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.
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 is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, which chronicles the lessons in service and leadership he learned over the course of his career in restaurants. He is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which, under his leadership, was named the Best Restaurant in the World. Will is the host of The Welcome Conference, serves as a Co-Producer on FX’s The Bear, and is a recipient of the Wall Street Journal Innovator Award.
Will Guidara: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn
If you enjoyed this conversation with Will Guidara, check out these other episodes:
How to Connect More Deeply With the World with James Crews
How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection with Charles Duhigg
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Episode Transcript:
Eric Zimmer 00:01:06 What do a fine dining maitre d. A magician burying cards in a backyard and a toddler looking for Elsa have in common.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:15 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 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. I’m Erik Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Will, welcome to the show.
Will Guidara 00:02:13 Thank you so much. I’m really happy to be here.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:16 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:28 And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and 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 and they 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.
Will Guidara 00:03:02 Gosh, it’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, and not that that is focused on greed and hatred or whatever other words you used in the latter.
Will Guidara 00:03:29 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, some of them 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 considerately as possible.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:58 Oh, that’s beautifully said. There’s so many things in there that 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 pick that up in your book too. You talk about these tensions that that you had. Another one was hospitality and excellence. Yeah. 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.
Will Guidara 00:05:42 Yeah. So I am most known or I was most known for the majority of my my career, for my success in the restaurant industry.
Will Guidara 00:05:53 I came up in restaurants. My dad was a lifelong restaurateur. My dad, who is 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. He 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 ara Transcript
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 it had three things on it.
Will Guidara 00:06:49 One was to go to Cornell University and study hospitality. And 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 then 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 11 Madison Park, a restaurant that I bought from him. and over the ten 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 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 walk the path you’ve just been down.
Will Guidara 00:07:59 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 at a really exciting season in life.
Eric Zimmer 00:08:34 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 or 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.
Will Guidara 00:09:17 Yeah. The US was a manufacturing economy. It is decidedly a service economy now. Yeah, 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 Now, 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:12 And wow, that’s a great line.
Will Guidara 00:10:15 And in a season where, gosh, there is so much division and people seem to be drifting further and further away from one another.
Will Guidara 00:10:23 I think the world would be a better place if we were all just a little bit more unreasonable in pursuit of those relationships.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:30 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 it’s about a state of being. But I think it’s a beautiful way of reframing serving others. Right. Because we could look at serving others as not good demeaning, which I didn’t have to do it, you know, but we all serve others. I mean, I 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.
Will Guidara 00:11:09 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.
Will Guidara 00:11:18 But years ago, perhaps in our first or second year, there was a guy who spoke. His name was Charles Mason. 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 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.
Will Guidara 00:12:22 And he 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 nobility in service in answering that call to me to 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:04 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. Said all the time I get it like let go of the things in your life that are, that are problematic.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:25 But just the framing of it for me has always bothered me because I’ve always thought about like, whoa, hang on, shouldn’t I be putting at least as much focus on, like, what I’m serving? Yeah, well, I’m serving.
Will Guidara 00:13:36 You know, I talk often about self-care and its role in hospitality. I use the 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 going to 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 the self-care industries with language like that. 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.
Will Guidara 00:14:36 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:51 Yep. I just finished my first book, and I just turned it into the publisher a couple of 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 you when I examine it more closely, it troubles me a little bit.
Will Guidara 00:15:31 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 2/5 of who I am, then.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:45 They probably would be a good 2/5.
Will Guidara 00:15:49 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. 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:16:14 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 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.
Will Guidara 00:16:58 Yeah, that was probably a mix of Danny Meyer, but also Randi Gerardi, who is my first boss when I worked for Danny’s company, Randi went on to be the CEO of Shake Shack and is, in my view, one of the great leaders out there, full stop. And 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, 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 laissez faire about everything. And and it’s sad. And I think this is actually changing a bit generationally.
Will Guidara 00:18:08 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. And yes, we should inspire people through our actions. But words also do a lot of the heavy lifting and restaurants. We have this meeting we call premium. 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:17 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 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. And this gets back to your dad and intention. This is the person I want to be, regardless of what I met with.
Will Guidara 00:20:02 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, and 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.
Will Guidara 00:20:29 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, and 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 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. Right. But the idea is, my dad always says, ask yourself what right looks like, and then just do that.
Will Guidara 00:21:44 I’d always rather on the side of assuming the best than someone, and be proven wrong, than to assume the worst in them and be proven wrong.
