The Hospitality Principles That Build Billion-Dollar Startups

- September 30, 2025 (5 months ago) • 59:34

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	Alright, this episode is with Will Gudera. Will is the author of a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. He also is one of the writers for a TV show called The Bear, which is very popular. There's an episode in The Bear called "Forks" (I think it's in season two), and it's an amazing episode—you guys have to watch it. It's basically all about excellence and how to have unreasonable hospitality. A lot of people listening to this—the MFM audience—run internet companies. This book he wrote is about his restaurant called 11 Madison Avenue and how they went above and beyond to treat their customers amazingly, and how that actually helped their customers and helped their business. Maybe this book hasn't come across your table because it's not about internet stuff, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have Will on. Give the episode a listen. I loved recording this. One of the big takeaways, other than going above and beyond for your customers, is being excellent—being excellent in life, in business, in fitness, in family. I hope it inspires you. I loved recording this episode; it inspires me, so give it a listen. Man, I'm happy to talk to you. I read a lot, and there are probably two books that are not meant to be business books—or at least not my type of internet-business books. One of them is The Inner Game of Tennis. It's a book about how to be great at tennis, but it's sort of like how to be good at sports psychology, broad life psychology, how to handle stress, and how not to be down on yourself. The other one is Unreasonable Hospitality, because when I read the book I sort of wanted to become unreasonable in the rest of my life. I remember reading the book and thinking, "This guy's an animal." He's really uptight about things that I am not uptight about, and to be the best I can be, I need to be relentless.
01:52	Will Guidara	It's interesting. I think the dichotomy of what's in there is this: to accomplish what we did required a relentless pursuit of excellence. I mean, that's kind of an inevitability when you're trying to become the best at anything. But what's wild is that it wasn't the pursuit of excellence that actually took the restaurant over the top — it was the relentless, unreasonable pursuit of hospitality. You push everything to get every detail unbelievably perfect, and then you do these messy things at the end to make people feel seen. Whether that's obsessing over every single garnish on a plate of crazy, uber fine-dining food, and then recognizing that the thing people will actually remember is a hot dog, or whatever other random thing we did for people — it's this quest for perfection and the acknowledgement that the most human moments are perfectly imperfect, and those are the stickiest of all.
02:56	Sam Parr	"And what—what's that story again, exactly?"
02:59	Will Guidara	So it was a busier-than-normal lunch service. I was clearing tables to help out the team, and I was at a table of four. They were foodies from Europe visiting New York just to eat at fancy restaurants. They had been to Le Bernardin, Daniel, Jean‑Georges, and Per Se. For anyone listening who does not know what those restaurants are, just trust in how fancy the names sound — yeah, they're the very good ones. This was their last meal; they were going straight to the airport from the restaurant to go back home.
03:31	Sam Parr	And you just overheard that.</FormattedResponse>
03:32	Will Guidara	And while I was at the table, they were raving about the trip. Then one woman said, "Yeah, but we never had a New York City hot dog." It was just one of those light-bulb moments. I ran out to the hot dog cart, bought a hot dog, and brought it in. Then came the hard part: convincing my fancy chef to actually serve it in our restaurant. He cut up the hot dog and put one little piece on each plate — a little swish of ketchup, one of mustard, a can of sauerkraut, one of relish. He topped it off with a micro herb or something to make it look so...
03:59	Sam Parr	Looked all cool.
04:00	Will Guidara	Yeah. And then, before their final savory course — which at the time was our honey-lavender–glazed Muscovy duck — I brought out what we in New York called a "dirty water dog." I explained it: I said, "Hey, I overheard you before. We didn't want to let you go home with any culinary regrets. Here's that New York City hot dog." They freaked out. I'd been working in restaurants my entire life. I'd served tens of millions of dollars' worth of wagyu beef, lobster, and caviar, and I'd never seen anyone react to anything I'd served them like they did to that.
04:34	Sam Parr	That — and this was at Eleven Madison. This was...</FormattedResponse>
04:36	Will Guidara	It was at Eleven Madison, okay.
04:37	Sam Parr	And for the non‑New York, non‑foodie audience: Eleven Madison — I think you guys won an award that was like the "world's best restaurant." Was that what the title was?
04:47	Will Guidara	Yeah, yeah.
04:48	Sam Parr	Which is just — that's a crazy thing that even exists. But you won it. You won such a ridiculous award. I think the book got a huge bump from the TV show The Bear, because of the episode "Forks." That's the one where the kind of loser cousin goes to one of your restaurants and he learns how to be great. He learns how to be great in the most strange way when you're watching the show, which is: you polish the forks. If you polish the forks really well, you're going to be great at this other thing, which means it's going to lead to this other thing, and this other thing. Eventually it goes to when you're talking to a customer and you overhear them saying, "I love this restaurant and my visit to New York has been amazing, but I would really just love a hot dog — I still haven't gotten one of those yet." If you overhear a customer say that, run outside and get them a hot dog and present it to them in such a way that memories...
05:39	Will Guidara	Yeah.
05:39	Sam Parr	And that's that — that's the book. And also, a little bit about your background: were you at Eleven Madison Park as uptight or as hardcore as the show The Bear kind of made it seem? Do you have to perform and, sort of, be a dick to your staff in order to make them buy into this stuff?
05:59	Will Guidara	Listen. I think to succeed in a restaurant as a leader, the same lessons are true when it comes to succeeding in any other business. I think the greatest leaders are those that, when they walk into the room, the people who work for them check themselves a little bit. They want to make sure that everything is as it's meant to be, and they smile because they're happy that person is there. When you're a leader who acts like a dick, people are just scared of getting yelled at. When you're an attentive leader—thoughtful in holding people accountable—people don't want to make a mistake because they don't want to let you down.
06:44	Sam Parr	> "But can you walk me through a scenario? Because as a leader I have a bunch of employees. I have this weird feeling — I don't want to be disliked too much — and I don't know if I should call this person out on this particular thing. I don't know if I want to pick that battle right now. > > So, for all the listeners who I think are pretty average in terms of how a lot of people feel: can you walk through a conversation — like a productive leader conversation — that relates to holding people accountable?"
