EP5: Building a Sustainable System of Hospitality

In this episode, we sit down with Andy Hooper, restaurant industry leader and former CEO of Hart House, to talk about how people development drives long-term success in hospitality. With experience scaling mission-driven brands and advising operators across the country, Andy offers a clear-eyed look at what it really takes to build teams that deliver consistently excellent service.

Hear Andy’s take on navigating leadership transitions, the future of hospitality, and how brands can maintain consistency as they scale. He shares what curiosity reveals in emerging leaders, why training programs should be built around business metrics, and how social dining is reshaping guest expectations.

From the value of frontline development to the operational metrics L&D teams should be tracking, Andy breaks down the systems and behaviors behind sustainable hospitality leadership.

Tune in to hear why understanding your employees’ lived experience is key to building loyalty — and how investing in people leads to real, measurable results.

Chapters
00:00 Navigating Change in Leadership
02:55 The Importance of People Development
05:54 Trends and Challenges in the Restaurant Industry
08:53 The Future of Hospitality
11:53 Optimism in Social Dining
14:54 The Value of Exceptional Hospitality
20:21 The Power of Consistency in Hospitality
25:32 Training and Development Challenges in Restaurants
30:00 Linking Training Success to Business Metrics
32:10 Spotting Potential Leaders: The Role of Curiosity
38:35 Leadership Lessons and Personal Growth

About Us
Opus is the hospitality training platform purpose-built for the frontline. Train 100% of your team in 101 languages on the job to quickly get them up the productivity curve. With full visibility across your workforce, you get the frontline business intelligence needed to drive your business. 

Have an idea or experience you'd like to share? Keep the conversation going with us on LinkedIn!

Transcript

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (00:00)
Today I'm back to basics. I am with Andy Hooper, a restaurant industry leader who's really built his career on this powerful philosophy that exceptional hospitality has to begin with your team. So Andy's journey is really fascinating. We met when he was at And Pizza, but before that he was at Cafe Rio and he actually most recently founded a heart house as CEO. So through it all,

He's really stood for something important that I've really identified with, which is when you really invest in your employees, you create this beautiful ripple effect. Your team thrives, the business succeeds, and ultimately your guests walk away with a better, more memorable experience. So these days, Andy's sharing his wisdom as an advisor, helping restaurant owners find that sweet spot where business decisions and just general.

human connection meet. So Andy, I'm going let you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you're working on these days.

Andy (01:01)
Sure, yeah. So thank you for that. It's fun now to even just hear that and like kind of go back through. Also shows how far Opus has come too, candidly, because when we were meeting, it was like back close to patient zero from that perspective.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (01:11)
Yeah.

in a very dark,

dank office somewhere in Chinatown.

Andy (01:20)
in a very different time in the world too, you know, where I think ironically, I probably was actually sitting in roughly the same spot. It was just not sunny and there weren't plants here. Yeah, so I've been in this game now for 25 years. And as you mentioned, I think it's not that people development like should be at the center of it because it feels right or because it's like

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (01:27)
Laughter

Andy (01:41)
what should happen in the restaurants because there's human capital involved. It's also just good business and that's not necessarily a news flash to folks either. think what people are facing right now more than anything is the idea that like, even if they know that intuitively, how do they put that first when there's all of this other pressure? I am working on right now with a partner launching a venture studio that incubates

talent-backed food and beverage brands. And we've been working on that for the better part of about six months and a lot of it based upon the learning from Hart House, which was the first opportunity I had to start something from scratch, build it with people development and a proactive preemptive investment into people of the business being at day one. think a lot of existing operators may struggle to make big revolutionary change in their business, not because they don't want to.

because it's like daunting to mess with something structural that has long returns, you kind of in same way that people don't love ripping out capital projects from their restaurant, replacing a giant oven unless they need to, because they're like, man, I know this is the right thing to do, but the return profile's long.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (02:52)
want to come back to the management team aspect of it in a minute. overall, it just sounds like you're putting all of your amazing brain space to use. And I'm sure some blood, sweat, and tears A lot is changing very quickly in the industry these days.

You have so much exposure to different restaurant operations, so I'm curious to hear what patterns or trends are jumping out at you. More specifically, what's the restaurant industry challenge that's most concerning to you right now?

Andy (03:24)
one of the things that I'm hearing kind of across the board from folks is that there's a real fear in investing in restaurants, like as we know them with people and food and no arbitrage around tech or robotics or something else. And it kind of feels to me like the industry's

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (03:43)
Yeah.

