Off the Record With Will Guidara

When it comes to the things you would do in restaurants, they were big and sometimes spectacular. But the things that have always caught my attention were the teeny tiny little things. They will tell that story for us to real life. When I talk to couples and they're thinking about rebuilding their marriage or reimagining it. They got two kids all of a sudden and they're married. They're different people, their marriage is different. And they think in terms of Super Bowl. Years ago when I was getting married, the best piece of advice I got was. What up? What up? Welcome to Off the Record. So glad you showed up on a Saturday morning, whenever this show dropped or whenever you happen to be getting it in your feed. This is when I sit down with some of my favorite people in the world. Folks, I've never met but I'm fascinated by or experts on a topic that I am desperate personally to learn more about and I know y'all are two. Today's guest is literally one of the greatest people on the planet. And I don't say that lightly. He wrote a book called Unreasonable Hospitality that has had a second, a third, and fourth life. He was one of the creators of the show, The Bear. He's also a great friend and one of the greatest human beings ever. Just behind closed doors. His name is Will Guderra. You've seen him everywhere. He was originally known as being, I think the only restaurant in the United States to win the restaurant of the globe, right? The number one restaurant in the world twice. And he did it through unreasonable hospitality. They had amazing food, amazing service, amazing, whatever. But they took it the next level and said, we're going to give people an experience that they'll never forget. And what's beautiful about Will is that's how he lives his life. That's how he treats just his buddies. I've been on the road with him. We've done events together. I've shared meals with him. That's how he treats everyone. And it's such an impact to me. So I had him on the show. He's got a new field guide, like a how to implement unreasonable hospitality in your life and in your home. And we spent a ton of time in this episode. Man, one of my favorite conversations. I left a different man after having this conversation with Will about how we can be people that are spouses, that are kids, that are neighbors. Exhale when they think about us. How do we shift that pendulum and become unreasonably hospitable to those around us so we can share kindness. Grace, love, and also get stuff done. So buckle up or you know what? Unbuckle. This is an unbuckle conversation. This isn't a buckle up. Enjoy my conversation with one of the greatest men in the world. We'll get air. Here's the big picture question and I want to drill that into some like specifics. Your restaurant is super successful and it becomes number one in the world once and then it becomes number one twice. And then you've got this reputation of hospitality that's just maddening, right? Not maddening, it's some extraordinary. Yeah, it's over the top. You write this book that it goes on to become a phenomenon. And now you're helping businesses all across the world, literally. Like reimagine how they love and serve their customers. Ever since I met you just as a person and then we've hung out and then I read your book and I've always thought to myself. This is how my home needs to feel too. And if I, if I, as a guy who has a bunch of small businesses that I'm a part of. How dare I think about my customers, the people I'm trying to help. More so than my wife or than my kids or than my parents. What a weird energy swap. And so the inertia to push through that and say, why does my wife get my thirds and fourths and fifths. And the people I'm trying to help get my first and my seconds, right? That's been a two or three year slog through literature through all therapy. They're all sort of like, how did we all get here to where the people closest to us get our, get the least of us, right? Get our short snappy. I'll be there whenever what about me. And then we go here to somebody else's mission right to make other people feel good. And that stumped me. It's been a wild thing. And the biggest picture, the biggest, one of the biggest ah ha I've had over the last couple of years of this project of is marriage to worth it. And if it is, how do you do it? Is this idea that we have to celebrate each other? And the I, every time I bring that up to a group to individuals, everyone looks down. And almost to a person. It's like, yeah, I don't remember the last time I told him I'm proud of him. I don't remember the last time I told her, hey, stop, stop, you are beautiful. Or I saw what happened last night with our daughter and you did a great job with that. I just want you to know I saw that. We don't do that. And it's almost I can't do people feel like they're losing, right? And so I was like, dude, I got to talk to Will. I got to figure out how to take this thing that has is turning the business world over on his head globally. And say, how do I bring this to my house, right? How do I honor my spouse with this? How do I honor my dad with this, my mom with this, my kids with this? In a way that they leave knowing that guy loves me and cares about me. Yeah, it's so funny. It's actually been something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about recently. I just wrote the bonus chapter for the field guide. We hid this wild game inside of that book. And for those that find it and play it and win it, you get the bonus chapter. And then of the people that get there, there's another game. And the one person who wins that gets an all expense paid trip to the welcome conference next year. It's been really fun. But a bonus chapter is normally like a throwaway thing. And I wanted to use it as an opportunity just to challenge my own thinking. Just write about something the same, but new. And it's about bringing unreasonable hospitality into life. The final quote in the field guide is hospitality is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. I think that is from me the best definition of the word hospitality. And by the way, it requires both creativity and intention. It's one thing to be intentional to choose to pursue a relationship, but that only gets you so far absent. Thinking about the person has an individual and figuring out what is the most creative way to make them feel seen or loved or appreciated. It requires both. Now on the side or somewhat related years ago when I was getting married, the best piece of advice I got was from older friends who said, you need to wake up every day and make the choice to pursue your wife. We were just talking about this before we press record how marriage is a wild thing. You change, they change and if you're not careful. It's always changing, persistent change. Both people need to be pursuing one another to not lose each other in the process. Now in work, it's easy to be intentional and creative in pursuit of something because we come into work. We have however many hours a day where people around us, there's brainstorming, there's persistent thinking. This show, the amount of creativity and intention that you put into making this show great and it happens outside of the time you're actually having these conversations. I'm sure, right? On your team, how do we make the podcast better? And that applies to everything you do. There's a math problem where I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old. I'm at work, I have all of these meetings, these deep thinking sessions, then I go home and it's chaos. Until the moment I go to