Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world.

How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? In this conversation, Guidara details the radical reinvention that centered around memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality. From surprising a family with a magical sledding trip to Central Park after their dinner to converting a dining room to a beach for a couple whose vacation was canceled, Guidara shares stories of how doing more paid off long run.

Guidara believes every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and shows us how we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. 

We know that people and teams excel at a high-level when they feel in community with each other – aligned and connected. In the corporate workplace, this used to happen organically but in today’s post-pandemic world where most work is done remotely, the conditions of the game have changed – which means leaders must change how they’re playing the game. Today’s leaders need to be skilled at very intentionally creating the conditions for their teams to come together, to genuinely connect – and that’s what is at the heart of hospitality. Leaders who know how to take a collection of individuals and make sure they operate as a team will create more connected, inspired, effective, and happy employees. By applying ideas honed over the course of his career operating the world’s #1 restaurant, Will helps others do whatever it takes to be better hosts, and thus better leaders.

Too often, when we’re faced with a pernicious problem in business or our lives, we fall back on the tried-and-true: push harder, be more efficient, and cut back. Imagine, that instead, you asked yourself: what is the hospitality solution? What if you forced yourself to be creative, to develop a solution that worked because of—not in spite of—your dedication to generosity and extraordinary service? These are usually harder to execute, and coming up with them will definitely call on your creative side. But they’re almost always a win. During times of struggle – particularly in today’s economic climate – people tend to operate from a place of fear. In this talk, Will makes the case for why this is the perfect time to root your decisions in hospitality and give more, not less.

For most of America’s history, we functioned as a manufacturing economy; now, we’re a service economy—more than three-quarters of our GDP comes from service. So, whether you’re in retail, finance, education, healthcare, computer services, or communications, you are in the business of serving other people. Making good products is no longer enough, and serving efficiently is no longer enough – now, it’s how you make the people you work with and those you serve feel that matters most of all. In this talk, Will will share why he believes our world is on the precipice of becoming a hospitality economy, and how every business can choose to be in the business of hospitality, by transforming ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences.