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Uncensored CMO
The guide to unreasonable marketing from the creator of the world’s #1 restaurant - Will Guidara
01:12:36
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- [00:06]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored cmo. Now, one book I'm completely obsessed about at the moment is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Godara. He transformed the 50th restaurant in the world to become the number one, and he did it through unreasonable Hospitality. Now, the reason I think this is so important is that every single brand on the planet is. Can benefit from thinking as much about their service and their customer experience as they do about the product itself. And I think this is a source of enormous competitive advantage. This is absolutely incredible conversation, and I know you're going to get a hell of a lot out of it. Here it is. Will Godara, welcome to Uncensored cmo. It's great to have you.
- [00:47]
B
I'm so happy to be on this.
- [00:48]
A
I'm delighted and I have to say congratulations on the success of the book. I'm becoming a little bit obsessed with it and quoting it. Thank you. I'm really happy to meet the guy behind the book and hear more about it.
- [00:59]
B
Pleasure, man. And thank you for saying that. Gosh, it's so interesting. For me, it's my first book. Book after having been in restaurants for years. And while there's so many similarities between writing a book and creating a restaurant, the differences are also striking a that you finish writing a book, you put it out into the world, and there's no changing it. Right. In a restaurant, you can open it, you see what people connect to and what they don't connect to. And the second week of service, you can make adjustments. Books are not that way. Second, with a restaurant, I immediately can connect to whether or not someone is enjoying the thing that I've created. With a book, you release it and then you just sit back and wait. And so this many years later that new people are discovering it and connecting with the ideas in it, it's unbelievably gratifying.
- [01:49]
A
I can well imagine it in a weird sense. It's a bit like that with podcasting because we'll record this conversation and I won't know what people are going to be thinking. Do they like it? They not like. And then eventually you start getting messages back and then the reviews appear. And that's be nice to be in.
- [02:04]
B
Like the backseat of someone's car as they're listening to, are they into this? Am I doing good job? Because I think people crave affirmation or validation, and I don't think that ever changes.
- [02:13]
A
Well, particularly in the career you've had in the hospitality industry where you, you, your business depends on the review you get. Actually, it reminds me one of the, one of the joyous bits of your book actually was reading the review you got in the New York Times when you got the four star. And it's probably the grumpiest, most sort of critical four star review I've ever read. But what I thought was amazing about it was that the guy was clearly looking to kind of nitpick and try and find something wrong. And then at the end it's almost like he gave up and looked around him and went, I see a lot of happy people having a wonderful time and he sort of succumbs. I think was almost the phrase.
- [02:53]
B
Yeah, exactly.
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A
But the phrase he used that she was a magnitude of enchantment, which I just thought was brilliant.
- [02:59]
B
It was such a funny review. I remember reading that. And that was our second four star review. So we were being re reviewed. Right. You could only lose it at that point. And I saw the four stars. When you earn that the first time, it's profound joy. When you keep it, it's profound relief. It's a difference. And I saw it, relieved, read the review and I was like, wait, did we actually get. I'm confused whether we got it, but I think it, the fact that we did reinforces an idea. I think he went in there not looking to love it because the food we were making at that point was not what he believed good food should be. Or maybe the service was a bit too over the top for him, given his taste. But when you focus on hospitality, when you just focus on bringing people joy, that is so much less subjective. Joy is objective. If you look around a room and you just see people awash in happiness with smiles bleeding off their faces, it's almost irresponsible to ignore that. And I think that's what won us that day and so many others.
- [04:12]
A
Yeah, I really believe that. And it's one of those things that I think people don't understand about life and marketing in general is the importance of how you make someone feel versus what they think. Most marketers spend all their time going, did you understand our five benefits? This new product, you know, did you remember our strap line? You know, but actually the better question to ask is how did this product make you feel?
- [04:35]
B
Yeah.
- [04:36]
A
And you know, as you know from Daniel Kahneman. Right. You know, thinking fast, thinking slow. How we feel predicts how we then go and behave.
- [04:42]
B
100 think about it. I mean you even said like in my industry, the reviews were so important and they made or broke a business. One of the central ideas of my book is that it doesn't matter what you do for a living, you can make the choice to be in the hospitality industry. I think the reviews, in a way, they matter to everybody's business because pausing for long enough to acknowledge the impact of what you're putting out into the world and how it is making people feel is a pretty important metric to your ability to succeed. I believe marketers are in the hospitality industry simply by looking at what they do through a slightly different lens. I think that becomes clear. And I believe those who do look at it through those lens have the greatest competitive advantage.
- [05:37]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's the overriding thought, actually, I had and reason I'm so excited about being able to have this conversation with you is that marketers generally spend so much time thinking about what they want to tell the customer.
- [05:48]
B
Yes.
- [05:48]
A
And the products, benefits and features. They want to communicate, and they don't spend much time thinking about how is it going to be received and does the customer actually even want that or not. And I, you know, so I think if I had one wish for, you know, for marketers, it's to think like you're in the hospitality business in terms of how you design your products, how you design your communication, how you listen to your customers, how you respond to feedback, the experience they receive.
- [06:12]
B
Yeah.
- [06:12]
A
Be transformational.
- [06:13]
B
There's a quote by Maya Angelou. People will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And, I mean, it's so much easier to have a perspective on someone else's work because you're not mired in the details of what ordinarily goes into it. But I can think back on every advertisement to use that medium that I remember. I don't remember a single part of the information they were communicating to me. I just remember what it was about it that made me feel a certain way, what about it made me feel seen or gave me a sense of belonging to the idea of the product. I think the extent to which more people can slow down for long enough to actually think about that, that will lead to them collectively speeding up.
- [07:04]
A
Yeah. I can tell you my. My favorite super bowl ad, if I give a Super bowl example, is quite a few years ago now, Microsoft did this ad where they're talking about a new game controller they were launching. But what they did is they had this. This couple and their disabled son. And the disabled son, you know, couldn't do physically, was quite impaired. But when the disabled son used the game controller, he was able to suddenly enter a world that he was denied up to that point. And there's a bit in it where this dad who looks like a kind of veteran tough guy, you know, kind of shaved head, pretty, you know, pretty tough looking dude, he sits there and you can see him about to break down in tears, and he goes, my son's not disabled when he's playing. Oh, you know what I mean? And like, I'm like, oh, man, that was like chills down my spine.
- [07:50]
B
Yeah.
- [07:50]
A
And I've never forgotten that ad. It's exactly the point you make is like, that made me feel something deep and profound.
- [07:57]
B
And you don't remember whatever the processing.
- [07:59]
A
Speed was on the, like, which game controller, who knows? But I knew it was Microsoft and I knew they made me feel something deep in that moment. I love that unreasonable hospitality. There's a juxtaposition even in the name you came up with. You know, I know our joint friend Rory Sutherland has, you know, got this great concept of the opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea. And I often say to him, I think sometimes the opposite, a good idea can be a better idea.
- [08:26]
B
Yeah.
- [08:26]
A
Sometimes, you know, it. It becomes surprising in the way that you do it. Where did the idea of unreasonable hospitality come from?
