What can a $2 hot dog teach you about building a better business?
For Will Guidara, quite a lot.
Guidara was leading Eleven Madison Park when he overheard a table of guests mention one thing they had missed during their trip to New York: eating a hot dog from a street cart. He ran outside, bought one and convinced the kitchen to serve it before their final savory course.
The reaction changed the way he thought about hospitality.
In this conversation with Derrick Kinney, Guidara explains how that moment became part of a much larger approach to business, one built around being present, making people feel seen and giving teams the freedom to create experiences customers remember.
The principles extend well beyond restaurants. Guidara makes the case that financial services, real estate, retail and other service businesses are all in the business of serving people, with opportunities to turn ordinary interactions into something more personal.
He also discusses why leaders need to spend time on the front lines, how greater ownership can bring better ideas out of a team and the 95/5 rule that gave Eleven Madison Park room to invest in gestures that were difficult to measure but hard for guests to forget.
For financial advisors, the question is a useful one: What would change if client experience received the same attention as the product or service itself?
Key Takeaways
- Hospitality is a business strategy. Any service business can create stronger relationships by paying attention to how clients feel.
- Personal beats expensive. The most memorable gestures are often the ones that make someone feel specifically seen.
- Stay close to the front line. Direct contact with clients and employees can surface insights leaders otherwise miss.
- Give teams ownership. Employees are more invested when they have the freedom to shape the client experience.
- Make room for the unmeasurable. Guidara’s 95/5 rule reserves resources for memorable experiences whose value may not show up neatly on a spreadsheet.
Listen to the Conversation
Transcript
Derrick Kinney
Welcome to the Derrick Kinney Podcast on Modern American Advisor. Each week we revisit one of my most valuable conversations to bring advisors practical ideas to grow their businesses, serve their clients, and make more money to do more good. Will Guidara was just 26 when he took over Eleven Madison Park, a two-star struggling restaurant in the heart of New York City. Eleven years later, Eleven Madison Park was named the best restaurant in the world. So how did Will pull off the transformation of the century? He calls it unreasonable hospitality. Today, Will is revealing how he led his team to surprise and delight guests in every way imaginable.
That might mean surprising a family who had never seen snow with a sledding trip after dinner or creating a secret sign language to serve guests more efficiently. Plus, he shares how any business can be a hospitality business and how the most genuine acts of hospitality don’t have to be expensive or even extravagant. Oh, and make sure you listen for Will’s story about how a simple hot dog made his guests freak out in the best way possible. This is one of my favorite conversations I’ve had, and I can’t wait for you to hear it. Will, welcome to the podcast.
Will Guidara
Thank you so much. I’m really, really, really happy to be here.
Derrick Kinney
Well, to start, can you share with our listeners the story of how you started in the restaurant industry and how you first thought of the words unreasonable hospitality?
Will Guidara
Yeah. So, I mean, I grew up in the restaurant business. My dad was a restaurateur my entire life. My mom was in the hospitality business. She was a flight attendant with American Airlines. And so, it truly is all I’ve ever known. My dad was my hero growing up, and that’s one of the things I feel most blessed for. He and I are, to this day, extremely close. And honestly, I just wanted to be like him. It probably didn’t even matter what he did for a living. That would have been the thing that I wanted to do.
I just happened to luck out in the sense that what he did was something I completely fell in love with. I used to go to work with him all the time when I was a kid. Anyone who works in restaurants can relate to this, or if you have friends that do, you can kind of relate to it. If you want to spend time with your dad and he’s in the restaurant business, you go to work with your dad.
Derrick Kinney
Right.
Will Guidara
That’s how you get quality time. And I was always just enchanted by the energy in the dining rooms and the kitchens of the places he ran. I believe that a great restaurant, if they’re intentional in their pursuit of it, they create these profound conditions for connection. And when you’re in them, the rest of the world can be put on pause and all that’s left is you and the person you’re with.
And I often say that, and I actually have come to believe that this applies to businesses far beyond restaurants, but that we have an opportunity or perhaps even a responsibility to create these little magical worlds in a world that needs more magic.
Derrick Kinney
Mm-hmm.
Will Guidara
and I felt that when I was a kid, I most certainly didn’t articulate it like that, but I was just hooked to it. And I’ve pursued this industry ever since then, um, working in all sorts of different restaurants at every single position all the way up and kind of building a strong foundation until the point that I finally ended up owning my own company. The idea of unreasonable hospitality came into play later in my career when I finally owned my own company and my flagship restaurant, which was called Eleven Madison Park, had been added to the list of the 50 best restaurants in the world.
And this was coming at a time where we were already doing really well. We were kind of one of the hottest restaurants in America. We had all of the stars and the accolades and the awards and everything. And we went to London for the first ceremony that we were attending for the World’s 50 Best. And here’s how it works. When you go there, you know, you are one of the 50 best restaurants in the world, but you don’t know until you get there where on that list you fall.
Derrick Kinney
Wow.
Will Guidara
And so you walk in and there’s assigned seating and you sit down and you’re like, kind of, you know, eagerly awaiting the thing to start. And they start at 50 and they count down to 1. The thing is kind of like the Oscars in that you’re dressed in a tuxedo. It’s not like the Oscars and that you don’t want them to call your name for as long as possible because they’re starting at 50. And so I guessed we were going to come in at number 35 or something. I was pretty optimistic.
And I’m sure there was some amount of preamble before they started, but the British MC kicked it off by saying, coming in at number 50, a new entry from New York City, Eleven Madison Park. We had come in last place.
Derrick Kinney
Okay.
Will Guidara
perspective being what it is. We were one of the World’s 50 Best, but in that room, we came in last. My dad always says, of the many things that I quote him having said, that adversity is a terrible thing to waste.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
You can’t always control what’s thrown at you, but you can control how you react to it, what you learn from it, how you let it fuel you, how you allow it to push you forward. And that night, after leaving the party early because we were feeling bad for ourselves and grabbing a bottle of whiskey and drinking and processing through the stages of grief.
Derrick Kinney
Right, right.
Will Guidara
We ultimately realized that we didn’t deserve to be that much further up on that list. We were a great restaurant. We had unbelievable food, really great service, a beautiful dining room, but we hadn’t yet done anything that impactful. When I looked at the other restaurants that had topped that list, they did because the chefs were unreasonable in their pursuit of the food they served and the technique they used and the ingredients they sourced. They moved the conversation forward by being unreasonable in their pursuit of their craft.
Derrick Kinney
Will Guidara
And I decided that night that I wanted my impact to be driven by the same relentlessness, but in pursuit of something else. I wanted to be unreasonable about how I made people feel.
Derrick Kinney
See, what I like about that is you think about the word unreasonable, which sort of gets this negative connotation, like it’s the argumentative customer who’s berating the restaurant owner, but I want a refund. And you’re talking about a standard, the highest level of standard that says anything less than is unreasonable. I love what you said earlier about setting the conditions for connection. You know, when I go to the Apple Store, for example, I always like to compare the Apple Store with the— I think it may be defunct now, but some of the Microsoft stores they had at the mall.
Will Guidara
Yeah.
Derrick Kinney
And you walk into the Microsoft Store and it’d be like, I’m going to Best Buy and I’m buying a computer. It’s just this normal expected. But when you go into the Apple Store, it’s like they give you this suit filled with electricity and you’re like on fire. There’s this, this aura in the room. And to your point, You know, when it’s happening, you don’t even have to create it. You walk in and you feel like, I’m part of something special right now. So talk about, if you would, because your book Unreasonable Hospitality that I’m holding right now is such a gem.
You’ve really given us probably a 50% tip just with this book. This is so, so good. But break down for us the core pillars of unreasonable hospitality.
