19 Life-Changing Marketing Lessons from The World's No.1 Restaurant - Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality

29:55Which means a couple weeks later, a new bag of dog food is going to come, rip open the scab all over again. Then I'm going to call Chewy to cancel my order. This is something that happens at Chewy. This is how they respond every single time. When you do, they obviously apologize for your loss. They cancel your subscription. They can't take that last bag back for health code reasons, but they credit it to your account. And then two days later, a bouquet of flowers arrives at your house saying, we're so sorry for your loss. Here's the thing about dog people. After some season of mourning, they're very likely to get another dog.

30:32and if you ever buy dog food from anyone else ever again after they've done that from you, you're a freaking serial killer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's these examples everywhere of people who are, there's a magician duo in America. It's called Penn and Teller. Teller has a quote I love. He says, sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would deem reasonable. I haven't told you a single story that is very hard. They all just require trying a little bit harder, investing a little more money, perhaps, a bit more time, some additional resource. But in each case, I guarantee you that while hard to calculate, the return on that investment is significant.

31:24Yeah, and that's why the principle from the book, which I love, is kind of spot the friction, and when you're open to it, and I'm kind of into, like I meditate, believe it or not but like when you're open to when you're open to these things you start to notice it but it's like look for the friction where there's friction there's opportunity where there's opportunity there's excitement and that's when there's just unfair advantage or just like just results that are just unattainable and like you know I said I went to that lost paddy I was a lost popey like going around looking to watch the rugby right and as I met these English blokes you know early doors getting a load of Guinnesses down us and we jump in a cab and why I love cabs in America or taxis in America is the hospitality here, that's what I've noticed first in the UK, in London you've got amazing restaurants but the hospitality is a thing here more service and sales is a thing here whereas in the UK if you say you're a salesperson it's like oh you've got to give me the ick whereas here it's encouraged, it's really interesting so we get in and the guy's just like he's got loads of lollipops there and he goes in the cab yeah in the cab there's a whole thing of lollipops and he goes and he just turns the light on and it's like flicking around like that and he goes oh what song do you want and it's like that is just one it's better customer service for us in the cab two I feel like as you say hospitality is a selfish act which I love he's feeling better about himself it's just like and it's just it takes a few things man and it's just like oh it's wild how's having a dog change or made you better as a restaurateur or yeah i don't know i mean i haven't i haven't actually had restaurants since i had the dog but uh maybe it's made you much better no i will say this i took a mahayana buddhism class in college a mahayana mahayana buddhism what's the difference mahayana buddhism it's and this was a very very long time ago but it like i don't think dissimilar to any form of buddhism like not having an attachment to things.

33:33When I got my dog, we had this little stone house in the Hudson Valley that was from the late 1700s and it was in immaculate condition. When did you get the dog? In 2019. Okay. Big wood plank floors, like perfect. Within a month and a half of having this dog, those floors were ripped to shit.

34:01And listen, you don't get three Michelin stars or all that stuff without being a perfectionist. And yet, if I were to talk about the tension and who I am as a leader, then in one sense, I can be controlling. If I don't regulate that part of me, I like everything to be just so. I believe in perfection, in details, and I can be overly controlling if I'm not careful. On the flip side, I genuinely believe and am passionate about empowering the people on my team, recognizing that everyone will give much more of themselves if they feel a genuine sense of empowerment and an ability to impact where we're going.

34:52That's another tension, right? Those are not friends. And so I'm constantly falling off the line that divides them in one direction or another. My dog, I love this dog so much that I cared less about these ruined floors than an old version of me would have. Here's the deal. You cannot be only a perfectionist if you want to be in the world of hospitality. because hospitality is about human beings and the best of us are perfectly imperfect. And the dog in all of her beauty has ruined a lot of stuff in my life and it's actually made me better at embracing a little bit of mess because relationships are messy and we need to embrace those things more.

35:41When you said regulate your control freakishness, if that's all right to say, how do you do that? Just with intention. Yeah, so just a sort of saying, listen like it's yeah it's interesting and and by the way and when you do take it too far apologizing do you so with 11 Madison Park and that amazing journey to the to the top could you have any flex for messiness there or how did you because as you said humans are perfectly imperfect um totally well so let me let me yeah how would you navigate that tension in that setting it's a balance. So there's the quote by Maya Angelou. Most people have heard it.

36:22My favorite when it comes to hospitality. People will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. When I talk to people who have dined at 11 Madison Park back in the day, they often don't remember a single thing they ate. And they often don't remember a single detail of our perfectly executed service. What they remember are these little and big things that the team did around unreasonable hospitality, little additional gestures, things that were possible because the team got to know them and said, oh, this would be cool for this individual.

37:03Here's the reality. I could make sure that every detail of the dining room is perfect. The team in the kitchen could work really hard to make sure that the food was as close to perfect as possible. We could make sure that the service was as close to technically perfect. All that stuff. We could be very controlling over that stuff. And yet, it's clear that I need to empower the people on my team to come up with those additional gestures. They're on the front line. They're the ones that actually know the people they're serving. I can't control that. So I'm relinquishing control around the one thing that people will remember the most.

37:43and yet if that's not done on a foundation of excellence, then it wouldn't have been a three Michelin star restaurant. We wouldn't have gone on to do what we did next. It's balance. It's controlling the things that should be controlled and recognizing the areas where you need to let go. Because if you never let go, the team doesn't feel agency, and if they don't feel a genuine sense of ownership, they won't be their best, and the guest is not going to receive their best. it's so interesting the i really do feel like you are like the walt disney of hospitality i love and i love what you said your quote about that i want this is my kind of greatest world view how do i get people into my imagination and i think people anyone in the creative spheres is a wonderful way to think i love if you could detail the example of the cognac bottle and the bill yeah or the check yeah um i think that's a really delicious example of that and then we again we can apply some of that magic.

38:42Because I know we've talked about friction and the UPS stuff, but actually creating genuine magic from restaurants, a cognac example, and then other industries. Yeah. I mean, I would say though, a kid getting a tour of the cockpit is magical. Yes. Getting flowers from an e-commerce site is magical. These things are magic in my eyes. The cognac, was, listen, I think a lot of people when they try to enhance an experience they do it not nearly as well as they could because they've never slowed down for long enough to genuinely understand all the little touch points that exist in an experience. Most organizations don't actually know what every touch point is because they've never slowed down for long enough to genuinely understand the experience they serve.

39:38okay so that's that's why we're so that's a really interesting thing so that's where you could apply this to a lot of industries because everyone's running at a thousand miles per hour and they're actually not slowing down to extrapolate like what are these touch points I mean if you work in an office building and clients come to your office I guarantee you've never said hey what is the experience of being in the elevator like and what could we do to make that experience cooler what's the experience of going to the bathroom when you're up here what's the waiting room experience most people don't invest any creativity into those things where they can make a difference and in fact sometimes the smallest enhancement the most overlooked touch point in an experience can have the greatest impact on the experience as a whole the cognac is listen, there's millions of restaurants out there at the end of every meal, someone is bringing you a bill and yet in spite of the fact that every restaurant has that touch point in common, I've almost never seen it approached with any creativity or any intention.

40:49Which when you really slow down for long enough to think about it is insane. I think that's in part due to the fact that we have this flawed belief system that transactional moments cannot also be connective or due to the fact that it's actually a hard moment in a restaurant to get right from a timing perspective. Everyone has this in common, whether or not they realize that people are very impatient at the end of the meal. If it takes us too long to bring you the bill, we've just ruined the meal. At the same time, I can't drop it on your table before you've asked for it. Otherwise, what do you think I'm trying to do?

41:25Yeah, get the fuck out of here. Rush you out of the restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's especially hard in a fine dining restaurant. Yeah. Because let's name it, it's a big bill. And the moment you realize how much the meal costs, it's a little bit harder to still love the meal you've just had. For those reasons, no creativity. But once we'd identified it as an opportunity to make things more awesome, this is what we came up with. If you were dining, you and a friend, and you were done, you hadn't asked the check yet, but you know when people are done. I'd go over to your table with a glass for each one of you and a bottle of cognac, and I'd pour just a splash of cognac into each glass, and I'd say, hey, thank you for joining us.

42:02This is with my compliments. In fact, I'm going to leave the entire bottle here on the table. Please help yourselves to as much as you'd like and then I'd put the check down. So your check is here, ready, whenever you are. Small change, profound impact. That's so good. First, no one ever had to wait for their check again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. B, no one could ever think we were trying to rush them out when we gave them an entire bottle of free booze. So you've got to be a bit of a knob if you're drinking the whole bottle. There's a social norms thing there. Every few weeks that would happen, and it was awesome.

42:32Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't cost us very much, though, because very rarely did that happen. Mostly, they just drank that first splash. But at the same time, when we brought over that big bill, we matched it with a gesture of profound generosity. Also, at the end of a meal where we had served their every need with unbelievable attentiveness, we gave them the gift of serving one another. And I don't know about you, but pouring a drink for a friend is like this small, beautiful thing that I think restores the idea of what we were trying to create there. Yes. I've talked to people who dined with us then.

43:08They don't remember a single thing they ate, but they'll never forget how we made them feel when we brought them that bottle of cognac. These examples or these opportunities exist in so many places. The cab. Yes. Giving you a lollipop. So, yeah. Do you, so it's creative again, This is not trying to get too heavy here, but it could do. But do you think you, do creative ideas come to you or do you go to them? Or like, where does your creativity come from? I go to them. My approach to creativity, I don't believe that, at least it's not for me, that creativity is something that like strikes you like a bolt of lightning.

43:50Yeah, because have you read Rick Rubin's work? I have. You know, like his book, The Creative Being? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he talks about the, yeah, it's interesting. so you know his thing of like this is this energy of all times that you kind of it'd be like the radio like zing zing and tune into yeah it's interesting so you're not that's not your that's not my i mean like sometimes that's beautiful because i think a lot of people i think the other thing with your work well sorry to interrupt and just is is it shows you i think a lot of people who's are i'm not creative it's because they think it's this weird fucking alien force and if yeah so if you're saying it's not that that's beautiful dude and also and this came from We were talking about Seth Godin before.

44:25Yeah. I think I listened to a podcast he did. But what was the movie about the Beatles? Get Back. Get Back. Oh, bro, so good. Get Back proves everything I'm about to say. Yes. So I'll circle back to that in a moment. My approach to creativity. Okay, let's take the check. Intention. Let's make the check more awesome. Let's make that something cool. Yeah, yeah. Let's not make it an annoying, overlooked part of the experience. Let's make it one of the most incredible parts of the experience. My approach to creativity also sits in collaboration. So I would just say, all right, then I would think about who do I want around me in this meeting?

45:10Great. On Wednesday at 3 p.m., we're going to spend 90 minutes being creative about how to drop the check. I schedule creativity. Wow. So it's the intention of... But it's not any different than anyone in marketing. Well, it's interesting. So the other documentaries you watch are the antagonists of that. So the Beatles Get Back documentary, why I love that is they're like, we're in at nine, we'll have a couple of cups of tea and some toast. And by the time we're done, we're going to have written one of the great albums. The other one is there's a really good one about Rolling Stones, which is the complete, it's almost, they would sit around, basically just take drugs, drink and smoke all day.

