Being Inventive with Hospitality

Hey Beloved,

Hospitality is where intention meets curiosity.

That line from Will Guidara has stayed with me ever since returning from the Welcome Conference in New York City. It’s a gathering of chefs, founders, hoteliers, creatives, and culture-makers who all believe one thing deeply: hospitality still matters. The way we make people feel isn’t a side note. It’s the whole story.

Curated by Will and his Unreasonable Hospitality team, the Welcome Conference is less about tactics and more about posture. It's a room full of hearts. People who believe in the table, the stranger, the story. People who still give a damn.

This year’s unofficial thread:

Explore. Experiment.

And woven through it all, that quiet reminder kept coming back:
Hospitality is where intention meets curiosity.
Not just a checklist.

But wonder. Risk. Play. The creative courage to try something new just to make someone feel known.

Let’s get into it.

Jesse Cole, the yellow-tux-wearing founder of the Savannah Bananas, reminded us that the best ideas live just on the other side of mistakes.

He talked about experimenting constantly—not for the sake of being clever, but for the sake of people.

Every creative risk they take, every new moment they script, it’s all built around one guiding principle: Fans First.

They’re not just running a baseball team.
They’re creating a memory factory.

Jesse encouraged us to generate new ideas daily—literally. He writes down ten new ideas every single day. No judgment, no immediate planning, no editing. Just practice showing up with curiosity and courage.

And then he said something I can’t stop thinking about:

In other words, go all in.
Not every experiment will work.
But when it does—when it lands—it echoes.

That’s what hospitality can do too.

Easy Take Action: Jesse encouraged us to write down 10 new ideas every day. Don’t worry about how to execute or plan them out. Just focus on inventive ideas.

Rory Sutherland, a British advertising executive, went deep with a simple yet deeply disruptive contrast: exploit vs. explore.

To exploit is to keep maximizing what already works. To squeeze out efficiency. To tighten the system.

But to explore?
That requires imagination. It invites surprise. It trusts that humans are not rational inputs but emotional beings who crave story, delight, and meaning.

Efficiency might improve the process.
Exploration can transform the person.

In hospitality, that matters more.

Shamir Thakrar brought a quieter but equally urgent reminder: don’t get so focused on chasing the golden egg that you forget to care for the goose.

In business terms, that means culture over output.
People over product.
Health over hustle.

When we tend the soil, we stop obsessing over fruit. And ironically, that’s when the fruit shows up.

Redemptive hospitality requires us to slow down long enough to nurture what matters most.

There’s a line in The Message version of Romans 12:13 that feels like the rally cry we need right now:

Not "Be flawless."
Not "Be the fastest."
Not "Be the most scalable."

Be inventive.

Try things that don’t make sense on a spreadsheet.
Surprise someone on purpose.
Break the routine. Build something new.
Create a moment so curious and so intentional that someone walks away saying, "I’ve never experienced anything like that before."

That’s what hospitality is for.
Not to impress. To connect.
Not to impress. To bless.

It’s holy ground disguised as ordinary service.

But before I let you go…Let’s not confuse creativity with chaos. This kind of hospitality still needs structure. The right kind.

Not to control.
But to release.
To give a home to the wonder.
To make the inventive repeatable.

That’s the heart behind Hospitality OS. A program using Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality framework that holds space for creativity while rooting it in consistency.

If all of this stirred something in you, we’re getting ready to kick off Round 2 of the Hospitality OS workshop this October.

You’ll build a system for moments that matter.
You’ll design guest journeys with intention and curiosity.
And you’ll learn how to make it sustainable, not just special.

Sign up here to get launch details

Let’s keep exploring.
Let’s keep welcoming.
Let’s keep being inventive with hospitality.

With you,
Nathan