Andy (03:46)
very much going down this path of you either have to be automated, infinite kitchen style operators, or you have to be really rich in real life, full service, experiential. And it's interesting to me, I think that's the most concerning trend is that, everything sort of feels like it has to be either this or that, and it can't be both of these things at the same time ever.

that people in the restaurant space are kind of saying like, don't, it scares me if a concept is just trying to like deliver on operating excellence and let that be enough. It's like, there has to be an angle. And I always get scared about that because I'm like, that's such a chain restaurant mentality. I mean, there's so many individual, like independent operators out there in the universe who have no tech stack or no performance review system.

or know anything and they do an excellent job and we go to those places right now as human beings all the time and true wonderful hospitality still wins the day no matter what, no matter what you're peddling or how complicated or simple your operation is. So think that's probably the thing that's most concerning is that there's some pressure to figure out like the formula and that's it.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (04:43)
Right.

Right? It's like the tech or not approach and, and, or the forward thinking or not. And sometimes it's, you know, just the tried and true be who you are

Andy (04:56)
Yeah.

we were out at dinner with some friends in DC at a very fun restaurant last Sunday night. it just, I was such a reminder of how simple hospitality and structuring your business in a way where you can over deliver on expectations is so important. It was, we had a vegetarian amongst the four of us that were out. We ordered a meal that was, that involved pork.

We didn't say anything. They knew there was a vegetarian because it was small plates, Levantine cuisine. And so we were ordering a bunch of things to share and the kitchen brought out in completely duplicate version of the dumplings that we had ordered for her. And it wasn't that we asked. It wasn't that they were like, maybe we can make three dumplings as part of the same thing off to the side for her. They just brought an entirely new dish out.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (05:50)
Yeah.

Andy (05:50)
I went from thinking, man, these are kind of expensive small plates as I was going through. I I love the restaurant that have been before and it's wonderful. But I went from thinking, these are kind of expensive to like, man, what an incredible value. And it was all because they had structured the service delivery of the restaurant to allow for that. To like, just let somebody surprise and delight a customer because it fit within the economics of what they were doing.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (06:12)
So is it is the concern that that the the root of hospitality is leaving the industry or that people are overthinking it more than? Yeah.

Andy (06:21)
I think it's more the latter. People

are trying to be formulaic. It's like there's a hack, right? I think if you've been, as you have obviously, worked in restaurants yourself for a good chunk of your career, there's no substitute for the long brand building journey that is just building an excellent restaurant. Stuff doesn't happen overnight. can't – I always laugh when people are like, look at Chick-fil-A. Isn't it amazing? It's like Chick-fil-A is like 60 years old, guys. It didn't happen overnight.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (06:25)
Yeah.

you

Andy (06:49)
Like

it's, you can't just go out tomorrow and in seven years with private equity and like an experienced management team build Chick-fil-A. Like you need six decades to do that. And so I think it's just a good reminder of like fundamentals matter, like operating excellence matters. And sometimes there is no hack. You just go out and do the thing really well, which is why it's so important to have people development at the center of what you do.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (07:15)
thinking forward then, or I guess thinking more on the optimistic side of things, of not necessarily what the industry is losing, but what they have to gain. I'm curious what you're genuinely optimistic about in the industry right now.

Andy (07:29)
No question, genuinely optimistic about the fact that people are not socializing enough over the last five or six years, and they are realizing it and slowly starting to venture back out to the kinds of routines that they held before. I think they're encountering the missing piece of their life that is like...

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (07:36)
This is true.

Andy (07:53)
that is not being out there and doing things in real life with one another. So that makes me incredibly optimistic because food, restaurants, hospitality broadly has always been at the center of that. And it will be again. And so I think there's tremendous opportunity right now for people to just lean into that. Like there is story after story after story about loneliness, about isolation, about screen time, about the anxious generation. But all that stuff is all rooted in the idea that like we're just not, we're not socializing as much.

