Building the World's Best Restaurant with Will Guidara (E257)

0:00Watch it early on the High Performance App. Available now, Roman Kemp, the broadcaster, opens up a powerful conversation on success and mental health. The idea that one restaurant is the best restaurant in the world is kind of absurd. When you earn the top spot on that list, what it means is that you are having the greatest impact on the world of restaurants at that point in time. I derive significant and genuine pleasure out of bestowing graciousness upon others. Am I willing and prepared to always do what right looks like at every crossroads? And you make that commitment to yourself, then you never need to make another challenging decision ever again.

0:42That is Will Godara, and this is High Performance, the show that unlocks the minds of some of the most fascinating people on the planet. I'm Jake Humphrey, and alongside Damien Hughes, we learn from the stories, struggles, and successes of our guests, allowing us all to explore, be challenged and to grow. And I'm so pleased you've come to this episode because I know that Will is not a household name, but he is the man who created the world's number one restaurant, 11 Madison Park in New York. And the key is he didn't do that by accident. He learned the secrets, he employed those secrets and he changed the restaurant business forever.

1:22He's actually written a book subsequently about those experiences called Unreasonable Hospitality. It is a brilliant read. And in the book, Will describes in fascinating detail the mindset that took him to the top, the behaviours that made that crucial difference, and probably most importantly of all, the way that you can achieve greatness in your life by employing the same tactics. Enjoy. And before you do, here's a quick word from our brilliant partners. Before we get going, just to let you know that you can now enjoy a free trial of High Performance Plus, where you can get early access, ad-free content, exclusive masterclasses, and high-performance originals.

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3:49Will, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. What is high performance? High performance, I think it's just realizing your most authentic potential. And for me, that happens when people are disciplined and intentional enough to pursue it. I like to define hospitality. I think if there is an idea that's important to you, the more you redefine it, the better you become at embodying it and compelling those around you to embody it as well. One of my favorite definitions of hospitality is it's about being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. I think high performance is about being creative and intentional in pursuit of unleashing your full potential.

4:48What we really want to do with you is unpick the secret behind creating the world's number one restaurant. There's only one number one restaurant in the world and you managed to create it. And we believe that one of the secrets is this. It's a hot dog. It is indeed not just any old hot dog, Nathan's New York hot dog, which we've managed to get from the East Coast. By the way, which is remarkable. To the West Coast. And I will take that. I will hold this hostage for the balance of the interview. That's amazing. Almost everyone listening and watching this, they're now thinking, why is the man who created the number one restaurant in the world holding a New York hot dog?

5:29So excited about a hot dog. Tell us. Okay, unreasonable hospitality was this way that long before I understood what it meant, I had articulated what I believed our impact could be. Because first, I think it's important to acknowledge the idea that one restaurant is the best restaurant in the world is kind of absurd, right? There's too many restaurants. It's too subjective. When you earn the top spot on that list, what it means is that you are having the greatest impact on the world of restaurants at that point in time. When I set out to start pursuing that goal, which happened after we came in last place on the list the first time we were on it, I started thinking about the chefs that had earned the top spot on that list.

6:21I think whenever I've tried to achieve some sort of audacious goal, I like to start by studying those who've accomplished it before me, learn the lessons I can from them, take those lessons, make them my own, have a go at it myself. and each one of them well they were unreasonable in pursuit of the food they were serving their product and relentless in pursuit of innovation whether it was the ingredients they were sourcing or the techniques they were using you think Heston Blumenthal and everything he's done at the Fat Duck with the crazy molecular techniques and each of those chefs through their relentless innovation changed how restaurants around the world cooked when I set out to try to earn that spot the impact I wanted to make was not in pursuit of product and not through being relentless in pursuit of change it was by being unreasonable in pursuit of people and relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never change which is our collective human desire to feel seen to feel a sense of belonging, to feel cared for or just honestly to feel a little bit loved and that's when I wrote down unreasonable hospitality.

7:35The only thing was I had absolutely no idea what those words meant when combined, but I think that's okay. I think too many people spend so much time trying to perfectly articulate a goal they never start pursuing anything. I think you need to trust in the fact that as you pursue it, it will reveal itself to you along the way. The hot dog happened a few years after I wrote those two words down for the first time, But it was symbolic of a big breakthrough in understanding. I was in the dining room helping the team on a busier-than-normal lunch service, and I found myself clearing appetizers from a table of four, and they were foodies on vacation to New York City from Europe just to eat at restaurants.

8:17And this was their last meal. They're going right to the airport afterwards to head back home. And while I was there, I heard them talking about all the great meals they'd had. They'd been to Le Bernardin and Daniel and Jean-Georges and Per Se. those are all like the best of the best. And now they were at 11 Madison Park. But then a woman jumped in and said, yeah, but you know what? We never got to have a New York City hot dog. You know, that light bulb cartoon moment, right? And so I went out in front of the restaurant, bought a hot dog, ran back in, somehow convinced my fancy chef to serve it in our fancy restaurant.

