In the right hands, at the right time, and with the right presentation, a New York City street hot dog can leave the same lasting impression as the celery root velouté with black truffle and chestnuts.
Will Guidara has entertained A-list celebrities, CEOs, and world leaders while running his former restaurant group, Make it Nice, which includes one of the world’s best restaurants, the three-Michelin star Eleven Madison Park. But that hot dog is one of his most memorable dishes.
As a group of Europeans dined in his restaurant, he overheard them mention the one culinary treat they had missed on their trip was an authentic, NYC street-side, dirty-water hot dog. So Guidara acquired one, plated it, and served it up.
“I talk about it as improvisational hospitality,” said Guidara. “It makes it more fun to be on the floor if you can improvise and listen and watch and then react, and it gives every single person on the floor a much greater feeling of ownership in the experience they’re creating because they’re actually a part of creating it.”
Listening is a huge part of hospitality, and while most of the creativity in a restaurant happens behind the scenes in the kitchen, Guidara feels strongly that equal creativity can happen by listening in the dining room—and it starts with the 95/5 method of budgeting.
“The 95/5 doctrine is this—it means that you manage your money with relentless discipline 95% of the time. And that is everything. That means you care about every penny that goes in and out of the door. Because at the end of the day, the restaurant is a business and you need to make money.”
But it’s that remaining 5% that can make all the difference, Guidara said.
“In that 5%, where you’re not pausing to try to measure the return on investment for whatever dollars you’re spending to do something extraordinary, that you actually create the brand, that’s where the memories are made. It’s what, honestly, makes doing what we do so much more fun to do.”
Photos of Eleven Madison Park on Yelp
Other lessons Guidara has collected over the years come from a tried-and-true source—his father.
When Guidara decided whether or not to separate himself from the massively successful Make It Nice Hospitality Group, he turned to his father for advice.
“And he said, ‘My advice to you, with every single decision you have to make, just ask yourself what right looks like and do that.’ And he goes, ‘Now, to be clear, it’s a lot easier said than done because what right looks like isn’t always the best thing for you. But if you decide right now that whatever the answer is, you’re always going to do that, it’s going to save you a lot of heartache in the future.’”
His father also helped him see who he might be outside of his first chosen profession, which is a view many are taking as jobs are lost and restructured during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Your entire identity when you’re successful at something becomes wrapped up, at least you think it does, in not who you are but what you accomplish. I was the guy that created the best restaurant in the world. And the moment you sell it, you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, who am I now?’” Guidara said.
“And it’s not what you accomplish, although I’m very proud of everything I’ve accomplished, but it’s how you’ve accomplished it.”
And sometimes, he said, it’s perfectly okay to be without a destination in mind. In fact, it can be the most exciting time of your life.
“Now, for the first time, I’m giving myself the grace of not having a clear destination in the short term. That’s extraordinarily exciting and gives me the freedom to dream in ways that I’ve never been able to dream before.”
To learn more about Guidara’s work, listen to the full episode of Josh Kopel’s Full Comp below, and listen or subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Ready for more? Check out more episodes of Full Comp:
Episode 1: Building a Restaurant Empire in a Recession: Tender Greens’ Erik Oberholtzer
Episode 2: Creating Opportunity from Tragedy: Serial Restaurateur Darin Rubell
Episode 3: Redefining Cocktail Culture: Death & Co’s Alex Day
Episode 4: The Art of the Pivot: Iron Chef Eric Greenfield
Episode 10: How to build a $10 million restaurant: Chef Sam Marvin of Bottega Louie
Episode 14: The Benefits of Community Building: Chef Nina Compton, Chef/Owner of Compère Lapin
Episode 22: The Art of the Pivot: Mark Canlis, owner/operator of Canlis
Episode 26: The Future of Restaurants: Dean Alex Susskind, Cornell University
Episode 28: The Road Back: Adam Perry Lang, Celebrity Chef & Restaurateur
Episode 34: Becoming a Brand: Celebrity Chef Jet Tila
Episode 36: Fighting the Good Fight: Celebrity Chef Rick Bayless
Episode 45: Revolutionary Leadership: Kat Cole, COO of FOCUS Brands
Episode 56: 12 Things Every Restaurateur Needs to Hear: Seth Godin
Full Comp, episode 48 transcript
The Best Restaurateur in the World: Will Guidara of Eleven Madison Park
[Josh Kopel]
Today’s episode is presented by Yelp. Yelp’s mission is to connect people with great local businesses. They also offer great solutions for restaurants looking to streamline their front of house and increase sales. Millions of diners are already using Yelp, and these products are a great way to capitalize on that network. Head over to restaurants.yelp.com to claim your free page and learn more about these powerful tools for your business. Now, here we go.