45:49And that's why I do believe creativity needs a deadline. Yeah. And it gets like 4 p.m. I'm like, all right, we need to create a song now. And then bang.

45:58Again, and that's why I love all this stuff, man. There's no one size. But is it actually an antagonist? They were just deciding to have fun all day, but at 4 p.m. they're like, let's write a song. True, yeah. I just think that why I feel strongly about structured creative time. By the way, that doesn't mean you're going to have the best idea in those 90 minutes, but now it's going to stoke your creative fires. and it might be in the shower the next morning. You're like, there it is. I got it now. But I love creativity and collaboration. I'm not someone that does my best thinking alone. I like having people that I love and trust and support around me.

46:33And I do hate when people say I'm just not that creative. I think it's BS. I think we're all creative, but it is a practice. It's like any muscle that needs to be strengthened. It's another Maya Angelou quote. The more creative you are, the more creative you become. You just need to start doing it in order to get good at it. Who are some of the most creative people you've met? Oh, man. I mean, across industry, I've met so many different creative people in so many different ways. There's a guy named Jesse Darius. Jesse Darius is a brand marketing guy in New York. His firm was called Darius for a long time when he was acquired, and now he's running a much bigger company.

47:13But Jesse was kind of at the heart of the direct-to-consumer movement here in the States. So if you think back to Harry's and Everlane and Reformation and hymns, Jesse is like the guy that was involved with all of these things. And if I ever have a creative problem that I need to solve and I need a different thought partner than the people that I work with on a daily basis, Jesse is one of those guys that I call. He just has this ability to see things just through a lens that other people struggle to. Any specific examples on that? I mean, he's the person that reframes. He and his wife started a tampon company called Lola.

48:02He's the guy that's like, wait a minute. Everything we do now is organic and this and that and the other thing. and tampons haven't changed. These insights, that's such a random one that I just brought up, but he is able to see, he has an understanding of human behavior that I've not seen in very many people. How so? I don't know, man. He just, do you know the people that it just comes more naturally and easily to them? That's an insight that's actually quite obvious. He just sees it. Yeah, I love people who can spot the obvious, the non-obvious obvious kind of stuff. And then, by the way, when they spot it, it feels so relentlessly obvious.

48:50Yeah, that's basically what I think Rory does so well. Rory's brilliant. He's literally just like, that is just so obvious. By the way, Rory is another one. I mean, plenty of my friends who are musicians. Yeah. I love great musicians. I was going to say, what brought you to, because it's been really interesting, meeting these British lads, Nate and Ali. I mean, Nate's a very American name, but it's kind of weird. Like, you know, when you're a foreigner in a different country and you meet some of your fellow folk, you just kind of have this weird bond. And that's why I fucking... For sure. He's like, bro, let's go down to Charlotte.

49:28Not this, I've got to go back. But really interesting guys. And they were talking about all the different cultures of Nashville. And I feel like it's interesting. A lot of people, and again, I probably had this belief. you're in New York and you think you're in America but actually New York and London what they were saying is New York and London are really similar but New York's probably closer to London than New York is to Nashville and when I basically came that was their opinion I can see that in terms of the music stuff what brought you down here? we moved to Nashville we moved up to the country when COVID hit for a few weeks a few weeks turned into a few years and eventually we were like we're too young to like you know call it quits on the world and so we moved back to our apartment in the city but in those three years we had two kids and got a big dog and I was back in the city for five months and I travel a lot which means when I'm home with kids I just want to be home and if that's the case you just shouldn't live in New York having kids there is already hard and And if your home's so little that you don't even want to go out and experience the city, it's a level of difficulty that's not – there's no return on it.

50:43Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we decided to move. And we looked at a bunch of different places. I chose Nashville for a few different reasons. One, and perhaps most importantly, we didn't have family that lived in New York with us. And I wanted family around us. I didn't want to move where any of our family lived. But I figured I could convince a lot of them to move to Nashville. So my mother-in-law lives two blocks away from us. My sister-in-law lives on the other side of town. Our cousin moved to Nashville to be our nanny. One of my best friends moved down here. So we moved a whole compound of people to Nashville with us.

51:21Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Two, I already had friends here, either in restaurants or music. And there's this entrepreneurial spirit here that is pretty awesome. Nashville, I've been surprised. I've met more people that I want to spend time with than I have time to spend. Wow. But the other thing is, I mean, we're in a wild time. And Nashville is a blue city and a red state. Again, this is what they were saying to me yesterday. And I really like that. What do you like about that? Well, I've just found that there's too many places. And I think it's kind of, you tell me, it feels like it's happening everywhere around the world, although particularly so here in the States.

52:09Where depending on where you live, if in New York, if you're a little bit conservative, you're terrible. In Florida, if you're a little bit liberal, you're terrible, right? Like it's harder and harder depending on where you live to develop your own unique perspective on the world. This was wild. Sorry to interrupt, but I met a girl in our house last night and she was from LA. she's just moved she moved here about five years ago and we were playing beer pong with her friend who's like in fact her parents owned the group that owned Catch oh interesting I don't know I kind of forgot what it was called but she was like afterwards I was speaking to the girl from LA and she was like yeah we're really good friends but we don't talk about politics and I kind of found that as a British person found that kind of crazy she's like we're really like really cool like good friends we're like best friends here but it's just kind of that thing that we don't talk about and I was like that's fucking wild man like do you know what I mean well I mean that is a thing increasingly where people are just like I just don't want to talk about it because but what I was about to say about here is actually different which is A to your point like it's just people who believe in different things still able to spend time with one another and be friends with each other but also I've just found that like you're actually allowed to disagree with people around you and you can have those conversations and absent conversation I don't know what we're doing I think actually having open discourse about these fundamental things is a part of what it means to live in a democracy and we're losing it in too many places and I wanted my kids to grow up in a place where they could actually explore openly what they believe in.

54:02Yeah. So you're buying that Dino's place? Yeah. East Nashville. Is that kind of like the Brooklyn? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're kind of comparing apples to Ferraris here or whatever. East Nashville is like the more hipster area. And how do you spend your time here say versus New York outside of work I mean the distinction is in New York I was single or married here I'm a dad okay so it's hard to write apples and Ferraris that's actually a very good example of apples and Ferraris my priorities have just changed my life was able to be pretty selfish for a long time not overwhelmingly so but in the past I had to be a good leader at work a good son and a good friend and then a good husband for the last couple years when I finally got married now I still need to do all those things but I also need to be a good dad which is something I want really badly to do extraordinarily well and what you lose when you add the dad thing is the ability, or you just have less margin just to have fun for yourself.

55:32Now, I like to have fun, and so I find pockets of time to do it. But it's interesting how, you're talking about intention. Being a parent is so fun and so hard because for me it's the job that I want to excel at, perhaps more than I've ever wanted to excel at any job. And yet I have it on top of two other full-time jobs, which is a real job and also being a good husband, which means it's just a math problem. I have less hours to invest to excel at something that is so deeply important to me. What are the hard challenges you went through that you'd want your kids to go through? Well, I mean, the hardest challenge I went through, I pray my kids don't go through, which is my mom was a quadriplegic.

56:29What does that mean? So I'm ready to... Oh, no, no, no. Again, sorry for yourself sounding really stupid here, but... I don't think it's an expression of stupidity at all. It means you can't move your arms or your legs. It means you can't move, effectively. And she could hardly talk. But could she move her head? Yeah. Interesting. So she has a wheelchair. Yeah. And so any other dose of adversity I experienced, I don't even remember. It was irrelevant in comparison. I will say, though, one of my dad's quotes is, adversity is a terrible thing to waste. My dad and I are so close. And that is in a large part due to her condition.

57:16We needed to be. We were a team. and we needed to be close. I wonder what our relationship would be had she never gotten sick. Now, obviously, if I could go back in time, I wish she had never gotten sick and she was still alive today. But that most definitively was a big part of me becoming who I am. Learning to care for her at such an early age, watching my dad care for her, understanding what love actually looks like. not just his love for her. Most people would have... Put her in some assisted living facility. But my dad worked restaurant hours, took care of her, was a good dad to me. But also watching how she, absent most of the faculties available to you and I, was still able to make me feel so loved.

58:12How? Through eye contact, the power of a smile. like there's so much we can transmit to others energetically that because we don't have to tap into them we don't use them to their most full this this may be a very tenuous tenuous link or wrong link but like would you say from your mom's inability to move but still express herself still have connection has that given you kind of almost like a different it's almost like a sixth sense to what people are feeling on body language without, well, not even body language. You've got this, again, this is kind of heady stuff, but this ability to feel what people are feeling without them actually having to say anything.

58:56I think so. Interesting. I mean, I do believe that is something that comes naturally to me, and so I'm not sure if that came from that, but I have to imagine that contributed to it. And so when you walk into a dining room, how do you pick up people's energies and vibes? Because again, I think walking to a dining room, a boardroom, any difficult conversation or any interaction, man? What have you learned about that? Anything specific? I mean, gosh, I think if you actually just slow down, I talk about being present a lot. But when I say being present, what I mean is caring so much about the one person in front of you that you stop caring about everything else you need to do, which is very hard for people these days with the distractions of cell phones or with a culture that seems to celebrate efficiency and doing as many things as possible.

59:52Now, in a dining room, that happens one person at a time. I can get a sense of the dining room just by closing my eyes and listening to the din of the room, whether service is going well or not. What do you mean by the din? Like the noise. Oh, wow. so how would you be again so that's like shut your eyes I don't know if I can articulate it you can feel based on like the consistent level of conversation in music so I interviewed Jeremy King from you know the Walls last week or two weeks ago and it's interesting I was asking him about and he said it's the hum of the dining room and he said he was telling a wonderful story about these guys who would go in in Battlefield, essentially.

1:00:45And their job was to go and find where the bombs could be hidden. And a lot of the times they'd just go and they'd be like, it's just there. Everyone was trying to put a theory behind it. And I was like, from Battlefield to Dining Room. And he goes, I just can feel it. and it's like sometimes it's the way Messi gets a football. It's just some people have that innate thing. It's so interesting. But that's the room as a whole. How do you tap into where an individual is at? I mean, if you just look around a room, if you study someone even without talking to them, you can pick up on so much. that first date where the guy is clearly uncomfortable and has run out of stuff to say.

1:01:39And it's either because he's realized he doesn't want to be on that date or because he's so excited to be on that date and is so nervous. All right, so what does hospitality look like there? Go over to the table. Get the conversation going a little bit. So how would you do that? Just walk over and be like, hey, my name's Will. Welcome to the restaurant. How's it going? And then, hey, what's your story? Is this your first time? Just like, whatever, just getting a conversation going. What about if there was like a really intense sort of business meeting? Then knowing to stay away. Like so often, this is where I think a lot of people mess it up.