8:48And we made it look super fancy, a little swoosh of ketchup and mustard on each plate. And then before their final savory course, which at the time was our signature honey lavender glaze muscovy duck that had been dry aged for two weeks. I brought out what we in New York call a dirty water dog to their table. And of the millions of dollars worth of food that I'd served to people to that point in my career, I had never seen anyone react the way they did when I served it to them. And that really opened up a whole new way of thinking. around what it meant truly to make people feel seen, to give them a belonging, recognizing that how we made people feel was far more important than any individual product we served them.

9:41And that became kind of the fundamental north star of everything we did from there. Amazing. And have you got any other examples like that of the reaction to making somebody feel seen, heard, and loved? Oh, well, from that point, so I codified it. I think that's important. Anyone listening to this, you've done amazing things randomly. We all do amazing things randomly. And in reality, they're not actually random, but they come out randomly. And it's in those moments that you better have the wherewithal to hold on to them, to grab onto them, to put systems behind them, to make sure they keep on happening.

10:26And so when that happened, I had the wherewithal to recognize it was a thing, right? It almost breaks my heart. How many little moments of organic brilliance just kind of flutter away and never to be seen again, or at least not until someone else comes up with them because people didn't know to hold onto them when they happened the first time. So I went to the tapes and the hot dog. What happened to make that happen? and what do we need to start doing to make sure that things like that would start happening all the time and there was three things it required being present which is like an annoyingly overused phrase these days but man in hospitality it's everything for me being present just means caring so much about the person you're with that you stop caring about everything else you need to do.

11:14Too often people are so focused on efficiency that they miss out on the things happening right in front of them. If I were as optimizing for efficiency when I was clearing their table and anyone who's ever worked at a restaurant could relate to this, I would have been scanning the dining room and trying to figure out what other tables I needed to clear and in what order I needed to clear them to get the team out of the weeds as quickly as possible. But had I been doing that, I never would have heard that throwaway line about the hot dog. Second, it required this notion that we should take what we do seriously.

11:50Anyone who wants to be great at anything needs to take what they do seriously. And we all need to stop taking ourselves so seriously. I think way too many people let these self-imposed standards, honestly, the brands that they're trying to so carefully curate and put out into the world, get in the way of them giving those around them the things that will bring them the most joy. A hot dog is way off brand in a four-star restaurant, but when you look at how it made them feel, who cares? And third, well, this idea that if hospitality truly is about making people feel seen, the best way to do it is not to treat them like commodities, but unique individuals.

12:32I could have given them, I really do believe this and insert whatever you want here, but a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon, caviar, wagyu, whatever, it would not have had the same impact as the$2 hot dog because it would not have been specific to them. The greatest connections, the greatest gestures are those where one size fits one. And so, okay, those three things, being present, stop taking yourself so seriously, one size fits one. I told the team, I was like, go out there, do this too. We even added to position to the restaurant team so that they all felt supported in bringing that idea to life, recognizing that if you run an organization, if you lead a team and you have a big new idea, you better make it as easy as possible for your team to deploy.

13:20And then we started doing this stuff all the time. So this was a long way to get to the question you actually asked, which was, do I have other examples of that stuff? Yeah, tons.

13:33a guy on the phone said his dad was more Budweiser steak and potatoes than you know caviar and champagne and we had these fancy champagne carts like on wheels people you've probably seen them like fine dining restaurants where we'd push them over to the table the the team went out and bought every single available bottled Budweiser at every bodega in the neighborhood and we greeted him with that instead of the champagne. And by the way, the guy called us to say his dad was more Budweiser steak and potatoes because he was embarrassed. He was embarrassed that his dad wasn't going to fit in. The moment his dad was greeted with that, he knew he was in a place where he belonged.

14:17I'm interested, Will, in the codifying of it because you've spoken about other examples of these legend gestures of creating these memories and that people can tell us stories. And there's other examples as well, like the granola. Here's the thing. You've interviewed a bunch of people on this show that are pursuing all sorts of different disciplines, right? And I'd imagine when you talk about high performance, one of the things that they all have in common is there is no detail too small in the approach they take to their craft to be poured over with unbridled intensity, right? Every little thing, right?

15:03Every percent you can get is a percent worth pursuing. And so that was always my approach with the experience. Every little thing needed to be interrogated. Every single touch point needed to be isolated and then elevated. When it came to the granola, that is saying, okay, at fine dining restaurants, we send people home with a little snack, one last bit of food to walk away with. And that's not something that I created. That's something that's relatively standard at this point. And in most restaurants, it's a muffin or a pastry or something else sweet. And at that time we were doing Madeleines, which anyone who doesn't know what a Madeleine is, It's a very challenging thing to make well.