07:14	Will Guidara	Yeah, well. First of all, I think too many leaders focus on wanting to be liked. The people who work for us don't need another friend; they need someone who's willing to step up and lead them. If you focus on doing that consistently, they will invariably like you. It's not dissimilar to building any business: if you focus so much on making money, you're probably going to do something mediocre. Whereas if you focus on building something great, you'll end up making money. I believe that great cultures are those where feedback is normalized. When I talk about feedback, I'm obviously talking about praise. When you set crazy expectations for people on your team, you better be there to celebrate them when they meet or exceed those expectations—not only because it's the right thing to do, but because praise is addictive. When you receive some, you want to receive more. But sometimes I fear we focus so much on praise and think that's the only way to build a great culture that we forget how powerful criticism can be. > "If praise is affirmation, criticism is investment." The people who work for you are there because they want to grow and become better versions of themselves. That means if you aren't there to hold them accountable when they are not being their best, you're not actually doing right by them. I don't think there are many things a leader can do that are more beautiful than being willing to step outside of your comfort zone long enough to invest in someone else's growth. The only way it's an investment is if it's done thoughtfully, and I have rules of criticism.
08:56	Sam Parr	"Before you say those rules, just so I understand: how many staff did you have in total across all the restaurants?"
09:02	Will Guidara	"Oh, 1,800."
09:04	Sam Parr	"Wow, okay — was your retention better than industry standards?"
09:08	Will Guidara	Dramatically, so yeah.
09:10	Sam Parr	So, you killed it there. "Yeah, we did—well, okay." And what are the rules for criticism?
09:15	Will Guidara	Any of these, individually, are pretty simple, right? Criticize in private; praise in public. The moment you criticize someone in front of their peers, a "wall of shame" goes up. They're not going to receive the information you're delivering. Criticize the behavior, not the person. People inadvertently end up talking about the person's shortcomings instead of focusing on the behavior they're trying to correct. Criticize consistently. Too often we don't have the energy to call someone out when they've done something, so we wait until the moments we do. When that's the case, two things become true. One: people aren't sure what "right" looks like because you only call them out every other time they do that thing. Or, perhaps worse, people think you only criticize them when you're in a bad mood, which brings a negative stigma to the exchange. Never use sarcasm in criticism. A lot of younger leaders do that — they think that if they make a joke out of it, it'll be easier to swallow. But joking around about something as important as investing in someone else's growth, I think, makes a fool of both of you.
10:28	Sam Parr	"So, like, what's an example?"
10:30	Will Guidara	You know, like when people are like, "Hey, maybe stop being so late," and then go "da-da-da," like, whatever... trying to—
10:36	Sam Parr	Yeah, so what would you say instead? Instead: "I, you know, we said we were going to be here at eight. You weren't. I don't like that. Can you please be here at eight tomorrow?"
10:44	Will Guidara	"Exactly — without emotion."
10:46	Sam Parr	Yeah, which brings you...
10:47	Will Guidara	To the next rule: there's no place for emotion in criticism. It's unemotional. The moment you bring emotion into it, you're eliciting emotion in the other, and the more someone is emotional when receiving criticism, the more they shut down. And then finally: you better be praising everyone on your team more than you are criticizing them. Because if you're not, one of two things is happening. One: you are the person who tends to see all the things that are wrong more than you have the ability to see the things that are right. Or two: you have someone on your team who's just not doing enough things well to praise. In that case, you failed as a leader by letting them stay there as long as they have.
11:31	Sam Parr	Alright, so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business—nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like $17 or $18 million in revenue. I started it with like $300. My current company, Hampton, does over $10 million in revenue. I started it with actually no money—maybe $29 or something like that. Nothing. So you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan. What you do need is systems that actually work. At my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under $1,000. These are models that, if you do them correctly, can make money this week. You can get it right now—you can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, back to the show: what were some early stories when you were figuring out unreasonable hospitality and then you implemented it and were like, "Oh man, actually something is here—not only does it make them feel good, it actually might make me more money"?
12:37	Will Guidara	Yeah, I mean, the hot dog was the origin story. You always hear of athletes going to the tapes when they've made a mistake to see what they did wrong, to make sure they don't continue to do that thing. What I don't think anyone does often enough is go to the tapes when they've done something right — to make sure that they continue to do that thing. That's how you put intention to intuition. In the hot dog, we did something as silly and simple as it was that was significant, and it required being present enough to actually pick up on that. It required realizing that we should stop taking ourselves so seriously, because sometimes the silliest things can be the most connective. It required acknowledging this idea that the gestures that are specific to an individual will always have the greatest impact. I—I say, "one size fits one." With that, we put a system behind it. We hired an additional person to our team, someone who was in the dining room with only one responsibility: to be there as a resource to help everyone else bring their ideas to life. </FormattedResponse>
13:50	Sam Parr	And what was—what was their budget? Tell me everything. This is where... this is what I want to know: the operations. In particular, a lot of people listening—we own Internet companies or some type of digital company, not necessarily traditional, like a restaurant or a traditional service industry. So this is actually what I really, really want to know: operationalizing this. So, tell me.
14:10	Will Guidara	Yeah, so listen. In the beginning we didn't put a budget to it. It was just like, "Hey—just start doing it and be reasonable. Don't get—don't be unreasonable with the thoughtfulness." But we're not spending $1,000 on an idea for someone.
14:24	Sam Parr	"And what was this person's title?" "The Dreamweaver." "The Dreamweaver. Okay. And what were they making?" "Don't know what restaurant salaries are."
14:33	Will Guidara	They were probably making $25 an hour.
14:37	Sam Parr	Okay. And their whole goal — you said... I don't know if you wrote it out in the memo or in the job description, but you said "help everyone."
14:45	Will Guidara	You're just there because... Okay, so here's the thing, having nothing to do with unreasonable hospitality: everyone has great ideas. The difference between the people that I think crush it in life and those that don't is that the former actually decide to bring their great ideas to life. Right now, the reality is in the workplace—especially in high-functioning organizations—people don't have a ton of bandwidth. This is especially true in a restaurant. It's not like people have an extra thirty minutes in the middle of Saturday night service to go work on a little art project. This person was just there to create bandwidth. So they were there: anyone on the team who had an idea could go to the dreamweaver and say, "Hey, I need you to go out to the store and get a DVD for the movie Seven on the fly," or "Hey, we need to find sleds immediately," or "Hey, we need to go get the cotton candy machine from downstairs," or "Hey, does the toy store sell Super Soakers? Can we get any of those right now?" Whatever it was, that person was just there to execute. Now, over time we started hiring the dreamweavers from art schools so they could actually do their own craft work in the moment, and we just let it fly. There was one dreamweaver—the dreamweaver was responsible for execution. Everyone on the team, though, was in their own way a dreamweaver because they were the ones responsible for ideation. It's the people on the front line that are actually connecting with the customers. They're the ones picking up on the little things that you can run with. The dreamweavers were never given a set budget, although every once in a while—one or two months a year—I would look at the dreamweaver line item in the P&L and I'd say to the team, "Hey guys, let's rein it in a little bit."