bed, there's no time to think. And what I've learned for me, it boils down to systems. It's one of the paradigm shifts of all of my work is that hospitality is not just surrounding yourself with bubbly people and saying go be kind. It's a practice, it's a muscle and it's strengthened through systems. The same is true and how we bring it to our lives. And so I'll tell you about some of the systems I've developed that have helped me pursue the people that I care about more consistently. Okay, before we do that, why do I have? So whenever I tell couples who have two young kids, you're not going to like this. But y'all, every week, we ought to get together. Look at your calendar for the upcoming week. Just be honest about what's coming your way and put sex on the calendar. And they're like, I mean, like, but that's not, it just isn't is right now. Yeah, just plan for it. And that will actually prove that you value this thing and that you're intentional about it. And they always go, I have that innate feeling when you say you need to put systems in your house. And I know you're right. Why do I have that? Well, because you're, does that make sense? Is that is that I've been over Hollywood? - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's totally reasonable. You put a system to something. It makes it feel less authentic. - It demystifies it. - Yeah. - I don't believe that to be true. - It's not true at all. - It actually, it's just like, "Mmm, and sure is that it happens more consistently." - If all of your band plays in key, or in the same chord structure, now y'all can write a great song. - A hundred. - Otherwise it just noise. But there's something about structure. - But I'll give you an example. So my dad is so unbelievably important. - Yeah, yeah. - And my dad and I used to talk all the time. I'm saying, once a day, once every two days, at least. - Yeah. - And then I had kids. We can talk about my wife and a second, but my dad, that was the first to drop. - Because there's no time, right? - Yeah. - And I didn't like that. Now, it happened to me in a season where I travel a lot. I'm on a lot of planes right now. And so my system with my dad is every time I am waiting to board a plane. I call my dad. It's just become rude. - Yeah. - Now, is that less thoughtful? Feels less authentic, but it's not. - It maybe feels less authentic, but it feels actually more thoughtful because you've-- - I'm tangential. - And by the way, the conversations are still organic. - Of course, of course. - But it means that, on certain weeks, I'm talking about 12 times a week. - Which is way more than-- - Then it would be the first one. - Way to the spontaneous, yes. It's the same thing when I'm-- sometimes my wife is away for work. I'll put the kids down and I'll go downstairs and I'll have a glass of wine and I'm doing whatever I do. And if I ever catch myself scrolling through Instagram, I'll close it. And in my notes app, I have a list of like 15 friends that I'm just looking to catch up. I'll start calling them all. - Yeah. - One at a time. - So one picks up. - And when I get their voice, I'll be like, "Don't call me back. You missed your window, but I love you." And then I'll move on to the next person. - Like, there's these little systems that we can bake into our lives just to make sure that we are reminded to reach out to the people that we love the most. - Now, the other thing I've learned-- - Dude, I love that. - It is-- we used to say this in the restaurant. It was built around this culture of collaboration where I wanted everyone's ideas. It was my decision, ultimately, it was my point of view, but it was a collaborative process to get there. And it was not uncommon for someone on my team to say, "I'm just not that creative." - And I think that'd be us. - Right. - And everyone's creative, like hospitality, it's a practice. It's a creative, you are the more creative you become. People who misunderstand creativity think of it as like a lightning bolt that strikes you. That's not true. Like, if you want to-- did you ever see what was the Beatles documentary? - I haven't watched it. I need to spend a whole-- - I know. Everyone who knows I love music. - That's like, what are you doing, man? - They didn't have an album. They sat in a studio for a week. They had an album. - Right. - Like, they forced creativity. - And so, with certain things, I will just book an hour in the middle of my work day to think about the things that are coming up in life. Because when I realized I had an inability to bring hospitality into my life because I didn't have any margin to think about how to be creative and how I was bringing it. - A birthday. - Yeah. - Or an anniversary. - Or how I wanted to change how Christmas worked with my kids, whatever it was. - Yeah. - Like, these things don't just happen. You need to decide that you're going to invest the time to make them happen. And we all have margin. - Yeah. - It's just a matter of what we do with it. - You have heard that there's been some breakdowns. I don't have time to work out. I don't have time to go see a counselor. And then it's like, let's pull up your Netflix log. - Yeah. - And your scrolling log. - Yeah. - That was four hours yesterday. - Yeah. - Like, you got time. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah. - But be intentional by using that time. - This morning, I have a trainer that I work with on Zoom because I'm always all over the place. That's the system that works for me. And I worked out with him for 45 minutes this morning. Had I not had that on my calendar? I probably would have wasted some time on Instagram. - Of course. - Over coffee. - Yeah. - The more I can systemize doing the things that I know I want to do. - Yeah. - The less I'm going to do the things I don't want to do and the more consistently, I'm going to be moving towards the person I want to become. - So it's almost, it's the, I think at some point we have to, as a culture say, it's a fallacy that we're just going to stumble into it. - Yeah. - Like, whether it's relationships being a good parent or I remember being frustrated, I didn't understand. It shocked my wife. And then it shocked me that it shocked her that when we had our son, I'd never put a diaper on a kid before. There was a new technology for me. And I kept getting the tape. I put on backwards, I put it wrong. I had duct tape for a while. - That's all the V out of your ears, the actual tape. - Yeah, I mean, I used duct tape. It held way better than that stupid stuff on there. But I finally, quickly, would see her disappointment, see my son's discomfort. And I said the words, I don't know how to do this. - Right. - Yes. - And she would say, let me just do it. And years later, when we were deciding for Miss Stay Married, those kind of things came up. And she was like, this was the same guy that I saw you agree to play a song for it with a band that you did not know. Not only did you not know how to play it, you weren't good enough to play it yet. And I watched you learn to get good enough to then learn how to play that song. - Yes. - And then to perform it in front of a thousand people. I know that guy. And so when you gave up on this, she was right. Like, I had decided this isn't worth figuring out. I'll just let you do that. And I think for me, there was so much disappointment around embarrassment, shame. I let all that just be like, you know what, I don't have to do it. But it's, at the end of the day, as much as I want to be all woo-woo and mental health as a choice. - Yeah. - As a choice to say, like, you know what, I don't know how to do this thing. I have to figure out how to do this thing. Because I want to be this kind of dead, who, right? And that goes across the board. So if you've never spent an hour thinking, how can I overly love my spouse while? - Yeah. - Then you plan that hour and it's going to be awkward and weird, right? - Yes. - For a while. - Until something, you know what I mean? - Yeah, I mean, it's like anything. Nothing happens all at once. - Yeah. - But I guarantee you, any of us talk husband to wife. If you're a husband and you're just kind of like coasting through life, there's a birthday five months away and like, gosh, I got to think about what to get for her. And I guarantee you, if you just sit down for an hour and actually actively think about something, you're going to have a better idea than you would have had you not spent that hour. - Then you wait till the day before. - It might not come out of you super easily, but it's going to be productive or effective. Like with my kids, like, Christmas, the first two years, these ripped through their presents in five minutes and we were frustrated about it and we're like, this isn't what Christmas is supposed to feel like. - If you don't actually think about how to make it better, it's not going to change. It's like, they're false. - They're kids. - Right, they're kids. - Yeah. - And so, I booked an hour on my calendar, literally 10 months away, on Christmas morning, last year. Like, it's the two Christmas's ago. I put an hour on my calendar in October. I was like, figure out how to figure out Christmas. And then in October, I was like, oh my gosh, I have to figure out Christmas today. And I just started googling around and like, searching and called a couple people and ended up coming up with the most fun idea my kids were two and four at the time. I literally created a series of scavenger hunts for every single present. And the scavenger hunts were simple. I just took pictures of stuff all around my house on the neighborhood and just printed out just a picture of a gallon of milk, a picture of a mailbox. - Christmas was so much more fun. - It was magical, yeah. - And it took hours. The kids were running around. And by the way, the last gift were bicycles for each one of them. They could have cared less about the bicycles. - Oh, yeah. - They were having so much fun playing the game. I got them there. - Yeah. - The point is, like, I didn't know what was going to come out of the hour. The real point is this, any time we are facing an issue at work, we look at it as a creative opportunity, something that we can solve, a problem that we can navigate through and we dedicate the required time and resources and energy in order to solve that problem. We just need to be as disciplined and as intentional and as creative in pursuit of those same things in life. - We don't do those. - Yeah, we don't do that. - I don't know. I've wrestled with it because it's, 'cause it's what I have to. - Oh, you're fired. And I look at the divorce rates and I'm like, you can get fired from that too, right? - By the way, getting fired from that is infinitely. - Yeah. - Sucks more. - It's more expensive. - Yeah. - You lose a lot of people. - Yeah. - Structives. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Destructives. - You can get a new job easily. - Yeah, yeah. Or I wonder sometimes going back to the celebration, I do, I remember when my son was really young, and we waited for a long time to have kids, some on purpose and some just didn't happen. And I remember thinking the greatest gift I could give my wife in this new baby is to not be here. I don't want to be that guy. So I'm gonna go work more and make sure at least the check-in accounts full. And. What I found really quickly as work gave me a scorecard and I didn't have one here. It gave me a raise, my annual review, my promotion. There was a series of small wins that I could see, small finish lines I could see. They became pathological. I chased them with everything I had to the detriment of the things I cared about. But I wonder if there's a way to, when it comes to these systems, is it the daily microhabit of celebrating your spouse? Or is it the, my wife and I now we take an annual retreat and we honestly sit back and we're like, "I want to tell you how I experienced you this year." And this was pretty incredible. And those conversations bias permission to say, "This year you felt exhausted." Or this year you were gone this much. But if we start with that, then I'm on defense and so then I'm going to have to lob the grenades back over the wall, right? But if I start with, "Hey, here's how I experienced you this year in the positive." It gives us both in a weird way. I don't say a scorecard, but it gives us a, we know we're moving on the path. Yeah, and it's a safe space. I mean, like, by the way, do you talk about like how when I said systemize the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it does feel like he, until he actually spent time thinking about it. No, it's the exact right thing. I'm just curious about why I react that way. No, no, no, no. But it's natural to react that way. And yet, what you're talking about is effectively a check-in, right? I mean. No, my whole life is a system now. An emergency counselor would say like, "Do check-ins." It's a daily, weekly, monthly, annual thing. And check-ins are one of the most powerful things a couple can do because you're saying, "Okay, this matters." By the way, in work, I would say to my team, like, when we schedule something, that is my way of signaling to you that it matters. When I make something mandatory, it's me saying very clearly to everyone in this company, this is important to me and by definition, it needs to be important to you. Mandatory gets a bad rep. I actually think it's one of the most powerful things you can do. When you make something mandatory, you're saying, "This is real. This is important." The same thing is true. When you schedule, I mean, type of things that at first blush feel terrible. Scheduling connection with your person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And yet, it means that connection happens more consistently. When you have young kids, scheduling sex means that you have sex more consistently. Infinitely more. Yeah. Which, by the way, like, everybody has more frequently scheduled sex than none. The none existed unscheduled sex. That's always the question, like, do you want none? Yeah. Or do you want more often on the calendar? And I also think when you schedule something like a check-in, you're also almost like building a wall around that time to say, "This is a safe space." Yeah, yeah. And so the check-in is one that we hear about, and it's like kind of in the culture of marriages. I'm just saying take the idea of scheduling that kind of conversation and stretch it so much further. Because there's so many more opportunities. Yeah. Like, if you just think about, there's all these like books and marriage books and self-help books. And by the way, some of them are amazing. Most of them are nonsense. And I think a lot of people are constantly trying to learn how to be a better person. When I think everyone has the tools innately inside of them, it's just about saying, "Today, I am going to try." Yeah. There's this quote by Teller of Penn and Teller. Sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would deem reasonable. Like, we haven't in us. Just be the one that cares a little bit more and is willing to try a little bit harder. I think we all have it. Yeah. And the more systems you can build, the more setup for success you are in actually winning. Where does the, it's in the ethos