Will Guidara: The Leadership Strategy Behind the World’s Best Restaurant | Leadership | E403

24:52Hala Taha:I feel like that is such a great idea for all businesses, like immediately I'm like, okay, I want to get my team together and think of every single touch point. And there's certain touch points that you mentioned that are sort of unobvious that you don't think about and touch points that have a lot of friction, like getting paid always has a lot of friction and could really break or make the customer experience. So help us understand, like, what are some of the touch points that we really need to pay attention to that our clients are going to remember? Well, I mean, listen, when I talk about isolating, every single touch point.

25:25I think people, if you just run that process once, you will not come even close to identifying all of the opportunities. Every time I've sat down with a team to do this exercise, they, on the first pass, name about half of the touch points. Because it's when you actually start to get more granular that the opportunity really arises. If you have an office, the touch points don't just start the moment someone walks through the door. What happens when they park in the parking lot? What happens when they walk through the door? What happens when they're going up the elevator? Those are the moments that no one else has ever really thought about.

26:02And that's why you can make an impact. And so my first answer to your question, where can you make the most impact, is in the little moments that people would never expect you to invest any energy.

26:15Hala Taha:And your competitors are certainly not thinking about it. And the competitors certainly aren't. One of the examples I love to use is Five Guys. If I ever ask a room full of people, what do you think of when you think of Five Guys? Half of the room will always say peanuts. Why? Because Five Guys, of all the fast food chains that are out there, is the only one I know of that had the wherewithal to recognize that the time spent waiting for your food to be cooked is a touchpoint in the experience. And they're the only ones to have done anything with it. Now, say what you will about what they do. They put out the peanuts, you eat them while you wait.

26:51Maybe it's for generosity's sake or to make the wait go by more quickly, or maybe it's to warn you that their fries are cooked in peanut oil. Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter. They're doing something where no one else has done anything, which I'd argue gives them an unfair competitive advantage. But the second category of if you're trying to just do a couple to make the biggest impact, there's a rule that was conceived years ago. It's called the peak end rule. And it really talks about how we remember experiences. And the two moments in an experience that most dictate our memory of it is the peak and the end.

27:30the peak meaning the furthest deviation from zero for better or worse and then the very end now as it pertains to the peak why i love that is because if you mess up all you need to do is recover in a way that's more significant than the mess up and then obviously it means you need to stick the landing that whatever the end of the experience is make sure you get that right and by the way in most experiences the ending is kind of the worst it's when you send someone the bill or they're left to leave on their own. And yeah, we can extend the ending in perpetuity if we so choose. That's where creativity comes into play.

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31:39Hala Taha:I'd love to stick on this, like paying the bill with your restaurants. You've got the story about serving cognac at the end because you can't really guess when to give the check and it makes sure that they're not rushed and they get some sort of a gift. So I'd love for you to tell that story. And then I'd love to understand in like an agency business or in a business outside of the restaurant business, like what are some creative ways that we can give somebody the bill without having a bad experience? The check is a hard part in the experience to get right. First, because I think it's just a timing issue, right?

32:17Like everyone has this in common, whether they realize it or not. People get very impatient the moment they ask for the bill. If it takes too long for the restaurant to give it to you, the meal's kind of ruined. At the same time, I can't drop it on your table because as you said, you think I'm trying to rush you out. It's especially hard in a fine dining restaurant because let's name it, it's a big bill. And the moment you realize how much the meal cost, it's a little bit harder to still love what you just had. For those reasons, no innovation. But once we'd written it down, we had the opportunity to make it better.

32:48This is what we came up with. If you were in my restaurant, I knew you were done. You hadn't asked the check yet, but it was clear to me that you were done. I'd go over to your table with a glass for you and whoever you were dining with, and an entire bottle of cognac. And I'd pour just a splash of cognac into each of your glasses and say, thank you for joining us, a little something 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, ready, whenever you are. It might sound like a small change, but the impact was profound.

33:22First, no one ever had to wait for their check again. Second, no one could ever think I was trying to rush them out. I just gave you an entire bottle of free booze. It didn't cost us very much. Rarely did anyone drink more than that first splash we poured into their glasses. And yet, at the moment where we brought over a big bill, we matched it with a gesture of profound generosity, keeping the value proposition intact. Perhaps my favorite part. Listen, I don't care what you do for a living if you want to make the experience feel genuinely hospitable. We need to find creative ways to make it feel, even in the slightest of ways, like you've just invited someone to your house for dinner.

34:02One of my favorite parts when I have people to mind is that moment at the end of the night where there's just a couple people left and someone grabs that last half-empty bottle of wine and pours the remains into the remaining people's glasses. at the end of an evening where I had served your every need with unbelievable attentiveness. I gave you and your friend the opportunity to serve one another. All because we wrote this down and decided to make it matter. In terms of how I've seen this manifest in other worlds. I mean, one story I just heard recently, it was from a big, one of the top four law firms in America.

34:38And they're really spending a lot of time with my book. and the cognac thing was something they resonated with and this is what they came up with anyone who's ever dealt with lawyers knows that the bills can sometimes be rather big um and you never know it until you open the bill and so this has happened to me before where i'm with my family or something and i make the mistake of opening up an email clicking on the link, seeing a very large number, and then suddenly not even being the slightest bit present with my people anymore because I'm thinking about that. They just started calling their people or leaving a voice note saying, hey, your bill is going to go out tomorrow.