16:31	Sam Parr	"What was the most expensive thing?"
16:33	Will Guidara	Gosh... the most expensive thing we ever did—I don't know. We had these pictures of Miles Davis: giant photographs of him in the kitchen. One time, a guy who actually worked for us—because I always wanted to spend the most money on our own people—received things at the highest level possible. If they received stuff like that, they would be more inclined to turn around and come up with those things for other people. Until you know how good it feels to receive something, you're not necessarily as inclined to want to put in the work to give it to others. He loved Notorious B.I.G., so we reprinted all these giant framed photos of Biggie in our kitchen, which I mean was probably $600 or so.
17:22	Sam Parr	Okay, so it's not that much money. No? Okay, no. And what was the average... I don't remember what it would cost. What was the average table spending—$2?
17:32	Will Guidara	Yeah, it was like $400 per person.
17:34	Sam Parr	Okay. And how many a night were you doing? Or how many per customer, maybe?
17:40	Will Guidara	Well, so here's the thing. I distill unreasonable hospitality — the gestures of the philosophy — into three categories: one-size-fits-all, one-size-fits-some, and one-size-fits-one. I think it's important to explain this because, in our conversation, one-size-fits-all meant that we looked at the entire experience, every single touch, and identified how we could make as many of them as possible just a little bit more awesome. I'll give you an example: the check. In millions of restaurants around the world, at the end of every meal someone brings you a bill. And yet, in spite of the fact that everyone shares that touchpoint, I've never seen it approached with any creativity or intention. It's a hard part of the meal to get right because: a) Everyone gets really impatient the moment they ask for the check; if it takes you too long to give it to them, you've ruined the meal. b) At the same time, you can't drop it on their table before they've asked for it — otherwise people think you're kind of rude and trying to rush them out. It's especially hard in a fine-dining restaurant because those are big checks. The moment you realize how much it costs, it's a little bit harder to still love what you just had. There was no innovation here, but we saw that as an opportunity to do something with an overlooked touchpoint. So, when I knew you were done with your meal — even if you hadn't asked for the check but I could tell you were finished — I'd go over to your table with a glass for each person and a bottle of cognac. We'd pour just a splash of cognac into each glass and I'd say, "This is with my compliments. In fact, I'm going to leave the entire bottle here — please help yourselves to as much as you'd like." Then I'd put the check down and say, "Your check is here, ready whenever you are." It's a small change with a profound impact: 1. No one ever had to wait for the check again. 2. No one could ever think we were trying to rush them out — I had just given them an entire bottle of free booze. It didn't cost very much; rarely did people drink more than that splash. Yet, at the moment we brought over that big bill, we matched it with a gesture of profound generosity. By the way, I've talked to people who dined with us back then — we were serving some of the best food on the planet — and they don't remember a single thing they ate, but they'll never forget how we made them feel when we gave them that bottle of cognac.
19:57	Sam Parr	"There was—have you read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini?" "No." "Oh man, it's like... I feel like I'm..."
20:04	Will Guidara	Gonna end this podcast with an entire reading list.
20:07	Sam Parr	It's considered the gospel when it comes to influence, which is related to marketing. But I read it like a 14-year-old trying to meet girls. In that book, Robert Chaudhary tells a story where he basically lays out a variety of principles for persuasion. He presents studies and experiments to illustrate each one. One of the stories: he had a Waitress A give someone the bill. He had Waitress B give someone the bill and a piece of chocolate. And he had Waitress C say, "Here's your bill," walk away five steps, then come back and say, "Oh, I almost forgot—I got this chocolate for you." Option C got more tips by a significant amount.
20:56	Will Guidara	Wow.
20:57	Sam Parr	A huge amount, and frankly I don't even remember which principle this falls under. I read this about fifteen years ago, but I remember that one thing. So when you did that, this may not apply because I don't think you accepted gratuity. But if you did, did gratuity for the wait staff go through the roof because of this gesture?
21:18	Will Guidara	For sure, for sure. And, by the way, that's well documented. Cornell did a study: they compared a thousand diners who were given that little mint with the check to a thousand diners who weren't. The ones who were given the mint had, on average, 18% higher tips. I just think generosity begets generosity.
21:35	Sam Parr	That is the rule of reciprocity, by the way. It basically states: if I do a favor for you, you will do a favor for me. It can be significantly out of proportion because you now feel like you owe me, and humans hate owing someone. I remember reading about this and I went and bought a motorcycle. Back then it was a very cheap motorcycle. I think it was $3,000 or $2,500. I showed up with two cans of Coke and said, "Hey, yeah, I'm ready to look at your motorcycle." I met the guy on Craigslist, by the way. There was a gas station— I got myself a Coke and asked, "You want one? Thought you might want one." He basically said, "It's $3,000, that's firm." I replied, "Look, the best I could do is $2,500. What do you say?" He said, "Well, you're a nice guy—you got me a Coke."
22:27	Will Guidara	"You got me Coke?"
22:28	Sam Parr	"I'll do $2,500, so that was..." </FormattedResponse>
22:31	Will Guidara	A $499 win on that.
22:33	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah — that's sort of what it appears you did with the cognac. That's why I was asking whether the gratuity went up because of that gesture.
22:42	Will Guidara	Do you know — I was just on a Zoom with Rory Sutherland. Do you know who that is?