[Will Guidara]
I think the most exciting things that we do, the things that make me love hospitality on such a foundational level, they’re hard to capture in a photograph.
[Josh Kopel]
Welcome to Full Comp, a show offering insight into the future of the hospitality industry featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders and innovators served up on the house.
[Josh Kopel]
The only way we’re going to get through this is to get through it together. If I can help you in any way, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can book a free call with me by going to joshkopel.com/chat. Also, be sure to check out the Full Comp Restart Guide packed with valuable resources and strategies from Yelp, Cornell University and Oyster Sunday. Go to joshkopel.com/resources for your free download. Didn’t write that down? Don’t worry, there are links to both in the show notes.
[Josh Kopel]
If you own and operate the best restaurant in the world, does that make you the best restaurateur in the world? If I didn’t believe that Will Guidara was the best before our conversation, I certainly do now. His love of craft and of industry inspired him to not only create a restaurant empire but to create the Welcome Conference, a platform whereby the hospitality industry can come together to create a better future for all of us. We begin today with me desperately attempting to create a parallel between myself and one of the best restaurateurs in the world. I mean, who can blame me?
[Josh Kopel]
So let’s talk about us. We’re literally the same age, we’re both restaurateurs without restaurants and we’re both fighting to save the industry. Did you always see yourself working on an industry level or is this simply a job that needs to be done so that you can get back to opening and running your own restaurants?
[Will Guidara]
I’ve only ever wanted to be in restaurants. It was always very, very clear to me. I grew up in a restaurant family, it’s what my dad did. And because he was in the restaurant business, the best way for me to spend time with him was to go to work with him. And so when I was 12 years old, I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to open a restaurant, I knew I wanted to go to Cornell, everything else was just taking the most intentional path to get there and to learn about it one step at a time, every step of the way.
[Will Guidara]
I think when we started the Welcome Conference seven years ago was perhaps the first time I’ve recognized a desire to do things that transcended the work we were doing within the four walls of what was then my only restaurant or the metaphorical four walls of the company. But that was rooted in a desire to create community among the group of people that did what I did. Because I was going all over the world and speaking at chef conferences but always realizing that I was the only dining room person at those conferences. And I think that the craft of hospitality is that, it’s a craft. And those chef conferences were extraordinary, I believe the craft of cooking became significantly better because of those. Not because of the techniques that were being shared on stage but because it was creating a community of people that were sharing ideas and inspiring one another, and that made them better, all of them.
[Will Guidara]
And the same thing proved to be true about the Welcome Conference. Every year at the Welcome Conference was this day where… Listen, you know this, you get to a certain point in your career trajectory where there’s no one left above you in the hierarchy whose job it is to inspire you. Okay, we look wherever we can to find inspiration whether it’s in music or art or a great book or someone in our life that is just really good at like dropping wisdom. That day I found that it was playing the role, for me, of filling my gas tank. When you’re in the business of giving, which I think is the business we’re all in, we are in the business of giving graciousness, of giving memories of all of that, you find yourself depleting your own resources in order to uplift those around you, whether it’s the people that work for you or the people that you serve. And the Welcome Conference, if it was doing that for me, I knew it was doing it for other people and its growth was an indication of that.
[Will Guidara]
And so when this all happened, I knew I had the fortune of having some time on my hands. A few different people called me within a short measure of time and said, “Hey, you have to step up and do your part in leading right now.” And then somehow the next five months became a blur.
[Josh Kopel]
Let’s talk about that for a minute. I’d like to unpack that because it’s a question I’ve asked myself many times, why is there a leadership vacuum in front of house? How many celebrity chefs are there? How many chefs have taken leadership roles in back of house and in the art of being a restaurateur but you don’t really see a lot of operational guys? There’s like Danny Meyer and end of list. And so, why has that been the case? Is it because what we do is so nondescript?
[Will Guidara]
I don’t agree that there’s a leadership vacuum, I actually think that some of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met are dining room people.