- [08:35]
B
Yeah, so the name was honestly a push with the publisher. They did not like it in the beginning for two reasons. One, they thought the idea that the word unreasonable inherently brought about negative ideas. And then that the word hospitality would limit its reach just to people in restaurants and hotels. I actually believe both to be untrue, because first of all, I think the word unreasonable is a beautiful word when directed at beautiful things. I mean, listen, no one who has been remarkably successful at anything was not unreasonable. Right. You need to be unreasonable to see a world that does not yet exist. And to take that relentlessness, that willingness to do whatever it takes to bring an idea to life and to point it at something as beautiful as hospitality, I think that can become transformational. Now, the word itself, it came out of an experience in my life in 2010, I believe, where my restaurant, Eleven Madison park, had finally been added to the list of the world's 50 best restaurants. And that was a big moment for us. Right. We'd been working at it in New York for a while, and we'd gotten four stars from the New York Times and we'd gotten three Michelin stars. But this was like the white whale. This was the last thing that we were trying to achieve. And honestly, the presence of that list was powerful. In our world, because with it, every restaurant on the planet, except for one, had something to strive to achieve. And while I don't believe that anyone does anything of consequence just in pursuit of accolades, they're healthy motivations, right? Not only for you as an individual, but for you as a leader trying to motivate a team of people around you. And so we got this letter. You've been added to the list. I was fired up, went to the awards. The awards themselves, they're a lot like the Oscars, Okay? You're in your fanciest tuxedo, you're in a larger than life auditorium surrounded by your heroes. But they're different from the Oscars in one important way. At the Oscars, if you're nominated for an award, by the time they get to your name, you're desperate that they call it right here. If you're in that room, you already know you're one of the 50 best. You just don't know where on the list you fall until you get there. They start at 50, they count down to one. Here you are desperate that they do not call your name for as long as humanly possible. And I remember trying to guess where in the list we'd fall based on where we were seated, relative to where the people who had done very well the year before were seated. And I think, I guess number 35. Now, listen, I'm sure there was some amount of preamble, the normal welcomes, the thank you for comings from the big debonair British MC before he started the countdown, but I don't remember any of that. All I remember was him kicking things off by saying, ladies and gentlemen, let's get it started. At number 50, a new restaurant, 11 Madison Park. And it was just mortifying. Yes, we were one of the 50 best restaurants, but in that room, we had come in last place. And that night, we went through the stages of grief, ultimately landing on acceptance. Because here's the reality. It's absurd to say that one restaurant is the best in the world. When you earn the top spot on that list, what it really means is you're the restaurant having the greatest impact on the world of restaurants at that moment in time. We'd been at the restaurant for a while. Our food was now unbelievable. The service was about as close to technically perfect as possible. The dining room, it was remarkable. The product itself was amazing. And it was for those reasons we were on that list. But when we paused for long enough to think about it, it became quite clear we had not done anything Impactful. Whenever I've set out to achieve an audacious goal, I always start by looking at the people who've accomplished it before me, learning what I can from them, taking those lessons, making them my own, and then having a go at it myself. So that night, I started thinking about the restaurants that had been number one. Now they were all run by chefs. I'm not a chef. I'm a dining room guy. I've been doing this since I was a kid. But I always wanted to be the person in the room making other people happy. But each of these chefs, they were unreasonable in pursuit of the food they were serving their product and relentless in pursuit of innovation. What new ingredients could they cook with? What new techniques could they develop? And each of them, in their own way, has influenced how restaurants around the world approach cooking. That night, on a cocktail napkin, I wrote, we will be number one in the world. There's a great Jay Z quote. You can talk things into existence if you're willing to dream really, really big, but be patient in your pursuit. We are all capable of so much more than we believe we are. But an idea of that magnitude, absent a strategy, well, it's nothing more than a pipe dream. I needed to identify our impact, and so I thought about those shifts. If they were unreasonable in pursuit of product and relentless in pursuit of change, we were going to be unreasonable in pursuit of people and relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never change, which is just as we've been talking about our human desire to feel. To feel a sense of belonging, to feel welcome. And so underneath, we will be number one in the world. I wrote those two words, unreasonable hospitality, and that became our call to arms and the very thing that ended up bringing us to the top.
- [14:13]
A
Incredible. I remember you mentioned in the book, when you get to number one, and I think you say you're the first dining room guy. I love that phrase. That's like downplaying your role. The dining room guy. The first dining room guy to get on the stage.
- [14:28]
B
But, I mean, I think that, like, restaurateur. It's a beautiful word often misspelled. At my core, that's what I am. I am the guy in the dining room looking to make people happy.
- [14:37]
A
Yeah.
- [14:37]
B
And if that is the way that I do my job, if that's how I carry myself, that is how I will have the greatest impact. And so it's not. I don't use those words in an expression of false humility. I do it just because I think words matter. And if we can correctly identify a position, we will be that much more effective and excelling within that role.
- [15:00]
A
Yeah, it's funny, in the world I sort of move in with, you know, spend a lot of time with advertising, you know, in advertising, advertising agencies, it's a similar thing because in if you go to Cannes line, I know you were Cannes lion last year, weren't you? Like, you know, the creative is probably the thing that everyone worships at. And you understand why.
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B
Right.
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A
It's equivalent to the chef. No one is putting on an awards for the best account team.
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B
Yes.
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A
And actually having spent most of my career as a client, the ability to understand, as a client, for the agency to really understand what it is you want to do, what's the business problem you're trying to solve, and how in this case, advertising might solve it is critical. But no one ever made an award for best account team, by the way.
- [15:42]
B
They should. I mean, it's been something that I've really focused on trying to do, which is to celebrate the people in the dining room. Because at the end of the day, the food, the service, the design, the wine, they're merely ingredients in the recipe of human connection. That's the goal, by the way. That's, in my view, should be everybody's goal. And the dining room people are a big part of that. But absent celebration and acknowledgement and affirmation, you will never get your best and brightest to want to pursue that as a path. I think we need to make things cool in order for them to thrive. So for a very long time before I wrote the book and turned my attention towards trying to get everyone, regardless of discipline, to care about hospitality, my goal was just to try to make working in the dining room cool. And I think when you accomplish that, regardless of what you do, you find pretty amazing things start to happen.
- [16:42]
A
Now there are so many cool things that happen in the book, and I'd love to touch on a few of them that sort of really stood out for me. Well, because they were transformational, but also because I can see how anybody could apply them to anything. One of the principles that struck me was how you would go and look at your competitors and you wouldn't try and benchmark their strength, which would be what most people would do. You, you'd actually try and find their weaknesses. And I think you talked about, I mean, a scenario that I'm sure anyone listening and watching, can you go to a really good restaurant? And then the wine list, it's like an encyclopedia sometimes, isn't it? I mean, like it's a competition to have who can have the most esoteric and broad ranging wine list. Unless you're a master of wine, navigating some of these wine lists can be intimidating. But you went the other way and went, well, what if I want a beer, what if I want coffee, what if I want tea? You know, and let's make those things the best they can be.
