Finding the joy of service with Milk Bar's Christina Tosi and restaurateur Will Guidara (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

[00:00:00] Will Guidara: If a restaurant's doing that well, you can see a couple that's been married for 30 years, like rediscover one another for the first time.

[00:00:12] Adam Grant: Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to rethinking my podcast on the science of what makes us Tick with the Ted Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

Joining me today is my favorite duo in food. Christina Tosi and Will Gera. Christina is the founder, CEO, and Chef at Milk Bar. She's been a judge on Master Chef won two James Beard Awards and published multiple cookbooks, whereas Christina's specialty is dessert. Her husband Will's is dinner. Will is an accomplished restaurateur who build 11 Madison into the world's number one restaurant.

And wrote the bestseller, unreasonable Hospitality, which is about the power of giving people more than they expect. And sometimes it's not about the food at all.

[00:01:03] Christina Tosi: What's the cost of a kitty pool? Some sand and two plastic sleds from the local drugstore versus the food cost on unlike two plates of Muscovy duck.

[00:01:13] Adam Grant: Yeah, not that different. As you'll see Christina and will go to extraordinary lengths to create great experiences for others, and it's not just a principle of their work, but their marriage too. They're all about finding the joy of service.

[00:01:27] Christina Tosi: It's funny how these little things that we are raised, they're joy trails.

They're joy trails and they're mapped in all of us. We just have to figure out how they are and where to find them, where to pick them up now, and how to bring them into our lives because they will help unlock everything.

[00:01:51] Adam Grant: Christina, what do you think of unreasonable hospitality as a concept? Just a real softball Adam.

[00:01:59] Christina Tosi: You know, I was raised by a mom who. Taught me that. Life is for you to make and, and I mean that in the best way possible, which is to say, I didn't realize that life was so fun and magical for me, but maybe not for others.

I realized that it was that way because she made life happen, and she made life happen for me and for my sister, and for. The most random and most intentional people around us growing up, and so I think I learned the feeling and the spirit of engaging people and making people feel seen and welcome and making them feel things that were intentional and positive before I even had words to it.

It wasn't until I was a much, much, much. Older human that I met Will and got to witness it firsthand. So unreasonable Hospitality rings very near and dear to my heart, and it's been pretty fun to be raised with that spirit, but to watch it come to life through words and now be out in the world through my husband.

[00:03:08] Will Guidara: But, but hold on. I wanna, I wanna just, oh wait, he's gonna pick a fight. Okay, good. No, no, no. No fights. No fights. I. But I feel like when I've been brought in to talk to different companies over the last two years about these ideas, in some cases it's to try to convince them that this stuff matters. And in other cases, it's to provide some language to help articulate their collective intuition.

And obviously, I would not have married someone who didn't embody the things that were so incredibly important to me. And I'm, I'm not saying this. Because she's my wife or because she's sitting right next to me right now, but Christina embodies it. In the little ways and in the big ways. I remember one of the, the moments when I fell in love with her, not as a person, but as a business person, is when I learned that she called her like shipping business, a care package business.

'cause she understood that you can buy people cookies or you can send them a care package. And even in the naming mechanism alone, it conveys a very different sentiment. I feel like she got this stuff long before she met me, and it's one of the things that drew me to her in the first place.

[00:04:22] Adam Grant: Incredibly sweet.

Okay. I'm I, I really hate to burst that bubble, but I, I have to say that Will, you've done some things that other people would consider crazy in the name of Unreasonable Hospitality. The first one that really piqued my curiosity when I first learned about your work was the hotdog

[00:04:41] Will Guidara: moment. I was in the dining room.

I was clearing plates on a busier than normal lunch service, which. By the way is an important thing to do. The higher and the hierarchy you get, the more important it is than when you're helping your team. You do the most menial task. It's a meta signal to them that you're never gonna ask them to do something you're not willing to do yourself.

And when I was clearing their appetizers, this, by the way, was a, a table of Europeans on vacation to New York just to eat at fancy restaurants. And this was their last meal and they were going right to the airport afterwards to head back home. And. While I was there, I overheard them talking and they were going on and on about their amazing trip.