1:02:19They have the best of intentions and yet their hospitality happens to people, not for them. Wait, say that again. Happens to people, not for them. Fuck, that's so good, man. That's like, if you're in the restaurant, we've only known each other for so long. My instinct is you're going to want to know a lot about each course and each wine. You're a relentlessly curious person. I'm going to make sure that I send over the sommelier who is really passionate to be like, all right, dude, this wine was grown by this third generation winemaker who has an ingrown toenail and da-da-da-da-da-da, whatever.

1:03:03Yeah, yeah, yeah. For some, that's great hospitality. They're curious. They want to know everything. For the guys in a business meeting, don't go over and give them all the information. They're not there for it. They're there to have a business meeting and they just want it in a beautiful room that serves delicious food. And they want you to be friendly and attentive and then get out of the way. similarly a first date that is not going well okay get in there help get it back on track on the flip side a couple that's clearly having a fight give them space don't make the woman wipe her tears off to not be embarrassed when you come over to give them a bunch of stuff they don't need to hear about like it's about reading an individual and allowing them to feel seen.

1:03:54And feeling seen is them knowing where you're at such that they can meet you there. Knowing where you're at. Okay, so go, yeah, tell me a bit more about that. Well, I mean, it's what I'm saying. Like if... The meet you at bit. Oh, metaphorically. Like meeting someone in a business meeting is shutting up. Like just getting out of their way. and this applies to so many different I mean I go to a hotel there are times when I want like the enthusiastic greeting the rundown the understanding of when the gym is open there's the times I get to a hotel at one in the morning and I'm clearly just exhausted and I'd love for them to just give me my room key and say goodnight same person two different times different needs, different ones so is it Richard Corain the one size fits one so that's basically what we're talking about here what I loved, I listened to it somewhere it's like one size fits one one size fits some one size fits many size fits all detail that because I think that's applicable because again to your point if you're going to everyone and giving them there's only so much energy for unreasonable hospitality for one person.

1:05:25I think it's a really nice triangle almost or pyramid. It's a hierarchy. It's a hierarchy of how that works. Well, one size fits all we talked about with the check and the cognac. Yes. It's about elevating a touch point that goes into every single person's experience such that you take the ordinary and make it extraordinary, the transactional and make it connective. One size fits one are the crazy little things that we did for individuals. sleds for a family that had never seen snow stuffed animals for someone who forgot to buy one for their daughter the hot dog story, all these different things that we would do the dream weaving where I was serving you I heard you say something, I came up with an idea delivered it back to you and it was truly singular One Size Fits Some happens through, again, creativity and intention but through an exercise that I call pattern recognition of recurring moments.

1:06:22The bottom line is every business has these recurring moments. The things that happen not always for everyone but sometimes for some people. As often as once a day or as rarely as once every few weeks. If you can identify these moments in advance, decide in advance what is the most awesome way to respond every time that thing happens. and then invest whatever time, energy, money is required to develop the assets needed for those reactions, you can start making magic all the time. The flowers from Chewy is an example of this. That's one size fits some. They developed an idea for every time this one thing happened and they do it over and over and over again.

1:07:07Does it mean it's less special for the person that receives flowers because someone else got flowers as well? No, it's specific to their circumstance. So it's systemizing magic, essentially. It's systemizing graciousness. Graciousness. Interesting. Like, the example that I love to talk about from my restaurant was that people would get engaged with us often, like once a week. And anyone who's ever gotten engaged at a good restaurant, they poured you free champagne. if you got engaged at a restaurant and they didn't pour you free champagne you might not have picked the right place it's like the biggest question of your life they owe you free champagne yeah of course yeah that's reasonable hospitality we identified that as an opportunity to be unreasonable this is what we came up with we forged a partnership with Tiffany and Co they gave us 100 boxes those Tiffany blue boxes each with two champagne flutes in them we put them in the back next time so we get engaged we poured them free champagne like we always would have.

1:08:13But they wouldn't notice that their glasses looked just a little bit different from everyone else's. And when they were done with the champagne, we'd take the glasses away, wash them, dry them, put them back in the box, and then gift them the box at the end of their meal, thanking them, celebrating them. Was it less special for them because we had a bunch more boxes of champagne flutes in the back? No. In fact, I've talked to people who got engaged there. Don't remember a single thing they ate. But they will never forget how we made them feel when we brought them those glasses. Just hope someone doesn't get divorced and goes back then.

1:08:47No, but like this stuff. And by the way, the thing about those programs is two years later you change it. Yes. You don't do the same thing forever. What's the, because when you said you based your restaurant on Miles Davis, or was it Davis? Miles Davis. Davis. So was he like a... Significant jazz musician. Significant jazz music. So what's the why? I do like this as a concept of having a person or thing to build. I mean, that was almost accidental in the beginning. It came, I believe, that language defines culture. Yeah. And sometimes it's hard to find the words to fully articulate what you're trying to accomplish.

1:09:33In fact, I think sometimes people spend too much time trying to find the perfect words and not enough time just pursuing them. And at the very beginning, we got a review in a newspaper, and they said, I just wish the restaurant had a bit more Miles Davis. And I was like, what does that even mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was frustrated by it. Like, what is that? And we started studying it, and the more we learned about not his music, but the approach he took to the music, the more we resonated with that as the approach we wanted to take in building the restaurant. and there were words like fresh, innovative, collaborative, cool, endless reinvention.

1:10:13I believe if you look at something and it makes you feel a certain way, just run with it, run towards it. We wanted to make four-star restaurants cool in New York City. To that point, they were a little bit more stodgy. We wanted to build a truly collaborative environment where we were balancing the authority of the top and the information of the front line to actually do innovative things. Oh yeah, what's the quote I love, which is like everyone at the top has all the authority, none of the information, people at the bottom have all the information on the authority. How would you, so bottom up, top down innovations?

1:10:59We would just do, The approach we took to strategic planning, gathering people together multiple times a year, literally closing the restaurant, dividing up the team into groups, reaffirming our mission statement, articulating strategies for the year, breaking people up and empowering them to, hey, what do we want to do? And then actually mining that information and then giving them authority in return. And so giving people on the front line ownership over projects and the permission to bring them to life. How would you mine the information? Could you systemize that? Yeah, yeah. We would literally have meetings, all-day meetings.

1:11:41We'd close the restaurant, bring everyone in. What questions would you be asking people? No questions. We would say, hey, a reminder. Our mission statement is to be the most gracious and delicious restaurant in the world. This year's vision statement is to find a balance between going out and coming home. And the three strategies we are going to employ this year, I'm being contemporaneous right now, but is perhaps softer earning informality or whatever the things for going out and coming out would be. And then we divide the team of 150 people up into 15 groups of 10. and your group would be responsible for team building.

1:12:31This group would be responsible for side work. This group would be responsible for table side courses. This group would be responsible, whatever. And then they would have an entire day to just brainstorm specific, actionable ideas to further the agenda of the restaurant within their category. Wow. What are some of the crazy ideas you tried that didn't work? Oh, my God. Yeah, that's what I'd love to know. well like out of that let me do one on one one probably from that strategic planning meeting something that makes me feel at home is like connecting with my friends at a picnic like there's something that makes me feel so sorry so you'd be on the ball we want to make people feel feel at home going out versus coming home to find balance between going out and coming home Going out versus coming home.

1:13:26Sorry. And the thought process was that, what did you want to learn from that specifically? I wanted the experience at the restaurant to have all of the trappings of luxury associated with a three Michelin star restaurant, but to also be one where you felt like you were coming home. I wanted to make it the most casual version of luxury. we were trying to casualize luxury as much as we could and so there was a group of 10 people and their area of focus was table side presentations so courses we would that were more than just putting a plate on a table, it would require more theatrics one of the ideas that came out of that group was picnics feel deeply connective and their insight was that there's something like remarkably nostalgic and connect nostalgic and connective about having a picnic and so our cheese course became a central park picnic and we literally changed the tablecloth and picnic basket and it became this whole thing that we that went very very well became something that was celebrated

1:14:45another one that came out of that that didn't work is we had a hotel, the Nomad, right up the street. And there's something when you're at home, you finish dinner in the dining room, you go to the library, you have a cocktail. And we were like, we got to expand the experience from just happening at 11 Madison to also happening at Nomad. But that only works if we can get people there. All right, we need a car service that just sits in front of our restaurant and drives people over to that restaurant all night long. But that's not enough. We should drive people home to their apartments. Anyway, that idea never worked.

1:15:25Because there were too many guests. We could never actually have enough cars to do it consistently for everyone without it being totally unaffordable from a financial perspective. We went from that. We had a rickshaw to try to do it at one point. That was a disaster. Because when it was really, really hot out, the people in the back felt like They were an imposition to this poor kid that was sweating while they were pedaling the rickshaw. There's certain things that you just try over and over and over and over again. I'd say seven years after starting to figure out some sort of car service, we moved to the restaurant of the Hamptons and we got BMW to sponsor it and gave us seven series and it finally worked.

1:16:06Now, it worked because we had a sponsorship around it. One of the things we'd always say to people who had worked with us for a long time is if someone new joins the team and they have an idea that we've tried before that has failed, never shoot it down. Because just because we've tried it once and it didn't work, that doesn't mean that maybe they have a better approach that we didn't consider. Maybe the world has changed around us such the idea can now work. There's a quote I live by, which is by, a lot of comedians have it on their laptop, and it's Ernest Hemingway, the first draft of Everything is Shit.

1:16:42And the reason I like it is because One, it gives you the creative freedom to have, because there's no such thing as a bad idea, I don't think. But it allows you to maybe start with rickshaws. And if you keep going into that work and improving it, eventually you will, through another draft, a third draft, a fourth draft, fifth draft, sixth draft, get it better. And I love, one of my big things is good is the enemy of great. And it's very dangerous when you're at good, or you start wrestling your laurels, because the work can always be better. Good enough is never good enough. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, love that.

1:17:11By the way, I think there can be some bad ideas, but there might be a brilliant idea hiding just behind it. Well, I think bad ideas are kernels to good ideas. Is there an example of that where, so I don't know about the rickshaw, but like an example of like an idea. So, okay, maybe I'll go first. So I went to Adam Handling's restaurant, a guy in Thailand, he owns a frog in London, got a star. He's got a really gorgeous pub. when they're about a year and a half ago, and they do this chicken skin butter, which is orgasmically delicious. It's so good. And they have this like doorstop thick bread, and it comes to the table, and it's just...

1:17:52That sounds very good. Oh, it's very... It's marvellous. So anyway, I ordered it, it was this last Sunday. Order it, it comes to the table, and it's a very... It's in a different thing. It's like almost three... So you've got the chicken skin butter, which is this like almost sort of snow globe with these little chards of chicken skin in there. Then they had this almost like a little thing of Mars. It was like this red parfait. And then they had this chicken skin, sorry, chicken gravy that you dunk in. And it was just, they'd taken that idea, but it was already good and made it great. And it was just, all they'd done is added a little bit of parfait, but the dunking of the thing made it way more theatrical as an experience.