and I've tried to pin it down, but I love to get your opinion on. Where does the notion, let me say this way, with every new system and every new theory and every new, this is the right diet or this is the right modality or this is the road ever. What I feel like we've done to people is we've created this huge culture of disempowerment. The meta messages you can't unless you. And it can be jarring to folks. I get a lot of pushback when someone's like, "Hey, I keep yelling at my kids and so I'm going to go to therapy. I'm going to figure out." I'm like, you should do that and you should, it's going to be a valuable exercise to go back through time and figure out why your body responds to feeling powerless by yelling. That's a good, that's a worthy endeavor. And stop yelling at your kids today. Because you don't yell at your grandmother. You don't yell at the old lady at church. You don't yell at your boss. You can. You've proven to yourself. You can yell, "So don't yell again." And there's an instant like, "Oh yeah, I can." Does that make sense? But there's this culture of, "You can't." And I don't know how to, I don't have the skills, I don't know how to push back anymore against that. Because I feel like most of my job now has become, "You can." I believe that you can. When I was a kid, then like when you turn a certain age and you start saying, "I can't." Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Like right now my kids are three and five. They believe that they could jump in a single leap across a highway. Correct. They think they can do everything. Yeah, yeah. My daughter thinks that she is stronger than I am. She's like, "Daddy, I'm stronger than you." Let's be honest. And you're like, "Dude, I train on Zoom." I have a Zoom trainer. And then you get to a certain age. And suddenly, crisis of confidence, you can't. I remember when my dad was so intentional in how he raised me. And confidence was his biggest thing. Because my mom got sick and he just didn't want me to lose confidence. So I started saying, "I can't." He literally printed up these little fortune cookie-sized pieces of paper that said, "Success comes in cans, failure comes in counts." And literally he had like a thousand of them over my entire life. Like I'd be like putting in my underwear. I'm like seven. That was intense. It was not much. And yet I believe that to be true. Yeah. Here's the thing though. The people who push back on it, it's easy for me to believe that. Because I grew up with a dad who constantly reassured me that I could. Yeah. And I think the most people don't have that. Yeah, and so I don't think it's about pushing back on it. I think it's just about being the first person to say, "Hey, I don't think that you think you can." Because not enough people have told you that you can. Yeah. I don't even know you. You're a voice on the other end of a phone. And I know that you can. Yeah. And maybe the first thing that you can and should do is start to surround yourself with other people who believe in you as much as a stranger does. That's right. Because I think we're all capable of so much more than we think. But it's hard to know that if you don't have other people reminding you of it. I think that maybe the most important, the most important walk away I've had the last five, 10 years is none of this matters without people. Yeah. And to a large extent, you can get lucky. You can whiten up your way through a lot, but none of it works long-term without other people. But you put in the time to learn that song and get up on that stage and play with that band. Because you are tenacious and persistent and you believe in yourself. But really, because they believed in you enough to ask you to play with them and you did not want to prove them wrong. Right. You want to prove them right. I had a delusional confidence about that thing. Yeah. I knew that. You know what I mean? Yeah. I can, I'll hit that guy. But I'm saying they're confidence. They're confidence in you. Made you more confident in yourself. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they picked me. But the point I was making before, which I think you've also made is people need to stop waiting for some like magic recipe to feed these things out and rather just believe enough in yourself that if you decide to do something, you will be able to do it. By the way, when you say just stop yelling at your kids now, that doesn't mean you're never going to yell at your kids. Of course not. You're going to mess up in the same way that you're going to have that first blush reaction way. What about me? Yeah. But it's what happens when you think that or what happens when you yell the next time. Whether you're able to say, I'm not a bad person. I did it. I'm working on it. I've gotten so much better. And also kids. I was wrong. I'm sorry that I yelled at you. Yeah. I'm actually not sorry about the message. It was to the brain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't do that. But I am sorry about the way I'm which I delivered it. Yeah. Which by the way, only somewhat related. I think that is such an important caveat to how you apologize when you yell. I am not apologizing for the message. I meant that. I'm really sorry how I delivered it. That was not okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. That's at least for me by the way, in parenting and in leadership. Yeah. Because suddenly you apologize for yelling and now people think it's okay to do the thing that they were yelled at. To be late for fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. do, how have you worked? So I think a failure of, I would call my people, which is the mental health community over the last, especially 100 years, but especially last 50 years. This idea of mental wellness, mental health is if I can get all of the right thoughts and the right order, then I'm going to be okay. And I think what's been divorced in a pretty powerful way from that is you got to go do something different. You got to go act. How did you take these fun, exciting, I just have this imagination. I'm sure it's not real, but New York, it's awesome. You've got a bunch of five thousand star chefs in there making delicious food. You'll have wine going in these creativity sessions. Yeah. So fun. But at some point, everybody had to put their apron on and go fill their picture up and start cooking, right? And like, how do you make that shift from the exhausted, that's the word I hear more than anything, the exhausted dad, the exhausted mom, the exhausted wife, the exhausted husband, who, all right, I put an hour on the calendar to think of a cool thing I can do for my husband. I'm pretty sure he's going to be like, what do you do? And he's not going to receive it in the, with, with the way I'm telling myself, he's going to receive it or I want him to. But it's still the right thing to do. How do you take that hour and then set it into motion? So I think there's a, there's a couple of things to play here. One, it's from creativity to action. How do you get there? But you talked about like the exhausted part. And I think there's only worth noting, at least in my perspective, of the world, there's certain exertions of energy that are depleting. And there are those that are reenergizing. I'll use the restaurant as the metaphor. God, it's so true. Like our pursuit of excellence. And by the way, I love, I'm a perfectionist. I crave nailing every single detail. It brings me joy. And yet, that is depleting. Yeah, it's exhausting. The investments I made to do crazy things for other people that was never depleting. It was always energizing. In fact, it