of that tension. tension between them. I mean, that moment is a beautiful illustration of that tension. On one side, a chef who has spent his entire life trying to be celebrated for being the

best chef that he possibly can be. And then on the other side, me just trying to do the right thing to make these people happy. Those are not friends always. Right. It takes someone recognizing that the thing they're trying to do is just a little bit less important than the other thing in that moment. And yeah, I mean, you know, we spend weeks if not months conceiving of every single dish we serve, days if not weeks, prepping every ingredient that goes onto that plate, years and years training every single one of the people that is touching every one of those ingredients as it gets cooked and sent down the line before it finally hits that

plate and gets walked by someone who has spent years learning how to be the best dining room professional they can be and then put in front of you on the table and explained in the most elegant way possible. And then right before that, we serve you a dirty water dog. Again, if you don't have the right amount of confidence or the right perspective to understand what actually matters in those moments, feel very demeaning. If you do though, it's unbelievably exciting because when you can create the kind of experience that is truly specific to the person you're serving it to, show that you care enough to listen and then to do something with what you hear. Illustrate that the experiences that are one size fits one, where you are willing to bend your own rules solely in pursuit of making

that person happy. Well, that is much more satisfying and definitively much more noble than creating a plate of food that looks pretty. One of the books that I've spent the most time with in my entire life is the Tao Te Ching. It's an ancient Chinese manual for living well that somehow also reads like poetry. Here's an example of one verse that I come back to over and over through the years. If you look to others for happiness, you will never be happy. If your well-being depends on money, you will never be content. That kind of simple truth doesn't just sound good, it actually changes how you live if you let it. It's simple, it's direct, and it hits

me harder every year. If you've ever been curious about the Tao, or just want some ancient wisdom that actually works in real life, I've got something special. I teamed up with rebind.ai to create an interactive edition of the DAO. I handpicked 40 core verses, translated them into plain relatable language, and built them into a guide where you can ask questions and get my take in real time. It's like having a conversation not just with the DAO, but with me too. You can grab it right now at oneYouFeed.net slash Tao. That's spelled T-A-O. That's OneYouFeed.net slash Tao. T-A-O. If you're looking for a little

more clarity, calm, or direction, I'd love to meet you there. You were just talking about sort of navigating a partnership between you and the chef who ran the restaurant. And you say in the book something about how to proceed in pursuit of a good partnership. And I just love this idea. And it's to decide that whoever cares more about the issue can have their way. Nothing solves every problem. But that's a really good way to think about something like who cares more and we get locked into debates and discussions about things that maybe we don't care very much about but the other person really does. Yeah we have all these different ways that we developed to navigate through moments of tension. I think it's just important right right? Like, here's the reality. If you work alongside a group of like-minded people

who are as passionate as you are and wanting to be the best, that is a very, very special thing. It does not happen all too often. And therefore, it's something to celebrate. But also, when it is the case, there will be tension. Because when passionate people agree on a destination, they are invariably going to disagree on the right way to get there.

You have to look at it and have it as something that you celebrate because the tension implies that everyone just cares. But the more intentional you are in navigating through it, the better. Because I think a lot of people react to moments of tension in one of two ways. They either back away from it because it's uncomfortable and they want nothing to do with it, or they just try to bulldoze their way through it and get the other person to agree with them. And each of those approaches is a waste. Because if you can thoughtfully navigate through a moment of tension with anyone in your life, A, it will of course bring you closer to them. But together, you can identify what is the best

next step to take. And so in not just that relationship and in so many of our relationships and work, we had hacks. One, if you and I disagreed on something, we couldn't get through it. Either of us could at any point just say, hey, time out, switch. Which meant I had to now start arguing for the thing you wanted, and you had to start arguing for the thing I wanted. It's a funny thing about human beings,

more often than not, we just want to be right. And the moment you start arguing for the thing you were just arguing against, now you want that thing to win. And it's actually a beautiful shortcut to empathy because you work more to more deeply understand the other person's perspective. Sometimes that wouldn't work though. And we had another one, call timeout and say third option, which meant if you want A and I want B and neither of us can convince the other, maybe it's because neither idea is good enough. And maybe it's time for us to start working together to identify a third approach that's

better than either of the first two. But sometimes when you can't get somewhere through a logical path of reasoning, then you just need to say, hey, who cares more? And maybe I should just let them have their way. And we used to say, I mean, the words, this is important to me, we're sacred. But there is the side note, which is if you choose to do that, you cannot play that card too often. Right. Throughout the book, you talk a lot about the systems that you put in place you talk a lot about the systems that you put in place to ensure both hospitality and excellence. And I was blown away by so many of these, like the water thing. Tell us about the water.