- [17:34]
B
I mean, Rory Sutherland, one of my favorite things about him is he can take an idea. He took an idea from my book and re articulated it in probably a better way that I was able to. So he calls what I talked about now is named that reverse benchmarking. And I think I love that articulation of it. Listen, we always need to be sizing ourselves up against our competition. I think it's just an important thing to do. If you are competitive, you have an inability not to. And we shouldn't only be doing that against our competitors within our own industry. I think we can find wild amounts of inspiration from people in other industries. In fact, doing that is what enables you to bring a truly unique point of view to your own. But we would go to the best restaurants all the time to see what they were doing and how we measured up against them. And there was one meal I write about in the book that I had at Per Se in New York, which at the time when we were coming up was undeniably the best restaurant in New York. And it was one of those meals that for a competitive person was frustrating in its perfection. It was so unbelievably good until I ordered a cup of coffee at the end, which was just fine. And this was coming in at a time when generationally, people started to really care about coffee and beer and tea more than they ever had before. Right? With Third Wade, Third Wave Coffee Shops and all of the boutique breweries. And. And I went back to our restaurant, realized it was the same thing. Our wine program was great, but all those secondary and tertiary beverage programs weren't. And rather than try to compete with Per Se's Wine Cellar, which they probably had another million dollars worth of wine than we did, and I didn't have a million dollars to go buy wine, we decided to make those other programs truly best in class. And we did it through collaboration. I didn't know enough about those categories to do the work myself, but on my team there were people who were remarkably passionate about them. And so what we did, it was truly a win, win, win. I was able to give people on my team a sense of ownership over Parts of the restaurant, which built a sense of pride amongst the people that worked there to feel that sense of responsibility. I've always believed the more responsibility you give people, the more responsible they become. Two, in doing so, within a year, we were winning awards for all of those categories. And three, it actually gave us a competitive advantage over a restaurant that at the time was definitively better than we were. And it served as a foothold for us to begin our climb to catch up with them. And so, yeah, I think we should look at what other people are doing better than us and use that as inspiration. But often what other people are not doing well is a really great way in.
- [20:32]
A
Yeah. Something that struck me as well. Cause you were quite young, weren't you? And your team were quite young as well.
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B
Yeah, we're all very young.
- [20:37]
A
And I wondered if there was an element of. I mean, Adam Morgan, in his book Eat the Big Fish, talks about intelligent naivety of entrepreneurs. Often entrepreneurs don't know much about the category in which operating, but that naivety coupled with a bit of intelligence actually can allow them to challenge what the status quo and the assumptions. So if you'd already been a successful restauranteur, you might have assumed that no one messes with the wine list. That's the thing, you know? And standard coffee is okay. And so I wonder how much kind of maybe being young and a little bit naive in that scenario actually became a superpower in some respects.
- [21:09]
B
Gosh. I mean, I think the superpower of youth in entrepreneurship is manyfold. First, you just don't have much to lose. Right. So you are willing to take risks that become harder and harder to take later in your life and career. And that's something I think we should all try to hold on to. Not forgetting some of the big bets we were willing to take earlier in life and try to make sure that we stay willing to make those kinds of bets later in life. But to your point, we didn't as a rule. There were some exceptions, obviously, but for the most part, ever hire people with fine dining experience into the dining room, because the longer you spend doing something like that, the less inclined you are to challenge anything. I remember one of my first weeks at that restaurant, I was the boss, and yet I had a lot less experience. And I was younger than some of the people that worked just below me. One of them was the service director, and a guest walked in, and he had been a regular of mine at a different restaurant. So I went over to the table, I put my hands on the table and leaned in Just to engage in conversation with him. I left the table, went back into the service station, and the service director came up to me with a vein popping out of his forehead. Really, really upset and saying, will kind of yelling at someone, but they're your boss, so you can't actually yell at them. We don't do that. You don't put your hands on the table. And not as a jerk, but genuinely curious. I said, why? He said, because that's just not what we do. Now, I think the beauty of youth is that you have the propensity to say why as opposed to just doing something because it's always been done. And when you're willing to ask that question, you have an opportunity. Because if the answer is only because that's how it's always been done, then that thing deserves another look. Now, I think it's important to balance that with reverence for where something has come from, and not just changing things for the sake of change, but being able to look at something with a beginner's mindset is what has traditionally led to pretty beautiful innovation.
- [23:24]
A
One of the things that comes through a lot in your book is going way beyond what might be considered like a normal thing to do. I mean, one of the one. The sweet stories that kind of, you know, jumped out at me was the. That the champagne in the freezer.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And this is from very early on, wasn't it, that happened where, you know, a couple comes in, they just remembered its anniversary. They've left a champagne bottle in the freezer. So I've done that so often, I've forgotten to put it in the fridge freezer quickly and then try and time it so it doesn't explode.
- [23:51]
B
And then you get distracted.
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A
Exactly. And then. And then something el happens and then the next thing you find is, you know, broken bottle of champagne all frozen up. And one of your team, I think, went and not only went pop around their house to take it out, but left them a hamper for the next day, you know, to sort of wish them an anniversary.
- [24:08]
B
But I think they said, hey, if we left our bottle of champagne in the freezer, will it explode? And by the way, spoiler alert, yes, it will.
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A
Yes.
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B
And that it just. It just presents an opportunity. And I think if we are present enough to listen to what people are saying, if we care enough then to do something with what we've heard, and if we have the resource and the mindset to actually act on the ideas, I think you can do remarkable things. Now, what happened there was, in my view, Quite simple. Someone went to their apartment, took the champagne out, left some caviar, a little note, and said, hope you enjoyed your dinner, welcome home. Something like that. That might sound crazy to people, but it wasn't that hard, right? It just took a little bit of time. And yeah, now that caviar, the whole thing costs money. But most of these gestures aren't about how much they cost. They're just about how thoughtful they are. That bottle of champagne was meaningful to that couple. So go save it. You can. And in doing so, they get to continue to enjoy their meal, and you leave them with a story that will last a lifetime.
- [25:17]
A
And that, I think, is probably one of the big marketing lessons actually in the book is the power of stories, because you're creating all these experiences, but they turn into stories that turn into things people then tell each other, and that creates a life of its own. I mean, it's probably the oldest marketing trick in the world, isn't it? Is word of mouth.
- [25:35]
B
I mean, I say that's not as an affront to all the marketers listening to this, but yes, we spent money on unreasonable hospitality, whether it was through the people that we hired onto our team to bring ideas to life for the cost of the gestures themselves. But I can say this with confidence. Every dollar I ever spent on unreasonable hospitality was far more impactful than any dollar I ever spent on traditional marketing. Because, yes, you give people stories like this to tell, what do you think they're going to do? They're going to tell them over and over and over again, and one day you wake up with legions of ambassadors out there doing your marketing on your behalf far better than you could ever do it yourself. I've talked to so many people for whom someone on my team did something cool, and none of them can remember a single thing they ate. But they will never forget the impact of one of those gestures. And if that is not motivation to create as many of them as humanly possible, I don't know. It is.
- [26:38]
A
Totally. You touched on a core principle I think there. It's always better to let other people tell your story. And what marketers spend all their time is telling their own story, right? I'm going to buy. Going to buy an ad. I'm going to tell my story. But if you can, through experience, create an army of people, it's like a multiplier effect that people that will tell your story for you. Because the end of day, if you say to me, john, you got to check out this new restaurant that's open in Nashville. It's insane. Yeah, I trust you. And therefore, particularly with your experience. But anyway, but, you know, because I trust you, I'll go, yeah, I'll go and do that. I've walked past a billboard.
- [27:09]
B
You were on the plan, and you opened up the little magazine, which I guess those don't even exist anymore. And there was an advertisement for that restaurant. You wouldn't even think twice about it.
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A
I just got another ad. Another restaurant, of course, said, say they're amazing. You say they're amazing. You tell me. I'm like, you know, I trust you.
- [27:23]
B
Exactly.
- [27:23]
A
That's incredible. Now, talking of cost, cost value equation, there's a lovely rule that you touch on in the book, which I just think is brilliant. The 95. 5 rule.