They've been to the Bernadin and Danielle and per se, and Jean George. And if you don't know what those restaurants are, trust and how fancy they sound that they're the good ones, just 'cause they have French names, trust in the, in the frenchness of their names. But then woman, one woman at the table jumped in and said, yeah, but we never got to have a New York City hotdog.

And it was one of those light bulb moments, and I walked as calmly as I could into the kitchen, dropped off the plates, ran outside, bought a hot dog, ran back inside. Then came the hard part, convincing my fancy chef to serve it in our fancy restaurant. But I asked him to trust me. I. And he cut the hot dog up into four perfect pieces.

Put one on each plate, a little swish of ketchup, mustard, what we call a canal, which is, and again, French for a fancy little scoop of sour grout and relish to each plate. And then before their final savory course, which was at the time, our signature Honey lavender glaze muscovy duck that had been dry age for two weeks.

I brought out what we in New York, call a dirty water dog. And I explained it. I said, Hey, I wanna make sure you don't go home with any culinary regrets. Here's that hotdog, and they freaked out and kind of systemizing that is what led to everything that came from there.

[00:06:35] Adam Grant: Christina, what was your reaction when you first, uh, found out that Will did that?

[00:06:39] Christina Tosi: When I met Will I totally judged the book by the cover. I was like, oh, this guy's like a fancy restaurant guy. And even now, knowing how many years ago it happened, even now, it is exciting to me, right? Like this idea of someone that is. Unabashedly unafraid to break the rules, to like break the rules, to shake his own team from like, they're very purposeful, very artistic, very intentional sleepwalking for hope of something different, bigger, better.

Like for me it's the rule breaking of it. That just delights me. That like that makes me smile and makes me shake my head and makes me go like, that's what I'm talking about. That is what living life should be like and look like and seem like.

[00:07:23] Will Guidara: Back then it was Christina and Dave Chang running Momofuku and then Christina built Milk bar.

Everything they built was almost as a reaction to what. People like us were doing uptown. It was like downtown and uptown. It was like the Montagues and the Kats, right? Like I, we had

[00:07:41] Christina Tosi: worked in those other faction fancy restaurants that Will's talking about, right? Like, we had lived that life. And we were like, absolutely not.

That's not for us. That's not who we are. We wanted to democratize savory food and dessert. And, and, and

[00:07:55] Will Guidara: she was predisposed not to like me. Until, until I made it impossible for her to not like me anymore. It's,

[00:08:03] Adam Grant: well, Christina, it's not surprising that you were drawn to the rule breaking, uh, rumor has it that as a kid you were not allowed to say, I can't ever,

[00:08:12] Christina Tosi: or I'm bored, I can't, and I'm bored.

My mom is like, Nope, nope. Take the soap. Go wash your mouth out. Not in this house. Those are scapegoats, those are lazy things to say, and that is not who you are. You are more creative than that.

[00:08:26] Adam Grant: And so if your life were a comic book, that would be the origin story, and then it would like the next panel would be, okay, here you are, taking the milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl and turning it into softer of ice cream.

I.

[00:08:39] Christina Tosi: My dad is first generation Italian American, like very sturdy, very passionate about what they do, but also really passionate about staying in your lane and doing what's right and being good and that that will bring you somewhere in life. And it wasn't until much later in life that I realized that I knew all these rules and that I had this creative spirit that was.

Like waiting to be let out. My folks were like super duper passionate about being the best, the very best at what you do. They, I think maybe just underestimated that. Creativity has a space in the professional version of yourself in the workspace. And that was really fun to discover. Um, building milk bar, because I think that's really where it came out of me.

It wasn't until I realized that I actually had my own mic and that I had that all of these things would add up. Like the other, the other momism was you have to drink your milk. I had to drink my milk, I had to eat my vegetables. And I had to go to the grocery store with her once a week, and so I had negotiated somehow by some feet of, I don't know what, that I was allowed to choose one box of cereal every week at the grocery store.

As long as when we got home she could pour as much milk over the cereal as she wanted. I had like the entire roadmap to cereal milk this entire time with me and didn't find the unlock in it until I opened milk. Bar and I realized we're not gonna serve vanilla ice cream. We can be more creative than that, right?

What is the thing that everyone knows that will make them feel seen and loved and like themselves, but also with this fresh new take on life in the world?