Will Guidara
Yeah, for sure. and the one thing I want to say, just like underlining what you just said a moment ago about the word unreasonable, because yeah, I think depending on what it comes before, it has very, very different meanings.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
But when you look at anyone and anyone listening to this, look at the people you admire in your life that you know, or those that you admire from afar who’s been very successful in achieving something. They’re unreasonable in their pursuit of that thing. For me, unreasonable just means you are willing to do whatever it takes to bring an idea to life. The thing is, most people are unreasonable in pursuit of creating a product. I just believe it’s time for us, all of us, to start being just as unreasonable in pursuit of how we serve that product and how we make the people who we’re serving it to feel.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
that said, when I wrote unreasonable hospitality down, that night in London, because I did. I wrote, we will be number one in the world. Underneath it, I wrote unreasonable hospitality, which that comes from this idea that if you don’t have the confidence and conviction to say your greatest, most audacious goal out loud, it’s unlikely you’re ever going to achieve it.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
And it takes some vulnerability to do that, because if you do say it out loud and you fail to achieve it, well, you might think you’re going to let yourself and those around you down, but Well, if you try, even if you fail, you’re going to get a whole lot further down the road by virtue of having tried. But when I wrote those words down, I’m not even sure I understood what they meant. I think that’s okay though. I think it’s okay to start pursuing a goal without understanding it completely, so long as you feel enough of a connection to it and you will figure it out along the way.
The day I figured it out was on a busier than normal lunch service at our restaurant when I was in the dining room helping out the servers and I was clearing appetizers from a table of four food lovers who were on vacation in New York just to check out all the best restaurants. And they were on their way to the airport to head back home after their meal. And I overheard them talking and they were going on about like this restaurant and that restaurant and this restaurant. Now they’re at Eleven Madison Park. But then one of them jumped in.
Yeah, but you know what we never had was a hot dog from one of those street carts. And man, it was just one of those like light bulb moments. I ran back into the kitchen, dropped off their plates, ran outside to the hot dog cart, bought a hot dog, ran back into the kitchen, somehow convinced my chef to serve it in our fancy fine dining restaurant.
Derrick Kinney
All right.
Will Guidara
And we cut it into these perfect pieces and plated it in a really fancy way. And before their final savory course, which was a honey lavender glazed Muscovy duck that had been dry aged for two weeks, utilizing a technique that had taken years to perfect. I brought out what, in New York, we call a dirty water dog and put it on their table. And I said, hey, I want to make sure you don’t go home with any culinary regrets. Here’s a New York City hot dog.
Derrick Kinney
Wow.
Will Guidara
And my gosh, they freaked out.
Derrick Kinney
Wow.
Will Guidara
I mean, I’d served Wagyu beef and lobster and caviar and foie gras, like all the expensive stuff. I’d never seen anyone react the way that they did to that hot dog. You know, athletes, you always hear about them going to the tapes when they’ve had a bad game to see what they could have done better. You don’t often enough hear about them going to the tapes when they’ve had a good game to see what they did well, to make sure they keep on doing that.
When you go to the tapes, when you’ve had a good game to see what you should keep on doing, that’s when you put intention to intuition. It’s when you make sure you systemize what just at one point was an impulse. And so I started thinking about it constantly and ultimately it boiled down to three things. And this is what I think, like, kind of the three tentpoles of being unreasonable with hospitality are. One, you have to be present. And That’s kind of a woo-woo thing. It’s way overused.
But for me, when I say that, I mean, you’re just so, you care so much about the person you’re with that you stop caring about everything else you need to do.
Derrick Kinney
Yes. Yes.
Will Guidara
Multitasking doesn’t work in relationships. And in fact, if you are completely present with whoever you’re with, when you’re with them, I believe you can spend half as much time with that person and have it matter twice as much.
Derrick Kinney
That’s a good ratio right there. You probably helped save a lot of marriages just with that ratio right there.
Will Guidara
Yeah. I mean, how often do you see people spending time together and on their phone and they’re, they’re together, but they’re not really together?
Derrick Kinney
No.
