Lessons in Unreasonable Hospitality with Will Guidara | E1966

28:42Incredible. That's systemized. That's baked into the system. They must do that for everyone. They must have a file cabinet somewhere where they just keep these things. Fantastic. Profoundly amazing. I loved that one so much. another one that happened to me recently again systemized hospitality i love jet blue mint i love their mint cabins it's my favorite mint is amazing especially when you get the the one between the two there's the one with both armrests between the two yeah i mean i'll take any mint but and if you book it far enough advance you claim that one as quickly as you can and also what a great idea to be like hey there's a bunch of tapas style items here pick any three your call you you can because you know everybody's on a different schedule you might have had breakfast you might have skipped breakfast they'll just work with you on how they put the food i mean gently was doing an amazing job like generally like they actually got a real sommelier to pick the wines on the flight so like you're actually getting a good glass of wine when you're flying anyway i flew gently mint to london anyone has ever done the red eye to london from new york it's a hard flight it's not long enough i'd almost rather fly from la just have a little bit more time to sleep.

29:51So I mean, what, the flight is six hours or something? Yeah, it's exactly the wrong amount of time. Yeah. Best case, you're sleeping five hours, five and a half hours if you do it just, just right. Right. And yet on every airline, regardless what you're flying that route with, they ask you right before the takeoff, do you want us to wake you up for breakfast? That's like, no, I don't want to lose 20 % of my night's sleep for a terrible breakfast. So I always say no. Anyway, last time I flew into London, I woke up at the last possible minute like I always do, and on this little hook, in my seat was a little bag inside the bag was a bag of granola a bottle of green juice and a can of cold brew perfect to go perfect just perfect yeah and it was just someone caring a little bit more and trying a little bit harder and not following the same rules they'd always followed but asking themselves can this be done better in a way that makes people feel a little bit more seal.

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32:28Manila, India, whatever. And that caused a little bit of tension, people with Vic accents, people calling from America, maybe a little xenophobia. And he was like, wait a second, there are people in Utah who I could have work from home. And the work from home concept was new 25 years ago. That was weird to work from home. Yeah. And the technology had just happened where you could actually route calls over voice over IP, internet, people had broadband. And he just said, listen, you could be at home, you just have to have a closed door and you can work whatever shifts you want. And we will send an alert to you when the call time gets too high and you can get an extra shift, maybe a micro shift, two hours, four hours.

33:08And whoever takes it first gets to do that overflow. It was like a really brilliant technological solution. But what he said was, hey, let's let people take as much time as they want on the phone and you're not rushed. So he changed the metric from how quickly you got people off the phone and he just destroyed that. And he said, this is not a cost center anymore. This is now an investment in our brand. And he just changed everybody's framing of it. Like, because everybody looks at customer support as like some cost center to be reduced. And he was one of the first people, along with a friend of mine who passed away, Tony Shea from Zappos.

33:40Oh, Shea, yeah. I don't know if you knew Tony. I did. Or I never met him. Yeah. So he was a good friend of mine. We played poker together, invested in companies together. And his whole thing of delivering happiness was like right in your zone of unreasonable. And I just thought that's so profound to take the call center and then look at it as an investment, a branding effort. I talk about Zappos all the time because I didn't know JetBlue also was right there at the front of it. So I'm glad to know that now because, I mean, listen, for those businesses and so many more like them, those call center agents are their dining rooms.

34:14And imagine if you went to a restaurant and they looked at servers as a cost center that they need to reduce. Imagine if you went to a restaurant and the manager was saying to the server, hey, you're spending a little bit too much time talking to table 45. Let's dial it back. I mean, it is so counterintuitive. I think one of my favorite examples, I actually get to know that because I'm so inspired by Chewy and the stuff they're doing now. Do you know about some of the stuff they do? I don't know anything they're doing. I know Chewy is like a place you order pet toys and pet food online. So the thing they're famous for, I don't know how famous, but since I put out this book, people tell me of these things when they experience them.

34:54when you have a dog you buy food from chewy you do it on the auto um yeah yeah subscription and when your dog passes away the first thing you think to do is not to cancel your dog food subscription and so for many people they remember to cancel it after the next bag arrives having just lost their pet which is terrible yeah and so it's not you know obviously then the next step is to call Chewy, say, hey, this is what happened. Please cancel my subscription. And can I return this bag of food to you? And their response is always the same. Pattern recognition, recurring moments, systemizing graciousness.

35:35We can't take it back. We will refund your account for that bag, though, and just give it away, donate it if you'd like. And then, like that, flowers are delivered to that house within a day or two to say sorry for your loss. and then of course that person's gonna get another dog at some point uh we all do they're getting get their dog food from they would never consider using anybody ever again for that same thing what do you think of like glad you're saying well no no i was just gonna bring it back to one of your first question which was the bear and that episode forks they referencing yeah that entire episode especially is taken right out of the book right with the hot dog story reinterpreted as the deep dish pizza story.

36:17Did they ask your permission or did you just get surprised by that? A little bit of both. They filmed it and then they showed it to me long before it went on the air to make sure I was okay with it. But I'm very close with those guys. And in fact, following that, I'm now a co-producer on the show for seasons three and four. So I'm much more... Oh my God, that's amazing. Which is very cool. Yeah, well, you want to talk about Gracious if you were inspired by somebody to then include them. Just including somebody is such a powerful... message. You know, if you start thinking, when I saw it, I was like, I wonder if Will's got a legal case here, right?

36:52And well, there's something about fairness in the world. And we're faced with it right now. I don't know if you're watching what's happening with AI and then people stealing content and open AI in New York Times are in a bit of a lawsuit, a major lawsuit right now. That's an artist, people who write books like you and I having our stuff ingested. It feels unfair, right and this is where technologists and a lot of business people get themselves caught up they think i can technically do something therefore well then that's the test of if i should do it or not right it's almost like saying is it legal for me to do this right it's like a very low benchmark of ethical moral behavior and what i tell them is when you're thinking about fair use which is a legal contract for using other people's content which the bear i think probably thought well this is kind of fair use and there's no legal case here somebody in corporate probably told them like you need legal permission to show his book cover, but you don't need legal permission to steal his hot dog story and reinterpret it, right?

37:47They probably had that discussion. But that doesn't change how you feel. Your core premise, how did you make you feel? I felt for you like, oh man, I wonder if like he feels good about them cribbing his work. They went above and beyond. They said, not only are we going to make this feel fair, we're going to make it more than fair by making him an EP or a producer or whatever your title is. Like, wow, what a swing. right they could have made you feel terrible and they made you feel part of it do they even they they hired a dream weaver onto the set of that show so you know the episode right before four where uh the seven fishes with all those stars that came on it yeah they had a dream weaver just there to care for all the guest stars and which was very cool oh so to think about you know what and i heard on that set that nobody wants to leave the set because they feel so much hospitality they want to just hang because they have a dream weaver on set you know who did this too did you read mike ovitz's um autobiography who is mike ovitz read the mike ovitz autobiography he also tapped into unreasonable hospitality he had a gifting suite at caa right he's the co-founder of creative artist agency had a gifting suite whenever tom cruise or whoever was you know on their first set uh first day on set there would be a gift basket but these gift baskets were like next level and the level of thoughtfulness that you would go through not just ostentatiously like oh there's a watch in here or something but it would be like super thoughtful and he just has story after story of how he got people one time a director didn't want to do a film it might have been miss doubtfire and he was having dinner with the wife and she was just complaining about how their house they had to have this like huge bill to uh redo the driveway they had built some hollywood they had some hollywood hills house and the driveway was mangled whatever and she was having challenges with the driveway in the city.

39:35Ovitz just put his chief of staff and said, go find me the best architects. Wait, you know, hold on. Redo the driveway. Go there and redo her driveway. Build it to CAA. It's so funny. So I actually spent a bunch of time with someone who used to work with them. And she, after the book came out, she goes, I used to do this. I was the person. So it might've been her. It might've been her who built the driveway. So then this famous director had no choice because the wife, Ovis was just like, hey, we're coming over to fix the driveway issue. Fix the driveway issue. My lord, think about that level of thoughtfulness.

