What We Learn About Love Before We’re 10 (How We're Raised with Will Guidara)

0:00Will Guidara:Caregiving is one of the biggest sources of stress for parents today. The data shows that most parents spend nearly every waking hour focused on someone else. And if you feel depleted, that's not failure. That's the reality of how much you're carrying. Another thing the data tells us is this. Almost three quarters of parents say having a stronger network of trusted caregivers would improve their mental and emotional health. And I see that play out all the time. When parents have real support, the mental load lightens a bit and they become more present, calmer and more regulated. Care.com makes it easier to find that kind of support with background check caregivers, reviews and filters for the exact skills you're looking for.

0:38Will Guidara:Whether it's infant care, before or after school help, camps, daycares or senior care. And right now, Care.com is offering something they've never offered before. For a limited time, use the code GOOD35 to get 35 % off a premium membership, plus a free subscription to Headspace. Because when you have support, you can show up as your best self for the people you care for and for yourself. In spite of the fact that she could not walk or talk, I have never felt more loved by anyone in my entire life. Do you know when someone is so focused on a single person that you know you are the only thing in the world that matters to them?

1:21We made the choice to be unreasonable, not in pursuit of product, but in pursuit of people. And relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never, ever change, which is our human desire to feel seen.

1:33Will Guidara:Here's something I think about a lot. The way we lead at work, at home, anywhere isn't random. It comes from somewhere. And usually it's shaped early by what got noticed in our house, by what didn't. And my guest today is someone who has built a career around care. Will Godara is a restaurateur and the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park. Under his leadership, it became one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world, earning four stars from the New York Times and the title of world's best restaurant. And Will is so much more than that. He's the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, a book about going beyond service into something more human, something relational.

2:13Will Guidara:And he's the author of Unreasonable Hospitality Field Guide. If the original book is the what, think about this as the how. What moves me the most about Will isn't just excellence or care or hospitality. It's actually his intentionality, the way he thinks about people. You're going to hear it today. He's also a dad of two, which means he's not just building culture in restaurants. He is building culture at home. And he has a few pointers that I think we might all want to take in terms of the culture in our home. Today, we're starting a new series called How We're Raised. Conversations about the homes we grew up in and how our early experiences shape the way we live, lead and love today.

3:00Will Guidara:So this isn't a conversation about business strategy. It's a conversation about the child under the leader, about the patterns that help us succeed, and the ones that sometimes get in our way. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. Well, I'm so glad you're here right now. But before we get into anything reflective or deep, we're going to do all of that. I just want to locate you, kind of situate you in your life right now. Like, where are you in your life? What does a normal week look like? Just give us the basics and then we're going to jump in. Gosh, my life is so much different now than I thought it would be.

3:40I remember my wife and I were in Seattle like five years ago and we were walking past a houseboat and she said, can we live in a houseboat in Seattle one day? And I said, no, we live in New York City. We will always live in New York City. And she said, kind of wish you'd told me that before we got married. And I thought that would be my life. owning restaurants and living in New York City. And now neither of those is true. My family and I live in Nashville. I spend time with a small team. There's about 10 of us. I write books and I do speaking to companies across pretty much every industry. We have a creative studio where we get to dream of worlds that we wished existed and then one day welcome people into our imaginations.

4:32And I replaced restaurants with children. And I'm really grateful that I don't have restaurants and kids at the same time, because I don't think I'd be able to be nearly as good at either as I'd want to be. So you're catching me in a season that I feel so grateful to be in.

4:52Will Guidara:But I feel like with you, there's always this through line. I mean, I don't know if my word's going to be right, but care, it just feels like you've built a career around care. You're attentive to other people's experience. Now you're a dad. Care is certainly, you know, part of that partnership. I'm just curious because that, was that a theme in your life that was poignant for you from day one? Like when you were a kid, was care a big part of your, your home? Like how did it become such a, such a theme? I think it was, it was a big theme in my home brought about through adversity. So when I was a kid, my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer.

5:28And by the time I was seven, eight, nine, somewhere in that range, the radiation treatment she received during her cancer, when they removed the tumor from her brain, had rendered her into becoming a quadriplegic. And so, I mean, my dad is my hero. like watching him work restaurant hours legitimately take care of her and still be a good dad to me and never once feel bad for himself and in fact to the contrary like I would watch him and I don't I don't think I like consciously registered it at the time yeah but I I felt it and it infected me in a good way he derived pleasure out of caring for her and then as I got a little bit older we were a team right so I would take care of my mom and I would feed her and um and I think because of the example that he set yeah listen if I can go back in time obviously and wave a magic wand she would not have gotten sick and she'd still be alive today but I never was like gosh I wish my mom was healthy like that was our situation yeah my dad and I took care of her And she, in spite of the fact that she could not walk or talk, I have never felt more loved by anyone in my entire life.

