- I was eating dinner with aunt and uncle the night before LSAT. My uncle asked me, “Do you realize how long you are going to be dead?” I said no. He said, “I don’t either. But its a heck of a lot longer than you’ll be alive.”
- So thankful to have found a topic I love (what’s on the plate, what’s in the glass) and meet others.
- In NYC, there are 26,000 restaurants. 19,000 without pizza parlors.
- The road to success is paved with mistakes well-handled. Restaurants are like a sailing regatta.
- Good service: Did we do what we said we would do?
- How did we make you feel when we were delivering great service?
- Service are all the technical things we do. Innovations in service all get copied by others.
- The shelf-life of innovation is 2 minutes. We have to thrive on the thoughtful actions.
- Investment banker brought 7 clients. He ordered the best chardonnay. I brought it to him and he said it wasn’t a chardonnay. It’s completely irrelevant who is right or wrong. It’s important that the customer always feels heard.
- I’ve learned as a dad that dads are hardly ever right. I’ve learned as a husband that husbands are never right.
- There is not an animal that makes better or more mistakes than human beings. Humans are wired to be mistake-makers. What if they were viewed as natural resources. We need to view mistakes like waves. If you’re a surfer, you need waves to ply my craft. Mistakes, if embraced and handled in a profitable way can land you in a better spot.
- 5 As of mistake making: be aware that you made it; acknowledge; apologize; act on it (fix it); apply additional generosity. Think about what you would want done and then do more. The only thing you can do is write the next chapter.
- Mistakes provides the greatest opportunities to learn (as long as they are not mistakes that lacked integrity).
- We were hosting an event for fancy clothing designer. Server poured olive oil down brand new Calvin Klein dress. I promise this story will have a happy ending. Got the dress replaced. Sent basket.
- When mistakes of integrity are made, you need to pull at your family values.
- Working in the restaurant is a great job because it is like a family. Great restaurants have an espirit of being a family. It’s either an adjunct family or a replacement for the family that they wished they had.
- We create a sibling rivalry among our restaurants.
- My biggest failure as a leader was injecting the best parts of a family into the restaurants too far. It’s not a family; it’s a business. In a family you don’t fire people. You get 2nd, 3rd, 4th chances. In a business at times you cannot do that.
- There is not a greater crushing blow to me than when a person who is technically or emotionally suited to thrive in my business leaves.
- The minute one becomes a leader: we get a megaphone stitched to our lips, everything we say is amplified. Everyone of our followers gets a pair of binoculars where they are watching us.
- Became the Koch County field coordinator for a congressional campaign. 30 people who reported to me were all volunteers. Couldn’t fire anybody. The only thing I could do was inspire them to a higher purpose. They were there because they wanted to be there.
- If I want to have people on my team that are as good as I want them to be, means that I owe them a lot more than just a pay check.
- We used values and purpose to motivate people just as much as a paycheck.
- Every business is keeping for talent.
- People are looking to belong where they work and they want to trust where they belong.
- In the food industry, we’re always looking at those who have scaled systems. We’re working on how you scale culture: the way we make you feel when you work in one of our places, when you dine in one of our places. It is the single most defining factor in a business.
- We make it clear from the interview what we stand for. We’re going to call upon the gifts of who you are.
- Six emotional skills. Emotional skills cannot be taught. They can be celebrated.
- Kind-hearted and optimistic. We believe that hope is at the heart of hospitality. Do they have kind eyes?
- Curiosity.
- Work-ethic. Someone who cares about doing the job as well as they can do the job.
- Empathy. People who imagine what it might be like to stand in your shoes. Aware of how they are making you feel, like a boat going through the water leaving a wake. What wake am I leaving in my path?
- Self-awareness. They know what their own internal weather report is. Hospitality is a team sport. I need to take responsibility for not being a skunk.
- Integrity. Someone who has the judgement to do the right thing even when no one else is looking.
- All those skills add up to someone who has a high HQ (hospitality quotient).
- Thinking about quitting in leadership? Push your reset button and see if that works.
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