40:10Crazy. Now you're directing the fucking movie. Yeah, I mean, imagine your wife comes in and she's like, hey, guess what you're doing this summer? You're doing Miss Doubtfire. Like, this is what I'll say about the bear and then I'll leave it there. Yes, they helped get the message of the book out in a different way than I had gotten out to that point. It was cool for me to see it. They were gracious and welcoming me in. My favorite part about it is I've worked very, very hard to articulate as best I can the power of compelling someone on your team to deliver one of these gestures just once and how they will get addicted to it when they do.

40:58Yes. no number of words as articulate as i may or may not be could ever convey that moment as beautifully as they did when richie delivers that deep dish pizza yes sprints home in his car listening to taylor swift and then he's pacing around his apartment reading my book like it shows that light bulb moment in a way that i just thought was magical and beautiful and just unbelievably profound whoever wrote the screenplay or whoever you know is responsible for that project my lord did they play the long game? Because you have this character who's dealing blow out of the back of the restaurant. He's like, could give a shit about fine dining and he's cynical, right?

41:37And then this person who worked at ostensibly, I guess, Noma, he was overseas. I think that's where the main character, they seem to have said he did his thing, which I've been to Noma twice. I mean, you want to talk about, whoa. Yeah. I've never seen so many people around one dish. I'm like, does it really take eight people? and they're like each doing something like that was over the top but when he goes from being in you know the the course of that one episode so cynical about the forks and what am i doing here polishing forks and then the guy just takes them outside listen i know you don't take this seriously but i do so like if you want to be here like maybe you could just be into it and see if that works for you and everybody has that in them i think that moment to turn it around and restaurant people are very unique.

42:23It's kind of my experience in the restaurant business was a lot of misfits, a lot of people who didn't fit in a lot of other places. And then, you know, them kind of, and you tell me if this is correct, that the people who are drawn to fine dining or who become addicted to it, what is that personality type? You know, you, Anthony Bourdain, Danny Meyer, there's a certain archetype, or maybe there's multiple ones, but what is it that draws people into that? I grew up in the restaurant business in Brooklyn. So I think there's, you threw the word addiction around in restaurants. It can be applied to a few different things, right?

42:58It can be applied to, okay, bad stuff, which happens a lot in our industry. It can be in the pursuit of excellence and then it can be in pursuit of hospitality. And I think there's plenty of people that are addicted to one and not the other and vice versa. It's not as often you become addicted to both, but the Thomas Keller addiction, like that level of addiction to precision, I think is based fundamentally around this idea that we all live in a world where there's so little we can control. But if you give yourself fully to perfecting small things on small plates and doing it over and over and over and over again, there is a pretty profound satisfaction in that that doesn't exist in many other places.

43:43I think when it comes to getting addicted to hospitality, that's not limited to restaurants alone. And that's honestly one of the biggest messages of the entire book is addictions are bad except for this one can we all please please get addicted to making other people happy you know if you think about life uh you know tony shea passing uh you know early and i i gave a speech recently and i was like you know it's just reflecting on it it's like you know what we have at the end of the day you ever see the movie blade runner it's my favorite film there's the dove i have a bad movie memory so you got to keep going well there's just this incredible speech that one of the replicants gives at the end right and he's really sad because he has a six-year lifespan he's on that roof um and harrison ford's kind of you know met him at the end of his lifespan there because they have a planned lifespan six years old boom they die because they don't want them to get emotions he just says all my memories are gone like tears in the rain you know like a commodity my tears are just like raindrops right and he's just so heartbroken and and that's what you have at the end of your life I believe this is as close as I can get to any spiritual or religion about life at this point at 53 years old, which is there's a collection of memories we create.

44:54Right. And you then make those with other people. Yeah. And that's what's so special. I think in what you captured in the book, what you capture in the bear is, hey, man, there's some special moment here that's happened. And those moments will be gone. Well, you know, where they go is anybody's guess. If this is a simulation or we're just organic beings and the memories just fade. but they're meaningful to us they're super meaningful to us right and so you can kind of really craft a life around those moments those magical moments right uh and when they do hit man they just hit so perfectly like a perfect note well the quote that we've been using for decades and in my industry is like the one by Maya Angelou people will forget what you say they'll forget what you do but they'll never forget how you made them feel now yeah the memories go away eventually wherever they go, but the ones that last the longest revolve around how you make people feel.