6:54Like the, I think from her, this is not totally in line with your question, but eye contact. Like the little movement around a smile. Do you know when someone is so focused on a single person that you know you are the only thing in the world that matters to them?

7:17Will Guidara:I want to go back to that, to something you just said. How loved you felt by your mom, having her, like the way she gazed at you, her movements, having her full attention. Maybe not, but do you remember a moment like just to zoom in on or anything like visual or said, like, where were you? I just, I find that so compelling. Maybe it's especially compelling because our lives today are so chaotic and we're pulled in a million directions. I don't know how your memory works when you think back to like those early days or honestly these days last week. But I remember like glimpses, right? There's like these little things that for whatever reason, I can almost watch like an old VHS tape of a five second clip of my life.

8:04I used to ride a bicycle home from school. It was like so close. That's how I got home. And at a certain point, probably when I was, I don't know, eighth grade or something. By that point, my dad had brought in a nurse to help during the day because now we just needed it when my dad was at work. and my mom would have the nurse push her to the end of the street like 10 minutes before I was likely to come home and she would always be waiting there and I don't know which day or what but I remember one of those moments I remember coming down that little hill and her just and she would she would just have the biggest smile on her face and so that that's the moment I remember like the eye contact and the smile and maybe that's an amalgamation of a bunch of those days

8:57Will Guidara:wrapped up in one i'm not sure but but it is so interesting the story we tell ourselves about what kids need to feel confident i don't know like now right like the starting center on their soccer team which means they need five private lessons a week and three teams and they need to be the math star and they need to have all the friends and they need the fancy birthday party and if their friends all have this water bottle they need this water bottle and i'm just thinking about like mom my mom waited for me and she was just watching me there was nothing more important or interesting or compelling than waiting for you to ride your bike and my guess is you are at best an average bike rider i'm sorry she was not sitting there marveling i don't know if the pedaling was, you know, but just you on your bike for this like very short ride.

9:47Will Guidara:Yeah. And it was like, it was captivating. It was captivating for her. And her energy was captivating for me in return. Out of necessity, like she couldn't do anything. Yeah. She was fully present. like as a dad now uh I have all these things that I try to do to ensure that I am fully present I don't know that I'll ever be as fully present as she was with me and you can feel it when someone is yeah you know one of the things I say to myself um to try to stay really present in the moment with any of my kids when they're talking to me, I just say, Becky, listen for the next two minutes. Like they are the most interesting person.

10:42Will Guidara:It feels like your mom like was just, when she was with you, like that's always full attention. Like you were the most interesting person in the world. Yeah, I mean, like, listen to this. I played the drums. Yeah. Like let that sink in. I threatened my friends to buy their kids drums if they're failing in our friendship. and I had a band, a grunge band when I was like 14. We played up here. She was directly below us. There's no chance that it sounded good. And she loved it. Like loved it. And I'm not saying like that because I don't love when I hear some parents say, oh, my kid's so good at the every like that.

11:31But it wasn't that wasn't the spirit of it. She just loved being.

11:35Will Guidara:Yeah. Like able to be a part of this thing that I was delighted in. Yeah, she did. You end up getting to this, you know, career all around hospitality, around care, around entertaining, around actually a lot of things that aren't simple that can be also exceptional. Right. So just take me on that journey. So this is some of your early years. And then what brought you into that career? Or did it just seem like every step was the obvious next step? No, I mean, so again, my dad worked in restaurants. And I mean, my dad and I are very, very, very close. And so I just wanted to spend it like it didn't really matter what he did for a living.

12:20That would have been the thing that I wanted to do. And I would go to work with him on Saturdays because he'd work Monday through Friday, long days. and Saturday he'd go and just like to the office and have a few hours and sometimes I'd be in the office with him other times he'd drop me off at one of the restaurants here in the city and I'd help air quotes help yep and I just fell in love with restaurants I fell in love with like the choreographed chaos like the idea that every every one of life's relationships was happening concurrently within the same four walls but the fact that you go into the kitchen and there would be obsessed someone obsessing over food the sommelier with wine someone about graphic design interior like no two days would ever be the same and it seemed like these people were getting paid to make other people happy yeah and so when I my dad he is nothing if not intentional and was very insistent on imbuing that trait and me and And so when I was like, he would take it too far.

