Invest the time to get to know the people that work for you. You can't lead a group that isn't willing to follow you, and one of the best ways to get people to follow you is if they trust you, and it is so much easier for people to trust you if they know you and feel known by you. Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Will Gudera, the former owner of the legendary New York restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, and he's also a best-selling author. Under Will's leadership, Eleven Madison Park received three Michelin stars, and in 2017, they were named number one on the list of the world's 50 best restaurants. That is one heck of a feat. Now, you don't get that kind of recognition unless your food is incredible, but what's really set the restaurant apart is their level of service and how they take care of customers. Will calls it unreasonable hospitality, and I gotta say, I just love that idea because as leaders taking care of people and making them feel valued and seen, well, it's a key part of how you build trust on your team. Whether you're running a restaurant or running a business, you'll find lots of takeaways here to help you and your team rise to the top. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Will Guder a. I want to know why you say that a hot dog helped Eleven Madison Park become the number one restaurant in the world. Don't you do like five star gourmet everything hot dog? You gotta explain this to me. The hot dog moment really was a breakthrough moment in the evolution of the restaurant, and perhaps more specifically me identifying how we could make our impact on the world of restaurants. We had these aspirations to become the number one restaurant in the world, but when you really take a moment and think about it, that idea is kind of absurd. How do you say one restaurant is the best restaurant in the world? What that award really symbolizes is that a restaurant is having the greatest impact on the world of restaurants at any given time. And when I looked at the restaurants that had accomplished that before us, they were all run by chefs, chefs who were extraordinarily talented, who were unreasonable in pursuit of the product they served relentless and pursued of the sourcing of the restaurant. And so the sourcing of ingredients or the techniques, they were innovating all of this stuff. And I realized that for us to become number one, our impact would come in a very different way. We would make it through choosing to be unreasonable and pursuit of people and relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never change, which is our human desire to feel seen, to feel cared for, to feel welcomed. So unreasonable hospitality became our call to arms. That was the language I used to articulate the impact I wanted to make. Yeah, but the hot dog, you got to tell me about this hot dog, okay? How does a hot dog fit into all this? You know, sometimes you come up with these big ideas, these words that symbol ize everything you want to achieve, and then you look at those words and you realize you have no idea what they mean and you just need to trust in the fact that as you pursue them, they will reveal themselves to you along the way. They really began to reveal themselves to me through the hot dog. And so there was a lunch service. About a year and a half after I wrote those words in a cocktail napkin for the first time, the servers were busier than they were meant to be. I was out in the dining room helping them. I was clearing tables. And I found myself clearing appetizers from a table of four foodies. There were Europeans on vacation to New York City just to go to great restaurants. They'd been to some of the best restaurants in New York. This was their last meal. They were on their way to the airport right after lunch to head back home. And while I was clearing their table, I overheard them talking and they were going on and on about what a great trip it was. Now the amazing meals they had. And now they were out of Lev Madison Park, but then one woman jumped in and said, "Yeah, but you know, we never had. We never just stopped at one of the street carts and got a hot dog." David, you know that moment in a cartoon where the animated light bulb goes off over the character's head. You know they've had a good idea. As calmly as I could, I walked back into the kitchen and ran outside of the hot dog cart in front of the restaurant. Bonna hot dog ran back inside. Then came the hard part, convincing my fancy chef to serve it in our fancy restaurant. But I told him it was important to me. And we cut the hot dog up into four perfect pieces, put one on each plate, added a little swish of ketchup and mustard and a perfect little scoop of sauerkraut and relish to each plate. Then before their final savory course, which at the time was our signature honey lavender glazed muscovy duck that had been dry aged for two weeks. I brought out what we in New York called a dirty water dog to their table. And my gosh, listen, I had been serving food my entire life. Millions of dollars worth, foie gras caviar, wagyu beef, lobster, truffles. I never had seen anyone react like they did to the $2 hot dog. And that moment, that was a coming of age for me where my gosh, I realized that I'd been looking at my business and I'd been looking at my business. And the entirely wrong way. And that hot dog became our new true north one that we dissected and unbacked in order to figure out the roadmap that could allow us to start delivering experiences like that all the time. I just love that. And, you know, there's so much will that I want to talk about on that journey that you had to get to number one. But first, I'd like to go back to the beginning. You said you wanted to be number one, you know, and a lot of times you become what you think you are. And so you had this but tell us how you, you've learned this power of speaking things into existence. I'm very blessed in a number of ways and one of the reasons why I think I'm the most blessed is the relationship I have with my dad. My dad is my hero, my dad, my best friend, my greatest mentor and everything in between. And gosh, if by the end of this, I'm sure I will have quoted him many, many times because he's given me so much of the wisdom that I've carried through my career. When I was a kid, he gave me a paperweight and on it, it said, what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail. And he would always challenge me at varying intervals. He still does to this day over the course of