Every great innovation you've ever seen in your life started with somebody saying that could be done better. I bet I've got a solution for it.
Business like life is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple and it's that hard. Where does that come from? Dave, you got to be the kind of person that can actually persuade others to come along for the ride with you because there's not many jobs I know of that don't involve some kind of team.
Could you take me inside the room when you're interviewing somebody, having a conversation? What are some of the questions you like to ask?
I would never ask somebody, "Are you self-aware?" Because they'll say, "Yes, of course I am." But I might ask someone, "What's the greatest misperception other people have about you?" You cannot answer that question if you're not self-aware. The thing that gets me out of bed every single morning, and really the reason I wrote this book is one of my favorite quotes of all time, business, like life is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple. And it's that hard. I've repeated that a million times over the years. Where does that come from, Danny?
You know, when I wrote Setting the Table, it was really to try to teach me. I didn't come up with that one day and say, I've got to write that idea down. The process of writing for me is what gets things out of my heart and out of my head. And when I wrote that one sentence, which is right in the introduction to the book, I said, I don't know if I can do any better than that. It really is why we do what we do. We spend a lot of effort trying to make great food and find wonderful wines to pour for people and design beautiful dining rooms. But at the end of the day, it's the human life that happens within those walls and the relationships that get built and the memories that get created that really make people, you know, feel like they're part of that community, like they belong. So that's why I wrote it and I'm sticking to it.
Do you remember the moment you wrote it? Because now everyone would say, "Well, that had to be like AI or something. That's just too good. It's too good." Do you remember like after thinking like, "Oh my goodness, this is it."
Yeah. We barely had the internet 20 years ago. I'm just kidding about that. We certainly didn't have AI.
You know, one of the things that no one tells you about when you're writing a book is that you don't write the introduction till after you've written the whole book because you don't really know what you're introducing. At least that's the way I write. I don't really know where a book is going to go. I just start thinking about what ideas mean a lot to me and have meant a lot to me and then try to make an order out of them and some, you know, organization that's going to make it fun for people to flip the pages. And I'm really grateful that happened with Setting the Table. And now I'm excited to get What Could Possibly Go Right out into the world.
I love the title and I love this ethos of, I may pronounce the name wrong. Is it Simon Sinek?
Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist. I even from the second we connected, I sense just your aura is one of optimism of believing things will go well and certainly reading your books and studying your work for a while. I think that just makes for an excellent attribute of a leader as well as someone that people would want to get in line and follow. A belief that it's going to go well, a belief of optimism. Where does that come from?
Some of it is, I think, wired in people. I do believe that there are people, it's like a bell curve. I believe there are people who are just, you know, you could put them in a closet with no light for a year and they'd open the door and they'd be out there hopping on a pogo stick. Not that many people like that. Then you could, you know, you could shine the sun on some people forever and they're just going to walk on the shady side of the street. That's the other end of the spectrum. I do believe that most people respond to hope and optimism. I think that people go to work every day or people, you know, start their day at home every day or whatever it is they're doing intending to make it a better day than yesterday or hoping that it will be, right? And I just think that if you can show people that there is a way that that could happen and that they can actually have an impact on that with the approach they bring, it just works.
And it's not a calculated business strategy. It's just I did get some of this. I think the first time I ever had a job where I was a manager of people, 100% of the people were volunteers. I was working in a political campaign and nobody was getting a paycheck, right? They were all volunteers and therefore each and every single day as their boss, the only way I could motivate them was to talk about the possibility and the hope that something good could happen if the candidate were to be elected. And I think I learned that if you can name what the higher purpose is of your organization.
I mean I know families that actually have their own family pact and they have a higher purpose in their family. This is what we stand for. This is how we do things around here. I think that people really they follow they want to follow that kind of a lead. I also think that you know the first book I wrote Setting the Table is about the power of hospitality. It is a fact that the root of the word hospitality is hope. And I think that people who are really good at hospitality, in other words, making other people feel like you're on their side, are people that exude a sense of hope. They actually and they hope that their own actions can make the world better for people. So again, the quote you just read comes from the introduction to What Could Possibly Go Right. And I didn't write that until after I had written the book. They should really call introductions epilogues if I'm the guy writing the book. But I realized that the you called it the ethos, the through line of What Could Possibly Go Right is that things don't in fact always go right. They don't. There is no straight line between point A and point B. But I do believe that you can as a leader or as just a player, you can impact the outcome by bringing a sense of possibility to every single thing you do.
