This Week in Startups - Lessons in Unreasonable Hospitality with Will Guidara | E1966

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Oracle - Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI, is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Take a free test drive of OCI at https://www.oracle.com/twist. DevSquad - Most dev agencies only offer developers. Why? Because product management is hard. Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at http://www.devsquad.com/twist. LinkedIn Ads - To redeem a $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups * Todays show: Will Guidara joins Jason to discuss the book Unreasonable Hospitality and how it relates to all businesses including startups (3:44), Will’s annual “The Welcome Conference” in NY (14:32), how the show The Bear lifted Will’s ‘NY street hotdog’ story and made it their own - which then led to his involvement with future seasons (36:19), and more! * Timestamps: (0:00) Will Guidara of Unreasonable Hospitality joins Jason. (3:44) Important premises from the book Unreasonable Hospitality and how it relates to all businesses including startups. (6:26) Will explains how it felt to see parts from his book appear on the hit show The Bear. (8:13) Iconic examples of hospitality and how it can turn customers into advocates for your brand. (10:04) Oracle - Take a free test drive of OCI at https://www.oracle.com/twist. (11:08) Powerful examples of going above and beyond for your customer. (14:32) Will’s annual “The Welcome Conference” in NY. (20:57) DevSquad - Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at http://www.devsquad.com/twist (22:13) Jason shares an anecdote of how he helps others. (24:17) Will and Jason riff on interesting examples of unreasonable hospitality, including one that should exist for airplane passengers. (30:44) LinkedIn Ads - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups (32:12) A perspective shift that changes the value of call centers. (36:03) How the show The Bear lifted Will’s ‘NY street hotdog’ story and made it their own - leading to his involvement for future seasons. (40:21) Will feels that The Bear was able to craft and articulate his message spot on in one of their best episodes. (42:22) How to gain from the addictive personality traits in the restaurant business. (51:15) The “Chicken for Two” at the NoMad hotel. (53:31) Breaking down the state of tipping culture and how its removal from Eleven Madison Park was highly successful. * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Check out Unreasonable Hospitality: https://www.unreasonablehospitality.com/ Sign up for Will’s newsletter: https://www.unreasonablehospitality.com/newsletter Check out “The Welcome Conference”: https://www.thewelcomeconference.com/ Check out Will’s hospitality agency “Thank You”: https://www.thankyou.nyc/ * Follow Will: X: https://x.com/wguidara LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willguidara/ * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (10:04) Oracle - Take a free test drive of OCI at https://www.oracle.com/twist. (20:57) DevSquad - Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at http://www.devsquad.com/twist (30:44) LinkedIn Ads - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups * Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

I really truly believe that the only competitive advantage that exists over the long term comes through hospitality through consistently and generously investing in relationships. And I think when it comes to getting addicted to hospitality, that's not limited to restaurants alone. And that's honestly one of the biggest messages in the entire book is addictions or bad, except for this one, can we all please, please get addicted to making other people happy. This week in startups is brought to you by Oracle. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Take a free test drive of OCI at Oracle.com slash twist.

Dev Squad. Most dev agencies only offer developers. Why? Because product management is hard. Get an entire product team for the cost of one U.S. developer plus 10% off at DevSquod.com slash twist. And LinkedIn ads. To redeem a $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com

slash this week in startups. All right, everybody, many of you know that I grew up in the restaurant business. And at my favorite show last year was The Bear, my favorite episode was episode five, forks and which you may not know is my favorite restaurant when I was growing up in the 90s going to school in Manhattan was Gramercy Tavern part of the Union Square hospitality group, which had 11 Madison Park in it, I guess at some point. And the reason I loved it was because, hey, listen, I was broke and I used to sit at the bar at Gramer C Tavern when I would try to get a girl to go on a date with me and I would ask the bartender, hey, is there any way I could get the souffle

from the back? I know it's not on the front menu and they would always be. be unreasonable and see, let me see what I can do. And I was always taken by how great those restaurants were, whether it was Union Square, 11 Madison Park, or Grams Street, having that whole collection of restaurants. And then I read this book, Unreasonable Hospitality a couple of years ago. I made sure every single person in the company reads it, all the entrepreneurs that I have in my portfolio that we invest in every year. I tell them about the book. And it's on my short list of ways for you to change your thinking about how you run your business. It's one of the great entrepreneurial books ever written in my mind. And I'm super excited to have the author Will Gaderer with me today.

Welcome to the program, Will. Thank you, Jason. You heard my intro, yeah. I did hear the intro. And I love picturing young you at the bar at Crammercy eating a suplea with, did you take, are you married? I'm married now, but when I was single in the 90s in New York, listen, I was up and coming. I didn't have any money. And so what I would do was the opera and theater would give students free tickets or like $10 tickets. So since I was broke, I would get those tickets. And then if I had, you know, somebody I was pursuing, I'd say, hey, listen, I got to work late. But I got these tickets, you know, at school, you know, for this opera, for whatever play, you know, or like back in the day, Eric Begosian or all those monologists that we loved in the 80s and 90s. And then I'd say,

and then maybe after we can go to Gramercy Tavern for dessert because I couldn't spring for dinner. and I would go sit at the bar at Gramercy, and you would get 110% of the Gramercy Tavern experience at the bar, because you could see everybody. You get two cappuccinos, $3.50 each, get the souffle, you know, $14 back in the day. I could get out of there for $40, which the prefix. Wait, but my question is, did you bring your now wife to the bar at Gramercy back in the day? I met her in L.A., so I didn't.

But you have spent your life in hospitality, worked with Danny Meyer, then off on your own, 11 Madison Park, and you wrote this book. And the book, as its central premise, I think, and the reason it's,

it's taken off in the business community is, hey, how you make people feel, right, is as important as what you say to them. And this is a very hard thing, I think,

for technologists to understand, feelings, emotion, and creating in these moments. So I'm, I'm curious if you were to frame the book for people outside the restaurant industry,

and now you do a lot of business consulting and I understand. What is the central business takeaways that the audience, startups, can take from unreasonable hospitality? Listen, I think most businesses, whether they're actively doing it or subconsciously doing it, are trying to identify their competitive advantage. What is their mode? What is the thing that will prevent a new company from coming in and eating their lunch, right? And traditionally, the thinking there is, let's create the best product we can possibly create. Let's create the strongest, stickiest brand we can possibly create. Those are important to a point, but ultimately I actually don't care how good the product is or how strong the brand is because eventually, and time has proven this to be true.

It's just a matter of how long it takes. Someone is going to come around and they're going to build a better product. They're going to create a stronger brand. It may be that they are better capitalized. they're more creative, they have a new idea, they might just be better than you are. I really truly believe that the only competitive advantage that exists over the long term comes through hospitality through consistently and generously investing in relationships. And I think this is new thinking for a lot of businesses because, listen, anyone who has achieved any modicum of success has

done so by being pretty unreasonable in pursuit of the product they're selling, the service they're offering I'm simply making the case that we should no longer reserve our best efforts only for those things, but to also invest them in how we make people feel in the strength of connection they feel with you and your company. And I believe that when you do that, the impact is extraordinary and success comes with it. Yeah. You also align this with your teammates, right? How you make them feel. And I think that's another part of the 11 Madison Park story that I think maybe people either don't recognize as much. But that your commitment to the team members and making them feel great.