- [27:33]
B
Yes.
- [27:34]
A
And you talk about the gelato spoon that you kind of came. Insanely expensive gelato spoon. But the idea that you might provide something that is slightly over the top, you know, that you wouldn't normally get, you know, in. In this case, ice cream or, you know, it might be from a tasting menu. What's the power of doing something that, you know, something that might be a bit expensive but creates a. Yeah, so.
- [27:55]
B
This is where people struggle to get their head around some of my ideas, because there's that old adage, what gets measured gets managed. Right. Like, so many people have an inability to invest money into an idea unless there's a clearly and easily defined ROI on the idea. Now, the stuff I talk about, it's harder to measure, at least in the short term. I have yet to find a single business that if they don't commit to these ideas over a longer measure of time, the metrics are very, very easy to understand. But it's not like social media impressions or something like that that you can measure in the short term. And yet I don't believe that makes it matter less. In fact, to the contrary, I believe it means it matters more because human emotion, memories, connectivity, it's hard to measure. And yet those are the most important things that we are all here to create. Now, that said, there needs to be a mindful approach to financially practicing this stuff. And so the rule that I always used was the rule of 95. 5, which meant that we managed our money like maniacs, 95% of the time. And I mean, like, no expense was too small, too pour over or you get the gist. But we did that so that we could earn the right to spend it foolishly 5% of the time. And I put foolishly in air quotes because I don't believe that that 5% is foolish at all. In fact, that is where you make the greatest impact. But you have to earn it for two reasons. One, you need to create discipline within a business so you have that money to spend. And two, because if you don't earn it, if you are not spending that last 5%, you. You are being financially reckless. And so that's how we thought about it. And it didn't always need to be exactly 95 5. It was more of a metaphor that helped guide our thinking and resulted in the stories that. That I have to share now.
- [29:54]
A
Yeah, it's so true. I mean, actually, the analogy with. In marketing, probably the biggest fault line that divides marketers is between what we call performance marketing and brand marketing.
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B
Right.
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A
So with performance marketing, of course, you know, social media, buying, social media impressions, you can measure it, you know, instantly how many people have seen it, have they clicked on it and so on. The brand marketing is the intangible. It's the 5% as you've described. It's the, you know, the, the giving something away, it's doing something that won't have a payback today, might have payback tomorrow. The thing that's going to create mean that people talk about you, those kind of things. And this is the problem, because you can't measure it. People don't put a value to it. You know, they put a value to what they can measure. It's the biggest pitfalls in marketing is that they end up missing the 5% of things that will be transformational.
- [30:39]
B
Yeah. And honestly, like, I just always believe that the 5% is actually what ends up doing the most heavy lifting. Yeah. There's certain things I'll see something on social media and it's done in a really good way, and I'll buy that thing. Right. But that is by definition transactional. I don't feel any sort of greater connection to the brand. It's the brand marketing where suddenly I just love this brand. And it's not about the thing they're selling me. It's about this connection I feel to it. And those are the things that last a long time. I feel like they're investing in a relationship with me and, well, they're earning loyalty from me. That is hard to erode.
- [31:20]
A
Yeah. Well, a good example would be like, Rory told me about your book. Right. So Rory told me a story. I think it was probably the competitor one, the one that he's rebranded as reverse benchmarking. I was fascinated by that. And then walking through a store at the airport I spotted the book and then I buy the book sort of thing. So you've got the performance marketing comes after the brand marketing analogy. But it's the doing the unreasonable things that are going to create the word of mouth that people talk about you and then you can kind of convert them through the performance marketing 100%. Another concept that really struck me in the book that's close to my heart is that you differentiate between what might be restaurant smart and what might be corporate smart. Now this is another thing that everyone listening and watching will be very familiar with because most people are in big corporate organizations managing their brands and managing the politics. They're managing the budget and the processes and so on. But there's a real difference, isn't there, between what it takes to be successful with a restaurant compared to what it takes to be successful running a big operation?
- [32:21]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think the whole idea of restaurant smart, corporate smart, it's applicable to any big company that has within it a bunch of different teams that are doing different things. And when I was coming up, it was my dad that really kind of articulated this theory for me. I was working for Danny Meyer, one of my greatest mentors, and it was a job I loved. But eventually my dad made me quit. And the reason he made me quit is because he said, well, that's a restaurant smart company and I need you to work for a corporate smart company. So you understand both approaches. Now the most succinct distillation of this is where the highest paid people are working, Is it in the corporate office or on the restaurant level? And restaurant smart companies normally are giving better service. They have a greater connection to their customers because the people with decision making authority are actually on the front lines serving their customers. But they're oftentimes a bit less profitable or a bit less organized. They have a bit more liability. The corporate smart companies are not giving as good service. The people on the front line aren't empowered to do what is right in the moment. And yet those hum at a higher level. They're more profitable, they're more controlled, more organized. And my dad wanted for me at an early age to one day build a company that was both restaurant smart and corporate smart, to understand how to find balance between those two things, such that the right amount of empowerment happened at each level. And that's not easy.
- [33:57]
A
It's not. I think that balances everything. I mean, I've worked in sort of small startups, scale ups and big companies and I've also worked in small divisions of big Companies. So I've done the entire spectrum. That balance between restaurant smart, corporate smart is like 90 of the challenge.
- [34:14]
B
Yeah.
- [34:14]
A
I found there's a lot. I spent. I spent a little time actually in Suntory, and they've got a. A lovely Japanese phrase called the Gemba. And as if you come across. Gemba means the place where it happens.
- [34:26]
B
Oh.
- [34:27]
A
Which is really interesting. And that they have a very decentralized approach.
- [34:31]
B
What's the context? How's that manifest?
- [34:33]
A
Yeah. So, for example, so Suntory, I mean, they own lots of whiskey brands and lots of soft drink brands. I was working on an energy drink, and I basically ran the UK soft drink division marketing wise at the time. And what they would say when we had our kind of get togethers is they say, be as close to the Gemba as you can or delegate to the Gemba. So what they mean is that basically, you know, in Suntory head office, you are 8, 10, 12 steps away from the place where it happens. Therefore, you really can't make a good decision.
- [35:05]
B
Yeah.
- [35:06]
A
So they were all about delegating responsibility. And then we had this other phrase linked to it called yata mini hare, which is. We never quite understood fully, but it seemed to be. It got explained in different ways. You know, these things become like. They become, you know, kind of hard to pin down.
- [35:23]
B
More legendary than literal at a certain point.
- [35:25]
A
Exactly. But it was sort of like it was a combination of just do it and take ownership for it was sort of. It was a blend of those kind of. Those kind of ideas, but the combination of spend your time where it happens and then take ownership for it as if you are the owner of the company. I just thought that those two things really stood out for me in that kind of time.
- [35:47]
B
There's the retired naval captain David Marquet, who in his book, he says that in most organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority. I think to do anything of true greatness, especially within the world of hospitality, you need to bridge the gap between authority and information. Otherwise, you have an inability to show up for people when they need you. I mean, anyone can share a story of having engaged in some interaction with a customer service agent who, you know, knows what is the right thing to do for you in that moment, but is just not empowered to do it. And so that's, like I say, it's not easy to find the balance between corporate smart and restaurant smart. That doesn't mean it's not possible. A lot of my book is really centered around this idea. It's identifying something and then through focusing on it, understanding the inherent tension that exists and being intentional in finding that balance. That's when you can do really, really good things.