15:50And with a bit of thought, it became clear to me that in serving them Madelanes, we were trying to show them all the cool things we could do as opposed to giving them the thing that they actually wanted. Which is that at the end of a meal, you don't need any more food. You're full. And in the morning, that's when you're hungry, and no one should be eating more desserts the morning after a fine dining meal where there's been plenty of calories consumed. People just want a light, simple, humble breakfast, and so we gave them granola instead. And, I mean, I've been to so many fine dining restaurants and I've thrown away so many pastries that they've sent me home with, but everyone would eat that granola.

16:37And often the last photo on someone's Instagram post about their meal was how they set up their granola the next morning. It was meant to also show that following a meal where everything was so elevated and intricate, it was like a culinary hug to finish the entire thing out, which was just to say, hey, we're just people serving people here and we want to give you something we know you'll love. So for people who are listening to this and inspired by this and think maybe this is the missing magic in my life, in my business, in my family, wherever. How did you begin and how could they begin breaking down their world so they can see it in these tiny 1 % and start to improve them individually?

17:26By the way, it is the thing. If it's not something you're doing, it is the thing that's missing. I believe it's the greatest competitive advantage any business can have is doing the things I'm talking about right now. Every company is always looking for their competitive advantage, so often. But the reality is, I don't care how good your product is. I don't care how good your brand is. Someone will come around and build a better product. Someone will be more talented than you. Someone will be more creative than you. The only real competitive advantage that can exist sustainably over a long period of time comes through investing in relationships.

18:02Because let's just get that right. We're talking about the specific things here, the hot dog, the plates, the granola, the champagne in the freezer. But it's not about the hot dog, the granola, or the champagne in the freezer, is it? It's about the relationship with the person. These are all just touch points through which you can show the extent to which you're invested in the people you're serving. Your question, though, is how do you start? Listen, we used to do this thing with the team. I call it the interrogation of the guest experience. I come to realize that most organizations, most people actually don't understand every touchpoint in the experience they're serving because they've never paused for long enough to truly interrogate it and understand it.

18:50And so we would spend entire days just naming with excruciating detail every touchpoint, every moment of interaction between us and the people we were serving. and then once we had isolated all of those things and I mean the smallest things you go to the bathroom, you wash your hands when you're in the bathroom, someone goes outside for a cigarette in between courses someone's food is brought to their table while they're still outside or in the bathroom you get it, like every little thing now you have this list of hundreds of things I just look at all of them and say alright let's pick one how do we make it more awesome I did this with a car company once and it was like a bunch of car dealers and they were so annoyed with me.

19:32They're like, we know our touch points, dude. Like, get out of here. And I'm like, no, just do it with me, please. Like, just be patient, I promise. Three hours later, and by the way, the first hour was hard to get through. They just, they really weren't into it. But three hours later, we were having so much fun and stuff like, what's in the glove compartment? Someone drives a new car off the lot a week later they open the glove compartment for the first time. That's a touch point. One that I had never met a car salesman who had ever considered it. And now that dealership, when someone eventually opens the glove compartment, it could be a week later, it could be a day later, it could be three months later, there's a gift card for a coffee in there saying, hey, go have a coffee on us.

20:19Stop if you ever need anything. What a pleasure it was to do business with you. Right? Like that stuff leaves a memory. And then by the way, it's just this giddy feeling and I remember one of the guys called me like two months later he was like I got the first call someone got it right like anyone can do it but that's the important thing here like really what you're saying is we're all working in the hospitality industry like this is available to everybody you can do it in your life too think about every individual relationship in your life and write down the different touch points pick your wife what is the touch point in the day of how you serve her.

20:58She wakes up, she gets coffee, she da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? And then you're like, oh my gosh, I could do this for her every day. Yeah. Wouldn't even be that hard. And like, just picking up on that point, you know, our wife and our children, right, they're the thing we love the most. I have not once ever, and I've been with my wife for 25 years, not once have I ever thought, how can I optimize little things here to make today special for Harriet? You know, like the glove box thing. When did she last go to drive her car and there's some flowers on the passenger seat saying I just love you. We don't, do we?

21:30It's true. It really is true. And by the way, the life stuff and the work stuff are different. I think you actually need to be more intentional in life than you do in work. Because in work, you go to work, you're at work. You're accustomed to performing. In life, you can kind of turn yourself off with the people that you should actually be the most on around. But that reminds me of the work of Gary Chapman and the five languages of love. Yes. Would you tell us about that? Yeah, so the love languages, I mean, a hugely successful book. Anyone who hasn't heard of it, it's about, it's a marriage book at the end of the day.

22:16And it's this whole idea that many, many couples miss one another and that there are love languages. and we often give love in the way that we want to receive it as opposed to getting to know our partners well enough such that we are loving them in their language, not our own. And the love languages are acts of service. It's gifts. It's touch, right? And so I like gifts. My wife could care less about gifts. She just loves quality time. In the beginning, I mean, God, in the first few years we were dating, I'd like buy her a necklace from Cartier. nothing right because I was loving her in the way that I wanted to be loved and not the way that she wanted to be loved it was adding frustration on both of our sides right because I was like I just spent a lot of money on that necklace like you should like it more and she is like why is he not like giving me anything that I want and it was my fault I was giving what I wanted to receive not what she wanted to receive so that's the love languages thing so how do you go about understanding it from the other person's perspective then so i like the idea that you said of you that you literally went to the most granular level of touch point detail how would you advise anyone listening to this will to be able to both apply that theory and the languages of love to understand.

