Will Guidara – Unreasonable Hospitality

**Will Guidara** (0:00)
So many companies, regardless of how successful they are, reserve their best efforts only to invest in the thing that they sell. Don't invest that same amount of energy into how they make people feel, which to me feels counterintuitive. These companies, they are unreasonable in pursuit of bringing the most fully realized version of the product or service to life. They are relentless. They're willing to do whatever it takes to make that thing as close to perfect as possible. Unreasonable Hospitality is just willing to do the same when it comes to people. If it is the stickiest thing you can do in giving people a lasting impression of you, then why not give all of yourself to doing it well?

**Ted Seides** (0:49)
I'm Ted Seides and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is Will Guidara, the author of Unreasonable Hospitality and the soon to release Unreasonable Hospitality The Field Guide. Unreasonable Hospitality has become a New York Times bestseller and a business Bible for elevating customer experiences. Will was co-owner of Eleven Madison Park alongside Danny Meyer, when the restaurant ascended to number one in the world, the co-producer of Emmy award-winning streaming series The Bear, host of the Welcome Conference, and advisor to business leaders ranging from professional sports to financial services, on the delivery of hospitality as a primary business strategy. Our conversation explores the operating principles of unreasonable hospitality across the identification and enhancement of customer experiences. Will describes operationalizing exceptional service, finding magic in repeated touch points, building teams that embrace hospitality, and leading others through vulnerability. Once in a while, I get a chance to share a conversation outside of managers and allocators, designed to help you level up your performance and business. From the day I met Will several years ago, I knew he could do just that from his valuable insights and colorful stories.
Before we get going, I recently returned from a week's ski vacation to Switzerland with my son, Eric, the same son who shared his serendipitous encounter with the podcast last week. Snow conditions have been challenging almost everywhere this season, but we were excited to travel to Europe for the first time to ski. Our trip there back was full on trains, planes and automobiles. We got a taste of the beauty, food and culture that everyone raves about in Zermatt. As for skiing, between snow conditions we're accustomed to in Vermont and a whiteout blizzard our last two days, we only got two full days of skiing. But we certainly left the mountain better off than we found it for skiers the next week. It would be safe to question my sanity for making a long trip to ski only two days. But the truth is the number of full weeks I have left one-on-one with my 16 year old son are numbered, so I took in every moment, even when our plans for an active week were shot. What we did have was plenty of time to listen to podcasts. Although as you may have heard last week, Eric wasn't about to listen to Capital Allocators. But that's okay, he's happy to encourage you to listen and to tell your friends and their friends to listen. What he doesn't know is that process will inevitably get back to him through his friend's parents, offering another opportunity for him to think twice. And one day, one day, just maybe, he'll listen to. Thanks so much for starting a butterfly effect by spreading the word about Capital Allocators. That butterfly may be flapping its wings in the winter in Switzerland, and one day find its way to Eric. Capital Allocators is brought to you by AlphaSense. Expert calls have always been one of the most powerful ways to build conviction. But today, investors are asked to cover more companies and move faster with leaner teams. With AlphaSense's AI-led expert calls, their Tegas call service team sources experts based on your research criteria and lets the AI interviewer get to work. Then they take it one step further. Your call transcripts flow natively into your AlphaSense experience and become searchable and comparable, so your primary insights plug directly into your earnings, diligence, and pitch book workflows with no tool switching. AI for coverage and efficiency, humans for complexity and conviction. Sounds like just the right mix to create a scalable institutional edge without growing headcount. For hedge funds, this means validating thesis assumptions before earnings across dozens of experts instead of a handful. For private equity, it means faster pre-IOI scans and deeper commercial diligence. And for asset managers, it means pulling real operators' perspectives straight into models without disconnected tools or manual handoffs. All of this lives inside the AlphaSense platform, turning raw conversations into comparable, auditable insight. The first to see wins, the rest follow. Learn more at alphasense.com/capital.