Will Guidara
I think multitasking is a myth, but if I hadn’t been present at that table, I never would’ve heard the throwaway line about the hot dog. The second one is take what you do seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Too often, especially in customer service organizations, we spend so much time pursuing these brands that we’re trying to construct, the version of us that we want the world to see. And I understand that brands are important, but too often in pursuing them, we let these self-imposed standards stand in the way of us giving the people around us the things that will actually make them happy.
A dirty water hot dog in a four-star restaurant is sacrilegious until you look at the way it made them feel. And then third, they felt four-star. Yeah, it felt, it felt the most four-star. And by the way, it wouldn’t have felt that way to anyone else in the room, but it did to them. Which brings the third point up. If the goal is to give people a sense of genuine belonging, Then one size fits one.
I really believe I could have given that table a free bottle of expensive champagne and a bunch of caviar, and it would not have had the same impact as the $2 hot dog because it would not have been specific to them. You know, hospitality is about making people feel seen. The best way to do that is to not treat them like a commodity, but a unique individual.
Derrick Kinney
Yes. And Will, let me ask you this because If I heard you correctly, at this point you’re the owner of the restaurant, is that correct?
Will Guidara
Yeah.
Derrick Kinney
But you were busing tables.
Will Guidara
Yeah.
Derrick Kinney
So what intrigued me then is that you put yourself in an intentional position to hear what your focus group was telling you. And that strikes me that that may be a bit unusual for other restaurant owners. And so, what would you say to someone who’s listening thinking, well, clearing a table, that’s sort of beneath my job title, but you were doing it and it created a moment that people will probably talk about for years. It’s gonna sell a ton more books. It’s gonna help a lot more speaking gigs.
Will Guidara
Exactly.
Derrick Kinney
Because it’s a relatable story that shows people even the simplest things can have the biggest amount of magnitude. And you, created this experience. So why do you think more people don’t be as intentional as you were in that moment?
Will Guidara
Listen, anyone who owns any sort of company and is not systemized in taking time at whatever interval they deem appropriate to actually get in the trenches with their team is losing out on an amazing opportunity at a bunch of different levels. One, just to gain empathy for the thing that the people that work for them are doing. Two, to show the team that they’re just as willing to roll up their sleeves and do what they’re doing. Three, to show that they can do it.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
Right? And four, because so many insights that an owner has are not fully formed until they also have the capacity to see their world through the lens of the people on the front line. I’ve had great ideas that until I’ve actually gotten out there and started, you know, road testing them on the front line, they actually weren’t great. But like when you’re in there, when you’re actually doing the work, when you’re connecting with the people that you’re ultimately in business to serve directly, that’s when I think ideas go from good to extraordinary.
Derrick Kinney
My prediction, Will, is I think what your book and concept will do, it’s going to cause a lot of CEOs and VPs who are tethered to the ivory tower to be making trips to local offices to see how their ideas play out in real time. I think that’s going to become a big differentiator of what you’ve laid out for us in this roadmap. So thank you for that. I think it’s going to create a more holistic perspective on how people view implementation of these business ideas. Just a prediction.
Will Guidara
You know, the The other thing I would just say real quick, and I know we’re getting off track here, but one of the main things I talk about a lot in the book is like building a culture of collaboration and having the confidence as a boss to understand that sometimes the best ideas are going to come from the people that work for you, not from you.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
Yes. And it’s all well and good to talk about a culture of collaboration and to say to your team, my doors are always open, but until you actually spend time with the people that work for the people who work for the people who work for the people who work for you, they’re not actually gonna be that comfortable walking through your door no matter how open it is. But when you actually get in and spend time with the people in your company such that they grow to trust you, that’s when they’re gonna open up and share ideas with you. And those ideas could be the ones that transform your business.
Derrick Kinney
That is so powerful. I mean, that, uh, You think about somebody who may be making $20 an hour, but if you listen to that person who is on the front line caring for the very customers that you’re spending millions of dollars to bring in the door, that $20 an hour person could help generate $20 million for a business if listened to appropriately and intentionally.
Will Guidara
Yeah.