Eric Zimmer 00:21:52 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 and I hate to I to bother you, but, you know, your children are kind of running wild. Maybe you could try and, you know, bring them 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:39 Neither do I. We just left the hospital and their mother died. Oh, 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. Yeah, but but that’s an example of the of the charitable assumption. Yeah. 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.
Will Guidara 00:23:25 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.
Will Guidara 00:23:43 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 the stuff though? and yeah, of course they did. But gosh, if you limit what you’re willing to give to the world Old 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 risk of being taken advantage of.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:25 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:43 Talk to me about what that means.
Will Guidara 00:24:45 It really became my call to arms early in the evolution of the restaurant, as I endeavored to 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 gonna 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.
Will Guidara 00:25:53 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 the opportunity is 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. And 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:58 Give us some examples of some of the things that you guys did at the restaurant that came out of this unreasonable hospitality mindset.
Will Guidara 00:27:09 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.
Will Guidara 00:27:33 The position is called the Dreamweaver and named after the iconic song by Gary Wright, which has always been one I’ve loved. And this was a position out of 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 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 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 a shack burger, and then as their pre entry before whatever their 30 day dry aged ribeye, we serve them a little slice of a shack burger.
Eric Zimmer 00:28:47 You tell a great story about how a guest mentioned mention 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 him a hot dog. But my favorite part of that story is you bring it into the kitchen and trying to get this Michelin award chef to plate up a hot dog in an elegant way.
Will Guidara 00:29:12 Well, by the way, like you talk about how hospitality and excellence are not friends. And in the beginning of our conversation, you referenced the inherent tension between them. And 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.
Will Guidara 00:29:50 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 on to 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.
Will Guidara 00:30:59 Well, that is much more satisfying and definitively much more noble than creating a plate of food that looks pretty.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:18 One of the books that I’ve spent the most time with in my entire life is the Dao de 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 Dow, or just want some ancient wisdom that actually works in real life, I’ve got something special. I teamed up with Rebind to create an interactive edition of the Dow. 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:17 It’s like having a conversation not just with the Dow, but with me too. You can grab it right now at oneyoufeed.net/tao. Now, 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.
Will Guidara 00:33:13 Yeah, we had all these different ways that we developed to navigate through moments of tension. I think it’s just important. 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.
Will Guidara 00:33:32 That is a very, very special thing. It does not happen all too often and 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, it will of course bring you closer to them. But together you can identify what is the best next step to take.
Will Guidara 00:34:34 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 in another one we 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.
Will Guidara 00:35:32 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 we’re sacred. But there is the side note, which is if you choose to do that, you cannot play that card too often.
Eric Zimmer 00:35:57 Right. Throughout the book, 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.
Will Guidara 00:36:20 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? What he meant when he said that was.
Will Guidara 00:36:36 If your eyes are open wide enough, you can really find inspiration everywhere, oftentimes in the most unlikely of places. And so yeah. Is that a baseball game? And I’m watching the, the catcher, sign to the pitcher and watching the pitcher shake his hand. The catcher shakes his head and the 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, peaceful environment.
Will Guidara 00:37:43 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 it 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 Stillwater 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 busboy 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 busboy who’s across the room watching me because they knew I was about to go create your table.
Will Guidara 00:38:47 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 and then sparkling water, if I went like this, it was ice water. And if I went like this, it was bottled Stillwater. 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 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 me about this.
Will Guidara 00:39:47 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. And 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 put your hand in a direction. And now say a card. 234567, eight of jacks, clubs, spades or clubs? Spades, diamonds, hearts.
Will Guidara 00:40:44 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 mine, like markers in the yard. So no matter what, where the guy pointed and what card, he said, the guy could massage it to get to exactly where he wanted to be.
Will Guidara 00:41:41 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:07 That is such a great story.
Will Guidara 00:42:09 It’s fun.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:09 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.
Speaker 4 00:42:17 Be able to build you to be able to do some magic.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:20 I might sign up. I just assumed to be able to do any kind of reasonable magic was going to take a long time.
Will Guidara 00:42:26 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.
Speaker 4 00:42:45 All right, theory 11.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:46 I’m sold. What would you say is the best example of hospitality that you have received? That really kind of blew your mind?
Will Guidara 00:42:55 Man, I mean, that’s a hard one, especially since I put out the book.
Eric Zimmer 00:43:00 People just go out of their way to blow your mind.
Will Guidara 00:43:03 It’s always the case. Restaurateurs love serving other restaurateurs. because they know. 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.
