The Hospitality Principles That Build Billion-Dollar Startups

0:00:04 All right. This episode is with Will Gudera. Will is the author of a book called Unreasonable
0:00:10 Hospitality. He also is one of the writers for a TV show called The Bear, which is very popular.
0:00:14 And there’s an episode in The Bear. It’s called Forks. I think it’s in season two. And it’s an
0:00:19 amazing episode. You guys have to watch it. And it’s basically all about excellence. So how to
0:00:23 have unreasonable hospitality. There’s a lot of people listening to this, a lot of the MFM audience.
0:00:28 You guys run internet companies. And so this book that he wrote, it’s about his restaurant called
0:00:33 11 Madison Avenue and how they went above and beyond to treat their customers amazingly and
0:00:37 how it actually helped their customers and help their business. Maybe this book hasn’t come across
0:00:41 your table because it’s not about the internet stuff. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted
0:00:47 to have Will on. So give the episode a listen. I loved recording this. And one of the big takeaways
0:00:52 other than going above and beyond for your customers, it’s about being excellent, being
0:00:58 excellent in life, in business and fitness and family. I hope it inspires you. I loved it.
0:01:01 I loved recording this episode. It inspires me. So give it a listen.
0:01:07 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it
0:01:10 like no days off. On the road, let’s travel. Never looking back.
0:01:17 Man, I’m happy to talk to you. I read a lot. And there’s probably two books that are not meant
0:01:24 to be business or at least my type of internet business books. One of them is The Inner Game of
0:01:29 Tennis. It’s a book about how to be great at tennis. But it’s sort of like how to be good
0:01:34 at sports psychology or life psychology, how to handle stress and not be down on yourself.
0:01:38 And then the other one is unreasonable hospitality. Because when I read the book,
0:01:43 I sort of wanted to become unreasonable at the rest of my life. I remember reading the book and I was like,
0:01:51 this guy’s an animal. He’s really uptight about things that I am not uptight about. And to be
0:01:54 the best that I can be, I need to be relentless.
0:02:01 It’s interesting. I think the dichotomy of what’s in there is to accomplish what we did there
0:02:06 required this relentless pursuit of excellence, right? I mean, that’s kind of an inevitability
0:02:12 when you’re trying to become the best at anything. But what’s wild was it wasn’t the pursuit of
0:02:18 excellence that actually took the restaurant over the top. It was the relentless, unreasonable pursuit
0:02:25 of hospitality, right? Like you push everything to get every detail so unbelievably perfect. And then
0:02:33 you do these messy things at the end to make people feel so very seen, whether that’s obsessing over
0:02:42 every single garnish on a plate of crazy uber fine dining food, and then recognizing that the thing that
0:02:48 people will actually remember is a hot dog or whatever other random thing we did for people.
0:02:55 And so it’s this quest for perfection and the acknowledgement that the most human moments
0:02:59 are perfectly imperfect. And those are the stickiest of all.
0:03:01 And what’s that story again exactly?
0:03:09 So it was a busier than normal lunch service. I was clearing tables to help out the team.
0:03:17 And I was at a table of four. There were foodies from Europe in New York just to eat at fancy
0:03:23 restaurants. And so they’d been to like, you know, Le Bernardin and Danielle and Jean-Georges and
0:03:27 per se. And for anyone listening who does not know what those restaurants are, just trust in how fancy
0:03:31 the names sound. They’re the very good ones. And this was their last meal. They’re going straight
0:03:33 to the airport from the restaurant to go back home.
0:03:35 And you just overheard that.
0:03:38 And while I was at the table, they were raving about the trip. And then one woman said, yeah,
0:03:43 but we never had a New York City hot dog. And it was just one of those light bulb moments. And
0:03:48 I ran into the hot dog cart, bought a hot dog, brought in, then came the hard part, convincing
0:03:53 my fancy chef to actually serve it in our restaurant. But he cut up the hot dog, put one
0:03:57 little piece on each plate, a little swish of ketchup, one of mustard, a canal of sauerkraut,
0:04:02 one of relish. He like topped it off with a micro herb or something to make it look fancy.
0:04:06 So it looked all cool. Yeah. And then before their final savory course, which at the time was our
0:04:13 honey lavender glazed muscovy duck, I brought out what we in New York call a dirty water dog. And I
0:04:17 explained it. I just said, hey, I overheard you before. We didn’t want to let you go home with any
0:04:25 culinary regrets. Here’s that New York City hot dog. And they freaked out. Like I’d been working
0:04:31 in restaurants my entire life. I had to that point served tens of millions of dollars worth of wagyu
0:04:36 beef and lobster and caviar. I’d never seen anyone react to anything I’d served them.
0:04:40 like they did to that. And this was at 11 Madison. This was at 11 Madison. Okay.
0:04:46 And for the non New York non foodie audience, 11 Madison, I think you guys won an award that was
0:04:51 like the world’s world’s best restaurant. Was that what the title was? Yeah. Which is just that’s,
0:04:58 that’s a crazy thing that that even exists, but you won it. You won that such a ridiculous award.
0:05:03 And the book, I think got a huge bump in the, in the TV show, the bear because of the episode
0:05:11 forks where the kind of loser cousin goes to one of your restaurants and he learns how to be great.
0:05:17 And he learns how to be great in the most strange way when you’re watching the show, which is you
0:05:22 polish the forks. And if you polish the forks really well, you’re going to be great at this other thing,
0:05:26 which means it’s going to lead to this other thing and this other thing. And then eventually it goes to
0:05:32 when you’re talking to a customer and you overhear them saying, I love this restaurant and my visit to
0:05:36 New York has been amazing, but I would really just love a hot dog. I still haven’t gotten one of those
0:05:40 yet. And if you overhear a customer say that you run outside and you get them a hot dog and you present
0:05:45 them in such a way that brings memories. And that’s, that, that’s the point of the book. And also a little
0:05:53 bit about your background. Were you at 11 Madison as uptight as, or as like hardcore as the show,
0:05:59 uh, the bear kind of made it seem like, do you, do you have to perform and sort of be a dick to your
0:06:01 staff in order to make them buy into this stuff?
0:06:09 Listen, I think to succeed in a restaurant as a leader, the same lessons are true when it comes
0:06:13 to succeeding in any other business. I think the greatest leaders are those that when they walk
0:06:18 into the room, the people that work for them, like check themselves a little bit. They want to make
0:06:25 sure that everything is as it’s meant to be. And they smile because they’re happy that person’s
0:06:34 there. Right? Like when you, when you’re a leader that acts like a dick, people are just scared of
0:06:41 getting yelled at. When you’re an attentive leader that is thoughtful in holding people accountable,
0:06:46 people don’t want to make a mistake because they don’t want to let you down.
0:06:53 But can you walk me through a scenario? Because as a leader, I have a bunch of employees. I have
0:06:58 this weird feeling of like, well, I don’t want to be like disliked too much. And I don’t know if I
0:07:01 should call this person out on this particular thing. I don’t know if I want to pick that battle
0:07:07 right now. And so for all the listeners who, I think I’m pretty average in terms of a lot of people
0:07:13 feel that how I feel. Yeah. Can you walk through like a conversation as to like a productive leader
0:07:18 conversation that relates to holding people accountable? Yeah. Well, first of all, yeah,
0:07:24 I think too many leaders focus on wanting to be liked. The people that work for us don’t need another
0:07:29 friend. They need actually someone who’s willing to step up and lead them. And if you focus on doing
0:07:33 that consistently, they will invariably like you. It’s not dissimilar to when you
0:07:38 try to build any sort of business. If you focus so much on making money,
0:07:43 you’re probably going to do something mediocre. Whereas if you just focus on building something
0:07:44 great, you’re going to end up making money.