my life and my career to ask that question, answer it honestly. And whatever the answer is, no matter how audacious to try to do that. And he always says that so many people are scared to say their most audacious goals out loud for fear that if they do and don't achieve them, they'll let themselves and those around them down. But if you don't have that confidence, that conviction to dream your biggest dreams out loud, it's very unlikely you'll ever achieve them. That's my dad. But I also witnessed it firsthand through my mom who when I was four, she was diagnosed with brain cancer based on the radiation treatment she received throughout the removal of the virus. Throughout the removal of the tumor, she ultimately was rendered into becoming a quadriplegic. She was meant to live maybe until I was 10 or 11. But my mom was completely determined to see me graduate from college. A decade or more longer than how she was supposed to live. And I turned 10 and everyone got nervous and she kept on living 12 kept on living 14 kept on living. David, she passed away five hours after I graduated from college. Wow. And so like, you know, these things can feel trite. This idea that you can talk things into existence. If you believe in something, if you say it out loud often enough, it can come true. I mean, listen, people say stuff like this, but. A, I can say with confidence watching her that against all odds, it can be true . And I can also say that it certainly will not be true if you don't say it often and if you don't believe enough in yourself. That's really powerful stuff. And, you know, so you do graduate from college. You go to Cornell and you have this hope of one day owning a restaurant in New York City. Early on in your career, what was the failure that you learned the most from? I mean, gosh, I had so many failures along the way to the Madison Park. One of the things that I will constantly be navigating in terms of my personality is my OCD tendencies and my desire to control every single little detail of my environment and ensure that every thing is as per the way. The thing is as perfect as humanly possible, right? I'm very anal retentive. I'm a perfectionist. That should come as no surprise. You don't get a Michelin three star restaurant. If you aren't maniacal about the details and as controlling as possible and ensuring their excellence. And yet intellectually and emotionally, I understand that the greatest leaders are those that lead with trust and empower their team and give them the responsibility that encourages them to be able to help them. And that encourages them to become more responsible. That mission command will always exceed mission control, that setting a goal and then empowering your team to collectively determine the best way to achieve it is right, right? I know that, but there's tension between trust and control. They're not friends. And many times over the course of my career, I fell off that razor sharp line between them in one direction or the other. I think the best example is halfway through our evolution at the restaurant, we debuted this new groundbreaking menu, which was going to be of about and for New York. Every ingredient was going to be sourced from New York. Every course was going to tell a part of the story of the history of New York. All of that. And I became so determined that every guest here, exactly what I wanted them to hear about each course and not a thing more that I ended up writing scripts for the entire team to memorize in order to describe the food. I made them use my words to describe something. And so we debuted the menu as a big deal. The New York Times Food Critic came that same day, dined with us. I was hiding in the barista station watching him because the New York Times Food Critic, you 're never supposed to watch them, but everyone does. It's this big cat mouse game. I think we nailed every single detail. We got it all just perfect on his way out the door. He actually looked at me. We locked eyes that never happens. I took it as a sign that we crushed it. A couple days later, an article came out. It wasn't a formal review. It was a warning shot. And he said at the New York Medicine Park, the words fail the food and went on to talk about how the team at 11 Madison Park so famously human and always capable of bringing their most fully realized selves to the table sounded like actors and the best line. He felt like the entire meal felt like a seder hosted by Presbyterians. We had put all of this work into making this meal perfectly. And then me, the leader of a restaurant that had 160 people working at it through a decision I made, I messed it all up. Messed it up because one, I was doing things that went against the very core values I told everyone on the team I believed in, that I trusted them to be themselves. And that, well, instead of allowing them to be themselves, I made them into actors, rehearsing, or reciting a script that someone else had written on their behalf. That was a hard moment, although it gave way to incredible season. Listen, what I think a lot of leaders do when they make a mistake is that leaders have this expectation that their teams want them to be perfect or think that they are perfect, which could not be further from the truth. Human beings are inherently imperfect and any person that pretends to be perfect has an inability to fully gain the trust of those around them because it's clear that they're not telling the whole story. And too many leaders, when they make a mistake, think that if they just pretend it didn't happen, the people won't notice it did and they'll forget about it. But every time a leader makes a big mistake and doesn't own up to that mistake, the trust that they so desperately need from their team slowly and consistently erodes. And after that happened, I called an all-staff meeting instead in front of 180 people and apologized and said that I messed up, that was my fault. And I was going to make many more mistakes in the future, but I was going to try never to make that mistake again. You've got this OCD quality, this you like to control, like that can easily get in the wood will. Okay. How do you catch yourself when you see that creeping back in? I think the best answer is that I've learned not to rely on just me to catch myself. I talk in the book about a woman who worked for me for a really long time named Laura Wagstaff, who worked for me for 15 or so years. And she was the first person who played this role in my life, but I ended up empowering people either very, very