Unreasonable Marketing - lessons from the creator of the world’s #1 restaurant - Will Guidara

35:42I just thought that those two things really stood out for me in that kind of time. You know, there's the retired naval captain David Marquet, who in his book, he says that in most organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the frontline have all the information and none of the authority. I think to do anything of true greatness, especially within the world of hospitality, you need to bridge the gap between authority and information. Otherwise you have an inability to show up for people when they need you. I mean, anyone can share a story of having engaged in some interaction with a customer service agent who you know knows what is the right thing to do for you in that moment, but is just not empowered to do it.

36:29And so that's like, I say it's not easy to find the balance between corporate smart and restaurant smart. That doesn't mean it's not possible. A lot of my book is really centered around this idea. It's identifying something and then through focusing on it, understanding the inherent tension that exists and being intentional and finding that balance. That's when you can do really, really good things. I noticed that a lot in the book, actually. You sort of embrace the tension and you kind of use the tension kind of almost as a creative stimulus. And I think you quote Roger Martin as well, don't you?

37:02Yeah. You think someone like Roger Martin would be all very logical about this, but actually he says, no, sometimes you need conflicting goals. Yes. Because within the conflicting goals, that's where the tension is. I mean, I do a lot of cycling and they always say, you know, you can have it cheap, fast or light. Yeah. You know, you can pick two, I think is the phrase. Exactly. There's a similar version of that with general contractors. Now, you know what was really interesting when I wrote the book is I got to know Jan Schwartz from LinkedIn. And the more he got to know about my work as I was literally writing, the more he started turning me on to people like Rory and Roger.

37:37And I think he was the first person that actually showed me how the overlap between marketing and hospitality is actually quite profound. But this idea of choosing conflicting goals, I mean, I can go through so many of these tension points in what I was trying to create. I wanted to create a restaurant that felt like you were going out. It had all the luxury and the trappings of that experience, but also felt like you were coming home. Those two things are not friends. I wanted to create an experience that was at once both modern and classic. Those things are not friends. Honestly, the biggest one is in excellence and hospitality, focusing on the product and on how you make people feel.

38:20those are not friends but if you can sit in that tension success comes because of it not in spite of it it really does isn't it there's one one example it sort of sort of links that actually where where you talked about because often when you go to a restaurant you have a choice between you got you got the fixed menu where you're choosing to get you can get served precisely what it says right and then you've got the kind of chef menu or tasting menu where it's like i'm going to give up control and whatever comes out comes out sort of thing and you talk about how at one point when you're improving the menu you actually give people just the main ingredients yeah it's like this compromise between this i thought that's really interesting because the interesting thing about it of course it's a different way of doing it and there's a surprising thing but it forces a bit of interaction doesn't it it's like inbuilt human intervention because when you don't have all the information so one one example you have all the information you don't have to ask any questions the other one you don't have to ask any questions you don't know what you're going to get right but you went to the middle bit which actually triggers a oh so what do i get with my beef you know um can i change the side and i not to to nitpick word choice but compromise i think that word suggests that it's a watered down version of both ideas and i think when you come up with the right ideas it's not a watered down version of either idea it's actually an enhancement on each.

39:42So what that is, what you're talking about is there's the tasty menu, you sit down, you just sit back and enjoy the ride. The reason it's beautiful is because of the surprise of just not knowing what's going to come. And that brings with it a sense of adventure that I think many people were looking for in fine dining restaurants, juxtaposed against a price fix menu where you know everything you order is going to be something you like to eat, right? And there's the control. and I was like what if there was one experience where you could have all of it and so the way it worked is there were it was this grid menu there were four it was four by four words first course second course third course fourth course and you just got to pick the principal ingredient that you were craving and then we would just take you on a ride so you might pick whatever sea urchin trout beef strawberry all things that you were really excited to eat but then the rest of it you still get to capture and preserve the surprise there's just one of a million ways to do something like that but i i think when you lean into the tension you don't need to compromise either approach but you see some of the best parts of each and and unite them into something even more extraordinary.