As somebody who really is thirsty all the time, I love this one. I mean, I just, I love the intellectual challenge of trying to make every little thing you do just a little bit better. My dad also used to say to me when I was a kid, keep your eyes peeled. And what he meant when he said that was, if your eyes are open wide enough, you can really find inspiration everywhere, oftentimes in the most unlikely of places. And so yeah, I was at a baseball game and I'm watching the catcher sign to the pitcher and watching the pitcher shake his hand or the catcher shakes his head and the catcher does

another one. I'm like, gosh, sign language, it is such a remarkably effective thing. And I was like, I wonder if we can bring sign language into the restaurant. And so I started just studying the experience to try to identify where it could exist and have the most impact. And there's two things, one economy of time and economy of movement are both really important things

to think about when you're trying to make any experience better economy of time, because invariably in a fine dining restaurant, there's all these different things you want to do for the guest and you want to squeeze as many little things as you can into the experience. But if the experience drags on too long, it's just ruined. Economy of movement because you're trying to create the serene and peaceful environment and yet in a fine dining restaurant, there's a lot of people that work there. And if you're not very intentional in how you're moving them through the room to do all the thousands of

little things that we do for people when they're in our dining rooms, it can feel very chaotic. And so in water service, I found an opportunity to improve at both through the use of sign language. And so anyone who's ever been to a restaurant knows that at the beginning of the meal, a server will come up to you and say, would you like still water or sparkling water or would you prefer tap water? However, the restaurant has trained them to say that. And then that person needs to go and either themselves get the water or in a slightly nicer restaurant, find their bus boy or their bus girl and communicate

to them what the water is that they're meant to give. It's just a lot of unnecessary movement and a lot of wasted time. And so we just had sign language that if I'm talking to you, the moment I get your order, I'm signing behind my back to the bus boy who's across the room watching me because they knew I was about to go create your table. And I don't know actually how to explain this by words right now, but like, if I move my fingers like this, kind of like dancing my fingers up and down, it meant sparkling water. If I went like this, it was ice water. And if I went like this, it was bottled still water. And it almost was like a magic trick where I could actually

still be talking to you. Right. And the person came over and started pouring the water that you had ordered from me. And there were these little moments. You know, Penn and Teller, Teller has a quote, sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone would reasonably expect. These little moments, these things, these systems that you can come up with that not only make things more perfect, but make things a little bit more magical. Not only do they feel good for the person

on the receiving end, but they are so fun to conceive. I was talking to a friend of mine who's actually a magician, and he was talking to a friend of mine who's actually a magician and he was talking to me about this. He was brought in by a movie producer to train an actor, a famous actor who was about to take a role in a movie where he needed to know magic. And so this guy was brought in to spend an entire day with this actor teaching him magic. And they were finally done and it was him and the producer and his assistant and the actor in the living room

of the producer's house. And they were done. And the producer's like, come on, one more, one more, give us your best trick. And he's like, well, I kind of, I kind of just did give you my best trick. He's like, no, come on, you gotta have something else. He's like, all right, do you have a backyard? And the guy's like, yeah, yeah. So they go into the

backyard and he says to the actor, he's like, all right, just look around the backyard and just point your hand in a direction and now say a card, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of Jack's club spades or club spades, diamonds hearts. They walk over there and then the guy takes out of his bag, a shovel and he gives it to the actor. He goes, all right, dig. And the guy digs and the card that he said is buried in the ground right there.

And it's this wild moment of magic. Like, oh my gosh, maybe magic is real. How the literal heck did this guy do it? But he's not there just to do magic tricks. He's there to teach him magic. So then he pulls up a video. The night before, he was relatively certain he'd get to the end of the day

and the producer would say, give us one more trick. The night before, he went there and in a clock format, so he could very easily in his head remember where he had buried every card, buried all 52 cards in the ground and remembered where each one was. He used some like markers in the yard. So no matter where the guy pointed and what card he said, the guy could massage it to get to exactly where he wanted to be. That is a moment that you'll never forget. And it wasn't hard. Yeah.