23:43That's what this particular individual would need from me. Okay, let's do the love languages part first, which, okay, let's say you are completely obtuse and aloof and have no concept of other people's emotions. You could just ask, right? You can buy in the book and ask him. But, which by the way, is not an admission of failure. It's a form of pursuit. I want to love you in the way that will make you feel loved. we talk about that well let's do it with you guys your wives time, touch, gift or words I forget the last one how does she want to be loved yeah time gifts by the way I hadn't thought about that that's the important thing here it's not like we went into this knowing the answer but the answer is so simple so often we already have the answer we just need to stop and actually ask ourselves the question And so like, okay, now you just answered that question.

24:43You should never give your wife a physical object again. Yeah. You should always just give her some experience that results in the two of you having quality time together. And you should never spend time with your wife again.

25:01But the piece of that is the question. Why are you never here anymore? Ah, well. I did a podcast episode with Will Gadara. I don't know it's because I love you exactly like our marriage is better than ever but and I get it from a personal perspective but I'm interested in also from a professional perspective I've been a so you've got hundreds of diners coming into your restaurant yeah how do you almost preempt what the language of love will be for them so they feel seen and heard and belong I mean I don't know Okay. That's a big question. I think there's a bunch of different ways to answer it, so I'll approach it from a few different angles.

25:46The first one is what I kind of already said. Just actually be present and listen to the people you're serving. While you're at the table, just pick up on the things they drop into conversation. I think these days with the distractions of our phones, sometimes we can't slow down and focus enough on the things that the people around us are saying and also the things they aren't saying, right? Like, we're all more observant than we give ourselves credit for if we actually decide to be observant. I mean, we can all sense people's energies, right? Like if you're really paying attention, you know when a table has run out of things to talk about and they need you to chip in and help or when a table is so engrossed in conversation that they want you to stay away.

26:35You know that they want a hot dog because you just heard them say it, right? You know that a dad has been on business for like five days and really misses their kid. And there it is right there, an opportunity to be able to give him something to take home to him or her. So being present, I just think is a huge part of it. I think these recurring moments that are constantly everywhere in our lives, if we look at them and identify the recurring moments, we are set up for success in responses that are consistent regardless of who the moment happens with. But the experience is different based on what we get.

27:23So there's also just being proactive. We used to say this thing, earning informality. As much as I talk about listening, you can't listen to someone say something if you haven't created the conditions where they've let their guards down enough such that they start actually talking. So when you met your wife's dads for the first time, I imagine you called them Mr. Blank, right? Yep. Of course you did, otherwise you would not have been marrying their daughters. The moment, the first time they said, hey, call me whatever their first names are, you knew that you had been invited in to actually share a genuine relationship with them.

28:12I think one of the best things that we can do is to pursue that with people such that we get there as quickly as possible, earning informality. The idea that it needs to be earned and you better earn it as quickly as possible for the good stuff to actually start happening. And the ways to do that are, well, eye contact is a big part, right? The more you give people eye contact, the more they're invited to trust you and give more of themselves to you. A bit of well-placed humor sometimes does it. I think vulnerability is the biggest one. Say more on that. If you're willing to offer up a bit of yourself to someone, they will be much more inclined to do the same in return.

28:50Have you ever met someone who, And they've just opened up about something they're struggling with. How much closer do you feel to that person when they do? And how much more quickly does that set the conditions for genuine connection? Yeah. And you can do that professionally too. It just requires a bit more tact. So why does all this matter to you? It's just the thing that I love. Yeah. I derive significant and genuine pleasure out of bestowing graciousness upon others. It is the thing that fills my gas tank.

29:38And it happened to become the thing I did for a living. And so if I do something for a living and it is the thing that I love, well, I'm going to go all in on it and try to take it to its most fullest. realized place it makes me wonder about your upbringing and and your parents whether this was because you know this is deep empathy this is love this is compassion this is understanding this is connection these are all the things that we're missing and losing more and more in society but you have it in abundance i mean okay so when i was four my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer um And the tumor was removed from her brain, but it was malignant, which means that it wasn't just like this little ball of a tumor.

30:31It had kind of spread with little fingers kind of. And so they removed a majority of it, but then needed to use radiation treatment to kill what remained. But that was back in the day before radiation treatment was very refined. And so it resulted in radiation damage right after the surgery. She could still walk and talk and kind of do everything. She didn't have use of one leg and one arm anymore, but outside of that, she was good. But over the course of the years that followed, the radiation damage pretty quickly rendered her into becoming a quadriplegic. Now, my dad worked in the restaurant business, worked restaurant hours, which means for anyone listening, a lot of hours.

