The Hospitality Principles That Build Billion-Dollar Startups

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
All right, this episode is with Will Guidara. 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, and there's an episode in The Bear. It's called Forks. I think it's in season two, and it's an amazing episode. You guys have to watch it. And it's basically all about excellence. So how to have unreasonable hospitality. There's a lot of people listening to this, a lot of the MFM audience. You guys run internet companies. And so this book that he wrote, it's about his restaurant called 11 Madison Avenue and how they went above and beyond to treat their customers amazingly and how it actually helped their customers and helped their business. Maybe this book hasn't come across your table because it's not about the internet stuff. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have Will on. So give the episode a listen. I loved recording this. And one of the big takeaways other than going above and beyond for your customers, it's about being excellent, being excellent in life, in business, in fitness and family. I hope it inspires you. I loved it. I loved recording this episode. It inspires me. So give it a listen.
I'm happy to talk to you. I read a lot. And there's probably two books that are not meant to be business or at least 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 or life psychology, how to handle stress and not be down on yourself. And then the other one is Unreasonable Hospitality. Because when I read the book, I sort of wanted to become unreasonable at the rest of my life. I remember reading the book and I was like, this guy's an animal. Like he's really uptight about things that I am not uptight about. And to be the best that I can be, I need to be relentless.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:55)
It's interesting. I think that the dichotomy of what's in there is to accomplish what we did there required this relentless pursuit of excellence, right? I mean, that's kind of an inevitability when you're trying to become the best at anything. But what's wild was it wasn't the pursuit of excellence that actually took the restaurant over the top. It was the relentless, unreasonable pursuit of hospitality, right? Like you push everything to get every detail so unbelievably perfect, and then you do these messy things at the end to make people feel so very seen. Whether that's obsessing over every single garnish on a plate of crazy uber fine dining food and then recognizing that the thing that people will actually remember is a hot dog, or whatever other random thing we did for people. And so, it's this quest for perfection and the acknowledgment that the most human moments are perfectly imperfect, and those are the stickiest of all.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:59)
And what's that story again exactly?

**SPEAKER_3** (3:02)
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, there were foodies from Europe, in New York, just to eat at fancy restaurants. And so, they've been to like, you know, La Bernardin and Danielle and Jean George and Perse, and for anyone listening who does not know what those restaurants are, just trust in how fancy the names sound. They're the very good ones. And this was their last meal. They're going straight to the airport from the restaurant to go back home.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:34)
And you just overheard that.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:35)
And while I was at the table, they were raving about the trip. And then one woman said, yeah, but we never had a New York City hot dog. And it was just one of those light bulb moments. And I ran out to the hot dog cart, bought a hot dog, brought in, then came the hard part convincing my fancy chef to actually serve it in our restaurant. But he cut up the hot dog, put one little piece on each plate, little swish of ketchup, one of mustard, a canel of sauerkraut, one of relish. He like topped it off with a micro herb or something to make it look fancy. It looked all cool, yeah. 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 just 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.