35:21It's a big one. Open it when you're ready to open it, and I'm here to talk about it. But I just want to make sure it doesn't catch you off balance or if you weren't expecting it. I do think setting expectations is a beautiful expression of hospitality, and that's such a small thing that they did, but I think it actually shows that they care, that they're not just flippant about putting this giant bill in your inbox, that they recognize that money is real, it's important, and they care about how you receive information like that.

35:56Hala Taha:As I was thinking through, like, what do we do in my business? Something that we did a few years ago. So I have two parts of my business. I have a social media podcast agency that's like a retainer business where people have monthly services. Then I have a podcast network, which is a rev share. So the rev share one's really nice because I'm paying people. So they're getting more money than we are. So they're totally happy. That's never an issue because we're paying people, right? But on the retainer side of the business, one thing that really helped us was setting up auto ACH. So instead of us having to send invoices every month where they're like reminded, it's just like an automatic payment and we're kind of aligned from the start.

36:35Hala Taha:And an idea that I have after reading your book is like, well, maybe we should also, you know, every month send like our wins for the month so that they just like keep reiterating all the value that we created that month or anything new that we implemented that's an additional value at because I'm always like adding new things to their services where they might not even realize that we've made these improvements. You know, another thing, this is also restaurants, but I think the lesson is valuable. Cornell University, I have no idea why they did this, but they ran a study. They compared a thousand diners that give a mint with the bill, you know, the little red and white mints that you get at a diner to a thousand diners that don't.

37:14The ones that did on average had 18 % higher tips than the ones that didn't, which is wild to me and proof that generosity begets generosity and by the way asymmetrically the value of the tips far exceeded the cost of the mints more often than not if you give a little bit you will get a lot more in return and um the reason i bring that up with you whether this makes sense for your business or for someone who is listening and to their business like when you're making the ask for someone to pay their bill, find an opportunity to give them something at the exact same moment. Mix generosity into the transaction.

37:56Hala Taha:Yeah, like giving good and bad news at the same time to kind of soften the blow a little bit. So for a lot of people tuning in, they're perfectionists. They are operators. You know, oftentimes there's a person in the business who's more of like the operator and then there's the visionary. The operator folks can get really obsessed with excellence and doing everything perfect and following every step in the process. And sometimes that can really, you know, contrast with being super hospitable, right? Can you talk to us about the tension between excellence and hospitality? Yeah, I mean, they're not friends.

38:35There is tension between them. And yet I would argue that the most successful among us, our success comes because of that tension, not in spite of it. The way I talk about it is, listen, I am about as controlling and OCD and obsessive about details as anyone. I think you need to be in order to get three Michelin stars and to thrive in that environment. And yet, I also understand very, very deeply that no team will ever rise to its most fully realized potential unless the people on that team are genuinely empowered. those two things don't go that well together. Empowerment and control, right? They're opposites.

39:21And yet, if you can make the choice to hold both of them, to decide what absolutely needs to be consistent and systemized and done the exact same way every single time, and where there are opportunities to let your team run, recognizing that they're the ones that actually know the people you're serving in a way that you never can. there's too many customers as opposed to one leader at the top. Now, in empowering, you create cultures of hospitality, but in relinquishing control, you are giving up a little bit on excellence. Yet, it is the winning formula. My favorite quote is by Maya Angelou. It's one that I'd imagine many people have heard.

40:07It is, people will forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And by the way, I believe that to be so very true when I think about the experiences that linger with me. It's never about some technical element of the product or service. It's about something that a human being did for me that made me feel seen or gave me a sense of belonging. And yet with the idea, or I believe most people would agree with that, just to be clear. Like most people, when I talk to them, I think that's pretty true. And yet, in spite of how true it is, so many people reserve their best efforts for consistency and excellence and don't invest nearly enough into those things that actually will lead to the kind of memories that people can hold on to.

40:56And so for those who are operators who are so concerned with excellence, they rebuke hospitality. I just think you're you're leaving way too much opportunity on the table.

41:06Hala Taha:One of the questions that you repeatedly ask in your field guide is, how do you want to make people feel, right? How do you want to make people feel? So what do you suggest are the feelings we should try to create with our customers and our employees as well? I mean, the reason I ask it a lot in the field guide, and the whole idea of the field guide is that I think that nothing can be great unless it's an authentic representation of the person behind it. And so I want people to answer that question themselves so that what they're serving is sincere. And so I can tell you my answers, and I will, but I think that the better approach is whether you are a customer of your own business.

41:50We are all customers of other people's businesses every single day. We know what bad service feels like. We know what bad hospitality feels like. It's so easy for us to judge how other people approach their work, and it's also easy for us to know how we want them to make us feel. And yet so few of us actually pause to articulate that enough that we can ensure we are making other people feel that way. And so I think one of the best approaches is to say, how do you want other businesses to make you feel? And are you being intentional enough in how you run your business to make sure that you're making your customers feel that way?

42:31But my answers to the question? I mean, I want to feel heard with a business. Like, how many times have I called to complain and I feel like the person I'm complaining to? Not only do they not care, but doesn't even feel like they're listening. I want to feel seen. I want to know that I'm not just another customer, but I am Will, and the people who I am giving a lot of money to actually recognize me as an individual. I want to feel cared for. I want to know that people are going to try a little bit harder to make sure that I'm leaving that experience happy. And I want to feel welcomed. And if I can do those things for everyone that walks through the doors of my business, I'm pretty sure I'll win.

43:25Hala Taha:So let's move on to talk about how to really rally our teams and our employees to also have this shared motive of being more hospitable with our clients. One of the things that you talk about often is having a shared language and you come up with like a lot of like catchphrases and phrases to identify ways to make change and impact on your team. Talk to us about just first the importance of a shared language with a team. I think it's important just to pause for a moment and talk about the importance of communication. Just more globally. You know, actions speak louder than words, yes. And also words matter.