13:26Right. So when I was 12, I think we were like on our way to the airport from SeaWorld or something. And he's like, well, it's time to come up with your goals for life. And I have been, and I know this because he wrote them down and he gave them to me in my 20s. What were they? One, go to Cornell and study hospitality. Two, open my own restaurant in New York City. And three, marry Cindy Crawford. And I got like two out of three. And then the third, I think I might have done even better.

13:56Will Guidara:Let's be honest. And so it's all I ever wanted to do. So I did get into Cornell and I did like I worked. He he really pushed me to work for the best restaurants. So I worked for Junior Print at Tribeca Grill. I worked for Wolfgang Puck at Spago. I did all that stuff. And then I graduated from Cornell, went to work for Danny Meyer. And I worked there for a couple of years. But at this point, I didn't want to be in fine dining. I'd worked in fine dining and I'd been turned off by it. I'd been turned off by the fact that at this stage, if you worked in a restaurant, you were there to serve the chef.

14:41Like it was all about the food and the way that hospitality was manifested had taken a backseat. and so I wanted to my goal was to work at Shake Shack and so Danny Meyer came to me as I was at moment he goes hey we're trying to do big things at 11 Madison Park I'd love for you to go there I said no I want to go to Shake Shack but my dad one of the many lessons that I carry with me from him was if you work for a company and you want them to be there for you when when you need them you need to be there for them when they need you. So the deal I made with Danny was that I would go to 11 Madison for one year and then I'd get to go run Shake Shack.

15:25And then in that year, I just realized it didn't have to be the way that it was. And in fact, in fine dining at that level, you could create magic for people at a level beyond what I think anyone had, had dreamt of. Yeah. And so a year later he came and said, you ready to go to Shake Shack? And I said, no. Now, granted, had I gone to run Shake Shack, I probably would own the building we're in right now. But that was the best decision of my life because what I got to do from that point forward was just the coolest thing ever.

16:07Will Guidara:So tell me more about that. Tell everyone more about that. Like your brand of hospitality, of taking care of people, the experience at being at a restaurant, what that means. Just jump off wherever. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the best restaurants in the world, they're run by chefs more often than not. Yeah. And when you look at the best, best restaurants in the world, they at that point were 100 % run by chefs. People who, gosh, they were unreasonable in pursuit of the food they served, their product, and relentless in pursuit of innovation. What new techniques could they develop? What new ingredients could they start cooking with?

16:48And each of them in their own way have influenced how restaurants around the world approach cooking. At a certain point, I was inspired enough by them, but cognizant of my own superpowers. and through those two things, was able to pair them together such that we made the choice to be unreasonable, not in pursuit of product, but in pursuit of people.

17:11Will Guidara:Yep. And relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never, ever change, which is our human desire to feel seen, to feel cared for, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel genuinely welcomed. And it was years ago, I wrote Unreasonable Hospitality on a cocktail napkin, but that articulation became, like our call to arms. Yeah, the human desire to feel seen.

17:40Will Guidara:I've been traveling a lot lately for my book tour, which means airports, rental cars, doing bedtime over FaceTime and having some of the most meaningful conversations with parents. And every time I'm on a trip like this, I think about how much coordination it takes to step away from everyday life, even just for a couple of days. I know for so many families, when you do travel for work or for fun, it can feel good to know your home isn't sitting empty while you're gone. Because while you're away, you could be hosting your home on Airbnb and earning some extra income to put toward future travel.

18:13Will Guidara:Okay, Becky, that sounds great, but I cannot take on one more thing. I get it, truly. And that's exactly where Airbnb's co-host network comes in. You can hire a vetted local co-host to take care of the hosting for you. A co-host can create your listing, manage reservations, message guests, and even provide design and styling. It just makes everything feel a little more manageable. If you've ever considered hosting, but you need a little help, find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. Parents make so many decisions every day. What's for dinner? Where are the shoes? Did anyone brush their teeth? It feels like it never stops.

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19:33Will Guidara:Okay, parents, quick check-in. If your brain feels like it's holding everyone's schedule except your own, you're not doing it wrong. You're carrying a lot. I see this all the time. School emails, activities, chores, dinner plans, and somehow it all lives in one person's head, usually mom's, and that gets exhausting. That's why I love Skylight Calendar. It's a smart touchscreen calendar that takes everything swirling around in your brain, schedules, chores, meals, grocery lists, and puts it in one place where the whole family can actually see it and participate. It syncs with Google, Apple, Outlook, all of it, and you can color code each family member.