[Josh Kopel]
Industry wide leadership vacuum, I guess is-
[Will Guidara]
Well, yeah, no, and I understand what you’re saying, I guess I would re articulate it as like a celebrity vacuum, more than that. Like there are these unbelievable leaders who step up in front of their teams and lead them with integrity and lead them through words and through actions and create cultures that are so beyond extraordinary. I just don’t know that their messages or their brands or their names are being broadcast to the world in the same way that chefs are. And I think what it is… I don’t know if it is that dining room work or service or hospitality is nondescript, I just think that our job is to make it cool. The only people that are celebrated are people that are cool, it’s part of our high school conditioning that never goes away. I do believe we’re in this moment right now where people are connecting to the idea that graciousness is really cool in a way that they haven’t in a very, very long time.
[Will Guidara]
And so I think this is a moment. Because, listen, the whole idea of being kind and welcoming and inclusive is something that our entire country could really stand to get better at right now.
[Josh Kopel]
For sure. Well, from a front of house perspective, I think that there’s a difference. I think chefs probably get into the restaurant industry because they love food, but in the front of house, you get into it because you love people and then food.
[Will Guidara]
Or you just like creating experiences. Like I love throwing a party, I loved throwing parties in college, I’ve loved throwing parties ever since and, honestly, the only thing that’s different is I get to throw parties on a bigger budget now and the parties happen every single night over and over and over again. But no, I understand what you were saying before, I think there’s some amazingly inspirational people but you do need to work harder to find them. Service doesn’t make as good television as cooking does.
[Josh Kopel]
Right, that’s the hurdle. And I’m sure you’ve experienced this in your own life, and it was always so awkward for me. We’d hire a photographer to come into the restaurant to shoot that season’s menu or an aesthetic thing that we had done with the restaurant for some holiday and then they would always shoot the chef cooking, and then they would say, “All right, Josh, it’s time to shoot you, work.” And it’s like, what do I do? I’m just like pointing or looking over or folding a napkin or clearing a table. Because, again, and I know nondescript is probably the wrong word, but it’s many things, we’re there to serve.
[Will Guidara]
I think the most exciting things that we do, the things that make me love hospitality on such a foundational level, they’re hard to capture in a photograph. A lot of it is the processes of creatively conceiving how to just make someone’s night a little better, and in doing so make their year a little bit better. And there’s not that still shot of beautiful food on a plate although the beautiful food on a plate always has a lot to do with creating those memories. But I think we need to use words to express the intricate beauty of our profession more because there is no glamor shot of hospitality that can show any specific point of view and how one person approaches it versus another.
[Josh Kopel]
Born out of that ideology is the 95/5 doctrine, can you talk to me about what that doctrine is and how you executed it within the restaurant?
[Will Guidara]
The 95/5 doctrine is this: it means that you manage your money with relentless discipline 95% of the time. And that is everything. That means you care about every penny that goes in and out of the door. Because at the end of the day, the restaurant is a business and you need to make money. You need to make money for a variety of reasons, one, to keep your team employed, one, to give your investors an appropriate return, also just to make sure that you’re making money, otherwise just stay at home and invite people over for dinner. But if you manage your money like a crazy person 95% of the time, then you get to spend recklessly and irresponsibly the other 5% of the time. And it’s in that 5% where you’re not pausing to try to measure the return on investment for whatever dollars you’re spending to do something extraordinary that you actually create the brand, that’s where the memories are made. It’s what, honestly, makes doing what we do so much more fun to do.
[Will Guidara]
And that doctrine can apply to so many different elements of the restaurants that I ran or honestly, concepts that everyone’s familiar with. For us, a big part of that was the “Dream Weaver,” which was a position I created years ago because there was this one day, and I’ve told this story countless times, but I was waiting on a table at lunch and it was a group of Europeans and after lunch they were going to the airport. I overheard them saying, “Hey, we’ve eaten at Momofuku, we’ve eaten at Per Se, we’ve eaten at Daniel, le Bernardin, now Madison Park, this has been the best food trip ever. The only thing we didn’t get to have was a dirty water hot dog from a street cart.”
[Will Guidara]
And it was one of those light bulb moments and I ran out to the street and got a hot dog and brought it in. The team in the kitchen cut it up into perfect little pieces and placed them on the side, then a canal of sauerkraut and a canal of relish and a swish of mustard and a swish of ketchup and we served it to them. And even though every other course in the menu took days to prepare and the menu itself took months to conceive, that was the dish that they remembered the most, for sure. And it also made my life so much more fun. I talk about it as improvisational hospitality. It makes it more fun to be on the floor if you can improvise and listen and watch and then react, and it gives every single person on the floor a much greater feeling of ownership in the experience they’re creating because they’re actually a part of creating it.
