Defining Hospitality

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Dan Ryan: today's guest has worked with fortune 500 companies and startups. He's introduced groundbreaking concepts to JetBlue's terminal five at JFK airport and Memorial Sloan Kettering. He's passionate about fostering creativity in the world, around him. He's the CEO and founder of I crave design ladies and gentlemen, Lionel Ohayon..
I'm good. How are you, Dan? I'm great. Um, I just want to let everyone know. We used to live right around the corner from each other on 20th and seventh forever. And [00:01:00] I've always heard of you. I've had so many friends that have worked for you and just said the best things about you. And you've created some amazing from nightclubs to hospitals, to airports, which actually, I didn't know about that part until recently, because I don't know a lot.
Um, and then I, everyone would talk about you. I never ever saw you. I was beginning to wonder if you actually existed. And then one day we were at dinner, I was with Stacy Shoemaker and you walked in and then I had to give you a hug, even though we'd never met each other before. And it was just like, I was just so happy to have finally met you because we've been in the same circles.
Lionel Ohayon: I remember that it was, it was really, it's really an amazing thing. It's like we live in this culture of people that we love and know, but we don't know, you know, like there's so many people in this industry that I actually hear about talk about reference, but we never actually get to see each other.
Cause we're just kind of deep in it. And uh, and I think when we met out in lake [00:02:00] Tahoe was just like an image for me. It was an amazing moment. I've told that story like 20 times.
Dan Ryan: Well, I want to actually start off with that moment because like I said in the beginning, I actually, I knew you did JFK. I had no idea you worked on Sloan Memorial, uh, Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Um, and what's really interesting when you said that, oh yeah, we did that. And I want to ask you all about that, but that moment for me, I just got goosebumps. I'm actually getting goosebumps again because my neighbor, he. Had cancer, he beat it back. And then I think it was about a year ago, he told me, he said, oh, you know, I have to go back in for some extra treatments.
Don't worry. Everything's okay. And have you been to the new Memorial Sloan Kettering to see it? I was like, no, I don't go to hospitals. She's like, it's amazing. I can't wait to go there. And I shared that with you and it, I was actually surprised by you because you, [00:03:00] you appreciated hearing that. But also I got the sense that you're hearing that so much, that it wasn't like this lightning bolt or, or bell going off, but you've really created something amazing there that you built off of from your jet blue experience.
And I want you to tell us about it.
Lionel Ohayon: Yeah. Look, I mean, I was a kid who always wants to be an architect. Right. And when I graduated architecture school, my professors were like, are you sure you don't want to be a film director because maybe that's more in your kind of lane. I work is very theatrical, I guess.
And I guess, you know, we broke out nightclubs and bars and stuff like that. So when we got a phone call from Sloan Kettering to design a hospital, you know, for us, that was just for me, I lost my father to cancer, you know, 27 years ago I was a young guy and it was an incredibly validating moment that, you know, forced me to really search into what it was that I was doing.[00:04:00]
And what were people seeing about what I was doing that I clearly didn't understand yet. Right. And I understand who was going to go out on the limb with a body of work. We had to ask us to do a cancer hospital, which to me was like, you know, this is the most important thing I might ever do. Right?
Dan Ryan: One thing on that, you just said something where it was like, everyone else could see these things kind of leading you into this way.
And there's a thing that I've heard over and over is saying is like, we're all in our own jobs. But we can't necessarily read the label. So I definitely want to hear more about how others have she read the label
Lionel Ohayon: and that's critical. It's just such an important it's, you know, people say, what's your superpower.
And I always say, I can stand beside myself and look at right. And that's like, get out of your ego, get out of your own central space and look at the perspective from outside. And that was one of those moments where I was like, something's resonating and what we're doing. And we know we're trying to do something different because our search is a little bit different [00:05:00] than a lot of people who do we do.
We're really interested in experience it, a mode of response that people get, you know, what is the experiential quality of what I'm doing and what my people take out of it on the back end. So that's always been super important for me, but to really, um, have a moment where someone's telling you, like, we think you can solve problems for us, and we're a cancer hospital.
Now, your body of work is. Bars, some hotels restaurants and this airport. And what happened was I did an article. I think it was a basketball name talking about that airport where I explained that what we were solving for in the airports was anxiety. Right? We got this project for jet blue airport, terminal five at JFK.