- [36:53]
A
I noticed that a lot in the book, actually. You sort of embrace the tension and you kind of use the tension kind of almost as a creative stimulus. And I think you quote Roger Martin as well, don't you, that you think someone like Roger Martin would be all very logical about this. But actually, he says no, sometimes you need conflicting goals. Yes, because within the conflicting goals, that's where the tension is. I mean, I do a lot of cycling and they always say, you know, you can have it cheap, fast or light. You know, you can pick two, I think, is the phrase. Exactly.
- [37:20]
B
There's a similar version of that with general contractors. Now, you know what was really interesting when I wrote the book is I got to know jan Schwartz from LinkedIn. And he. And the more he got to know about my work as I was literally writing, the more he started turning me on to people like Rory and Roger. And I think he was the first person that actually showed me how. The overlap between marketing and hospitality is actually quite profound. But this idea of choosing conflicting goals, I mean, I can go through so many of these tension points in what I was trying to create. I wanted to create a restaurant that felt like you were going out. It had all the luxury and the trappings of that experience, but also felt like you were coming home. Those two things are not friends. I wanted to create an experience that was at once both modern and classic. Those things are not friends. Honestly, the biggest one is in excellence and hospitality, focusing on the product and on how you make people feel. Those are not friends. But if you can sit in that tension, success comes because of it, not in spite.
- [38:27]
A
Afraid of really does, doesn't it? There's one. One example sort of linked to that, actually, where. Where you talked about. Because often when you go to a restaurant, you have a choice between you got. You got the fixed menu where you're choosing to get. You get served precisely what it says, right? And then you've got the kind of chef menu or tasting menu where it's like, I'm gonna give up control and whatever comes out, comes out sort of thing. And you talk about how at one point, when you're improving the menu, you actually give people just the main ingredients.
- [38:55]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:55]
A
It's like this compromise between this. I thought that' because the interesting thing about it, of course, it's a different way of doing it and there's a surprising thing, but it forces a bit of interaction, doesn't it? It's like inbuilt human intervention, because when you don't have all the information, so one example, you have all the information, you don't have to ask any questions. The other one, you don't have to ask any questions. You know what you're going to get, right? But you went to the middle bit, which actually triggers a, oh, so what do I get with my beef? Can I change the side?
- [39:24]
B
And not to nitpick word choice, but. But compromise. I think that word suggests that it's a watered down version of both ideas. I think when you come up with the right ideas, it's not a watered down version of either idea. It's actually an enhancement on each. So what that is, what you're talking about is there's the tasting menu. You sit down, you just sit back and enjoy the ride. The reason it's beautiful is because the surprise of just not knowing what's going to come, and that brings with it a sense of adventure that I think many people were looking for in fine dining restaurants juxtaposed against a price fix menu where you know, everything you order is going to be something you like to eat, right? And there's the control. And I was like, what if there was one experience where you could have all of it? And so the way it worked is there were. It was this grid menu. There were four four by four words, first course, second course, third course, fourth course. And you just got to pick the principal ingredient that you were craving, and then we would just take you on a ride. So you might pick whatever sea urchin, trout, beef, strawberry, all things that you were really excited to eat. But then the rest of it, you still got to capture and preserve the surprise. That's just one of a million ways to do something like that. But I think when you lean into the tension, you don't need to compromise either approach, but you seize on the best parts of each and unite them into something even more extraordinary.
- [40:58]
A
I think you spot on. It's almost optimizing because most people are not at one extreme or the other. Most people are not at sort of like, I want exactly that dish as it's described, and they're not at the. Well, actually, I don't really care. I don't have any influence in it. You might have an allergy or you might.
- [41:14]
B
There's also just things that people don't like and I don't care how good a chef you are, if I don't like salmon, you're not going to serve me a plate of salmon that I'm going to enjoy. And so it's just a means of, you know, the other thing it did was I think hospitality is a dialogue, it's not a monologue. And just creating space for conversation always lends and yields positive results.
- [41:37]
A
Now, one phrase that everyone's very familiar with is the idea the customer is always right.
- [41:42]
B
Yes.
- [41:42]
A
And sometimes you don't feel that, particularly in kind of high end restaurants where it's so sort of like orchestrated that you feel like you couldn't possibly feed. But I mean, so me and a good mate of mine, John, every time I visit New York, he takes me to a different steak restaurant. I mean, I've just noticed New York has got insanely good steak.
- [42:00]
B
Really good steak.
- [42:01]
A
Honestly, it's a thing, it's like, I don't think I've ever been anywhere else where the quality of steak is so good.
- [42:06]
B
It's, it's remarkable.
- [42:07]
A
It is remarkable. It's a new. You know, I've been going to New York for about five or six years and I think we're close to writing a book now, actually, because there are.
- [42:15]
B
Some other properly good restaurants in New York outside of steakhouses.
- [42:18]
A
Exactly, exactly. And what was interesting about the one we went to this week, so we got in, we sat down by the bar and we'd ordered, I think a rib eye to share on the bone, and it came too rare. Well, probably not quite rare enough for me and too rare for him. We both, we both kind of went medium rare. But it's interesting that medium rare actually is open to quite a lot of interpretation. I would probably call, he would definitely call this super rare. You know, it was very, very kind of red. In the uk, if you have medium rare, it's often just a little bit pink in the middle and sort of cooked on the outside. So the variance between what a customer would think, you know, a well, you know, a well cooked steak is. So to what extent would you hold that the customer is always right? When you've spent so much time and love creating the perfect experience, what happens when a customer says, that's not what I wanted?
- [43:11]
B
I mean, one of my favorite quotes that came out of one of the welcome conferences, I host a conference called welcome here in New York. Years ago, the theme was Being right. That was literally the theme. And Danny Meyer, part of his speech was being right is irrelevant. And it's True. I think there are some cultures where that is the belief system, the customer is always right. There's other restaurants where the chef believes that people should be kneeling at the altar of his or her culinary prowess. And in those places, the chef is always right. Both approaches are flawed. The reality is being right is irrelevant. And there's a story I share in the book, literally, about a steak cooked medium rare, where someone ordered it medium rare. We brought it over. I watched this whole thing happen where a server delivered it, walked away from the table. The guest flagged them back over. They said, hey, I asked this for medium rare. This is rare. And at least in the States, the truth is that a perfect medium rare is more rare than people expect it to be. Now, we were at the time trying to become the greatest restaurant in the world. The last thing the server wanted to do was for the person to think we'd made a mistake. Right? Because you don't become the best by making mistakes. And we had not actually, textbook wise anyway, made a mistake. And so he did what he thought was the right thing to do. He said, I am so sorry this is medium rare, but if you'd like it to be cooked medium, I'll totally bring it back to the kitchen. We'll make it for you. Again, the guy was trying to get the guest the thing that they wanted, but in a place of defensiveness, needed the guest to know that they were wrong. We hadn't made a mistake. The problem with focusing on who's right is by definition, it means the other person needs to be wrong. And in doing that now, the customer felt shame. And it took us a long time to reestablish the connection that we were trying to establish from the very beginning. I think that idea, it's an old adage in my business for sure, and in others as well, just needs to go away. It's about doing what is right in each circumstance, regardless of who is right and wrong.
- [45:27]
A
And you realize, of course, in that situation that the interpretation of medium rare is quite personal. It could depend on where you're from, it could depend on how you've been brought up. But loads of things could influence what your perception has.