[Will Guidara]
And so we started doing that more and more and everyone on the team was welcome to come up with ideas and it required sending people to Central Park with sleds or creating impromptu beaches in the private dining room or making a stuffed animal out of kitchen towels for someone who remembered they forgot to get their kids, whatever it was. You’ve run restaurants, you know we don’t have a bunch of random people sitting in the back waiting to run errands in the middle of service. And so we promoted one of the hosts who was good with calligraphy, that’s where it started, but then four years later, we had an entire team of dream weavers who we sourced from the fashion schools and the arts schools. And they had an entire workshop in the back just to help bring the ideas that the captains in the dining room had through interacting with their guests to life.
[Will Guidara]
There’s no explicit ROI on a hot dog that you add to someone’s meal, there’s no explicit ROI to a few sleds from a store that you found that was open at 10:00 PM, but you do it because it just feels right. And so when I say you manage your money like a crazy person 95% of the time such that you can spend recklessly the other 5%, it’s actually not reckless at all, it’s very intentional. You’re doing it because you’re creating experiences for the guests that transcend any that they’ve had before and you’re also giving the people in the dining room the ability to be just as creative as anyone in the kitchen, but with a different set of tools in their toolbox.
[Will Guidara]
The concept is not actually novel, anyone who’s run a great wine program and has put together wine pairings implicitly understands it. If you’re good at wine pairings, you try to find amazing wines at great values. So let’s say you need to hit a 28% cost on the pairings, the people that are really good at it hit a 20% cost on a bunch of the pairings so that when it comes to one or two of those wines, they can drop a baller bottle on the table that everyone knows and recognizes and says, “Oh my gosh, did they just pour me Chav Hermitage as a part of a pairing that costs $195 or whatever it is?” It shows creativity both in budgeting and generosity.
[Josh Kopel]
Well, let’s unpack that disciplined approach to the business. I would like to dig in at the 95% because I think that’s where a lot of people struggle. What were the key performance indicators you were looking at that gave you an indication of the general health of your restaurant.
[Will Guidara]
It’s not that complicated. You write a budget and you stick to it, right? I think people overcomplicate some of this stuff. You know what you should be spending on chemicals, you know what you should be spending on linens. I think one of the big things that people too often do is they only look at their P&L once a month and by the time the accounting department gives you the P&L, it’s already a week after the end of the month, and then you’re so busy and… You need to check in on your numbers and you need to evaluate where you’re at relative to budget with frequency. And when there’s an issue, you need to take it seriously and you need to show just as much… You need to create a culture where people have just as much fun solving problems with the P&L as they do solving problems with the menu.
[Will Guidara]
If you put just as much focus and creativity into what’s on the plate and how you’re putting that plate on the table, how you’re welcoming someone through the doors and how to make sure that your chemical expense is in line, it’s all just as important. And there’s too many cultures where there’s almost like acceptance that certain people just aren’t good at that, and I think that’s absurd. People convince themselves they’re not good at something if they don’t really enjoy doing it, but there is enjoyment to be had and everything so long as you’re competitive enough that you rise to the challenge. I didn’t have a science beyond that.
[Josh Kopel]
It obviously worked really well. The pandemic’s been an expedited education for me. Now, I’m sure you don’t know this, I released publicly about a month ago an op-ed explaining that I was closing my restaurant permanently, the reasons why, and the lessons I learned through the process. And what I found most interesting about that whole experience was the greatest discomfort that I felt was in making the decision to act. And not the act itself, right? Once I decided to close, the unwinding of a business is paperwork and phone calls and emails. It was the choice that was difficult not the resulting act of the choice. And I want to talk to you about when you separated from your company because a lot of people find themselves in that position, and I want to know what it felt like to come to that decision. Would you feel like you lost through that experience? Would you feel like you’ve gained through the experience? And your future vision for your career path.
[Will Guidara]
I would talk about the power of making a decision as being so much greater and also so much heftier than what it takes to execute that decision. We would always talk in pre-meal, we’d use the metaphor of being at the top of a double diamond ski slope. The hardest part is when you put your poles into the snow and just do that nudge because you just made the irreversible decision, you need to figure out how to get down the mountain. And by the way, you might break a leg on the way down, but you’re going to get down. The hard part is deciding that you’re going to give it a go. I think as it pertains to me leaving my company, there’s all this relational stuff intertwined with that. It’s like marriage and divorce and everything, and the decision was not easy.
[Will Guidara]
When it became clear that we were going to be going our separate ways, whether we’re going to be splitting the company, whether I was going to buy the company, whether he was going to buy, whatever it was, my dad sat down with me and he said, “Hey, Will, this going to be one of the hardest years of your life. There’s relationship stuff in here, there’s identity stuff in here. You’ve worked for 15 years to create something.” And he said, “My advice to you, with every single decision you have to make, just ask yourself what right looks like and do that.” And he goes, “Now, to be clear, it’s a lot easier said than done because what right looks like isn’t always the best thing for you. But if you decide right now that whatever the answer is, you’re always going to do that, it’s going to save you a lot of heartache in the future.” And ultimately, and I won’t get into all the intricacies of it, but what right looked like was being the seller and stepping aside. Yeah, it’s an extraordinarily challenging thing.
[Josh Kopel]
What did you gain from the experience?
[Will Guidara]
I think the challenges and what I gained are probably all the same, eventually. Another quote from my dad, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” And so I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been because of the experience. Because it was a hard emotional experience with a ton of intricacies. But I don’t think this is unexpected, but your entire identity when you’re successful at something becomes wrapped up, at least you think it does, in not who you are but what you accomplish. I was the guy that created the best restaurant in the world. And the moment you sell it, you’re like, “Wait a minute, who am I now? Who am I if I don’t own that restaurant anymore?” And then I think it’s through just a lot of thinking and reflection and connection with the people in your life that matter that you actually start to for the first time find the words to define who you really are. And it’s not what you accomplish, although I’m very proud of everything I’ve accomplished, but it’s how you’ve accomplished it.
[Will Guidara]
Simply by putting words to that, by putting intention to intuition like that, you start to like names, probably in the most clear way you ever have before what your real superpowers are. And then once you know what those are, you can lean into them even more heavily than you ever were able to before. I think every year, I’ll get some greater insight into what I learned out of that experience. The same is true for most of the major inflection points over the course of my life. When I lost my mom, still to this day, I identify things about that experience that made me a better version of who I am.
[Josh Kopel]
You used the word intention and I’m going to quote you here. There’s a word we use a lot in our company, intentionality, it means every decision from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane matters. To do something with intentionality means to do it thoughtfully with clear purpose and a desired result. What was your intention in creating the Welcome Conference?
[Will Guidara]
Listen, I was in the season where if I wanted to book a restaurant reservation, I would be calling the chef because I knew all the chefs. And I didn’t know anyone who did what I did and we were in a moment in dining where the craft of cooking was getting better and better and better and better and it felt like service everywhere was going to shit. Man, I love service, it’s what I like, it’s the thing I love most about restaurants is being able to serve other people. It’s about being able to give them gracious hospitality and well, A, I wanted to get better at it, and I know that I needed community to get better at it. B, I want everyone to get better at it. I saw what the community had done for the craft of cooking and I really wanted to be a part of a group of people that had the opportunity to do that for service and hospitality.
[Josh Kopel]
And has that purpose shifted in light of the pandemic?
[Will Guidara]
I guess to an extent. I think the Welcome Conference probably serves the entire industry now more than it does just the dining room community. When I look at the people that have signed up to the platform that we just launched, it’s cooks, it’s chefs, it’s restaurateurs, it’s servers, it’s everyone. I think the role of the Welcome Conference this year is to remind people that there are still beautiful things to celebrate. Also, two things I’ve spent the most time on over the past few months are the Welcome Conference and the Independent Restaurant Coalition. If you’d asked me five months ago, I would have said the Independent Restaurant Coalition is the emergency room doctor that’s there to make sure you don’t flat line and the Welcome Conference is the person that comes and cheers you up and reminds you that you have a reason to live.