0:07:51 Yeah. I believe that the great cultures are those where feedback is normalized. And when I
0:07:58 talk about feedback, obviously I’m talking about praise. When you set crazy expectations for people on
0:08:02 your team, you better be there to celebrate them when they meet or exceed those expectations. A,
0:08:10 because it’s the right thing to do. But B, because praise is addictive. And when you receive
0:08:18 some, you want to receive more. But sometimes I fear that we focus so much on praise and think that
0:08:23 that’s the only way to build a great culture that we forget about how powerful criticism can be. Because
0:08:31 if praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. The people that work for you definitively are there
0:08:36 because they want to grow and become better versions of themselves. And that means that if you aren’t
0:08:42 there to hold them accountable when they are not being the best versions of themselves, you’re not
0:08:48 actually doing right by them. I don’t think there are many things a leader can do that are more
0:08:53 beautiful than being willing to step outside of your comfort zone for long enough to invest in
0:08:58 someone else’s growth. Now, the only way it’s an investment is if it’s done thoughtfully. And I have rules of
0:08:59 criticism.
0:09:04 Before you say those rules, just so I understand, how many, how much staff did you have in some across all the
0:09:05 restaurants?
0:09:06 Oh, 1,800.
0:09:11 Wow. Okay. And was your retention better than industry standards?
0:09:12 Dramatically so.
0:09:14 So you killed it there?
0:09:15 Yeah, we did well.
0:09:17 Okay. And what are the rules for criticism?
0:09:23 And by the way, any of these individually, they’re pretty simple, right? A, criticize in
0:09:28 private. You can praise in public, but criticize in private. The moment you criticize someone in
0:09:31 front of their peers, a wall of shame goes up, they’re not going to receive the information you’re
0:09:39 delivering them. Two, criticize the behavior, not the person. People inadvertently end up talking
0:09:45 about the person’s shortcomings as opposed to just focusing on the behavior itself that they’re
0:09:53 trying to correct. Three, criticize consistently. Too often, we don’t have the energy to call someone
0:09:59 out for having done something. And so we wait until the moments that we do. But when that’s the case,
0:10:04 two things become true. One, people aren’t sure what right looks like because you only call them out
0:10:10 every other time they do that thing. Or perhaps even worse, people think you only criticize them
0:10:18 when you’re in a bad mood, which brings a negative stigma to the exchange. Never use sarcasm and
0:10:23 criticism. A lot of younger leaders do that. They think that if they make a joke out of it, it’ll be
0:10:27 easier to swallow. But joking around about selling as beautiful as investing in someone else’s growth,
0:10:30 I think, makes a fool of both of you.
0:10:32 So like, what’s an example?
0:10:39 You know, like when people are like, hey, maybe stop being so late. Like, whatever. Trying to like…
0:10:43 Yeah. So what would you say instead? It said, you know, we said we were going to be here at eight.
0:10:47 You weren’t. I don’t like that. Can you please be here at eight tomorrow?
0:10:49 Exactly. Without emotion.
0:10:49 Yeah.
0:10:54 Which brings you to the next rule. There’s no place for emotion and criticism. It’s unemotional.
0:10:59 The moment you bring emotion into it, you’re eliciting emotion in the other. And the more someone
0:11:05 is emotional when receiving criticism, the more they shut down. And then finally, you better be
0:11:11 praising everyone on your team more than you are criticizing them. Because if you’re not, one of two
0:11:19 things is happening. One, you are just the person that has a tendency to see all the things that are
0:11:27 wrong more than you have the ability to see the things that are right. Or you have someone in your
0:11:31 team that’s just not doing enough things well to praise. And in that case, you failed as a leader by
0:11:33 letting them stay there as long as they have.
0:11:39 All right. So a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of
0:11:43 experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast,
0:11:48 you know that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like
0:11:55 17 or 18 million dollars in revenue. I started it with like $300. My current company, Hampton,
0:12:00 does over 10 million in revenue, started it with actually no money, maybe $29 or something like that,
0:12:05 nothing. And so you don’t actually need investors to start a company. You don’t need a fancy business
0:12:11 plan. But what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, The Hustle,
0:12:16 they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under $1,000.
0:12:22 These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now.
0:12:27 You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now back to the show.
0:12:33 What were some early stories when you were figuring out unreasonable hospitality,
0:12:38 and then you implemented it and you’re like, oh, man, actually, something is here. Not only does it
0:12:39 make them feel good, it actually might make me more money.
0:12:45 Yeah. I mean, the hot dog was the origin story. You know, you always hear of athletes going to the
0:12:50 tapes when they’ve made a mistake to see what they did wrong to make sure they don’t continue to do that
0:12:55 thing. What I don’t think anyone does often enough is go to the tapes when they’ve done something
0:12:59 right to make sure that they continue to do that thing. That’s how you put intention to intuition.
0:13:07 And in the hot dog, we did something as silly and simple as it was, that was significant.
0:13:15 And it required being present enough to actually pick up on that. It required realizing that we should
0:13:20 stop taking ourselves so seriously, because sometimes the silliest things can be the most connective.
0:13:32 And it required acknowledging this idea that the gestures that are specific to an individual will
0:13:40 always have the greatest impact. And I say one size fits one. And with that, we put a system behind
0:13:46 it. So we hired an additional person to our team, someone who was in the dining room with only one
0:13:52 responsibility to be there as a resource to help everyone else bring their ideas to life.
0:13:57 And what was the what was their budget? Tell me everything. This is where this is what I’m what I
0:14:02 want to know is the operations. And in particular, a lot of people listening, we own internet companies or
0:14:08 some type of digitally company, not necessarily traditional, like a restaurant or traditional service
0:14:12 industry. So that this is actually what I really, really want to know is operationalizing this. So tell me.
0:14:17 Yeah. So listen, in the beginning, we didn’t put a budget to it. It was just like, hey, guys,
0:14:22 just start doing it. And like, be reasonable. Don’t like get like, be unreasonable with the
0:14:27 thoughtfulness. But like, we’re not spending $1,000 on an idea for someone.
0:14:28 And what was this person’s title?
0:14:30 The Dreamweaver.
0:14:31 The Dreamweaver.
0:14:36 Okay. And what were they making? I don’t know what restaurant salaries are.
0:14:40 They were probably making $25 an hour.
0:14:45 Okay. And their whole goal, you said, you said, I don’t know if you wrote out in a memo or in the job
0:14:48 description, you said, help everyone.
0:14:51 You’re just there. Because, okay, so here’s the thing.
0:14:57 Having nothing to do with unreasonable hospitality, like, everyone has great ideas, the difference between
0:15:03 like the people that I think crush it in life and those that don’t are the ones that actually
0:15:05 decide to bring their great ideas to life. Right?
0:15:11 Now, the reality is, is in the workplace, in most high functioning organizations, people
0:15:17 don’t have a ton of bandwidth. This is especially true in a restaurant. It’s not like people have an
0:15:22 extra 30 minutes in the middle of Saturday night service to go work on a little art project.