22:47	Sam Parr	The marketing guy — yeah, yeah... ad, ad, ad — agency executive. </FormattedResponse>
22:50	Will Guidara	Yeah, we were talking about this exact thing earlier today. He was talking about how he ordered a new mattress and pillows from some company and they just included a duvet set or something. He said, "Honestly, I'd feel guilty if I ever ordered a mattress from anyone else again." But we're juxtaposing that against: had that same company said, "If you order a mattress and two pillows, we will give you a duvet set," then he thinks he'd earned it by virtue of having done what they said he needed to do. It's — I think it's reciprocity combined with surprise and delight. You need to do it without saying you are going to do it in advance for it to have the impact you want it to have.
23:37	Sam Parr	"Did you call it unreasonable hospitality back then? What was your mantra within the company?" "Yeah—unreasonable hospitality." "Did you notice that profits and revenue went up, and do you think it was because of that?"
23:47	Will Guidara	Yeah, I think this is the—okay. Yes. Profits and revenues went way up. I think everyone I've ever seen embrace these philosophies has seen financial benefit. Yet there are some who are reticent because of that old adage: "what gets measured gets managed." It's hard to measure the impact of these things in the short term. You need to be willing to commit to ideas for long enough to see them truly come to life. Because: a) the more of an emotional connection people have to what you're doing, the more likely they are to return; and b) whether it's the hot dogs or sleds—or all these different things we did—you are giving people stories to tell. Every dollar I ever spent on unreasonable hospitality was far more impactful than any dollar I ever spent on traditional marketing. When you give them those stories to tell, what do you think they're going to do? They're going to tell them over and over and over again.
24:52	Sam Parr	Well—were you guys seeding those stories? I mean, if the "hot dog" story got out, were you the one who told everyone? Because if I am—if I'm going to do this, I'm telling everyone: I've done it.
25:03	Will Guidara	No, we never—we never told anyone. We did the things in the moment. The hot dog story got out when I wrote the book.
25:08	Sam Parr	Got.
25:09	Will Guidara	I think if you do these things, you can be pretty sure that people are going to tell the stories themselves. Okay, so that's "one size fits one." "One size fits some" is effectively using simple pattern recognition. The reality is, in every single business there are things that happen over and over again. They're not touch points — they don't happen always for everyone — but they happen sometimes for some people. If you've ever gone to a casual dining restaurant with a kid and they give you the little pack of crayons and the coloring mat, that is effectively pattern recognition. They've realized kids come in; if we have these on hand, it will result in a better experience for the family as well as the children.
25:54	Sam Parr	"Did you have a unique twist on that particular...?"
25:57	Will Guidara	Particularly, we did so many different things. We had Lego sets for a while. We had Etch A Sketches for a while. We just cycled through different things. We did full, proper exercises where, alongside the entire team, we'd come up with lists of these recurring moments and then get creative on how to make our reactions to them more awesome. By the way, you can't do these things effectively unless you do involve the entire team. There's the— I call it famous because I think it's famous— quote by David Marquet: > "In most organizations the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority." [transcription ends]
26:41	Sam Parr	Order.
26:41	Will Guidara	To brainstorm truly significant things within this space, you especially need to bridge that gap between authority and information.
26:48	Sam Parr	So, were you holding weekly all-hands meetings with all 1,800 people, or were you sending emails?
26:54	Will Guidara	No. So 1,800 people are across the company. We would do strategic planning restaurant by restaurant.
27:00	Sam Parr	Quarterly.
27:01	Will Guidara	We did one big one a year, but there were also all sorts of little meetings that would be scattered throughout. At the end of the day, the number of ideas that came out of a one-day strategic planning session at the beginning of the year would generally take us about a year to implement. You could get enough out of one day to really keep you going for a year.
27:24	Sam Parr	And so you did. And so, "one size fits some." That is—that's the second one.
27:29	Will Guidara	Yes. I'll give you an example of that — this is my favorite. A lot of people got engaged at a restaurant. If anyone's ever gotten engaged at a restaurant, they poured you free champagne.
27:43	Sam Parr	Mm-hmm.
27:43	Will Guidara	If they didn't, you got engaged at the wrong restaurant—but that's reasonable hospitality. Now that we'd identified this, we had an opportunity to make it as well—more awesome. This is what we came up with: Tiffany & Co. had their offices across the park.
27:58	Sam Parr	Oh my God.
27:59	Will Guidara	One day, I went over there and knocked on doors until I found the Chief Marketing Officer. I convinced her to give us 1,000 of those iconic Tiffany blue boxes—each with two champagne flutes in them. We put them in the back. Next time someone got engaged, we poured them free champagne like we always would have, but they wouldn't notice that their glasses looked a little bit different from everyone else's. At the end, we'd give them the glasses; they toasted their...
28:22	Sam Parr	That's... drink awesome.
28:24	Will Guidara	Again, three things on that one. 1. Was it less special for them because we had a bunch more in the back? No. 2. I have talked to people who got engaged with us who don't remember a single thing they ate, but they will never forget that. 3. That one didn't even cost us anything. I mean, it cost Tiffany a reasonable amount of money, but I guarantee you they've more than made up for that investment with all the Tiffany things that have ended up on registries.
28:53	Sam Parr	Dude, that's so good.
28:54	Will Guidara	And then, of course, there's one size fits one, which is the Dreamweaver stuff. The reason I say all of them is because at Eleven Madison we would serve 110 people a night. I couldn't do a Dreamweaver thing for every single person that came in there. But between one size fits one, one size fits some, and one size fits all, you better believe that everyone was walking out of there having had an experience that, well, felt at least a little bit magical.
29:22	Sam Parr	I used to run a company called The Hustle. It was the first company I sold, and it was a pretty amazing company. I'm a self-taught copywriter — that was my passion — and the company was built on copywriting. One of my philosophies was to alter what I called the forgotten text. What that means in practice is this: a very specific example is when you sign up for a conference website and enter your email. More often than not — in 99% of cases — a customer will get an email from Mailchimp, Beehive, or ConvertKit (whatever), and it's going to tell you: > "Thanks for subscribing. Click here to confirm." And that's it. It's just the stock email.
30:03	Will Guidara	Yes.