But we are doing more now than we were 24 months ago.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (08:26)
I was reading this morning about how still in New York, for better or worse, city officials are cracking down on the sheds, the dining sheds, which I thought were already gone, but apparently they're still here. But there's something that you just said that made me think about.

the fact I've always been like pro shed because it's more seats for restaurant owners. Like if you have more covers, then you have more money. And like, I think that's good and everyone eats. But there is something interesting about bringing it back to where it used to be. And like, even just the optics of the restaurant being this like pre pandemic, like visual is inviting people to actually just sit at a cafe table on the curve, curb and not need, you know, a big, you know, medicinal

Andy (08:46)
Yeah, Yep.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (09:09)
plastic bubble around them or whatever it is.

Andy (09:12)
I mean, I think again, like, if the root of what the experience is warrants an Alpen Globe, then give them an Alpen Globe, right? And if it's not, then don't. But I think I truly believe so one thing that we've I'm working on a project right now, which is really fascinating. That is in in

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (09:18)
That's sure that too.

Andy (09:33)
like adjacent to like a private members club experience as a component of what it is. And what's fascinating is the more you research what's happening, I mean, there was especially in New York, like a proliferation of these private members clubs, and you can read an article everywhere about how yet another one is being stood up. you know, it's, it's got these components from Soho House and this component from Chipriani, and it has these design aesthetics from zero bod, but it's not any of those. It's different. And

I think what the answer is, is that the proliferation of those things and the momentum around them and people's interest in them comes back to that hospitality desire that I mentioned earlier. It's not so much that there's this formulaic thing where it's like you build a library and it has an arch and your club menu must have a burger and the burger must be $18. It's not that formulaic, but what it is saying is yes.

Not trying to overthink it and coming back to the whole like, welcome to my home. read this incredible article about this man in Harlem who has been doing these dinner parties at his house for years now. And like people want to get into his home for this party. It's like one of those things where like you don't know how to get in. You know, if you, if you get in, it's because he wanted you there. It's a cross section of

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (10:37)
Hmm.

You

Andy (10:50)
every day men and women of the city and celebrities and socialites and business leaders and everything else. it's this kind of like curated thing, but with the men. Yeah, very. But, the magic, the magic sauce, like the secret sauce of that is the fact that it's, it's gathering. is nourishment. And I think that word is something that we've been really fixated on, on that project, which is that the world needs nourishment and

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (10:56)
Huh. Sounds very New York.

Andy (11:15)
food and hospitality often give that level of nourishment. And that word is by design, not by default. It's deeper and richer than satisfaction or than belonging. It's something that's like letting you leave better than when you came. And not just on a full stomach or with a full heart, like fuller, like in the broadest possible sense.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (11:32)
Hmm.

would argue that there's some people listening though, who are thinking, this whole concept of hospitality, or like the, the tried and true Danny Meyer hospitality, whatever it might be, that hospitality is expensive, you know, thinking about the flip side of that is that when you think about

companies that want to invest more that actually have the desire but face financial pressure, like what's the investment that they should never cut? And it can't be as simple as like, just don't cut your people, you know, like what is it?

Andy (12:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

you should never ask or answer a question with a question, but here's my, here's my answer. was the last time you heard of a restaurant with exceptional hospitality going out of business? Like I can't, right? Like there's no, there's no obvious link between overspending on hospitality and going out of business, but there is a trail of tears about under-investing in your people and going out of business.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (12:14)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Andy (12:38)
or under investing in your food quality and going out of business. And so I just find it deeply ironic when people are like, I can't afford to when the counterfactual of like, you can't afford not to is actually more important. And it's scary because restaurants are cashflow, like, like exercises. And if you're under capitalized, then the thought of over investing in growth is difficult.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (12:46)
Yeah.

haha

Andy (13:06)
But it's often because we as leaders don't break those down into digestible tactics that somebody can use. like selling one additional dessert an hour often pays for the over investment in hospitality or like surprising and delighting a guest with something unexpected that brings them back six days sooner than they otherwise would have come back also pays for that investment. And so we talked a lot at heart house about the fact that

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (13:30)
Mm.

Andy (13:34)
We were very bold about making a proactive investment in our people that cost more money, but you can't stop there. What you must do then is raise the standard of execution to a level that says in exchange for this proactive investment in you, like, you know, I knew you before you were you in this and I chose to invest you in this way. You must operate here because when you do, this is what the flywheel looks like in the other direction.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (13:46)
Right.

Andy (14:03)
And again, like using a simple QSR example that doesn't think about it as being like over-invested. Chick-fil-A to me is like the pinnacle of that. It's like they do very simple things over and over again at a very high level, sort of back to basics over and over. And you leave with this sense of exceptional hospitality and value for the money, given what it means and where it sits for people. like to me, that is an example of them not losing the script.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (14:27)
Right.