0:15:28 This person was just there to create bandwidth. So they were there. Anyone on the team had an idea
0:15:33 that could go to the Dreamweaver and be like, Hey, I need you to go out to the store and get a DVD for
0:15:39 the movie seven on the fly. Or, Hey, we need to find sleds immediately. Or, Hey, we need to go get the
0:15:47 cotton candy machine from downstairs. Or, Hey, does the toy store sell super soakers? Can we get any of
0:15:52 those right now? Whatever it was. And that person was just there to execute. Now, over time, we started
0:15:58 hiring the Dreamweavers from art schools so they could actually like do their own craft work in the
0:16:05 moment. And we just let it fly. There was one Dreamweaver. The Dreamweaver was responsible for
0:16:10 execution. Everyone on the team, though, was in their own way a Dreamweaver because they were the
0:16:14 one responsible for ideation. Yeah. Right? It’s the people on the front line that are actually
0:16:18 connecting with the customers. They’re the ones that are picking up on the little things that you can
0:16:26 run with. Um, the Dreamweavers were never given a set budget. Although every once in a while, like
0:16:32 one, two months a year, I would look at the Dreamweaver, uh, line item in the P&L and I’d say
0:16:37 to the team, Hey guys, let’s rein it in a little bit. What was the most expensive thing? Gosh, the most
0:16:43 expensive thing we ever did. I don’t know. Like we had these pictures of Miles Davis, these giant
0:16:50 photographs of Miles Davis in the kitchen. One time a guy, um, who actually worked for us
0:16:58 because I always wanted to spend the most money on our own people because if they received this stuff
0:17:03 at the highest level possible, they were going to be more inclined to turn around and come up with
0:17:08 these things for other people. Right? Like until you know how good it feels to receive something,
0:17:14 you’re not necessarily as inclined to want to put in the work to, to give it to others. And he loved
0:17:22 notorious B.I.G. So we like reprinted all these giant framed photos in our kitchen, a biggie, which I
0:17:28 mean, that was probably 600 bucks or something. Okay. So it’s not that much money. No. Okay. And
0:17:33 what was the average? I don’t, I don’t remember what it costs. What was the average table spending?
0:17:41 Two grand? Yeah, it was like 400 a person. Okay. And how many a night were you doing? Or how many
0:17:49 per customer maybe? Well, so here’s the thing. I distill unreasonable hospitality, the gestures of the
0:17:57 philosophy into three categories. One size fits all, one size fits some, and then one size fits one. And I
0:18:02 think it’s important just to explain this because we’ll frame the conversation. One size fits all, man,
0:18:08 that we looked at the entire experience, every single touch point, and identified how we could
0:18:15 make as many of them as possible just a little bit more awesome. So I’ll give you an example. The
0:18:20 check, right? The check. In millions of restaurants in the world, at the end of every one of those meals,
0:18:24 someone is bringing you a bill. And yet, in spite of the fact that everyone shares that touch point,
0:18:30 I’ve never seen an approach with any creativity or intention. Yeah. And it’s a hard part of the meal
0:18:36 to get right because, A, everyone gets really impatient the moment they ask for the check. If it
0:18:41 takes you too long to give it to them, you’ve ruined the meal. At the same time, I can’t drop it on your
0:18:46 table before you’ve asked for it. Otherwise, you think I’m trying to rush you out. It’s especially hard in a
0:18:51 fine dining restaurant because those are big checks. The moment you realize how much it costs, it’s a little
0:18:58 bit harder just to love what you just had. For that reason, no innovation. But we saw that as an
0:19:03 opportunity to do something, an overlooked touch point. So when I knew you were done with your meal,
0:19:08 you hadn’t asked for the check, but I knew you were done. I’d go over to your table with a glass for each
0:19:14 person at the table and a bottle of cognac. We’d pour just a splash of cognac into each glass, and I’d say,
0:19:18 this is with my compliments. In fact, I’m going to leave the entire bottle here. Please help yourselves to
0:19:23 as much as you’d like. And then I’d put the check down and say, your check is here, ready, whenever
0:19:31 you are. It’s a small change with a profound impact. One, no one ever had to wait for the check again.
0:19:36 B, no one could ever think we were trying to rush them out. I just gave you an entire bottle of free
0:19:43 booze. It didn’t cost very much. Rarely did people drink more than that splash. And yet, at the moment
0:19:48 where we brought over that big bill, we matched it with a gesture of profound generosity.
0:19:53 And by the way, I’ve talked to people who dined with us back then. We were serving some of the
0:19:57 best food on the planet. They don’t remember a single thing they ate, but they’ll never forget
0:20:00 how we made them feel when we gave them that bottle of cognac.
0:20:03 There was, um, have you read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini?
0:20:09 No. Oh man. It’s like, I feel like I’m going to end this podcast with like an entire reading list.
0:20:14 It’s like considered the, the, the gospel when it comes to like influence, which is related to
0:20:19 marketing. But like, I read it as like a 14 year old trying to meet girls. Uh, but like,
0:20:28 and in that book, Robert, uh, Cialdini tells a story where he is basically like says like a variety
0:20:35 of principles for persuasion. And he has studies and experiments to verify or, or, or, or tell the
0:20:41 story of each one. And one of the stories is basically, he had a waitress give someone the
0:20:48 bill. He had waitress B give someone the bill and a piece of chocolate. And he had waitress C go,
0:20:53 here’s your bill. Walk away five steps. He goes, Oh, I almost forgot. I got this chocolate for you.
0:21:02 And option C got more tips by a significant amount. Wow. A huge amount. And, uh, you know,
0:21:07 frankly, I don’t even remember which principle this, this falls under. I read this like 15 years ago,
0:21:12 but I remember that one thing. And so when you did that, this may not apply because I don’t think you
0:21:18 accepted gratuity, but did you, if you, if you did, did you notice gratuity for the weight,
0:21:20 weight staff went up to the roof because of this gesture?
0:21:24 For sure. For sure. And by the way, that’s well documented. Cornell did a study.
0:21:30 They did one where they had, they compared a thousand diners that give that little mint with
0:21:35 the check to a thousand diners that didn’t. And the ones that did on average had 18% higher tips.
0:21:37 I just think generosity begets generosity.
0:21:42 That is the rule of reciprocity, by the way, it’s called the rule of reciprocity. And here’s,
0:21:48 and here’s how it states is basically, if I do a favor for you, you will do a favor for me.
0:21:55 And it can be, um, significantly out proportioned, but because you now feel like you owe me and humans
0:22:00 hate owing someone. And so I remember reading about this and I went and bought a motorcycle back then.
0:22:05 And it was a very cheap motorcycle. I think it was, they wanted $3,000 or $2,500. And I showed up with
0:22:09 two cans of Coke and I go, Hey, uh, yeah, I’m ready to look at your motorcycle. I met the guy in
0:22:13 Craigslist, by the way, like I was, I just, there was a gas station here. I got myself a Coke. Do you
0:22:22 want one? I thought you might want one. And, and I, uh, we had, he had basically said like, it’s,
0:22:27 it’s $3,000. That’s the firm, you know? And I was like, look, the best I could do is 2,500. What do you say?
0:22:32 And he’s like, well, you’re a nice guy. You got me a Coke. I’ll do $2,500.
0:22:39 So that was a $499 win on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s sort of what it appears
0:22:43 as though you did with the cognac. And that’s why I was asking about, uh, gratuity if it went up
0:22:47 because of, of that gesture. Do you know, I was just on the, on a zoom with, do you know Rory
0:22:53 Sutherland? Do you know who that is? The marketing guy? Yeah. Uh, ad, ad, uh, ad agency executive.