45:47I've talked to so many people who dined at Madison Park during its heyday. Don't remember a single thing they ate. Nothing. But they remember these little things that we did that made them feel seen. Another quote from the Welcome Covert, Thomas Cox, who at the time was the general manager at Claridge's Hotel in London, which is my, if not my favorite, one of my favorite hotels on the planet. And his quote, I'm going to not get it verbatim, but it was to the effect of, we try just a little bit to give people the kind of experiences that when they write an autobiography would be featured in them.

46:25Wow. To that exact idea. If we can create these profound enough moments, they will be that much a part of people's lives. They will be one of the things they reflect on at the end of that yeah and if everyone held that up as the audacious version of the goal and even all they got a third of the way to it we'd be doing some pretty amazing stuff yeah i had that experience at the amman hotel in japan have you been to the tokyo edition of amman no man next level it's like 40 rooms i had this like a really interesting moment you're a little bit jet lagged so i like you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna go out for a run around the imperial city and then they got this incredible japanese breakfast what a combo right go out at the crack of dawn come back have the japanese breakfast it's a little weird i'm like sweaty whatever i'm in the restaurant looking over the city but i forget my airpods or something i go back to the room yes i'm leaving at 6 30 or something i go back to the room and there's three cleaning people like just getting into my room and i'm like so i go talk to the manager and i was like hey can i I left and then there were three people came to my room.

47:34Like, do you send three people to clean the rooms? And how do you do that? It's like, Oh, we have sensors on the doors. We know you've left. We want to have the smallest amount of time possible to clean that room. So we send a SWAT team in to just do it. Boom. So that if you happen to go back, the time it takes for us to turn that room over, we can do it in 15 to 25 minutes. Bang. And then, then they put little snacks in there for you. So you come back and there's like these snacks. Just unbelievable, the detail level. And then I'm like, you're folding my dirty laundry. That is a completely unnecessary step.

48:09Like, I left a t-shirt and they folded it perfectly. Like, amazing. Weird, but amazing moments of like - The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. I mean, how can you leave one thing on a pile on the ground? You know, like, I think that's the beautiful thing about it. One of the stories I shared recently was from the Kempton. A guy went and stayed there and came back to his room and ran out of toothpaste. to the housekeeper and just replaced it with three little tubes of toothpaste with a note that said, just to make sure you're not put out for the rest of your staying. And this is not a very expensive hotel.

48:41Which, by the way, the reason I share that right after you share the thing about the amount is because I sometimes worry that people listen to people like us have this kind of conversation and immediately say, well, of course, those places can do it with their price points. Right. Everyone can do this stuff. Maybe you do it with different amounts of money or utilizing different budgets, but it doesn't take much outside of a bit of thoughtfulness. We're talking about like mental models. I'll leave this one alone. But the president's idea. Really what it means is just my favorite definition is caring so much about the person you're with that you stop caring about everything else you need to do.

49:20This conversation right here. Right. Right now, my phone is on do not disturb. I don't know what is happening after we're done. I don't even know what time it is. I might be late to the thing I'm going to next. I don't know what... I've decided that for the sake of our time together, I don't care. And sometimes you need to care less about some things in order to care more about some people. And I think that's what we all need to get a little bit better at. And this presence thing, after what we saw with COVID and people got weird and then devices, it's becoming very acute in the world. Kids are now so distracted constantly, and you've got two young kids, and you'll see this as they get older.

50:01The ability to maintain eye contact, the ability to hear another person's sentence, take it in, and then reflect it back to them. It's just getting lost on this next generation because of the constant distraction they're in. And then as Gen Xers, they said the same thing about us. Remember MTV? It's like moving too fast, and it's going to scramble our brains. I have a friend, Doug Rushkoff, who is like a media, he was like a Marshall McLuhan author. And Doug would always talk about how we are like constantly trying to battle this ADHD that's being imposed upon us by the world. And it's up to us to then be present and to fight against it.

50:39Like you've made the decision, hey, it's an hour. Let's just be super present for this. It's super powerful. Hey, I'm curious in the restaurant business because I'm a bit of a restaurant nerd and a foodie and did every job possible at my dad's bar in Brooklyn. when I was growing up. And like the Zagat, my dad would get me the Zagat guide for Christmas just to give you an idea. And I got to, like I would, I carried the Zagat guide with me. I would never not have a Zagat guide. I would never not go to a city. And I got to meet through a friend of mine, Barry Wine. I don't know if you know the restaurateur Barry Wine.