31:14still would get up early every single day, get her out of her wheelchair, get her dressed, get her showered, bring her out, get her ready for the day, go out, do the 14-hour day, come back, do the entire thing in reverse, still be a good dad to me. And yet never once did I see him feel bad for himself. In fact, to the contrary, while we both, if given the chance to go back and change our situation would in a heartbeat, he derived joy out of getting to care for her by the way he was working restaurant hours which meant he was gone for a lot of every day so i had to take care of her too and in part because he set a beautiful example for me to follow and in part because it's just i'd imagine how i'm programmed I guess.

32:09I never felt bad for myself either. There were things that my mom couldn't do for me that everyone else's mom could, right? She couldn't drive me around. She couldn't cook, all this stuff. But I had a beautiful, different kind of relationship with my mom where I got to take care of her. I didn't have to take care of her. I got to take care of her. and so ever since I was a little kid like we also my dad I went to a school where you didn't people didn't really walk to the school most people had to take a bus or get driven there and he moved us he moved our house when she started getting very sick to a house two blocks from the school because he was really worried about my confidence issues when I was a kid like would I start to feel overly reliant on everyone else's parents and not ever, like, find myself as a person and all that?

33:10So he was like, all right, I'm going to get the house closest to school, and I'm going to make sure that everyone always hangs out at our house. Wow. And so I was also the host, right? Like, so I got to take care of my mom, and I was always the host of all my friends. Like, he set it up in a way that, like, people just came to our place.

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37:16There's a really beautiful story you tell in your book, Will, about a time when you were very young, where your mum had fallen at the bottom of the stairs and you were too young to help her up, that really, to me, captured the essence of hospitality. Yeah. this was before she was a quadriplegic. So this was like somewhere in between surgery and full on. And I say that because she was still trying to get around, but it was becoming more and more difficult for her. And we still lived in a house where her bedroom was upstairs. And one time she fell down the stairs. Not to the point where like, it was an ambulance situation.

38:00I knew that. But I was too young to pick her up. and so I just got a blanket and it was close enough to the end of the night and my dad walked up and my mom and I were just asleep on the ground at the bottom of the stairs I mean think about it this way I don't remember everything about that night in fact you know like stories like that you start to wonder whether you actually remember them or you remember people telling you the story of it happening right but thinking about it now gosh that felt good to be able to be there for her in that moment what was the best bit of advice that you remember receiving from your dad he sounds like an extremely wise man oh man we could do like a six-hour podcast where i just like gave you one-liners if you weren't busy and only had half an hour to go we'd extend it no um adversity is a terrible thing to waste.

38:58That's one of my favorites from him. Tell us more on that. That's brilliant. You can't control what life throws at you. And by the way, everything we're talking about with my mom, I mean, you can control how you react to those moments, what you choose to learn from them, how you allow them to compel you to grow. I mean, my dad and I, anyone who reads the book, you'll see He and I are extraordinarily close. We talk pretty much every day. I can guarantee you we would not be as close as we are had my mom never gotten sick.

39:38You're never too young to be a mentor. You're never too old to have a mentor. I love that from him. I think that we sometimes wait to be anointed until we feel like we are empowered to invest in those around us. And if you wait to be given permission to do anything, you've likely waited too long to start doing it. On the other side of life, we get to a certain point where we don't think it's appropriate to ask for mentorship anymore or we think we know so much we don't need it, which is effectively us having made the decision that it's time to stop growing. Another one from him, when faced with challenging decisions, just ask yourself what right looks like and do that.

40:44Alluding to this idea that if you decide, anyone listening, if you can just press pause and think about this for a second, am I willing and prepared to always do what right looks like at every crossroads, and you make that commitment to yourself, then you never need to make another challenging decision ever again. Because while a lot of life exists in the gray, generally right versus wrong is pretty black and white. Now The The Warning Or the caution statement On this is that sometimes doing what Right looks like Well it costs you money You You lose Stuff But you always hold on to your integrity Did you ever not make the for sure when I was younger.

41:48Yeah. Yeah. He didn't give me that advice until I was in my twenties,

41:54but he's also, you know what he's good at? He's always been very good at like giving me the right kernels of wisdom, not only when I need them the most, but also when I'm actually ready to learn those things. Right. We've seen this in movies all the time, right. where there's like the wise sage and like the kid just doesn't want to hear it yet. He's always been good at like giving it to me when I'm ready to receive it. One of, I don't think it's your dad's phrase, but it's one I want to explore in a bit more detail, Willis. Culture can't be taught, but it can be caught. Because a lot of the lessons that you're sharing with us are incredible, but I'm interested in how do you then scale it so that you tap into the ingenuity, the imagination, the creativity of the other people that you're working with?