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One of the I think things that people struggle with is how to advance their culture as something grows from maybe small or one restaurant to this big business or big organization and it's something you've done really really well. And this book has a lot of teachings to help people try to do that. Is that even the right question to ask? Or is there a different way to view this when somebody is building something and they go, "Wait a second. I can't physically be there every day to influence the culture or influence the behavior because now we have multiple locations. We're all over the place or some leaders are working in a more remote world and they still want to have that type of culture." How do you view this growing the culture as a business scales?
It's the absolute right question to be asking because I think that when people have a successful business or organization of any type, and it's doing good things for people. Why would you not want to do more of it? And once you make a choice to scale it, as you just said, or to do more of it, then there's kind of two things you know you're going to need. It's kind of like a plant is going to need sunlight and water, right? Well, I think for a business to grow, it's going to need funding and it's going to need leadership. It's going to need the kind of inspiring leadership that makes people want to go someplace with it. And when you put all that together, you end up having the possibility to grow a business. And yet, there's still one other crucial thing that the plant needs. It's not just the water and it's not just the sunlight. It needs the soil. And the soil is the culture. The culture is what the plant is growing in. The culture is what the business is going to either grow in or not grow in. And you can have the best business in the world, but if the way people feel working there isn't great, or if the way people feel doing business with you doesn't feel great to them, or if it doesn't feel great for your community, your culture is not actually additive to your growth. So, if I've learned any one thing through all these years, it's to tend to the soil, tend to the culture. And there are ways that you can scale that. And I found that the biggest way to do that is to be really really clear with everyone in the company which behaviors we are going to celebrate and which behaviors we are not going to tolerate.
And when you put all that together and you really are consistent with people and you do celebrate the stuff you want more of and you don't tolerate the stuff you want less of, you find that the culture can actually flourish. And then I would add one more thing to that. When you're growing, you need more people obviously. And if I've learned any one thing there, it's that when we promote people or when we hire people, everyone else in the organization is watching very carefully who's getting the promotions, who's getting the raises, who's getting hired. Everyone's watching. And you better make sure that the people you're bringing in and/or the people you're promoting are not only the people who are best at the stuff they do, but crucially they are the best at who they are for your culture.
Because every time you compromise on either one of those, you're sending a powerful message, maybe unwittingly, but you are sending a powerful message to everybody else. We didn't really mean all those words we were talking about because otherwise we wouldn't have promoted this guy. Those are the things I really try to focus on as we grow. And you know, we're very very conscious. Like the thing that gets me out of bed every single morning and really the reason I wrote this book is I was trying to learn over the past 20 years because we were growing and it wasn't always easy. And I was trying to learn when it worked really well, what was working really well, and when it didn't work really well, where were we failing? And it always came back to who we hired, how we and how we did business.
All right, I can't wait to get to some of the hiring stuff because that's rich in your book and I have tons of notes. But before that, my curiosity is getting the best of me. What are some of the specific behaviors that you celebrate? I think that's a really critical point of honoring the people who do it right and celebrating it not only so that they feel it but so everybody else sees it and feels it as well. So what are some of those specific behaviors that you celebrate?
Well, I would celebrate you because embedded in your question, you said the curiosity is getting the best of you. I really honor curiosity and you know if you're going to be the kind of organization that looks at every day as an opportunity to improve on how well you did it yesterday, you did your best yesterday, but you probably could do it a little bit better. It starts with curiosity. You've got to actually wonder what could we do differently? How could we do it differently? What more can we learn? What more can we teach? So that's crucially a behavior that we celebrate.
Real quick, does that look and sound like somebody asking questions? Somebody like good eye contact, somebody thinking of new ways to do something in a way that maybe has never been done before because they read a book or they talked to a mentor like what does curiosity actually look and feel like?
Well, every single thing you said would be part of my answer. And I think that curiosity is the crucial fuel for entrepreneurial spirit.
Because what an entrepreneur does there's a couple things. First of all, these reading glasses I have on I only wear when I'm reading really or if I'm looking at my computer screen. But whatever it is they're correcting is very different than the kind of glasses an entrepreneur wears. An entrepreneur wears glasses because they are upside. They only see what's up. They only see what could possibly go right. And they're always looking at existing problems that if only they were solved would make the world better. That's what an entrepreneur can really see, right? So, think about every great innovation you've ever seen in your life started with somebody saying that could be done better and I bet I've got a solution for it. And furthermore, and this is one of the most underrated things I think about leadership and curiosity infuses all these things, you got to wonder, right? Wonder is really the kissing cousin to curiosity. But you've got to be the kind of person that can actually persuade others to come along for the ride with you because there's not many jobs I know of that don't involve some kind of team. And so it starts with curiosity, seeing problems before others see them, coming up with a solution before others did that, and then persuading a bunch of really gifted people who are like-hearted and like-minded to come along for the ride and help you get there. Because very few things we can get done on our own.