specifically, like in words, I give you permission to do this, or just organically through building a strong enough relationship with them that they felt comfortable to do so. To call me out before I had the wherewithal to recognize it myself. I think to be great, you need to have people around you that aren't scared to tell you when you are going astray. And for me, that could be when I'm getting overly ambitious and setting unrealistic goals. That could be where my desire to trust is being overwhelmed by my desire to control. That could be a whole host of issues. But listen, no matter what you do, if you believe in hospitality, you need to recognize that it's a team sport, right? It doesn't matter how hospitable any one individual it is. It's the hospitality of every person on the team that defines your success. And if you agree that it's a team sport, then you need to play the game like you're a part of the team, not that you're some solo artist there. When you lead a team, it doesn't mean that people on the team don't get to lead you sometimes. Great leaders know when to follow and that only happens if you create the kind of relationships where people can trust them the fact that they can call you out. And that's something that you'll appreciate. We all need those truth tellers out there. I've heard you say, pick the person you want to work for, not the company you want to work for. Why do you give that advice? Listen, I think mentorship is everything. I don't think you're ever too young to be a mentor. I don't think you're ever too old to have a mentor. I think we all need to be and have mentors in order to grow to our fullest potential. And especially, I say that the most often to kids that are just getting into their careers, right? Because you graduate from school and depending on what industry you're in, you either want to work for Apple or you want to work for Nike or whatever the top performing company is. But when you work for a great company, I don't care how good the company is, there are great people and there are less great people. And if you work for a mediocre leader in a great company, you are going to receive that mediocre leadership. I would always rather work for a great leader at a mediocre company than a mediocre leader at a great company. Because that is the person who is going to teach you, inspire you and guide your development. Let's fast forward to 2011 and you buy 11 Madison Park from your mentor who was Danny Meyer. Walk us through that moment. What was it that made you say, "Okay, it's time?" I mean, in part it was circumstantial. I had been approached to open my own restaurant down the street as a part of this big new hotel and it was going to be a very big deal in the city. And this was my moment to become an entrepreneur. Yet at the same time, I had not finished the work I was trying to do at 11 Madison Park. We weren't even close to number one at that point. And I put a lot of work into that restaurant. I wasn't ready to let it go. And so I approached Danny and said, "Hey, I'd love to open my own restaurant over there and continue working with you here." I believed that I could do both. And he said, "No." Which I get now. He explained it then that being partners in one restaurant and competitors in another just down the street would open us up to more attention than our relationship needed to bear. And I said, "Well, listen, I don't want to leave this restaurant, but I'm ready to be an entrepreneur. And so if that's the case, I love you, but I'm going to leave and I'm going to go do that." And he said, "How about you buy the restaurant instead?" Because he believed in the spirit of what we were trying to do and understood that the restaurant accomplishing its goals was more important than if he owned it when it did. Now, why I said yes when he offered me the chance to do that is a totally different story because David, I had no idea what I was doing. I was an employee up until that point. I didn't know anything about securing debt or raising money or setting up human resources departments or financial departments looking into accounting and all that everything was new to me. But I said yes and trusted in the fact that I'd figure it out along the way. I think that's something that so many people early in their careers don't do. They think about all that they need to know and become so overwhelmed by it that they never just give it a shot. I talk about this all the time that nobody knows what they're doing until they start doing it. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, you just need to believe in the fact that you're going to make a ton of mistakes. And the path that Danny would always say, the path to success is paved with mistakes well handled. And that you're going to work your ass off and figure it out along the way. When did you first believe you had it in you to become the number one restaurant in the world? I mean, I think that's something about youthful exuberance. We debuted on the list of the 50 best restaurants in the world in last place at number 50. And the anger I felt coming in last place fueled my conviction to come in first . And that night I decided that we would become number one and I believed it with every ounce of my being. I was young, much younger than I am now when we began that process. I mean, this was 14 years ago. But it goes right back to what we started this conversation around. You need to believe in the fact that you can talk things into existence. And honestly, maybe the first time I said it, I didn't totally believe it, but the 20th time I said it, I started believing it and the 100th time I said it, I completely believed it. What was it that you decided in your journey to being number one? What was it that you decided you were going to be famous for that no one else could do? Well, that's exactly it. Unreasonable hospitality. I believe a lot in superpowers. I think it's important to look at yourself and have the vulnerability to say out loud what you're great at. I think a lot of people think that when you say out loud to those around you what your superpowers are, that it's a display of cockiness. I actually believe it's a display of humility because the moment you say to a group, "I'm really good at this. You're inviting everyone around you to say, "Wait a minute, really? Are you?" When I looked at the restaurants that had become number one before us, they were all run by chefs. I was the dining room guy. I was the one that derived significant and genuine pleasure out of bestowing