Off the Record With Will Guidara

The Dr. John Delony Show

In this episode, Dr. John Delony sits down with Will Guidara to discuss how the principles of 'unreasonable hospitality' used in the restaur

Key takeaways

• Hospitality is defined as being creative and intentional in the pursuit of relationships.
• Implementing 'systems'—such as scheduling calls or even sex—can actually increase authenticity by ensuring consistency.

Main topics

• Unreasonable Hospitality in marriage
• Relationship systems and scheduling

Notable quotes

Hospitality is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships.

Conclusion

Applying the same level of excellence and service we give to our caree

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) When it comes to the things you would do in restaurants, they were big and sometimes spectacular. But the things that have always caught my attention were the teeny tiny little things. They will tell that story for the rest of their life. When I talk to couples and they're thinking about rebuilding their marriage or reimagining it, they got two kids all of a sudden and they're married. They're different people. Their marriage is different. And they think in terms of Super Bowl. Speaker 1 (0:27) Years ago when I was getting married, the best piece of advice I got was... Speaker 2 (0:37) What Speaker 1 (0:38) up, what up, welcome Speaker 2 (0:39) to Off The Record. Dude, I'm so glad you showed up on a Saturday morning whenever this show dropped or whenever you happen to be getting it in your feed. This is when I sit down with some of my favorite people in the world, folks I've never met but I'm fascinated by, or experts on a topic that I am desperate personally to learn more about, and I know y'all are too. Today's guest is literally one of the greatest people on the planet, and I don't say that lightly. Speaker 2 (1:10) He wrote a book called Unreasonable Hospitality that has had a second, a third, and fourth life. He was one of the creators of the show The Bear. He's also a great friend and one of the greatest human beings ever, just behind closed doors. His name is Will Gadara. You've seen him everywhere. He was originally known as being, I think, the only. restaurant in the United States to win the restaurant of the globe, right? The number one restaurant in the world twice. And he did it through. Speaker 2 (1:47) unreasonable hospitality. They had amazing food, amazing service, amazing whatever, but they took it the next level and said, we're going to give people an experience that they'll never forget. And what's beautiful about Will is that's how he lives his life. That's how he treats just his buddies. I've been on the road with him. We've done events together. I've shared meals with him. That's how he treats everyone. And it's such an impact to me. So I had him on the show. He's got a new field guide, like a how to. Implement unreasonable hospitality in your life and in your home. And we spent a ton of time in this episode. One of my favorite conversations. I left a different man after having this conversation with Will about how we can be people that our spouses, that our kids, that our neighbors exhale when they think about us. How do we shift that pendulum and become? unreasonably hospitable to those around us so we can share kindness, grace, love, and also get Speaker 1 (2:50) stuff done. Speaker 2 (2:51) So buckle up or unbuckle. This is an unbuckle conversation. This isn't a buckle up. Enjoy my conversation with one of the greatest Speaker 1 (3:00) men in the world, Speaker 2 (3:01) Will Speaker 1 (3:01) Gadara. Speaker 2 (3:03) Here's the big picture question. And I want to drill down into some like specifics. Speaker 2 (3:10) Your restaurant is super successful and it becomes number one in the world once and then becomes number one twice. And then you've got this reputation of hospitality that's just maddening, right? Not maddening, it's extraordinary. It's over the top. You write this book that it goes on to become a phenomenon. And now you're helping businesses all across the world, literally. Like reimagine how they love and serve their customers. Ever since I met you just as a person and then we've hung out and then I read your book and I've always thought to myself, this is how my home needs to feel too. And if I, as a guy who has a bunch of small businesses that I'm a part of, how dare I think about my customers, the people I'm trying to help, more so than my wife? or than my kids or than my parents. What a weird energy swap. And so the inertia to push through that and say, why does my wife get my thirds and fourths and fifths and the people I'm trying to help get my firsts and my seconds, right? Speaker 2 (4:29) That's been a two or three year slog through literature through all therapy through all sort like how did we all get here to where the people closest to us get our Get the least of us right get our short Snappy I'll be there whenever what about me's and then we go here to somebody else's mission right to make other people feel good and Speaker 2 (4:53) That stumped me. It's been a wild thing. And the biggest picture, the biggest, one of the biggest ahas I've had over the last couple of years of this project of is marriage still worth it? And if it is, how do you do it? Is this idea that we have to celebrate each other? And the, I, every time I bring that up to a group, to individuals, everyone looks down. Speaker 2 (5:19) almost to a person. It's like, yeah, I don't remember the last time I told him I'm proud of him. I don't remember the last time I told her, hey, stop, stop, stop. You are beautiful. Or I saw what happened last night with our daughter and you did a great job with that. I just want you to know I saw that. We don't do that. And it's almost, I can't do, people