256: From #50 to #1 in the World | Will Guidara, Author of Unreasonable Hospitality

Will Guidara is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, “Unreasonable Hospitality.” He is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which under his leadership was named the Best Restaurant in the World. He is the host of The Welcome Conference, a Co-Producer on the Emmy Award-winning series “The Bear,” and is a recipient of the Wall Street Journal Innovator Award. He is also the author of the book, “Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide.”

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Will’s restaurant ranked 50th out of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, he leaned on something his dad taught him: adversity is a terrible thing to waste. That night, he wrote two words on a napkin—Unreasonable Hospitality. And just a few years later Will achieved his goal of  becoming number one in the world.
• What stands out most isn’t just the turnaround—it’s the insight behind it: excellence isn’t just about what we deliver; it’s about how we make people feel.
• Will realized that the real differentiator was the experience. It was “one size fits one.” It was DreamWeaving. It was an obsession with the human side of every interaction.
• DreamWeaving was buying sleds for a family whose kids were seeing snow for the first time so that their after meal activity could be sledding for the first time in Central Park or creating beach scenes in the private dining room for a couple who was only there because their beach vacation got canceled.
• So often the people who achieve at a high level do so by being a little unreasonable.
• Never let a gracious impulse pass. We all have small instincts to do something thoughtful and too often, we ignore them. But that’s where the magic is.
• Hospitality, at its best, is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. And even something as simple as asking our guests to really listen isn’t an imposition. It’s a gift.
• No detail is too small to be poured into. Especially when it comes to valuing people.