30:04	Sam Parr	I wrote the world's greatest welcome email and I'll have to remember it. The subject was "Look what you did, you little jerk." > "I don't think you realized what just happened. You just signed up for the best business newsletter on earth." > Immediately after doing that, a bell went off in our office in San Francisco. When that bell went off, Sarah went and did 25 push-ups because she was so excited. David went and took a shot for some reason, and Kevin is outside right now hugging an old lady because he's so excited. Look, I gotta go stop Kevin, but I just want to let you know how excited I am that you gave us your email. We are tirelessly working on tomorrow's edition. I hope you love it, and just know that we are working really hard to please you. It went viral. Then we took it a step further. When you unsubscribe from an email you often just see "You are now unsubscribed." I stole this one from Groupon — I'll tell you what Groupon's was. Groupon, which was an email newsletter company, had the intern sitting right there and it said "Here's what just happened when you unsubscribed." It was the CEO fake-throwing coffee in the intern's face, and it said something like: "Our intern Kevin must have done something bad to make you unsubscribe. I'm punishing him. Don't worry, I'm on it. If you want to resubscribe and give us another chance, that would mean a lot. Click here." And so the...
31:35	Sam Parr	The thing is that we worked really hard, so our pop-up said, "Oh no — not another pop-up." Then it continued, "Well, look, while you're here: the situation is this. This company — it's called The Hustle — it's my company; I run it." We did this... we did this newsletter: "Give us your email if you want to get it the next day." And so the whole website Forgotten Text — I worked really hard to do Forgotten Text — and we got so many backlinks, or, you know, press because of it.
32:00	Will Guidara	Do know — first of all, that's brilliant. In the way I see the world, there are two reasons why I think it's especially brilliant. One is obvious... well, they're probably both obvious. One reason is I believe the smallest enhancements to the most overlooked touch points in a guest experience can have the greatest impact on the experience as a whole, because it is you saying very clearly to the people you serve, "We're willing to care about things that no one has ever paused for long enough to consider." I spent time with an auto dealer group in California right when the book was coming out, and I was talking to them about touch points. They thought I was... you know, when you think about a classic car dealer and then I'm talking about unreasonable hospitality, it was like oil and water in the beginning. I was like, "Alright, I have a question: what happens a week after someone buys a new car? When they open the glove compartment for the first time, what's in it?"
32:53	Sam Parr	Oh my God.
32:54	Will Guidara	"And they're like, 'Nothing.'" I was like, "It's a touch. That's part of the experience." They did something super small. After that, they started putting a Starbucks gift card in the glove compartment of every car that just said, "Thank you so much for your business. If you ever need anything, give me a call." And then... whatever, Kevin, that.
33:10	Sam Parr	Oh my gosh, that's great.
33:11	Will Guidara	They call me a year later. They're like, "We have never seen a return as big on any marketing investment in the history of our..." [speaker trails off] </FormattedResponse>
33:18	Sam Parr	Was it just, like, $5?
33:20	Will Guidara	"It was a $15 gift card, Tim."
33:22	Sam Parr	We'll see. Oh my gosh!
33:24	Will Guidara	So, the—oh—like, the smallest things, the parts that no one has ever thought about, really make a difference. And then, about what I said about the hotdog: so many companies have become so focused on perfecting brands that they've stopped pursuing people. Everyone is taking themselves too seriously, and the moment you just let yourself be a little sillier, a little more human, a little more connective, it never fails.
33:53	Sam Parr	That's so good. Have you—what are some other interesting stories of people who have implemented this and had almost a turnaround? Because you're telling me these stories. I'm sitting here taking notes, and I'm not taking notes for this podcast; I'm taking notes on what I need to tell my team (mhmm). I'm so bought in. I get so fired up whenever I hear about this. But the discipline of following through, and making it part of our culture, is quite challenging. You said you don't see results necessarily right away—it might take a minute. You're taking a bit of a leap of faith.
34:24	Will Guidara	I mean, here's another one I heard recently. This has been one of the most fun things for me over the past two years: getting notes from people who run funeral homes, prison systems, insurance companies, banks, NFL teams, and everything in between about the various ways they've manifested the ideas. I think this one's quite brilliant. It focuses on the beauty of making things mandatory. Just like the word criticism has been given a bad rep and I think it should be destigmatized, so has mandatory. We feel like if we make something mandatory for our people to do, it's a bad thing. But I think when you make something mandatory, it's just a meta-signal to everyone that works for you that this matters. There's a guy who owns two UPS stores in Sarasota. He read the book, really fell in love with it, and tried to figure out how to bring it to life in his space. I don't think anyone's ever woken up saying, "Where do the most hospitable people in the world work? UPS stores," right? But he...
35:30	Sam Parr	That's a big— that's a big opportunity, right?
35:31	Will Guidara	Exactly. So he made a rule: he mandated that everyone on his team—the people who worked at the UPS Store—had to, one time per shift, comp a customer up to, call it, $40. They had to do it, and they had to write when they were clocking out who they comped and why. It was a win-win-win in the most profound of ways. If you're a customer and you go to a UPS Store and you randomly get comped for shipping something or copying something, it's going to blow your mind—you'll tell that story a bunch. It also ended up being really good for the people who worked there. When you work at a place like that, you are not accustomed to being on the receiving end of profound appreciation and enthusiasm, and yet we are all human beings. Those feelings energize us, and when you get them it makes your day better, full stop. I don't care how "too cool for school" you present yourself as being. Third—and this is what I thought was so fascinating, and when he explained it it made sense—because it was good for the team, they went from having to do it to getting to do it. They've only got to do it once, so they started engaging and getting to know everyone who came into the store much more deeply: deciding who deserved it the most, who was having a hard day and needed something to go right, and who was having a great day and needed a cherry on top. So even the customers who did not receive the comp started having genuinely enjoyable experiences in those stores. I'm hearing about things like this all the time, and it's just... it's just awesome.
37:23	Sam Parr	That's great. Do you have, among the people who listen to this, maybe they own an e-commerce store—so they run a Shopify site—or they have a small software company that's only two or three people? Do you have any examples, in particular, of a website that you've gone to and thought, "they nail it"?
37:44	Will Guidara	I mean, I think the story of Chewy and what they do is just my favorite. Do you know—do you know what I'm about to say?
37:52	Sam Parr	Yeah, so Chewy — it's funny: Ryan Cohen, founder of Chewy, is now more famous because of GameStop. He's this crazy investor, but he started Chewy and the premise was amazing customer service. An example would be: "If they heard that your dog died, they would send you flowers or something like that."