44:11And one of the most powerful things a leader can do to evolve a culture is to, with frequency, speak with every ounce of their passion about the things that matter to them. We had a meeting in our restaurant called Premial. It's the 30-minute meeting we have every day before we open the doors and go into service. Other businesses would call that meeting their daily huddle. Many businesses have it. Most approach it incorrectly. Or they spend the entire meeting talking about operational concerns, ideas that could easily be communicated via an email. And yet, listen, it does not matter how well-trained your team is if they're not inspired to want to do the job well.

44:53they're never going to do it at the highest level possible. The reality is that we all need inspiration. We crave it. I think the reason TED Talks are so popular is because a lot of people out there have no one in their life who's answered the call to inspire them. So they literally are farming it out to the internet. I think one of the most powerful things a leader can do is decide what their non-negotiables are, decide what they want to stand for as a business, decide what their why is. And then every day, if possible, speak with passion about those ideas because passion is contagious. And the more passionate you are, the more passionate the people around you will become.

45:40What gets talked about is what gets thought about. And I think we grossly underestimate the power of words. Now, as it pertains to an internal shared language, um this is something i learned from my longtime boss danny meyer um who when i graduated from school a lot of my friends went to work with big hotel chains or consulting groups and they always said that i worked for a cult because danny was really good with these like isms um the one-inch rule the swan charitable assumption all these little phrases that he came up with and we learned and would say over and over and over again. So they thought I worked for a cult.

46:25I've come to believe that if you call another company a cult, it probably means that you just don't work in an environment that has a well-established culture.

46:34Hala Taha:Yeah. Isms, this internal language, I think is a powerful thing to do, to decide what matters to you. Articulate these ideas in short, succinct ways and make them a part of the fabric of your organization. Because when you have this language that only you and your colleagues speak, it brings a closeness. And as a leader, every time you create one, it's you saying very clearly to the people on your team, this matters to me. And so by definition, it needs to matter to you as well. Yeah, I feel like it's those isms that are really gonna create a movement because they're memorable. Everyone can align to them.

47:14Hala Taha:It's clear, you know, what's important to the business. And especially in difficult moments, they kind of have a guiding star of like what they're supposed to do. So I thought we could do something fun with this. You've got lots of awesome catchphrases in your book, whether you made them up or you learned them from somebody. So I'm going to rattle them off. And then I'd love for you to tell me like, what does this mean? Why is it important? And hopefully it inspires people of how to make changes in their business. Okay, first one, the name of your book, Unreasonable Hospitality. Unreasonable hospitality means that everyone who has achieved anything of significance, whether you're looking at engineers or designers or athletes or directors, they are all unreasonable in pursuit of bringing the most fully realized version of their product to life.

48:04Unreasonable hospitality is bringing that same level of relentlessness, but simply focusing it in pursuit of other people. constant gentle pressure that one's from danny meyer um this idea that gosh it doesn't matter where you are within a hierarchy you can affect change through constant gentle pressure through deciding this matters enough for me to push the issue but change only happens when you're pushing constantly and gently. The consistency, meaning that sometimes just persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. And the gentleness, so that you're not just annoying everyone around you and you can actually invite them to believe in what you believe.

48:54Hala Taha:Be the swan. Hmm. That is especially true in restaurants, but I think it can find its way into so many other environments. When you watch a swan on top of the water. They're just gliding. But underneath, their feet are kicking like crazy. It's about this idea that we need to walk through life with composure and grace, but never at the expense of working our tails off to continue moving in the right direction. Athletic hospitality. There's this idea, we used to say, and this was back in the George W. Bush era, we came up with almost as a humorous ism or riff on it, no guests left behind. That no matter what, if we messed up with someone, we were going to fight to turn them around before they left.

49:52I like to gamify everything. And I look at hospitality as a passion, but also a game that you can win. And if someone comes in and they're in a bad mood or they're not looking to love us or they're just that difficult customer that everyone who's ever run a business has experience with, let's make it a game. Let's try to make sure that we are the one group of people that can make them happy.

50:18Hala Taha:Make the charitable assumption. That's another Danny one. And I think it's so powerful. The charitable assumption is another way of saying give people the benefit of the doubt. and by the way, this applies to leadership and service, but let's use service as an example. If someone comes into the restaurant and they're acting like a jerk, it's totally reasonable to decide that they no longer deserve our best hospitality, our most gracious service. That charitable assumption, though, would have you lead from this place. Maybe they're acting like a jerk because on their way to the restaurant today, they found out that a loved one died or that their spouse just filed for divorce.

51:08Maybe the person acting like a jerk is actually the person that needs our love more than anyone else in the room. Now, sometimes the person actually just is a jerk, right? But I'd always rather err in assuming the best in someone and be proven wrong than the other way around.

51:30Hala Taha:Okay, last one. Find the legend. That was the word that we used to describe the crazy over-the-top things that we would do for people. These one-size-fits-one gestures we would bestow on our guests when we'd really listen hard. Not just the things that they were saying, but looking at their body language, everything that they were giving us. Collect all that information and try to come up with

52:02improvised things that would just, well, that they would talk about forever. And whenever we were able to do one of those things, that was a legend.

52:11Hala Taha:Let's tell a story related to this that I think that our listeners will find really interesting. You have a story about a hot dog. I'd love to hear that one. Yeah, so this was like the first legend that gave way to many more. This was after coming in last place, after doing that whole interrogation of the experience, making a lot of changes, but I still didn't think we'd figured out what it meant to be unreasonable. Until one day I was in the dining room on a busier-than-normal lunch service, and I was doing what I always did when I was helping out the team. I was clearing dirty plates. By the way, that's a reminder to leaders, the further up in the hierarchy you find yourselves, the more important it is that when you make the decision to help, do the most menial task as often as possible.

53:05Because it's a great way to just remind your people you're never going to ask them to do something you are either unwilling or incapable of doing yourself. I love that. And I found myself clearing appetizers from a table of four. They were Europeans on vacation to New York just to eat at restaurants. In fact, this was their last meal. They were headed straight to the airport from the restaurant to head back home. and by the way before I tell the story if it reminds you of a scene from the show The Bear it's because they got it from me not the other way around and while I was at the table I overheard them talking and they were raving about their trip they'd been to all the fanciest restaurants and now 11 Madison Park it was the trip of a lifetime but then a woman at the table jumped in and said yeah but we never got to have a New York City hot dog and it was like one of those light bulb moments in a cartoon where you know the characters had a good idea I went back into the kitchen, dropped off the plates, ran outside of the hot dog cart, bought a hot dog, ran back inside.

54:00Then came the hard part, convincing my fancy chef to serve it in our fancy restaurant. But I got him to trust me, and eventually he cut it up into four perfect pieces, put one on each of the plates, put a little swish of ketchup, a swish of mustard, a little scoop of sauerkraut, one of relish. Topped it off with a micro herb or something to make it look fancy. and then before their final savory course which at the time was our honey lavender glazed muscovy duck that had been dry aged for two weeks i brought out what we in new york call a dirty water dog to the table and i explained it i said hey i overheard you talking i did not want you to go home with regrets here's that hot dog and holla they freaked out like at that point i'd served over the course of my career, tens of millions of dollars of caviar and lobster, whatever.

54:51I'd never seen anyone react the way they did to that hot dog. And really all that went into it happening were three things. One, being present at the table, which I defined as caring so much about the one person in front of you that you just stop caring about everything else you need to do and everyone else in the room. And that's hard for a lot of people to do. Two, to take what you do seriously, but to stop taking yourself so seriously. I think too many people are so focused on perfecting their brands and not nearly focused enough on just pursuing people. A hot dog could not be more off-brand, but who cares when you look at how it made them feel?

55:35And three, hospitality is about making other people feel seen. And the best way to do it is not to treat them like a commodity, but like unique individuals. And I really think one size fits all, that approach will only ever take you so far. And so those three things became the roadmap for us. And it was about going to every table, being more present, taking ourselves less seriously, and finding these one-size-fits-one ideas, these gestures that we could convey.

56:08Hala Taha:I really, really love this. And I'd love to understand how we can make this more scalable, repeatable, and just like roll this out to our teams more tactically. So like, what are some of the things that we can do to make it more accessible to our teams to be able to implement this, especially people who are like working directly with clients? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of ways. So, and I write about, this is a big part of the field guide. The new book is where I really kind of walk people through this. But I mean, the first thing is about resource, right? Like even people with the best of intentions, most high capacity people don't have a ton of margin and we have all these great ideas, but if it's too hard to deploy an idea, we get overwhelmed and we move on in life.

56:56And we had a position on our team called the dream weaver. Someone who was with us every single night, but they had no responsibilities. They were just there as a resource to help everyone else bring their ideas to life. What's wild is if you're not the person that has to execute an idea, you are inclined to come up with more of them. If I have a resource for you, so you're like, oh my gosh, I need sleds. Go find sleds in the city right now, right? Like more of this stuff would happen. So simply investing so that people have a resource to bring ideas to life is one significant way to scale. But still, it can only scale so far when you're coming up with original ideas every single time.

57:43And so that led us to a different exercise that we did with our entire team called pattern recognition of recurring moments. And by the way, this one I think is transformative. this time we got the team together, not asking them to identify a list of touch points, the things that happen always for everyone, but a list of the things that happen sometimes for some people, as often as once a night or as rarely as once every few weeks, because every business has these recurring moments, the good ones and the hard ones. And if you can identify them in advance, decide what is the most awesome way to respond every time that thing happens.

58:25Develop whatever assets you need for those responses. You can create magic all the time. Like if I think about your business, I mean, the good recurring moments, all the different podcasters you work with, what's a big milestone in the life of a podcast?

58:42Hala Taha:Launching your podcast, hitting, let's say, 100k downloads a month, getting your first sponsorship, getting your first payout. There you go. Okay. So right there. Now you and your team say, okay, what do we want to do every single time someone gets their first sponsorship? What do we want to do every time someone hits a hundred thousand? Right. And by the way, those meetings are so fun. And then once you have like a room filled with stuff so that when someone hits a hundred thousand, it's not like a whole thing. You just go, you get it, you send it, you make the impact you're trying to make and you have a good time doing it.

59:18That's what I'm talking about. And it's wild once you see this stuff out in the world to realize how impactful it can be. If anyone's ever been to a fast, casual restaurant with a kid and they give you the placemat and the little box of crayons, that's effectively what this is. I'm just talking about taking it much, much, much further. I think Chewy is a great example. um chewy the online pet supply company if you um have a dog you can go on chewy you set up the automatic dog food subscription you never forget to buy dog food again um i'm not a dog person i'm pretty ocd that that doesn't really work with dogs but then i got married and was informed that i am actually a dog person and so like seven years ago we got our first dog and god i love this dog like genuinely so much.