[Will Guidara]
I think the Welcome Conference now… So, okay, we just launched this platform, it’s free to join but you do need to be a member of it. What we found is we couldn’t do the one day conference this year, broke my heart, we had an amazing lineup. But instead of that, my dad’s quote, “Adversity is a terrible thing to waste. What if you took the fact that we lost that one day of in-person connection and replaced it with five months of virtual connection.” And so in a platform you can connect with so many people that do what we do from around the world, share ideas, ask one, another questions, vent in pursuit of catharsis, whatever it is. And there’ll be a ton of content that’s just added: podcasts, virtual pre-shifts, industry round tables, keynote speeches, all under the theme of reinvention, because we have a need and an opportunity in our industry right now to reinvent in a way that we’ve never felt or had before.
[Will Guidara]
But then within each month, there’ll be a sub theme on things we believe that if we collectively lean into and focus on, we can not only survive this season but thrive on the other side of it. Yeah, I guess it’s less to create community around the craft of hospitality and it’s more to just make sure that we’re doing our part and continuing to fill the gas tank of everyone who’s given their life to a career in restaurants.
[Josh Kopel]
And, and in terms of your role within the conference and within the industry, do you see yourself, post pandemic, getting back on the floor as a restaurateur or do you think that because there’s such a big job to be done that you’ll continue to serve the industry?
[Will Guidara]
I don’t know right now. And honestly, I’m not putting too much pressure on myself in this moment to figure it out. And by the way, that’s a liberating thing and a scary thing. One of the reasons why I think I did well in restaurants is I was blessed to know exactly what I wanted to do at the age of 12, I always knew exactly what I wanted to do. And before the pandemic, I was getting ready to open a bunch of restaurants in New York, I had my whole team together and I was ready to go and thankfully, we hadn’t signed any leases. Now, for the first time I’m giving myself the grace of not having a clear destination in the short term. That’s extraordinarily exciting and gives me the freedom to dream in ways that I’ve never been able to dream before and it’s also like, “Oh man, that was the thing that was kind of good about my whole approach was I always knew exactly what I wanted.”
[Will Guidara]
If I were a betting man, I don’t have kids yet, I want to have kids, I’d like to raise my kids in restaurants, I think that’s a beautiful environment to learn so many life skills.
[Josh Kopel]
It’s an industry podcast and at the end of every episode, I’d like to give the guest an opportunity to offer advice or words of encouragement directly to the folks listening.
[Will Guidara]
I quote my dad constantly, I’ve quoted him several times in this conversation. And one of the things that I’ve probably quoted him as having said the most is, “Adversity is a terrible thing to waste.” And that has never felt more true to me than this year. I know that it is very, very reasonable for people to be overwhelmed by and therefore immobilized in the uncertainty of our world and the anxiety that comes with that uncertainty. There’s so many people that I know who have like me put their heads down and worked for years to build something, to realize their dream only to have to watch it fall apart over the course of the last eight months. And in moments like this, it’s paralyzing.
[Will Guidara]
Never has our industry been forced into a dead stop like it is now. And if on the other side of this we don’t look back and with confidence know that we learned something new or improved ourselves in some way, whether it’s through having deepened some relationships that you perhaps didn’t spend as much time focusing on in the past, or whether it’s having re-imagined what you want life to look like, whether it’s having discovered that there were elements of how we ran our businesses before that just weren’t right, and we want to seize on this opportunity to improve them. I, for me, I’ve been looking at life and trying to think of it as a Venn diagram of opportunity and joy. There’s so much opportunity in the world, there always will be, and now I’m trying to figure out what brings me joy such that I can find that little sliver where the two overlap.
[Will Guidara]
I’ve been trying to remind that as crazy as every day is with having conversations like this or all the Zoom calls or just doing everything we can, it’s almost like we’re in a boat that’s sinking and we’re just bailing water and bailing water and bailing water. But maybe you’re stuck on that boat with someone that you love and maybe you can just stop bailing for a few minutes every once in a while and appreciate the quality time you have. Adversity is a terrible thing to waste. This is a season that is definitively full of adversity, but every single one of us has an opportunity to find a silver lining and emerge from it a better version of yourself. And so I hope that that opportunity is not one that any of us waste.
[Josh Kopel]
That’s Will Guidara. To learn more about the Welcome Conference, go to welcomeconference.org. If you want to tell us your story, hear previous episodes, check out our video content or read our weekly blog, go to joshkopel.com. That’s J-O-S-H-K-O-P-E-L.com. Thank you so much for listening to the show, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re there, please leave us a review. A special thanks to Yelp for helping us spread the word to the whole hospitality community. I’m Josh Kopel; you’ve been listening to Full Comp.
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