You talk about that a lot in the book. And then it's a little bit trippy. It must be trippy for you or surreal to have the show The Bear essentially be, you know, as I told people, I was like, I think they read, you know, Will's book. And they kind of architected the entire arc of the story. around your passion for being unreasonable. But maybe you can talk a little bit about the series and then what they show in terms of the characters in there and how that parallels how you try to make people on the team feel

and the commitment to each other. Because that part of the philosophy, I think maybe people aren't as excited about as some of the great stories of front of the house. But, you know, what happens before service is super important as well. Well, and I mean, the reality is, is not only can you not do one without doing the other, but actually you're kind of, most of the things you're doing accomplish both simultaneously, right?

Like, I quote the retired naval captain David Marquet in the book is saying that in most organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority. Yeah. If you're trying to establish a strong sense of connection and offer unreasonable hospitality to the people you're serving, you can't do that without empowering the people on your frontline because they're the only ones who know those people well enough to understand what is the thing that will make the hospitality unreasonable. And while I talk about plenty of things, whether it's an approach to feedback or the power of a 30-minute meeting on a daily basis or how you celebrate treat traditions that your team can look forward to, I talk about all those things.

But the greatest way to show unreasonable hospitality to the people that work with you is to actually give them agency. And so the two things go hand in hand. And we can dive more into that. Yeah, I think that's a good place to sort of talk about some of the iconic examples because, you know, this dream weaver concept and we'll get into that, just how you can think about the customer and then craft something personalized to them that makes them feel incredible, then turns them into what we say in net promoter score, you know, for people who are business nerds, basically makes them advocates for your brand. They're amplifying.

They're promoters of your brand. And you did this with a $2 dirty water hot dog. You did it with some bud light, you know, or some bottles of bud. It doesn't take a lot of money. It takes a lot of thoughtfulness. So let's go through some examples of those unreasonable moments and then how you empowered people to think about those on an operational level in the business. Because I remember that there was that one story about like, hey, how did you get here? How did you get to Gramacy Tavern? How did you get to New York? Back in the day, you could actually park in that area, in the Gramercy Tavern area. You could actually park and there were these things called meters. You could put money in them. You would run out and put money in people's meters, right?

Incredible, like a little thing that costs 50 cents or a buck 50. But wow. What a gesture. That's actually a really good one, but let me circle back to that one at a moment because it helps prove a point that I'm pretty passionate about. I mean, there were ultimately two types of these gestures. The first were one-offs, right? Where I think you really can create some profound magic, which comes from giving your team the permission and the resources to bring the ideas to life, encouraging them to actually listen to people they're serving, to not take themselves too seriously, and to in the moment, come up with. like these one size fits one ideas that they can deliver.

All right, AI might be the most important new technology, well, ever. We know that. And it's storming every industry. Literally billions of dollars are being invested. But the problem is AI needs a lot of processing power. It needs a lot of speed. So how do you compete without your cost spiraling out of control? Well, it's time to upgrade to the next generation of cloud with Oracle Cloud infrastructure or OCI.

OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and all your AI needs, and OCII has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offering one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and at less than half the cost than other clouds. So if you want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x, and Databricks, Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash twist. That's right, oracle.com slash twist. Oracle.com slash TWI.S.T. When I say resources, it's because we literally had someone a position on the floor every single night whose only job was to help them bring those ideas to light. And so, yeah, we did all

certain stuff. There was a couple that was dining with us after having gotten married at City Hall. And they had a big wedding planned. It got canceled because of family drama. This was now there wedding night. You could tell they were sad about that. The server on her own figured out what their wedding song would have been. And we slowed down their meal just enough that at the end of the night, my entire team was in the private dining room having a party, but it was actually their wedding reception. Oh, wow. And we brought the couple into the room, the moment they set foot into the room, we played their wedding song, Lovely Day by Bill Withers. We had given them the gift of their first dance. Oh, wow. Incredible. We, yeah, to your point, we turned our champagne cart into a

Budweiser cart for a guest's father. The guest had warned us in advance that his dad was going to be uncomfortable in such a fancy environment that his dad was more Budweiser and steak and potatoes. We did crazy, intricate stuff like a mariachi band in the kitchen during a kitchen door. We did very, very simple thing. Like placing quarters under napkins every time someone went to the restroom and we overheard them, you know, debating the epics of the Toots Ferry. all of these things, which accomplished, you know, a couple things simultaneously. We're in a season right now where people are no longer used to, you know, above the beyond for them. It's sad, but my gosh, it feels good when someone does. And going above and beyond your point, it has nothing to do with how much money you're spending on them. It's just people are desperate to feel seen. And when you show that you're listening to them. You care enough about them to listen.

and then to do something with what you heard, the emotional connection they feel to the thing you're doing becomes that much greater. Yeah, the concept is active listening, right? Like, this is what they talk about in psychology, they talk about in therapy. There's a lot of modalities,

but this actively listening to the other person, some people call it creating space. Maybe that's a little corny for people, but you're so right. And there's something about America, which I feel is broken. You tell me if I'm right here, where people feel like maybe

being of service, the humility of that, maybe they feel like they're above it. Like, oh, why should I be serving you? When in fact, the acts of service, acts of kindness, the person that benefits is yourself. I notice in all your interviews, you seem like a very happy person. You seem very content.

And I think when my theory here might be, you tell me if I'm wrong, that you've made people feel so good that you've got a collection of memories that when you wake up in the morning, you know some of the best. memories people have had in their lives were created by you and your team. Wow.

Yeah, that's unbelievable. By the way, I want to say two things about what you're saying, which I believe to be true, that there's a lot of people who look at working in service as a demeaning profession. Yeah. But anyone who has ever given a loved one a present around the holidays and has been so excited to see the look of profound appreciation on that person's when they open that present, they actually know how good it feels to serve others. They just haven't made the connection yet.

The other thing I'll share is I host a conference in New York City every year. It's called the Welcome Conference. It's become kind of like the largest annual symposium around hospitality. And years ago, there was a local restaurateur from a famous old school restaurant called La Grande wheat named Charles Masson. And the way he talked about it, I thought was beautiful. He talked about leverage in the world. And if you've ever tried to pull something from above, you don't have much leverage.

But if you ever get underneath that same thing and push, you have so much more. I think we have more leverage in the world if we find pleasure being held to serve. And I think if you own that, the impact you can have on others and the greater world around you is not sort of extraordinary. Yeah. And if you look at different cultures, I'm sure you've spent time in Tokyo and Japan. And, you know, anybody who's a restaurateur or who's into building products or services will, you know, confirm this experience when you go to Japan. I send entrepreneurs to Japan. I'm like, you need to recharge.

Go to Japan for 10 days. Here's a list of places to go. There's a place where they make French toast, central bakery or center bakery in Ginza, where they, that's all they do is bread, you know? and they've got four types of bread, five types of butter, and they are obsessed with it. And the craft and that pride, and if you go take the subway and you're confused on where to go, three people come out with white gloves on and walk you to your station. That's the unreasonableness that is baked into the culture. And it really, I think, changes your brain when you see an entire society doing it.

Have you spent time there? And I'm sure you must have amazing stories. I've never been to the French toast spot, though. So now you have a whole list for you. I have literally Jake J-Calves, Japan, a little like Google list. And when I go there every year or every other year, I'm just do my little searches, best French toast, best ice cream, best dessert, whatever. And I just start looking at the blogs and subreddits and eater and, you know, the guardian,

whatever. I try to find these little nuggets. And then all I do, I go alone and I'll just walk for five hours and hit five spots. And just hit the one dish that they're known for. and just to open my brain to the possibilities of what excellence looks like in their culture. And by the way, the thing that I think is so cool over there is they're not just relentlessly disciplined in pursuit of creating the best French toast in the world. But when you go there, you feel loves by them when they serve it to you. And that's a distinction.

There's plenty of places that are run out for their ex. But they manage to push both of those envelopes simultaneously in a way that have very few other cultures can. Yeah. But I want to circle back to the parking meter because what that is an illustration of is a greater point, which I think people and other businesses need to really understand, which is, okay, the hot dog or the first dance or those things, they're hard to scale, right? You need to pick up an idea. You need to come up with an idea. You need to turn it around. You can't force these things. Otherwise, let's still contrived. But those are proofs that you can sit. systemize hospitality, right? And I talk about this all the time, this notion of pattern recognition, just looking for recurring moments and then baking into your processes, how you want to amplify the graciousness with which you respond when those moments occur. If at a restaurant, again, back in the day, it's not the case anymore, people would park at meters and require quarters to fuel those meters with some level of frequency, even if only once every two night.

You can sit around and say, every single time that happens, we are going to do this. Yes. And the coolest thing about it is once you bake hospitality into your systems, it inspires your team to want to be more hospitable. Because I guarantee you, every time one of my hosts saw the look on someone's face when they say, we just, you'll meet her, don't worry, just relax, you're all taken care of. The look of appreciation that they received, that's a high, you. want more and more often. What I love about that example, too, is there are examples, you know, that take a lot to manifest, right?

Like you're saying, creativity, et cetera. And those are, like, surprise. But there's also, like, humans have fear. And there are things that are frustrating. And to feel protected and to have frustration and anxiety removed, that's also kind of pool in a very primordable way. Getting a ticket and having somebody to protect you from getting a ticket or from getting code is showing protection. It's showing like, I'm going to get between you and that parking,

you know, ticket. I'm going to get between you and getting towed. It's like protecting somebody. It's like it falls into another kind of zone of, uh, of just emotional, Freudian, like, primal. I mean, dude, I listen to this. I have a very recent example of this, not from business, but from life. I was just in Seattle, me and my wife and our two kids, age is one and three. And we say it at a friend's house. A very, very good friend. His name is Brian Canlis. They own a great restaurant in Seattle called Canlis Restaurant, I believe, one of the greatest, like, temples of hospitality in America. His wife, McKenzie is one of the most thoughtful people ever. We get there and we've sent back and forth enough pictures of our family over the last couple years. Obviously, when you travel with two young kids, you're worried about how they're going to feel and are they going to feel like out of place or they're going to keep everyone awake in the middle of the night, right? You're talking about fear. There are a few levels of fear, more profiling. found that your kid disturbing everyone else. But we get there and in the room that they were sleeping, she had printed on a home printer like 40 pictures of them and our family and put them all over the walls in their

and their room just so that they fell home there. That took her maybe 20 minutes. Yeah. And it worked. And it worked for them. But I mean, honestly, the real recipient of that gift was my wife and I, who were overwhelmed by the smallest, simplest, simplest gesture. of hospitality, but it's thoughtfulness and by definition, it's impact.

Yeah. It's incredible. These opportunities exist all around us in life and in work, and none of them are hard. They just require caring a little bit more and trying a little bit harder. Hey, startups, I want you to take a second and picture the ultimate all-star team for your business. Okay, you got that image? Maybe it's the Avengers or the X-Men.

Maybe it's the dream team in the NBA. Let's be real. Until you've raised your Series A, maybe your Series B, you're going to need help to build this A team. And that's why you need Dev Squad. They will get you a complete product team loaded with top tier talent straight from Latin America. Your specialized team is going to consist of two to six full stack developers, a technical product manager, along with specialists in product strategy, UI, UX, UX, design, DevOps, you know, all that good stuff, as well as quality assurance.

So you will be all synced up and you're going to be on the same time zone. and not only are you going to be on the same time zone, it's going to question 75% less than the equivalent team in the United States. With DevSquad, you're looking at seamless collaboration and the flexibility of monthly payments without any long-term commitments. So, are you ready to build your team of superheroes? We'll head right over to DevSquod.com slash twist. Go to DevSquod.com slash TWIST and stag an exclusive 10% off your engagement. That's devsquad.com slash twist and transform your star. with the all-star team you deserve.

Presence is something you talk about a lot. And I think this is very hard to do in the age of smartphones. It's one of the reasons I like long-form podcasts. I think maybe why they've taken off people being present with each other and, you know, discussing these topics deeply. And it's hard to be present when you have notifications coming in, etc. I'm so inspired by your book, you started thinking about this. And I started thinking about products and services I love, right?

and then how do how I could use those for unreasonable hospitality. One of them is I love a brand called Anchor. It sounds silly, but they make phone charging cables and battery packs that snap on the back of your phone. Yeah. I'm just obsessed with them. They just, their craftsmanship is amazing. It's like somebody cares about your charging experience and gadget stuff more than like, you know, like the person making the French toast. So I buy their battery packs, like five at a time.

I put them in all my jackets. I put him in my bag. Sitting at the poker table, I see my friend Shamath. His battery is going low. I take his phone because you want to talk about something scary. Your battery running out of juice is pretty terrifying. It's like the modern equivalent of like, yeah, losing your car keys or something, losing your wallet.

I just slide the battery pack onto it, hand them back their phone. Did the same thing with other friends of mine. It's brilliant. It's such a beautiful gesture. And then they're like, what did you? Oh, I'm like, yeah, and it's not only sure down to 18%. And then they're like, oh, I'm at 100% and they hand it back. I said, no, keep it.

Yeah. Cheers, though. I got you. It's like a $50, $100 device. But it has created such joy. The other one I found is. And then, by the way, every time they use it, they're going to think about you. Exactly.

I got their back. I got their back. And this is, every product or service can have this in it as well. And just being really, really thoughtful about it is all it takes. And in business now, you have all these people coming to you with their stories in different weird businesses. Are there weird businesses that you've gotten great, unreasonable hospitality anecdotes from that just blew people's mind? I mean, it's so obvious in restaurants or hotels how to do it. You just think about the person. You put something in their room. Give me the weird stuff

that's come in over the year since the book came out. I mean, well, let me start with one that, like such an obvious low-hanging fruit one that no one has done. I was just in Seattle, again, with my two kids, one of them being a one-year-old flying across the country with a one-year-old boy is a harrowing experience. Yes, it is. If you're listening to this right now and you've been the parent or another guest on a flight with a crying baby, you know, it's intense. And it happens all the time. And yet, for how long that's been happening, I've never seen an airline do anything for anyone. I've never seen them give earplugs to the people around of the crying baby.

I've never seen them do anything for the parent to help comfort crying baby. You can't even ask for milk on an airplane. They always say they don't have it. And that on its own, just that one simple example, you talk about pattern recognition, the idea that no airline has ever had the wherewithal to address into that is criminal to me. What an opportunity. What an opportunity. It's such an it's sitting right there.

It's a layup. It's like a hundred dollar bill on the floor and you don't pick it up. And you know what? This is part of the problem, I think, in a culture of unionization, and am I getting paid for this? and why would I go above and beyond, right? And you need leadership at the top who could say to the people who are the flight attendants on that flight, hey, here's the budget for the flight. You got an extra $250 a week.

You know, or $250 a month. Everybody has $250 a month. You know, Richard Branson could do something like this because he's got the leadership on the top on one of his airlines. Anybody can expense up to $250 a month to do something for our customers, keep it in your bag, whatever it is, you know, it might be a chocolate bar. It could be whatever. It could be some warm milk. And just have fun with it. You see something come up with a way to make it a better experience. Just that small gesture would make people love their job. For but $3,000 a year. And the

customers would love it and they become loyal. And I mean, so yes, everything you said, I like, you're preaching to the choir. Also, the person at the top means to create budgets for people to go above and beyond. Yes, and they also need to create a culture where that is not considered going above and beyond. It's just considered normal. Right? Because here's the thing. We decide what we care about. When you run a company, you decide what the company cares about. When you buy a car, it's well understood that the car is going to come with tires. Yeah. Right? So why can't an airline just decide that the flight comes with these other things? Right. I know that that sounds crazy. But when I buy a phone now, it doesn't come with the thing that you plug it

into the wall with anymore. Right? The charger. It's not inconceivable that a car company could sell you a car and then make you buy the tires separate. Yeah. So let's decide that that is a step too far. It comes with the tires. I'm simply making the case that if you run a company, table stage should include hospitality. Right. All right. So here's some good ones, because I do this on my Instagram. It's one of my favorite things I do. In your TikTok, it's one of the reasons I follow you is that you have people come in with weird stories and you just recount them. They'll share them with me constantly. And I think they're...

I gave you the anchor one. Now you have my battery pack one. Yeah, exactly. It's a really good one. Gosh, my favorite one. I think I've already shared it or I've recorded it to be shared. A guy reached out, I think he's like 21 years old. He's been going to the same dentist, his pediatric dentist since he was a kid.

And some people, I've heard about this. I never know this was a thing. Some people go to their pediatric dentist far into life. Okay. But apparently at 21, a 21, you're not allowed to. So he goes to the pediatric dentist, he has a dentist appointment. He's leaving. And on his way out, they're like, hey, just let you know, you can't come back anymore.

Like, this was your last visit. Whoa. Which room for improvement. And when they told him, he didn't really feel the sense of being able to say goodbye. No, that same dentist, his entire life, had a no cavity wall. So if you ever went to that dentist, and you had no cavities, they'd take a Polaroid picture of you, and they'd put it on the wall. And for the next month, they would stay on the wall. And for a little kid, it's like, it's like you really proud of it.

Yeah. Three weeks after his last dentist appointment there, he gets a big envelope in the mail, opens it up, and it's every one of the Polaroids from his entire life of him on the no cavity wall. Wow. For him to have for the rest of his life. Incredible. That's systemized. That's baked into the system. They must do that for everyone.

They must have a file cabinet somewhere where they just keep these things. Fantastic. Profoundly amazing. I loved that one so much. Another one that happened to me recently, again, systemized hospitality. I love JetBlue mint. I love their mint cabins. It's my favorite.

Mint is amazing, especially when you get the one between the two. There's the one with both armrest between the two. I mean, I'll take any mint. But if you bug it far enough advance, you claim that one as quickly as you can. And also, what a great idea to be like, hey, there's a bunch of. bunch of tapest style items here. Pick any three. Your call. You can, because, you know, everybody's on a different schedule. You might have had breakfast. You might have skipped breakfast. They'll just work with you on how they put the food. I mean, Jepley was doing an amazing job.

Generally, like, they actually got a real sommeur to pick the wines on the flight. So, like, you're actually getting a good glass of wine when you're flying. Anyway, I flew JetBlue mint to London. Anyone has ever done, the Red Eye to London from New York. It's a hard flight. It's not long enough. I must rather fly from L.A. just. have a little bit more time to sleep. So, I mean, what, the flight is six hours or something? Exactly the wrong amount of time. Best case, you're sleeping five hours, five and a half hours.

If you do it just, just right. Right. And you add on every airline, regardless what you're flying that route with, they ask you right before the takeoff, do you want us to wake you up for breakfast? That's like, no, I don't want to lose 20% of my night's sleep for a terrible breakfast. So I was saying, no. Anyway, last time I flew into London. I woke up with the last possible minute like I always do.

and on this little hook, NYC, was a little bag. Inside the bag was a bag was a bag of granola, a bottle of green juice, and a can of cold brew. Perfect. Perfect. Just perfect. Yeah.

And it was just someone tearing a little bit more and trying a little bit harder and not following the same rules they'd always followed, but asking themselves, can this be done better in a way that makes people feel a little bit more sealed? Navigating the B-to-B maze can feel

Really tough, huh? You're trying to hit the mark with all those top-tier executives. You want them to pay attention to your enterprise product. But where can you find all those big fish, the whales? The ones who call the shots make the buying decisions for corporations, for startups, and everybody in between. Well, here's where LinkedIn ads is going to solve that problem for you. And I've used this. It is one of my secret weapons.

LinkedIn means business. Business equals LinkedIn in people's minds. When you're on LinkedIn, you're in the business mindset. So you're going to really be thinking about business products and services. You're open to those opportunities. And LinkedIn recently passed a billion users. 180 million of those billion are senior executives, 18%. But hey, we all know about the 1%.

10 million C-suite executives. That's your CFO, CTO, CIO. These are the people who are always looking for a new product or service to make their organization run better. But they are on LinkedIn. That's why LinkedIn's ad platform delivers two to five times, greater return on investment compared to other social media platforms. So easy to understand why this is because this is where all the business people are

and they're in that business mindset. Super easy, call to action. Make your B2B marketing, everything it can be and get $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups, no spaces, no dashes. Terms and conditions apply because they're giving you a hundred. The interesting thing about that company, I remember when they launched in New York, They were out in Queens, and I had interviewed the founder of the company back when I was a journalist, and he was so proud that he had a discovery.

