Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

by Will Guidara

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

I reminded myself: If adding another element to the experience means you’re going to do everything a little less well, walk it back. Do less, and do it well.

A leader’s role isn’t only to motivate and uplift; sometimes it’s to earn the trust of your team by being human with them.

We were no longer in the business of running an extraordinary restaurant; we were now in the business of human connection.

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

if you don’t have the courage to state a goal out loud, you’ll never achieve it.

Danny Meyer says that hospitality is a dialogue, not a monologue.

and the more open you demonstrate yourself to be, the more likely people are to be open with you.

This is a hospitality solution: a problem that we solved not by sneakily chipping away at the service we were offering but by blowing it out in the opposite direction—by giving more, not less.

Why do people put so much time and effort into a marriage proposal? Because they know it’s a story they’ll tell for the rest of their lives.

Gifts are a way to tell people you saw, heard, and recognized them—that you cared enough to listen, and to do something with what you heard.

Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. Whether on your ass or on your skis, don’t worry—you will get down the hill, and you’ll learn a lot along the way.

To paraphrase the marketing guru Seth Godin, creativity is a practice. Even great creative minds like Sir Paul McCartney, Godin explains, have a system to help them be creative, to hone their ideas.

Maya Angelou famously said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” The more space we gave ourselves to dream, and the more trust we gave one another, the better we got.

As you grow, you can’t lose the very thing that gave you the opportunity to grow.

“Don’t run away from what you don’t want; run toward what you do.”