- [45:39]
B
I mean, I've seen this in cocktail bars where I order a cocktail and it's just taking a really long time. I'm like, hey, my drink is taking a while. Is there any way to. And they're like, sir, this is a craft cocktail bar. Like, the drinks take a long time to make. Effectively saying, I'm wrong for feeling like I'VE been waiting too long. Same thing. It's just. You know what? Let me go check on that right away. We're gonna get it over to you.
- [45:59]
A
Talking about speed, there's some lovely examples in the book of where you kind of solve for moments in the service that you'd otherwise. So when you arrive, for example, or when you're ordering the check, or when, for example, there's a gap between when you sit down and when you get your first drink. So you kind of solve for how people got their water, the right kind of water delivered to them. And I was fascinated by the amount of signaling that was going on between the team because in all these things, you kind of found solutions without the customer even knowing that what they wanted was going to get there a lot quicker.
- [46:28]
B
I think in the same way that one beautiful way to identify innovative ideas is through reverse benchmarking, another way is through doing what you could effectively call a pain point purge. We just look at any experience and look at the pain points and try to figure out how to either A, make them less painful or B, even better, make them highlights of an experience. And so water. Yeah. There's a rule in restaurants. You get something in front of people for them to drink as soon as humanly possible. But in a big restaurant, I go over, I get your water preference. Sparkling, still, ice water. And now I need to go communicate that to someone. They need to go get the water, the whole thing. And I was at a baseball game and I was watching the catcher use sign language to communicate to the pitcher. And to the point I made earlier about how some of the best nuggets of inspiration can come from wildly different worlds, I said, ooh, sign language. I want to figure out how to use that in our restaurant. That's where the idea started, was just a desire to use sign language. Economy of movement is always a beautiful thing. And that's what we came up with when, as your server, you were telling me your order behind my back, I was actually using my hands to sign to someone across the room what water you wanted. And it could be the case that they were pouring you that water before I'd even left the table. Which not only lends itself to more efficiency, but also feels like a little magic trick in a really wonder filled way. The other example is the check. I mean, there's nothing great about getting a check right. In fact, it's a hard moment in most meals to get right because whether anyone realizes it, they become remarkably impatient the moment they ask for the check. If it Takes us too long to give it to you. We've just ruined the entire meal. And yet I can't drop it on your table before you've asked for it. Otherwise, you think I'm trying to rush you out. Not to mention the fact that in a fine dining restaurant, it's a big check. And the moment you realize how much that meal costs, it's a little bit harder to still love the meal you've just had. And for those reasons, no one ever really approaches it with any creativity or any intention. What we came up with was, when I knew you were done, I'd go over to your table with a glass for everyone at the table and an entire bottle of cognac. I pour just a splash of cognac for a moment at the table, and I'd say, hey, this is with my compliments. In fact, I'm going to leave the entire bottle here. Please help yourselves to as much as you'd like. And then I'd put the check down and say, your check is here whenever you're ready for it. Small change, profound impact. First, no one ever had to wait for the check again. Second, no one could ever think we were trying to rush them out. I just gave them an entire bottle of free booze. It didn't cost us very much. Rarely did people drink more than that splash. And yet, at the moment where I dropped off that big bill, I matched it with a gesture of profound generosity, keeping the value proposition intact. Perhaps my favorite part. I don't care what you do for a living. If you want to create a culture of hospitality, try to make sure that the experience feels, even in the slightest bit the tiniest way, like you've just invited someone to your house for dinner. My favorite part, when I have people over to mine, is that moment at the end of the night where there's just a few people left and someone grabs that last half empty bottle of win, pours the remains out into the remaining glasses. At the end of an experience where we had served their every need with unbelievable attentiveness, we gave them the gift of serving one another, all because we looked at a pain point and said, how can we make this awesome? I think that opportunity exists for everybody, and if you seize on it, you can do some pretty cool things.
- [50:24]
A
I love that so much. That is amazing. Randomly, it reminded me, actually of years ago. I did negotiation training. In negotiation training, they ask you to identify what is low cost to you but high value to the person you're negotiating with, and to trade on that, yes, and they also talk about the give, where you want to be giving up things that, again, are, you know.
- [50:44]
B
Hold on to things you're ready to.
- [50:46]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [50:47]
B
Right, yeah.
- [50:47]
A
But it struck me, my whole career that actually is thinking about what's in your power to give. And you're right, because the cognac, you know, I don't know, maybe 1 in 100 tables might have finished the lot and they had a bit of time spare. But most people.
- [50:59]
B
But by the way, if they did drink the entire bottle, back to our earlier point, they were telling stories about that.
- [51:05]
A
There you go.
- [51:06]
B
Then, by the way, they definitively didn't remember anything about the meal, but they were telling stories about what they'd done.
- [51:12]
A
Actually. That's the art of geniuses. You win either way.
- [51:14]
B
Yeah.
- [51:15]
A
If they clear the bottle, they're talking about it, and they can't believe how lucky they just got. If they don't, they will still tell the story about this guy's giving entire bottles of cognac at the end of the evening. That's incredible.
- [51:25]
B
Yeah.
- [51:26]
A
Yeah. Did anyone actually drink it?
- [51:28]
B
It happened once in a while, for sure. And it was fun, honestly, for the, like. Oh, table 33. I think they're doing it. They're gonna do it. They're gonna do it. They're gonna do it.
- [51:36]
A
Ring the bell. I think it's wonderful. Now, one of the quotes that stood out in your book, and I think you're quoting Calvin Coolidge here.
- [51:44]
B
Yes.
- [51:44]
A
Is nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. And it's something I've certainly learned just even doing this podcast actually, is the power of sticking at something and the amount of learning you do by continually testing, going again and not giving up kind of thing. But I was interested in that, putting persistence as almost the number one traits.
- [52:05]
B
Oh, my gosh. And that was that quote, which is a longer quote, and it talks about how the most talented don't always win, the most intelligent don't always win. The people that are the most persistent almost always are still in the game at the end. Right. And he gave me that entire quote on a plaque when I was a kid. I just think the people that are willing to do whatever it takes to stay in the game and to hopefully win, the mettle they show and the amount of learning that can happen along the way, it always yields to some of the most inspiring stories. How many people I've known that try something and it was fails the first time. How many of the companies that we celebrate as now being the most Influential and most innovative and most impactful. Had they given up after a few failures, how different our world would be completely. Persistence is an under celebrated trait and I think we need to seek it out on the people we surround ourselves with and focus on embodying it more ourselves.
- [53:09]
A
I had this little idea for a book actually I was going to write where each chapter would be a spectacular failure.
- [53:15]
B
Right.
- [53:17]
A
And the twist in it was basically every story of failure at the very end of this chapter, I'd say. And this was. Became tested.
- [53:26]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [53:26]
A
You know what I mean? Because every successful person, you know, once you really understand what's happened, because of course you only hear about the successes, but really when you dig, dig beneath the amount of failures that happened prior to that success, I thought it'd be a fascinating way to kind of make that point.
- [53:39]
B
I agree.
- [53:42]
A
Talking of the failures, one thing you touch on as well is never, ever waste a good crisis. Because of course, a big part of Your journey was 2008, wasn't it, when the world just changed overnight and went into recession. People weren't spending. How did you get through? Like, because also you've got one of the top restaurants in the world at the time, and then people aren't no longer dining out, spending the biggest banks.