Derrick Kinney
Now, I think that many business owners are listening and thinking, look, I know these principles work in a restaurant, but what about my industry? You know, what if I’m a financial advisor, a realtor, a gym owner? Can you give us some examples, Will, of how you’ve seen business owners across a lot of different sectors implement these principles? Yeah.
Will Guidara
So, I mean, the first thing I’d say is, okay, the US used to be a manufacturing economy. Now we’re a service economy, and dramatically so. More than three-quarters of our GDP is driven by service industries. That means that whether you’re in construction or financial services or computing or real estate or retail or insurance, the list goes on. You actually do the exact same thing for a living that I do. You’re in the business of serving other people. And if you start to look closely enough, you’re going to start to find these opportunities for unreasonable hospitality to give people more than they could ever possibly expect all around you.
Take real estate agents, for example. So I live in New York City. Every time I bought or rented a new apartment, the real estate agent has at best left me a bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge as my thank-you or congratulations gift. Oh, that’s great. Now people say, yeah, you’re in the restaurant business. This is easy for you. Okay. In the restaurant, maybe we get 3 hours of time to get to know someone. A real estate agent, I mean, you spend weeks, months, maybe in some cases years with them looking together for your new home.
If they’ve been paying attention, they should know almost every intimate detail about your life. And so imagine if the first time my wife and I went to the apartment that we ended up falling in love with, the real estate agent overheard her talking about the nook where the sun was kind of like washing into the apartment where she could imagine herself doing yoga in every morning. And imagine if when we moved into that apartment, instead of the obligatory bottle of bubbles, there was a brand new yoga mat in that nook with a candle and a note that said, welcome to your new home.
Derrick Kinney
Yeah.
Will Guidara
Yeah. Now, like the three things I want to seize on here. One, it’s not that much more expensive than a bottle of champagne. Two, it will make the real estate agent’s life more fun because creativity, like adding another level of creativity into your work, makes the work more intriguing and therefore easier to throw yourself into. And Three, it’s a very insignificant investment in what will invariably become a lifelong relationship. Like if that happened, you’re never going to another real estate agent.
Derrick Kinney
Right.
Will Guidara
But you can think about that. I guarantee you, anyone listening to this, if you just do some simple pattern recognition, because by the way, it doesn’t always need to be these improvisational call and response ideas. Through simple pattern recognition, you can come up with a lot of stuff. If you sell cars, you know that people buy cars for a few different reasons. Either they’re building a family, they need a minivan. Or they’re bringing their kid who just turned 16, they’re getting their first car, or finally the kids are out of the house and they’re trading in the minivan for a sports car, right?
At each one of those inflection points, you could have a gift locked and loaded in the back that makes that person feel seen, whether it’s buying a AAA membership for the kid who’s getting their first car. By the way, it’s like $50, $60, $70 compared to the price of the car, whether it’s for the person that just bought a minivan. Get them a bag of Goldfish so their kid doesn’t get hangry on the car ride home. Like, there’s—
Derrick Kinney
Right, right.
Will Guidara
There’s a million different ideas. And what I found with my team, and this was so crucial because all these things that we did in the restaurant, all the ideas that the hot dog gave birth to, they weren’t all my ideas. I gave everyone on my team the permission and the resources to bring their own ideas to life. And suddenly, They weren’t just serving plates of food that someone else had created. They were coming up with their own ideas and those ideas were impacting the experience.
And I’ve never met a single person in my life who won’t throw themselves more wholeheartedly into the work when they have a hand in developing the thing they’re serving. It’s like turning salespeople into product designers. The moment they feel more of an ownership over the thing they’re selling, the more sense of ownership they start to embody in the way that they sell it.
Derrick Kinney
One of the takeaways I’m getting from our conversation, Will, is something that I’ve talked about and I’ve embraced in my own businesses. And that is, you know, people will buy the product or service with certain expectations, but what they remember and they talk about is how it made them feel. You know, and Maya Angelou’s famous quote is, you know, it’s that people always remember how you made them feel. And that’s—
Will Guidara
Yeah.