Andy (14:31)
as a brand.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (14:33)
and I love where you're headed with this because I think a lot of people, specifically with Chick-fil-A, will talk about my pleasure and how that sort of scripting is what ties it all together. think what really brings hospitality to life is the gum wrapper rule. Well, no one uses gum wrappers anymore, but if you're walking by a napkin, are you going to pick it up? And it's the...

Andy (14:55)
Mm-hmm.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (14:56)
the things that don't exist in a pamphlet, that don't exist in a training, it goes beyond the script. And I agree with that, like raising the bar has to come at all levels. But the sense of like, I would imagine that the sense of nourishment, as you're saying on the guest side also goes to nourishment on the employee side as well.

Andy (15:20)
Yeah, think, again, as operators, think it's our responsibility to look for structural ways to build that kind of nourishment. Meaning, back to the example of my dinner last Sunday, that restaurant clearly has priced their menu, set their service model, trained their staff that they not only can they surprise and delight.

But it's an expectation. You should be looking for this throughout the meal. if you don't do that thing, I'm going to ask questions. Because of course there was an opportunity to knock their socks off over the course of two and a half hours. Why didn't you take it? And that comes back to, that's just such a different mindset than giving your manager a swipe card and saying anything over X dollars has to be approved by me. It's the inverse of that.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (16:06)
Yeah.

Andy (16:10)
Hey, we've taken into account and price the menu and hired the team and staff the restaurant and giving you the training. It's our expectation of you that you find a way to do this over the course of your shift. And if you're having a trouble not being able to find a way to do this, raise your hand and say, like, I'm not sure where to look for this. But, but your answer can't be like, Oh, I'm worried about food costs. That's like, no, no, no. If our food costs comes in at 23, because you didn't give something for free this shift, then we're not doing what we need to do to develop.

retained frequent guest stuff. And so that's where I really feel like we have to kind of shift our approach as operators is when you do raise the bar, it's not just like, expect more of you, but it's like, here are all the things I've done structurally to enable that so that you don't have to worry about missing your cogs target. mean, every manager in the world isn't going to do that if they know that they have to do that within the bounds of their current

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (16:57)
Mm.

Andy (17:05)
KPI and that's candidly why training sucks. I mean, I saw you post something the other day, which I totally agree with, which is like the operators expect people to be like proficient on day one with no ramp and the corporate finance department expects somebody to be in position, like contributing at a hundred percent of productivity the moment they're on the schedule. And it's like, well, structurally you are literally setting your team up for failure. If they don't, it's because they're ingenious and or doing something

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (17:14)
You

Andy (17:34)
like illegal to make it happen. Like that's the answer. And a lot of restaurant operators will look the other way and sort of pretend like that's not reality.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (17:41)
I was thinking the same thing where there's, course, behind all of this naturally occurring hospitality, there's some sort of training engine beneath it. And we recently published a survey that captured trends in training operations in restaurants. So.

I wanted to get your reflections on a couple of the findings. The first one being exactly what you're talking about, which is learning and development professionals right now are really caught between shrinking budgets and pressure to maintain the same quality and speed, frankly, increasing speed, ramp times, what have you. So as someone who has made resource allocation decisions at the executive level, I'm curious how...

you prioritize speed over quality or vice versa in training programs. Like how do you think about the reality of restaurants and where they need to be allocating training spend?

Andy (18:39)
part of it is there needs, I tell people this when it comes to technology a lot, which is like, just work on your business process first. Get the business process in the right place. Then take your business process that you love to a tech provider and say, help me do this thing more efficiently. So much better than responding to a salesperson saying, I have all these cool features that'll do X, Y, and Z. And you're like, awesome.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (18:55)
Mm.

Thank

Andy (19:02)
and then you do

it and it doesn't really actually help your business process at all. perhaps worse yet, the business process becomes a tail wag the dog scenario of that tech relationship and you end up doing things that are unnatural. you have to take the same approach when it comes to getting people up to speed and keeping them up to speed with training in a restaurant and not be subject to some antiquated paradigm that says,

You this is the day of the week that we train or this is the time of the week that we train. You have to ask yourself, like, should this happen in this way or not? Can it happen economically or not? Or is there a different way to do it? And I like to use the example of like full service restaurants or places where there's a lot of prep and scratch cooking. and the idea that a lot of that happens, like before the restaurant is open. Like when I was at Cafe Rio, we had people prepping and cooking in the restaurant starting at like 7 AM.