1:18:30Anything like that for you guys, we've taken a really good idea. And just through, I love your quote, what's the magic quote about intention or just more effort? Sometimes magic is just investing more energy. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So any on that? I mean, at Nomad, the signature dish was our roasted chicken with black truffle and brioche and foie gras under the skin. It was unbelievable. Yeah. It was served for two. We'd present the bird. We'd come it back. We'd carve off the breasts. And then we'd do like a fricassee of the legs. It was the signature dish. That entire hotel brand was effectively built on this chicken dish.

1:19:14There was no need to ever do anything with it. But every year we'd look at it and be like, how do we make it cooler? Now there's danger there because you have to be very careful with messing with something that is working that well. So you need to make sure you have a red team around you because you should never change something for the sake of changing it. Oh, a red team, meaning if we have a brainstorming group and we come up with an idea that, let's say, I am very, very passionate about, I would say, okay, you and you, you're the red team, which means your job is to study and come back with an impassioned argument why it's a bad idea.

1:19:57Red team is, as I understand it, a term that's used in the news. Like when a news station's about to break a story, the red team tries to poke every hole in the story to make sure that they don't have egg in their face after the story comes out. We use it creatively. So like people who may even believed in the idea were on the red team. They had to intentionally challenge the idea. And then if you still liked it, after the red team was done with you, then you can roll it out. What we did there was, I forget whose idea it was, like most great ideas in collaboration you never know the person who planted the seed but like thanksgiving the wishbone do you know this do you know what a wishbone is it's the thing in the chicken right in in the turkey and in the chicken yeah where two people pull it yeah my mom always used to say to me as a kid like make a wish darling and whoever gets the thing on the top their wish comes true so you and i both pull it and and i was like that was i was like i haven't done that in ages and I loved doing that so let's let's do that so at the very end when you had the chicken we had this beautiful little piece of wood with a hole in it and the wishbone just came out and we just give people the wishbone totally unnecessary it was already a hit it just made something that was already awesome yes a little bit more awesome yes it's and is that applicable to other categories because I don't want to get onto the welcome conference because yeah of course what you do.

1:21:29If you're doing something and it's really working, you should ask yourself, can it work even better? If you're doing something and it's just not working, obviously fix that. Before we get on to the Welcome Conference, is there any ideas? I think having the courage to stick with an idea through hard times, in a sense, it's almost like knowing it's going to be a bit shit to begin with, but there is something there. There's some sort of fodder there that you can bounce off. Is there an example that's kind of started not necessarily great through X number of drafts has become something that's really interesting?

1:22:11Oh.

1:22:18Yeah, I mean, I don't know things that started out not great. I just don't... The word for Miles Davis, endless reinvention. There's nothing that didn't go through endless iterations. And I think that's what makes it fun. It's actually the beauty of restaurants compared to the book. The pro of the book is that it will forever be experienced exactly in the way that I intended. You can read this book in 50 years, it'll read verbatim the same way it reads now. restaurant's hard because the restaurant's going to close every restaurant, any expression like that, and it will only exist in the memories of those who experienced it.

1:23:03Yeah. Now the benefit of a restaurant versus a book is a restaurant, you can open it, and day three you can start tinkering, and you can tinker forever. A book, you can't. It is what it is. It's two very creative expressions, but with very, very big fundamental differences between them. But also, I suppose there's an interaction with a book and a person. One of my favorite things to do is re-read books. Because I think the same book... Oh, who you are, when you've read it, where you're at in your life, the same words. I actually asked this to Seth. I was like, what's a book? I think you have the right book, wrong time.

1:23:48Yeah, for sure. And I asked him, I can't remember what he said, because I think it's a really delicious experience. And I read your book, what, two years ago maybe? Even before we already discussed it. And then I've got thousands of notes all over it. And then I go back and prep for this conversation, reread it. And I'm like, bro, there was, again, a kernel of an idea, and I can't even remember what I'd put. But I scribble all over books. I love doing that. Because I feel like when you read a book with a pen, and make notes. You're not reading the book, you're having a conversation with the author.

1:24:23That's why I love reading books from old autobiographies from the 1800s. You're fully in their head. You're listening to them. Also, you can read weird... I tried to read Dostoevsky, that Russian novelist, he did Crime and Punishment. I was reading notes from the underground. I gave it a good go, but I was on a beach in Thailand and I was like, this is kind of morbidly depressing. But it was interesting to see the way these guys think back then in 1846, whatever. And it's like, oh yeah, we're still the same place. That's what I'm saying. You're experiencing it now exactly in the way that he intended it.

1:25:04And there were probably some remarkable restaurants then. Yes. They don't even exist in memories of anyone anymore. Yeah. If you could go back in time to any period to dip yourself in for a day or to experience hospitality to inform today, where would you go back to? You know, I love movies. I just love, especially when you're very, very passionate about your work. Movies have always helped me put the world on pause and just like lose myself in something else. What are your favorite films? So many different movies. I'm not like a, here's my top three films of all time. But when I think about that question, like The Last Emperor, and thinking about that level of, not that I crave being actually a part of that world.

1:26:08Last Emperor is, I don't watch that many films, to be honest. No, no, no. It's China forever ago. Oh, fuck. Yeah, yeah.

1:26:20But then also like Midnight in Paris and like those worlds. I would just love to – I mean, Last Emperor is the Forbidden City. Midnight in Paris is Paris in the 20s, right? Like there's so many moments where – and by the way, those two could not be different, more different from one another in terms of vibe. but there's something relentlessly beautiful about these different seasons in history and the way in which people created these environments. So I don't know where I would go, but I'd get a little time machine and just hop around for a few days for sure. And what would you be trying to notice?

1:27:11Again, this is all ethereal kind of. That's the thing. I'm always surprised by what I notice wherever I go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad used to say, keep your eyes peeled, which was his way of saying there's inspiration everywhere if your eyes are open wide enough to see it. Well, again, this could be a load of bollocks, but I think I've read it. I'm obsessed with the Beatles, and I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Their whole thing is reinvention. A bit like Mars Davies. every single album was completely different. 100%. Nine years, bish, bash, bosh, let's just become the best band of all time.

1:27:45But there's a story of, and I've read a lot of books on the Beatles, and it's Paul McCartney was on a plane, the Salt and Pepper arrive at the, you know, to season his meal or whatever. And a flash of inspiration, Kurt, it happens, but it's not really a flash because he'd been trying loads of things. And he goes, S and Pepper, and then he writes Sergeant Pepper. but if you notice if you open yourself up to these things so do you meditate or anything like that do you have any practices to open yourself up to awareness or is that just kind of an innate thing for you I've done meditation in the past it's never something that's stuck for me interesting I think everyone has these things that they do to refill their tank I do like to journal I like a practice of reflection on a nightly basis any specific like is it just chunder out of it in your head My rule is I just have to write the date.

1:28:36That's all I actually have to do. Oh, wow. So lower the stakes. Lower the barrier so far. More often than not, once you write the date, you keep on writing. There are some days where I'm just so wiped, I just write the date. That happens very infrequently. But no, what it could be is something that I was inspired by that day. It could be something I did that day that I feel merits an apology the next. Such as? just being a person that I didn't want to be to someone on my team. Losing myself in a moment of intensity at work and bringing emotion to criticism, which is fine so long as you can actually step up and apologize the following day.

1:29:22And those moments of repair are sometimes the most powerful of all. Moments of repair, most powerful of all? in terms of building trust. Interesting. If you've ever, okay, think about relationally. If you have a friend

1:29:45and you never have a fight, that's a pretty good friend. If you have a friend and you actually had a knockdown, blowout fight and then one of you came to the table and said, hey, I actually deeply care about this friendship. I'm sorry. I want to repair it those are generally actually the greatest relationships because you fought to save it and you become closer as a result the same is true in customer service actually there's all this data around if someone has a good experience they'll talk about it this much if they have a bad experience they'll talk about it this much if they have a bad experience but whatever the company is invested the time, energy, and resource to make it right, that's the one they'll talk about the most.

1:30:33Anything on that, if there's some ag with a customer? Whatever it is. If they're upset and you put in the work to make it right, they will become one of your most deeply loyal customers. So why would you say so much customer service? I think you're a unique person in this regard, but I think it comes easy to you. but for a lot of people, it's customer service. Because what gets measured gets managed and it's harder to calculate the return on that. I think of customer recovery as one of the greatest forms of marketing you can do and people woefully underspend on it. Is there any brands you've worked with across the Welcome Conference or with your consultancy about turning adversity into opportunity?

1:31:21I haven't met, I don't have a list of people that are exceptionally good at that. but it is something I believe in very, very passionately. I think it's because you get the ego. As soon as there's an argy-bargy, an ego. Well, no, I just don't think people think about that way in terms of how to invest their dollars. All these brands have wildly big marketing budgets, and then if you ask them what their customer recovery budget is, they don't even have a line item for it. It's the budgets. It's interesting. I interviewed the global CEO of Tony's Chocolony. Have you seen the chocolate brand? It's pretty big in the States now.

1:32:03It's a really big, thick chocolate. And they've got offices all over the world. And one of his things he did, which is more internally just to change the whole conversation, is they had like five coffee machines in their central office. And he was like, we're just creating a workforce that is just siloed. and like no one actually knows what's going on across any of the business. So he got rid of all the coffee machines, just had one in the middle. Everyone's going, why are you doing that? And he's like, just wait. And he goes, the connection to create the culture of the ideas. I was just like, but again, it's just take me into the coffee machines.

1:32:37It's really, really, really, really smart. What have you, so you said you were texting Seth this morning. I read, I used to deliver cheese around London. I left uni, I was like, what am I doing? and that's how I kind of got into the underbellies of Kitchens I really got excited for this but I read, oh my god what was the book I read it wasn't Purple Gout, Lynchpin and reading that book basically put me on the journey for this so he's like a hero of mine and he's been on a few times what have you learned from him? I mean so much, you talk about creative people one of the, I'll never forget this one story when I met him the first time I think I just bought a bunch of Girl Scout cookies.

1:33:21Do you know what Girl Scout cookies are? That sounds stupid. Are they like cookies for Girl Scouts? That's not me being... No, no, no, no. It's a deeply American thing, so that's why I asked the question. No, no, I don't know. So Girl Scout cookies are, they are released, I think, twice a year, and they're sold by Girl Scouts, and it's how they raise money for their troops. And they're very classic cookies. they've almost never changed. There's Thin Mints and Tagalongs. They're the same cookies that I was eating when I was a kid that they're selling now, and they're like five bucks a box or something.

1:33:54It's just the same cookie? But they're released seasonally, and that's a moment. People crave them because they're nostalgic and also buy a lot of them because you're supporting your friend's daughter effectively. With you.

1:34:11he was telling the story about how there was at the grocery store that he went shopping at, there was a table, like a little folding table with two Girl Scouts selling Girl Scout cookies outside of the grocery store. And every time he'd leave, they'd be saying to everyone leaving the store or coming in, do you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies? Do you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies? And invariably, even though they're little kids, people have a tendency to just walk past people trying to sell them stuff. And one day he walked past them and they turned around and he goes, hey, can I give you some advice?