graciousness upon others. If they made their mark through the product, I knew that I could make my mark through how I made people feel. That was my unique skill. And the path to number one was just being as unreasonable in pursuit of that as all of them were in pursuit of the food. Tell us about your dream-weaver role. So after the hot dog story, after that happened, athletes always go to the tapes and they've had a bad game to see what they did wrong. They don't often enough go to the tapes and they've had a good game to see what they did right to make sure they keep on doing that thing. I went to the tapes and there were three things that went into that hot dog moment happening. I needed to be present to be fully focused on that table such that I could pick up on that cue. That's one. Number two, if you want to be the best, you better take what you're doing seriously, but also you need to stop taking yourself so seriously. I think far too many people, especially in customer service, let's self-enpost standards get in the way of them giving the people around them the things that will bring them the most joy. And three, it was centered on this idea that hospitality is about making people feel seen and the best way to do that is not to treat them like commodities but unique individuals that the most significant gestures are bespoke to the person receiving those gestures. I would say that unreasonable hospitality, one size fits one. So we had this hot dog as our new true north, being present, don't take yourself too seriously, one size fits one, that was the road map. And then it was the team. I gave them permission and resources to go out into the dining room and come up with gestures of their own. Now, that said, I'm going to land the plane on this answer momentarily. Too many leaders make the mistake of coming up with great ideas, giving their team permission to do something, but not following up those ideas or those permissions with the resources that make them actionable, that make them easy enough for their team to deploy. And we didn't have someone just sitting around in the restaurant waiting to go run errands for people. And so we added the position, the dream waiver, whose only role was to be there every night during dinner service to help everyone else on the team bring their ideas to life. And the creative agency of the people in the dining room matched with the capacity of the dream waiver created the kind of gestures that came to be known as legends within our industry. Tell us about your one inch rule. The one inch rule means that if you're going to do something, anything, follow it through till the final inch that you're not done with anything until you're completely done with that thing. It's called a one inch rule in the restaurant, because we pick a lot of stuff up and we put a lot of stuff down and you can agonize over a plate of food forever. But if the person delivering it to the table loses focus when that plate is one inch away from the table and they drop it a little too hard, that perfectly placed garnish can stumble off and will undo hours and hours and hours of effort to make it perfect. But it's also a philosophical ideal that whatever you do, you need to be fully focused on that thing until you're completely done with it and before you choose to move on to the next thing. I think there's this flawed belief system out there that multitasking is the most efficient approach to take. In fact, I believe focusing on one thing at a time is much more efficient, not only in our ability to emotionally connect with others, but also to get our details as a result. Is it possible to get your details as excellent as humanly possible? You know, you're kind of like a coach in the sense of, you know, coach before the game. It has this, you know, pregame motivational speech and you actually set up pre meal meetings with your team and you've really viewed those pre meal meetings as a real game changer. Walk me through what you do in one of those meetings and the intent behind it. And those of you who haven't worked in restaurants is the 30 minute meeting that we have most restaurants do it right before we unlock the doors and start serving people dinner. Most restaurants do it. Unfortunately, a lot of them waste it. They waste it by talking about things that could be so clearly communicated via an email and new menu item, a new one by the glass, whatever. I believe that meeting, that daily huddle should be where you talk about the why and the how just as much, if not more than the what. It's an opportunity for a leader to share moments of inspiration, things that they've seen out in the world that they've been touched by that they want to share with the people that work for them and also an opportunity for that same leader to invite the people on their team to do the same. I think a pre meal a daily huddle is wasted if a leader only talks about things that will make their team better at their jobs. That's an opportunity to talk to your team about things that will make them better as people in life beyond just the work. Give me a story that you used to inspire your team to get going. I mean, it could be anything, man. If I were doing a pre meal, so I'll tell you one right now, I've started a newsletter called "Premill" because I miss "Premill". Now, every two weeks I send out a virtual pre meal through a newsletter and I was just working on one a moment ago. I was there with my kid and when you're a parent and you're shopping with your kid, it can be a very emotionally traumatic experience, right? You have your list to get through and your kid just wants every single dessert on the shelves and they don't want to be there. So when a trader jows actually had the capacity to look through the lens of single parents at the grocery store with their kids for long enough to address that moment with graciousness and hospitality. And at every trader jows, there's a couple stuffed animals hidden in the store, not within arm's rank, but they're around the store. And if a kid finds one of those stuffed animals, when they get to the cashier, they tell the cashier and the cashier gives them a sweet treat out of this treasure chest is what they call it. They did some simple pattern recognition at Trader Joe's. They identified that this was a recurring moment, a nagging problem for some of their customers and they treated it. They addressed it with creativity, playfulness, intention, ingenuity and made the experience for the parents and the kids so much better for it to the point that they had to do. And so when they get to the grocery store, they're going to get to the grocery store and they're going to get to the grocery store. And they're going to get to the grocery store and they're going to get to the grocery store. And they're going to get to the grocery store and they're going to get to the grocery store. And they're going to get to the grocery store and they're going to get to the grocery store. And they're going to get to the grocery store and they're going to get to the grocery store. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Will Gadera in just a moment. All this talk about service has me thinking about Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford. In his words, the purpose of life is to serve. And when you live that way, it changes everything about how you lead. And I would really focus on serving. I mean, it's the ultimate in living is to serve. And you can serve everywhere in your life. And once you decide you want to serve, then you start thinking about yourself on how you do that too. And you also ask for advice on how you can serve. So back to your lifelong learning and continuous improvement. You start thinking about this all the time. You start gathering feedback in a positive way. You start asking people, "What can I do?" "Whatever your job is, what can I do to help more? Be more effective?" But the thing that allows you to do that is if you have decided that the purpose of your life is to serve. And then when you move to the greater good, wow. I mean, this is all about human dignity, human beings, humanity. So great question. And it would be service. And then everything that would go into that, including your lifelong continuous improvement to serve at the highest level. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Alan, episode 146, here on How Leaders Lead. You've got to get your team excited about going to work when you do these premium meetings. How do you as a leader get yourself up so that you can go into that meeting and have the right attitude that you're going to need to have? I mean, I'm inherently passionate about the work. So I never need to get myself fired up about the work. I just need to make sure that my gas tank is full. If my gas tank is full, I will be ready to do the work. And we talk about this in hospitality all the time, right? Like if you are in the business of serving others, think of it like a metaph orical water pitcher. You can't constantly pour water out of your pitcher into other people's glasses . If you don't figure out how to refill your pitcher, you're going to run out of water very quickly. And so from different people find their oxygen or their gas or their water in different ways. For me, I like a little time alone at home ordering takeout Chinese food and binge watching terrible television. If I can give myself that every once in a while, that's enough to keep me in the game. I think it's something that a lot of people don't do well. Young leaders, they think that success is determined only by their output. And they start to burn out pretty quickly because they don't remember that they need to feed themselves if they want to turn around and feed others. You know, why do you make such a big deal about continual teaching and learning with your team? Because this seems to be a major, major driver in how you think about working with your teammates. You know, I'd always say that we're not out there saving lives, but that doesn 't mean that our work doesn't matter. I believe that what we do for a living really does matter. We can impact people in the most beautiful ways. We can help them celebrate. We can give them the grace to forget. We can inspire kindness in the world by being really kind to everyone that comes through our doors. But I think that if you want to be great, you need to make sure that the extent to which you're impacting the people on your team is as if not more significant than the ways in which you're impacting your customers. And so I've always believed that if you come to work for me, the only way that I can keep the value proposition intact is if I ensure that you are leaving a better person than you came, more educated, more mature, more professional, all of that. And so I think education does everything. You said appropriately that I've always focused on teaching and learning because what I don't mean when I say that is that it's one or two people at the top of the hierarchy's role to teach everyone everything. I think it's their role to create a culture of teaching and learning where people are expected to learn first, but then find something they're passionate about and turn around and teach it to everyone else. Knowledge is like a bank account. If only a couple people are making deposits and everyone's making withdrawals, you're going to run out of money real fast. But if you have an entire company of people learning and teaching one another constantly, the extent to which you grow together is limitless. You know, feedback is also a great opportunity to invest in your people. Let's say I'm working for you and I don't meet your high standards. You know, how would you give me the gift of feedback so that I would not only hear what you had to say, I want to do something about it? I have rules for feedback. One, give it consistently. If something's important to you, every time someone falls short of that expectation, it needs to be addressed. You can't be looked at as the person that only gives constructive criticism when you're in a bad mood because then people misinterpret what you're actually trying to convey. Two, criticize the behavior, not the person. If you come in with a wrinkled shirt and when I tell you to go back into the locker room and iron your shirt, I call you a jerk along the way. Well, I've just completely gone against everything I believe in, right? Because you're a great guy. You just need to fix the behavior. And if I don't think you're a good person anymore, you shouldn't be on the team . Three, criticizing private, not in public. Feedback, like any form of communication, only fully lands when people's guards are down and they're open to receiving it. The moment you criticize someone publicly, a wall of shame goes up and they're never going to fully receive the message you're trying to deliver. How do you do that in a hustle-bustle environment of a restaurant where things are happening and you see this? I mean, how do you have that private moment? Well, I think you can address things succinctly in one moment and then more at length at the end of the night. The more feedback you give, the more normalized it becomes. I think it's only those that don't give a lot of feedback who find themselves in a situation where it's such a big deal when you give feedback that it needs to become this whole lengthy conversation. If I'm constantly praising you and criticizing you, each one of those doses of feedback could be as short as a three-second conversation. I can just pull you aside and whisper into your ear, "Hey, you did that wrong. Hey, great job. You did that right." The more you do it, the less of a thing it has to be when you do it. You seem like a pretty chilled out guy and I'm curious, have you ever lost it when you're trying to get somebody's attention? 100%. Yes. And I've lost it with and without intention. When I say without intention, there's times when I've started yelling about something where I probably inadvertently did start to criticize the bahorson instead of the behavior. In those cases, I always try to come in the next day and apologize, not for the message I was trying to deliver, but the way in which I delivered it. That said, there's times when I've yelled on purpose and I believe, "Well, you know what? You said lost it. So I'm going to be really specific with my answer here. I think that you can raise your voice without losing control of your emotions. And sometimes I think that's necessary. Everyone's read this book, "The Love Languages," right? The five love languages , the too many people are showing love in the way they want to receive it, not in the way that the person needs to or wants to receive it. I've always talked about tough love languages as another way in which we need to think about feedback. You might need a gentle hand and that's the way that you receive it and someone else, if I gave them that same loving, contemplative dose of feedback, it would land on deaf ears. You need to get to know your people well enough to know how they are going to really hear something and then deliver it to them in that exact way. You know, you celebrate and catch people when they're doing the right things. What does recognition look like on a Will Gudera team? Well, if criticism should never be in public and always in private, I believe that recognition and praise should be or can be in public and more often than not should be. I think praise can be addictive because we love hearing we've done something well, but it becomes even more addictive when we feel just the celebration and support of the people around us once we receive it. Not to mention the fact that it's encouraging to others in the sense that they want to work harder in order to one day receive that public praise. But I also like to find every opportunity I can when receiving external validation or affirmation to point the spotlight on the people or the person or people that were involved in creating that success. I think that we should leverage as much affirmation for the people who work with us as humanly possible. When I was not the boss, I would find every opportunity I could to get Danny Meyer to tell someone on my team that they did a great job. I think a lot of bosses feel a sense of insecurity that if the people who work for them receive praise from someone above them in the hierarchy, that it's going to disempower them in some way, shape, or form. But if you really want to be a great leader, finding as many ways as humanly possible for the people who work for you to receive praise and affirmation will only make you better. Do you have a personal recognition award? Oh yeah, for sure. My company then, before I sold it, was called Make It Nice. And so we had a Made Nice award. Every single month someone in the kitchen, someone in the dining room would receive that. It was basically like an employee of the month, except repackaged and rebranded so that it didn't feel cheesy and to the contrary, it felt cool. And by the way, there's something there, right? Like, we see these things, employee of the month, and they feel so dumb because they've been treated with such, I don't know, malaise over the years that we don't think they're good ideas. Finding regular rhythms of praise is always a good thing for an organization. So you have this goal of becoming the number one restaurant in the world. You say it out loud every day. You believe it every day. You wake up going to work every day, say we're going to make it happen. Describe the moment when it actually happened. It was one of the best moments of my life. You know, I think when you set impossible goals and you say it over and over and over again, you believe it's going to come true, but I don't know that you're ever fully prepared for how good it will feel when it one day does. I stood up, gave my wife a long kiss in the mouth. I'm sure she'd love that. And gave a speech kind of articulating the pride I felt. And I think that's the one thing that's so great about being a leader of a big team. It's that you can feel pride in the least prideful way. It's not an illustration of self celebration. You're feeling pride of the work that an entire group of people did together. You know, along with all you did at 11 Madison Park, you're also the host of the Welcome Conference. Tell us about it. So the Welcome Conference, I started a long time ago now. And I started it because I was finding myself on the stages of these chef conferences all over the world. These conferences where a bunch of chefs would come together and share ideas and inspire one another and connect to form community. And in doing so with these like-minded professionals from across the globe spending time together, the craft of cooking evolved. And yet, each one of them, I was the only dining room person. But here's the deal. I believe that hospitality is a craft. I believe it's a muscle that can be strengthened, but no craft evolves at the speed it can if you don't have a community of passionate people together collectively pushing it forward. And so I started the Welcome Conference to do just that, to get together people who are passionate about hospitality so that we could evolve the craft. And it started in this little basement auditorium like 12 years ago. And now it 's an annual event at Lincoln Center that brings together some of the brightest minds and hospitality inside and outside of the restaurant business. You've had some phenomenal guests, Seth Meyers, Alan Malley, Simon Sennake. And I understand that your dad actually spoke at one of the conferences one year. Tell us about the gift you gave him