40:57I think it's fun. It's almost optimizing because most people are not at one extreme or the other. Yeah. Most people are not at sort of like, I want exactly that dish as it's described. Yeah. And they're not at the, well, actually, I don't really care. You know, I don't have any influence in it. You know, you might have an allergy or you might be feeling just things that people don't like. And I don't care how good a chef you are. If I don't like salmon, you're not going to serve me a plate of salmon that I'm going to enjoy. And so it's just a means of, you know, the other thing, it did was I think hospitality is a dialogue it's not a monologue and just creating space for conversation always lends and and yields positive results now one phrase that everyone's very familiar with is the idea the customer is always right yes and sometimes you don't feel that particularly in kind of high-end restaurants where it's so sort of like orchestrated that you feel like you couldn't possibly feel I mean um so me and a good mate of mine John every time I visit New York, he takes me to a different steak restaurant.

41:57I've just noticed New York has got insanely good steak places. Really good steak houses. Honestly, it's a thing. It's like I don't think I've ever been anywhere else where the quality of steak is so good. It's remarkable. It is remarkable. I've been going to New York for about five or six years, and I think we're close to writing a book now, actually. There are some other properly good restaurants in New York outside of steakhouses. Exactly. exactly and um but what was interesting about the one we went to this week um so we got in we sat down by the bar and we'd ordered uh i think a ribeye to share and on the bone and um it came too rare well probably not quite rare enough for me and too rare for him we both we both kind of went medium rare but it's interesting that medium rare actually is open to quite a lot of interpretation i would probably call he would definitely call this super rare you know it was very very kind of red um in the uk if you have medium rare it's often just a little bit pink in the middle and sort of cooked on the outside so the variance between what a customer would think you know a well you know well cooked steak is so to what extent would you hold that the customer is always right when you've spent so much time and love creating the perfect experience what happens when a customer says that's not what i wanted i mean one of my favorite quotes that came out of one of the welcome conferences.

43:16I host a conference called Welcome here in New York. Years ago, the theme was being right. That was literally the theme. And Danny Meyer, part of his speech was being right is irrelevant. And it's true. I think there are some cultures where that is the belief system. The customer is always right. There's other restaurants where the chef believes that people should be like kneeling at the altar of his or her culinary prowess. And in those places, the chef is always right. Both approaches are flawed. The reality is being right is irrelevant. And there's a story I share in the book, literally about a steak cooked medium rare, where someone ordered it medium rare.

44:02We brought it over. I watched this whole thing happen where A server delivered it, walked away from the table. The guest flagged them back over. They said, hey, I asked this for medium rare. This is rare. And at least in the States, the truth is that a perfect medium rare is more rare than people expect it to be. Now, we were at the time trying to become the greatest restaurant in the world. The last thing the server wanted to do was for the person to think we'd made a mistake, right? Because you don't become the best by making mistakes. and we had not actually textbook wise anyway made a mistake and so he did what he thought was the right thing to do he said i am so sorry this this is medium rare but if you'd like it to be cooked medium i'll totally bring it back to the kitchen we'll make it for you again the guy was trying to get the guest the thing that they wanted but in a place of defensiveness needed the guest to know they were wrong we hadn't made a mistake the problem with focusing on who's right is by definition it means the other person needs to be wrong and in doing that now the customer felt shame and it took us a long time to re-establish the connection that we're trying to establish from from the very beginning i think that idea it's an old adage in my business for sure and in others as well just needs to go away it's about doing what is right in each circumstance regardless of who is right and wrong and you realize of course that in that in that situation that the interpretation of medium rare is is is quite personal it could depend on where you're from it could depend on you know how you've been brought up but loads of things could influence what your perception I mean I've seen this in the cocktail bars where I order a cocktail and it's just taking a really long time like hey my drink is taking a while is there any way to and they're like sorry this is a craft cocktail bar like the drinks take a long time to make effectively say I'm wrong for feeling like I've been waiting too long same thing it's just you know what let me go check on that right away we're going to get it over to you and to talk about speed there's some lovely examples in the book of where you kind of solve for moments in the service that you'd otherwise so when you arrive for example or when you're ordering the check uh or when for example there's a gap between when you sit down and when you get your first drink so you kind of solve for how people got you know their water the right kind of water to them and i was fascinated by the amount of signaling that was going on between the team because in all these things you kind of found solutions without the customer even knowing that that what they wanted was going to get there a lot quicker i think in the same way that one beautiful way to identify innovative ideas is through reverse benchmarking another way is through like doing what you could effectively call like a pain point purge you just look at any experience and look at the pain points and try to figure out how to either A, make them less painful, or B, even better, make them highlights of an experience.