[00:10:18] Adam Grant: I'm reminded of some research showing that, wait, I, yeah, I'm gonna do this. 'cause what do I do? I talk about research. That's all I have. Okay? I love this evidence that if you look at really creative kids.

They tended to come from households that had fewer rules than their peers, but very clear values. The few rules list would be the, you can't say I'm can or I'm bored, but the values are really, really clear. You've gotta find interesting, meaningful ways to use your time. It's so interesting that a, a common thread between the two of you is this just flagrant disrespect for convention and for norms and refusing to, to do things the way they've always been

[00:10:57] Will Guidara: done.

I do think what we have in common. Is a reverence for history and for what's come before us and for learning all the rules, but not feeling beholden to them and choosing which ones we wanna break. We look like. Pretty buttoned up and professional in many ways, but neither one of us will ever take the answer because it's always been done that way as a reason for why we should continue doing it that way.

[00:11:28] Adam Grant: So Christina, while, while you're reinventing the way that that ice cream and dessert is, is done, well, not to be outdone, the most extreme thing I'm aware of that you've done was the couple who couldn't go on vacation.

[00:11:43] Will Guidara: I think if you're looking to bring people joy, you pick up on little things, and then if you're paying attention.

There's opportunities all around you, and it's just a matter of which ones you grab hold onto. They had a big beach vacation. It was canceled because of inclement weather. Somehow they got off our wait list at the 11th hour. They were now in our restaurant instead of on the beach, which is pretty cool too.

But we wanted to bring them to the beach. We sent our handyman to the Home Depot, which was just down on 23rd Street with a couple of guys. We brought hundreds of pounds of sand back to the restaurant, to the private dining room, which was empty. We covered the floor with sand. We bought a kitty pool, filled it with water, beach chairs, served them my ties, and it was when they were done with their dinner, we said, Hey, just before you go, we have one last treat.

We just wanna bring you up to the private dining room. And if they couldn't make it to the beach, we brought the beach to them. That's less of a part of the meal than it is making them feel something. And of all the thousands of things we did for all these people, when I run into people who we did one of these things for, they can never remember a single thing they ate, but they'll never forget these things.

Right. And, and we were celebrated for our food, but it was in things like this that we actually. Left people with memories.

[00:13:06] Adam Grant: When I first heard that story, I was immediately reminded of a hotel that the Heath brothers wrote about. The hotel is a complete dump, but it has glowing reviews because they have a Popsicle hotline.

I.

[00:13:19] Will Guidara: Yes,

[00:13:20] Adam Grant: you, you pick up the phone and all you can do, it's all right. Yeah. It's in California. All you can do is order popsicles, but who wouldn't forget that?

[00:13:26] Will Guidara: You walk down to the pool, there's a red phone, you pick up the phone, they say Popsicle hotline will be red out, and a guy comes out in a tuxedo and gives you one of those red, white and blue bomb pops and walks away and it, for years, it's been like the second highest rated hotel in all of Los Angeles on TripAdvisor.

I say that in a restaurant. The food, the service. To design their merely ingredients in the recipe of human connection. We are actually doing our job when we create the conditions where people can walk in and sit across from the table. 'cause by the way, the table is one of the few remaining places on earth where people feel a compulsion to put their phones down and actually lean in and reengage.

And if a restaurant's doing that well. You can see a couple that's been married for 30 years, like rediscover one another for the first time.

[00:14:17] Adam Grant: You both are big believers in treating people better than they expect and giving them more than they signed up for. And one of the reasons I was so drawn to this philosophy is I.

It's exactly what I, what I was trying to capture when I said, look, in the long run, it's better to be a giver than a taker or a matcher. If you are constantly looking to elevate people with no strings attached, you just get a lot of joy from that. But two, you also end up getting all these unexpected dividends from doing that, which include like a great reputation and all sorts of lessons that you didn't expect to learn because you got involved in things that you know weren't part of your usual.

Way of, of living. I sometimes find it a little bit of an uphill battle to get people to appreciate this way of thinking. I'm curious about what pushback you get and how you counter it.

[00:15:09] Christina Tosi: My take on it is the pushback of course, is gonna happen, and that's totally fine. That's just part of the magic making process.