as a thank you. You've done a deep dive. My dad did a talk. His talk was called "Inversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste." We don't have the budget to pay some of these people anywhere close to what they should make with the amount of wisdom they're delivering to the people in the auditorium. And so instead, we do this gifting ceremony the night before the conference for all the speakers. And we spend months and months and months on these gifts. This is the gift I got for my dad. My dad's a big Patriots fan. Big Patriots fan. And I forget what year this was, but this is before I was really into football. And I called him halfway through the Super Bowl. I got home for dinner, turned it on, and the Patriots were getting their butts kicked. And I called him and I was like, "Dad, what's going on with your team? They're getting their butts kicked." And he's like, "Don't call me during the Super Bowl." And I was like, "It's halftime." He's like, "Well, shut up!" And he hangs up at me. First time in my life, my dad has told me to shut up. Patriots led by Tom Brady have one of the biggest best comebacks in Super Bowl history. Turn around and win that game. I call my dad back afterwards. And he screens my call. He doesn't want to hear my voice since I gave him a hard time at halftime. And instead, he texts me and he goes, "That's how it's done." So I managed to somehow pull this off where I got a football from that game signed by Tom Brady to my dad that said, "Frank, that's how it's done, Tom Brady." I love it. What's your dad thinking that? A ball to my dad from Tom Brady signed with the words my dad said about Tom Brady, which I thought was really fun. I love it, obviously. I mean, I regained his love with that gift. I should say that. That's funny. You know, this has been so much fun. I want to have some more with a lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? For sure. What's one word others would use to best describe you? Oh, I'm loyal. What would you say is the one word that best describes you? Playful? Who would play you in a movie? Adam Sandler. What's your favorite movie about a restaurant or a chef? Oh, I don't like any movies about restaurants or chefs, but the TV show The Bear, I think, is the best on screen depiction of my world, and I think it's beautifully done. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Oh, some, probably the drummer from Dave Matthews Band in the late 90s. I played the drums and I would have loved to have played the drums in a big band in their heyday. What's your biggest pet peeve? My biggest pet peeve is people who are impolite. My biggest pet peeve, like within that right now, is people who don't respond to an email. Not like a random email that you sent without invitation, but if you and I have a conversation and we say we're going to follow up and I send you an email and then you just never respond, I feel like that is becoming increasingly normalized in society where people aren't acting with the level of civility that we used to be accustomed to, and I think it's deplorable. Let's pretend you're celebrating one of your milestone birthdays. You know, where would you go for dinner and what are you ordering? I am going to a restaurant called Rayo's in East Harlem in New York. Love it. I'm getting meatballs and I'm bringing a bottle of really old, beautiful burr olo. And you're going to sing my girl after you've had your dessert at the bar. There you go. There you go. There you go. That is a good one. What's one of your daily rituals, something you never miss? I mean, I have two. I hate working out. I hate working out. And yet I know that I need to, and a friend of mine a long time ago gave me this advice because he really believes in push-ups and in a multitude of ways he goes, just promise me that you'll never go a day for the rest of your life without doing one push-up. And I was like, I can promise you that. And the thing about that is, is the moment you're down to the ground doing one push-up, it's very rare that you don't do a bunch more. And so very rarely, if ever, does a day go by that I don't do at least one push -up. That's great. You know, there's a great book. I think it's Tiny Habits. It's all about that. If you do that one push-up, you'll end up doing 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Oh, right now I have a two and a half year old, so you'd probably hear the Mo ana soundtrack. What's something about you that few people would know? I am a very extroverted person in the world, but very few people would know that, yeah, sometimes I just need space and time alone. And that's actually the thing that re-energizes me. Well, we're out of the lightning round now. That was a very good job. I just got a few more questions and we'll wrap this up. So, Will, I was intrigued. You build this business. You become number one in the world. Yet you sold your share of 11 Madison Park to your co-owner. Why did you get out? I mean, simply put, the relationship wasn't the same anymore. I think as we grew, we had different priorities. My dad always says, ask yourself what right looks like and do that. Our definitions of what right looked like were no longer the same. And I've always just operated on this belief system that you need to love everything about what you do. Otherwise, you need to start doing something else. And when it was no longer the same with my partner, I didn't love it as much. And also, I just believe in the idea of second chapters. I was in a place where I could have just continued running that company and opening more restaurants for the rest of my life and that would have singularly defined my career. And so, I saw this opportunity to move on and pursue my second chapter and also just recognize that the first chapter was no longer going to be what it had been. How long as a leader, Will, should you work at making it right before you move on to that next chapter? Well, I think you should work as long as humanly possible, as long as it feels like there's a chance for success. But I also think that you can't conflate persistence with pushing endlessly for a result that will never come about. I actually think that happens at the expense of those that work for you. You know, you've been on this incredible ride the past couple of years and you have a best-selling book, unreasonable hospitality. I've written a few books myself and when they're over, you know, you kind of look back and you go, "I wish I would have said this or wish I would have told that story." What's a favorite