was that energy, it was that exertion of energy that gave me the energy to invest in the excellence. Gotcha. And so I think it's, you can spend energy doing different things. Some will leave you exhausted. Some will actually start to fill your tank back up. Yeah. And understanding which fall into which category for every individual is important. Now, I believe that the creativity, the hospitality, the fun, the magic and a marriage is actually what makes it worth living. Correct. And absent that, if you are married and you have kids and you have a job, the whole thing is exhausting. Yeah. So you need to spend time investing in things that actually energize you. Like anyone who's ever gone to the gym when they're hungover understands this. You have nothing left to give and you go and you leave feeling better than when you walked in the door. Absolutely. And so this is where I think this comes into play. Now, the other thing you said is I'm going to give it to him and he's not even going to appreciate it. Do you know, do you know the guy Ryan Holiday? Oh, yeah. Absolutely, extraordinary. I was on his podcast and that's a bigger deal than being on my show. By the way, like, you know, it's a big deal. It's good to come back to. Right. He hasn't, he hasn't had me on. So that's cool. No, but one of the things I say is there are a few things more energizing than the feeling I have when I see the look on someone else's face when they receive a gift, I'm responsible for giving them. Right. So I go into his podcast and I'm like, hey, how does that line up with stoicism? Am I wrong? Because his whole thing like being a stoic means you should do it regardless of the outcome. And by the way, so we had this whole conversation, she's like, no, no, it is totally, totally okay for you to be filled up by the reaction. And yet if that's the reason you're doing it, that's not okay. Yeah. Because then you're using your spouse exactly. They become a Xanax for you. The giving needs to be the thing that fills you up, regardless of the reaction you get. And yeah, if you never do anything cool for your person, the first time you do something for them, they're going to be like, what is happening? Yeah, what do you want? Yeah. But if you do it often enough, like, like anything, they're going to be like, hey, there's no catch here. Yeah. This is awesome. Yeah. Well, and it's for me, it's been an identity shift, which is not how can I make her in a better mood? How can I make her not mad to I'm a guy who. And by telling myself the story, I'm a guy who shows up no matter what. Yeah. That has given more energy. Because now I am working towards this identity. I'm not chasing this whack-a-mo game of, is that make sense? 100%. You said something important. Some things give us energy and some take from us. One of the most common things I hear from couples is my spouse says they just need some time to on their phone. I can't think of a more depleting use of time. It's not a recovery tool. A walk is at exercises. I'll say what? I don't watch a ton of TV and I'm 10 years late to it. But my son and I started on an episode one of Stranger Things. And we would get done with an episode. And I was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was magic for me all the way through it. And I know people like, I like this. He's the whole thing. And I'm sharing it with him. And so there is some time and there's energy there. But almost every time. I guess what I'm going to say is a lot of the screen and a phone screen are very different. In a shared experience. Yeah. You're with your people. You're with your people and your head in this moment. Yeah. That's beautiful. But just unplugging is often not benign. It's cancer. So it takes from you. It's malignant. By the way, and I've had situations like this in my life in the past. So I'm like, I've seen some time I'd look at my phone and I judge them. Right. And yeah, like, especially if it's your wife, that's not the case with my, but like the next step is not telling them why that is not the best way to the best way is to say awesome. I need some time to do this. Like we can inspire people through our actions. Like my wife, there was a season where I was on my phone. And Christina would be like, I'm going to go for a walk. And then she'd leave to go for a walk. And I'm on my phone. I'm like, how did I end up being a loser? She never judged me for it. But then I'd be like, Hey, can I go on a walk with you? Or awesome. I'm going to go on a walk myself as well. Yeah. I think like the one Coda want to put on the conversation from before. Do you have it to do list for work? Right. Everyone does. I think anyone who's doing anything of significance in the world has a to do list. These are the things. And like when we have a moment of pause in our day, at least this is how I manage my, my work. There's these moments, right? Like we're not some days I'm scheduled back to back to back to back to back to back. There's other days where I have 30 minutes. Yeah. And I'll sit down and I'll open up the to do list and say, is there anything here I want to think about? Not action on. Like maybe I'm sitting down and have lunch. What do I want to think about? Obviously I also have a to do list for life. And then to do list for life isn't, I mean gutters might be on it. Sure. But that's not the only thing that's on it. Like anniversary or my dad's 80th birthday is next year. I don't know what we're going to do. But I've now spent three or four hours thinking about it. And I have like a whole list on thinking about all sorts of different stuff. Like if you don't have it to do list for life and I'm not talking about the chores, but like the things about life that makes life great. What are things that you want to be thinking about now so that three, six, nine, 12 months from now when those things happen? They are spectacular. Anyone who ever gets to the weekend and has nothing to do because they never planned what they wanted to do on the weekend can relate to this. Yeah. Your weekends are better if you spend 20 minutes during the week deciding how you want to spend them. This is how you bring hospitality into your life. Just be a bit more creative and a bit more intentional. I we obviously have tons of to do list. A thing that was a game changer for me was a to do four. And what's what's the thing? And this was inspired by I was listening to Esther Pearl counsel somebody and they're going back and forth. And this woman was incredibly critical of her husband. Just he doesn't do this. He doesn't do this. He doesn't do this. And Esther and her very New York thick French beautiful accent. She just said, when's the last time you made him a cup of tea and that woman just got silent? Like all this criticism, all this criticism. And much of it's probably warned. Yeah. When's the last time you just headed in with something kind. And I thought what a powerful thing. And so just making a to do for like what's a thing I can go do. And part of it was inspired out of 14 year old son. And I was like, hey, I'm going to not tell you very much how to treat a new girlfriend as you're getting into dating and treat a future spousal someday. Like, um, you you're gonna have a very lived experience. So Sunday night, getting the carted, what are we doing to it? We're gonna go fill out mom's car, so she has gasoline. And that's a thing, 'cause I know she hates going to the gas station. And like, what's a thing? And what it's done over time for me is, I just walk in the house with my eyes open, a little bit water. It takes, 'cause I've counted-- - Wait, those simple things. - That's