1:00:13I am really a dog person now. And I love her so much that it sometimes hurts because I know I'm going to lose her before I'm ready to. And when that day comes, I guarantee you, the first thing I'm going to do is not go on Chewy and cancel the subscription. Which means that a couple weeks later, another bag of food is going to arrive and going to rip open the scab. And then I'm going to reach out. This is a recurring moment for them. This is how they respond every time it happens. They obviously apologize for your loss. They cancel the subscription. They can't take the last bag back for health code reasons, but they credit it to your account.

1:00:49They encourage you to give it to someone else. And then two days later, a bouquet of flowers arrives at your house saying we're sorry for your loss. I mean, what does that cost? Fifteen bucks? Dog people are very likely to get another dog. And you're never going to get dog food from anyone else ever again. I think, by the way, I've seen so many of these. I've seen examples of this on airplanes now. I'd love to hear more examples.

1:01:18Hala Taha:It's so interesting and I think inspiring for people. I'm going to send this one. I didn't see this myself, but this was the newest one. I just got a text today. I was just on a United flight to Vegas. The Wi-Fi didn't work, which made things uncomfortable or whatever. In the thick of my disconnection frustration, the most amazing thing happened. The flight attendant started walking up and down the aisle with a handwritten trivia game she spontaneously started in the cabin. Written on the back of the cardboard with trivia about our destination. She walked up and down the aisle and engaged with anyone that wanted to join in.

1:01:55making a six-hour black hole into a bright, fun experience that, ironically, amidst of total loss of Wi-Fi, made us feel more connected, unreasonable hospitality, magic. That one, what I think is actually kind of inspiring about that, that's not a systemized thing. That was that flight attendant. But I'm also inspired by it because I think in many businesses, especially the big ones, there's already amazing things happening. Someone just needs to figure out what those things are and put the kind of systems behind them to make sure that they happen more consistently.

1:02:34Hala Taha:How do you actually empower your employees, especially when there's some sort of financial component? Like, how do you actually embed this process financially within your company as well? In terms of empowering them, well, A, just tell them they're allowed to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Say, hey, this is important to me. This is why it's awesome. And now you're allowed to do it. That's step one. Step two is praising the hell out of the people that do it. That's yet another reason why there's so much impact in a daily huddle. Getting people together and be like, okay, I want to celebrate. Hala did this thing yesterday that was just unbelievable.

1:03:15Like, da-da-da-da-da, Hala, you want to tell the story? And then everyone gives you a round of applause. Here's the thing. Even the two cool for school kids on our teams, we all crave affirmation. The more you get, the more you want to get. Or if you see other people getting it, you want to work hard to get some of it yourself. It becomes a beautiful thing. And also, every time I praise something, it's me saying very clearly to everyone on the team, this is what right looks like. It also is about not just praise, but criticism. And when I say criticism, I mean thoughtful criticism, giving people feedback constructively on when they do something imperfectly, what they can learn from it so that they can do a better job next time.

1:03:58And I think there's two things that are important in that. One, doing it. Because if you empower people and you don't tell them when and how they fell short, the empowerment's going to lead to problems, not successes. but the other thing that's important is the thoughtfulness through which you approach it because if someone tries to do something once and they fail and you get really angry at them they're very unlikely to try again so those are the moments where you celebrate failure and use it as an opportunity to learn then the last thing as it pertains to money is well you need to tell them where the guardrails are there's a one of the ways in which I manage my business it was called the rule of 95-5 which meant we managed our money like maniacs 95 % of the time and when I say managed our money I meant like no expense too small to be poured over in a pretty crazy way but we did that so that we could earn the right to spend the last 5 % foolishly so how much can you afford to invest in hospitality and then tell the people on your team what piece of that investment do they have control over i mean ritz carlton had a thing for years i think they still have it where every one of the team was able to spend i think up to two thousand dollars a day on guest recovery.

1:05:38So if they messed up, the team wasn't empowered. Do whatever it takes to make this right. I think when people understand, when they have an invitation to do something, when they are celebrated for doing it, and when they understand the lines within which they can freely roam, that's when powerful things happen.

1:06:07Hala Taha:This reminds me of something that we've done in our company where every holiday season for our sales reps that we work with for our podcasters, like all the brand representatives, we actually give them a Christmas gift. And we give them a Christmas gift that they can go on a website and we give them like, you know, $100 budget or$150 budget. They can pick out what they want. And it's something repeatable that they use every day. And so they get to pick out this gift. And we got so much feedback from people that it was a bigger gift than their own company gives them. These are people that we don't work with very often, like necessarily, they're not daily contacts, but like we might do a deal with them where they bring in 50K or 100K or even a million dollars a year.

1:06:51Hala Taha:So like depending on how much they usually bring in, we're giving them like a bigger gift. And oftentimes it's a bigger gift than their own company is giving them. So they get so much loyalty towards us. and it's something that they totally didn't expect, especially if they've never worked with us before because we just surprise them. Whereas our clients, we give them, like our monthly clients, we give them a Christmas gift, but we don't even get thank yous. It's just, to them maybe it's just, you know, we don't even get a thank you because maybe they're expecting it. It's not a special. So I'm wondering, like, is there, like, is the element of surprise, like a really important piece of this?

1:07:27Hala Taha:and like if we're allocating budget for gifts, should we not do it on expected times like birthdays and holidays? There's a few things here. Yeah. Yeah, I always encourage people to give outside of the gifting cycle. Less like for the need to receive the thank you. I think you need to give the gift because it's the right thing to give. Be, find joy in the giving itself and not base how good you feel about giving it on how appreciative the other person is. Now, that said, you don't want to be wasting money on something that's not making an impact. Yeah. And I think when, I mean, I don't know about you.