And was only after like five or six years of doing that, but we started to ask our questions like, why, like, does that have to happen then? Or can it happen during a different time of the day or even in a different place? That's more economical that frees up some hours for us to do proper training so that these people aren't having to like double and triple up when the restaurant's not generating any revenue. And I guess put simply what you need to do is just like smash the paradigm of what it is today and build it with.

a zero-based budgeting mindset. Start from the ground up and say, how many hours does it really take for somebody to learn how to do this job? And then you have to say, okay, well then we're going to protect that at all costs. The first thing that's going to happen is we're going to make sure that somebody has this number of hours to learn how to do this job. Because if we don't, we're just going to be doing it again and again and again and again. And it's going to be 70 hours to do it instead of 10. And I think when you start doing that and breaking it down from a first principles perspective, you uncover that

many of the things that exist in restaurant training programs today are just like iterated from a paradigm where we didn't have any of the same things that we have today. so starting with a blank piece of paper may be scary, but it may lead you to a lot of really interesting insights. It did for us and the team at Hard House where we just said, like, for example, like how many restaurant operators out there have a six week GMIT training program or an eight week GMIT training program? like, we just said like,

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (21:07)
have to go.

Andy (21:19)
How long does it take to learn the things that we need to teach somebody? And the answer was like 10 days. They're like, OK, GMIT program is a 10 day training program. So he's like, you can't treat somebody in 10 days. Well, if you hire them properly and you actually give them those 10 days training, and those 10 days aren't eight hours of quasi-productive labor covering for a cashier who didn't show up, then yes, they can learn that stuff in 10 days.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (21:42)
It's great advice. Just the concept of making training situational and being more comfortable with a blank slate than just almost iterating from old bad practices. One thing the data also very clearly shows, which probably won't come as a surprise, is that

Tracking operational metrics against training success obviously leads to budget production protection, but only 40 % of L &D teams in restaurants are actually doing that. Most of them are still tracking just completion as a metric for success. you you've worked in corporate environments like Burger King, you've worked in growth concepts like in pizza. I guess, what's your advice for those L &D leaders who, you know, maybe don't have access to the P &L?

or aren't given access to the PNL.

Andy (22:33)
I mean, don't want to be trite or flippant about this, but my advice is get access to the P &L. why even have the department if they don't understand how their work ties into the actual business and what matters, right? If you're going to go so far as to invest in a platform to help you deliver training more effectively...

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (22:38)
You

Yeah.

Andy (22:52)
Human being to lead the charge and be a strategic partner to the operating team like give them access as an HR manager earlier in my career I spent all of my time shoulder to shoulder with people in Burger King's sometimes Closing a Burger King at 2 in the morning with an assistant manager Just to be able to get access to to things that you know weren't

I wasn't on the list serve as a regional HR manager for the Southeast divisions company P &L. But you can get that stuff. And the more you understand not only that, but how people are measured and what pressure they're under, you're going to be able to deliver a lot more effectively on tying the right KPIs to the investment that you're making in L &D. if you don't have that access, you got to get it. If you're trying to fly blind, it's just not going to work.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (23:38)
Mm.

I And I think even if someone isn't necessarily granted immediate access, I think there's portions that you can be asking for that are appropriate. You know, like, I think there's, I've heard this before from LND leaders that there's, you know, they, it's like, I have asked, but, you know, they said no. It's like, well, get creative, you know,

Andy (23:55)
Sure.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (24:06)
I want to finish up the conversation with diving deeply into people development. You've been doing this for so many years. And I think a lot of people, including myself, want to know when you are spotting potential leaders, what are

specific signals that you're looking for?

Andy (24:22)
so I think the number one, character trait that I'm looking for after 25 years, that seems to indicate somebody's upward mobility, is their capacity for curiosity. The more certain they are of things, the worse it gets and the faster it gets worse. The more curious they are, the more opportunity there is.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (24:34)
Yeah.

Andy (24:43)
And I think it's just such a natural, I mean, it's such an interesting toggle switch on the mood elevator where like, if somebody is curious, they will encounter something like somebody stealing from them, let's say. And their answer will be that that person faces consequences and it likely results in termination. But their approach will be, I wonder why that made sense to that person to do that instead of that person is terrible.