Derrick Kinney
You know, you talk about the yoga mat, that’s the story. that gets told to the friend and the relative, and all those people become customers, all for the price of creativity, which was free and probably maybe $20.
Will Guidara
Yeah. You know, like one of the things people talk about all the time with products is how sticky they are, right? How is, how sticky is the relationship between people and the product? You brought up Apple, right? That’s a very sticky brand. The moment someone has an Apple phone. It takes a lot to get them to trade phones. They like the way that holding an iPhone makes them feel.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
But here’s the thing. No product will ever make you feel as good as an interaction with a person will. As sticky as creating the perfect product is, there’s nothing in the world that is stickier than profoundly gracious hospitality.
Derrick Kinney
Let that sink in, folks. That’s, that’s rich right there. Just— and what you’re talking about is just the power of connection. When all these things, you know, their favorite food or you’re basically what you’re describing, Will, is you’re identifying the problem that people have and how can you make their life better by enhancing the experience? I love that so much.
Will Guidara
Well, and then, and then I just want to add this one more thing because, yes, Here’s the best news about it. For me, adopting this principle and this strategy into your business, it’s a win-win-win. The customers are happier than ever. And when the customers are happy, your bottom line grows, right? Your revenue goes up and the customers are happy. And most of that flows through to the bottom. But the team is happier too. I’ve already talked about how much more committed to the work they are, but also the team, yourself included,, are just happier because it feels really, really good to make other people happy.
One of the things we are collectively struggling right now with across industries is staffing. People complain of depletion and burnout, but there are few things more energizing than seeing the look of complete joy on someone else’s face when they receive a gift you are responsible for giving them. Too many people’s solution to workplace burnout is to say more more work-life balance. But if work is depleting and life is restoring, then you spend all of your time in life restoring yourself just to go be depleted again at work.
If you create a culture of hospitality, work is depleting sometimes, but it also naturally restores you, and then you can just enjoy the time in life when you have it.
Derrick Kinney
I love that. I think that’s so well said. And I want to talk about money for just a bit as we wrap things up here. You talk about in your book, You have a rule called 95/5. Can you explain what that means and how you implement that?
Will Guidara
Yeah, The 95/5 rule is how I always ran my businesses. And basically it meant that 95% of the time I managed every penny like a maniacal person.
Derrick Kinney
Okay.
Will Guidara
I mean, like, you know, down to the literal penny. such that 5% of the time I could spend, “foolishly”. And I put foolishly in quotes because at times the way that that money is spent feels foolish, but in fact, it’s the smartest money you’ll ever spend. That money is the hot dog or the gestures that came next, whether it was buying guests sleds and sending them to Central Park because we overheard them saying that it was their kids’ first time seeing snow, or filling our private dining room up with sand and beach chairs because a couple told us they were in the restaurant because their beach vacation had been canceled.
That kind of thing to most people sounds foolish, but the ripple effect of that kind of spending is the kind that propels your business to a different stratosphere. One of the main things I think that so many people struggle with, especially bigger companies, it’s that whole idiom, what gets measured gets managed.
Derrick Kinney
Yes.
Will Guidara
The 5% is only foolish because it’s harder to measure an exact return on it. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a return. In fact, I think the return is often the biggest return you can see.
Derrick Kinney
You know, Will, as we wrap things up, I like to ask each of our guests, uh, it comes out of my book, Good Money Revolution, what is your generosity purpose? And that’s a cause or an injustice, a wrong you want to right. There’s something that you support in the world or in your local community that really drives you. And I’m curious what that might be for you and why you might care about it.
Will Guidara
So, I mean, for a long time, I was always really spending a bunch of time with hunger relief organizations. That was the natural thing to do at the restaurant. But, you know, I sold my restaurants at the beginning of 2020, and then 2 months later, COVID hit. And so I try to spend my time right now providing care to the caregivers. And so I’ve spent a bunch of time on this thing called the Independent Restaurant Coalition, which is just this— it’s, it’s a group that we put together to support independent restaurants, many of whom have really had a real hard go at it through the pandemic.