Everybody at that time was putting their call centers in India to save money, Manila, India, whatever. And, you know, that caused like a little bit of tension, people with Vic accents, people calling from America, maybe a little xenophobia. And he was like, wait a second, there are people in Utah who I could have work from home. And the work from home concept was new 25 years. years ago. That was weird to work from home. And the technology had just happened where you could actually route calls over voice over IP, internet, people had broadband. And he just said, listen, you can be at home. You just have to have a closed door and you can work whatever shifts you want. And we will send an alert to you when the call time gets too high and you can get an extra shift, maybe a micro shift,

two hours, four hours. And whoever takes it first gets to do that overflow. It was like a really brilliant technological solution. But what he said was, hey, let's let people take as much time as they want on the phone and you're not rush. So he changed the metric from how quickly you got people off the phone. And he just destroyed that. And he said, this is not a cost center anymore. This is now an investment in our brand. And he just changed everybody's framing of it. Because everybody looks at customer support. It's like some cost center to be reduced. And he was one of the first people, along with a friend of mine who passed away Tony Shea from Zappos. I don't know if you knew Tony. I never met him. Yeah. So it was a good friend of mine. We played poker together.

they're invested in companies together. And his whole thing of delivering happiness was like right in your zone of unreasonable. And I just thought that's so profound to take the call center and then look at it as an investment, a branding effort. I talk about Zappas all the time for that. I didn't know Jeff Lute also was was right there at the front of it. So I'm glad to know that now. Because I mean, listen, for those businesses and so many more like them, those call center agents are their dining rooms. And imagine if you went to a restaurant and, And they looked at servers as a cost center that they need to reduce. Imagine if you went to a restaurant and the manager was saying to the server,

hey, you're spending a little bit too much time talking to table 45. Let's dial it up. I mean, it is so counterintuitive. I think one of my favorite examples, I got to actually get to know that because I'm so inspired by Chewy and the stuff they're doing now. Do you know about some of the stuff they do? I don't know anything they're doing. I know Chewy is like a place you order pet toys.

Yeah, and pet food online. Yeah. So like the thing they're famous for, I don't know how famous, but since I put out this book, people tell me of these things when they experience them. When you have a dog, you buy food from chewy. You do it on the auto. Yeah. Yeah.

subscription. And when your dog passes away, the first thing you think to do is not to cancel your dog food subscription. And so for many people, they remember to cancel it after the next bag arrives, having just lost their pet, which is terrible. Yeah. And so it's not, you know, obviously, then the next step is to call Chewy, say, hey, this is what happened. Please cancel my subscription. And yes, can I return this bag of food to you? And their response is always the same pattern recognition, recurring moments, systemizing graciousness. We can't take it back. We will refund your account for that bag, though, and just give it away,

donate it if you'd like. And then, like that, flowers are delivered to. that house within a day or two. Wow. To say, sorry for your loss. And then, of course, that person's going to get another dog at some point. And guess where they're getting, get their dog food from? They would never consider using anybody ever again for that same thing. What do you think of like, God, do you hear you say something?

Well, no, no, no. I was just going to bring it back to one of your first question, which was the bear. And that episode, Forks the referencing. Yeah, that entire episode especially is taken right out of the book, right? with the hot dog story reinterpreted as the deep dish pizza story. Did they ask your permission or did you just get surprised by that? A little bit of both. They filmed it and then they showed it to me long before one of the air to make sure

I was okay with it. But I'm very close with those guys. And in fact, following that, I'm now a co-producer on the show for seasons three and four. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Which is very cool. Well, you want to talk about gracious if you were inspired by somebody to then include them, just including some.

somebody is such a powerful message. You know, if you start thinking, when I saw it, I was like, I wonder if Will's got a legal case here, right? And, well, there's something about fairness in the world. And we're faced with it right now. I don't know if you're watching what's happening with AI and then people stealing content and Open AI in a bit of a lawsuit, a major lawsuit right now that's an artist, people who write books like you and I, having our stuff ingested.

It feels unfair, right? And this is where technologists and a lot of business people get themselves caught up. They think I can technically do something. Therefore, well, then that's the test of if I should do it or not. It's almost like saying, is it legal for me to do this? Right. It's like a very low benchmark of ethical, moral behavior. And what I tell them is when you're thinking about fair use, which is a legal contract

for using other people's content, which the bear, I think, probably thought, well, this is kind of fair use. And there's no legal case here. Somebody in corporate probably told them, like, you need legal permission. to show his book cover, but you don't need legal permission to steal his hot dog story and reinterpret it, right? They probably had that discussion. But that doesn't change how you feel your core premise. How did you make you feel? I felt for you like, oh, man, I wonder if like he feels good about them cribbing his work. They went above and beyond. They said, not only are we going to make this

feel fair, we're going to make it more than fair by making him an EP or a producer or whatever your title is. Like, wow, what a, what a swing, right? They could have made you feel terrible. And they made you feel part of it. Dude, they even, they hired a dreamweaver onto the set of that show. So, you know, the episode right before, 4, where the seven fishes with all those guest stars that came on it. Yeah, yeah. They had a dreamweaver just there to care for all the guest stars, which was very cool. Oh, so to think about, you know what?

And I heard on that set that nobody wants to leave the set because they feel so much hospitality. They want to just hang. Because they have a dreamweaver on set. You know who did this, too? Did you read Mike Ovitz's autobiography? who is Mike Ovitz? Read the Mike Ovid's autobiography. He also tapped into unreasonable hospitality. He had a gifting suite at CAA, right? He's the co-founder of creative artist agency. He had a gifting suite. Whenever Tom Cruise or whoever was, you know, on their first set, first day on set,

there would be a gift basket. But these gift baskets were like next level and the level of thoughtfulness that you would go through. Not just ostentatiously, like, oh, there's a watch in here or something, but it would be like super thoughtful. And he just has story after story of how he got people. One time a director didn't want to do a film. It might have been missed outfire. And he was having dinner with the wife and she was just complaining about how their house, they had to have this like huge bill to redo the driveway.

They had some Hollywood, they had some Hollywood Hills house and the driveway was mangled or whatever. And she was having challenges with the driveway in the city. Ovidz just put his chief of staff and said, go find me the best architects. We do the driveway. Go there and redo her driveway. Build it to CAA. It's so funny. So I actually spent a bunch of time with someone who used to work with them.

And she, after the book came out, she goes, I used to do this. I was the person. So it might have been her. It might have been her who built the driveway. So then this famous director had no choice because the wife, Ovis was just like, hey, we're coming over to fix the driveway issue. Fix the driveway issue. My Lord.

Think about that level of like thoughtfulness. Now you're directing the fucking movie. Imagine your wife comes in and she's like, hey, guess what you're doing this summer? You're doing Missed Outfire. Like, this is what I'll say about the bear and then I'll leave it there. Yes. They helped get the message to the book out in a different way that I had gotten out to that point.

It was cool for me to see it. They were gracious and welcoming me in. My favorite part about it is I've worked very, very hard to articulate as best I can, the power of compelling someone on your team to deliver one of these gestures just ones and how they will get addicted to it when they do. Yes. No number of words as articulate as I may or may not be could ever convey that moment as beautifully as they did. when Richie delivers that deep dish pizza. And then sprints home in his car, listening to Taylor Swift and then he's pacing around his part for reading my book.

Like, it shows that lightful moment in a way that I just thought was magical and beautiful and just unbelievably drove out. Whoever wrote the screenplay or whoever, you know, is responsible for that project, my lord, did they play the long game? Because you have this character, who's Dylan Blow out of the back of the restaurant? He's like, could give a shit about fine dining.

And he's cynical, right? And then this person who worked at, ostensibly, I guess Noma, he was overseas. I think that's where the main character, they seem to have said he did his thing, which I've been to Noma twice. I mean, you want to talk about, whoa. I've never seen so many people who were on one dish.

I'm like, does it really take eight people? And they're like each doing something. That was over the top. But when he goes from being in, you know, the course of that one episode, so cynical about the forks. And what am I doing? doing your polishing forks. And then the guy just takes them outside. Listen, I know you don't take

this seriously, but I do. So, like, if you want to be here, like, maybe you could just be into it and see if that works for you. And everybody has that in them, I think, that moment to turn it around. And restaurant people are very unique. It's kind of my experience in restaurant business was a lot of misfits. A lot of people who didn't fit in a lot of other places. And then, you know, them kind of, and you tell me if this is correct, the people who are drawn to fine dining or who become addicted to it, what is that personality type?

You know, you, Anthony Bourdain, Danny Meyer, there's a certain archetype, or maybe there's multiple ones, but what is it that draws people into that? I grew up in the restaurant business in Brooklyn. So I think there's, there's, you throw the word addiction around Tynrush. They can be applied to different things, right?

They can be applied to, okay, bad stuff, which happens a lot. It happens a lot. It can be in the pursuit of excellent and that it can be in pursuit of hospitality. And I think there's plenty of people that are addicted to one and not the other and vice versa. It's not as often you become addicted to both. But the Thomas Keller addiction, like that level of addiction to precision, I think is based fundamentally around this idea that we all live in a world where there's so little we can control. but if you give yourself fully to perfecting small things on small plates and doing it over and over and over and over again,

there is like a pretty profound satisfaction in that that doesn't exist in many other places. I think when it comes to getting addicted to hospitality, that's not limited to restaurants alone. And that's honestly one of the biggest messages of the entire book is addictions are bad except for this one. Can we all please, please get addicted to me? making other people happy. You know, if you think about life, you know, Tony Shea passing, you know, early. And I gave a speech recently and I was like, you know, it's just reflecting on it. It's like, you know what we have at the end of the day?

You ever see the movie Blade Runner? It's my favorite film. There's the dove from the movie. I have a bad movie memories. You got to keep going. Well, there's just this incredible speech that one of the replicants gives at the end, right? And he's really sad because he has a six-year lifespan. He's on that roof.

And Harrison Ford's kind of, you know, met him at the end of. his lifespan there because they have a planned lifespan. Six years old, boom, they die. Because they don't want them to get emotions. He just says, all my memories are gone, like tears in the rain, you know, like a commodity. My tears are just like raindrops, right? And he's just so heartbroken. And that's what you have at the end of your life, I believe.

This is as close as I can get to any spiritual or religion about life at this point at 50 years old, which is there's a collection of memories we create, right? And you then make those with other people. Yeah. And that's what's so special. I think in what you captured in the book, what you capture in the bear is, hey, man, there's some special moment here that's happened. And those moments will be gone.

Where they go is anybody's guess. If this is a simulation or we're just organic beings and the memories just fade. But they're meaningful to us. They're super meaningful to us, right? And so you can kind of really craft the life around those moments, those magical moments, right? And when they do hit, man, they just hit so perfectly, like a perfect. note. Well, the quote that we've been using for decades in my industry is like the one 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. Now, yeah, the memories go away eventually, wherever they go, but the ones that last the longest revolve around how you make people feel. I've talked to so many people who dined at a Let's Madison Park during its heyday. Don't remember a single thing they ate. Nothing. But they remember these little things. that we did that made them feel seen. Another quote from the welcome covered, Thomas Cox, who at the time was the general manager at Claridge's Hotel in London, which is my, if not my favorite, one of my favorite hotels on the planet.

And his quote, I'm going to not get it verbatim, but it was to the effect of, we try just a little bit to give people the kind of experiences that when they write an autobiography would be featured in them. Wow. To that exact idea. Like, if we can create these profound enough moment, they will be that much a part of people's lives. They will be one of the things they reflect on at the end of that life.

Yeah. And if everyone held that up as the audacious version of the goal and even only got a third of the way to it, we'd be doing some pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, I had that experience at the Amman Hotel in Japan. Have you been to the Tokyo edition of Amman? No. Man, next level. It's like 40 rooms.

I had this like a really interesting moment. You're a little bit jet lag. So I like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go out for a run around the Imperial City. And then they got this incredible Japanese breakfast. What a combo, right? Go out at the crack at dawn, come back, have the Japanese breakfast. It was a little weird.

I'm like sweaty, whatever. I'm in the restaurant looking over the city. But I forget my AirPods or something. I go back to the room. You know, so I'm leaving at 6.30 or something. I go back to the room. And there's three cleaning people, like just getting into my room. And I'm like, so I go talk to the manager and I was like, hey, can I ask you a question?

I left. And then there were three people came to my room. Like, do you send three people to clean the rooms and how do you do that? It's like, oh, we have sensors on the doors. We know you've left. We want to have the smallest amount of time possible to clean that room. So we send a SWAT team in to just do it, boom. So that if you happen to go back, the time it takes for us to turn that room over, we can do it in 15 to 25 minutes, bang. And then they put little snacks in there for you. So you come back and there's like these snacks. Just unbelievable, the detail level. And then I'm like, you're folding my dirty laundry. That is a completely unnecessary step. Like, I left a T-shirt and they folded it perfectly. Like, amazing. Weird, but

amazing moments of like... The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. I mean, how can you leave one thing on a pile on the ground? You know, like, I think that's the beautiful thing about. One of the stories I shared recently was from the Kempton, a guy went and stayed there and came back to his room and ran out of toothpaste. The housekeeper just replaced it with three little tubes of toothpaste with a note that said just to make sure, you know, you're not put out for the rest of your staying. And this is not a very expensive hotel. Which, by the way, like, the reason I share that right after you say the thing about the amount is because I sometimes worry that people listen to people like us have this kind of conversation and immediately say, well, of course, those places can do it with their price points. Right. Everyone can do this stuff. Maybe you do it with different amounts of money or utilizing different budgets, but it doesn't take much outside of a bit of thoughtfulness. We're talking about like mental models. I'll leave this one alone, but the president's idea. Really what it means is just my favorite definition is caring so much about the person you're with that you stop caring about everything else you need to do. This conversation right here.

Right. Right now, my phone is on Do Not Disturb. Yeah. I don't know what is happening after we're done. I don't even know what time it is. I might be late the thing I'm going to next. I don't know what I've decided that for the sake of our time together, I don't care. And sometimes you need to care less about some things in order to care more about some people.

And I think that's what we all need to get a little bit better at. And this presence thing, you know, after what we saw with like COVID and people got weird, and then devices, like, it's becoming very acute in the world. Kids are now so distracted constantly, and you've got two young kids, and you'll see this as they get older. The ability to maintain eye contact, the ability to hear another person's sentence, take it in, and then reflect it back to them. Like, it's just getting lost on this, like, next generation because of the constant

distraction they're in. And then as Gen Xers, they said the same thing about us, like with, remember MTV? It's like moving too fast, and we're going to, like, it's going to scramble. our brains. I have a friend Doug Rushkoff, who is like a media, he was like a Marshall McLuhan author, and Doug would always talk about how we are like constantly trying to battle this ADHD that's being imposed upon us by the world. And it's up to us to then be present and to fight against it. Like, you've made the decision. Hey, it's an hour. Let's just be super present for this. It's super powerful. Hey, I'm curious in the restaurant business because I'm a bit of a restaurant nerd and a foodie

and did every job possible at my dad's bar in Brooklyn when I was growing up. My dad would get me the Zagat Guide for Christmas, just to give you an idea. I got to, like, I would, I carried the Zagat guy with me. I would never not have a Zagat guide.

I would never not go to a city. And I got to meet through a friend of mine, Barry Wine. I don't know if you know the restaurant store Barry Wine. Yeah, I know Barry Wine. Yeah, so he's a good friend of mine. And his son, by the way, curated the library at the Nomad Hotel.

Thatcher, yeah. He's amazing. Oh, you did the nomad. I forgot about that. That chicken for two there. The chicken for two. I took my mom out for her birthday, specifically there to get that chicken for two.

And is it like done three ways? Yeah, we did it a couple different ways with the foie gras on the black truffle into the skin. By the way, when I say people forget the food, that is with a couple exceptions. The chicken is one of those things you never forget. Holy cow, the chicken at the nomad hotel. All right. Which is gone now. I know.

It's so sad. Let me ask you a couple questions about. restaurants. I'm going to tell you some, I want to get your experience on this lightning round. Toast. This ability to order without a server, you take a picture of a QR code. I'm torn. With a great server, my lord, you know, I obviously want to work with a great server. I always ask him, hey, what do people come back for? What do people rave about on the menu? Give me the top two items. Some folks are just like, it's all good. Man, I can't take that server. I want a server with an opinion as a foodie, like, hey, I may only get a chance to come to the nomad once.

What, and I just, that's how I phrase it. What do people come back for? Where do they order, you know, again and again? Tell me what people really like, and man, when they give you that honest answer, like, chicken for two, do it? Boom. What do you think of these, like, toast and like the, just only having runners? Is it break your heart?

Or do you think, eh, it's got its virtues? I think it depends on the type of restaurant. And in fact, I think there's certain types of restaurants that I wish would do more of it. The reality is it's a hard time to be in the restaurant business. My timing and selling the company was great. Okay, at the level that I was operating at, no, get the QR codes out of the way. But there's plenty of restaurants that are struggling to make margin. They're not hiring the best people because they can't afford to pay them enough.

And if I were running those ones, like more of like the fast or like the casual dining restaurants, I would eagerly employ that technology, reduce the number of people on the floor by 50%, pay the remaining people 50% more, such that you had half as many people, but the ones you have are great. That makes total sense. Consolidate the salaries there. What do you think about this tipping culture? Everything's a tip, turn the thing around. Hey, I got one more thing for you. And just tipping in general, I know Danny tried to, and I don't know what your take on it was, like sort of include the service in there and they fought. him, he wanted people to make a living wage. How should servers back a house get paid? What do you think about like tipping culture here in the United States? I mean, at a lot of medicine, I got rid of tipping. And it was actually the most successful removal of tipping. And then after I sold the restaurant, they brought it back because the restaurant just wasn't doing as well anymore. And the reality is, you need to manage a business very well to get rid of tipping. If you're not,

if you don't really have your eye on the ball, it can really bite you. If you actually understand what you're doing, it can be pretty remarkable. But two things need to be true. One, you need to be in high enough demand where people don't mind the prices going up to account for the fact that there are no tips. Because public perception, still people struggle with the idea. They're comparing your chicken to the other restaurant chicken, the price without taking into account that you have to tip at the other one. In Madison, we were almost irrelevant assert. And it needs to be consistently busy because if you're covering the tipping of the team and you have a bad night, you just get screwed. Yeah.

It was amazing when we made that transition. And it was much, much better for the restaurant and the culture. And I believe the guests as well. But I don't know. So you just put the service charge in, boom, you're done. No. No, we just attracted it into the preface. X price.

The price of the meal included the people that worked there. Amazing. And people would sometimes insist on giving us cash. And we, it was like our favorite game. I love gamifying everything in work. And one of our favorite games was always figuring out how to take the money back onto them before they left without them realizing. So like, we were used to take the money.

Just put it in their side pocket. We'd get it in their side pocket or their purse or their jacket or something. All right. What about this? I'll end on this one. They're a little controversial. There are people who are getting reservations and then selling them in the after markets. There's an app that lets you bid to, you know, buy premium tables. Obviously, you know, there's, I think Alina, I'm pronouncing it correctly in Chicago. Alina. Alina. Alina, rather, yes. Alinia. You know, they sold tickets, right? Essentially, that seemed like a really good idea. But there's these other ones that are kind of auctioning. off or, you know, selling these things on the slide. What do you think of this, like, buying your way into the bottle service of vacation, you know, scalping of fine dining or scalping of, like, carbon reservations? Is that that's uncouth or just? I mean, I don't know. As a restaurateur, it used to happen not as consistently or in as structured a way as it's happening

now, but it used to happen in a little medicine, and I hate it. I hated it because I price the experience based to offer maximum value. I wanted the price to be as high as it possibly could be while still offering amazing value. In the moment you paid someone else 200 bucks just before you got to the door, I no longer feel like I'm able to give you the right amount of value. Now, at the same time, whatever, someone else is making money, you decided you want to pay for it. And so, like, I don't really get in the way of it.

I don't think it's right. And at the same time, if I were still in restaurants, there would be plenty of other things. I'd be spending my time and energy focusing on. Okay, rate my strategy for getting reservations. Because, you know, I grew up in the restaurant business. Yes. I have my own playbook of how to get a reservation when it's impossible.

Just tipping-wise, this is how I got into every restaurant. Only one time, Asia to Cuba did this not work. But for hundreds of times this worked in New York City. Back in the day, I put a 20 or a 50, folded twice, walk right up, barrel past everybody, go right to the side of the reception desk, put my hand down, slide over a little bit to show the 50, make eye contact and say, I'm really sorry. I had to make a reservation tonight.

There's anything that comes up with cancellation. I was going to sit at the bar. Just two people, I'm only in town for a night, or this girl I'm trying to impress her. Does anything you can do? I'd really appreciate it. My name's Jason. I'm just a big fan of the restaurant.