42:47Yeah, so when I say culture can't be taught, it can be caught. The idea there is like,

42:57you can't like read a good book about culture and then sit down and have like an hour meeting with your team and then boom, your culture's great. I think a lot of people have had the experience of having worked for a boss who says all the right things, but doesn't embody them at all, right? And it just rings so hollow. I think you can't tell people to do the right thing. You need to embody those things around them while you tell them and let them catch it from you. You need to understand that consistency is everything. You need to do that stuff every single day. day after day after day for a very, very, very long time.

43:41And then slowly, I mean, the whole idea is something getting caught, right? You catch a cold. You get infected with a virus. I think cultures can become the most beautiful viruses where if you infect a couple people around you, you get them on board with your vision. Now, the three of you start doing it. You infect a couple more people. Now the five of you start doing it. and suddenly you have an entire team of people around you. But I think where I most often say culture can't be taught, it can only be caught, what I really mean, like the great lesson, like the specific applicable business lesson there is bring people into your company.

44:29Let them exist there for long enough that they can soak up enough of your culture before you unleash them. Like Chanel has this thing where if you're a new executive at Chanel, it's something, don't quote me on these numbers, but you are not allowed to speak at a meeting for four months or something. Too many people join a new company and feel like they need to say all this stuff and do all of this stuff in order to prove that they deserve to be in that role. But the best thing a person can do and the best thing a company can ask the person to do is just to exist, to soak it up, to get infected a little bit.

45:15No, cannonball. Yeah, ease into the pool. And then when they do finally say something, not only will it carry more weight because people won't think that they're just a gas bag or something. Yeah. but whatever they say will be so much more informed because of the time they've spent easing into that pool but there's something as well that you speak about about the language here that I'm picking up the importance of that four months of staying silent and listening allows you to pick up the language of the culture that you're inheriting yeah I believe that words are very very important I talk about how words matter and we should be very, very good about articulating everything in the best possible way.

46:04Danny Meyer, my boss for a long time, was incredible with this. We shared a common language and in doing so, listen, words matter because the only way to give hundreds or thousands of people the ability to row in the same direction all the time is to have these ideas that everyone can rally around.

46:27and Danny was an expert at it to the point where people who worked at other companies called Danny's company a cult but I've come to find people that call a company a cult are generally just people who work in companies without a culture I love that but I really learned that from him and have taken it very very seriously you know like oftentimes in the middle of service in a restaurant someone gets overwhelmed and they need to chill out also have you ever told someone who was overwhelmed to chill out and how did that work out for you so we came up with specific ways to articulate that idea that was easier for people to receive and easier for people to give so what was it um that was dbc dbc actually came from a very good friend of mine um who i've known since preschool who's a he's a social worker he's he's he works in a psychiatric hospital and one day he had this realization that the hospital was way over prescribing sedatives as these kids had like these meltdowns and he had this belief system that if the kids just did some deep breathing it would be much more impactful than all the the sedatives they were prescribing so he went home to his parents' house where he still had like a silk screening machine and printed up these t-shirts that said DBC, like very cool t-shirts and brought him into the hospital the next day.

47:53I said, Hey guys, anyone who overcomes a potential meltdown three times in a row through deep breathing alone, you get a t-shirt and it's cool to care, right? Like he made it cool. Everyone wanted a t-shirt within a few months, the sedative, the number of sedatives being prescribed plummeted by some outrageous percentage. So in our restaurant, I told that story the first time I heard it, and I told it about 40 times in two months because repetition matters. If you want to get a point across, you better say it enough times that you grow sick of hearing yourself say it. And that became our thing.

48:28You weren't allowed to say chill out. You weren't allowed to say calm down, but you could say DBC to someone else. Yeah. Words matter. People don't invest enough time into articulating the things that matter to them but despite all this effort this attention to detail you will still have had many many moments where someone doesn't fit in the culture or they might fit in the culture but they don't fit in the role they have in that culture so what have you learned over the years about getting the right people in the right place and at times simply having to remove people from the place yeah okay so i think most people have heard the expression hire slow fire fast yeah the hiring slow part makes a lot of sense right every hire sends a significant almost asymmetrical message to everyone else on the team if you are willing to hire that person what does that say about the expectations you have for everyone else there you are not building a family we need to stop calling our colleagues families because they're not but you are trying to build a very special collection of people and every time you make the choice to add someone onto that team it needs to be done with incredible thoughtfulness and deliberate thoughtfulness the fire fast part is where I think that expression deserves a bit more nuance.

49:56And so I say hire slow, fire fast, but not too fast. When someone is not succeeding in a restaurant, one of two things is happening. Either they are not trying and failing or they are trying and failing. If someone is not trying and failing, you got to get them out as quickly as possible. Because as much as who you hire sends a pretty big message to everyone else in the team, who you fire sends an even bigger message to everyone else. And if you are trying to create a team of people who care and are willing to give so much of themselves to help bring the spirit of the collective endeavor to life, you cannot allow someone who's not willing to try.