I watched an interview you did on a show at one point and I think one of your first jobs was a sales job and that was my first job as well and I'm so grateful. I didn't love all of the elements but I got good at it and I think developing those skills has helped me for the rest of my life ever since. I'm curious because we're all in sales every day. Dan Pink has written a lot about that. He's been on the show talking about we're all in sales all the time. How did that one of those first jobs you have doing really well as a sales professional, how did that help you for the rest of your career?
It mostly helps me and I'll try to explain that. If I were really good at it though, I'd have a copy of What Could Possibly Go Right in the picture right now because then all of your viewers could see how beautiful the cover is. So, I'm going to try to get better at sales. What taught me more than anything is really kind of connected to one of the first questions you asked, which is that sales, like anything else, is building relationships with people. You don't want to be the kind of person, you know, I remember going to a shoe store when I was younger and it didn't matter what shoe I wanted. The person brought out everything from the back room that they wanted to sell. And it didn't matter whether it, you know, the two questions were, does it fit and do I like it? And even when they fit, if I didn't like it, it didn't matter. So what a great salesperson is they really try to put themselves in your shoes and they ask, "If I were that person, what would I want right now?" And they don't answer questions that you're not asking. They answer a question that you actually have. And a great salesperson actually sometimes helps you get to that question. And I just got good at connecting dots also.
So, for example, yeah, I was I think 23 when I first started as a salesperson in New York City and I had a massive territory. I was selling electronic tags to stop shoplifters of all things. But when I first started I had all of Manhattan. I had Bergen County, New Jersey. I had Suffolk County, Long Island. I had Duchess County up above. And I got to know, we didn't have the internet back then. So, everything I got to know was by being curious. And I drove my little company car, which was a powder blue Volkswagen Rabbit. And if I stopped into a dress store and learned that they were having a shoplifting problem and I ended up selling a system to this person, I found out that his cousin had a health and beauty aid store, you know, across town and I found out that his best customer had a food store, right? And I just kept connecting dots and making relationships with people. I also learned that I was willing to put myself out there in a way that I hadn't when I was much younger. Sales is kind of a gamble. It's a risky thing because what if they say no? And more often than not, they do. So, it was just like one of the best growing experiences ever. And through it all, I think I learned that I love to compete, but I mostly I wasn't trying to beat anybody. I just whatever number of sales I got last week, I wanted to do a little bit better this week. So, I learned a lot about my own competitive spirit as well.
Yeah, it's similar to entrepreneurship because in especially a lot of the sales jobs, there's a variable compensation component, meaning if you don't sell, you don't eat. You don't get any money. And so, you're betting on yourself every day. And that's what you do when you start a business is you're betting on yourself and your ability to rally people around a mission and to go make something happen. And so that's why I think if there's any like young person who isn't quite sure what they want to do when they graduate college, I tell them to get a sales job because you probably won't love it. It'll be hard. Maybe you'll like it. I hope so, but you probably won't. But if you work hard to get good at it, those skills are portable to whatever the thing is you do next. And so that's why I think it's
There's no job I've ever seen that doesn't benefit from good sales skills and good writing skills, I want to add.
Yes. Yeah. Well, obviously you've shown you've got that. One of the things that Okay, let's get some of the hiring stuff. One of the phrases that I loved my background is in athletics played football growing up in college and a little bit afterwards and so when you write about
Famous you were pretty famous weren't you?
No I mean good enough to have my college paid for which is great my parents loved it and I was proud to do that for them. But entrepreneurial athleticism it's a trait we look for in anyone that you consider for a leadership role in your organization. So, can you define this entrepreneurial athleticism and how important that trait is for you?
Absolutely. So, you wouldn't have gotten as far as you got. You're a quarterback. Yeah. Okay. So, you would not have gotten as far as you got without some god-given physical talent. But you also wouldn't have you probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as far as you had gotten if you didn't also have athleticism. And when I use the expression athleticism, it's not only what happens in sports, it's what happens anywhere, which is that with whatever gifts I got naturally, I'm going to actually dedicate myself, train myself to be my best, and I'm going to have the mental and emotional mettle to figure out a way to win. And that's athleticism. And I look for that in leaders that we have because, you know, people often say to me, gosh, how are you in the restaurant business? It's so hard. It's so competitive. Maybe, but I think that's true of what you do, Ryan. How many podcasts are out there?