46:53And so water, yeah, there's a rule in restaurants. You get something in front of people for them to drink as soon as humanly possible. Then in a big restaurant, I go over, I get your water preference, sparkling still, ice water, and now I need to go communicate that to someone. They need to go get the water, the whole thing. And I was at a baseball game and I was watching the catcher use sign language to communicate to the pitcher. And to the point I made earlier about how some of the best nuggets of inspiration can come from wildly different worlds. I said, oh, sign language. I want to figure out how to use that in our restaurant.

47:35That's where the idea started, was just a desire to use sign language. Economy of movement is always a beautiful thing. And And that's what we came up with when as your server, you were telling me your order behind my back. I was actually using my hands to sign to someone across the room what water you wanted. And it could be the case that they were pouring you that water before I'd even left at the table, which not only lends itself to more efficiency, but also feels like a little magic trick in a really wonder filled way. The other example is the check. I mean, there's nothing great about getting a check, right?

48:14In fact, it's a hard moment in most meals to get right because whether anyone realizes it, they become remarkably impatient the moment they ask for the check. If it takes us too long to give it to you, we've just ruined the entire meal. And yet I can't drop it on your table before you've asked for it. Otherwise you think I'm trying to rush you out. Not to mention the fact that in a fine dining restaurant, it's a big check. And the moment you realize how much that meal costs, it's a little bit harder to still love the meal you've just had. And for those reasons, no one ever really approaches it with any creativity or any intention.

48:46What we came up with was when I knew you were done, I'd go over to your table with a glass for everyone at the table and an entire bottle of cognac. I'd pour just a splash of cognac for everyone at the table and I'd say, Hey, this is with my compliments. In fact, I'm going to leave the entire bottle here. Please help yourselves to as much as you'd like. and then I'd put the check down and say, your check is here whenever you're ready for it. Small change, profound impact. First, no one ever had to wait for the check again. Second, no one could ever think we were trying to rush them out. I just gave them an entire bottle of free booze.

49:23It didn't cost us very much. Rarely did people drink more than that splash. And yet, at the moment where I dropped off that big bill, I matched it with a gesture of profound generosity, keeping the value proposition intact. Perhaps my favorite part, I don't care what you do for a living. If you want to create a culture of hospitality, try to make sure that the experience feels even in the slightest bit, the tiniest way, like you've just invited someone to your house for dinner. My favorite part when I have people over to mine is that moment at the end of the night where there's just a few people left and someone grabs that last half empty bottle of wine and pours the remains out into the remaining glasses at the end of an experience where we had served their every need with unbelievable attentiveness.

50:08We gave them the gift of serving one another, all because we looked at a pain point and said, how can we make this awesome? I think that opportunity exists for everybody. And if you seize on it, you can do some pretty cool things. I love that so much. That is amazing. Randomly, it reminded me actually of years ago, I did negotiation training. In negotiation training, they ask you to identify what is low cost to you but high value to the person you're negotiating with and to trade on that yes and they also talk about the give where you want to be giving up things that again are you know hold on to things you're ready to yeah yeah exactly right yeah but it struck me my whole career that actually is thinking about what's in your power to give and you're right because the cognac you know i don't know maybe one in a hundred tables might have finished the lot and they had a bit of time to bear but most people by the way if they did drink the entire bottle back to our earlier point they were telling stories about that there you go then by the way they definitively didn't remember anything about the meals but they were they were telling stories about what they'd done actually that's the other genius is you win either way yeah if they clear the bottle they're talking about it and they they can't believe how lucky they just got if they don't percent of when they would still tell the story about this guy's giving it entire bottles of cognac at the end of the evening that's incredible yeah yeah did anyone actually drink it it happened once in a while For sure.