It is about leading and pushing and continuing to refine the dream of making a moment happen for someone un unabashedly, unapologetically, until everyone else. Comes along and it's okay. There could be some stragglers in the back. No big deal. 'cause by the way, it's contagious, right? Like the idea that you go to bed every night and you go, oh my gosh, I truly left this place better than I found it today.

And I didn't leave it better than I found it because I was able to solve the bigger picture challenges. But rather because, because I was able to do these small things, and I know these small things add up.

[00:15:53] Adam Grant: I wanna push on some of the, the sharper edges though that come up and, and some of the challenges that, that I've encountered with this way of operating.

So the first one is where do you draw the line? I can see you build a culture like this and pretty soon, like people are more into what can I do to, to create a magical life changing experience than they are into cleaning up the kitchen or doing their jobs. Do we

[00:16:18] Christina Tosi: have enough soft serve cups? Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it's a tension point. It is inevitably the like, babe, you gotta eat your vegetables before you can have your dessert, right? Like you still have to check the boxes. I think you have to learn to follow the rules before you can learn to break them. I also think that's what makes it feel so good.

'cause also if you're just out all day playing, you don't have an appreciation for play anymore. I

[00:16:40] Will Guidara: think everyone has hospitality in them. It's just a matter of whether someone has inspired it out of them. And so how do you get people to get on board with it? Well, I don't think it's possible to know how good it feels to give it until you first have experienced how good it feels to receive it.

But also what gets talked about in an organization is what gets thought about in the same way that I. Executing these gestures requires intention, so does creating a culture where they're consistently delivered and where they're delivered in balance. We had a thing called the rule of 95 5. It meant we manage our money like maniacs 95% of the time, such that we could earn the right to do this the other 5% of the time.

That's a great boundary. We never talked about hospitality without also talking about excellence, because excellence is a prerequisite to all this stuff. You can't do this unless you're sitting on a foundation of a well-built machine. But we also never talked about excellence without talking about hospitality, because excellence is merely table stakes.

You're just fulfilling the base level promise you've made. The hospitality is what actually makes it great.

[00:17:48] Adam Grant: I

[00:17:48] Will Guidara: think a,

[00:17:48] Adam Grant: another challenge that comes up is the, the disappointment, then the risk of disappointment when expectations go higher and higher. So, you know, I can imagine having shown up at, at one of your restaurants and saying, well, wait, I, like, I heard you brought in snow for a couple that had never seen snow.

Like, where's my snow? Like, why, why, why didn't you do something that was transformational

[00:18:10] Will Guidara: for me? So I was on a plane the other day, we pulled off from the terminal. And then they come over to the loud speaker saying, Hey, ladies and gentlemen, so sorry, we just got word. There's an issue with the plane.

We're gonna be delayed here in the tarmac for a little bit. Collective groan of exasperation, right? But then what happened was the pilot came out from the cockpit. There were three like families with little kids on the plane. Walked up to the first one, said, Hey, do you wanna tour the cockpit? They went back, he went to the next one.

Do you wanna tour? They went back. Third one, we were still delayed. He started giving tours to adults. I asked and I'm like, how? What's the deal? And they're like, he does that every time. Every time we're delayed on the runway. He gives everyone tours. The cockpit, did I get a tour of the cockpit? No. Was that experience so much better even for me because other people did?

Yes. Were the flight attendants much more cheerful and hospitable because they were in an environment marked by hospitality? Yes. You write about it in your book, hospitality is a selfish pleasure. It feels great to make other people feel good. And so even if you're not on the receiving end of some over the top gesture, all the people serving you are gonna be serving you with so much more joy and enthusiasm and pride that your experience still will be markedly better than it would be anywhere else.

[00:19:30] Christina Tosi: You're also in a like inherently more joyful place because you got to experience other people's. You have to witness other people's joy, which if in and of itself is a gift.

[00:19:40] Adam Grant: Yes. In psychology. That's called moral elevation.

[00:19:43] Christina Tosi: It's moral elevation. Babe. Get what the God,

[00:19:49] Will Guidara: Adam, I, I know you wanted that term. Hi Todd.

I know you. I was waiting for someone to say moral. We, we have a drinking game here. Anytime someone says moral elevation, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. Here.