- [54:05]
B
Right.
- [54:05]
A
How do you survive that and what, you know, what did you learn in that period?
- [54:10]
B
Yeah. So never waste a good crisis. That's kind of what they say in Washington D.C. that's like the lobbyist version of the quote. The way I articulate it came from my dad, which is adversity is a terrible thing to waste. During the recession in 08, it was a tough time because, by the way, we were not yet the top restaurant in the world. We were trying to become a great restaurant, which meant that we were charging okay restaurant prices, but that were incurring remarkable restaurant expenses. And then that recession came and nearly wiped us out. And we did two things to weather the storm. First, we cut as many expenses as we could. None that would impact the guest experience. But we tried to get very, very creative in managing our money and all the other areas. And second, we tried to come up with really creative ways to bring more people in the door. Now, in the first, when we started coming out of the recession, my dad sat down with me and he said, hey, all those things you were doing to save money, hold onto them. Far too many companies, they tighten the belt when things are hard and they just throw the belt off completely once they get good. But if you can hold on to cost saving, Measures when the times get good again, you find unprecedented levels of profitability. But on the creative ways to actually engage more people, I think that is where there's a particularly inspiring lesson. I spent time with Sir Norman Foster. We were working on a big project in New York City. And I'll never forget one of the things he told me. I said, hey, what's your favorite? Of all the remarkable things you've created, what's your favorite? And he talked about this house in the mountains of Switzerland. And I said, oh, I mean, this guy's some of the most famous skyscrapers. And he's talking about this little house. I said, why? I said, in a skyscraper, I have this giant swath of land, unlimited resources. I can build anything on that house. The limitations of the terrain forced me to be my most creative self, because limitation breeds creativity. In moments of adversity where you don't have a ton of resource to expend, you are really kind of walking on shaky ground. That's when you need to be the most creative. And if you can allow that limitation to fuel your creativity, I think some of the most groundbreaking ideas come out of it. And I talk in the book about some of the innovations that came out of that time, but they were transformational for us.
- [56:41]
A
Yeah, so true. I mean, so many innovations in this world have come from adversity, haven't they? Where, you know, the business or the. Or the founder has been forced to into thinking quite differently.
- [56:53]
B
And we were talking about Cannes before.
- [56:54]
A
We were. Yes, yeah.
- [56:55]
B
And I went, it wasn't last year, I think it was two years ago. I did a talk on the main stage, whatever you call it, but quickly realized that a lot of what can is is the parties, right? Because people go there to either reconnect with relationships that already exist or try to forge new ones. And of course, that's is a huge part of any industry, is the depth and the quality of the relationships you have in it. But I was so struck by the following. I mean, some of these parties were insane. I can't even imagine, and maybe this number exists out there. How many tens of millions of dollars are spent throwing parties over the course of that festival? I mean, there's Foo Fighters on the beach, There's Paris Hilton DJing on a yacht. There's closed down all this stuff. Millions and millions and million. Now imagine if someone actually didn't have a big budget. I would imagine that would result in a more impactful strategy. And I was saying to some friends there, I went to some of these Parties. I don't remember anything about them. And I can't imagine the people that threw those parties had any real conversation with any of the people they were trying to connect with. Given how crazy and over the top and chaotic they were, the parties were almost more along the lines of, hey, look what we can do, as opposed to just being the kind of thoughtful expressions of giving people what they need in those moments. And yet there was one thing I love, pattern recognition. It's how I've always pursued more scalable expressions of hospitality. Look at the things that just happen often and figure out what is the coolest way to react every time they happen. And then you can create magic all the time. Everybody was in the lobby of the Carlton every single night. It was like this one moment where everyone reconvened there and it was like probably from 11:30pm until 2 in the morning. And everyone was drinking, but you couldn't really get food. The whole thing was too chaotic. I bet you could spend a fraction of what it took to throw one of those parties, bring in a great pizza chef from somewhere in America and just make pizzas and go give pizzas to everyone in that lobby every single night. And I guarantee they would talk more about that than any of the parties that cost seven or eight figures to throw. Now, the reason for that, one, limitation breeds creativity. In the absence of a budget, you actually have the capacity to come up with a better and more creative idea. And two, because it's not about showing how you are cool and have money and create something over the top. It's just about being thoughtful. Look at what people need and be the person to fulfill those needs. And they will appreciate you, they will feel closer to you. And so I think you can really take this idea and look at it across all disciplines, across all different events. And I think it's really, really powerful when you do.
- [59:57]
A
Amazing. Well, I think we've got our can plan sorted for next year, though.
- [60:00]
B
You and I can serve pizza.
- [60:01]
A
We're going to do this. You and I are serving pizza. And it'd be amazing. Actually, a small thing. Before I go to the next question, I had to reread this, I think two or three times in your book, when you were talking about the downturn in 2008, did I read that you or the group owned Shake Shack at the time?
- [60:16]
B
Yes.
- [60:17]
A
That is insane.
- [60:17]
B
Well, that's still when I worked for Danny Meyer. So this is when I worked out 11 Madison park before I bought it. And Shake Shack was Danny's burger chain that was literally born out of 11 Madison Park. So Danny owned the company, but Shake Shack was born literally from our private dining kitchen. And the chef that was there before us is the creator of the Shack burger. And literally, they were making burgers in our PDR kitchen and running them out to the park every single day. And the profits of Shake Shack are another thing that helped keep us alive during that time.
- [60:47]
A
That is incredible.
- [60:48]
B
Yeah.
- [60:49]
A
Talking of fast food, I might know the answer to this already because you talked about Shake Shack, but if you were to rate your personal. Which chains do you admire at the sort of bottom end or the top? So if you.
- [61:00]
B
If you like fast food chains, I mean, I. Gosh, my Death row meal would be an In N Out burger. Double, double animal style French fries. Animal style. I'd probably sub in a really nice bottle of Barolo for the Coke. That would be one of my last meals.
- [61:17]
A
I love that. That's a great way of asking the question. I should have asked the question like that, shouldn't I? Your Death row meal.
- [61:23]
B
But I am probably one of the few whose death row meal might actually include fast food.
- [61:28]
A
Cheeseburger and a Varolo.
- [61:29]
B
Yeah, I'd probably have some good pasta in there as well. I love In N Out burger, and I love the. I love everything they do. I mean, I think also the hospitality at Chick Fil a is consistently remarkable. And they. That is not on accident. Right. You talk about scalable things. I think people sometimes, like, give them a hard time for the my pleasure thing. But it's powerful. You get every single person in your company to say my pleasure instead of your welcome. And it communicates a belief system. And I think there's little and big things that more people can do more consistently to create a culture of hospitality. And that's one beautiful example of something they did to really evolve and transform their entire organization.
- [62:16]
A
I got to say, my youngest daughter, Lilia, is a complete fanatic on American fast food.
- [62:21]
B
What's her favorite?
- [62:22]
A
Well, it's In N Out burger as well, but it's the Flying Dutchman, which is not on the menu. And you have to ask for it. So you only know if you know.
- [62:31]
B
Wait, what is the Flying Dutchman? The Flying Dutchman animal style is also not on the menu.
- [62:35]
A
Oh, yeah, of course. Well, I did the double. You see, I got Flying Dutchman with animal style fries. I went for both the things that you can't get.
- [62:41]
B
Okay, okay. What is a Flying Dutchman?
- [62:44]
A
Well, Flying Dutchman is. So rather than the brioche bun, you have onion so, like half an onion. So imagine like you got the onion cut in half, then you got the cheese, then you got two beef burgers, right? And then that's it. So you're eating it with the onion.
- [63:00]
B
I mean, it's a little horrifying that as an American, you are telling me something about burger that I didn't know. But I appreciate it. But here's the other thing. This is what I love about what they've done with Animal Style and the Flying Dutchman. I talk about this as an internal culture thing to create your own language, to come up with these little isms, right? A shared language gives people a sense of belonging. It helps build culture. And the same is true in how they kind of refocus that to their customers, right? Like, you feel like you're a part of a cult because you know the language. But honestly, cult more often than not has negative connotations. Cult is short for culture, right? Like, if you can create that kind of culture where people feel a sense of belonging through any means necessary, language included, I think the impact is always pretty profound.
- [63:52]
A
It's huge, isn't it? I mean, talking about culture, I wanted to ask you as well about your approach to hiring people, because I imagine not only to be the world's best, but also to scale. It must be incredibly important who you hired.
- [64:06]
B
I feel like earlier in my career, I made hiring so much more complicated than it needed to be. I was the guy. I'd probably be doing it on LinkedIn now, but back in the day, I was just doing it on the Internet, like, looking up really smart interview questions like, what does the guy from Goldman Sachs use in his interviews? And I almost went into interviews with a full script of questions. But over time, Listen, I believe relationships are relationships, and the lessons you learn from those in life can inspire you at work and vice versa. Here's the reality. The most important interview of my life was my first date with my now wife. If I had gotten that wrong, the ramifications would be much more severe than hiring the wrong person. And yet, had I shown up to that first date with a list of questions, I can go so far as to assure you we would not be married now. Rather, I get to know her. Is this someone I want to spend time with? Do I think I can trust her? Are we going to have fun together? All this, and if the answer is yes, we keep on dating. That's how I started to interview people. I interrogated down the list of requirements to be as small as possible. Oftentimes we filter out the right person by asking them to have an experience or a credential that is not actually required. And then once I get to the interview, I don't bring the resume. I already know they have the experience required for the job. Now I just want to get to know them effectively. Looking to identify three things. One, do I like them, do I trust them? Two, do I think they're going to work hard? But three, perhaps most importantly, do I think that the people who work for me will get along with them? Less important whether I'm going to get along with them, it's more important whether they're going to get along with the other people on my team. Because anytime you prioritize capacity over chemistry, I believe you're making a big mistake. Now, sometimes with that approach, I got a couple people wrong, but I got a lot more right than I ever did wrong. And I was able to scale a culture to. I mean, when I sold my restaurants, we had 1800 employees and turnover was great. And we had a lot of really good people because I hired the person, not the resume.
- [66:19]
A
That's incredibly powerful. You're talking about chemistry as well. And I guess the other part of it, which you alluded to is the collaboration that happens. Yeah, so often. I mean, you know, you made front of house famous, I guess, didn't you? As well as obviously the kitchen. But they're often completely separate, aren't they? I mean, this analogy works in any organization. Everyone works in their silos. Sales and marketing is probably the equivalent for kind of the world I live in is that, you know, one of them's looking at the future and creating demand, the other one is kind of fulfilling supply. And it's a classic, it's a classic friction point of where you've got this misaligned objectives and under pressure that becomes difficult. You're working in one of the most high pressure, demanding environments in the world. How did you create the kind of collaboration that's required to be as successful as you were?
- [67:07]
B
I mean, I think with anything like that, it's a few prongs to a strategy. First, just talking about it, I think words matter and what gets talked about is what gets thought about. We'd have these 30 minute meetings, these pre meals every single day. And yeah, in those meetings we focused on some operational logistics, but they were more about the how and the why than they were about the what. And so reminding people over and over and over again, repetition matters. If you believe in something, you better say it enough that you grow sick of Hearing yourself say it. Otherwise it won't bleed into the culture that we are not the kitchen versus the dining room. We're not front of house, back of house. We are one team collectively aligned to accomplish one goal. So a, just talking about it. Second, implementing systems that lead to empathy, not just hoping that people will be more empathetic. Because in those friction points, it often is driven from a lack of understanding. Oftentimes people on either side believe that their work is more important or that they work harder. That the other team is lazy. Right. That the other team doesn't matter as much. And so implementing systems that force people to walk in the other side's shoes. We had cooks delivering food to the dining room. We had cooks in our dining room pre meals. You had to work in the kitchen for a certain number of days. When you joined our dining room team, we had servers teaching the room, dining kitchen team about wine. We had cooks teaching the dining room team about food. Like just forced cross pollination. And that's where I talk about how unreasonable hospitality. It happens at the intersection of creativity and intention. Intention not just wanting something to happen, but deciding to pursue it every single day and putting the systems in place that will result in it happening and creativity in being creative such that those systems are as impactful as humanly possible.
- [69:07]
A
That's amazing. Thank you. I wanted to end almost where we started and actually quote. I think this quote is from your father, which is, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?
- [69:19]
B
Yeah.
- [69:20]
A
Which I just think is. I think fear is probably one of the biggest things in life that holds us back in whatever, like overcoming the fear to ask for a date. If we can go back to your example with your wife. Right. You know, anything in life, you know, fear is one of the biggest things that holds us back. How important is it to kind of the belief system that you have.
- [69:43]
B
Yeah. So that quote is not out of my father's mind, but it's in my life because of him. He gave that to me on a paperweight when I was a kid, which I still have on my desk with me today. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? And he has inspired me to answer that question at varying intervals over the course of my career and in my life. And gosh, I love it because I believe it can call you to greatness. He's always said that. Far too many people, they're honestly scared to say their biggest goals out loud for fear that if they do and don't achieve them, they'll let themselves and those around them down. But he'd always go on to say that if you don't have that confidence, that conviction required to dream your biggest dreams out loud, it is very unlikely that you'll ever bring them to life. And by the way, even if you don't, you will get a whole lot closer simply for having tried. I think we're all capable of more than we think. Jay Z articulated the quote in his own way. He said, I believe you can talk things into existence. I think if we are unbelievably audacious and honest with what we want to achieve and then patient in bringing those things to life, it's pretty cool.
- [71:00]
A
That's really cool. It reminds me a little bit of the I don't know who said this quote, so I would love to attribute it, but jump and the net will appear. Yeah, you know what I mean? If I think about my own life so often, you go, well, I will do it if. If these circumstances are right, if I've got enough money, if I have got the experience and so on, and not.
- [71:19]
B
Let the occasional times that the net didn't make you never want to try again. Right? I would definitely be single if I never asked a girl out again after the first time. I was told no. Rejection along the way is a part of the process, and I think that's okay.
- [71:37]
A
If anything, the rejection is your learning mechanism, your feedback mechanism, isn't it? That enables you then to it's the.
- [71:43]
B
Feedback loop that makes you better.
- [71:45]
A
100%. Well, it's been amazing, mate. Thank you so much. I've loved this conversation. I could have carried on for the rest of the day. I suspect we'll have to. Have to kind of pause there, but thank you for writing such an inspiring book.
- [71:57]
B
And thank you.
- [71:58]
A
I know everyone listening, you know, is going to get a ton out of this conversation.
- [72:02]
B
I appreciate that.
- [72:03]
A
Cool. Thanks man.
- [72:04]
B
Thank you, man.
- [72:05]
A
Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on x uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next.