51:30And it was fun, honestly, for the like, oh, table 33. I think they're doing it. They're going to do it. They're going to do it. They're going to do it. Ring the bell. It was wonderful. Now, one of the quotes that stood out in your book, and I think you're quoting Calvin Coolidge here. Yeah, it's nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. And it's something I've certainly learned just even doing this podcast, actually, is is the power of sticking at something. and the amount of learning you do by continually testing, going again and not giving up kind of thing. But I was interested in that, you know, putting persistence as almost the number one trait.

52:04Oh my gosh. And that was that quote, which is a longer quote, and it talks about how the most talented don't always win, the most intelligent don't always win, the people that are the most persistent almost always are still in the game at the end, right? And he gave me that entire quote on a plaque when I was a kid. I just thank the people that are willing to do whatever it takes to stay in the game and to hopefully win. The medal they show and the amount of learning that can happen along the way, it always yields to some of the most inspiring stories. And how many people I've known that try something and it fails the first time?

52:46How many of the companies that we celebrate as now being the most influential and most innovative and most impactful. Had they given up after a few failures, how different our world would be. Completely. Persistence is an under-celebrated trait. And I think we need to seek it out on the people we surround ourselves with and focus on embodying it more ourselves. I had this little idea of a book, actually, I was going to write where each chapter would be a spectacular failure. And the twist in it was basically every story of failure, at the very end of this chapter i'd say and this this was became tesla yeah you know i mean because like every successful person you you know once you really understand what's happening because you only hear about the successes but really when you dig dig beneath the amount of failures that happen prior to that success i thought it'd be a fascinating way to kind of make that point i agree um talking of the talking of the failures one thing you touch on as well is never ever waste a good crisis because of course a big part of your journey was 2008 wasn't it when the world just changed overnight and went into recession people weren't spending how did you get through like because also you know you've got one of the you know top restaurants in the world at the time and then people aren't uh no longer dining out spending the big bucks right how did you survive that and what you know what did you learn in that period yeah so never waste a good crisis that that's kind of what they say in Washington, D.C.

54:14That's like the lobbyist version of the quote. The way I articulate it came from my dad, which is adversity is a terrible thing to waste. During the recession in 08, it was a tough time because, by the way, we were not yet the top restaurant in the world. We were trying to become a great restaurant, which meant that we were charging okay restaurant prices but were incurring remarkable restaurant expenses. and then that recession came and nearly wiped us out and we did two things to weather the storm first we cut as many expenses as we could none that would impact the guest experience but we tried to get very very creative and managing our money and and all the other areas and second we tried to come up with really creative ways to bring more people in the door now in the first when we started coming out of the recession my dad sat down with me and he said hey all those things you were doing to save money, hold on to them.

55:11Far too many companies, they tighten the belt when things are hard and they just throw the belt off completely once they get good. But if you can hold on to cost saving measures, when the times get good again, you find unprecedented levels of profitability. But on the creative ways to actually engage more people, I think that is where there's a particularly inspiring lesson. I spent time with Sir Norman Foster. We were working on a big project in New York City and I'll never forget one of the things he told me. I said, hey, what's your favorite? Of all the remarkable things you've created, what's your favorite?

55:50And he talked about this house in the mountains of Switzerland. And I said, oh, I mean, this guy's some of the most famous skyscrapers and he's talking about this little house. I said, why? He said, in a skyscraper, I have this giant swath of land, unlimited resources. I can build anything. On that house, the limitations of the terrain forced me to be my most creative self because limitation breeds creativity. In moments of adversity where you don't have a ton of resource to expend, you are really kind of walking on shaky ground. That's when you need to be the most creative. And if you can allow that limitation to fuel your creativity, I think some of the most groundbreaking ideas come out of it.