1:34:41Which is these two Girl Scouts had no clue that they were getting advice by Seth Godin, one of the great thinkers of our time. And he goes, stop asking people if they want to buy Girl Scout cookies. Just start asking them what their favorite Girl Scout cookie is. Because everyone here has an answer to that question. And he was just giving them the best advice ever, which was to express curiosity in someone else's perspective, engage them in conversation and I'm sure their cookie sales went up dramatically he wasn't trying he was giving them advice to stop trying to sell at people and instead try to engage with them and then the sale became an inevitability it's interesting because he's one of the greatest marketeers but why I love him is he was very good friends with Zig Ziglar who wrote The Secret of Closing the Sale and he read that book I think he reads it every year or listens to the tape every year so he has this marketing and he's a genius one of the most greatest marketing minds ever but I love it he knows how to sell things as well he's baked in his understanding through his relationship with Zig Ziglar how to sell stuff which essentially that's the best sales advice ever which is just don't enforce hospitality on people change conversation wild yeah because didn't I think didn't he have dinner with Danny Mayer and Danny Mayer's nose broke or something I don't know that's I think that happened maybe I think he walked through a door or something I'm not sure yeah yeah yeah so talk to me about Danny Mayer because you know setting the table yeah he's the don he's the like what have you learned from him I know he's got lots of sort of very pithy aphorisms be the swan slow gentle pressure I mean there's a myriad yeah what are the ones that you've picked up from him?

1:36:32I mean the entire idea of, I call those isms yes the entire idea of isms I learned from him the power of language to articulate a culture and going so far as to create these little pithy articulations of your non-negotiables to A, send a meta signal to everyone on your team that these things matter in this culture and B, make it as easy as possible for people to repeat those ideas such that they gain steam and traction within the environment. His focus on language to articulate culture is unbelievable. I think what he's accomplished by virtue of it is nothing short of extraordinary. I really believe words matter and I don't think we put enough attention to it.

1:37:20And I think the idea of calling it a captain. like in that one word you could call it manager or captain you just change the word everything else changes go into what Danny taught you about that any specific examples because words change behavior the words whether it be the swan the salt shaker constant gentle pressure all of those things were really how that was impressed upon me how I took that one of my first jobs for Danny was I was opening the cafeteria at the MoMA. A cafeteria is the furthest thing from fine dining. The MoMA was? The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I was sick, yeah.

1:38:05And the main position at the cafeteria outside of the people cooking the food is a cashier. We learned before we even opened, because I'd been inspired by him, cashiers are not like we sat around like where are the best cashiers you've ever seen and no one had a list because like that's not a job that dictates excitement uh passion responsibility and so we had the same job we just renamed it and we called it mc which was a play on words the letter M, C, menu consultant which made it very, very clear in the actual job title that you needed to really know the menu you were consulting people and the food that they were ordering and also MC, like the master of ceremonies that this is an important job and by virtue of that one simple change of title we ended up with some of the most remarkable people same pay scale, same job, different title my mother-in-law and this is one now i've i've realized has existed in more than just her scenario worked as an accounting uh she was an accountant she was a partner in a firm in virginia they don't have receptionists there they have the director of first impressions you're not there to receive people you are there as their first impression and And in re-articulating an idea, you make it very clear to the person, to the individual, what their responsibility actually is.

1:39:43I think people need to stop putting security guards at the front of luxury stores. They need to replace them with doormen or hosts, right? Like people who still need to make sure that the environment is secure, but that is not the entirety of their role. their role is also to warmly greet people. I mean, I went to a very expensive watch store because I owned one of their watches and I was going in for a repair. And the security guard made me feel like I was a criminal walking in there because his entire job was to keep the environment secure without realizing that he was also the first impression for people who had spent a lot of their money to support that brand.

1:40:33A simple job title change there would have, in my view, led to significant result. Yeah, I think it's, like, I feel like it's, and that's why we have a blandemic of these sort of mission statements and just brands. I think it all starts with a set of language and code and then the brand actually comes off that. and I feel like people really need to, words can be very heavy. I don't mean heavy as in a darkness way, but as in like - Powerful. Powerful, yeah, that's a better way of putting it. And yeah, it's mad. There's Peter Thiel, who's the famous American billionaire. He wrote a really good article.

1:41:15And again, this may be less, but it's how the word sales, we've all tried to change the word. It's almost where it doesn't work, or at least it doesn't in the UK. so no one would ever say on their LinkedIn page, sales manager. It would be commercial director or new business development or partnerships manager. All these little words make a massive difference. And I feel like one of my big things is when we've been trying to do partnership deals with the podcast, it's just changing the word from you to our, so everything's as an O-U-R. our partnership, our future. So I really believe that that little word can have a massive change on the direction of travel.

1:42:06Do you know what I mean? It's mad. What's underrated about Danny Mayer or Maya?

1:42:15Gosh, what is underrated about him? Everyone, I think, understands his focus on culture, the impact he's had on hospitality and restaurants. I think that what's maybe not celebrated enough about him is the amount of ownership he gives to the people on his team not necessarily literal ownership but the feeling of ownership when I worked for him I really thought of the restaurant that I worked at as my restaurant. Wow. And there were times that I would do something that he didn't agree with, but he would let me do it. Now, there were moments where he'd be like, hey, this is my restaurant. I want it done this way.

1:43:07But he was very, very careful with how often he played that card. He's good at allowing people to truly make things their own. and there's zero ego attached. I think he's one of the greatest to ever live. I love that man so much. In terms of tensions and not friends, I love that as a theory, ego versus not having an ego because I feel like this whole, one of the guys we went for lunch with, Rory and Osh, in fact, Seth wrote the foreword, The Science of Storytelling, Will Store, insane book, and he's wrote The Status Game. And we were sort of, over a bottle of wine, he was saying the issue with ego-less sometimes is that if we were all just Buddhists, none of this would have been, if we were just sat there going like, namaste, bro, none of this stuff would have been built.

1:44:04So it's like we need this, sometimes we need, and this is just a delta of exploration here, is we actually need ego, we need aggression, we need drive and competitiveness because it pushes us forward. And conviction. And conviction. And I wouldn't be doing, I wouldn't be sat here in Nashville with you if I didn't have an ego, right? If I was like, I'm just going to just do this. But at the same time, if you're a dick, again, I believe it's another tension. Do you know what I mean? So how do you navigate that? Because clearly to become number one, you even write in the book, like you were hurting when they read your name out first.

1:44:38Like it hurt. Like you need that ego, but also you shouldn't have too much for an ego. Talk to me about that. yeah I mean you definitely need an ego what I even said before about creativity I like to dream of a world that I wish existed and then one day welcome people into my imagination why is my imagination something that anyone should care to walk into that is ego driven I believe that my imagination is good enough that other people should want to walk into it I mean how you navigate it is through again not to be redundant intention it's knowing what you want to be and also knowing what you don't want to be and surrounding yourself with people who trust you and feel trusted enough by you that they're willing to call you out when you go too far like if you don't have anyone around you that's willing to be like hey dude you're wrong or hey dude this version of you kind of sucks.

1:45:43I talk about criticism and how you invest in the people that work for you. You better put yourself in a scenario where other people feel comfortable investing in your growth as well.

1:45:59Comfortable investing in your growth. And is that something you... Is that linked back to the intention and the language? I'm just saying, if you have no one around you that is willing to tell you when you're messing up, then you are never going to know when you're messing up and you're going to stop growing. Yes, okay. If criticism is an investment in someone else's growth, then you better make sure that there are people on your team that feel comfortable criticizing you. The David Chang pod you did was great. Oh, Dave Chang. Yeah, yeah. And he said you're a maniac. How are you a maniac? Because I think it's interesting, because you have this attention to detail and all this stuff.

1:46:35When you said that, what would you say that meant? I think he's probably speaking to, I work hard. And if you work with me, you will be celebrated and supported and cared for. And you're expected to work hard as well. What does hard look like to you? Like in a week, this last week, whatever. Because I think there's levels of hard. How are you just doing whatever it takes, given the moment, to achieve the most fully realized version of whatever it is you're doing? I'll give you an example. We held our Unreasonable Hospitality Summit for the first time here in Nashville last year. Where was it? It was at the Four Seasons.

1:47:28Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. And it's 350 people. They come to Nashville. It's a two-day thing. It's not like welcome. Welcome is a conference, a one-day thing. This is more of like a practical workshop through the lessons of unreasonable hospitality, but also conference and party and this whole thing. And when we sold tickets last year, I was surprised by the number of people that were coming alone. I imagined that it would be groups of two, four, six, like people from different companies coming together. And I was not just surprised, I was concerned because so much of the summit was designed not just for what was happening from the stage but also what was going to happen at the tables.

1:48:19And I was fearful that some tables filled with groups that had known each other for a long time were going to be fully leaning in and alive and vibrant and then other tables with a lot of solo diners would be reserved and shy and it would be negatively impactful in the conference and also for those individuals. I'm a relentlessly extroverted person, but even I don't like to walk into a hotel ballroom if I don't know anyone. It makes me uncomfortable. And so with the team, we were talking, I was like, all right, hold on. I want you to, let's write an email to everyone that's coming alone. and we're like three weeks out from the summit.

1:49:03We have a lot of stuff on our plate. And say, hey, we saw you're coming alone. We're not throwing shade. Actually, we're honored that you're doing it. The night before the summit, if you're traveling into town, if you already have friends you're looking to see or if you just want some rest, great. If you'd actually like to meet someone else who's coming alone, we're going to set up dinners all around Nashville and we're going to pair you up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm intense to work with because the people on my team know that at any moment, something like that might come about. And that's an incredible amount of work to now be emailing separately with 60 people to figure out what kind of restaurants they want to be at and getting to know them well enough to pair them at all these six stops.

1:49:50There's no money in that. That doesn't change the conference, but it will make it better because by virtue of having done that, all the people that came alone walked into the summit the next morning when it started already in relationship with someone else.

1:50:05That's probably what Dave was talking about. When I get excited about an idea, I always say to my team, do not ruin a story with the facts. Do not ruin a story with the facts. When I have an idea of something I want to achieve, if someone immediately tells me why it's not possible, I get very upset. Oh, same here, yeah. I want a group of people that only looks at how it is possible and then is willing to do whatever it takes to bring the idea to life. I'm the same as that. The worst thing someone can say to me is you can't do it. Yeah. Because it's like, I have a complete maniac in my head that won't stop.

1:50:45What's the, so with conferences, right? So we're doing, it's not quite, it's more of a, so we do these supper clubs and stuff. and I basically, we're doing our big hungry hooteruni at the end of the year, right? Rory's speaking at it. What is hooteruni? It's basically my, so we do these supper clubs, these live podcasts. What's the etymology of hooteruni? Just my weird brain. There's not, I don't know, just like it's a hoot and I use the word rooney a lot in my writing. I just think it just sounds quite interesting. It's memorable and it's, everyone I say, they're like, what the fuck is that? I'm like, well, that's half the job done.