51:07Yeah, I know Barry Wine. Yeah, so he's like a good friend of mine. And he took - His son, by the way, curated the library at the Nomad Hotel. That's who did. Yes, Thatcher. Yeah, he's amazing. Oh, you did the Nomad. I forgot about that. Yeah. That chicken for two there. The chicken for two. I took my mom out for her birthday, specifically there to get that chicken for two. And is it like done three ways? Yeah, we did it a couple different ways with the foie gras and the black truffle into the skin. By the way, when I say people forget the food, that is with a couple exceptions. The chicken is one of those things you never forget.

51:40Holy cow. The chicken at the Nomad Hotel. All right. Which is gone now. I know. It's so sad. Let me ask you a couple questions about restaurants. I'm going to tell you something. I want to get your experience on this lightning round. Toast. This ability to order without a server, you take a picture of a QR code. I'm torn. With a great server, my lord, I obviously want to work with a great server. I always ask them, hey, what do people come back for? What do people rave about on the menu? Give me the top two items. Some folks are just like, it's all good. Man, I can't take that server. I want a server with an opinion as a foodie.

52:18like, hey, I may only get a chance to come to Nomad once. What, and I just, that's how I phrase it. What do people come back for? Where do they order, you know, again and again? Tell me what people really like. And man, when they give you that honest answer, like chicken for two, do it. Boom. What do you think of this like toast and like the just only having runners? Does it break your heart? Or do you think, eh, it's got its virtues? I think it depends on the type of restaurant. And in fact, I think there's certain types of restaurants that I wish would do more of it. The reality is it's a hard time to be in the restaurant business.

52:48And my timing and selling the company was, was, was great. Okay. At the level that I was operating at, no, get the QR codes out of the way. But there's plenty of restaurants that are struggling to make margin. Um, they're not hiring the best people because they can't afford to pay them enough. And if I were running those ones, like more of like the fast or like the casual dining restaurants, I would eagerly employ that technology, reduce the number of people on the floor by 50%, pay the remaining people 50 % more such that you had half as many people, but the ones you have are great. That makes total sense.

53:29Consolidate the salaries there. What do you think about this tipping culture? Everything's a tip, turn the thing around. Hey, I got one more thing for you. And just tipping in general, I know Danny tried to, and I don't know what your take on it was, include the service in there and they fought him. He wanted people to make a living wage. How should servers back a house get paid? What do you think about tipping culture here in the United States? I mean, at Madison, I got rid of tipping. And it was actually the most successful removal of tipping. And then after I sold the restaurant, they brought it back because the restaurant just wasn't doing as well anymore.

54:05And the reality is you need to manage a business very well to get rid of tipping. If you don't really have your eye on the ball, it can really bite you. If you actually understand what you're doing, it can be pretty remarkable. But two things need to be true. One, you need to be in high enough demand where people don't mind the prices going up to account for the fact that there are no tips. Because public perception, still people struggle with the idea. They're comparing your chicken to the other restaurant chicken yeah the price without taking into account that you have to tip at the other one i don't know in madison we were one experience almost irrelevant at a certain and it needs to be consistently busy because if you're covering the tipping of the team and you have a bad night you just get yeah you get lost right yeah yeah it was amazing when we made that transition and it was much much better for the restaurant and the culture and i believe the guests as well but i don't know so you just put the service charge in boom you're done no no we just attracted into the prefix price when the price of the meal included the people that worked there amazing and it's and people would sometimes like insist on giving us cash and we it was like our favorite game i love gamifying everything in work and one of our favorite games was always figuring out how to stake the money back onto them before they left without them realizing so like oh so just be used to take the money just put it in their side pocket we'd get it in their side pocket or their purse or their jacket or something all right what about this uh i'll end on this one they're a little controversial there are people who are getting reservations and then selling them in the after markets there's an app that lets you bid to you know buy premium tables obviously you know there's uh i think alina am i pronouncing it correctly in chicago alinea alinea rather yes alinea um you know they sold tickets right essentially that seemed like a really good idea um but there's these other ones that are kind of auctioning off or you know selling these things on the slide what do you think of this like buying your way into the bottle service of vacation you know scalping of fine dining or scalping of like carbone reservations is that that's uncouth or just i mean i don't know as a restaurateur it used to happen not as consistently or in a structured way as it's happening now but it used to happen in 11 madison and i hate it i hated it because i priced the experience based to to offer maximum value i wanted the price to be as high as it possibly could be while still offering amazing value and the moment you paid someone else 200 bucks just before you even got in the door i no longer feel like i'm able to give you the right amount of value.