And the difference in growth of I wonder why that made sense is that that if they seek for understanding of why theft made sense, they can identify what led us there. Maybe it's financial precarity and pressure that person's facing outside of work. And maybe if that becomes a pattern you see, you start thinking about ways you can provide benefits to your employees that reduce their financial precarity and their certainty. And you come up with things like emergency savings plans or

other things and you speak directly to people's motivation. And so I always look for curiosity because that to me is the number one indicator that you're going to be able to innovate to keep pace with the way that the world changes.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (25:49)
Yeah, it's like an indicator of adaptability.

So then million dollar question, what's your go to interview question in order to spot that?

Andy (25:58)
I'm not sure that it's an actual question. think it is watching how they answer and the degree to which across a battery of questions in an hour or two hours of being together, both in an interview setting like this or shoulder to shoulder in the business, how certain are they of something that is new to them or how curious are they? I mean, if they ask a bunch of questions, I'm always interested in that as a mark of curiosity.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (26:00)
Mm.

Mm.

Andy (26:26)
I can tell when I get to the end of an interview and I say, you know, what questions do you have for me? And it's like very clearly that there are five prepared questions that are the best questions to ask your interviewer. They're AI generated. And it's like, no, I want to know like, what are you actually interested in? Like, what are you curious about? Like what, what don't you know that you wish you knew about this?

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (26:35)
generated.

well, this kind of goes back to you and your, aspirational days then,

what's the leadership advice that you got that really shaped how you think about developing talent?

Andy (26:59)
There are two pieces I think that have stuck with me. The first happened when I was a student delegate on the board of trustees at the University of Miami a long time ago now. And one of the trustees told me when I mentioned that I was interested in a career in hospitality, that I should study human resources. And at the time I was like, you mean like Toby Flenderson from the office like that? Like I don't want to be that. And his response was,

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (27:07)
Thanks

Andy (27:25)
No, no, no. You need to study it because in hospitality, you will have a predominantly lower wage, hourly deskless workforce that you will work with. And you need to know everything, not just about the legality of things or what things are okay to ask and not, but about what a lived experience is like for a housekeeper in a hotel or a prep cook in a kitchen. And that was exceptional advice because I grew up through human resources with

direct access to frontline folks in a way that was in many cases like more trusted for me learning the business than it would have been had I been an operator. Because in many respects, like I wasn't their boss, I was their confidant. And so it just gave me a chance to really try to understand like what makes people tick. And that kind of pegs to the second piece of advice that I got that I think sticks with me to this day.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (28:01)
Mm.

Andy (28:16)
I was so fortunate to have a run in with a, with a mentor, um, John McKay, who taught culture shaping for Sendolene leadership consulting, which had a relationship with Burger King and all of these principles of the human operating system of which one of them being sort of this focus on curiosity were foundational for me. Like the fact that I, that I see people as having an operating system like iOS or Android and

I want to understand what operating system they have, what is driving them, and that shapes how I interact with them and how I lead them was a huge piece of my early development and something that frankly makes me maybe better at life, at being a dad, at being a husband. But that's something that's absolutely stuck with me.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (28:48)
Hmm.

Yeah,

it's a great way to see the world too. And it ties back to the point of curiosity. All right, well, with the back to basics lightning round. Everyone gets four questions. have to do the thing that no leader likes to do, which is answer it in one word.

Andy (29:23)
Okay? Alright, I like this. This is exciting.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (29:26)
So first question, what was your first job?

Andy (29:28)
lawn mowing.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (29:29)
What was the last book or the last book you read or podcast that you listened to?

Andy (29:34)
The art of gathering.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (29:37)
yeah, I just got that on my list from a friend. What's a food trend you are completely over? And what is a skill that you are working on?

Andy (29:46)
Acai Bowls

Throwing a softball, fast pitch softball style.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (29:54)
You

Andy (29:56)
have no, have twin daughters that are playing softball and they're in kid pitch now, like AAA ball for Little League. And so I am trying to learn how to throw a softball like a professional underhand soft fast pitch softball pitcher, because I know nothing about it.

Rachael Nemeth (Opus) (29:56)
a metaphor or?

Yeah.

you

Great skill.

Well, Andy Hooper, it was so nice to see you and thank you so much for joining me. A pleasure as always. Yeah, and we'll see you next time.

Andy (30:18)
Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Rachel. Appreciate