56:35And I talk in the book about some of the innovations that came out of that time, but they were transformational for us. Yeah, so true. I mean, so many innovations in this world have come from adversity, haven't they? Where, you know, the business or the founder has been forced into thinking quite differently. And we were talking about Cannes before. We were, yes, yeah. And I went, it wasn't last year, I think it was two years ago, I did a talk on the main stage, whatever you call it. But I quickly realized that a lot of what can is, is the parties, right? Because people go there to either reconnect with relationships that already exist or try to forge new ones.

57:16And of course, that is a huge part of any industry is the depth and the quality of the relationships you have in it. But I was so struck by the following. I mean, some of these parties were insane. I can't even imagine, and maybe this number exists out there, how many tens of millions of dollars are spent throwing parties over the course of that festival. I mean, there's Foo Fighters on the beach, there's Paris Hilton DJing on a yacht, there's closed down, all this stuff, millions and millions and millions of dollars. Now imagine if someone actually didn't have a big budget. I would imagine that would result in a more impactful strategy.

57:59And I was saying to some friends there, I went to some of these parties. I don't remember anything about them. And I can't imagine the people that through those parties had any real conversation with any of the people they were trying to connect with, given how crazy and over the top and chaotic they were. The parties were almost more along the lines of, hey, look what we can do, as opposed to just being the kind of thoughtful expressions of giving people what they need in those moments. And yet there was one thing. I love pattern recognition. That's how I've always pursued more scalable expressions of hospitality.

58:35Look at the things that just happen often and figure out what is the coolest way to react every time they happen. And then you can create magic all the time. everybody was in the lobby of the Carlton every single night it was like this one moment where everyone reconvened there and it was like probably from 11 30 p.m until two in the morning and everyone was drinking but you couldn't really get food the whole thing was too chaotic too chaotic I bet you could spend a fraction of what it took to throw one of those parties bring in a great pizza chef from somewhere in America and just make pizzas and go give pizzas to everyone in that lobby every single night.

59:11And I guarantee they would talk more about that than any of the parties that cost seven or eight figures to throw. And the reason for that, one, limitation breeds creativity. In the absence of a budget, you actually have the capacity to come up with a better and more creative idea. And two, because it's not about showing how you are cool and have money and create something over the top. It's just about being thoughtful. Look at what people need and be the person to fulfill those needs, and they will appreciate you. They will feel closer to you. And so I think you can really take this idea and look at it across all disciplines, across all different events, and I think it's really, really powerful when you do.

59:56Amazing. Well, I think we've got our can plan sorted for next year. You and I can serve pizza. We're going to do this. You and I are serving pizza. I think it would be amazing. Actually, a small thing before I go to the next question. I had to reread this I think two or three times in your book when you were talking about the downtown in 2008 did I read that you or the group owned Shake Shack at the time? yes well that's still when I worked for Danny Meyer so this is when I worked at Eleven Madison Park before I bought it and Shake Shack was Danny's burger chain that was literally born out of Eleven Madison Park so Danny owned the company but Shake Shack was born literally from our private dining kitchen And the chef that was there before us is the creator of the shack burger.

1:00:37And literally they were making burgers in our PDR kitchen and running them out to the park every single day. And the profits of Shake Shack are another thing that helped keep us alive during that time. That is incredible. Yeah. Talking of fast food, I might know the answers to this already because you talked about Shake Shack. But if you were to rate your personal, like which chains do you admire at the bottom end or the top? Like fast food chains. I mean, I, gosh, my death row meal would be an In-N-Out burger, double-double animal style, French fries animal style. I'd probably sub in a really nice bottle of Barolo for the Coke.

1:01:15That would be one of my last meals. I love that. That's a great way of asking the question. I should have asked the question like that, shouldn't I? Your death row meal. But I'm probably one of the few whose death row meal might actually include a fast food cheeseburger. And a Barolo. Yeah. I'd probably have some good pasta in there as well. I love In-N-Out Burger and I love everything they do. I mean, I think also the hospitality at Chick-fil-A is consistently remarkable. And that is not an accident. You talk about scalable things. I think people sometimes give them a hard time for the my pleasure thing, but it's powerful.