feel like they're losing, right? And so I was like, dude, I gotta talk to Will. I gotta figure out how to take this thing that is turning the business world over on its head globally. and say, how do I bring this to my house, right? How do I honor my spouse with this? How do I honor my dad with this, my mom with this, my kids with this, in a way that they leave knowing that Speaker 1 (6:00) guy loves me and cares about me? Speaker 2 (6:03) It's Speaker 1 (6:03) so funny. It's actually been something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about recently. I just wrote the bonus chapter for the field guide. We hid this wild game inside of that book. And for those that find it and play it and win it, you get the bonus chapter. And then of the people that get there, there's another game. And the one person who wins that. gets an all expense paid trip to the welcome conference next year in new york city so it's been really fun but a bonus chapter is normally like a throwaway thing and Speaker 2 (6:37) and Speaker 1 (6:38) i wanted to use it as an opportunity just to challenge my own thinking and just write about something the same but new and it's about bringing unreasonable hospitality into life Speaker 1 (6:51) The final quote in the field guide is hospitality is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. I think that is for me the best definition of the word hospitality. And by the way, it requires both creativity and intention. It's one thing to be intentional, to choose to pursue a relationship, but that only gets you so far absent thinking about the person as an individual and figuring out what is the most creative way to make them feel seen or loved or appreciated. It requires both. Speaker 1 (7:27) Now on the side, or somewhat related, years ago when I was getting married, the best piece of advice I got was from older friends who said, you need to wake up every day and make the choice to pursue your wife. We were just talking about this before we pressed record, how marriage is a wild thing. You change, they change, and if you're not careful... Always changing. It's like persistent change. Both people need to be pursuing one another to not lose each other in the process. Now in work. It's easy to be intentional and creative in pursuit of something because we come into work, we have however many hours a day, we have people around us, there's brainstorming, there's persistent thinking, like this show. Speaker 2 (8:17) The Speaker 1 (8:18) amount of creativity and intention that you put into making this show great, and it happens outside of the time you're actually having these conversations, I'm sure, right? You and your team are, how do we make the podcast better? And that applies to everything you do. There's a math problem where... I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old. I'm at work. I have all of these meetings, these deep thinking sessions. Then I go home and it's chaos until the moment I go to bed. There's no time to think. And what I've learned for me. Speaker 1 (8:47) It boils down to systems. It's one of the paradigm shifts of all of my work is that hospitality is not just surrounding yourself with bubbly people and saying, go be kind. It's a practice. It's a muscle and it's strengthened through systems. The same is true in how we bring it to our lives. And so I'll tell you about some of the systems I've developed that have helped me. pursue the people that I care about more consistently. Okay, before Speaker 2 (9:17) we do that, why do I have, so whenever I tell couples who have two young kids, Speaker 1 (9:22) you're Speaker 2 (9:23) not going to like this, but y'all, every week, when you're able to get together, look at your calendar for the upcoming week, just be honest about what's coming your way. and put sex on the calendar and Speaker 1 (9:33) they're Speaker 2 (9:34) like ah i mean like but that's not it just isn't is right now yeah just plan for it and that will actually prove that you value this thing and that you're intentional about it and they always go i have that innate feeling when you say you need to put systems in your house and i know you're right why do i have that well Speaker 1 (9:56) because you're Speaker 2 (9:57) Does that make sense? Is that, is that, I've been over Hollywood? No, no, no, no, no, no, Speaker 1 (10:00) no, Speaker 2 (10:00) no. Speaker 1 (10:00) That's totally, that's totally reasonable. You put a system to something, it makes it feel less authentic. It demystifies it. Yeah. And yet, I don't believe that to be true. Speaker 2 (10:08) It's not true at all. No. It actually, Speaker 1 (10:10) it's like, ensures that it happens more consistently. Speaker 2 (10:13) If, if, if all of your band plays in key, or in the same, in the same chord structure, now y'all can write a great song, right? A hundred percent. Otherwise it's just noise. But there's something about like, But Speaker 1 (10:24) I'll give you an example. So my dad, my dad is so unbelievably important. Yeah. Speaker 2 (10:28) And Speaker 1 (10:28) my dad and I used to talk all the time. Speaker 2 (10:32) I'm Speaker 1 (10:33) saying like once a day, once every two days at least. And then I had kids. We can talk about my wife in a second, but my dad, that was the first to drop because there's Speaker 2 (10:43) no time. Speaker 1 (10:44) Right. Speaker 1 (10:46) And I didn't like that. Now, I happen to be in a season where I travel a lot. I'm on a lot of planes right now. And so my system with my dad is every time I am waiting to board a plane, I call my dad. Speaker 2 (11:00) It's Speaker 1 (11:00) just become rude. Now... Is that less thoughtful? It feels less authentic, but it's not. It Speaker 2 (11:09) maybe feels less authentic, but it feels actually more thoughtful because you've designed it. And by the way, Speaker 1 (11:14) the conversations are still organic, thoughtful, and spontaneous. But it means that on certain weeks, I'm talking about 12 times a week. Which is way more than waiting for spontaneous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 (11:30) It's the same thing when I'm, sometimes my wife is away for work. I'll put the kids down and I'll go downstairs and I'll have a glass of wine and I'm doing whatever I do. And if I ever catch myself scrolling through Instagram, I'll close it. And in my notes app, I have a list of like 15 friends that I'm just looking to catch up. I'll start calling them all one at a time. So one picks up. And when I get their voicemail, I'll be like, don't call me back. You missed your window, but I love you. And Speaker 2 (11:56) then Speaker 1 (11:56) I just move on to the next person. Like there's these little systems that we can bake into our lives just to make sure that we are reminded to reach out to the people that we love the most. Now, the other thing I've learned. Dude, I'd love that. Is we used to say this in the restaurant. It was built around this culture of collaboration where I wanted everyone's ideas. It was my decision. Ultimately, it was my point of view, but it was a collaborative process to get there. And it was not uncommon for someone on my team to say, I'm just not that creative. And I think that's BS. I think everyone's creative. Like hospitality, it's a practice. The more creative you are, the more creative you become. Speaker 1 (12:43) People who misunderstand creativity think of it as like a lightning bolt that strikes you. That's not true. Like if you want to, did you ever see, what was the Beatles documentary? Speaker 2 (12:53) I Speaker 1 (12:54) haven't watched it. Speaker 2 (12:55) I need to spend a whole, I know. Everyone who knows Speaker 1 (12:57) I love Speaker 2 (12:57) music, it's like, what are you doing, man? Speaker 1 (12:58) They didn't have an album. They sat in a studio for a week. They had an album. Like they forced creativity. And so with certain things. I will just book an hour in the middle of my workday to think about the things that are coming up in life. Because what I realized is I had an inability to bring hospitality into my life because I didn't have any margin to think about how to be creative and how I was bringing it. a birthday or an anniversary or how I wanted to change how Christmas worked with my kids, whatever it was. Like these things don't just happen. You need to decide that you're going to invest the time to make them happen. And we all have margin. It's just a matter of what we do with it. I've heard that. Speaker 1 (13:46) There's been some Speaker 2 (13:47) breakdowns of I don't have time to work out. I don't have time to go see a counselor and Then it's like let's pull up your Netflix log and your scrolling log. Yeah, that's four hours yesterday. Yeah, like you got time. Mm-hmm Speaker 1 (14:01) Yeah. But. I'd be intentional about using that time. This morning, I have a trainer that I work with on Zoom because I'm always all over the place. That's the system that works for me. And I worked out with him for 45 minutes this morning. Had I not had that on my calendar, I probably would have wasted some time on Instagram. Of course. Over coffee. Yeah. The more I can systemize. Speaker 1 (14:27) doing the things that I know I want to do. Yeah. The less I'm going to do the things I don't want to do and the more consistently I'm going to be moving towards the person I want to become. So it's almost, it's the, I Speaker 2 (14:40) think at some point we have to as a culture say it's a fallacy that we're just going to stumble into it. Speaker 1 (14:44) Yeah. Speaker 2 (14:45) Like whether it's relationships, being a good parent or I remember my being frustrated. I didn't understand. I. It shocked my wife, and then it shocked me that it shocked her that when we had our son, I'd never put a diaper on a kid before. It did not work. It was a new technology for me. And I kept getting the tape. I put it on backwards. I put it wrong. I had duct tape for a while. I love the way you're using actual tape. Yeah, I mean, I used duct tape. It held way better than that stupid stuff on there. But I finally, quickly would see her disappointment, see my son's discomfort, and I said the words, I don't know how to do this. Right? Yes. And she would say, let me just do it. And years later, when we're deciding if we're going to stay married, those kind of things came up. And she was like, this was the same guy that I saw you agree to play a song with a band that you did not know. Not only did you not know how to play it, you weren't good enough to play it yet. And I watched you learn to get good enough to then learn how to play that song and then to perform it in front of a thousand people. I know that guy. And so when you gave up on this and she was right, like I had decided this isn't worth figuring out. I'll just let you do that. And I think for me, there was so much disappointment around it, embarrassment, shame, all that. I let all that just be like, you know what? I don't know how to do it. But it's, it's at the end of the day, as much as I want to be all woo woo and mental health as a choice, as a choice to say like, you know what? I don't know how to do this thing. I have to figure out how to do this thing. Because I want to be this kind of dad who, right? And that goes across the board. So if you've never spent an hour thinking, how can I overly love my spouse well? Then you plan that hour and it's going to be awkward and weird, right? Yes. For a while until Speaker 1 (16:35) something happens. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it's like anything. Nothing happens all at once. Yeah. But I guarantee you, we'll talk