Will Guidara
Founder, Thank You. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderauthoroperatorentertainerother@WillGuidara ↗LinkedIn ↗unreasonablehospitality.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Guidara is the former co-owner of New York City's Eleven Madison Park, which earned three Michelin stars and was named the world's best restaurant in 2017. He authored the bestselling book Unreasonable Hospitality and served as a producer on the television series The Bear.
2shows
2appearances
42statements
6resolved
5supported
0contradicted
83%fully supported
22said about them ↓ Everything Will Guidara said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Guidara: Unreasonable hospitality generates better returns than traditional marketing
“Every dollar I ever spent on unreasonable hospitality was far more impactful than any dollar I ever spent on traditional marketing, because when you give them those stories to tell, what do you think they're gonna do? They're gonna tell them over and over and …”
Guidara: Running a $15M restaurant requires similar effort to a $5M restaurant
“It doesn't take that much more work to run a fifteen million dollar a year restaurant than it does a five million dollar a year restaurant.”
Refusing to spend 5% on customer relationships is financially reckless
“If you are not spending that last five percent, you're being financially reckless. I believe you're focused so much on today dollars that you're not thinking enough about tomorrow dollars because When you invest in relationships with that five percent, the loy…”
Leaders should modify 'hire slow, fire fast' to 'fire fast, but not too fast'
“I've caveated that to hire slow, fire, fast, but not too fast. Over and over again, if you're a sports fan, how many times has your team cut someone and then they go on to thrive on another team? I see people getting rid of people and then watching those same …”
Guidara: Gaining public attention requires unwanted compromises to achieve critical success
“You can't get people to pay attention to you unless you've achieved some level of critical success, and that means doing the things that you aren't necessarily inclined to want to do in order to get to where you need to get.”
Guidara: Restaurants should not enforce dress codes
“I don't believe there should be a dress code in a restaurant. I think that you're there to invite people as they are”
Hospitality extends far beyond the restaurant industry
“I bifurcate them only because I believe hospitality is more than restaurants. Restaurants is simply the medium through which I fell in love with hospitality.”
Companies obsess over product perfection but neglect human connection
“So many companies, regardless of how successful they are, reserve their best efforts only to invest in the thing that they sell. Don't invest that same amount of energy into how they make people feel, which to me feels counterintuitive. These companies, they a…”
Diners become highly impatient immediately after asking for the bill
“Every diner has this in common, whether or not they realize it, they get very impatient the moment they ask for the bill.”
Manage 95% of expenses ruthlessly to fund 5% on customer experience
“The way I've always managed my businesses is through something that I call the rule of ninety-five-five, which is my way of saying you manage every single dollar like a maniac 95% of the time. No expense is too small to be poured over. Every penny counts. But …”
Impress high-profile clients by serving the people they love
“When you play at a certain level, the people you're trying to impress have a lot of people trying to impress them with a lot of frequency. Sometimes the best way to love on someone is to love on the people they love. If we could turn our attention To the peopl…”
Businesses should systemize responses to recurring customer touchpoints
“You can do a lot of the heavy lifting is with one size fits some. That is through simple pattern recognition of recurring moments, and I believe every business should go through this exercise. It can be transformational. What it requires is looking at the thin…”
Sarasota UPS franchisee mandates daily $30 customer comps for cashiers
“He created a rule where everyone that works the register at the UPS stores has to, they are required to, once a day, comp someone's purchase up to 30 bucks.”
Customers advocate most enthusiastically for successfully resolved bad experiences
“If someone has a good experience with the business, they are going to talk about it so much. If they have a bad experience, they're going to talk about it even more. If they have a bad experience, but you put in the work to turn it around, they're going to tal…”
95% of companies recklessly under-invest in customer recovery
“I'm fully convinced that 95% of companies recklessly under-invest in turning around negative situations in customer recovery.”
Callers won't distinguish AI from humans in two to four years
“Is because it's becoming very clear, whether it's two years, three years, four years, that you're going to pick up the phone and call someone, and you're not going to be sure whether you're on the phone with a human being or not.”
Companies reinvesting AI savings into human connection will win long term
“The only moments we're going to be able to trust as being genuinely human are the ones where there is a human in front of you, which means, in my view, that the companies that make those moments feel as human as humanly possible are going to win in the long te…”
Guidara: Emotional hospitality matters more to customers than flawless technical excellence
“It wasn't the pursuit of excellence that actually took the restaurant over the top. It was the relentless, unreasonable pursuit of hospitality, right? Like you push everything to get every detail so unbelievably perfect, and then you do these messy things at t…”
Guidara: Thoughtful leaders inspire accountability through respect, not fear
“When you're a leader that acts like a dick, people are just scared of getting yelled at. When you're an attentive leader that is thoughtful in holding people accountable. People don't want to make a mistake because they don't want to let you down.”
Guidara: Praise must outweigh criticism or the leader is failing
“And then finally, you better be praising everyone on your team more than you are criticizing them. Because if you're not, one of two things is happening. One, you are just the person that has a tendency to see all the things that are wrong more than you have t…”
Guidara: Staff must experience extreme hospitality before delivering it to customers
“Because I always wanted to spend the most money on our own people, because if they received this stuff at the highest level possible, they were going to be more inclined to turn around and come up with these things for other people, right? Like, until you know…”
Guidara: Presenting the check is dining's hardest touchpoint to manage
“And it's a hard part of the meal to get right, because A, everyone gets really impatient the moment they ask for the check. If it takes you too long to give it to them, you've ruined the meal. At the same time, I can't drop it on your table before you've asked…”
Guidara: Leaving complimentary liquor bottles at tables yields massive goodwill cheaply
“It didn't cost very much. Rarely do people drink more than that splash. And yet, at the moment where we brought over that big bill, we matched it with a gesture of profound generosity.”
The other half of the tape: Will Guidara's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 13 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ted Seides 13Sam Parr 8Scott McDonald 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Capital Allocators 14
My First Million 8
2026 11 mentions in 11 episodes 1 per episode
- Rebuilding the NYU Endowment – Michelle Knudsen (EP.513)
- Senior Decision Makers: Luis Laboy, Hewlett Foundation (EP.512)
- Senior Decision Makers: Nicholas Csicsko, Trinity Wall Street (EP.508)
- Hotel Investing at EOS – Jonathan Wang (EP.506)
- Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503)
- Will England, Derek Drummond, and Tony Caruso – Disintermediating Pod Shops (EP.501)
- Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
- Alex Sloane & Matt Perelman – Buy-and-Build Playbook in the Core Economy at GSP (EP.499)
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 8 mentions in 1 episode
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Will's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founder, Thank You | 1 | 24 | 80% 4/5 | full record on My First Million → |
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Founder, Thank You | 1 | 18 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Capital Allocators → |