50:43You can't allow them to stay there a day more. But for all the other people, the people that are trying and they're not succeeding, that's when you need to really spend some time figuring out why. Have you not given them the tools they needed to succeed? Did you hire them into a position that they weren't quite ready for because you just really wanted to get them in the door? Is that someone that you need to invite to take a step back such that they can solidify their foundation a bit more before they ultimately return to the position you initially thought they were ready for? Or do they have a different learning style than other people on your team?

51:26Or did you just hire someone into the wrong role? Did you ever fire someone slow and in the process of firing them slowly realize actually they shouldn't be fired at all? They should just be moved? Oh, my God. Some of the people that were the most impactful in the trajectory of my company were people that were failing miserably in one role and they just needed to be switched into another. We had one guy at the Nomad. He was a maitre d' at the Nomad. And the Nomad was a big restaurant, 130 seats. And that was like one of the hottest restaurants in New York. The maitre d', the guy working the front door there, that's a very difficult job.

52:05You need to be friendly, right? But really, you're like, you have to see the matrix. And you're managing, it's like an air traffic control position. and I loved him and he just sucked. He was not good at it. He was not good at it, but I loved him so much. And at the same time, we started doing all these kitchen tours at 11 Madison Park to the point that we couldn't keep up with them and I wanted as many people as humanly possible to get to go see the kitchen and have a course in there if they wanted one. But we didn't have people just sitting around to do kitchen tours all night. So eventually I said, I'm just going to hire someone to only, that's their job, they give people kitchen tours all night.

52:44which and I think in the beginning I took one of our captains at 11 Madison I said hey why don't you do this for a little bit and man she was terrible at that because that just basically means you're having conversations with people for eight hours a night and not everyone's good at that turned out she ended up being the most amazing maitre d at Nomad and he ended up being the most amazing kitchen tourer at 11 Madison Park they were literally switched neither one of them was succeeding they switched and within a week both of them was crushing it all right but i think there's something really powerful there about and it's a phrase you've used before about vulnerability your willingness as a leader to admit i might have made a mistake here it's it's my error would you just tell us a little bit about how anyone listening to this can be more vulnerable and the benefits of doing so i think far too many people in leadership positions pretend to be perfect.

53:43They feel that that is the expectation that's been put on them. Like, okay, I'm now in this role. I'm meant to be perfect. Here's the problem. No one is perfect. And we will only follow people that we can see ourselves one day being like. We're all human we all are aware of our own imperfection. And so even if someone is miraculously able to fool you into really believing they're perfect, okay, now they're not actually going to follow you because they don't see enough of themselves in you. More often, no one thinks you're perfect. And everyone can tell that you're just not being 100 % honest and pretending to be.

54:30now juxtapose that against a leader who when they make a mistake they're willing to just stand in front of their team and say hey I made a mistake and I'm sorry two things happen one when a leader makes a mistake often times morale suffers and when a leader apologizes publicly for having made that mistake it immediately reverses morale back into a good place not to mention the fact that if you are willing to criticize yourself people will always be that much more willing to receive criticism from you and if you can't create a culture where feedback both positive and critical is not only received but sought out you'll never achieve your full potential and one of the best ways to get your entire team to embrace receiving criticism as if you're willing to stand up there and give it to yourself when appropriate brilliant we've reached the point in our interview where we're going to wrap up with a few quick fire questions if you're happy i'd love that the first one the three non-negotiable behaviors that you and the people around you need to buy into the three things i look for in someone when i hire them are do they have integrity do i think they will work hard and do i think that they will get along with the people who already work for me.

55:57What advice would you give to a teenage Will just starting out? Don't choose a job based on the company. Choose a job based on the individual you will work for. There's plenty of great companies that we all get very excited about putting on our resume. but especially in the early days the person you report to is far more important than the company you work for what's your biggest strength and what's your greatest weakness they're probably one in the same i believe that our superpowers can be our villain origin stories pretty quickly if we don't hold them tight. I have these perfectionist tendencies.

56:49I have OCD-like qualities to me. And when I can keep them in moderation, it is a miraculous superpower. When I lose control over them, I end up taking control away from the people who work with and for me. What's the single best piece of advice you've ever received and why? I think we already said it for my dad. When faced with a challenging decision, ask yourself what right looks like and do that. When we are making the most difficult decisions, that often coincides with the times when our judgment can feel clouded and we can feel overwhelmed. And that's when we make the big mistakes. And so distilling big decisions down to feel as simple as possible has always been very helpful for me.

57:50So would you give us the context then of how you applied that piece of wisdom from your dad to decide to walk away from your partnership with Daniel? Yeah. When we realized it was time to move on from one another, obviously we both wanted to keep what we'd built. and it was this ensuing months and months and months long process back and forth and back and forth and I eventually kind of had this realization when I finally asked myself that question that in each of us trying to keep to hold on to it we were effectively tearing apart the thing we'd spent so long building and okay, what does right look like?