[00:20:00] Adam Grant: I think another challenge is it's easier to do this for customers than it is for employees. And yes, Amazon, I am looking at you. Like there, there are tons of organizations that have built customer obsessed cultures and struggled much more when it comes to creating high quality, meaningful experiences for their employees.

How do you think about squaring that circle?

[00:20:25] Will Guidara: Well, I think it's much harder. It is for me anyway, to build a culture where you create these kind of experiences for your customers. If you don't start by creating them for your employees, and by the way, this is a full on Danny Meyers, right? You take care of your team first, if it's not just because it's the right thing to do, it's just the most scalable investment of your time because.

If your team is on the receiving end of things like this, now they know what right looks like and they're gonna be that much more likely to turn around and deliver these kinds of things to your customers. When, when the people who worked for me came into dinner, the things we did for them were far crazier and more significant than anything we ever did for any guest we ever served.

For two reasons. One, it was a way of saying, I appreciate you and you deserve this more than anyone who can afford to come in here because you're on our team. But two, there's selfishness in it. Show them how good it feels, and they're gonna be that much more inclined to want to go out and do things like that for other people.

I.

[00:21:29] Christina Tosi: Let's take a birthday, for example, because I think that's the easiest way to think about how do you think about being like TE teammate obsessed when it's someone's birthday inside the walls of Milk Bar, it becomes like this flock effort, this group effort of like, you never leave a member of your flock behind.

So when it's someone's birthday, someone's in charge of like getting everyone's input for the card and then someone else is in charge of like dreaming up the layer cake that the kitchen's gonna make for them. There's a beautiful like flock mentality to it where they are seen and loved, not just because they're part of an organization, but alongside the people that have chosen them in the interview process to be like, you are the one with the twinkle in your eye.

You are the one I wanna go into war with, and you're the one that I wanna celebrate when it's the day to celebrate you.

[00:22:15] Adam Grant: I, I've seen other organizations kind of stumble onto the same thing. There's a, a call center, AppleTree answers that. Literally has a dream granting committee and employees can say, this is the the thing I've been dreaming of, that I, I can't get on my own.

And then that team tries to make it happen or, yeah. I think about Wayne and Cheryl Baker having created this reciprocity ring exercise where groups of people come together within and across workplaces and they make requests for things they can't get on their own, but want or need, and then everybody else tries to help them.

And you see even the grumpiest, most selfish people light up when they realize they can make something happen that somebody else really cared about.

[00:22:55] Christina Tosi: Resistance is futile, man. The grumpy ones are, send them to me. I'll take the grumpy ones.

[00:23:00] Will Guidara: Listen, some people react like this stuff is cheesy. But what I've most often found is those that do are just people who have built up a kind of protective shell because maybe they wanted to be treated in a certain way and stopped trying because they never were.

But if you can break through that and be the person that does, it doesn't matter what you do for a living, you can make the choice to be in the hospitality industry simply. By being as relentless and intentional and creative as unreasonable in pursuit of this stuff as you already are, whatever product you're selling.

And I've seen now retirement homes and lawn care companies and banks and insurance companies add the position of Dreamweaver to their teams law offices. This

[00:23:51] Adam Grant: is something Jane Dutton and I found years ago at, um, in a study at Borders before they went outta business. They had an internal foundation that existed to try to help employees with all kinds of challenges that they might encounter, whether it was, you know, paying for a kid's school, covering college education, what they called a life qualifying event in the family that you just could not make ends meet for.

And they thought that this foundation was all about people getting the help that they needed. What we found in our research was that people were even more moved by being able to give, when they were able to solve somebody else's problem, it made them feel like they mattered and that strengthened their attachment to their colleagues and made them feel like they were part of an organization with a heart that cared.

And I, I love the way that the two of you have sort of brought this philosophy out in public because it, it almost seems like you're a walking antidote to cynicism.

[00:24:47] Will Guidara: The smallest gestures for the people that you work with can have the greatest impact. Service and hospitality are two different things.

Services thing that you do. Hospitality is how you make someone feel. Someone the other day started trying to trip me up on that. They says, this service or hospitality is this service or hospitality. And by the end of it, I said, I, I said, all right, let me just cut you off. It's hospitality. If they feel seen.