0:22:57 Yeah. We were talking about this exact thing earlier today. He was talking
0:23:05 about how he ordered a new mattress and pillows from some company and got, they, they just
0:23:12 included like a duvet set or something. And he’s like, honestly, I’d feel guilty if I ever
0:23:18 ordered a mattress from anyone else again, but we’re juxtaposing that against had that same
0:23:23 company said, if you order a mattress and two pillows, we will give you a duvet set because
0:23:30 then now he thinks he’d earned it by virtue of having done what they said he needed to do. And
0:23:36 it’s the, I think it’s reciprocity combined with surprise and delight. You need to do it without
0:23:40 saying you are going to do it in advance for it to have the impact you want it to have.
0:23:43 Did you call it unreasonable hospitality back then? What was like your mantra within the company?
0:23:45 Unreasonable hospitality? Yeah.
0:23:50 Did you notice that profits and revenue went up? And do you think that it was because of that?
0:23:55 Yeah. I think this is the, okay. Yes. Profits and revenues went way up. I think the,
0:24:05 everyone I’ve ever seen embrace these philosophies have seen financial benefit. And yet there are some that
0:24:13 are reticent to, because it’s that old adage, what gets measured gets managed. And it’s hard to measure
0:24:19 the impact of these things in the short term, right? You need to be willing to commit to ideas for long
0:24:28 enough to see them really truly come to life. Because A, the more of an emotional connection people have to
0:24:35 what you’re doing, the more likely they are to return. B, whether it’s the hot dog or sleds or all these
0:24:43 different things we did, you are giving people stories to tell. And every dollar I ever spent on
0:24:49 unreasonable hospitality was far more impactful than any dollar I ever spent on traditional marketing.
0:24:52 Because when you give them those stories to tell, what do you think they’re going to do? They’re going
0:24:55 to tell them over and over and over again.
0:25:00 Well, did, were you guys seeding those stories? I mean, if like the hot dog story, like it got out,
0:25:04 were you the one who told everyone? Because if I, am I going to, if I’m going to do this,
0:25:08 I’m telling everyone I’ve done it. No, we never, we never told anyone we did the things
0:25:13 in the moment. The hot dog story got out when I wrote the book. Got it. But I think if you do
0:25:17 these things, you can be pretty sure that people are going to tell the stories themselves.
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0:26:06 Okay, so that’s one size fits one. One size fits some is effectively using simple pattern recognition.
0:26:12 The reality is in every single business, there are things that happen over and over again. They’re not
0:26:19 touch points. They don’t happen always for everyone, but they happen sometimes for some people. If you’ve
0:26:25 ever gone to a casual dining restaurant with a kid and they give you the little pack of crayons and the
0:26:31 coloring mat, that is effectively pattern recognition. They’ve realized kids come in,
0:26:37 and if we have these on hand, it will result in a better experience for the families as well as the
0:26:37 children.
0:26:48 We had Lego sets for a while. We had like etch-a-sketches for a while. We just cycled through
0:26:56 different things. But we did like full proper exercises where alongside the entire team,
0:27:02 we’d come up with lists of these recurring moments and then get creative on how to make our reactions to
0:27:09 them more awesome. And by the way, you can’t do these things effectively unless you do indeed involve
0:27:14 the entire team. There’s the, I call it famous because I think it’s famous, but the quote by David
0:27:18 Marquet that in most organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the
0:27:23 information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority.
0:27:27 In order to brainstorm like truly significant things within this space, especially,
0:27:31 you need to bridge that gap between authority and information.
0:27:37 So were you holding like weekly all hands with all 1800 people or sending emails?
0:27:42 No. So 1800 people was across the company. We would, we would do strategic planning restaurant
0:27:48 by restaurant quarterly. We did one big one a year, but then there were all sorts of little
0:27:53 meetings that would kind of be scattered through the, but at the end of the day, the number of ideas
0:27:58 that came out of one day long strategic planning at the beginning of the year would generally take us
0:28:06 about a year to implement all those ideas. Um, so you could get enough out of one day to really keep
0:28:07 you going for a year.
0:28:12 And so you did, uh, and so one size fits some that is that, that’s the second one.
0:28:14 Yeah. So I’ll give you an example of that. This is my favorite.
0:28:23 A lot of people got engaged at our restaurant. Um, if anyone’s ever gotten engaged at a reasonable
0:28:29 restaurant, they poured you free champagne. If they didn’t, you got engaged at the wrong
0:28:34 restaurant, but that’s a reasonable hospitality. Now that we’d identified this, we had an opportunity
0:28:40 to make it as well. More awesome. This is what we came up with. Tiffany and co had their offices
0:28:44 across the park. Oh my God. One day I went over there and knocked on doors until I found
0:28:51 the chief marketing officer convinced her to give us 1000 of those iconic Tiffany blue boxes.
0:28:56 Yeah. Each with two champagne flutes in them, put them in the back. Next time someone got engaged,
0:29:00 we poured them free champagne. Like we always would have, but they wouldn’t notice that their
0:29:05 glasses looked a little bit different from everyone else’s. And at the end we’d give them the glasses.
0:29:11 They toasted. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Again, three things on that one. Was it less special
0:29:18 for them because we had a bunch more in the back? No. Two, I have talked to people who got engaged with
0:29:25 us who don’t remember a single thing they ate, but they will never forget that. And three, that one
0:29:30 didn’t even cost us anything. I mean, it costs Tiffany a reasonable amount of money, but I guarantee
0:29:35 they’ve more than made up on that investment with all the Tiffany things that have ended up on
0:29:39 registries. Dude, that’s so good. And then of course there’s one size fits one, which is the
0:29:46 Dreamweaver stuff. The reason I say all of them is because at 11 Madison, we would serve 110 people a
0:29:54 night. I couldn’t do a Dreamweaver thing for every single person that came in there, but between one
0:29:58 size fits one, one size fits some, and one size fits all, you better believe that everyone was walking
0:30:04 out of there having had an experience that, well, felt at least a little bit magical.
0:30:10 I used to run this company called The Hustle. It was the first company that I sold, and it was a
0:30:16 pretty amazing company. And I’m a self-taught copywriter. That was my passion. And the company
0:30:22 was built on copywriting. And one of my philosophies was to alter what I called the forgotten text.
0:30:30 And what that means in practice is a very specific example is when you would sign up like for your
0:30:38 conference website, when you enter your email, more often than not, in 99% of cases, a customer will get
0:30:43 an email from MailChimp or Beehive or ConvertKit, whatever. And it’s going to tell you, thanks for
0:30:46 subscribing, click here to confirm. And that’s it. It’s just like the stock email.
0:30:54 Yes. I wrote the world’s greatest welcome email. And I’ll have to remember it, but it said the subject
0:31:02 was, look what you did, you little jerk. And the body, it said, I don’t think you realized what just
0:31:07 happened. You just signed up for the best business newsletter on earth. And immediately after doing
0:31:15 that, a bell went off in our office in San Francisco. And when that bell went off, Sarah went and did 25
0:31:22 pushups because she was so excited. David went and took a shot for some reason. And Kevin is outside
0:31:29 right now hugging an old lady because he’s so excited. Look, I got to go stop Kevin, but I just want you
0:31:33 know how excited I am that you gave us your email. We are tirelessly working on tomorrow’s edition.
0:31:37 I hope you love it. And just know that we are working really hard to please you.
0:31:43 And it went viral. That went viral. And then we took it a step further. So when you unsubscribe
0:31:50 from an email, you often just see you are now unsubscribed. And I stole this one from Groupon.
0:31:53 I’ll tell you what Groupon was. But Groupon, which was an email newsletter company,
0:31:59 there was the intern sitting right there. And it says, here’s what just happened when you unsubscribed.