It just required trying harder. And I think that's just a beautiful thing. And I don't know, so many people do things that are so unbelievably noble and so impactful. And if you do one of those things and you're not working hard to imbue your approach to it with a bit of magic, I just think it's a waste. That is such a great story. It's fun. Yeah. And now I'm wondering how much magic can you learn in a day? Because I'd love to, I mean, if it's only going to take a day of investment to be able to do some magic,

I might sign up. I just assumed to be able to do any kind of reasonable magic was going to take a long time. No, by the way, by the way, there's there's a company called Theory 11. And if you go onto their website, you can learn magic and you can learn the kind of things that you can do at a party that just they're not only fun to do. But if you're the kind of person that loves bringing other people joy, I just think magic is one of the most beautiful ways to do it. All right. Theory 11, I'm sold. What would you say is the best example of hospitality that

you have received that really kind of blew your mind? Man, I mean, that's a hard one, especially since I put out the book. People just go out of their way to blow your mind. It's always the case. Restaurant tours love serving other restaurant tours. Because we know that those people will appreciate the energy you invested into making the experience special more than perhaps other people will. And now with the book, it's just really anyone who's passionate about hospitality. So I can't say the best, but I'll share one that happened recently, which I think underlines a pretty beautiful idea. I was in Palm Beach with my wife

and my then three-year-old daughter. And we were staying at one hotel, but my wife is a pastry chef. She has a chain of bakeries called Milk Bar. And so we both love good dessert. And there's a hotel in Palm Beach called The Breakers, which is celebrated for its key lime pie recipe, which hasn't changed in 80 years and it's a secret recipe. And so we went, we left the hotel we were staying at and with our daughter drove to that hotel

for dinner to have the key lime pie. Now, the Breaker's, if anyone's not familiar with it, it looks like a Disney castle a little bit from the outside. It's big, over the top, gorgeous. And as we pull up in the car, my daughter, Frankie says, daddy, is that Elsa's house? Referencing Elsa from the movie Frozen. And I in a moment of poor judgment said, yeah, babe, we're going to Elsa's house right now. Thinking that, okay, that's the end of this interaction. And it was for a moment. Then

we get out of the car and we walk into the hotel. She's like, well, let's go meet Elsa. Like I'm not going to Elsa's house without meeting Elsa. And I was like, uh-oh. And so we go to the restaurant and I cheat ahead with the maitre d' who was seating us. So my daughter and my wife were a few steps behind. I was like, dude, I need a little help here in 30 minutes. Can you just come back to the table and say to my daughter that you checked, but Elsa's actually away for a couple days and she's gonna miss Frankie, but she's so excited she's here

and you just wanna send her Elsa's regards. He's like, totally dude, I got you. He does come back 30 minutes later and he does say that, but in addition, they must've had this stuff at the gift shop or something. He had a little like plastic pearl necklace and a plastic pearl bracelet and a little tiara. And he went over and gave my daughter all these things

from Elsa to Frankie to just welcome her to her house and say how sorry she was to have missed her. I've been upgraded to some amazing hotel rooms and I've been left some amazing bottles of wine and I've been left some amazing bottles of wine and I've been given some very, very thoughtful gifts but that one will always sit close to the top. And the reason for that is sometimes the best way to love on someone is to love on the people they love.

And they made the most important person in my life feel unbelievably good, which, well, that's the fastest way to my heart. That's a wonderful story. And I love that, the line you just said, which is sometimes, you know, the best thing you can do is love on the people that someone loves. Because you're right, that is very profound. The example that came to mind when you just said that was thinking about nurses My mom has been in and out of hospitals a lot over the last decade and

There are some nurses that go Just a little bit beyond they're not unreasonable. They're not giving her princess necklaces. They're just being a little bit more kind. But it feels so important in those moments. In a hospital like that with the mother who's not doing well, there's so much that's out of your control. And you're scared, they're scared, everyone's scared. That kindness just comes shining through. And I just, as I think about that, them being kind to my mom is far better than anything they could do to me. In that moment, right? I'm sorry that you're going through that, that she is as well. Well, she's doing okay right now. She's been, well, I'm not going to

jinx it and say she's been hospital free for X amount of time. We'll just leave it at, she's doing all right for the moment. I'm going to see her in, she used to live in Columbus, but we moved her to Denver recently where my sister is and I'm going to see her on Friday. So amazing. I think the other version of, of this is there's been more than a few times where I will be somewhere with my wife or my dad or something and someone is trying so hard to impress me that the three or four of us will be standing around and that person is only looking at me and only talking to me and completely

ignoring the people that I really care about. And that is the opposite of the right way to impress me. Yeah. Right? And then I've been with other people who I think they might be trying to impress me, but they basically ignore me and focus only on my dad or my wife. And that is the best way to impress me.