it. It's 28 seconds, I've counted 28 seconds to walk by and see the dryer, the washer, not moving, and to move one to the other. - Yeah. - It does take three or four minutes to fold whatever's in the dryer. That's a long time, so. - By the way, I mean, if you commit to helping with the laundry and you're the one that gets there when the dryer is dry, it's a hard moment. - It's the worst. - It's the worst, I don't want to sure you got it. It's those moments, you're like, just the last night, I opened the trash to put something in the trash and that sack was so overfull. And my wife was right here and we both just looked at it. Just to see, are you gonna, you know when you're having an infant the first time? And you hear that baby crying or whatever. And you're both kind of half asleep, but not. And then both of you stop breathing just to see. Like, I'm being more quiet than you, like, you know that. But that leads to the, like, to me the power of, just go first. This quote, I was doing a, the signing books after a talk months ago. And one of the guys that came up, he said, gosh, your talk reminded me of this, this saying we have in our family, like from his parents. I think it went back, always. Never let a gracious impulse pass. And by the way, I get chills repeating it because if you can actually commit to living life that way, which I don't think it's possible for anyone to do it 100% of the time, but at least to aspire towards that. - I'm writing that down. Like the number of times I'd see something and have an idea of something I wanted to do with that thing for someone in my life and be like, man, that'd be so cool. I'm just too busy right now. - Well, I think that excuse is gone now 'cause you can pretty much do anything with your phone now. - Yeah, you know what I mean? - But even some of this, like, I'll give you an example. I was, like, I can sit in, like, I can do that in two seconds. - Yes. - But like, for example, this one requires, like, marginally more work. - Okay. - My kids call the thrift stores, treasure stores. That's how we branded them. And like, we have this whole tradition when they get a bunch of new toys, they have to bring some of the treasure store and they get one additional new toy out there and that's the whole thing. We were at the treasure store, me and my kids, Kristina was out of town, so we're just gonna burn and day like a lot of week and day. And one of my buddies is a kid that I've known since preschool was a huge sublime fan. He loved sublime. Like, he used to busk on the streets of your playing sublime. And he's a medium. I know he's a medium shirt and I see an old sublime shirt in medium. And I'm like, man, I should just buy this and send it to Andy. And I put it back into the thing and I was like, I don't want it. I'm gonna have to go home and find a box. And then it was literally two weeks after I heard never lit a gracious impulse pass. And I turned around, picked it up, found the time that we can brought the kids to whatever. I'm gonna know from him two explainers like, dude, it just feels so nice that you thought of it. Yeah. The silliest, simplest thing and how close I was to not doing and what it cost me eight bucks between like the $2 shirt and whatever the shipping was. Yeah. In our marriages with our kids, with our friends. I'd say like over the last 10 years, I've probably let 50% of my gracious impulses pass. Now I have a lot of them. So it works. But in marriage, above all else, if we can be more determined to never let a single one pass. Now that one thing, we all have the ideas. It's just a matter of actioning them. That's it. I'm gonna take that on as a challenge. If you try to even like for a week. I'm gonna go 30 days. Now I'm gonna put it in. I'm gonna go 30 days and I'll keep track. But I would like to not, no matter what the impulses, I'm gonna see it through. I like that. That's fun. That could be really fun. I actually love it as a challenge. Like there's all these challenges. But it re-orients. Like generosity. It re-orients generosity. But it re-orients the most important relationship of my life back to top of mind. Yeah. Not behind work numbers and schedules and doctor appointments for kids and all that. It holds, it's kind of like when you're working with your business, it's like what makes you so successful, which makes my boss Dave so successful, is what I'll call it pathological obsession with the end user. All right, like I've been doing a lot of stand-up here over his A&E's and like there's comics who come through and you can feel it. I've worked really hard on an hour. You all owe me these laughs. Versus, I've met with some, I mean, we've just been in the green room with some big time comics who are like the crowd's tough. And they see it as I owe them a break from their life. I'm gonna go out there and work extra hard to give them. Right? Like I, it's hospitality, right? It's just the way I see it. But the most important person I should be thinking about that is not a room full of strangers or a customer. It's, how do I bring that to my wife? And I like that. That's a good challenge for me. Don't let a gracious impulse pass. Do you know what you're talking about with comedians? It exists across every business. Every business. After I sold my company and before COVID, in that two months, I like had a complete identity crisis. I was like, who am I without restaurants? And sort of frantically raising money and putting together a team to open more restaurants? And when COVID hit, I was one week away from signing three restaurant leases in New York. COVID gave me the gift of choosing what I wanted to do next as opposed to doing what I'd always done. But the name of my hospitality company that I'd set up for those restaurants was called Thank You. And it was because I looked at so many of the successful restaurants in New York. And when you walked in the doors of those restaurants, it was almost like the energy you were receiving was you're welcome. - Ex-yes! - Yes! And I was like, hold on. - Yes! - I don't care if I have the best restaurant in the world or a random restaurant and. - Y'all don't exist without them. - Like, I am grateful that you are here. 'Cause we don't exist without you. - Yeah, and also, like even if you're the busiest place ever, and you could be mean to a bunch of people and you're still gonna do great. Like they're choosing to invest their time with you. Like that for not in a business level, but simply like ask yourself what right looks like. Do you know what I mean? - Right, me and me feeling grateful for that. - Yeah. - But it's wild to me. Like, and by the way, the thing that frustrates me, I'm like, where is karma? - Yeah. - Like, how are these people still-- - It comes so busy when this is the way they're leading some of those comics. - It comes, yeah. - It comes. - But it comes. - It'll come. - It comes. And I've, yeah, it comes. Yeah. - It comes when, and you see it, when there's a spectacular fall publicly, and there's a ground swell of. - No, no, no, no, I know her. Like don't talk bad about her. You might have this perception, or I know that guy. - Yeah. - But I close doors, I know that guy. This conversation's over, right? And you see people survive those versus the other, which is a thing comes up, and everyone's like, yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Doesn't surprise me. - Yeah, yeah, and it's a haunting, right? I've heard you speak several times, and you know that conversation's about this. Well, when it comes to the things you would do in restaurants, they were big and sometimes spectacular, but the things that have