Will Guidara 00:43:57 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 breakers, 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 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. But 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, oh. And so we go to the restaurant and I cheat ahead with the maitre d who was seating us.
Will Guidara 00:44:53 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 is actually away for a couple days, and she’s going to miss Frankie, but she’s so excited she’s here, and you just want to 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, he. They must have 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 given some very, very thoughtful gifts.
Will Guidara 00:45:49 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:09 That’s a wonderful story, and I love that. What? 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 it feels so important in those moments in a hospital like that with a the mother who’s not doing well, there’s so much that’s out of your control and you’re scared.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:00 They’re scared, everyone’s scared. And that that kindness just comes shining through. And I just, I as I think about that, them being kind to my mom is far better than anything they could do to me. For me, in that, in that moment. Right.
Will Guidara 00:47:13 I’m sorry that you’re going through that or that she is as well.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:16 Well, she’s doing okay right now. She’s 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.
Will Guidara 00:47:34 So amazing. Now, I think the other version of of this is there’s been more than a few times where I will be someone, somewhere with my wife or my dad or something, and someone is trying so hard to impress me that the 3 or 4 of us will be standing around, and that person is only looking at me and only talking to me, and it completely ignoring the people that I really care about.
Will Guidara 00:48:00 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 we’re uncreative sometimes. And how we pursue someone because we don’t recognize that. Just think about the things they care about and pursue those things instead.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:33 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?
Will Guidara 00:49:00 By the way, I think that’s true in life as well. It’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 and 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 on how powerful and beautiful criticism is. Because yes, if praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. And 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.
Will Guidara 00:50:16 And I have rules of criticism, and these are those that exist in the workplace and 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. Yeah. to criticize Says 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 in the wrong. And that’s confusing. And to be unclear is to be unkind.
Will Guidara 00:51:22 And there’s a bunch more of them. And. 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 they’re sarcastic about it, about it. They think if they turn it 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 are 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 and a lot of them are still true.
Will Guidara 00:52:26 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 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:09 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?
Will Guidara 00:53:20 I mean, something that I, I’m having a lot of fun with this one thing right now, a buddy of mine.
Will Guidara 00:53:26 His name is Aaron Routier, 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 on the radio right now, and I’ve known him for years. And about a month or two ago he invited me over to his 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.
Will Guidara 00:54:26 I got my first cut as a songwriter within a few months of being in Nashville, and 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 too. I really do believe in talking about the power of community and what can happen when you gather together awesome people around the table and 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 in farming, you know, 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.
Will Guidara 00:55:31 Yeah, right now I spend my life writing about and talking about hospitality, and I do that with, with television, with the bear, and I do it 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:07 Yeah, I’m an unabashed fan of 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 is very Nashville. And interestingly, I just I do these episodes that I give to to supporters of the show called a teaching a song and a poem where I, where I talk about I pick a song I love, a poem I love, and something I want to talk to the audience about.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:36 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 bare 100%.
Will Guidara 00:56:47 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:47 Anyway, he has a book called How to Write One Song. And I used to be a songwriter about before I started this podcast. I was a I was a songwriter, not a not a not a successful one, but I wrote songs and I loved it. And over the last ten years or so, what I’ve done is I still make I still write music. All the all the instrumental breaks in the show are all Chris, my, my editor and my friend and I. 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 tweedy book off the shelf about how to write one song. Yeah. And so your story further feeds that sort of inspiration to do it. And 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:57:43 And I love what you said with no reason. Yes, like I’m not writing a song so it will do anything. 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.
Will Guidara 00:57:58 But here’s the thing. It will do something. It’ll make your next podcast interview better. Yes, yes, it’ll make you better. And by definition, it will more positively impact the things that you are trying to do in the impact you’re leaving in 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, in.
Eric Zimmer 00:58:23 Holistic terms.
Will Guidara 00:58:24 And 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? Yeah. And you, you figure out what is the rhythm that works for you, and you sit down and you do it.
Will Guidara 00:58:41 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.
Eric Zimmer 00:58:52 Yes.
Will Guidara 00:58:53 And so the way I’ve done that is I now have a newsletter that I put out every two weeks. It’s called premium. 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 Unreasonable Hospitality. Com.
Eric Zimmer 00:59:13 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. Yeah. 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 were 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.
Will Guidara 00:59:37 Thank you so much, man.
Chris Forbes 00:59:39 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. It’s a great way to stay inspired and support the show. Sign up at onefeed.net/newsletter.
Eric Zimmer 00:59:59 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.
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