1:01:52You get every single person in your company to say my pleasure instead of you're welcome. And it communicates a belief system. And I think there's little and big things that more people can do more consistently to create a culture of hospitality. And that's one beautiful example of something they did to really evolve and transform their entire organization. I've got to say, my youngest daughter, Lilia, is a complete fanatic on American fast food. What's her favorite? Well, it's in and out burger as well. But it's the Flying Dutchman, which is not on the menu. And you have to ask for it. So you only know if you know.

1:02:31Wait, what is the Flying Dutchman? The Flying Dutchman. Animal style is also not on the menu. Oh yeah, of course. Well, I did the double, you see. I got Flying Dutchman with Animal Style fries. So I went for both the things that you can't get on the menu. Okay, okay. What is a Flying Dutchman? The Flying Dutchman is, so rather than the brioche bun, you have onion. So like half an onion. So imagine like you've got the onion cut in half, then you've got the cheese, then you've got two beef burgers, right? And then that's it. So you're eating it with the onion. I mean, it's a little horrifying that as an American, you are telling me something about that burger that I didn't know, but I appreciate it.

1:03:08But here's the other thing. This is what I love about what they've done with Animal Style and the Flying Dutchman. I talk about this as an internal culture thing to create your own language, to come up with these little isms, right? A shared language gives people a sense of belonging. It helps build culture. and the same is true in how they kind of refocus that to their customers right like you feel like you're a part of a cult because you know the language and but honestly cult more often than not has negative connotations cult is short for culture right like if you can create that kind of culture where people feel a sense of belonging through any means necessary language included i think the impact is always pretty profound it's huge isn't it i mean talking about culture i want to ask you as well about your approach to hiring people um because i imagine not only to be the world's best but also to scale yeah it must be incredibly important who you hired i feel like earlier in my career i made hiring so much more complicated than it needed to be i was the guy i'd probably be doing it on linkedin now but back in the day i was just doing on the internet like looking up really smart interview questions like what does the guy from goldman sachs use in his interviews and I almost went into interviews with a full script of questions.

1:04:27But over time, listen, I believe relationships are relationships and the lessons you learn from those in life can inspire you at work and vice versa. Here's the reality. The most important interview of my life was my first date with my now wife. If I'd gotten that wrong, the ramifications would be much more severe than hiring the wrong person. And yet had I shown up to that first date with a list of questions, I can go so far as to assure you we would not be married now. Rather, I get to know her. Is this someone I want to spend time with? Do I think I can trust her? Are we going to have fun together?

1:05:02All this. And if the answer is yes, we keep on dating. That's how I started to interview people. I interrogated down the list of requirements to be as small as possible. Oftentimes we filter out the right person by asking them to have an experience or a credential that is not actually required. And then once I get to the interview, I don't bring the resume. I already know they have the experience required for the job. Now I just want to get to know them. Effectively looking to identify three things. One, do I like them, right? Do I trust them? Two, do I think they're going to work hard? But three, perhaps most importantly, do I think that the people who work for me will get along with them.

1:05:46Less important whether I'm going to get along with them. It's more important whether they're going to get along with the other people on my team, because anytime you prioritize capacity over chemistry, I believe you're making a big mistake. Now, sometimes with that approach, I got a couple people wrong, but I got a lot more right than I ever did wrong. And I was able to scale a culture to, I mean, when I sold my restaurants, we had 1800 employees and turnover was great and and we had a lot of really good people because I hired the person not the resume that's incredibly powerful you're talking about chemistry as well and I guess the other the other part of it which you alluded to is the collaboration that happens yeah so often I mean you know you made front of house famous I guess didn't you as well as as well as obviously the the kitchen but they're often completely separate I mean this analogy works in any organization everyone works in their silos.