And honestly, to this day, um, I think Anything I can do to breathe life into an industry that breathes life to so many other people in so many other industries feels like the most scalable way that I can give back.
Derrick Kinney
I love that. Well, Will, we could have talked for hours today. His new book, Unreasonable Hospitality, it’s on sale wherever only the finest books, the four-star books are sold. You’ll find his book right there. Will Guidara, thanks for being on. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation today.
Will Guidara
Hey, I appreciate it, man.
Derrick Kinney
What a down-to-earth interview that was. All right, let’s talk about the key points of our conversation that you can apply right now. First of all, I loved how Will talked about the rule of 95/5. You remember that? Manage 95% of your money down to the penny and then spend 5% foolishly. I really like that. And Will says that’s the smartest money you’ll ever spend. And then when you surprise and delight your customers, they become loyal to you. It creates this ripple effect for your business. I mean, imagine family gatherings around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and they’re talking about a hospitality story at your business. How gold is that?
It’s like the ultimate referral for your business. And perhaps the biggest takeaway of this interview was his hot dog story. I love that. But one thing that was behind the scenes I wanted to bring out in our conversation was he was busing the tables. Now, why that matters is this is the owner of one of the top restaurants in the world, but he intentionally put himself out there where he could listen to what his customers were telling him.
So many business owners, as I consult with them all around the country, the fatal mistake we help them correct is they’ve removed themselves so far away from the customer that they’re working on the business and not in the business. This is a clarion call to you to get back in your business and be with your customers so that you can hear what worries them and frustrates them and what brings them joy so that you can attract more of them and create more amazing hospitality stories. Thanks for listening to the Derrick Kinney Podcast on Modern American Advisor.
Do you want to attract more $3 million to $10 million clients and grow your business? Then check out successforadvisors.com. That’s successforadvisors.com. And remember, if you want a business that’s booming, focus on the human. We’ll see you next time.
About Will Guidara
Will Guidara is a restaurateur, author and hospitality entrepreneur whose career has centered on the relationship between service, leadership and experience.
He is best known for his time leading Eleven Madison Park in New York City. When the restaurant first appeared on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, it entered at No. 50. Guidara and his team set out to reach No. 1, eventually taking the top spot.
That pursuit helped shape the philosophy he calls “unreasonable hospitality”: bringing the same ambition and attention to how people feel as a business brings to the product itself.
Guidara is the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, which takes that philosophy beyond the dining room and into a broader conversation about business, culture, teams and the experiences people remember.
FAQs
What does Will Guidara mean by “unreasonable hospitality”?
For Guidara, unreasonable hospitality means being as ambitious about how people feel as you are about the product or service you provide. It is less about extravagance than attention: noticing what matters to someone and acting on it.
What is the 95/5 rule?
Guidara’s 95/5 rule brings discipline and generosity into the same operating model. Manage 95% of the budget closely, then leave 5% for ideas that may be difficult to justify on a spreadsheet but can make an experience memorable.
What can financial advisors take from unreasonable hospitality?
The advice may be the product, but it is not the entirety of the client experience. Guidara’s approach asks advisors to consider what happens around the advice: how closely they listen, how personal the relationship feels and whether clients feel genuinely known.
Why does Guidara believe leaders should stay close to the front line?
Because distance can obscure what is actually happening inside the business. Guidara argues that time on the front line gives leaders a clearer view of the client experience, the work their teams are doing and the ideas that can make the business better.
Does memorable hospitality have to be expensive?
No. One of Guidara’s best-known examples involved a $2 hot dog. Its value came from the fact that it was specific to the people receiving it. The gesture mattered because someone had been paying attention.
Continue Listening
More from the Derrick Kinney Podcast on Modern American Advisor, with conversations on the ideas, relationships and experiences that can set a business apart.
- Ted Moser — AI, Digital Platforms and the Future of Client Experience
- Jeff C. West— Handling Objections: Five-Step Framework for Building Trust
- Sten Morgan — How Great Advisors Grow: Mindset, Value and Leadership