0:32:06 And it was the CEO fake throwing coffee in the intern’s face that said, and it said like,
0:32:12 our intern Kevin must have done something bad to make you unsubscribe. I’m punishing him. Don’t worry,
0:32:17 I’m on it. If you want to resubscribe and give us another chance, that would mean a lot. Click here.
0:32:23 And so the point being is that we worked really hard. So our pop-up said, oh, no, not another pop-up.
0:32:29 Well, look, while you’re here, the situation is this. This company, it’s called The Hustle. It’s
0:32:33 my company. I run it. And we do this newsletter. Give us your email if you want to get it the next
0:32:38 day. And so the whole website, forgotten text. I worked really hard to do forgotten text. And we
0:32:43 got so much backlinks or press because of it.
0:32:48 Do you know, first of all, that’s brilliant. And in my, like the way I see the world,
0:32:52 there’s two reasons why I think it’s especially brilliant. One is obvious. The one is
0:32:58 well, they’re probably both obvious. One is I believe the smallest enhancements to the most
0:33:03 overlooked touch points in a guest experience can have the greatest impact on the experience as a
0:33:08 whole, because it is you saying very clearly to the people you serve, we’re willing to care about
0:33:15 things that no one has ever paused for long enough to consider. I spent time with an auto dealer group
0:33:20 in California right when the book was coming out. And I was talking to them about touch points and they
0:33:24 thought I was, you know, when you think about like a classic car dealer, and then I’m talking about
0:33:29 unreasonable hospitality, it was like oil and water in the beginning. And I was like, all right, I have a
0:33:35 question. What happens a week after someone buys a new car when they open the glove compartment for the
0:33:36 first time? What’s in it?
0:33:41 My God. And they’re like, nothing. I was like, it’s a touch point. That’s a part of the experience.
0:33:47 They did something super small. They started after that putting a Starbucks gift card in the glove
0:33:51 compartment of every car that just said, thank you so much for your business. You ever need anything?
0:33:53 Give me a call. And then whatever, Kevin.
0:33:54 Oh my gosh, that’s great.
0:33:59 They called me a year later. They’re like, we have never seen a return as big on any marketing
0:34:01 investment in the history of our, of our.
0:34:02 Was it just like $5?
0:34:05 It was a $15 gift card, Tim.
0:34:06 Oh my gosh.
0:34:13 So the, like the smallest things to the parts that no one has ever thought about really make
0:34:19 a difference. And then B, what I said about the hot dog. Like so many companies have become so
0:34:26 focused on perfecting brands that they’ve stopped pursuing people. Everyone is taking themselves too
0:34:32 seriously. And the moment you just let yourself be a little sillier, a little more human, a little
0:34:41 more connective. It never fails. That’s so good. I think you guys like this podcast for two reasons.
0:34:48 One is if you are building a business, it’s lonely. And listening to Sean and I, we’re sort of like
0:34:52 your friends. And the second reason is, you know, that we are builders. We love building companies.
0:34:58 It’s kind of our life’s vocation. So if you have a business that does at least $3 million in revenue,
0:35:03 I think I know exactly what you’re experiencing. You’ve built a great business. It’s working.
0:35:08 And you finally have a second to look up. You’re young. You probably run an internet company. In
0:35:13 your town, there’s potential that you’re a freak that you have no one else to talk to about growing
0:35:16 your company. In fact, when you even go out in public, you probably don’t even like telling people
0:35:20 what you do for a living because you don’t feel like explaining it. If you fall in this category,
0:35:25 that means you’re making the biggest decisions of your life. 10, $20 million decisions all by
0:35:30 yourself alone. And without that push, in my opinion, the risk is not blowing up. It’s drifting
0:35:36 into good enough territory, into becoming mediocre. And the worst thing that can happen to you is 10
0:35:41 years from now, you look back and you realize, I missed this amazing opportunity. I didn’t grow. I
0:35:48 plateaued in life and in business. My company, Hampton, we changed that. If you’re running a company
0:35:53 that does at least $3 million in revenue, you can apply at joinhampton.com. We vet you,
0:35:58 we curate you, and we give you eight handpicked founders who have similar businesses, similar sizes
0:36:02 as you, who will challenge you, who will hold you accountable, and who will give you perspectives
0:36:09 that you cannot get anywhere else. And this all happens in real life. So check it out, joinhampton.com
0:36:16 What are some other interesting stories of people who have implemented this and had almost like a
0:36:21 turnaround? Because you’re telling me these stories. I’m sitting here taking notes on and I’m not taking
0:36:26 notes for this podcast. I’m taking notes on what I need to tell my team. Because I’m like, I’m so bought
0:36:32 in. Like, I get so fired up whenever I hear about this. But the discipline of following through and
0:36:37 making it part of our culture, that’s, it’s quite challenging. Because you said you don’t see results
0:36:40 necessarily right away. It might take a minute. You’re taking a little bit of a leap of faith.
0:36:44 I mean, here’s another one that I heard recently. And this has been one of the,
0:36:50 one of the most fun things for me over the past two years is getting notes from like
0:36:59 people that run funeral homes and prison systems and insurance companies and banks and NFL teams and
0:37:03 everything in between about all the various ways in which they’ve manifested the ideas. But
0:37:10 I think this one’s quite brilliant. And it focuses on the beauty of making things mandatory.
0:37:14 Just like the word criticism has been given a bad rep, and I think it should
0:37:21 be de-stigmatized. So has mandatory. We feel like if we make something mandatory for our people to do,
0:37:26 that it’s a bad thing. But I think when you make something mandatory, it’s just a meta signal to
0:37:32 everyone that works for you that this matters. So there’s a guy who owns two UPS stores in Sarasota.
0:37:37 And he read the book, really fell in love with it, tried to figure out how to bring it to life in his
0:37:40 space. And I don’t think anyone’s ever woken up saying, you know, we’re the most
0:37:47 hospitable people in the world to work at UPS stores, right? But he made a big, that’s a big
0:37:48 opportunity, right?
0:37:55 Exactly. Exactly. So he made a rule. He mandated that everyone on his team, all the people that
0:38:05 work the register at the UPS store had to one time per shift comp a customer up to call it $40 worth.
0:38:11 And they had to write it when they were clocking out who they comped and why. It was like a win,
0:38:19 win, win in the most profound of ways. A, if you’re a customer, you go into a UPS store and randomly you
0:38:24 get comped for like shipping something or copying something. It’s going to blow your mind, right?
0:38:30 You’re going to tell that story a bunch. B, it ended up being really good for the people that worked
0:38:37 there. Like when you’re working at a place like that, you are not accustomed to being on the receiving
0:38:45 end of profound appreciation and enthusiasm. And yet we are all human beings. Those feelings energize
0:38:53 all of us. And when you get them, it makes your day better. Full stop. I don’t care how too cool
0:39:00 for school you present yourself as being. But third, and this is what I thought was so fascinating. And
0:39:06 when he explained it, it made sense. Because it was good for the team, they went from having to do it to
0:39:13 getting to do it. But they only got to do it once. So now they started engaging and getting to know
0:39:21 everyone that came into the store so much more deeply to decide who deserved it the most. Who was having a
0:39:27 hard day and needed something to go right? Who was having a great day and needed a cherry on top? So even
0:39:33 all the customers that did not receive the comp started having genuinely enjoyable experiences in those
0:39:39 stores. And I’m hearing about things like this all the time. And it’s just, it’s just awesome.
0:39:46 That’s great. Do you have, um, a lot of the people who listen to this, maybe they own an e-com store.
0:39:52 Um, so they run like a Shopify site, or they have a small software company. It’s only two or three guys.