1:06:39Sales and marketing is probably the equivalent for kind of the world I live in is that, you know, one of them's looking at the future and creating demand. The other one is kind of fulfilling supply. And it's a classic friction point of where you've got this misaligned objectives and under pressure that becomes difficult. You're working in one of the most high pressure demanding environments in the world. How did you create the kind of collaboration that's required to be as successful as you were? I mean, I think with anything like that, it's a few prongs to a strategy. First, just talking about it.

1:07:13I think words matter. And what gets talked about is what gets thought about. We'd have these 30-minute meetings, these pre-meals every single day. And yeah, in those meetings, we focused on some operational logistics, but they were more about the how and the why than they were about the what. And so reminding people over and over and over again, repetition matters. If you believe in something, you better say it enough that you grow sick of hearing yourself say it. Otherwise, it won't bleed into the culture that we are not the kitchen versus the dining room. We're not front of house, back of house.

1:07:44We are one team collectively aligned to accomplish one goal. So, A, just talking about it. Second, implementing systems that lead to empathy, right? Not just hoping that people will be more empathetic, right? Because in those friction points, it often is driven from a lack of understanding. Oftentimes, people on either side believe that their work is more important or that they work harder, that the other team is lazy, right? That the other team doesn't matter as much. And so implementing systems that force people to walk in the other side's shoes. We had cooks delivering food to the dining room.

1:08:23We had cooks in our dining room pre-meals. You had to work in the kitchen for a certain number of days when you joined our dining room team. We had servers teaching the kitchen team about wine. We had cooks teaching the dining room team about food, like just forced cross-pollination. And that's where I talk about how unreasonable hospitality, it happens at the intersection of creativity and intention. Intention. not just wanting something to happen but deciding to pursue it every single day and putting the systems in place that will result in it happening and creativity in being creative such that those systems are as impactful as humanly possible that's that's amazing thank you um i wanted to end almost where we started and actually quote i think this quote is from your father which is what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail yeah which i just think is i think fear is probably one of the biggest things in life that holds us back in whatever you know like overcoming the fear you know to ask for a date of because if you go back to example with your wife right you know um anything in life you know fear is one of the biggest things that holds us back How important is it to kind of the belief system that you have?

1:09:42Yeah, so that quote is not out of my father's mind, but it's in my life because of him. He gave that to me on a paperweight when I was a kid, which I still have on my desk with me today. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? And he has inspired me to answer that question at varying intervals over the course of my career and in my life. And gosh, I love it because I believe it can call you to greatness. He's always said that far too many people, they're honestly scared to say their biggest goals out loud for fear that if they do and don't achieve them, they'll let themselves and those around them down.

1:10:21But he'd always go on to say that if you don't have that confidence, that conviction required to dream your biggest dreams out loud, it is very unlikely that you'll ever bring them to life. And by the way, even if you don't, you will get a whole lot closer simply for having tried. I think we're all capable of more than we think. Jay-Z articulated the quote in his own way. He said, I believe you can talk things into existence. I think if we are unbelievably audacious and honest with what we want to achieve and then patient in bringing those things to life, it's pretty cool. That's really cool. It reminds me a little bit.

1:11:02I don't know who said this quote. so I'd probably love to attribute it, but jump and the net will appear. You know what I mean? Because most, I mean, if I think about my own life, so often you go, well, I will do it if. If these circumstances are right, if I've got enough money, if I've got the experience and so on. And not let the occasional times that the net didn't make you never want to try again. Right? I would definitely be single if I never asked a girl out again after the first time I was told no. Yeah. Right? Like rejection along the way is a part of the process. And I think that's okay.

1:11:36If anything, the rejection is your learning mechanism, your feedback mechanism, isn't it? That enables you then to take the feedback loop that makes you better. 100%. Well, it's been amazing, mate. Thank you so much. I've loved this conversation. I could have carried on for the rest of the day. I suspect we'll have to kind of pause there. But thank you for writing such an inspiring book. Thank you. I know everyone listening, you know, is going to get a ton out of this conversation. I appreciate that. Cool. Thanks, man. Thank you, man. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO.

1:12:08I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on X at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.