56:57Now, at the same time, whatever, someone else is making money, you decided you want to pay for it. And so like, oh, why don't really get in the way of it? I don't think it's right. And at the same time, if I were still in restaurants, there'd be plenty of other things I'd be spending my time and energy focusing on. Okay. Rate my strategy for getting reservations. Cause you know, I grew up in the restaurant business. I have my own playbook of how to get a reservation when it's impossible. Just tipping wise, this is how I got into every restaurant, only one time, Asia to Cuba, did this not work.

57:29But for hundreds of times, this worked in New York City. Back in the day, I put a 20 or a 50, fold it twice, walk right up, barrel past everybody, go right to the side of the reception desk, put my hand down, slide over a little bit to show the 50, make eye contact and say, I'm really sorry. I had to make a reservation tonight. If there's anything that comes up, a cancellation, I was going to sit at the bar, just two people, I'm only in town for a night, or this girl, I'm trying to impress her. If there's anything you can do, I'd really appreciate it. My name's Jason. I'm just a big fan of the restaurant.

58:02Am I too aggro? Is that charming? Does that upset you? Because I know that it worked for, it worked for whoever was at the front desk. I mean, listen, I... And it worked at Gramercy Tavern too, by the way. We'll point out it did work. No, like, I... Am I the bad guy? Not the bad guy. I can't speak in support of it. Okay. Just professionally because it would undermine some of the things I've tried to do in the past. I have palmed two doormen in my life once at Dantana's in LA. Okay. And once to the 18-year-old kid that worked at the Red Lobster in Palm Springs on Valentine's Day. Did it work? It worked both times.

58:43Okay. So palming does work. The real advice I would give. Yes. If there is a restaurant that you don't just want to get into once. I mean, listen. Yeah. If you want to get into a restaurant once. that strategy, that works. Not always, but often. If there's a restaurant that you want to be able to get into frequently, go to the bar a few times and just talk to people, get to know them. Exactly. The thing that we like, and this is true of every maitre d' that ever worked for me once we got to a certain level, people would rather seat someone they like than a stranger for 50 bucks extra. And if you just become a part of the community, if you invest in that relationship, yeah that investment will yield dividend yeah i did this at uh there's a great place up in lake tahoe where i got my ski house and they're booked out like crazy it's just the one good place there it was the people who did flour and water in san francisco like a really great pizza and pasta joint make it all local i follow them on instagram i comment on when they're making stuff and then i did i met juliana the hostess sat at the bar talked to them a little bit did exactly what you're saying and then i just what i do is i just write notes in my iphone juliana brazil parents were in town when i went the next time i always look it up call juliana to see if i can get a reservation and then i just said to her hey your parents came from brazil how was it because her parents had come in and they'd never been to america i said what did they think of all the snow and everything great conversation now like you're saying i'm part of the family i'm part of the community i got the best shot at getting a table and you know i don't expect it but and then giving absurd tips i think also works too yeah that never hurts that's well i like to write a little note i like to write a little note on the thing uh so i'll just write thanks so much for taking care of my girls they love the the pizza and you know just write that and then i write the tip so just like that and also like even just talking to you for this long there's some people that do all those things and like only a quid pro quo way you strike me as the kind of person with doing those things because you care about people and then the natural end result is you also get the stuff that you want to get.

1:00:49Absolutely. Honestly, this conversation right here is kind of a perfect distillation of everything that's in the book. Yeah. If you care about people, if you put in the time to make them feel special and seen, if you celebrate them and hold them up and invest in them and empower them, you will go further in life. Full stop. This is what I tell everybody. For background, I invest in 100 startups a year, venture capitalists, essentially, but earliest stage. And I tell my team, we are. That's why I make everybody on my team. I got a 21-person team. Read your book. And everybody's really excited that you came on today.