58:33well, be the person to let it go And I also, like, listen, I knew that I could build something again, right? And I wasn't even sure what that was going to be. But that's almost less relevant. Like, that is what happens when you do what's right. Great things happen. And now I'm hanging out with you guys in a room in Vegas talking about this book that I wrote, which has changed my life. but no one makes the choice to let go if no one's willing to do what's right something else which you're involved in now because you have the time for it is um you you consult on the bear the tv show yeah huge out here in the united states how accurate is the bear for real life restauranteurship i think there's quite a bit of it that's that's pretty accurate and we're we're deep into filming of season three now which is like where it actually becomes a restaurant now like a proper restaurant and it's it's very accurate now that's been fun it's fun to to see actually how remarkably similar tv and restaurants are.

59:53Like when you think about the teams that go into each and there's the actors and the, you know, the crew and kind of the writers and the producers and everyone involved, not dissimilar to sommeliers and bartenders and chefs and cooks and porters. And it's been a really fun experience. And what does life look like for you now? You know, you're a restaurateur that created the number one restaurant in the world. What comes after that? you know it's funny my entire career my entire life since i was 12 and my dad had me write down my three goals for life for restaurant cornell i've set extraordinarily audacious goals pursued them with patience and been very very focused and convicted in achieving them.

1:00:46I'm giving myself the grace to pursue a bunch of different things now. I'm sure I'm going to open a restaurant again. I don't think I'll be able to keep that at bay forever. But I'm working on The Bear and other TV shows. I'm working on new books. I'm working on some things in the tech space. We're doing consulting. I'm doing speaking. I'm hanging out with people like you and I'm kind of just doing everything to see what sparks the most joy for me and my team. And then almost like when you invest in a stock, if it starts to do well, you put a little bit more money into it, right? Like that's kind of my, my approach now.

1:01:33And it coincides with having two young kids at home. And so I'm just playing a slightly different game than I've played in the past. And the final question to leave people thinking about after this brilliant conversation. Your one golden rule for living a high performance life. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. That's a quote by Calvin Coolidge. but what I've what I've found and it's true to the quote is I met so many amazingly intelligent and talented and gifted people who have not accomplished anything because they've not had the persistence and determination to see it through and I met others who have had so many fewer God-given gifts that have accomplished so much because they refuse to give up.

1:02:35Brilliant. This was awesome. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, man. I love that. Brilliant conversation. Thank you very much.

1:02:45Damien, Jake, practical life advice for anyone, not just for people working in the hospitality industry because as he brilliantly pointed out we're all in the hospitality industry yeah it's definitely one of the most enriching uplifting conversations I've had in a long time I I loved his book but more importantly I loved meeting him and a lot of the wisdom he shared there wasn't in the book it just came from the heart and I'm sure that people that have just listened to this will feel the same but I'm now looking at high performance I'm looking at whisper I'm looking at all the things I'm involved in I'm looking at my kids and my wife my relationships with my siblings and my parents and my friends.

1:03:24And it reminds me that so, even though you're doing your best so much of our lives, because we're busy doing our best, we kind of stumble through. But as Will pointed out, you know, just take the time to sit down and really look at the tiny details, the way that you interact with people. And it's not about seeing the world through your own eyes about what you're doing and what you're thinking and how you're feeling, but it's all about seeing the world through their eyes. Yeah. This idea of relationship. absolutely yeah and there's a concept that's called a uh a scotoma where we become blind to what we do on a regular basis because we almost get into autopilot and what will say is just take the time to slow down and then look at those touch points those moments through the eyes of whoever it is you're looking to serve and i think what he said is you want to create any environment where people feel seen heard and loved and that sense of belonging then follows as a consequence and that's what we all want whether it's in our personal lives or our professional lives or even for what we're trying to do with high performance create a community where people feel they can belong they can come and be seen heard valued and loved for what it is they're trying to do and that was a great articulation on on how we can get better at it and a very simple question that you know people can ask themselves at the end of every day have i made people feel like that have i made people feel loved have i found a reason to make them feel good have i put a smile on people's faces yeah i think it's really powerful yeah that well like i say we're all in the hospitality business and i think whatever job we're in whatever we're trying to make an improvement on will's wisdom there can help us all go a little bit further and do it for ourselves man do it in the time we spend in the gym the food that we eat the way we talk to ourselves It's every little detail.

1:05:17Break it down. Find a way to optimise it. What a great conversation. I predict that it's going to impact a lot of people. Go far and wide. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, there's that great line in the Sanders Military Academy that to lead is to serve. And Will's just given us a great example on how we can all do that. Thanks, mate. Thank you, mate. And that brings us to the end of this conversation with Will Gadara. Listen, I only ask one thing of you today. Please send this episode to just one person. let them know that the knowledge that Will has could be a game changer for them. I would be so, so grateful.

1:05:50And that's it. As always, remain humble, curious, and empathetic. And we'll see you again soon.

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