1:51:20and so when we do these supper clubs or networking events again to the point about language I can't stand the word networking even though it is ostensibly a networking event going in through that mindset just creates different language equals different behaviours whereas if you were to call it a make mates thing again it's one little word but it changes everything and so I looked at a lot of these events that were going on we've got a lot I mean it happens in London all the time and you go there there's like lanyards and it's kind of there's a lot of irritants I find and it's kind of forced the food's always crap like it's little things but the food's always awful like it's very sponsored heavy with like banners and stuff so I basically wrote a list of everything I dislike about these events and then basically wanted to create the sickest thing so we did it in November I had a Michelin star chef called Tom Brown who does a surf and turf with another chef called Brad Carter.

1:52:19So the food was sick. And also I was like, why does we have to be at a dinner table for these events? So I booked an area where we had all these different seats that flowed around like this. Because the last thing you want at a networking event is people to be stuck with someone that you don't want to be speaking to. Unless you just get everyone up to it. Seven minutes in, you're like, oh, mate, I had it one week. And the guy was like, bro, I'm an investment guy. I was just like, oh, no, this is a game set match. This is done. and so we wrote like a list of these things and like we did it and executed it and I felt really happy because everyone was like the energy in the room was generous and it was like you know it was about creating those things but it was about saying this is not it's not like a networking event do you know what I mean I was trying to create that magic and anyways we're doing this hooteruni and I've got all these crazy ideas in my head like obviously the podcast is called Hungry I want to do Hungronies so when people walk in my branding orange and pink.

1:53:16Yeah, yeah. So I've got all these crazy ideas, but what I'd love to know is all the lessons you've taken from the restaurants, how have you made your network, your events magical? Like, what have you... Because they can be quite stuffy sometimes, you know? I don't know. Well, yeah, I think it's just about... Have you ever read the book The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker? No, I haven't. No, you should read it. Oh, really? It's really good. The Art of Gathering? Yeah. Sick. She's very good about intention and how to do things that prompt connection. I think with every event, and different events are geared towards different outcomes.

1:53:59For me, certain things I do are for inspiration. Other things I do are for connection. Others are for community. Others, you know, and it's about identifying what is the reason that this thing exists and how do we do little and big things to optimize for that end goal? Like when it's inspiration, I mean, that is just being as wildly creative and persistent in finding the best people to take the stage. I mean, Rory spoke last year at Welcome and obviously crushed it, right? And I was introducing, Rory's very big, but for a lot of the people in that room, they had not heard of him yet. Introducing someone like him to that group was lovely.

1:54:52Something like the summit where people are going for education and inspiration, but also really community. They want to spend a couple days with like-minded people from different industries to be inspired by them. Then it's like, what very specific things do we do at the table to get people to let their guards down such that they are very open and sharing ideas with one another. So what were some of those things? I mean, you really should read The Art of Gathering. Yeah, 100%. We used to do this dinner series where I love small talk for certain things, and yet at an event, if you're not careful, people can waste the entire time together in small talk.

1:55:34You could put six remarkably interesting people around a table, and they don't say anything. So we would literally just say, hey, guys, I don't want to be too heavy-handed. It's not dogmatic. No one's getting in trouble if they don't. But there's three questions on the table. Could you actually get the small talk out of the way and then dive deep into those ideas and make that the conversation? What were the questions? They differ based on event. I mean, it depends what you're trying to accomplish. But one of Priya's rules. So you'd basically start with, so with my thing so i ask these questions selfishly my thing is inspiration so i've because i've been doing this so long i've got links make a few whatsapp voice notes i can basically get the lineup sorted like in in in that industry so that's what's done inspiration community i want people to meet like-minded people of a similar probably x size of brand but then also have fun so i've got like a dj coming and stuff like that like i want it to be but to like community yeah um

1:56:40If you and I met at a pub and we had a really fun night, it'd be great. And we'd probably just go our separate ways and never really talk again. Because we would just be fucking around the entire night. I wouldn't really know anything about you. You wouldn't really know anything about me. Vulnerability brings people together. Talking about real things makes people feel much closer.

1:57:09And so if you're really trying to establish community, like prompting the kind of questions that allow people to open up more than just whatever random things we talk about at a party. The other thing, this comes from Priya's book, and it works to varying degrees of success around a round table. Like let's say six people are sitting together, which is not what you're doing, but one conversation at a time. I think it's always a really powerful rule. Basically Priya's thing is like rules are not bad. Rules are not bad, interesting. Like actually having rules that people need to follow. Yes. As long as you're very thoughtful and don't get carried away.

1:57:57And also it's not something naff like, what's your dog's name? Yeah, like it's not, I mean there's plenty of places like you go to these retreats where you're not allowed to say what you do for a living. I'm not saying that's what you should do. No, no, but I just think it's interesting because I think this is bringing alive everything we're saying about intention and language and rules. And actually these, almost the constraint is the, it's the freedom of a tight brief. I also think assigned seating is hospitable. What did you say? Assigned seating is a gesture of hospitality. Oh, as in where people sit?

1:58:31Yeah, a thousand percent. I hate an event that I go to, unless it was done by unthoughtful people. Yeah, yeah. Where it's just open seating. Because now I have the pressure of having to let this person down. Whereas if someone's very thoughtful about how they assign seating, I think it's a gesture of hospitality. I'm going to go into the dining room when I'm ready to sit down. I know where I'm sitting. Hopefully they've put me alongside people that I'm going to be excited about spending a night with. We did our first, again, the first drafts for Everything is Shit. Our first Subber Club was like four years ago now.

1:59:10And just because I wasn't very organized. I've now got an EA who's amazing, helps me. Like basically, she sorted all this out today. And I just thought, oh, so I basically put more pressure on me. I basically got up to do the live podcast. I was like, oh, we haven't got any seats, so just sit wherever. Anxiety, it caused me. because people don't just, unless that first person sits down, like we're mimetic creatures. There's no like, and so now every time we have like a set plan, it's like, that's just off my head. But it was like, I was like, please just sit down and head. My head inside was just going into overdrive.

1:59:42Like this is an absolute carsy. And if you ever do do assigned seating, spend more time than seems appropriate on figuring out who sits where. Yes. So the questions are brilliant. So when people come into, so the Welcome Conference is an inspiration. The Unreasonable Summit, is that the right way around? It's inspiration, but training and then also community. Okay, cool. From the Welcome, what's been the most memorable talk, other than maybe Rory? I mean, so many, man. That's a hard one. Like, Rory was incredible. we had a guy named Jesse Cole this last year from the Savannah Bananas what's Savannah Bananas?

2:00:29Savannah Bananas are an exhibition baseball team in the States he bought a minor league baseball team and effectively it was a failing team and he and his wife you should just look up there's no way for me to fully do them justice but I'll give you the very 30 ,000 foot description they changed half of the rules of baseball It's like he's inspired by Walt Disney and Ringling Brothers. It's a full show now. And it's this random former minor league baseball team from Savannah. Where's Savannah? In Georgia, not too far from here. That now sells out major league baseball stadiums every single year and has more followers on social media than any other major league baseball team.

2:01:24But they've changed rules. So if you had a foul ball, do you know enough about the rules of baseball to somewhat understand? We've got cricket. I'll work out. Foul ball goes into the crowd. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you had a foul ball at a Savannah Bananas game and someone in the crowd catches it, it counts as an out. Oh, sick. It was actually giving the fans a sense of ownership and the outcome of the game. Wow. And so many things like that. Look up the Savannah Bananas. They're incredible. And if you could boil him into one pithy aphorism, what's yours's intention, for example? What would you say?

2:01:56He and I are very kindred spirits. Interesting. But I'd say his is a combination of two things. Fans first. He's relentless in thinking about every decision through the eyes of the people that they're serving, the fans. And if he was a baseball player, he got injured in college. He loves the sport of baseball. He's not messing with tradition for the sake of it, but he will not do something just because it's always been done. But again, that links to Rory's things. At school, you can't rewrite the question, but in business you can. Yeah, yeah. And I think the fun or the smart idea lies in the dumb question.

2:02:39And I think a lot of things, again, with creativity, I think questions help you open up creativity and asking dumb questions is one of the most beautiful things you can do. Any other specific speakers that were really like, I don't know, just had like interesting ideas. There's been so many every year. It's been, there was a girl named Lindsay Reg this past year who started a chain of coffee shops in North Carolina where they only employ people with autism. Wow. And her whole thing is like so many people are so much more capable than we give them credit for. And if you actually give people responsibility, it's wild to watch the people they become.

2:03:25And in hospitality with so many people struggling to actually fill their teams, she has a wait list of thousands of people that want a job and she just can't open coffee shops quickly enough to give them all jobs. Wow. we've been doing this for 10 years 12 years, the Welcome Conference so there's more than 100 speakers I think it's the principle of looking at things just spotting obvious things that are not obvious to most people on the Welcome Conference have you heard about the peak end rule? which is one of my favorite things I love the peak end rule and again I suppose it's the cognac thing.

2:04:08It's a great example. It's a great example. Have you heard of the Do Lectures? Mate, you need to check that out. So Seth knows him. A guy called David Hyatt does the Do Lectures in Wales. And it's in the middle of nowhere.

2:04:29It's a conference. It's a conference. But again, it's basically in these almost like glamping kind of tense. Oh, fun. And it's on the, but if you want inspiration just to do things differently, but he's been going for years and he's got like a series of books, you know, but it's all about do. It's all about taking action. That's his intention. So it'd be like do writing, do speaking, do creativity. But they, again, to limitations so that you have to apply. It's a rigorous application process. To attend or to speak? To attend. Got it. Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday spoke there back in the day. And they only ever allow 100 people so it's a really good constraint but one of the things he came on the pod I was asking him he goes we just don't know how to end the event and we don't know what we're going to do and basically what you got everyone to do was write a letter of kind of who they wanted to be you know coming out of the event it's kind of a very much inspirational transformative thing and they have this cow shed which is covered in candles at the end of the event as you're going to the through the you basically walk through it and you burn your burn your old self and then take your new sheet of who you are but he was saying he was struggling for ages how do you think about the Pekin rule in the conference side of things because I feel like in a restaurant it's quite easy to create that magic in events it's not as obvious in my head I mean I think honestly the way I thought about it with Welcome which took me a few years I only I think started to realize this three years ago was to do less so I could do a little bit more.

2:06:07Every year I got so excited about all the speakers I wanted to bring to the stage. The end of the conference every year, it's an amazing day. It sells out in 30 seconds every year. It's a very special day. And yet the end of the day always felt stressful because I was just trying to squeeze too much in. I felt people were bringing such high expectations to the day, and I wanted to over-deliver. And in trying to over-deliver, I was actually not sticking the landing year after year after year, where it was going a little bit too late. We were never hitting the end time perfectly. We had given people so much content that they were just getting a little bit too tired at the end of the day.

2:06:55And so what I've done, at a certain point, we had 11 speakers in a day. I think this year we're going to have seven. So what time would it start then? It goes from nine to five. Nine to five. And then is there a dinner at the end? There's all. Then the world programs parties around the conference. Well, that's because I want to get into the Walt Disney of events now. Like your imagination, like take me into that. Well, so that's where there's things that I intentionally choose not to own. Interesting. because I want as many other people to feel a sense of ownership as possible in what I'm doing.