[00:25:17] Adam Grant: I wanna go to a lightning round now. What is the worst advice you've ever gotten?

[00:25:23] Christina Tosi: This is exactly what was gonna happen, Adam. He's like, no, no, I'm good. I know how to game the system.

[00:25:30] Will Guidara: Focus on improving your weaknesses, not your strengths. What is

[00:25:35] Adam Grant: something you've rethought recently?

[00:25:38] Christina Tosi: What success looks like?

[00:25:40] Adam Grant: What did it used to look like and what does it look like now?

[00:25:43] Christina Tosi: I was a lone wolf for the first 10, 12 years of Milk Bar, and it was me building this idea of celebrating nostalgia and just like taking a jackhammer to nostalgia and building back up, making people feel old and new at the same time. It was just like, it was my entire focus and.

I got met this guy. We now have two kids. We have this hilarious dog named Butter. It just as I. Grow in my responsibilities and in the things that bring me joy every single day. It just gives me a different POB and different context to what success in a day looks like. How I leave the world better than I found it in a day.

And I love that it's a little bit of a moving target, but also one where I'm like, Ooh, I'm getting wiser, but also have more questions than I have answers. And I love that.

[00:26:35] Adam Grant: Will, what is your favorite meal for dinner?

[00:26:38] Will Guidara: My mom's bolognese with tortellini from a shop back in the day called Belt Duces in New York.

[00:26:48] Adam Grant: And Christina, your favorite dessert,

[00:26:50] Christina Tosi: half baked chocolate chip cookie

[00:26:53] Adam Grant: sounds disgusting to those of us who hate chocolate, but I'll try to get over it. Wait,

[00:26:58] Will Guidara: you hate

[00:26:59] Adam Grant: chocolate, did you, Christina found this out when we met. You clearly missed the memo, Christina, the, maybe the first thing you said to me.

Was asking me my favorite dessert.

[00:27:09] Christina Tosi: It's just my favorite way to get to know and understand someone, whether it's the dessert you eat when people are watching, or I call the dessert you eat when no one's watching that like really soothes your soul, your dirty dessert secret. It's, it's a moment of vulnerability to bond.

[00:27:23] Adam Grant: I remember only being a little embarrassed to say, my favorite dessert is a cotton candy blizzard from Dairy Queen. You cannot imagine my excitement. Then when the two of you texted me a picture. Of a cotton candy blizzard with four spoons in it.

[00:27:37] Christina Tosi: The blizzard come on like this is magic, right Adam? Like someone that basically makes a thick milkshake and then holds it upside down for the count of like three Mississippi's.

I remember that being the most unreasonably hospitable thing that the Dairy Queen still does at scale.

[00:27:52] Adam Grant: One of the things that's been really delightful about getting to know both of you a tiny bit is you've completely redefined my sense of what it means to be a foodie. I'm like, oh, you can love food without being a snob about it and without judging people based on their culinary preferences.

I could, I could get on board with this.

[00:28:10] Will Guidara: I feel like you don't actually love food if you judge other people for the food they love. You just love some food. Yes. What's a hot take?

[00:28:19] Adam Grant: You have. An unpopular opinion, a hill that you're eager to die on.

[00:28:25] Will Guidara: The Fast and the Furious franchise is one of the greatest movie franchises ever created.

Good luck with that one. Actually, you know what I will say, this is a hot take. I love Taco Bell. We both do.

[00:28:37] Christina Tosi: Yes. I.

[00:28:38] Will Guidara: Taco Bell is extraordinary. We love Taco Bell. I'm a fan.

[00:28:42] Christina Tosi: Yeah. If you're not getting excited about a date night where you smuggle Taco Bell into the movie theater and buy a dollar nacho cheese at the snack bar and a soda to watch, Fasten The Furious, whatever the newest movie is, you have not lived life and that's not a real date.

You have not known love.

[00:29:01] Adam Grant: Do you have a prediction for the future of food or hospitality?

[00:29:06] Christina Tosi: The the best I can give us is my hope. And my hope is that we get closer to the idea that food brings us happiness and joy and nourishment beyond how we're taught to typically think about food and that. The food that moves people and makes people feel incredible that we don't put a lens on it that is the same hood, woulda, shoulda of things.