38:10	Will Guidara	Yeah, well, certainly. I mean, this is how it works: you go to Chewy, you subscribe for your dog food, right? You set it up as a recurring order and you never have to think about it again. But eventually your dog is going to die, and the first thing you think to do is not to go on Chewy.com and cancel your dog food order. So, invariably, a couple weeks later—while you're mourning the loss of your dog—another bag of food arrives.
38:35	Sam Parr	Yeah, the worst.
38:36	Will Guidara	The worst. So now you call Chewy, then you cancel it. This is what they do every single time: they obviously apologize for your loss, they credit your account for that last bag of dog food (they can't take it back for health-code reasons), and they encourage you to give it to someone else who needs it. Then, two days later, you get a bouquet of flowers saying "sorry for your loss." Now that's pattern recognition. </FormattedResponse>
38:58	Sam Parr	Which would be what — "one size fits most"?</FormattedResponse>
39:01	Will Guidara	Maybe those flowers cost them $15. Think about dog people: when they lose a dog, it's normally just a matter of time before they get another one. In the same way, Rory is never going to buy a mattress from anyone else. I'd be hard-pressed to imagine anyone ever buying dog food from anyone else again. Listen, I think "unreasonable hospitality" happens at the intersection of creativity and intention. It's being intentional enough to pursue relationships, to seek out opportunities, and to—well—care enough to find them, and then to do something with them once you do. Then there's the creativity to try to figure out the most awesome way you can possibly come up with to respond. I think it's just as much about creating an environment where your team feels energized, rewarded, and appreciated, because it's a two-way street. At least for me, there is nothing that energizes me more than seeing the look on someone else's face when they receive a gift I am responsible for giving them. When you create a culture like this, you're giving everyone on your team the gift of being able to give gifts. They don't always need to be lavish or expensive; they just need to be thoughtful. </FormattedResponse>
40:24	Sam Parr	Are there any other digital brands that I can go to and document, or become a customer of, to see how this is implemented?
40:33	Will Guidara	I am consistently drawn to the in-person examples. But you asking me this makes me... I feel like you're asking me, "What is a good movie that I've seen recently?" I never have the ability to remember them off the cuff, but yeah.
40:49	Sam Parr	I'm putting you on the spot, and I can give you an easy out if you want. An easy out—let me think... Are there any that I have? The fact that we can't come up with any off the top of my head is kind of insane, I think. Yeah. If I'm listening to this, I'm like, "Oh, so the bar's low." Because, by the way, I will—I'm gonna, like, call you out. Actually, I would say, "So you run this thing called The Welcome Conference." Okay, I'm gonna go to thewelcomeconference.com. I'm gonna go to your website. I feel like we can make this unreasonably hospitable and
41:21	Will Guidara	It's, to make this even funnier, we're like — we're two weeks away from releasing an entirely new website for both of them: unreasonablehospitality.com and thewelcomeconference.com. Our websites kinda suck right now, I'm not gonna lie.
41:38	Sam Parr	"It... you know, when I'm thinking about all this, I'm like, 'Alright, I gotta go implement all this stuff.' But then it's like, 'Shoot — I gotta go and design the site and write.' It's hard."
41:45	Will Guidara	It's a marathon, not...
41:46	Sam Parr	Not. It seems a lot more fun to give someone free ups.</FormattedResponse>
41:49	Will Guidara	No, but this is what I'll tell you: I use the word magic a lot because I do believe when you do these things, you're... you're creating magic. And there's this quote — you know, Penn and Teller. My—my favorite quote about magic comes from Teller. He says: > "Sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would deem reasonable. Nothing about this stuff is hard; it does, however, require being willing to work harder." I—I was talking to a buddy of mine who's a magician, and he was doing training for... </FormattedResponse>
42:23	Sam Parr	"It's like the greatest friend ever to hang out with."
42:25	Will Guidara	Dude, I have a lot of magician friends. "Really?" — "Yeah, I do."</FormattedResponse>
42:31	Sam Parr	They must have read the pickup artist books that I used to read. Back then, all those pickup artist books would tell you to learn magic tricks.
42:36	Will Guidara	Everyone says that works, but I don't think for many of these guys it worked until more recently. He was hired to go train Paul Rudd in magic for Ant-Man. He and his assistant went to the director's house to hang out for a day with Paul Rudd and the director. They went through a bunch of magic tricks, showing and teaching him the whole time. At the end, they were about to leave and the director said, "Come on—show me your best trick." The magician replied, "Well, I kinda just showed you all my stuff." The director said, "No, no, no. Come on—your best trick." He asked, "All right, do you have a backyard?" He went into the backyard and then said to Paul, "Hey, can you just..." — he gestured toward the yard behind the house — "point into the yard, any direction in this yard, and name a card: ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king, and the suit." Paul said, "Eight of hearts," and pointed. They walked out in that direction and the magician said to his assistant, "Hey, give me the shovel." The assistant reached into his bag, gave him the shovel, he dug into the ground, and pulled out the eight of hearts from the ground. </FormattedResponse>
43:41	Sam Parr	Oh my God.
43:42	Will Guidara	Now he's not just there to do magic tricks for Paul Reddy; he's there to show him how to do magic. He shows him a video of them at the guy's house the night before—digging holes and burying all 52 cards in the lawn.
43:54	Sam Parr	No shit.</FormattedResponse>
43:55	Will Guidara	He did it as a grid, so no matter where Paul pointed, he could figure it out. That was a lot of work. But Paul’s reaction when he pulled an "eight of hearts" out of the ground made all that work worth it. That's what magic is, and that's what I think hospitality, when pursued unreasonably, has the capacity to be.
44:21	Sam Parr	"Man, that's awesome. Do you love being an author significantly more than running a restaurant? Because one sounds way easier than the other." </FormattedResponse>
44:30	Will Guidara	It's interesting. I don't know—I mean, I loved what I did. I loved it. I loved working like a maniac to build a world and then getting to stand at the front door of that world and welcome people into it. It's one of my favorite things. I don't get the gratification now of sitting in someone's living room and watching them read the book. There, I got the gratification of watching people experience the thing that I built.
45:00	Sam Parr	But I bet you it's been a nice season of life. I mean, I don't know the finances, but I bet it's made a really good living, and it's been nice to...