Yeah. You know, like, I just think we're uncreative sometimes in how we pursue someone because we don't recognize that. Just think about the things they care about and pursue those things instead. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about managing people because I think that the lessons that go into managing people that work for you are lessons that can be applicable

in any area with people. And there was something that you said, and I think this is, you got to be in our relationships careful with this, but you say that praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment in the workplace. What do you mean by that? By the way, I think that's true in life as well. That's just, there's different rules that apply to it. I think that we're in a season where so many companies are so focused on

praise in ways that they haven't been before and gosh, that's a beautiful thing. I think for a long time, it was not nearly as significant a part of corporate culture as it needs to be when you set impossibly high expectations, when you have your team working incredibly hard to achieve them and they do something, well, you better be there to affirm them and to celebrate them because people crave affirmation and we deserve it when we work hard and it's just the right thing to do. And yet, I think in many cases, companies have become so focused on praise that they have lost focus on how powerful and beautiful criticism is. Because yes, if praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. I don't think there are many things you can do

that are more generous than being willing to step outside of your comfort zone for long enough to invest in someone else's growth. Now it's only an investment if it's approached thoughtfully. And I have rules of criticism and these are those that exist in the workplace. Criticize in private, never in public. Like any message, it's one you're hoping they're going to receive the moment you criticize them in public. It makes them feel shameful which puts up a wall and they're no longer listening. Criticize the behavior, not the person. We conflate a

behavior with someone's entire identity too often in how we criticize them. And if someone is doing something wrong, we talk to them as if they're a bad person. When they're not, they're just doing this one thing wrong. Just talk about that. To criticize consistently in that some people only criticize others when they're in the mood to or when they have the energy to and what that does is sends very unclear signals about What right looks like because I could be doing something today and no one talks to me about it I do the same thing tomorrow and now suddenly I'm on the wrong and that's confusing and to be unclear is to be unkind

And there's a bunch more of them. But the one that I think is very important. Oh, actually, I do like this one. Criticize without sarcasm. I think it's what a lot of insecure people do in moments where they're having to hold someone accountable is they're sarcastic about it. They think if they turn into a joke, it'll be easier to receive. But you should never joke about something as beautiful as investing in someone else's growth that makes both people look bad. But the last rule circles back to where this started, which is if there is someone who works for you, you better be praising them more than you're criticizing them. Because

if you're not, it means one of two things is true. You are just so focused on catching people doing things wrong that you're not focused enough on catching them doing things right. Or that person shouldn't work for you anymore and you're at fault for allowing them to still have their job. Now in life, the rules change. A lot of them are still true. But in life you also need to receive an invitation.

Like if someone works for me, it's part of my job to hold them accountable to a standard that I have set. Yeah. And they have chosen to work for me ideally because they want to grow within my organization or they think they can learn something from me and I'm there to usher their growth. That is not the case in life. In life, I am not there to hold other people accountable unless I've been invited to play a role in making them a better version of themselves. And I think that's one of the most beautiful parts of mentorship, intentionally picking the people who you would love to see invest in your growth.

All right, we're nearly done. Is there anything you would like to talk about that we haven't that's like exciting in your life or ideas that are new to you that you haven't put in a book that are, you know, lighting you up? I mean, something that I'm having a lot of fun with this one thing right now, a buddy of mine, his name is Aaron Ratier. And he lives here in Nashville and he's a Grammy award winning songwriter. And he's written music for everyone from Lady Gaga to a bunch of like really, I think he has like two number one hits in the radio right now. And I've known him for years and about a month or two ago, he invited me over to his house. He's like, hey, let's spend an hour and write a song together. And I went and wrote a song with him. I believe one of the things I talk about often is how there's a sacredness to

the table. It's one of the few remaining places where people will genuinely come together and put their phones away and lean across the table and connect. And we need more of these things that create conditions for connection. But for now, let's protect the table at all costs because it's where a lot of beautiful things

can come to exist. And we wrote this beautiful song called That Table and it ended up getting cut. I got my first cut as a songwriter. Within a few months of being in Nashville, it's coming out next month by this unbelievable band called The Lone Bellow. I bring it up for three reasons. One, I'm just really excited about it. It's fun for me.

