Recently we received a gift from our accountant that brought us both surprise and delight. It was a beautiful plant with a handwritten card that included the following:

Dear Gabrielle and Steve,

Thank you for your loyalty over the past 25 years. We’re so fortunate to have you as a client.

We hope this small gesture brings you some surprise and delight. And yes, we also learn from you.

From Mark, Michael and the team

Unreasonable Hospitality

You may recall that I wrote a few posts about Will Guidara’s best-selling book Unreasonable Hospitality. It looks at how he transformed Eleven Madison Park to be rated the Number 1 restaurant in the world by surprising and delighting customers. We also did a whole episode on surprise and delight on our Keeping it Real with Jac and Ral podcast. Mark and the team receive my newsletter and are avid followers of my podcast. Hence the reference to surprise and delight.

I sent Mark a thank you text saying:

Thank you. I am both surprised and delighted. You do listen.

Mark responded with:

You are very welcome. I learn so much from your work – surprise and delight is something we’ve always done but NOT well. We’ve now got a good program in place thanks to you.

Systemise Experiences

I hope Mark and the team inspire you to think about how you can systemise ‘Surprise and Delight’ experiences for your clients or your team.

If you have not read my previous posts you can do so via the following links: Legendary Moments Become Stories or My Kylie Story. Both posts are about my personal experiences at the restaurant Eleven Madison Park. You can also listen to the podcast episode on this topic. They are well worth a read if you are interested in the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect.