The Exchanges

Q What's the breadth of the portfolio of what you're doing now?

A We're working on sports stadiums with the airlines and tech with financial services. That's the scope of our creative studio. The creative studio is what I call the group that goes in and figures out how to bring these ideas to life and other industries. And we have our gatherings. We do the welcome conference, which is our big event in New York city, which is more of a Ted talk style thing, but centered around hospitality. It's become the biggest hospitality symposium in the world. It's at Lincoln Center. We have the Unreasonable Hospitality Summit, which is a two-day workshop, training, community gathering, and party, effectively, in Nashville. That's been fascinating to see the different industries represented in that small room. Then we have training workshops. I have a couple of people on my team that travel the country doing training workshops for car companies, travel associations. Then there's me doing some speaking, hanging out with people like you, writing some new books and everything in between.

AI assessment note: “We're working on sports stadiums with the airlines and tech with financial services.”

Q Are there any additional ways of making magic from what you discussed in the original book?

A The more time I spend studying this, the more I'm convinced that the systemized stuff does more heavy lifting than I ever realized. When I was writing the book, I'd been creating this culture to live in Madison Park iteratively over the course of many years. Now, when I work with a new company to build it into their culture more quickly than over the course of several years, It's the systemized stuff that infects everyone on the team. In 23, I spoke at Sundance Film Festival. There were so many flight delays that year, and this one was particularly bad. My flight was delayed seven hours. I didn't get to the hotel until four in the morning. I was pulling up in the car, exhausted, desperate to go to bed, gearing up for a long conversation. It's one of my pet peeves with hotels these days is how long the check-in process has become. But when I walked in, There was just one guy in there. His name was Oscar. He was the overnight manager. He's standing there with his arm outstretched, holding my room key, and he goes, Mr. Gadara, you must be exhausted. Here's your key. Go get some sleep. We can check in tomorrow. Smallest gesture. So profound. Because it was exactly what I needed in that moment. Went upstairs, fell right to sleep. Next morning, I've never been more excited in my life to check into a hotel. Ran downstairs, ran around the lobby, found the GM. I was like, dude, Oscar is…

AI assessment note: “the more I'm convinced that the systemized stuff does more heavy lifting”

Q One is Ascension data. Ascension provides workflow software for compensation that allows you to track, plan, and take care of your team. We're excited for you to check out how they can help solve the sticky pain point of compensation. There's a link in the show notes so you can learn more. And here are those closing questions. What was your first paid job, and what'd you learn from it?

A My first paid job was Baskin Robbins in Tarrytown, New York. That was the best. Mrs. Chan, my friend's mom, owned the Baskin Robbins. I got my job there right before the winter, and when you work at Baskin Robbins during the winter, it's a very interesting experience. You end up just hanging out a lot of the time. I remember people would come in and buy a birthday cake, and I had to write happy birthday Ted on the birthday cake. It was not at all easy. I remember having to hide some cakes that I messed up in the first couple weeks of that job because I didn't want to get in trouble for ruining too many cakes when I'd just gotten the job. I learned two things from that. One, from a leadership perspective, it was hard because no one ever taught me how to write on the freaking cake. You can never assume that people know how to do the little things that need to be done well to make something succeed. If you're buying a birthday cake, that's much more important than a scoop of ice cream. Now you're a central part of a big memory in someone's year. Make sure the people that work there know how to make it perfect. Two, on the customer side, way too often we take for granted that even the smallest things are not necessarily easy to execute at a high level. Back to the UPS guy, things like that have made me over time pause for just a little bit longer at every transaction to make sure t…

AI assessment note: “My first paid job was Baskin Robbins in Tarrytown, New York.”

Q When you go through that elevating under 30 different potential touch points, what are examples along the way of a couple of the things that you did?

A Coat check. There's this rule that I love. It's how people normally remember experiences. It's called the peak end rule. People remember the peak of the experience, whatever the furthest deviation is from zero, and then the end. You need to stick the landing. If you go to a restaurant during the winter season in New York City, you end up checking your code. The last part of what is hopefully an amazing experience is you rummaging through your pockets, trying to find the coat check ticket that invariably you can't find right away, and then giving it to someone, then standing cold near the drafty door, waiting for them to bring your coat, and then you leave. Everything is perfectly choreographed right until the end. We saw that as an opportunity. I said, I want it instead to be such that people walk from their table to the front door, and we're just standing there holding their coats. I've worked with magicians a lot over the years. One of my favorite things about working with them is they'll come up with an idea for a trick, and if you ask them, how do you do that? They're like, oh, we don't know yet, but if we like that as an outcome, now we're going to back up and figure it out. Same thing with the coat check. We came up with that idea and then figured out how to make it happen, and it's not that exciting a tale, but what would happen is rather than people going through what t…

AI assessment note: “Coat check. There's this rule that I love.”

Q What are some of your favorite applications that you've seen across different businesses over the last year?

A This is wildly simple and unbelievably impactful. I heard from a guy who owns two UPS stores in Sarasota. Not necessarily the first person I would have written on a list of those I'd expect to hear from about unreasonable hospitality. And he goes, I love your book. I've been trying to figure out how to implement the ideas into my stores, and it's a little bit harder. It's different in my world. I came up with something, and it's changed our entire culture. 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. That one thing changed everything. First, if you were the recipient of the comp, obviously it made your day. Imagine going into a UPS store, shipping something, or printing something, and they're like, Ted, it's on me today. It would blow your mind. This is about exceeding expectations. That would definitively exceed any expectation you ever had. The second one is it changed the employee's entire perspective around the work. For the first time, they were on the receiving end of actual appreciation. We undervalue how important it is to feel validation through appreciation and how important that is to do a good job in your work. There are places where they don't receive it as much. When I heard the story, I started thinking back to, am I as grateful to the people that work …

AI assessment note: “He created a rule where everyone that works the register at the UPS stores”

Q In the aspects of building a culture, you mentioned as one of those tenants, repair. There's an implication something's broken, you got to repair it. What's the thought around repair?

A That one is the final culture in creating a culture of hospitality, the way I've organized it in the field guide, because it's the only one that starts to turn outward as well. As it pertains to leading your team, repair means Knowing when, as a leader, it's time to say, I'm sorry to the people that work for you. You see this all the time. Some of the greatest leaders feel like they need to be perfect and feel like if they've made a mistake and don't apologize for having made it, people won't notice that they made it. Everyone notices. You're hiring great people. They're not stupid. They know when you've done something wrong. When a leader is willing to step up in front of their entire crew and say, I made a mistake. I am sorry. Not only Does it immediately reverse whatever downward trajectory the morale is taking? If you're willing to criticize yourself, the people on your team are going to be that much more willing to receive criticism from you. That level of vulnerability earns you trust. The other form of repair is with the people you serve. There's all this data. 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 talk about that experience the absolute most. I'm fully co…

AI assessment note: “As it pertains to leading your team, repair means Knowing when, as a leader”

Q Which two people have had the biggest impact on your professional life?

A Without question, my dad and Danny Meyer. My dad is my greatest mentor. He's taught me so many different things of his quotes that I carry with me. One is adversity is a terrible thing to waste. I look at my relationship with him, which would not exist at the level it does absent if my mom had not gotten sick. He's reinforced that in me over and over again, and now I can look back with gratitude at some of the most adverse moments of my career, because had they not happened, I would not have done what I went on to do next. Coming in last place is what generated the idea of unreasonable hospitality. When my business partner and I fell out of love and I ended up selling my company, that felt like a pretty devastating moment, and thank God that happened. Otherwise, I would not have written this book, and I would not be getting to do all the exciting things I'm doing now. He gave me this paperweight when I was a kid. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? I love this question. It can call you to greatness if you let it. He's challenged me over and over again. Ask myself this question whenever the most honest answer is. Try to do that. My dad's entire thing was, be audacious. And what you try to achieve and patient in your pursuit of those things. From Danny, the foundation of everything I've built as it pertains to hospitality, but also the power of language t…

AI assessment note: “Without question, my dad and Danny Meyer.”

Q So if you break down those three core components, everybody's always thinking about building a team. What are the things that you've learned about how to build an effective team?

A There's a lot in there about how to hire. One of the biggest things I've learned there is we over index and how much we need people to bring to the table and in doing so filter out the people that might be best for the role. When I was coming up, I had these long lists of things I needed people to have done in order to even be eligible for the job, and what I found more and more was if I'm willing to invest the time, I can teach people a lot of what they need to know, and if I'm willing to invest in my people, it opens up the people I can actually consider such that there are a lot more amazing people to choose from. Interrogate the list of what people need to have done in order to be eligible such that it is short as humanly possible. Some things are required. If it's not required, get it off the list. Open up the filter. It's also a lot about who to fire. One thing I've found over and over again is there's this adage, hire slow, fire fast, which intuitively makes sense. Be very slow before you allow someone to join your team, but if someone is not working out and they're running the risk of poisoning your culture, get them out as quickly as possible. 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 peopl…

AI assessment note: “One of the biggest things I've learned there is we over index”

Q A lot that you described in your dad caring for your mom that sounds very much like unreasonable hospitality. What does that mean to you, that concept?

A My favorite quote about hospitality is one that many have heard. Comes from Maya Angelou. She said, people will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And I believe that to be so very true. When I think back on the experiences that linger with me to this day, those memories are not marked by some detail of the product or service. They're marked by something, whether big or small, that a human being did to make me feel safe. Scene to give me a sense of belonging, to make me feel welcome. A story that they gave me to share, a memory that has lasted. I believe that to be pretty objectively true. Everyone I have ever talked to would agree with me about that. 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 are unreasonable in pursuit of bringing the most fully realized version of the product or service to life. They are relentless. They're willing to do whatever it takes to make that thing as close to perfect as possible. Unreasonable hospitality is just willing to do the same when it comes to people. If it is the stickiest thing you can do in giving people a lasting impression of you, then why not give all of you…

AI assessment note: “Unreasonable hospitality is just willing to do the same when it comes to people.”

Q What are some of the other newer realizations you've had from working with a bunch of different companies in different industries?

A A ton of stuff around AI. One of the questions I get asked frequently centers around this belief system that AI is antithetical to hospitality. I don't believe that to be true. It's how you use it that dictates its impact. When used effectively, it can be one of the greatest tools in our collective toolbox that we use to make people feel all the ways that I try to get people to feel. It is how it's employed, and I see some companies using it purely for efficiency right now. Which is the greatest waste of the technology. Yeah, it makes sense. They're using it to reduce expenses as much as humanly possible. There are other companies that I see using it for some levels of efficiency. Let's say they're saving 10 dollars a year. I'm using obviously a ridiculous number to make it easy. They're putting five of those dollars to their bottom line, and they're reinvesting five dollars to make the human experience as human as humanly possible. The more time I spent talking to those leaders, 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. 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…

AI assessment note: “A ton of stuff around AI. One of the questions I get asked”

Q How did you bring that concept into the restaurant?

A The foundation of it came from Danny. So much of what I have done started with the foundation of That he built. I really tried to build on top of that. Where I started in my restaurant was when we came in last place at the 50 best awards. I wanted to be number one. Like many people, when you set out to achieve a seemingly audacious goal, I looked at those who had been number one before to try to learn lessons from them and figure out how I could make those lessons my own. I talk a lot about the importance of knowing your own superpower so that you can fully Capitalize on it. When I looked around that room, everyone else in it were chefs. I was the only dining room guy. Each one of those chefs, they were unreasonable in pursuit of the food they were serving, their product, 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 our restaurants around the world approach cooking. That night, I decided we were going to be number one, and we're going to do it by being just as unreasonable, but in pursuit of the thing that I stood for. How we made people feel. That's when I wrote unreasonable hospitality down on a cocktail napkin. What came next was figuring out what that actually meant. It took pursuing it to fully discover it. That was alongside the entire team. I love t…

AI assessment note: “What came next was figuring out what that actually meant. It took pursuing it”

Q What's your favorite story that you came through in all these little experiences that you created?

A It's more fun recently for me to talk about my favorite stories as ones that have happened for me in the years since. I was staying in Palm Beach with my wife and my then two-year-old daughter at, uh, Four Seasons. My wife is a pastry chef, and The Breakers is right down the street, and The Breakers is renowned for their key lime pie. In my family, we travel for dessert. One night we left the Four Seasons, went to the Breakers for dinner so we could have the key lime pie. As we're pulling up, I was still a new dad at the time. My daughter speaking to the building that the Breakers is in, because it looks like a Disney castle. She goes, dad, does Elsa live here? In a moment of idiocy, I said, well, yeah, of course she does. Not realizing that the moment we walked into the hotel, she'd be like, all right, dad, let's go meet Elsa.

AI assessment note: “It's more fun recently for me to talk about my favorite stories as ones”