always caught my attention were the teeny tiny little things. And when I talk to married couples, it's the teeny tiny things that people will tell forever. They will tell that story for the rest of their life. When I talk to couples, and they're thinking about rebuilding their marriage, or reimagining it, they got two kids all of a sudden, and they're married, they're different people, their marriage is different. And they think in terms of Super Bowl, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, make each other a cup of coffee. Like, just start washing the towels, man. And then you want to get crazy, put the liner back in the trash after you take this. Like, it's these little things. Am I crazy? It feels like hospitality, feels like this generous, this generous generosity impulses, man, they happen at the micro level, way more than the spectacular, the fireworks show. Sometimes, like, when I go to speak to a group of financial advisors, or any business who works with the same customer over the course of years, for months or years, it's a question I get. Like, hey, it was easy for you to do unreasonable hospitality, because you had people for one night. I see them all the time. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, by the way, I'm envious of that. Yeah, you get to know them. You get to walk through life with these people. Now, to the point of like the big gestures, anyone listening who has no idea who I am, like, at the restaurant, we do crazy stuff. Yeah. Send people sledding or beach scenes. We do wild, wild things. When I think about, mm, my relationship with my wife, that's what it looked like in the beginning, right? Like, crazy over the top day. It's this, that, the other thing. If ICE did the big over-the-top things for her. all the time. Now, she would just be annoyed. Right? Like we live life together. Like and by the way, it's like any song, a song is not good if it's all crescendos, a tasting menu is no good if it's all beef dishes, right? Like you need in a song, you need the bridge and the verse and the soul. Like it's all about how these things balance together. But when you're in relationship with someone, you now know them so unbelievably well that it's those microgestures that matter more than anything because anyone can do something over the top, only someone that knows them so intimately well understands the little things they'll make them tick. Yeah. In my marriage, when Christina sets up the coffee machine at night so that when I walk downstairs, all I need to do is press a button. I mean, yeah. That's better than buying me a new car, right? Like that means so much to me because she knows that in the morning before coffee, I'm barely functional. Right. And so that one thing takes her probably 28 seconds. And there's other things in the other direction. How important is it? So let me set this up. I have my big moment over at the comic club. Yeah. Right. So I do my first big headlining night. And I set up some surprise guests who are infinitely better and more famous than me and they're fun just to show up. Wait, congratulations. No, it was a blast. It was fun. That's incredible. The room sells out here Nashville. It's a whole that's how me and my dad connect to when I was a kid. Like all of this stuff happens at once. And my wife doesn't think I'm funny at all. At all. I'm hilarious, but she doesn't. Very similar to Kelly. Doesn't think I'm fun at all. Yeah. Great. And the secret thing is, is anytime she comes and watch, just me do a thing, whether I'm speaking somewhere or whatever. Half the time people are looking over her. What's her reaction? What do you think? Do you think this is funny? Are you crying too? Right. And so she hates the spotlight. She likes working behind closed doors. And so coming out for her is a thing. She came to the show. And at one point, the lights are real real bright in those rooms. I saw her like with her head back laughing. Oh. And dude, it was just like every other laugh in a way. He's like, boom, there it is. Like Dave Chappelle and Nate Bargazzi could have been laughing if it hadn't. I didn't know. Didn't matter. Yeah. Boom right there. One of my favorite things about hanging out at comedy clubs hanging out with other comics in the green room. There's just kind of no filter and no rules. And it's awesome. Everybody's like on the same team. I left early. I was like, guys, it's awesome. Thank you all for coming and being a part of this with me. It was pretty special for me. I was racing home to get that second standing ovation. Yeah. Couldn't wait. Yeah. Could not wait. So I left early. I drive up. I'm like excited. I have this thing. It's like, I'm going to walk in. She's going to be like, Oh, my gosh. Oh, so there's one single light on in our kitchen, which is kind of the signal. The kids are in bed. She's still awake. When that light goes off, I know she's already gone to bed. I caught home early, walk up the stairs, get into the house. And she goes, Hey, and I was like, kind of wait. I was kind of waiting for you like a go. And she goes, Hey, is there any way you could take our son to school in the morning? Because I forgot our daughter as a doctor appointment. Is there when you can get in there? And I was like, yeah. And she goes, Oh, God. Thank you. And she came over and kiss me tonight and said, good night. I love you. And she went to bed. And honey. What I just the event I had made up in my mind. Yeah. colliding with reality. Yeah. And so there was the instant part of me. If that had happened five or 10 years ago, it would have been, I would have supernovaed. Right. You know, love me. You don't care about me. Oh, crap. Yeah. Yeah. Like, why everyone else thinks I'm so great. Like, and you're the only why doesn't? And instead I laughed. I was like, who that didn't collect. I thought I was going to. And a couple of days later, I was like, Hey, this is embarrassing for me as a blouse six foot two Texan, but can I just say this? If I ever go do, she calls me hanging out with my friends. Go to the thing with your friends. Yes. If I were good to do that and I come home, it means a big deal to me. If you would just ask me, what's one joke that went great? Yeah. Which is one? Or if you come and I did a good job that you just like throw a ticker tape. Yeah. When I walk in the door, will you be obnoxious for me? And here's what was wild. In her hearing that, of course, she heard a grade. She's like, yes, of course. But the way she read it back to me was John the whole month was a celebration of you. Because you were on, you were running jokes, three nights a week. You were gone. And I was creating space here. I was creating space here. I took the kids care. I took all the stuff off. Like, you thought the kids weren't doing anything. I was doing all of it, driving everybody where, because I wanted you to have a. And so for her, that it had been a month long celebration. The fact that I got so, so uncomfortable and I went for you, I thought that was the parade, right? But there was this, and I tell you the whole story to distill it down and say, again, almost like coming up with a, with a structure or a system. I can't expect her to be a mind reader, right? And so there's something about asking, will you love me like this? And I'm embarrassed that I have, that I have these, like, hey, when I'm stressed, will you just put your hand on my arm? It just makes it all go away. I know that's weird. Would you just do that? It feels un-un-un-sexy and unromantic and un-holywood. But I think it might be an act of super graciousness giving you a path. Here's how you can love me really