0:40:00 Do you have any examples of, in particular, a website that you’ve gone to? And you’re like, they nail it.
0:40:07 I mean, I think the story of Chewy and what they do is, is just my favorite. Do you know,
0:40:08 do you know what I’m about to say?
0:40:13 Yeah. So like, uh, Chewy, uh, you know, it’s funny, Ryan Cohen, the founder of Chewy,
0:40:16 he’s now more famous right now because of GameStop and he’s being, he’s this crazy investor,
0:40:21 but he started Chewy and the premise was like amazing customer service. And I think an example
0:40:26 would be like, if they heard that your dog died, they would send you flowers or something like that.
0:40:30 Yeah. Well, I mean, this is how it works. You go into Chewy, you subscribe for your dog food,
0:40:34 right? You set it up recurring order. You never have to think about it again,
0:40:42 but eventually your dog is going to die. And the first thing you think to do is not to go on Chewy.com
0:40:48 and cancel your dog food order. So invariably a couple of weeks later, as you’re mourning the loss of,
0:40:54 of your dog. Now another bag of food comes. Yeah. The worst, the worst. So now you call Chewy,
0:41:01 then you cancel it. And this is what they do every single time. They obviously apologize for your loss.
0:41:05 They credit your account for that last bag of dog food. They can’t take it back for health code
0:41:09 reasons. They encourage you to give it to someone else who needs it. And then two days later,
0:41:14 you get a bouquet of flowers saying, sorry for your loss. Now that’s pattern recognition,
0:41:22 which would be, uh, what one size fits most. Some, some, some, and maybe those flowers cost them
0:41:28 15 bucks. Think about dog people. When they lose a dog, it’s normally just a matter of time before
0:41:32 they get another one. And the same way that Rory is never going to buy a mattress from anyone else.
0:41:39 I’d be hard pressed to imagine anyone ever buying dog food from anyone else ever again. Listen,
0:41:44 I think that unreasonable hospitality, it happens at the intersection of creativity and intention.
0:41:52 it’s being intentional enough to pursue relationships, um, to seek out opportunities
0:42:00 and to, well, care enough to find them and then to do something with them once you do.
0:42:09 And then creativity to just to try to figure out what is the most awesome way you can possibly come up
0:42:14 with to respond. I think it’s just as much about creating an environment where your team feels
0:42:21 energized and rewarded and appreciated as well, because it’s a two way street. I, I, at least for
0:42:26 me anyway, there is nothing that energizes me more than when I get to see the look on someone else’s face
0:42:31 when they receive a gift, I am responsible for giving them. And when you create a culture like this,
0:42:36 you’re giving everyone on your team, the gift of just being able to give gifts and they don’t always
0:42:40 need to be lavish or expensive. They just need to be thoughtful.
0:42:46 Are there any other digital brands that I can go to and, and, and document or become a customer of and
0:42:48 see how this is implemented? Well,
0:43:00 I am consistently drawn to, um, the in-person examples, but you asking me this makes me,
0:43:04 I feel like you’re asking me what is a good movie that I’ve seen recently. I never have the ability
0:43:08 to remember them off the cuff, but yeah, I’m putting you on the spot and I can give you an easy out if
0:43:13 you want an easy out. Let me think, are there any that I have? The fact that we can’t come up with
0:43:18 any off the top of my head is kind of insane. I think, um, which if I’m listening to this,
0:43:25 I’m like, Oh, so the bar’s low because by the way, I will, I’m going to, uh, like I would call
0:43:30 you out actually. I would say, uh, so you run this thing called the welcome conference. Okay. I’m going
0:43:35 to go to the welcome conference.com. I’m going to go to your website. I feel like we can make this
0:43:40 unreasonably hospitable, uh, and make this even better. It’s funny. We’re like, we’re like two
0:43:46 weeks away. Unreasonable hospitality.com, the welcome conference.com of releasing an entire
0:43:52 new website, uh, for both of them because our websites kind of suck right now. I’m not going to
0:43:57 lie. It, you know, when I’m thinking about all this, I’m like, all right, I got to go implement
0:44:01 all this stuff. But it’s like, shoot, I got to like go and like design the side and write. It’s,
0:44:06 it’s, it’s hard. It’s a marathon. It seems a lot more fun to give someone free UPS.
0:44:14 No, but this is what I’ll tell you. Like I, I use the word magic a lot because I do believe when you
0:44:18 do these things, you’re, you’re creating magic. And there’s this quote, you know, Penn and Teller,
0:44:24 my, my favorite quote about magic comes from Teller. He says, sometimes magic is just being willing to
0:44:31 invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would deem reasonable. Nothing about this stuff is
0:44:37 hard. It does, however, require being willing to work harder. I was talking to a buddy of mine who’s
0:44:42 a magician and he was doing training for the greatest friend ever to hang out with. Dude,
0:44:48 I have a lot of magician friends. I got really, yeah, I do. They must’ve read the pickup artist
0:44:52 books that I used to read because back then all those pickup artist books, they tell you to learn
0:44:56 magic tricks. Everyone says that works, but I don’t think for many of these guys, it worked until more
0:45:04 recently. But he, he was hired to go train Paul Rudd magic, I think for Ant-Man. And so he goes to the
0:45:09 director’s house. He and his assistant go to hang out for a day with Paul Rudd and, and the director.
0:45:13 And they go through a bunch of magic tricks. They’re showing him, teaching him how to do it,
0:45:16 the whole thing. And at the end, they’re about to leave. And the director’s like, come on,
0:45:20 show me your best trick. He’s like, well, I kind of just showed you all my stuff.
0:45:27 And the guy’s like, no, no, no, come on, your best trick. And he’s like, all right, uh, do you have a
0:45:33 backyard? And they go in the backyard and he says to Paul, he goes, Hey, can you just point into the
0:45:39 yard, any direction in this yard, kind of like gesturing behind the house and name a card.
0:45:44 Ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, Jack, Queen, King, and the suit. So
0:45:50 like Paul said, like eight of hearts and pointed. So they walk out in that direction. They says to
0:45:55 his assistant, Hey, give me the shovel. The assistant reaches into his bag, gives him the shovel. He digs
0:45:59 into the ground, pulls out the eight of hearts out of the ground. Oh my God. Now he’s not just there to
0:46:05 do magic tricks for Paul Rudd. He’s there to show him how to do magic. So he shows him a video of them
0:46:12 at the guy’s house the night before digging holes and burying all 52 cards in the lawn and he did it
0:46:18 as a grid. So no matter where Paul pointed, he could figure it out. Um, that was a lot of work,
0:46:27 but Paul’s reaction when he pulled an eight of hearts out of the ground made all that work worth it.
0:46:35 That’s what magic is. And that’s what I think hospitality when pursued unreasonable has the
0:46:43 capacity to be, man, that’s awesome. Do you love being an author significantly more than running a
0:46:48 restaurant? Because one sounds way easier than the other. It’s interesting. I don’t know. I mean,
0:47:00 I loved what I did. Like I loved it. Like I love working like a maniac to build a world and then getting
0:47:04 to stand at the front door of that world and welcome people into it. It’s one of my favorite things.
0:47:12 I don’t get the gratification now of like sitting in someone’s living room and watching them read the
0:47:16 book. Like there, I got the gratification of watching people experience the thing that I’d built.
0:47:20 But I bet you it’s, it’s been a nice season of life. I mean, I don’t know the finances. I bet
0:47:25 you it’s made a really good living and it’s been nice to, well, no. So that’s my point. And I love
0:47:31 this. It’s hard for me to compare which one I love more, but I certainly don’t miss it. Like I don’t miss
0:47:35 what I did because I’m so loving what I’m doing now. I, and what are you doing now? You’re,
0:47:40 you’re, you wrote the book. I imagine you’re speaking and you had the conference.
