Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60018618-unreasonable-hospitality

I was delightfully surprised by how much I liked this book. The way Will Guidara talks about prioritizing the people you work with over everything else. I cried over the stories about his Mom. I would be over-the-moon to be prioritized by someone the way he talks about prioritizing his teams—enlightened hospitality. Good leaders prioritize the people they work with and I agree you can see it when they interact with those people.

I now believe the best interview technique is no technique at all. You simply have enough of a conversation that you get to know the person a little bit. Do they seem curious and passionate about what we’re trying to build? Do they have integrity? Are they someone I can respect? Is this someone I can imagine myself and my team happily spend a lot of time with? (12:02)

People will forget what you do, they’ll forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. (21:14)

Enlightened hospitality which upended traditional hierarchies by prioritizing the people who worked there over everything else including the guests and investors. Danny’s big idea was to hire great people, treat them well, and invest deeply into their personal and professional growth and they would take care of the customers—which is exactly what they did. (48:13)

It’s easier to learn the right way to do things at the high end than it is to break bad habits—you can always take it down a notch later but it’s harder to go the other way. (49:36)

Two things happen when the best leaders walks into a room—the people who work for them straighten up a little bit, making sure everything’s perfect, and they smile too. (52:08)

Enthusiasm is contagious. (54:34)

Make the charitable assumption. A reminder to assume the best in people even when, especially when, they weren’t behaving especially well. Ask first, is everything okay? Maybe this person needs more love and more hospitality than anyone else in the room. (58:38)

This central concept of enlightened hospitality, the idea that taking care of one another would take precedence over everything, was real. He didn’t focus on the what, he focused on the why. Just being in the room felt like joining a movement or accepting a mission—a vibrant and exciting community more important than yourself. (1:00:46)

Cult is short for culture. (1:01:59)

Manage 95% of your business down to the penny and the other 5% foolishly. (1:31:59)

Wherever we could we worked to minimize expensive turnover and the dreaded overtime. But then, a few times a year, I would spend a truly obnoxious amount of money on an experience for the team. (1:33:55)

Whether that meant closing the restaurant for the day so we could host a team building retreat or hiring a DJ and a couple cases of Dom Pérignon for the over the top staff parties we were famous for. I could afford these indulgences because I’d been so disciplined the rest of the year. (1:34:08)