Essential Lessons in Hospitality for Every Business

a restaurant, at a restaurant, I'm just gonna say. Will Gadara, founder of Hospitality Company, Thank You, also the author of the new book Unreasonable Hospitality, The Remarkable Power of giving People more than they expect. People who live in the New York City area or follow restaurants closely also know him as the former co owner of eleven Madison Park and of the Nomad and the co founder of the Welcome Conference. It's an annual hospitality symposium. Will joins us

on Zoom from New York. Well, how are you. I'm doing really well, guys, Thank you for having me. Well, the way I'm going to connect this to Amazon is your book has the subtitle the Remarkable power of giving people more than they expect, which Amazon certainly has done and it needs to continue to do. If it wants to get back from this, Um, how do does that?

How has that played out in your career? Well? Well, and I actually have a different way to to equate it to Amazon, if I may, because the book Unreasonable Hospitality, what what the thesis of it is is that the US was a manufacturing economy were now a service economy, and dramatically so. And I believe we're on the precipice of becoming a hospitality economy because when I look at what people missed the most over the course of the pandemic,

it was connection. And as we go into the uncertain financial times ahead, I think when people tighten their purse strings, the things that they will choose to spend their money on are those that bring a sense of connection. Um. Jeff Bezos was unreasonable in pursuit of building Amazon, right, I mean, like what he did to bring that company to life like it required profound relentlessness. Um. This book is my step by step guide on how to be just as unreasonable, but not in pursuit of product, in

pursuit of people. Um. Well, can we talk unreasonable? Um? Well, because when you think about hospitality, you think about sledding in Central Park are filling a private dining room with sand. Tell us about that. I have yet to have that. That's pretty super but tell me about that. Well. So that was our endeavoring to be unreasonable with hospitality. We were a fine dining restaurant, right, were unreasonable in pursuit

of the food we served. But if we could take hospitality up to that same notch, it would be pretty incredible. And so we started a program was called the dream Weaver program, where anytime we overheard something at a table, we tried to grab onto that and turn it into an extraordinary experience. Um the ones you're referencing, Or one time we overheard a table of four talking about how their kids were seeing at snow for the first time

they were. They were in New York on vocation from Spain, and so the dream Weavers found a store still up and selling sleds at eight o'clock in a Friday night. When they left, there was an suv outside with the sleds in the back. To take an essential part, I'll

give you one more. A couple of came and console themselves because they had a beach vacation and their flight was canceled, And so we heard them talk about that when they made the reservation, And so we turned our private dining room into their own beach to put a bunch of sand on the ground, a little kittie pool filled with water they could rest their toes into while they drowned their sorrows over tropical may ties. You know,

we did all of that because here's the deal. Like, people are more inclined to collect experiences than things these days. But I believe that an experience is not worth collecting unless you give people a story that helps them relive that experience over and over again. Um, you know the

other the other well, I just don't know. I was going to say the other thing that, like I think about when you guys were talking about Amazon and Apple, honestly is Amazon and with their focus on efficiency with giving things to people quickly, that efficiency has come at

the expense of relationship. It's been part of the digital transformation where I think people right now are actually even find waiting a little bit longer if they feel some sort of emotional connection to the brand that they're being served by. I think that is the stickiness, right There's a stickiness with Apple because people like the way the product makes them feel but there's nothing that can make people feel good in a more profound way than the hospitality.

So this book is me saying to every business out there, you can make the choice to be in the hospitality industry. And the book is where I kind of explain how to do that. Well. Well, late in the book, when you're talking about leadership, and there are a lot of leadership lessons in here. You you write about one of the biggest mistakes that you made of your career and you use that as sort of a story to talk about how leaders need to say their story. Um, share

that with us. Yeah, So, you know, one of the struggles I have as a leader is the balance between control and trust. I am a perfectionist. You don't. You don't accomplish what we did without having a pretty resounding excellence reflex. And when you're when you're perfectionists, you try to control as many details as possible. But trust is where hospitality comes in, where you you empower your team to bring their most fully realized selves to the table.

And we started a new menu and it was like really digging into the history of New York and the culture of the city. And I wanted every course to be explained in just the way that I wanted the guests to hear about them, and I ended up giving the team like a script to follow, and the result was a completely inauthentic experience where the servers instead of

becoming hospitality professionals, they were actors. And we got ripped in our first review where I mean the New York Times said it was the meal is like a stayer hosted by Presbyterians. And this is where you were going. Is too many leaders try to pretend that they didn't make a mistake in hopes that the world will forget that they made one, Whereas the best form of leadership is to stand up in front of your table when you lead them astray and to apologize for your missteps.

Because the best way to run a great organization is to normalize a culture of feedback. And the best way to get people to be inclined to receive criticism from you is if you're just as willing to stand up and criticize yourself. You do say in your book, you know thirty minutes a day can completely transform your culture, or you at least think about it this way. How So, because I think what you talk about ends up very

quickly becoming what the team thinks about UM. In restaurants every day the narrative, but we'll inspire the narrative, I think is perhaps how I'd articulated. You know, in restaurants, every day, right before we open our door, we have a thirty minute meeting with our team where and every restaurant does this, but many it's when you go over the new dishes, the new glasses of wine. You know,

when health insurance enrollment is. I always used it as an opportunity not just to talk about the what, but the why, to share moments of inspiration, to invite the team to do the same, to make it a moment where we focused on why the work we were doing matter, the impact we could have, and why we should all

be proud and encouraged to bring all of ourselves to it. UM. I believe that if every customer service organization, every bank branch, every rental car center, if they just spent thirty minutes or even fifteen minutes a day getting their team together and talking about the opportunity they collectively have to make a positive impact on people's lives. Customer service as we know it would be revel luctionized. I I mean, I would love to somebody who spends a lot of time

on hold. You know, I think we all we all are it's very difficult to talk to a human. I mean, do you think the market incentives are aligned for this? Because think about what we just talked about leading into you what investors focus on right focusing on costant Amazon, They're focusing on top line growth or what the top line looks like. They're focusing on how many iPhones were sold. I mean, how how do you make that? Very briefly, will I talked about that and like how the markets

not aligned necessarily? Well, I think the market is aligned because at the end of the day, it does come down to numbers. And I believe if you run this your business in this way, it translates to the numbers. I mean, listen, I'm sure the two of you have examples of places or times you've been somewhere where they've made you feel so good, and those are the places that you will go to over and over and over again. Does it require incremental um additional cost to bring a

culture of hospitality to life? Do I believe? And does my experience prove out the thesis that those costs result in exponentially higher revenue. Yeah. Absolutely, and the profits go up dramatically because of that. Well, and I think that, And that's a great point to end on, right, because if you do this right, ultimately you want want some payoff. If you will, hey, well we gotta run. Good luck

with the book Will Goodar, he's founder hospitality Company. Thank you his book Unreasonable Hospitality, so be sure to check that out.