2:07:33I throw the after party. No one else can. I've basically taken away, not from a legal perspective, but just like, if I'm doing it, other people won't do it. If I don't do it, a lot of other people will fill that space. And so there's so many really fun after parties across New York City after the Welcome Conference because other people see it as an opportunity to gather their communities while everyone's in New York at the same time. So when you say other people, that's other reps. So would you get... Other companies. But would they pay you to have those people? No. So you're just like, oh, we're just going to let you do it?

2:08:14Yeah, I'm like, we're not doing it. You guys do whatever you want. I think sometimes people try to control so much that they don't allow people... Have you read much of Charles Bukowski? Uh-uh. Oh, God, he's wrote wonderful... like one of my favorite American writers. Kind of, he wrote a book called The Postman, but he was one of those writers who was just, he was like an alcoholic postman and would just write, but he writes in a really like simplistic way. And we just talk about life in America from that perspective. Ham on Rye is a really good book. But one of his kind of big things is just don't try.

2:08:51Honestly, he chain smoked, he would drink, but he's one of those beautiful writers. And I'd love to like, maybe we're kind of swimming to that territory now, but it sounds kind of obvious, but when is it important to not try or don't try sometimes in hospitality?

2:09:10Well, I need to think about that articulation because my instinctive response is to cringe at the idea of not trying. Yeah, maybe letting go is a better way of saying it. Well, yeah, what I'm not saying is if I decide to do something, I'm going to try really, really hard to do it as well as humanly possible. What I'm saying is I don't need to be the person that does everything. And with welcome, for example,

2:09:45my team and I only have so much bandwidth. We could throw one really great after party for sure. And it would be, in my view, the best after party, right? Because obviously I'm creating the thing I wish existed. So it would be weird if I didn't think it was the best. But by not doing one, a lot of other people working really hard to create something amazing that is a part of welcome. And so even though they're not contributing to the conference itself, they're contributing to the day. and it means that there's an entire army of people out there really showing up with all of their passion to make the day better and that makes the day better.

2:10:28It doesn't need to be all mine. The more, in the same way that what the Savannah Bananas did with the Fallow Ball is cool because now the person and the audience can actually contribute to whether the team wins or loses. The more people that have a sense of ownership over how the day goes, the more invested in its success they become. Does that make sense? It makes complete sense. It makes complete sense. I think it's maybe don't, well, what Bukowski says, don't try, but I think the whole point of that is it's, he was a kind of a, what's the word, a lot of piss taker. He was kind of like a, as a writer, he was kind of like wrapped in melancholy, but was kind of, which.

2:11:12Yeah, it was intentionally provocative. Yeah, that's it. But back to what I said before, we used to have 11 speakers, now we have seven. And what we realized was it's a long day, nine to five. The last speaker is never a speaker. It's music or it's just something that people can stop thinking and smile together at the end of the day. How do you think about the moments in between the moments? So like the in between each talks, I think, because especially say we're linking this to inspiration and community. I love it when I go to events and there's time to actually just kind of mingle and mooch around.

2:11:49Are you intentionable about that? Well, that's what we're trying to get better at, honestly. It's 2 ,000 people at Welcome. And so the amount of time to get everyone out and get them fed and then get them back in or to do the same thing again for snacks, it's hard to have as much of that community, which is why I talk about the summit as more about... How many is it at the summit? How many people? 300. 300. Okay, yeah, how would you do it at the summit then? Oh, so many different things. There's too many things that I don't want to ruin the surprise of for people that come, but there's all these little games that we play or little fun secret surprises that come.

2:12:35Could you give us one or two? Not what you're doing this year that you've done in the past. I'll tell you what I did in the past that I'm... You might not use again or something. I'm pretty certain we're not doing this year. This was fun. We said day one of the summit is in the ballroom, effectively, and then people go to the rooms, change, then we gather together. Four seasons. Sick. Then we gather together on the rooftop for a really fun dinner, live music party.

2:13:01When they check in to the summit, they all have a name tag, and on the name tag is a pin.

2:13:11and there were, I think, 18 different versions of the pins. They all had the UH, the Unreasonable Hospitality logo, but the pins were, or maybe there were 20 different pins, four different colors, five different shapes. So you might have a red star, and I might have a green square, but 20 different shapes times 350 people, it means that, whatever, there were groups of 20 people that all had the same pin. so when they left the classroom part of the day to good change said tonight we don't want to be one of these events where you wear your lanyard at a party that makes it feel more like an event and less like a party we host events or we host parties not events but put the pin on and here's the game you'll notice that there's about 15, 18 other people wearing the same pin shape and color as you.

2:14:09The game to play tonight is to by the end of the night figure out why you're wearing the same pin as them. You are grouped together with intention. There's something that connects you all. And the first group to figure it out, we have a really fun prize for you. And so that night people that have never met each other were like deeply engaging with one another to try to figure out what they had in common so that they could figure out what the connective tissue was the next day all the groups started going through their thing and and we're like all right you guys want to know the truth we just randomly gave you the pins oh wow there was nothing that actually bonded you together but every group found so many different things that did yes that's beautiful and it was just some people are like fuck you guys but like it was It's an exercise.

2:14:58It was a lesson in like, we have a lot in common with everyone. And if you actually work to figure it out, it's unbelievable what you can identify. And in hospitality, if you can actually get people to let their guards down and find things that give you a genuine connection to them, regardless of the relationship, you can go so much further. I think networking is really hard for that because there's a certain anxiety. You just need to change the rules. yeah exactly that's what I'm saying it's it's you're there to learn but meet people and I feel the whole idea of just networking it's like one that word to me conjures up feelings of like transaction and two it's like I think with networks uh it's going narrow and deep you know less people but more depth whereas for like these events it's like let's do let's do an icebreaker fucking thing and it's like you know someone the name of someone's dog and whether they like you what their favorite color is, but you don't have any actual depth.

2:15:59Is there ways you can galvanize vulnerability? If vulnerability equals connection, can you galvanize that? Well, I mean, dude, some of those questions that we asked at those events were galvanizing vulnerability. Really? Some of the questions were intense. Such as? Like, how are you failing in your role right now? Oh, fucking hell. that's set up in my tummy right now. Yeah, and imagine having to actually open up and say that to a group full of strangers. And also how good it feels to answer that question to a group full of strangers. How are you failing your role right now? Yeah, again, questions like that.

2:16:43This is like a year and a half ago that we did that. How are you failing your role right now? How am I failing my role right now? I'm saying yes to a little bit too much. I'm going to get better at saying no. I don't have the margin that I need to... This is a high-class problem. I have a lot of people reaching out to me to do a lot of things that sound really cool. And I don't like letting people down. And I need to get better at saying no to a lot more stuff. Because whether it's in my life as a husband, son, dad, friend, or at work and just having space to dream, find myself doing so many things that I don't have the number of hours I need to succeed at all those.

2:17:33That's what Jeremy King said. He said that the two pieces of wisdom from his book, because have you read Without Reservation? I have not. Oh, it's a really good book. It's kind of like the James Bond of your, it's very British. I wrote that. It's the James Bondification of Will Godara's. Oh, that's fun. There's a lot of differences, but a lot of similarities. When did it come out? Oh, fuck. I just assumed you read it. I'll get you a copy of it. No, I can get it. I'll get it. Two months ago. It's really good, like, because obviously he was, well, he's slightly older. He's like 70, but he saw all the, his old thing is there's a revolution starting restaurants.

2:18:05So he was a crazy story. Again, it's about making something happen when you just make something fucking happen. He gets the Ivy, and it's all like looking back now, these are such British institutions. It was either Le Capri or the Ivy. And they were, it was kind of, not many people were coming in. It was early days. And they get a call that Mick Jagger was coming in. And the guy on the phone, all of picking up the receiver, was about to say like, oh, we've got loads of availability tonight. And Jeremy goes, no, no, no, we're fully booked, but we'll try and find you a thing. So he goes and hustles, gets all his family to come in for that evening.

2:18:42And then Mick Jagger comes bowling in. And then suddenly everyone's like, Mick Jagger's there. And, you know, he had relationships with Lucy and Freud, the famous artist. Yeah, yeah. Princess Diana was like a regular there. It was really interesting. Obviously, I live in London, so you see. That's fun, dude. But one of his things was, I mean, he had some really interesting ones. The first thing was look people in the eye. So he would ask everyone that was there, what color is their eye? And he had a little, his granddaughter. So he was having Tabor out for dinner with Ruthie Rogers, who does the cafe.

2:19:18and Ruthie went to her granddaughter color as the waiter came around and she goes brown she goes good and it was the color of the waiter's eyes so she was teaching that to her two year old which was sick the other thing was maintaining your standards is the fastest route to bankruptcy links that kind of riffs on your reinvention thing and the other thing to your point about saying no, Jeremy says I've heard Tim Ferriss say this if a speaking engagement comes up and it's in seven weeks time. Would you do it tonight? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim said that to me as well. So have you met Tim Ferriss then?

2:19:54Yeah. What have you learned? Because these guys I've not listened to for years. They're my heroes. What have you learned from him? He's based in Austin, right? Yeah, he's between Austin. He's always all over the place. I've only met him a couple times. We've had dinner. We were speaking at the same event. We had dinner that night. now you know sometimes I mean that was one we talked about this exact thing and that was the advice he gave me oh interesting but you know sometimes with someone like him it's so easy to learn from someone on their podcast or all the other stuff they're putting out I just like to hang out with people I just like to get to know them as a human being.

2:20:44You know what I mean? That's what I mean, yeah. Like, what did you learn about him that you, what is it? Because I feel like he's just such a Ruth on his podcast. That's the example of asking him. He's just a good dude. Sick. He's just a really good guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's kind and he's invested in relationship. Like, I really, really liked him. And like anyone, he's a human being and trying to figure stuff out. And I think that's. Yeah, there's something about meeting your heroes. which is kind of underwhelming. Well, it's beautiful when it's underwhelming in the sense that, so like, I remember when Rory first came on the pod, like, for example, I was well nervous because I was like, he's a, but he's like calling his wife because the delivery drivers like put the thing around the back.

2:21:27And I think Chris Williamson, he was just like, yeah, he's a normal person. Chris Williamson, I don't know if you've ever listened to him, he's a British podcaster, he's in Austin. He's got a thing called the yogurt lid rule. And I think he was sat down with this author or writer that he'd revered for years and years. And they're about to start the podcast a bit like I sat here. And the guy goes, I'm just going to grab a yogurt just before we start. And I was setting all the cameras up. And he eats the yogurt and then he starts speaking to me. He's got the lid of the yogurt and he goes like that.