1:08:15I would imagine this is true for you. How many holiday gifts do you get right around Christmas from not your family, but from your work universe?

1:08:26Hala Taha:yeah plenty of them like I'll get gift baskets and like all different stuff yeah so when you give a gift during Christmas your gift is one of a lot of gifts I think it's kind of an issue in how we give gifts and kind of just how culturally we live life there's so much magic that happens in December and then like the rest of the year is kind of magic-less so I encourage people to like pick your own holidays. Like for every one of those people, you can give them that gift during the holidays or on the anniversary that they started or what is yap day on an annual basis. Or pick up a sales season or something like that.

1:09:09Hala Taha:Yeah, like just pick a day and like make meaning and bring magic to... My wife has a chain of bakeries called Milk Bar. And her big thing is like, birthday cakes are not just for birthdays. Like there's no reason you can't turn a random Wednesday into an exciting moment simply by cutting a cake. And I think the same is true about gifts and also has the added benefit of yours being the only gift they received that day. Not one of many. Oh, I didn't know your wife was the founder of Milk Bar. We got to have her on the show too. That's amazing. Yeah, she's amazing. That's awesome. She's the cooler one in the family for sure.

1:09:48I think that's a big part of it. The other thing is like, recognizing that you don't need the thank you all the time, but if no one is saying thank you, then maybe it means that somehow the gift just isn't meeting the moment.

1:10:07Hala Taha:Yeah. Because it's easy. And I've been in that position to be like, well, they're awesome. They're like super appreciative. These people, like they just are not appreciative as opposed to holding up the mirror and being like, okay, why are they not saying thank you? Maybe they don't want this thing. Maybe this gift sucks. I remember because we love to do stuff like this at my company. We've gotten like creative over the years. And we were giving a gift when we signed new podcasters. And one of the podcasters we signed is this legendary podcaster, Jenna Kutcher, who's been my client for a really long time.

1:10:42Oh, I know Jenna.

1:10:43Hala Taha:Yeah, she's in my podcast network. she actually just like retired her show but we still saw her her back catalog but so one of the things that we did is like my team decided on their own they were going to send her this like neon sign that said gold digger or something like that and they shifted to her and they're like oh she never said thank you i was like i was like because she probably doesn't want a neon sign in her house so we just gave her a bunch of junk i'm like of course she didn't say thank you By the way, you gotta be really careful when you give someone something to hang on their walls.

1:11:16You better really know them well to know that that's going to be what they want.

1:11:21Hala Taha:And she's still like, all her stuff is like aesthetically pleasing. We sent her a neon sign, but it's the thought that counts, right? So we talked about athletic hospitality and we talked a lot about offense, right? How do we like go through every touch point, make it as good as possible, you know, be unreasonable with our hospitality. but let's talk about when things go wrong. Let's talk about when we have to play defense. If we're having trouble with a client, with a customer, if somebody went through a bad experience, what are the things that we should do to fix that incident? And then also to make sure that like, we've got a process to fix it systematically.

1:12:00And I don't want to like obsess over words and I'm not even sure I fully believe what I'm about to say, but like, I actually think you still play offense then. There's all this data around this idea. That if you come into my business and you have a good time, you're going to talk about it a bit. If you come in and you have a bad time, you're going to talk about it a lot more. If you come in and you have a bad time, though, and I do whatever it takes to turn it around, that's the experience you're going to talk about the most. In fact, I know this to be true because my biggest regulars over the years were people that we messed up with the first time they came in.

1:12:40But because I was willing to do whatever it took to make things right, they felt such an investment from me that they rewarded it with their loyalty. There's almost a business case to be made that someone should start a business that intentionally messes up with every single customer they have just so that they have the opportunity to turn it around. And so I think in those moments, that's when you've got to go big. I think a lot of businesses could spend a little bit less on traditional marketing and a lot more on customer recovery. And the ones that do it well, I think, are pretty remarkable.

1:13:18How do you suggest that we find out just how happy our customers are?

1:13:23Hala Taha:I know there's like NPS surveys that people talk about, but like what is, how can we like understand like if our customers are actually really happy enough where they're going to stay and refer people? or if they're like just okay? Well, I think part of it, I mean, listen, this is so, the answer to this question is so different based on the business and the size of the business. Though I've spent a lot of time with a lot of like small to medium businesses who at the end of the day, like someone on their team is interacting, whether it's on the phone or in person or through a screen with their customers.

1:13:58And there's just no system through which that person is actually taking note of how that person feels. Right? Like, I can, and most people are the same, you can read pretty quickly without even saying, hey, are you enjoying our business? You can tell whether or not they are. And yet we have no communication process in place to actually raise a flag if they're not, or identify that they are so we can tell whether something changes in a negative direction. So I think step one is just, what is the system through which you are keeping track of the things that all of the different people on your team already know and centralizing that information into one place.

1:14:38With the bigger, bigger companies, yeah, you do need to rely on MPS and surveys, but then actually do something with it. I mean, the number of companies that have surveys or whatever, don't ask for information if you're not going to do anything with it. It's just annoying. Yeah. And honestly, it's disrespectful.

1:15:00Hala Taha:Yeah, you're wasting people's time. Yeah. So how about if a team member does something wrong? I know we were talking a little bit about praise and affirmation as well as criticism. And you've got like a certain process around which you give feedback to your team and how you handle giving criticism. So can you speak with us about that? is an investment, but only when done thoughtfully. And I have a bunch of rules, like criticize in private, never in public, because the moment you criticize someone in front of their peers, a wall of shame goes up. They're never going to be able to receive the message you're trying to deliver.