45:06	Will Guidara	Well, no — so that's mine. And I love this. It's hard for me to compare which one I love more, but I certainly don't miss it. I don't miss what I did because I'm so loving what I'm doing now.
45:17	Sam Parr	"And what are you doing now? You wrote the book, I imagine you're speaking, and you had the conference."
45:23	Will Guidara	So, I have a Welcome Conference in New York. We do an Unreasonable Hospitality Summit in Nashville. I write a newsletter called Pre-Meal that comes out every other week.
45:32	Sam Parr	So, you own a media company?
45:34	Will Guidara	Kind of, yeah. I'm also a writer and a producer on The Bear now, which is fun.
45:40	Sam Parr	I didn't know. I thought it was just for that one episode.
45:43	Will Guidara	"I started writing and producing the following season."
45:46	Sam Parr	Is that awesome, man? That sounds awesome. </FormattedResponse>
45:48	Will Guidara	Dude, it's so fun, and that whole team is just the best and...
45:53	Sam Parr	What's that main—what's the actor's name?
45:55	Will Guidara	Jeremy Ellen White</FormattedResponse>
45:56	Sam Parr	"I mean, he seems awesome."
45:57	Will Guidara	He is awesome, but then just be wildly talented and exceptionally humble.
46:04	Sam Parr	So, do you get to hang out with all these guys and just see how it's made? I mean...
46:07	Will Guidara	That seems like my fantastic schedule aligns. I'm in Chicago on set with them.
46:12	Sam Parr	"And Matti Madison — I think he's fantastic."</FormattedResponse>
46:13	Will Guidara	Matti's the best. He is a ridiculous and incredible human being.
46:17	Sam Parr	That's so cool. There's a whole—there's all these Instagram accounts. There's this idea in men's fashion, or menswear, and the idea is: for certain people, if you try too hard, it's like "the clothes are wearing you, you're not wearing the clothes." And there's a term for it: sprezzatura.
46:38	Will Guidara	"Yeah, spresatura [possibly 'sprezzatura']. And then there's Manny Matheson, who's always wearing the clothes... like he—"
46:42	Sam Parr	And there's—and he's the example—so sprezzatura. I've talked about this part. It's an Italian word. It basically just means effortless, effortlessly cool. Yeah. It's like a $2,000 beautiful suit, but you're wearing dirty boots, and because of that, you're cool. I'm not.
46:57	Will Guidara	I don't have that, by the way. I'm not—I don't have that grasp on menswear. I wear, like, a T-shirt and jeans at this [point].
47:05	Sam Parr	Yeah, but you kinda had it in a way because of your company and Matty Madison—somebody who was listening in The Bear [TV show]. He's—I don't know what's his name—[unclear: "the bear fact"?]. They kinda portray him as this silly, goofy doofus guy, but in reality he is a very gregarious person. He's huge; he's a big guy, but he's got tattoos all over his face and he wears the coolest clothes on Instagram. It doesn't look like clothes he bought from a thrift shop. It looks like clothes he's owned for twenty years and that have this beautiful wear on them.
47:38	Will Guidara	It looks like he just wakes up and, magically, a new outfit was draped upon him in the middle of the night by some ethereal... he's been...
47:46	Sam Parr	Got it. So he's like that in real life?
47:48	Will Guidara	No, yeah — he's amazing. He's so sweet.
47:51	Sam Parr	Well, and what's crazy is, I'm sure you could speak to this, and I would like to hear some stories about it. People in the restaurant industry—if you own a restaurant, it seems like most of those who are "successful" are actually still kind of broke, and they're working their asses off.
48:04	Will Guidara	Yeah, I mean, here's the problem. I think there's a couple problems. A lot of people that open restaurants didn't work their way up through the business in a way to make sure they really understood the business side of restaurants. It's like anything: I don't think you can succeed financially unless you are willing to be as creative in pursuit of making money as you are in pursuit of the experience you're building for people. I think a lot of restaurants are just too small, and the economics of a small restaurant are hard to really make work. That doesn't change until you start opening so many restaurants that you're running around like crazy and you're so distracted that the quality of the restaurants starts to suffer. Now, there are some people who have done it extraordinarily well and have figured out how to balance art and commerce...
48:59	Sam Parr	Who do you put in that bucket?
49:01	Will Guidara	I mean, Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz — they have a company out of Chicago called the Boka Restaurant Group. I think they have 36 restaurants or something.
49:10	Sam Parr	Right, because here's the reality. </FormattedResponse>
49:11	Will Guidara	Okay. You need a good general manager to run a restaurant. You need someone who's great at taking care of the guests and managing the team. Honestly, the skills required to do that well are not that different whether you're working at a 40-seat bistro or a 60-seat, three-Michelin-star restaurant. The cost of that person these days is, depending on the market, between $90,000 and $180,000 — it's not that big a swing. So you can be doing $5,000,000 a year and paying that, or $20,000,000 a year and paying that, and the margins just become really, really hard when you're not doing enough volume. You can do volume if you're doing fast casual — Chick-fil-A, McDonald's — over the course...
50:03	Sam Parr	Well, when you say "volume", do you mean the number of seats — like, literally just the number of customers?
50:07	Will Guidara	The number of seats and times per average check.
50:11	Sam Parr	Got it. So just the—we... we—it's an AOV [average order value]. So, like, yeah: the average customer, yeah.
50:17	Will Guidara	Value... It doesn't take that much more work to run a $15 million‑a‑year restaurant than it does a $5 million‑a‑year restaurant. </FormattedResponse>
50:25	Sam Parr	"What's the difference? So, you're saying it doesn't take that much work to get the average customer order to be $100. Or the difference between running a $100-per-head restaurant versus a $20-per-head restaurant is not significant?"
50:37	Will Guidara	The amount of work that goes into it is not that different, nor is the amount of work that goes into running a 20-seat restaurant versus an 80-seat restaurant. You need the same number of general managers, the same number of chefs. You do need some more staff, and obviously variable expenses will be higher, but most of the fixed costs are relatively the same. Your rent's going to be higher on a bigger restaurant, but these are all such small percentages compared to the top line that I always encourage people—when they say they want to open a restaurant—to work in one long enough to actually make mistakes on someone else's time before they open one. Then open one that's big enough that it actually is worthwhile doing.
