I listened to this interesting TEDTalk recently. This was an accidental discovery but turned out to be a true gem. In the beginning it might seem like it has to do something with the restaurant business, it doesn't apply to me, but believe me - it's worth listening till the end.
The concept of unreasonable hospitality guided the speaker as they took ordinary transactions and turned them into extraordinary experiences. Hospitality is about making people feel seen, and the best way to do that is not to treat them like a commodity, but as a unique individual. And if we could be unreasonable in our pursuit of that, we could give people the kind of experiences they would remember forever.
Hospitality is not just for fancy restaurants. The speaker gets it. Some of the gestures he described in the video, were quite extravagant. They did hire people under the team to help execute the ideas. That hotdog only cost $2, but the impact it had was priceless. It does not take a big budget to start infusing unreasonable hospitality into your culture because, it's not the cost of the gesture that matters. It's how it makes people feel.
For most of world's history, we are a manufacturing economy. Now we're a service economy and dramatically. So more than three quarters of our GDP is driven by service industries. Globally, it's more than 65%. That means that whether you're in real estate, or retail, or construction, or finance, or insurance or computer services, you do the same thing for a living that the speaker does. You're in the business of serving other people. And if you start to look closely enough, you will find opportunities for unreasonable hospitality to give people more than they could ever possibly expect. All around you. This is not rocket science. It just requires caring a little bit more and trying a little bit harder. Being present, not taking yourself too seriously. And remembering that one size fits one. Imagine if everyone on your entire team started thinking like this. Because making good products is no longer enough. serving your customers efficiently is no longer enough. It's how we make people feel that matters most of all, because I believe we are on the precipice of becoming a hospitality economy. Unreasonable hospitality helped the speaker's restaurant accomplish every single one of their goals. And it turned to the people he worked with from a collection of individuals into a trusting team, unlocking a collective creativity and capacity they had never experienced before.
So, the next time you find yourself pursuing a relationship with someone you work with, or someone you serve, I'm just here to encourage you to try being a little bit more unreasonable. Give people that sense of belonging. Give them a memory that can last a lifetime. It will not only transform your business, but it will also make you and all the people around you feel really, really, really good.