0:47:45 So I have the welcome conference in New York. We do an unreasonable hospitality summit in Nashville.
0:47:48 I write a newsletter called premial that comes out every other week.
0:47:50 So you, you own a media company?
0:47:56 Kind of. Yeah. I’m also a writer and a producer on the bear now, which is fun.
0:47:59 I didn’t know. I thought it was just for that one episode.
0:48:02 It was, I started writing and producing the following season.
0:48:04 Is that awesome, man? That sounds awesome.
0:48:11 Dude, it’s so fun. That whole team is just the best. And what’s that main, um, what’s the actor’s
0:48:18 name? Jeremy Ellen White. I mean, he seems awesome. He is a awesome, but then just be wildly talented
0:48:23 and exceptionally humble. So do you get to hang out with all these guys and just see how it’s made?
0:48:28 When my schedule aligns, I’m in Chicago on set with them.
0:48:30 And Matty Madison, I think he’s fantastic.
0:48:34 Dude, he’s the best. He is a ridiculous and incredible human being.
0:48:39 That’s so cool. There’s, um, a whole, there’s all these Instagram, there’s this idea in men’s
0:48:46 fashion or, uh, menswear. And the idea is like, um, uh, for certain people, if you try too hard,
0:48:49 it’s like the clothes are wearing you, you’re not wearing the clothes.
0:48:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:48:54 And there’s all, and it’s called, um, Spresa, Spresa Tura.
0:48:58 Yeah, Spresa Tura. And then there’s Manny Matheson, who’s always wearing the clothes.
0:49:02 Like he, and there’s, and he’s the example. So Spresa Tura, I’ve talked about this pod.
0:49:06 It’s, it’s an Italian word. It basically just means efforts, effortlessly cool, which is like,
0:49:11 it’s like, um, uh, a $2,000 beautiful suit, but you’re wearing like dirty boots.
0:49:13 And because of that, you’re cool.
0:49:19 I’m not, I don’t have that, by the way. I like, I’m not, I don’t have that grasp on menswear.
0:49:21 I wear like a t-shirt and jeans at this point.
0:49:26 Yeah, but yeah, you kind of had it in a way because of, because of your company. Um, and,
0:49:30 and Maddie Madison, it’s the right one listening in the bear. He’s, uh, I don’t, what’s his name in
0:49:31 the bear?
0:49:31 Fact.
0:49:38 And he is kind of, they kind of portray him as this kind of silly, goofy, doofus guy. But in reality,
0:49:42 he is like a, like a very gregarious guy and he’s huge. He’s a, he’s a big person, but he’s got tattoos
0:49:48 all over his face and he wears the coolest clothes on Instagram, but it doesn’t look like clothes that
0:49:52 he went and bought from a thrift shop. It looks like clothes that he’s owned for 20 years and they got
0:49:58 this beautiful, like wear on it. And it looks like he just wakes up and magically a new outfit was like
0:50:04 draped upon him in the middle of the night by some ethereal. Yeah. He’s got it. So he, he’s like that
0:50:04 in real life.
0:50:07 No. Yeah. He’s, he’s amazing. He’s so, he’s so sweet.
0:50:12 Well, and what’s crazy is I’m sure you could speak to this and I would like to hear some stories in this,
0:50:16 but people in the restaurant industry, if you own a restaurant, it seems like most of them who are
0:50:21 quote successful, they’re actually still kind of broke and they’re working their asses off.
0:50:28 Yeah. I mean, here’s, here’s the problem. I think there’s a couple of problems. A lot of people that
0:50:33 opened restaurants didn’t like work their way up through the business in a way to make sure they
0:50:38 really understood the business side of restaurants. It’s like anything. I don’t think you can succeed
0:50:42 financially unless you are willing to be as creative in pursuit of making money as you are
0:50:48 in pursuit of the experience you’re building for people. I think a lot of restaurants are just too
0:50:57 small and the economics of a small restaurant are just hard to really make work until you start opening
0:51:06 so many restaurants that you’re running around like crazy and you’re so distracted that the quality of
0:51:12 the restaurants start to suffer. Now there are some people that have done it extraordinarily well and
0:51:17 have figured out how to balance art and commerce and who, who do you put in that bucket? I mean,
0:51:23 Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz, they have a company out of Chicago called the Boca restaurant group. I think
0:51:29 they have like 36 restaurants or something, right? Because here’s the reality. Okay. You need a good
0:51:35 general manager to run a restaurant, right? Like you need someone that’s great at taking care of the
0:51:40 guest and managing the team. And honestly, the skills that are required to do that well are not that
0:51:47 different, whether you’re working at a 40 seat bistro or a 60 seat three Michelin star restaurant.
0:51:54 And yet, and then the cost of that person these days is somewhere between, depending on what market
0:52:03 you’re in, $90,000 to $180,000. It’s not that big a swing. And so you can be doing $5 million a year
0:52:12 paying that or $20 million a year paying that, right? And the margins just become really, really,
0:52:17 really hard when you’re not doing enough volume. And so like you can do volume if you’re doing fast,
0:52:21 casual, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s over the course. Well, when you say volume, do you mean like the
0:52:26 number of seats at a table, like literally just the number of customers? Number of seats and times
0:52:35 average check. Got it. So just the, the AOV. So like the average customer value. And so, and like,
0:52:40 it doesn’t take that much more work to run a $15 million a year restaurant than it does a $5
0:52:44 million a year restaurant. And so like, what’s the difference? So like you’re saying it doesn’t
0:52:49 take that much work to get the average customer order to be a hundred dollars versus, or the
0:52:52 difference between running a hundred dollar head restaurant versus a $20 head restaurant is not
0:52:58 significant. The amount of work that goes into it is not that different, nor is the amount of work that
0:53:04 goes into running a 20 seat restaurant versus an 80 seat restaurant. You need the same number of general
0:53:09 managers, the same number of chefs. You need some more, obviously your variable expenses are going to be
0:53:14 higher, but most of the fixed costs are relatively the same. Your rent’s going to be higher on a bigger
0:53:20 restaurant, but these are all such small percentages compared to the top line that I always encourage
0:53:25 people when they say they want to open a restaurant to work in one for long enough to actually make
0:53:31 mistakes on someone else’s dime before they go to open one. And then to open one that’s big enough
0:53:33 that it actually is worthwhile doing.
0:53:42 If I had to guess, you have a notes on your iPhone where you have all of these interesting
0:53:49 restaurant concepts or angles or sound bites that are interesting to you and you don’t want to do
0:53:56 them now. And you may never do them, but they, they fascinate you. Is there any, is that true?
0:53:59 And if yes, is there anything on that list that you could talk about?
0:54:05 I mean, listen, I, I think that the fashion of restaurants is not dissimilar to the fashion of
0:54:10 jeans, right? Like we want skinny jeans, then fat jeans, then skinny jeans, then fat jeans,
0:54:13 like kind of the pendulum shifts back and forth. I think for a little while there, restaurants started
0:54:21 getting way too complicated. Um, and I’m excited about the return to simplicity that’s happening right
0:54:26 now where people are realizing that with everything going on in the world, the human moments need to
0:54:31 be as human as humanly possible. And the places I’m drawn to, like there’s a restaurant in New York
0:54:38 City called Res Dora and it’s just unbelievable pasta and a beautiful room served delightfully well.
0:54:46 I’m, I’m drawn to more the kind of restaurant that creates the conditions for genuine connection.
0:54:54 I was just with my wife and six friends and we, we rented a house, uh, in Mykonos in Greece last week.
0:55:00 And the people that owned the house every morning, we’d wake up and they’d set this long table for us
0:55:06 with breakfast. There was Greek yogurt and fruit and some bacon and eggs and a fresh loaf of bread
0:55:12 every morning. And we’d sit down and no one had to order anything. And it was like this beautiful
0:55:20 moment. I feel like that’s a restaurant that doesn’t exist yet. And I would love to see it exist. Like
0:55:26 where you just sit down with the people you love and the food’s just there and you just get into it.
0:55:33 I, I want, I’m drawn to go to, and perhaps in my imagination when I don’t have to deal with the
0:55:39 realities of actually doing it, dream about building restaurants that are less about impressing people
0:55:44 by what you can do and more just extending an invitation for them to reconnect with one another.
0:55:54 Last couple of questions. Did you, um, I’ve heard stories and I am, um, I respect, uh, the food
0:55:58 industry, but like I, that’s not my passion. You know, I, I’m a very, I’m a much simpler eater.
0:56:04 And what little I do know is like, I’ve read stories about like the, the Michelin star thing
0:56:10 and, um, and how like some chefs will like end up giving it back because they play to the critics
0:56:15 sometimes and it kind of becomes overwhelmed, overwhelming for a variety of reasons. Did you
0:56:21 ever feel when you were, when you were building a restaurants, did you ever feel the tension of
0:56:26 playing for critics and awards and playing for customers and also doing things that you just
0:56:37 think cause they’re dope? Yeah. Um, I, it was a tension that I felt more acutely earlier in
0:56:43 my career and in our journey towards success than I did later. I think in the beginning,
0:56:47 listen, you have to play the game a little bit. Of course, I think it’s the same. No matter what
0:56:52 industry you’re in, you can’t get people to pay attention to you unless you’ve achieved some level
0:56:57 of critical success. And that means doing the things that you aren’t necessarily inclined to
0:57:04 want to do in order to get to where you need to get. So I’ll give you an example. I, my first big
0:57:09 goal was I wanted four stars in the New York times. There’s only seven restaurants in New York with four
0:57:15 stars. We needed to get that. That was the starting point. Once you’re a four star restaurant, then you’re
0:57:20 going to be full all the time. And if you want to be the best at something, that’s the first stop along
0:57:25 the way, especially if you, well, not especially if you are in New York. Now, when I looked at the
0:57:30 four star restaurants at the time, they were all in like the upper East side, they were all in midtown,
0:57:38 they were like fancy places. And so I don’t believe there should be a dress code in a restaurant. I
0:57:44 think that you’re there to invite people as they are, but we had to have a dress code. Um, we had to
0:57:49 have, we never wear jackets required, but there was like a proper dress code, no hats, no t-shirts,
0:57:55 whatever it was. The day we got four stars, the dress code went away. Like there were certain
0:58:00 things we had to do in order to get a seat at the table. And then once we were there, we had the
0:58:08 freedom and the confidence to start doing things our own way. Over time, what I learned, um, was that
0:58:17 if I consistently was delivering the thing I wanted to receive, it was always going to resonate more
0:58:25 with the world. And so playing the game got us to a pretty good level, but starting to just do what
0:58:31 I wanted to do and not what I thought other people wanted us to do was the thing that ultimately got us
0:58:39 to the top. One of my kind of joys of this podcast is finding people who, uh, our listeners don’t
0:58:44 already know. And we kind of like, uh, you know, we, we, we said like this, this, we, we put our stamp
0:58:48 like this person is amazing. And hopefully, hopefully in some way we’re like a little bit of a tastemaker
0:58:54 because we have, we have shown them something new. You’re already a huge deal and you are, you’ve been
0:58:59 circling around the business circle and everything for, for a while. We definitely haven’t discovered you,
0:59:04 but it would give me so much joy if someone listens to this and feels inspired because they
0:59:10 hadn’t previously heard about you and, and, and, and now know about unreasonable hospitality just for
0:59:16 the sake of excellence, of pursuing excellence. And that’s something that I’m very passionate about
0:59:21 right now. I wasn’t always passionate about that. Um, and now I don’t think that comes naturally to me
0:59:26 for, for a long time. My attitude was, it’s good enough, move forward, aggressively move forward.
0:59:32 Um, and I’m trying to fight that and I’m trying to be more excellent. And I hope that the listener,
0:59:36 because I know I feel this way whenever I talk to you, whenever I read about you, whenever I listen
0:59:40 to a podcast with you, I feel that I feel the need to be more excellent than I currently, than I’ve
0:59:45 currently been behaving. Thank you, man. Thank you. And I, and I hope we’ve given that to, to our audience.
0:59:49 Well, to anyone out there listening who, this is the first time we’ve run into one another.
0:59:54 It’s good to meet you. Kind of. Yeah. What do you, what do you want to promote? Do you have
0:59:58 anything? Where, what do, what did you, what’s your social media, uh, platform of preference,
1:00:03 if any? Yeah. The, the two things I’m excited to promote are a, the newsletter premium, which is one
1:00:09 of my favorite things to do. Like it is the stories that I shared today. It’s me sharing one of these
1:00:13 stories every couple of weeks, just things I’m seeing out in the world that inspire me. You can sign up
1:00:18 for that at unreasonablehospitality.com. And then second, my next book on reasonable hospitality,
1:00:25 the field guide, which is like my version of a workbook to really like go through with a team
1:00:30 and bring these ideas to life comes out April of next year, but is available for pre-order
1:00:36 now. And I’m so excited about it. I just sent it up to pre-mail and I’m absolutely going to buy that.
1:00:41 I would love that. That seems to be, uh, the thing now in the book industry is having like,
1:00:46 uh, a workbook to accompany the book. We made it much harder on ourselves than we needed to.
1:00:52 It’s like this four color. It’s almost like a graphic novel version of a workbook. I did it
1:00:56 with this design firm called invisible creature. They’ve done work with like NASA and Pixar. And
1:01:01 I love the, I love workbooks. I’m I, I fall for it every time. And by the way, I just had it for
1:01:04 pre-mail. You’re welcome email. I’m actually not, I don’t even want to say what it is because
1:01:08 hopefully you’ll get more subscribers. You’re welcome. It was fantastic. Thank you.
1:01:11 I’m like, I’ve, I’ve only, obviously I’m doing this. I can’t read the whole thing,
1:01:15 but like I’m seeing like the, I’ve read the first sentence. I’m hooked and I’m scrolling. I’m like,
1:01:19 Oh, this is a whole story. Here’s the background. This is awesome.
1:01:21 There we go, dude. That’s, that’s high praise.
1:01:25 Yeah. The website sucks, but the welcome email is okay.
1:01:29 The website absolutely does not suck. I would just, I just mess in with you.
1:01:33 This is awesome. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. That’s it. That’s the pod.
1:01:41 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days
1:01:45 off on the road. Let’s try. Let’s take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot
1:01:48 podcast network, but we’re not the only ones. There’s other podcasts on this network too.
1:01:51 And maybe you liked it. Maybe you should check them out. One of them that I want to draw your
1:01:55 attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew. And whether you’re a marketer or a salesperson,
1:01:59 and you’re looking for the small changes you could make, the new habits you could do, the
1:02:03 small decisions you could make that will make a big difference. That’s what that podcast is
1:02:07 all about. Check it out. It’s called Nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.