every time i enter a new industry, i have the same instinct.
catch up.
learn the names.
learn the language.
learn who matters.
learn how things are done.
because there are always people who have been there for 10, 20, 30 years.
and honestly? they know things i don’t.
some knowledge really does take years to earn. you have to do the work, make the mistake, watch something fail, try again.
i respect that.
but lately i’ve started questioning my instinct to catch up.
because catch up to what?
i’m spending a lot of time around food and hospitality now.
chefs. operators. restaurateurs. people who have spent years inside the industry.
and through First Seating, people coming from completely different worlds.
finance.
real estate.
technology.
art.
law.
family businesses.
the more people i meet, the less interested i am in who knows the most.
i’m more interested in:
what does this person know that the others don’t?
the chef understands craft.
the operator knows where things break.
the investor sees capital and risk.
and sometimes the person furthest from hospitality asks:
wait. why does it have to work this way?
and everyone pauses.
not because they know more.
they just haven’t learned not to ask yet.
that’s the part i find interesting.
the gate doesn’t only keep people out.
it changes the people inside.
if everyone learned from the same people, worked at the same places, and spent years being rewarded by the same system, of course they’re going to start seeing some things the same way.
even brilliant people can share a blind spot.
maybe especially brilliant people who were all trained to look in the same direction.
which makes being new more useful than i used to think.
yes, you know less.
but you also haven’t learned which questions are embarrassing yet. which possibilities everyone already dismissed. which rules are actual rules and which ones everyone simply stopped questioning.
sometimes that makes you naive.
sometimes it means you can still see something.
i think about this a lot with First Seating.
i’m not trying to build a room where everyone is impressive in the same way.
i’m interested in people with different kinds of depth.
depth. curiosity. definitely low ego.
because knowing a lot is only useful if you can still learn from someone who knows something else.
and i think we do this less often in our own lives than we realize.
we usually choose people who understand us quickly.
we choose friends who think like us.
colleagues who share our references.
partners who make the world make sense in familiar ways.
being understood feels good.
but there’s a hidden cost:
your life can become very intelligent inside a very narrow field of vision.
so maybe the better question isn’t:
am i surrounded by smart people?
maybe it’s:
what can the people around me see that i can’t?
maybe a great room isn’t one where everyone earned entry through the same gate.
maybe it’s one where everyone earned something.
just not the same thing.