1:15:35You're criticizing the behavior, not the person. If you are late to work three times in a row, you are not a terrible person. You just need to stop being late. And in that same vein, you can praise with all the emotion you want, but criticism should be unemotional. I'm just saying, hey, you're great. Love you. Stop being late. The charitable assumption, though, is a part of that. Hey, is everything okay? Asking the question before you say the thing. Never use sarcasm. I think a lot of leaders do this when they're young or insecure. They make a joke out of criticism because they're so uncomfortable delivering it, but gosh, joking about something as beautiful as investing in someone else's growth makes you and them look bad.

1:16:28Perhaps most importantly, be willing to receive criticism from others. Because we've all worked with that person that gets really defensive every time you try to invest in their growth. And if you're the person that's always getting too defensive, guess what? People are going to stop giving you the criticism that you need in order to grow. and if they stop giving it to you, you're going to stop growing. You are not investing in yourself if you get too defensive every time other people try to.

1:16:57Hala Taha:Another idea from your work that I really resonated with was this idea that a 30-minute stand-up every day can really actually create a team. I noticed this with my company. We have a lot of daily huddles through various teams. And I actually run our sales team. That's like my main responsibility is to recruit podcasters for the network. And then I help run our sales team. And then I have lots of leaders that do other things on my business. But for us, I implemented a meeting called DealDesk where every morning our team, even though we're remote all over the world, we have this meeting called DealDesk and every salesperson is just rattling off their deals and any problem.

1:17:35Hala Taha:And we kind of just discuss it and just make sure that everything's unblocked. And in this meeting, we started off with like, what's your one word open? What's your personal high or recognition? and we kind of get warmed up and then we go into this deal desk meeting. And it's honestly like, we've like tripled our sales since doing this. Like it just is, and it's something that everybody looks forward to every day. Like we love having this meeting. So I'd love to understand from you, like what is the, how do you open up your meetings? Like if you have a format that you'd like to recommend to the folks listening in.

1:18:08Hala Taha:And then also like why you think this meeting creates such like a positive culture, this daily huddle. I think it's a little bit to the point I was making before about people just needing to be inspired. And part of a leader's role is to get their team fired up or to bring them ideas that help them look at their world a little bit differently. and when you do that the people you work with cease being a collection of individuals and they come together as a trusting team which unlocks the capacity and chemistry required to do great things my approach I would always start out with some housekeeping like what are the things I just need to get through I need everyone to know so that we are aligned and on the same page and then I dive into whatever was the thing I was thinking about that week, I have a newsletter called Premial that I still write.

1:19:10It comes out every two weeks now, which people can sign up for at unreasonablehospitality.com, which is basically what I'd be talking about with my team. Where those things come from, I believe that finding inspiration, you get good at it. If you walk through the world with your eyes open wide enough, you can seize on little things and bring them back home and use them to inspire your team. And so every week I would have seen something, I'd come back, I'd tell a story, and then articulate the lesson I got from that story. And I would tell that story every single day for a week and then probably never again.

1:19:51I think the stories are important because stories make ideas stick. if you just jump to the lesson and skip the story half of the people in the room are not going to receive it but if you can give a story behind an idea it makes it that much more memorable maybe a pre-meal this week would have been the story about that flight attendant doing the trivia when the wi-fi was down and celebrating the creativity the empowerment and how she created community among the team and alleviated boredom and frustration by virtue of doing it. And so what is something that's happening in our world that is like losing Wi-Fi in a plane?

1:20:35And what's a way that we can work together to react in a more creative way?

1:20:42Hala Taha:That in itself is just like so inspiring. Like I'm thinking about all my best days and my best weeks. Like I naturally do stuff like that. I'll think of like something that happened in the business and every meeting that I'm on, it's like a little tour and I tell the story and the lesson. But it's so powerful if like you make that part of your routine, like every Friday thinking through what happened this week and what can I kind of take as a lesson and communicate to my team next week so that they remember this value that we have. You know, like I just think it's such a it's it would be so cool to do that more as a routine as a leader.

1:21:17And by the way, you yourself will be more inspired because if you have that as a deliverable, you are going to train yourself to find inspiration more frequently as you walk through life. So you're just going to inherently be more inspired and therefore more inspiring.

1:21:35Hala Taha:This has been such an incredible conversation. Unreasonable Hospitality is such a great book. I know you just came out more recently with The Field Guide. but this was one of the best books that I've read lately in terms of like business value so much so that I had the idea with my business partner Kate I was like let's start a book club and like make everybody read read like all of our leaders read a book and then discuss it and think about how we'll implement some of the ideas in our business and so you are going to be our first book read in our company book club so thank you for writing this and sharing your wisdom I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests.

1:22:14Hala Taha:The first one is, out of everything we talked about today, what is one actionable thing that our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? I mean, the thing that you can do today is like what we just talked about, like seize on the power of a daily huddle today. It doesn't need to be 30 minutes like mine was. don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Like go into work and say, hey everyone, just circle up and just tell them about something you're inspired by. And by the way, if Hala said something inspiring today, just use that to inspire them. But like, just start.

1:22:55Don't wait to have it all figured out before you start.

1:22:58Hala Taha:Yeah, I think meetings, some people are so like anti-meeting and they think that that's being more productive is removing the meetings. but I really think that syncing the team together and getting everybody to talk and feel connected will make you so much more productive than just everybody being in their own silos. Yeah, we should be anti-ineffective meetings, but don't get carried away that we remove an entire format that can be unbelievably impactful just because there's been so many bad versions. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? I work very, very hard. I really love working.