1:01:27So thank you for that. And I just said, listen, we have this customer. It's called the founder of a startup. And we need to be unreasonably hospitable to that person. We are a service organization. Now, in venture capital, when you frame yourself as a service organization, it's just crazy because people think, well, we have all the power. We have the money. We get to lord it over and write the check to the founder. And then they get to pursue their dream. So they forget who the customer is. They start to think like, well, yeah, I'm the star of the show. No. You're just a check. You're just a wire into their account to pursue their dreams.

1:02:04Let's really support these founders. And I think your book just does it so well. I think cross-disciplinary is just so great when you're trying to understand the world. And I think you've done that by doing this. I can't wait to come to this conference. When is it? It's on September 16th. In fact, tomorrow we're announcing the date. It will be on September 16th at David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. Oh, I'm coming. i'm definitely coming i cannot wait uh for this because that this to me is like what it's all about you're amazing everybody who's listening read this book um it'll change your brain watch the show the bear and uh yeah follow will on his socials you'll you'll see him do it i'll let you get back to your summer this has been amazing i'm gonna call you when you're in new york i assume still you're based in new york yeah i'm in new york we're back and forth reaching here in the hudson valley hey the one thing i want to plug that oh please plug yes any plug anyone who likes the book.

1:02:57The thing that I'm doing, I created a practice of writing when I was writing the book. And then you're done with the book and it's dumb to kill a practice. And so now I have a newsletter that I send out every two weeks. Oh, great. It's called Premial. And you can sign up on unreasonablehospitality.com. But it's become, it's my favorite thing. It's basically me walking through the world feeling inspired and bringing things back home. And it would be the thing that I would be talking about with my team, premium that I send out on a bi-weekly basis. What's something recently that blew you away? You got your eyes wide open for this stuff.

1:03:31Well, I mean, it's just wild. In fact, I just finished writing one today, which is the New York Metro trains. So Metro North, Amtron. Yeah. This has existed for a really long time, but I only recently read about it in an article that came out in 2009 on the New York Times. They have dialed into their system a minute of grace. And so when a train says it's leaving at 11.45, it always leaves at 11.46 because they want to give people that last minute to slide into the train right before the doors. And have you ever slid into those doors right before they close? You feel like king of the world. Absolutely.

1:04:11And the idea that as many times that's just randomly happened, that they actually did it with intention. Yeah. Yeah. And ever since I learned that, I've been looking to find opportunities for minutes of grace of my own when I'm working with other companies. The newsletter is lots of little nuggets. It's snackable. It's easy, but it's just little things that'll make you think. Writing, I always tell people is clarity of thought. When you write something, you get to clarify your position, right? And so it just, or you don't want to hit the send button, right? That clarity of thought, that moment of a minute of grace is a great operating principle to take with you for the next, for the rest of the year, where can you add just a little grace, a minute of grace.

1:04:53And man, there's so many opportunities for that. And you're right. There's nothing like not wasting time at an airport gate or on a train lane. When you can thread the needle perfectly, that is an optimization that New Yorkers live for. Also getting a seat, getting the four top in the food car, the dining car. That's the big win. If you can get the four top in the dining car, don't give it up, man. You can take a laptop out. It's incredible. I love that. I don't know if you've taken Emirates to the middle. Have you spent time in the Middle East yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have. And I have the exact experience you're about to talk about.

1:05:33The Emirates flight has like a little bar on the back. And I get on that flight. I go take that four top. I sit there and I love people. And like people listen to my pod. So sometimes people recognize me and they're like, oh, I listened to your pod. I'm like, want to join me? And I just love to sit there and meet people. Because if you're in that business class, like what are you doing going to Dubai or Riyadh or wherever you're going? It's a serious wasted opportunity if you don't record a podcast the next time you're on that flight. I should record a pod on that flight. You should just bring a microphone and a couple pairs of headphones and just - Yeah.

1:06:06Who's on the flight? The podcast should be whoever you talk about from point A to point B. Absolutely. Well, I'm going to see you in September. where I'm coming to the, it's the welcome conference, right? You said welcome. Yeah, the welcome conference, yeah. Can't wait to see that. And we'll see you all next time on This Week in Startup. Go buy the book.