51:18	Sam Parr	If I had to guess, you have a Notes app on your iPhone where you've stored all of these interesting restaurant concepts, angles, or sound bites that fascinate you. You don't want to pursue them now, and you may never do them, but they still fascinate you. Is that true? And if yes, is there anything on that list that you could talk about?
51:43	Will Guidara	I mean, listen—I think the fashion of restaurants is not dissimilar to the fashion of jeans. We want skinny jeans, then wide jeans, then skinny again; the pendulum shifts back and forth. For a while, restaurants started getting way too complicated, and I'm excited about the return to simplicity that's happening right now. People are realizing that, with everything going on in the world, the human moments need to be as human as possible. The places I'm drawn to: there's a restaurant in New York City called Res Dora, and it's just unbelievable pasta in a beautiful room, served delightfully well. I'm drawn to the kind of restaurant that creates the conditions for genuine connection. I was just with my wife and six friends—we rented a house in Mykonos, Greece last week. The people who owned the house would set a long table for us every morning with breakfast: Greek yogurt and fruit, some bacon and eggs, and a fresh loaf of bread. We'd sit down and no one had to order anything; it was this beautiful moment. I feel like that's a restaurant that doesn't exist yet, and I would love to see it exist—where you just sit down with the people you love, the food's just there, and you just get into it. I'm drawn to, and perhaps in my imagination when I don't have to deal with the realities of actually doing it, I dream about building restaurants that are less about impressing people by what you can do and more about extending an invitation for them to reconnect with one another.
53:29	Sam Parr	I've heard stories, and I respect the food industry, but that's not my passion. I'm a much simpler eater. What little I do know is I've read stories about the Michelin star system and how some chefs end up giving their stars back because they start playing to the critics. It can become overwhelming for a variety of reasons. When you were building a restaurant, did you ever feel the tension between playing to critics and awards, serving customers, and doing things you just thought were "dope"?
54:11	Will Guidara	Yeah, it was attention that I felt more acutely earlier in my career and in our journey toward success than I did later. I think, in the beginning—listen—you have to play the game a little bit.
54:29	Sam Parr	Of course.
54:29	Will Guidara	But I think it's the same no matter what industry you're in: you can't get people to pay attention to you unless you've achieved some level of critical success. That means doing the things you aren't necessarily inclined to want to do in order to get where you need to get. I'll give you an example. My first big goal was I wanted four stars in The New York Times. There are only seven restaurants in New York with four stars. We needed to get that — that was the starting point. Once you're a four-star restaurant, you're going to be full all the time. If you want to be the best at something, that's the first stop along the way. Well, not especially if you are in New York. When I looked at the four-star restaurants at the time, they were all in the Upper East Side or Midtown — they were fancy places. I don't believe there should be a dress code in a restaurant; I think you're there to invite people as they are. But we had to have a dress code. We never required jackets, but there was a proper dress code: no hats, no T‑shirts, whatever. The day we got four stars, the dress code went away. There were certain things we had to do in order to get a seat at the table. Once we were there, we had the freedom and the confidence to start doing things our own way. Over time, what I learned was that if I consistently delivered the thing I wanted to receive, it would always resonate more with the world. Playing the game got us to a pretty good level, but starting to do what I wanted to do — and not what I thought other people wanted us to do — was what ultimately got us to the top.
56:15	Sam Parr	One of my kind of joys of this podcast is finding people who our listeners don't already know. We kind of—like—put our stamp on them. We're like, "This person's amazing." Hopefully, in some way we're a little bit of a tastemaker because we've shown them something new. You're already a huge deal, and you have been circling around the business world for a while. We definitely haven't discovered you, but it would give me so much joy if someone listens to this and feels inspired because they hadn't previously heard about you—and now know about unreasonable hospitality just for the sake of excellence, of pursuing excellence. That's something I'm very passionate about right now. I wasn't always passionate about that. I don't think that comes naturally to me. For a long time my attitude was, "It's good enough—move forward aggressively." I'm trying to fight that. I'm trying to be more excellent. I hope that the listener—because I know I feel this way whenever I talk to you, whenever I read about you, whenever I listen to a podcast with you—feels the need to be more excellent than they've currently been behaving. </FormattedResponse>
57:25	Will Guidara	Thank you, man. Thank you. </FormattedResponse>
57:26	Sam Parr	And I — I hope we've given that to our audience.
57:28	Will Guidara	Well, to anyone out there listening—if this is the first time we've run into one another, it's good to meet you, kinda.
57:35	Sam Parr	Yeah—what do you want to promote? Do you have anything? What's your preferred social media platform, if any?
57:42	Will Guidara	Yeah, the two things I'm excited to promote are: the newsletter Pre-Meal, which is one of my favorite things to do. It is the stories that I shared today — it's me sharing one of these stories every couple weeks: just things I'm seeing out in the world that inspire me. You can sign up for that at unreasonablehospitality.com. And second, my next book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide, which is like my version of a workbook to really go through with the team and bring these ideas to life. It comes out in April but is available for pre-order now, and I'm so excited about it.
58:17	Sam Parr	I just sent it up to pre-mail, and I'm absolutely going to buy that. I would love that. That seems to be the thing now in the book industry: having a workbook to accompany the book. Made it.
58:28	Will Guidara	Much harder on ourselves than we needed to. It's like this four-color—almost a graphic-novel version of a workbook. I did it with this design firm called Invisible Creature. They've done work with NASA and Pixar.
58:40	Sam Parr	I love— I love workbooks. I fall for them every time. By the way, I just sent it for pre-mail: your welcome email. I'm actually not—I don't even want to say what it is, because hopefully you'll get subscribers. Your welcome email is fantastic.
58:51	Will Guidara	Thank you. </FormattedResponse>
58:52	Sam Parr	Like—I've only, obviously, I'm doing this; I can't read the whole thing. But I'm seeing... I've read the first sentence, I'm hooked, and I'm scrolling. I'm like, "Oh, this is a whole story; here's the background—this is awesome." There we...
59:03	Will Guidara	Go, dude — that's... that's high praise.
59:06	Sam Parr	Yeah, the website sucks.
59:07	Will Guidara	But the welcome email is okay.
59:09	Sam Parr	The website absolutely does not suck. I was just messing with you. This is awesome. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. That's it — that's the pod.

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The Hospitality Principles That Build Billion-Dollar Startups

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