well. Does that make sense? A hundred percent. Instead of, like, it just, like, I feel like the conversation about hospitality, like, if someone's be like, I got to, I'm just going to, like, I'm going to be, like, double of seven, I'm going to be, like, you know, Sherlock Holmes trying to figure it out. It really helps if I can just give you a path. It's not a test. Like, just give the other person the answers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's very important to my wife that we just walk slowly with no purpose, sometimes. Yeah, it's very important to me that when the kids and I are watching a movie at the end of the night, she doesn't need to watch the whole thing. Yeah. But just come up and sit with us for 10 minutes. Yep. And by the way, if her body is touching my body a little bit, oh, my nervous system goes, I will fall asleep. I literally will just fall asleep at the moment that happens. And I told her that I was like, hey, I know that at the end of the night when the kids and I want to watch a movie, that is the last thing you want to do. If you could ever find, like, five minutes just to come and sit with us, like, that would just mean a lot to me. It's like, hey, it's not the last thing I want to do. It's like, that actually sounds lovely. I don't want to watch a whole movie. I have others like, that's when she goes through her, she likes to cross things off her. I think giving the answers is a beautiful thing. I also think to the point of like, because I've been there before, I went and did a big talk and Christine and the kids were with me and the organizer said to Christine, hey, like, do you want to see it? She goes, no, I'm good. And in the beginning, I'm like, oh, she doesn't even want to come to see me do my thing. Yeah, sometimes I think we expect our person to play too many different roles. They're meant to be our best friend and our partner and our lover and our co-parent and our biggest fan and our co-erner. Yeah, like our co-manager. Yeah. What are we doing here? Like, there are plenty of people out in the world that are going to be impressed with me. Yeah. I don't need my wife to be like, giving you a standing ovation. If I'm not careful, I really want it because I seek validation from her. But I already got the most validating thing I could ever have gotten from her, which was the commitment to spend her entire life with me. I want, she gave it to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like, I've had to work on that as well, because sometimes like, even just in a house party in her house, I'll like tell a couple jokes and everyone's laughing. I look over it. She's just not laughing. I'm like, Exactly. Yeah. I'll be. Yes. And vice versa, I had to explain to her, I don't know why. But when we are all on the couch, all four of us, and even one of these idiot dogs I have, I instantly go to sleep and she thought it was because I was bored and like, I wasn't engaged. And I said, I don't know how to describe this other than that's one of the only times in my world when my body goes, we're all okay. Yeah. And like, all my chickens are here for absolutely nothing, I can, I'm out. Yeah. I can turn off. And it's my, it's, it's not good for my sleep. It's my favorite thing is in a dark room, some, you know, people that you love, all the kids are there, and my body goes, and now we're good. Yeah. And she was like, Oh, I thought you were super bored. I wanted to be doing something else. And so you just nod it off. And I was like, no, no, no, this is when I'm like, yeah, I invited a friend of mine and his, kid this a year ago, it was like a Friday and I had a light day and we were on it. We were working on a project together. So we were on the Zoom in the morning, me and him and a bunch of people from our team. So I was like, hey, for a good, do you want to just go see a movie? Let's take our kids and let's go see a movie today. You know, well, we don't do screen time with our kids. I was like, okay, bro, I get it. principally, I get it. I was like, do me a favor. Get your entire family and sit in the couch, watch any movie with a bowl of popcorn and circle back to me. It is one of life's absolutely great pleasure. Yes. I'm neurotic about screens and me and my daughter saw three movies last week and we had it. It got progressively more fun and progressively more silly and progressively more ridiculous. Movie night is different than every other relationship of the screen. And I think it's even going back to the theater is so fun. Back to, I mean, it's magic. The movie theater experience. It's a shame that it's like kind of losing as much as it is because I want my dad's quotes that I love is the secret to happiness is always having something to look forward to. And I love taking my kids to the movies in the morning on a weekend. Yeah. Like literally popcorn for breakfast. And we do it once every couple months, but we will talk about it for the entire week. Yeah. I mean, like, guys, Saturday morning popcorn for breakfast. That's what we come. And I think like we need these things. Not just for our kids, but just for ourselves. These little moments to look forward to. Yeah. And again, that's so small. So small. It's not Disneyland. It's not a camping trip. It's not. Let's go eat popcorn for breakfast. Yeah, it's going to be ridiculous. Popcorn for us. Yeah. It's going to be silly. And I've written it down. I'm beginning today. What's the thing? The whole 30? The whole 30. Yeah. Like it's going to be the gracious 30. That's what I'm saying. Like actually thing, I've never thought about it as like a month long challenge. And so I'm inspired back by that. Like these ideas of all the challenges revolver on working out, drinking, and what we eat, they revolver on me. Yeah. This challenge revolves around my wife. And by the way, this is one of the greatest investments in you. Have you read any stuff by Bob Waldenker for the Harvard study of longevity? Oh, the longevity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I've started spending a much relationship. Yeah. It is amazing. He is amazing. And the number one thing, basically how strong are your thigh muscles? So that you don't fall walking later in life. And you can stay social. But the depth and quality of your relationships leads to you living longer than any element of your diet or your workout routine or how much you drink in a while because relationships, that's it, are what make life worth living. And so yeah, if that is the case, it's irresponsible to not imbue them with a little bit of magic. And that is, well, everything that we've been talking about in magic. I love, you've distilled it down. It's intentionality. Yeah. Just being creative and intentional and pursuit of the people you care for, which is really frustrating because that means at the end of the day, I look in the mirror and I get to choose. Am I going to be for her or for me? And by the way, when I'm for her, it's way for me to. Yeah. It's the most selfish pleasure. Yeah. It's the best. It really is. There are very, very few people that I've ever met who like giving, who like receiving gifts at Christmas, more than they like giving them. Yeah. It's so much more fun. Yeah. The luck on someone's face and the unwrap it, they see that. Especially a thoughtful one. Yeah. And when you get that luck, you're like, oh, I nailed it. Yeah. That, I mean, in that same idea, it can be transposed across everything. Thanks for being my friend. Thanks for having me. Enjoy your time, man. You travel in the world here. Soon, so be safe. I'll see you on the other side. I'll still be here. [BLANK_AUDIO]