1:23:36and yet I have, and this is not something that comes naturally to me, it's something I've worked at very, very hard for a very long time, developed the ability to, when I am at home, I am at home. And when I am at work, I am at work. And being able to turn each one on and off appropriately

1:24:02has just made life so much better. It's made me a better husband, a better dad, a much better friend. And honestly, when I'm able to turn work off for a couple days each weekend, it makes me so much better at it when it's time to turn it back on.

1:24:21Hala Taha:What kind of boundaries have you put in place? Like, is it just, I don't work weekends? Or have you put other boundaries in place? No, I mean, the only two, the real thing, because I travel a ton for work. So there's plenty of weeks where I'm just gone Monday through Friday. So yeah, with very, very few exceptions, I never work on the weekends. I also really take summer seriously with the kids. Like, no talks, no travel. Like, July and August, I'm with my family. I will wake up on the weekends in the morning. I'm always the first person to wake up and I will go downstairs and I'll have a coffee and I'll start doing emails.

1:25:03But the moment my first kid walks into the room, the phone goes down. That's it.

1:25:09Hala Taha:Yeah. Just those things. I love that. And where can our listeners learn more about you and everything that you do? Hey, first of all, this was such a fun conversation. Thank you for having me. I loved this conversation. No, in terms of me, I mean, I'm on the social media, mostly LinkedIn and Instagram, unreasonablehospitality.com. That's where you can sign up for my newsletter and learn about all the various things that we do. And I'm particularly excited about the field guide, which just came out. And I think for people who read Unreasonable Hospitality, a lot of other companies have done a book club around that book.

1:25:46I think book clubs around the field guide are going to be very, very impactful. because it's really walking through these ideas in a very actionable way. And I'm really proud of how it turned out.

1:25:59Hala Taha:I got a hard copy of the field guide and I'm actually in the process of writing book and I pulled it up with my editors and I was like, this book is awesome. And it looks so cool. And I was like, we need to do a book like this. And they're like, well, Holla, he has a different book that came first. This is the second book. That's more of the tactical thing, but it looks awesome. and it really just makes you want to work in it because it's just like an engaging format. I appreciate that. Great job on it. Yeah, great job. Will, thank you again for coming on Young and Profiting Podcast. It was such a pleasure.

1:26:31Thank you so much.

1:26:33Hala Taha:I loved this conversation. It was so much fun to speak with Will and learn more about unreasonable hospitality. I think it's one of those ideas that sounds like it only belongs in restaurants and hotels, but really it has so much to offer entrepreneurs and anybody building a business. Because as Will said, every business is in the hospitality business because every business is the people business. Whether you sell a product, a service, a course, a podcast, or a client experience, you are still serving human beings at the end of the day. And in a world where AI is making everything faster and more automated, the businesses that win are going to be the ones that make people feel seen, valued, and cared for.

1:27:14Hala Taha:Here are some of my favorite pieces of wisdom that Will shared today. First, service and hospitality are not the same thing. Service is what you do. Hospitality is how you make people feel. You can deliver the right product, hit the deadlines and check every box. But if the customer feels like just another transaction, you are missing the real opportunity. Hospitality is what turns a transaction into a memory. Next, look for the overlooked moments. Will talked about interrogating the customer experience and identifying every single touchpoint, not just the obvious ones. For entrepreneurs, that might be the onboarding email, the invoice, the follow-up, the handoff, the way you handle a mistake or the last interaction someone has with your brand.

1:27:59Hala Taha:Those tiny moments are where you can stand out because most people are not paying attention to them. Finally, empower your team to care. One of the biggest lessons from Will is that hospitality cannot just live with the founder. It has to become a part of the culture. Give your team the language, the permission, the guardrails to create magic for your customers. Celebrate the people who go above and beyond. Praise them in public because when your team feels trusted to make people feel special, your customers can feel it too. All right, Yap Fam, if you love this conversation with Will, make sure you grab his book, Unreasonable Hospitality.

1:28:34Hala Taha:The Field Guide is his brand new version of the book, which gets really tactical and helps you put these ideas into practice. As always, if you learned something valuable today, please follow and subscribe Young and Profiting on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a five-star review and hit like if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify video. All these small gestures and interactions, comments and reviews, this is what helps us reach more people who need these conversations. This is the number one way you can support our show. You can also follow me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search my name.

1:29:09Hala Taha:It's Hala Taha. And today I want to give a big, big shout out to Nina, our lead digital producer at YAP. She manages the whole team. She edits every episode, picks every clip. She is working so hard to put out this amazing content each and every week. And without Nina, this ship is not sailing. So shout out to Nina for doing such a great job. And shout out to our guest outreach team for getting well on the show and getting such a great guest and conversation happening this week on the podcast and each and every week on Young and Profiting Podcast. This is your host, Halataha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.

1:29:51Hala Taha:Hey, App Fam, we're about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit. Now, I've been doing Young and Profiting Podcast for eight years, and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses, and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous. You may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale. And we want to hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers. And I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry.

1:30:31Hala Taha:So that's what I want to bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm going to be interviewing people who are making anywhere from$500 ,000 to$10 million a year. They're not super famous. They're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes. And we're going to uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market, and so much more. If this sounds like you and you want to be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to youngandprofiting.com slash apply and share your story.

1:31:06Hala Taha:Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's youngandprofiting.com slash apply. And who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting Podcast. There's a new way to sweet green. Meat wraps, handheld, hearty, and made for life on the move. With bold, chef-crafted flavors, fresh ingredients, and over 40 grams of protein, they're built to satisfy without slowing you down. Try Wraps today in the app or at order.sweetgreen.com. Available at all participating locations.