2:21:56You know, everyone does that. Licks the lid. And Chris is like, oh my God, this guy is just normal. This writer who's probably published hundreds of... By the way, the thing about the confidence that's required or the confidence, not to be confused with cockiness, but the confidence required to allow yourself to just be who you are in front of people like that. Whereas so many people, even some who are extraordinarily well-known and successful that are so uncomfortable in their own skin that they need to pretend to be someone they're not, even for someone who looks up to them. As opposed to just saying, hey, this is who I am.

2:22:34And there's nothing to be embarrassed about. I am a normal person. And I just happened to have done something or said something that other people find intriguing. I love that about Rory. I think the same was true about Tim. I've also met other people who I obviously won't name, who after all they've done, still try way too hard to show up as a person that they are so clearly not. And that makes me sad. Have you ever struggled with confidence? For sure. How did you build that? I think I've just, my dad was a big part of that for me. How so? My dad is just like, he's, like when I was in high school, my mom's condition, she obviously couldn't drive me anywhere.

2:23:21I went to a private school and kids lived everywhere. So you had to be driven around to go hang out with people. He literally sold our house and bought a house a block and a half from our school. That was intentionally designed to be where everyone hung out. so that I never had to rely on everyone else to drive me around or never ended up getting left behind of all the social moments. He was very intentional to make sure that he did the little things so that the external stuff never eroded the foundation of confidence that he wanted me to have. But he also embraced me for exactly who I was. My dad, military guy, football player, big, strong man.

2:24:10Not a professional football player. No, but there's a lot in your book. I didn't realize that from the book. I thought he'd always been in hospitality. No, no, no. I'm saying like college football, all the matter, again, lacrosse, went into the military, was a first lieutenant, won a bunch of awards, medals rather. He's just a manly man. I went to high school. I played sports, but I was in a grunge band and bought my clothes at the Salvation Army and I had hair down to here. And I was not, I'm sure, the son that he thought he was going to have at that point. But he was, me, totally celebrated every choice I made.

2:24:55And then I ended up doing all the stuff in restaurants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he never, like, he... he focused on my development. He focused on my growth. He put me in positions there that would not erode my confidence. He pushed me outside my comfort zone but embraced who I was. He's the best. Have you read Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way? No, I've not. Oh, it's a beautiful book. But what would you say is one seemingly insurmountable obstacle that retrospectively paved the way forward? My mom. definitively if she was around today or you could bring like have a meal with her today and create a moment of magic weaving or dream weaving like with your dad your dad's still around if that's right to go here what would you do, where would you take her what's the most beautiful place you've been to what would that be I mean with her it wouldn't even matter where we were I would so just love to sit across the table from her for hours and hours and hours and someone who loves making my dad proud I'd love to tell her everything I've done that I think she'd be proud of and then I'd love to ask her a million questions so I could feel like I know her better it wouldn't matter where we were anything you'd really love to ask her no just all the little things just to fill in all the little gaps that's beautiful and it makes me appreciate my relationship a few more things and we'll wrap this up I've absolutely fucking loved this man I read the book so many times and this has just made it so sick so what's one truth you believe that most people would disagree with you on?

2:26:44Small talk is a good thing I think a lot of people condemn small talk, they'll be like I don't want to waste time with small talk I believe that real deep conversations is the only thing that matters I agree, I love more deep connective conversation as exemplified by the things I was talking about with Priya Parker and focused conversations. And yet, I think we are in a season where a lot of the deep conversation can be divisive and sometimes the little things that can be connective. And you need to start somewhere before you go deep. And I think so many people are so focused on efficiency that they're not making space for just silly small talk.

2:27:28I hadn't thought of that. yeah because I suppose like not that this might be a bit crass but like small talk is essentially foreplay right like you need it to get to get onto the deep things you can't just jump straight in there what are some of the like I know you talked about The Gathering book which I thought was really interesting what are some of the books or the films that have really shaped your thinking I mean my book does not exist without setting the table yep I think the one minute manager is the greatest short book ever about being a good leader. Everything I talk about with praise and criticism.

2:28:04Yeah, what's the crack with that? What's the situation with that? I mean, it'll take you 20 minutes to read it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like this big. The font is this big. It's by Ken Blanchard. And it's all about like, and it's in the title, The One Minute Manager, just how to like show up and lead well. And I read it in college and every single time any manager comes onto my team, that's their assigned reading. What's there, but I remember it because it's in your book but what's there's like a I mean like the rules of criticism yeah but praise the person praise criticize the behavior not the person yes a lot of that stuff yes so many books those are like set on the table one minute manager are the two that have stuck with me the longest in terms of like being formative parts of who I am how often do you read not nearly as much as I'd like to now yeah unfortunately unfortunately um i'm reading a book by this guy zach cass um about ai right now the new renaissance which i'm very excited about i did i've like literally i've had it in my bag for two and a half weeks i'm three pages in when i'm home it's hard to find time to read but remember what i was saying before about no um getting better at saying no like as my life changes, my habits need to change.

2:29:25And in the morning or at night is when I used to read. I can't read in the morning or at night anymore. And yet reading is a big part of who I've been. And so that means that I just need to carve out an hour in the middle of the day to read, which seems insane to me to read at work. And yet like... Yeah, my mate, Jack Rubin, who's built a brand called Purdy and Fig in the UK. I mean, they are one of the greatest D2C stories and they're probably your friend who you're talking about would love them and it's essentially no one has reinvented cleaning products so they've done it as in household kitchen sprays and stuff and they basically pre-amized that you get a bottle come through but you feel like you're in a luxury restaurant sort of thing and and it's anyway it's D2C and one of his things he does and he does it in the middle of the, you know, they've scaled this, like, I think it's about in three years, 120 mil on D2C.

2:30:28I think it was the fastest growing company in the UK last year. Like, it's a real success. It's the Harry Razors of UK. There you go, yeah. As I was going to say, like, that's the sort of level. He, in his office, he has a chair, like a sofa in the middle, and he will literally wake, not wake up, he will go and sit in the middle of the room in the middle of the day and read for 25 minutes. and I was like people he goes one I want the team to realize that reading is not a distraction reading allows you to see your business from 30 ,000 feet and two he wants to encourage a culture of curiosity he says that one thing has basically changed everything and he goes and he just encourages people like if you want to read if you want to go on a walk you can do those things in terms of the systemizing magic and AI I know you've talked about that like how do you think do you know the restaurant Fallow?

2:31:20Have you seen Fallow in London? No. Oh, they're like a, again, big success story at the minute, but they're huge on socials and have an amazing restaurant. They were talking all about using AI and sort of the customer service side of things. How do you think that will pan out in terms of, if you're reading a book on it, I'm just curious. No, listen, I think there's a lot of people out there that think AI is antithetical to hospitality, and I believe the opposite to be true so long as it's embraced in the right way. I think different people are going to use it for different reasons. Those that employ the technology solely for efficiency's sake will be making today dollars at the expense of tomorrow dollars.

2:32:11Those that recognize it is a tool not just for efficiency but to refocus energy are the ones that I believe will win in the long term. What I mean when I say today dollars versus tomorrow dollars, that means maximizing profits today but degrading your long-term business over time. And so you're saying AI will come in to essentially... Those that use the technology just for efficiency, I think will be missing out on a lot of opportunity. So put it this way. two companies, they do the exact same thing. AI can come in and replace 20 % of their workforce and they'll save a ton of money. Which that's coming across most industries.

2:33:04Company A does it. Let's 20 % of their people go, replaces them with AI. Company B lets 10 % of their people go, replaces all 20 % functionality with AI and redeploys the 10 % that they did not let go to more meaningfully make the experiences as human as humanly possible. And uses AI as a tool to help them in that effort. Company B will win in the long term. Company A will lose. that I feel very strongly about what are some of those specific things they can use it for though now it's an impossible question oh what can they use it for now yeah like as in like in a restaurant setting like is it remembering people's names oh no no no what I'm saying is there's a lot of things that human beings do now that don't impact the customer experience with you they're going to get replaced first now you can either just save all that money or think about how many, if you want to speak only about restaurants, think about how many restaurants that just don't have enough bodies on the floor.

2:34:14Or the experience just sucks because they're not paying people enough to get the best and brightest to work there. If you actually look at it as step one and a two-step plan to, yes, increase your bottom line, but also increase your effectiveness and actually providing an experience worth remembering. I think it's the people that look at it as an efficiency and a tool and an opportunity to be even better by redeploying human beings and allowing them to focus on the things that make their businesses human. It's a co-pilot, not a pilot. Exactly. Final question, purely for my afternoon in Nashville, mate.

2:35:02Where's really good to go, man? So I've done Dino's. Like, yeah, I've got today, I've got tomorrow, but I'm now redoing the podcast I was managing on Saturday because we ended up getting just pissed. So he rocked up and was like, mate, we're meant to be recording it too. And I'm like, mate, I'm four deep. So like, yeah. But yeah, so what's like really banging food? I mean, there's a place called Iggy's in Wedgwood, Houston that serves amazing pasta. Really interesting. There's a place called Kisser. As in kiss her or K-I-S-S-T? K-I-S-S-E-R by the Strategic Hospitality Guys. They're some of the great operators here in Nashville.

2:35:38Amazing. And that's in East, and it's just amazing. It's more Asian food, but it's so, so, so good. There's also the same part of that company. They have a place called Baby Chan, which is like a bakery, but also with savory food. Delicious. What about the best Nashville chicken? Oh, I mean, some people would say Hattie B's. other people would say Princes. Princes, yeah. Brown's Diner is really, really good. That's like old school Nashville, awesome. Arnold's Meat in Three is a classic. The one place on Broadway, and I'm having a moment, a senior moment right now, where they have great fried bologna sandwiches, and the music is actually awesome.

2:36:26And if you want to go experience Broadway, this is where you go. I'll figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, and then in terms of like drinking, I do that quite well. Yeah, I know. I mean, all these places you can drink at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sick. There's also a place in the East called Skinny Dennis, which is really cool. I went to Cafe Rose yesterday. Cafe Rose is awesome. Right across the street, there's a place called Schulman's, which is awesome. I went to Schulman's as well. So fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to Schulman's. That's the thing I noticed here is when you, the hospitality in terms of, they will sell you in a most beautiful way a dish whereas in the UK you don't get that so I walked in they're like I'm not doing an accent but they're like you need to try not need to try but they said it in the most beautiful way this broth we've made it's like all fresh and it's got all these herbs and it's got turmeric it'll make you feel amazing I'm like science like cafe rose yeah really good well mate it's been an absolute joy thanks for coming to Nashville well thanks for being so so nice to meet you generous with your time man I really appreciate it like as I said that book's been I literally recommend it to everyone Ali, the guy who I met at the bar at the pub, at Lucky Paddy's he was like, oh you do a podcast he was like, who are you here to interview?

2:37:37I was like, Will Goddard he was like, bro, like, fuck that book, or your book, is my bible he works in tech sales and I was like, it's so beautiful that's what I really love the book for it's not just about hospitality it's about life, creativity, generosity and so it's just been an honour, man I really appreciate it thank you so much man that was absolutely sick don't worry I said hi thank you so so much for listening to the podcast I really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on LinkedIn, search Dan Pope, and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands.

2:38:35Thank you so much.