Am I too agro? Is that charming? Does that upset you? because I know that it worked for whoever was at the front desk. I mean, listen, I... And it worked at Gramercy Tavern, too, by the way. We'll point out it did work. No, like, I...

Am I the bad guy? Not the bad guy. I can't speak in support of it. Okay. Just professionally because it would undermine some of the things I've tried to do in the past. I have pommed two doormen in my life once at Tantanas at L.A. Okay. And once to the 18-year-old kid that worked at the Red Lobster in Palm Springs on Valentine's Day.

Did it work? It worked both times. Okay. So palming does work. The real advice I would give. Yes. If there is a restaurant that you don't just want to get into ones. I mean, listen, yeah, if you want to get into a restaurant once, that strategy, that work.

Yes. Not always, but often. If there's a restaurant that you want to be able to get into frequently, go to the bar a few times and just talk to people, get to know them. Exactly. The thing that we, like, and this is true of every. that ever worked for me once we got to a certain level. People would rather see someone they like than a stranger for 50 bucks, that sure. Right. And have you just become a part of the community? If you invest in that relationship, that investment will yield dividend. Yeah, I did this

at there's a great place up in Lake Tahoe where I got my ski house and they're booked out like crazy. It's just the one good place there. It was the people who did flour and water in San Francisco, like a really great pizza and pasta joint and make it all local. I follow them on Instagram. I comment on when they're making stuff. And then I did. I met Juliana, the hostess, sat at the bar, talked to them a little bit, did exactly what you're saying.

And then I just, what I do is I just write notes in my iPhone, Juliana, Brazil, parents were in town. When I went the next time, I always look at up, call Juliana to see if I can get a reservation. And then I just said, oh, hey, your parents came from Brazil. How was it? Because her parents had come in. And they'd never been to America.

I said, what did they think of all this? snow and everything. Great conversation. Now, like you're saying, I'm part of the family. I'm part of the community. I got the best shot at getting a table. I don't expect it, but, and then giving absurd tips, I think also works too. Yeah, that never hurts. Well, I like to write a little note. I like to write a little note on the thing. So I'll just write. Thanks so much for taking care of my girls. They love the pizza.

And, you know, just write that and then I write the tip. So just like that little note. And also like, even just talking to you for this long, there's some people that do all those things in like only a quid pro quo way. You strike me as the kind of person that's doing those things because you care about people and then the natural end result is you also get the stuff that you want to get. Honestly, this conversation right here is kind of a perfect distillation of everything that's on the book. If you care about people, if you put in the time to make them feel special and seeing if you celebrate them and hold them up and invest in them and empower them.

You will go further in life. Full stop. This is what I tell everybody. For background, I invest in 100 startups a year, venture capitalists essentially, but earliest stage. And I tell my team, we are. That's why I make everybody on my team, a 21-person team, read your book. And everybody's really excited that you came on today.

So thank you for that. And I just said, listen, we have this customer. It's called the founder of a startup. And we need to be, you know, unreasonably hospitable to that person. We are a service organization. Now, in venture capital, when you frame yourself as a service organization, it's just crazy because people think, well, we have all the power, we have the money. We get to lord it over and write the check to the founder and then they get to pursue their

dream. So they forget who the customer is. They start to think, like, well, yeah, you know, like, I am the, I'm the star of the show. No, you're just a check. Yeah. We're just a wire into their account to pursue their dreams. Let's really support these founders. And I think your book just does it so well.

I think cross-disciplinary is just so great when you're trying to understand the world. And I think you've done that by, you know, doing this. I can't wait to come to this conference. When is it? It's on September 16. In fact, tomorrow we're announcing the date. It will be on September 16. Wow.

At David Geffenhall at Lincoln Center. Oh, I'm coming. I'm definitely coming. I cannot wait for this because this to me is like what it's all about. You're amazing. Everybody who's listening, read this book. It'll change your brain. Watch the show The Bear.

And yeah, follow Will on his socials. You'll see him do it. I'll let you get back to your summer. This has been amazing. I'm going to call you when you're in New York. I assume still. You're based in New York. Yeah, I'm in New York.

We're back and forth. We chain here in the Hudson Valley. Hey, the one thing I want to plug that. Oh, please plug. Yes. Any plugs. Anyone who likes the book. Yeah.

The thing that I'm like doing, I created a practice of writing when I was writing the book. And then you're done with the book and it's dumb to kill a practice. And so now I have a newsletter that I send out every two week. It's called Premial. And you can sign up on unreasonable hospitality.com. But it's become, it's my favorite thing. It's basically me walking through the world, kind of inspired and bringing things back home. And it would be the thing that I would be talking about with my team, premium that I send out on a biweekly basis.

What's something recently that blew you away? You got your eyes wide open for this stuff. Well, I mean, it's just wild. In fact, I just finished writing one today, which is the New York like Metro Trains. So Metro North, M. Trane. This has existed for a really long time, but I only recently read about it. And an article that came out in 2009 of New York Times.

They have dialed into their system a minute of graced. And so when a train says it's leaving at 1145, It always leaves at 1146 because they want to give people that last minute to slide into the train right before the doors. And have you ever slid into those doors right before the close? You feel like king of the world. Absolutely. And the idea that as many times that's just randomly happened, that they actually did it with intention. Yeah.

And ever since I learned that, I've been looking to find opportunities for minutes of grace of my own when I'm working with other companies. The newsletter is lots of little nuggets. It's snackable. It's easy, but it's just little things that'll make you think. Writing, I always tell people's clarity of thought. When you write something, you get to clarify your position, right? And so it just, or you don't want to hit the send button, right? And see that clarity of thought, that moment of a minute of grace is a great operating principle

to take with you for the next, for the rest of the year. Where can you add just a little grace? A minute of grace. And man, there's so many. opportunities for that. And you're right, there's nothing like not wasting time at an airport gate or on a train thing. When you can thread the needle perfectly, that is an optimization that New Yorkers live for. Also, getting a seat, getting the foretop in the food car, the dining car. That's the big win. If you can get the foretop in the dining car, don't give it up,

man, you can take a laptop out. It's incredible. I love that. I don't know if you've taken Emirates to the middle. Have you spent time in the Middle East yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have. And I've the exact experience you're about to talk about. The Emirates flight has like a little bar on the back. And I get on that flight, I go take that foretop. I sit there and I love people. And like, people listen to my pod. So sometimes people recognize me. And they're like, oh, I listen to your pot. I'm like, want to join me? And I just love to sit there and meet people. Because If you're in that business class, like, what are you doing going to Dubai or Riyadh or wherever you're going? It's a serious wasted opportunity.

If you don't record a podcast the next time you're on that flight. I should record a pod on that flight. You should bring a microphone and a couple pairs of headphones and just just who's on the flight. The podcast should be whoever you talk about from point A to point B. Absolutely. Well, I'm going to see you in September. I'm coming to the, it's the welcome conference, right? You said welcome conference.

Can't wait to see that. And we'll see you all next time on this week and start. by the buck.