[00:29:36] Will Guidara: All right. What's the question you have for me? How do you engage with people with whom you completely disagree about important things? Hmm. Not, not

[00:29:50] Adam Grant: as well as I should

[00:29:51] Christina Tosi: ask them what their favorite dessert is.

[00:29:53] Adam Grant: That's, that's actually a great opener. I, I wrote that down earlier, Christina. That's one thing that people can't help but find some common ground around.

I think the, the most valuable thing that I've done is try to figure out what's the principle behind. Their stance, and I might, I might have a different hierarchy of principles, but usually if we get to the very bottom of what's the value you're trying to serve here? There's a value that I respect.

[00:30:23] Will Guidara: Hmm.

Hmm.

[00:30:25] Adam Grant: That's cool.

[00:30:25] Will Guidara: I like that.

[00:30:26] Adam Grant: I, I think that most of what I've heard from the two of you is, is alignment when it comes to hospitality. I wanna know what you disagree on.

[00:30:37] Christina Tosi: I think oftentimes we disagree on process and I think that that's good for us. Imagine how we live our life together, Adam. You know what I mean?

Like when we both get amped up about the same idea, it's dangerous.

[00:30:48] Adam Grant: Well, okay, so what does that look like?

[00:30:50] Christina Tosi: I have this vision and Will is much better at putting it into words and creating a system around it. And I'm more into, I have this thing, can I just bake it into existence? Why do I have to use words and explain it to people?

Dan, Dan, but I think the hard part is that you, when you two people are married to each other and they're both leaders that are super passionate about seeing something and bringing it to life, it's figuring out like who's gonna lead and who's gonna follow or can both things be true at the same time?

[00:31:23] Adam Grant: One of the, the interesting challenges that you both run into is just unreasonable amounts of success. Um, you've both won tons of awards and, you know, gotten all these accolades. How do you keep your teams motivated and how do you stay motivated as opposed to resting on your laurels?

[00:31:45] Will Guidara: If anything, I need to work on being better at being more complacent.

Hmm. But I found that people who don't overextend themselves, that only choose to invest their time in not the things that will necessarily make them the most money, but the things that they will enjoy most, that they will learn the most from alongside people that they want to be surrounded by. They generally do pretty awesome work and it always leads to something else.

Touche.

[00:32:16] Christina Tosi: Sometimes complacency is a dirty word because it should be a dirty word, and sometimes complacency seems like a dirty word and when you try it on for size, you might find something really interesting. He below the surface

[00:32:26] Adam Grant: complacency is I think one of the best ways to open up your peripheral vision.

Hmm. This was so much fun and so interesting and thought provoking and I feel like I barely, barely scratched the surface of all the things I wanted to talk to the both of you about, but I guess we have to save some material for the future. Yeah. We'll see you next time.

[00:32:47] Christina Tosi: See you dq.

[00:32:49] Adam Grant: Thanks.

My biggest takeaway from Christina and Will is that generosity is not about putting others above yourself. It's about treating people better than they expect and expecting nothing in return. A sign of character is consistently choosing to be kinder than necessary.

Rethinking is hosted by me. Adam Grant, the show is part of the Ted Audio collective. And this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah, Kingsley Ma and Asia Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact-Checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hans Dale Sue, and Alison Leighton Brown.

Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Samaya Adams, Roxanne Highl, Ben Ben Chang, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney Pennington Rogers.

[00:33:45] Christina Tosi: Your gift is gonna have to be a cotton candy machine, I think. 'cause I think you can, I think you can nail the cotton candy blizzard at home, Adam. Oh,

[00:33:52] Adam Grant: ooh.

[00:33:52] Christina Tosi: Oh, I ruined it. I ruined that. Don't tell me I'm, I'm really good at ruining surprises that haven't even come to life yet.

[00:34:00] Will Guidara: Good to know.

[00:34:01] Christina Tosi: That's why he loves me.

Reason number for that. When,

[00:34:03] Will Guidara: when you're, when there is someone and you're trying to pursue a relationship with them and you have a good idea for a gift for them. Always write it down and never say it out loud until you're ready to give it to them.

Don't.