story or leadership lesson that you wish you would have put in that book? Or did you get it all down? Well, I believe in practices, right? I talk about the push-up practice. One of the practices I developed when I started writing the book was in my phone, I had a notes app, and every single time something would occur to me, I'd put it into that notes app, and then when I'd sit down to write, I'd look at what I'd put in there since the last time I wrote to see what still felt like a good idea with, you know, with a bit of space. And most of the things I put down ended up in the book. When I was done and I submitted the book, I didn't stop that practice. It would have been foolish, too, almost irresponsible, because once you get a good practice going, you should keep it going for as long as humanly possible. So I have probably half a book's worth in this phone just waiting to be written . At the end of my audiobook, I added a couple there after the credits. And one of the ones I talked about there was this whole idea of when you are a leader, making sure that you take a hard look at yourself and ask whether you are the player or whether you are the coach. Because I've seen far too many leaders struggle with success because they can't stop being a player and start to fully become the coach, where they are still putting themselves on the field and in doing so, resulting with an inability to fully lead the team. And I came across this because I was giving advice to a guy who runs a restaurant and none of my words were landing, but he was a big baseball fan and I realized if I used a baseball metaphor, it would actually finally hit home. And because, listen, here's the reality. A baseball team can win the World Series without their star pitcher, but they'll never win the World Series without their coach. And eventually, you need to decide what role you are in and fully embrace that role. You know, you've recently launched a new hospitality group called Thank You. What's the big problem you're trying to solve with that company? So what we do is, and I mean, this is the entire thesis of the book. The book is effectively about two things, about being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships and setting forth the world that I don't care what business you're in, you can make the choice to be in the hospitality industry simply by being as unreasonable about how you make people feel as you are whatever product you're selling. The agency is there to help people outside of restaurants and hotels make that choice to be an on-call think tank, working partner, to help them through whether it's experience, design, or gathering and gifting strategies, whatever it is, to help people be more consistent and disciplined in making investments into their relationship capital accounts. The caveat is that we only work with companies from whom I believe I can learn something as well. And so I think there's a lot of appetite and interest out there because I just believe we're in a time right now, David, we're like, whether it's the digital transformation of phones and AI or the hangover following COVID with hybrid and remote work and our collective remembering of our need for connection. All of these things, hospitality is the secret ingredient and the answer and I think people are really starting to understand that. The last question for you, Will, imagine you're having coffee with someone who wants to become a better leader. What's the one thing you tell them that they just got to do? Invest the time to get to know the people that work for you. You can read a bunch of books. You can have a bunch of strategies and a lot of those strategies are going to be instrumental in helping you be a more effective leader. But at the end of the day, you can't lead a group that isn't willing to follow you and one of the best ways to get people to follow you is if they trust you and it is so much easier for people to trust you if they know you and feel known by you. And that only happens if you invest the time to pursue your relationships with them. That's some great advice there and I think you're right on the money. And Will, I want to thank you for taking so much time out to have this conversation with me. This was an athletic podcast. The whole thing was rapid fire. I've been doing it. I'm like, I need to go. I had to get up for the game. I had a little pregame talk. And I said, how do I deal with this guy who believes in unreasonable hospitality? I got to have unreasonable line of questions. So anyway, you're very fun and I love your passion for your mission. And I think the idea of focusing on your people first and really being unreasonable in terms of how you think about them is such an enlightening idea. And it takes you way beyond what your product is. So thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. Hey, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate you. You know, in the world of fine dining, there's always going to be the talk of foie gua and lobster and caviar, but the game changer for will was nothing more than a dirty water hot dog. That's what sparked his idea of unreasonable hospitality. It became the foundation of 11 Madison Park's incredible success and the foundation for the book that he wrote about it. But as Will pointed out, he would have never had that breakthrough if he hadn't had his antenna up that day listening to those diners who said they wanted to try a New York hot dog. If you're a leader, you've got to constantly think about how you can make the people around you feel seen. Like you hear them, you understand them, and you're willing to go the extra mile to show how much they matter to you. This week, keep your antenna up. Look for an opportunity to do something unreasonably caring for either a team member or a customer. I think you'll be surprised how many chances you have to create the kind of memorable moments that really wow people and show them that you really, really care. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders make people feel seen. Coming up next on How leaders lead is Alan Shaw, the CEO of Norfolk Southern. Eric Guentz breeds complacency. Humility allows you to learn, allows you to innovate. It allows you to say, I don't have the answers. I've got the resources. You help me figure out, please, how we can make this better, how we can make it right. So be sure to come back again next week to hear more. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I may get a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]