20:14Will Guidara:So there's a lot less, wait, I didn't know in your house. Plus, with the free Skylight Companion app, you can add or update events, lists, and more on the go. And I appreciate this. If after 120 days, you're not 100 % happy, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Right now, you can get$30 off a 15-inch Skylight calendar at myskylight.com slash Becky. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash Becky.

20:56Will Guidara:You and I have talked about this, but everyone doesn't think, oh, am I a restaurant? Like I'm going there to feel seen. But just say more about that. Like what, how important that is. My favorite quote about hospitality comes from Maya Angelou. And it's one most people have heard. She said, people will forget what you say. They will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Gosh, I believe that to be so very true. when I think back on the experiences that linger with me, it's not something that someone did, the little technical element of a meal or whatever kind of experience that I remember.

21:32It's a little or a big thing that someone did for me.

21:36Will Guidara:Yep. And I say a little or a big thing because it could be in a restaurant, something as small as me being on a first date and the server noticed that we had just run out of things to talk about. So they came in to like lubricate the conversation a little bit, or it could be a big thing. And I have plenty of stories of those that others have done for me, but I think it's just being seen for me. And obviously the cadence of this conversation, having just talked about my mom, it means like, Hey, you are an individual. You matter. This is not a one size fits all situation. I am here to deliver an experience that is specific to and special to you.

22:26And if you can take that idea and be as relentless and creative and intentional in pursuit of making people feel that. Yeah. Not only does it make other people feel extraordinary. not only does it make the deliverer of those things feel extraordinary because I really do believe that hospitality is a selfish pleasure but I came to understand that it was the greatest competitive advantage that we as a restaurant could have and I now have come to believe it's the greatest competitive advantage that any business can have how did you create a whole

23:07Will Guidara:culture around that. Like I'm just thinking about anyone listening and we'll eventually, I want to talk about how you do this in your home, but making other people feel seen, whether or not you work in restaurants, just this, we're saying it's kind of the greatest competitive advantage of an individual, right? I mean, that's what, because there's no greater feeling we have. You know, I remember, I remember being at a restaurant when I had this cough and the waitress came up and I was like, oh, she's going to be mad or I don't know. And I just couldn't stop coughing. And she just brought me this tray of like two cough drops.

23:35Will Guidara:It was like, I just I can I love that restaurant by the way I don't remember what I ate right I but like it doesn't matter and by the way they obsessed over every single dish they served you guaranteed there was a team of people working on every single plate of food just had these in her pocket like I don't even know where she got wherever they came from but that one simple gesture meant so much more to you than anything else that they did exactly right so this culture of hospitality of helping people feel seen and cared for in this unreasonable way. So bring me to your house. This kind of culture of care, how does that show up for you as a dad?

24:12One of the things I say often about hospitality, and I said this for years in my restaurants, but I believe it applies to anyone. I would always say to my team, we have an opportunity, perhaps even a responsibility to create our own little magical world in a world that needs more magic. I think about magic a lot as it pertains to hospitality and caring and experiences. And one of my favorite quotes is by a teller of Penn and Teller. He said, sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would reasonably expect. I like that because it enforces something I believe in.

24:56None of the stuff I talk about is hard. It just requires being willing to work a little bit harder. Yeah. I think the, the biggest thing I think of and how I bring it home to my kids is just to try to create magic, try to create little and big moments that feel magical. We had a magic show at the nomad back in the day. And when I introduced it in the beginning, I talked about, I love magic so much. And I do love like actual magic and magicians because these days and it's even more so now with ai we know how everything is done and there's this childlike wonder that comes from not understanding something so my kids right now like if their lives don't feel unbelievably magical now what am i doing And so my favorite thing to do as a dad, in addition to the things I just should be doing to care for them and to protect them, is to just find little and big ways to create magic.

26:05Will Guidara:Like what? okay Christmas is a good example although my colleague and I Brian Canlis we've had all these conversations around how so many families are good at creating magic around the holidays but it stops there like people go all out to make magic in the holidays and then like the rest of the year is just kind of boring yeah seriously but like so last year we watched the kids open all of their presents and i mean everyone's experienced this you spend so much time trying to buy all these gifts that you think they're going to love and wrapping them and setting them under the tree and then it is over in like 30 minutes and like it's like oh that felt so unfulfilling and so this year i was like okay how do we extend that and make it magical as my kids are two and four at the time so i just and didn't take me very long I just created all these scavenger hunts for their gifts.