Two, I really do believe in talking about the power of community and what can happen when you gather together awesome people around a table and choose to put the world on pause for a little bit. But three, what it actually did for me, I was not expecting. In farming, you'll hear often about crop rotation, which is certain crops deplete the soil of certain things. And so, if you're growing soybeans in a field for a measure of time, you need to plant something else in that field for a while in order to restore the nutrients required to grow the soybeans again. And I found that to be the case so powerfully with me when I invested even an hour

of my life in a creative pursuit that was different from the one that I normally do. Yeah. Right now, I spend my life writing about and talking about hospitality. And I do that with television, with the bear, and I do with my book and with my newsletter. But spending an hour doing something with no ambition to like win a Grammy or something actually made me feel more creative in pursuit of the things that I actually do for a living. And gosh, I just would inspire everyone to take a little time and invest it in a creative pursuit that they're not trying to turn into a career

because I think it will make you better at the thing that you do. Yeah, I'm an unabashed fan of that idea and that's got to be one of the most Nashville stories that's ever been told. You just show up in Nashville and the next thing you know you're writing a song. I mean, that is very Nashville. And interestingly, I just, I do these episodes that I give to supporters of the show called a teaching a song and a poem where I talk about, I pick a song I love, a poem I love and something I want to talk to the audience about. And the one I just did, I used a quote from the Jeff Tweedy, who's maybe you might know Wilco, their music features in the bear. 100%, yeah.

Anyway, he has a book called How to Write One Song. And I used to be a songwriter. Before I started this podcast, I was a songwriter, not a successful one, but I wrote songs and I loved it. And over the last 10 years or so, what I've done is I still write music. All the instrumental breaks in the show are all Chris, my editor, my friend and I's. So I still make music, but I haven't written a song song. And I just recently was like, all right, I'm going to write a song again. And so I pulled the Tweety book off the shelf about how to write one song. Your story further feeds that inspiration to do it. We had an episode recently with the poet and author Maggie Smith where we

talk a lot about creativity in that way and just how wonderful it is to try and make things and I love what you said with no reason. Yes. Like I'm not writing a song so it will do anything. Yeah. It's not going to do anything. Maybe Chris will hear it. Maybe my partner Ginny will hear it. But it's the act of it. But here's the thing, it will do something. It'll make your next podcast interview better. Yes. It'll make you better and by definition, it will more positively impact the things that you are trying to do and the impact you're leaving on the world. And I think that sometimes we try too hard to measure the ROI of every little thing we do without understanding that we need to measure the ROI in holistic terms.

Yeah. And you know what? The other thing that I'm really excited about is when I worked understanding that we need to measure the ROI in holistic terms. Yeah, in holistic terms. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? The other thing that I'm really excited about is when I worked on the book, as I'm sure you felt this actually, you develop a practice of writing, right? And you figure out what is the rhythm that works for you and you sit down and you do it and then the book was done and it felt almost sacrilegious to stop doing that because practices are really hard to start again once you stop doing them. Yes.

And so, the way I've done that is I now have a newsletter that I put out every two weeks. It's called Premiel. It's kind of like what I would be saying to my entire team on a nightly basis if I still had the restaurant and it's just something I love doing. And it's one of the things I'm most proud of right now. And so anyone listening, check it out. You can sign up at unreasonablehospitality.com. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

Writing the book taught me something about my ability to create that I didn't know before I did it. Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up, Will. I've really enjoyed talking with you. The book was outstanding. I think even people who are not in hospitality would get a lot out of reading it. I know I did and thank you so much for spending time with us. Thank you so much, man. If you're enjoying the podcast, check out our weekly bit of wisdom newsletter. Every Wednesday, we send a short email with practical insights, reflections, and takeaways, often featuring past guests.

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