And we were like, what are we solving for? Can we make a cool airport yet? We do cool design and all that. But what's the real issue that we're solving for. We're like, this is post nine 11. This is jet blue, the first airline that said, [00:06:00] I'm not giving you food. So go figure out to do it on your own. Right? So you had this, you had this kind of paradigm where people had to get to the airport, at least an hour early deal with TSA, all the stress not.
And once they got there, then they had to go figure out food before they got on a plane. Cause then they'd be hungry. So there was like a tremendous amount of stress. And we were like, people are anxious when they try. And we start to like, well, how do they travel? What do people do? They get through security, the whole TSA thing.
We all know what that's all about. And then you get through it. You look at the fed, which is a flight information display. And you're like, yes, my boarding pass matches the point information display. Now, one more thing. Let me actually walk to that gate and make sure that that matches what my boarding pass says, what the plate information display says, then you say, okay, this is where my plane is taken off.
50% of people will then leave the gate and go get through it. Some people will not leave the gate, right. They're just going to stay at that gate two hours, three hours. They want us to do that. It says on time, Baltimore, four o'clock and nothing [00:07:00] changes. And that's just the nature of Americans are considered gate huggers.
That's a whole other conversation. So we are like solve for anxiety. And one of the things that came out of that was, well, what if people can order feed from a gate, right? Like why do you have to, why can't we use technology to like break through that problem? And once we were able to start to think that way.
And we had a partner who was really interested in getting to the bottom of that and the OTG, we were able to say, okay, here's what this thing can be. And here's how they experience of traveling through airports can change. And if we can reduce the anxiety, then we can really create an environment that, uh, that can be compelling, beautiful, and compelling and be experiential and be something that's evolutionary.
So in, in the outcome of that conversation, I got a call from Sloan cataract and they said, well, if you guys know how to deal with anxiety, let me show you a, let me show you a very anxious Plex. [00:08:00] Right. We do cancer. And, um, and that
Dan Ryan: arguably definitely one of the top one or two in the nation, if not the world, correct?
Lionel Ohayon: Yeah, definitely incredible organization. Staff will blow your mind. I think you'll see this across both, both most healthcare organizations, but Sloan care Kettering, particularly where we met them. They want to change. Right. And we ask our clients like, what's your threshold for pain? Right? People come, they want innovation.
You're like, well, it's painful. Innovation is a lot of work is a lot of change agency. There's a lot of like, understanding like how your operational model is gonna work. Like, you know, we, we made big, big changes to the bam and they were prepared for that, which is one of the reasons why it's so successful.
They really wanted it. And some people say they want change, but it's like, you know, w that meter kind of moves like that. And other people like step on the gas and really give me a chain. So it was, it was, it was a [00:09:00] really incredible opportunity to work with a, a committed group and be able to sort of like really drop big ideas down on Tesla.
Give it a break
Dan Ryan: right there. So. Okay. You're coming from nightclubs. I'm still not clear on how you go from nightclubs and hotels and restaurants to designing, to reduce anxiety. Like how did that, how did that inspiration come? Like where did that come from?
Lionel Ohayon: If it came from understanding, what problem are you solving?
Right. When we, when we were doing nightclubs, we were like, how do I make someone relinquish their inhibitions to find out something new about themselves? Right. That's what we were trying to do. How do I erase the line between spectator and spectacle? Now I actually make you feel like you are an active participant in this, in a circus, right.
Which is a nightclub. And so we are, we were trying to unpack [00:10:00] the journey of the thing. Right. And then kind of like the, using the thing as a vehicle for self-realization. And I think that might sound lofty, but it's not. That's how we were thinking through the problem. And, you know, I, you know, another example of that is a Disney cruise ship.
We worked on when we had to solve for the teenagers, right? Teenagers get brought on the cruise ship. You can imagine if you're 17 years old, you probably have an eight year old and seven year old brother or sister, and your parents were like, we're going on a Disney cruise ship right now. Everybody might be happy about that.
But the teenagers, teenagers are like, this is a disaster. Like I can't tell my friends at school, I'm going on a cruise ship or up Disney. So you have this reluctant participant coming onto this share. And we're like, how do we use that cruise ship to be a filter? So when they come on a ship, they might be reluctant when they get off it.
There are self realized, artists who created something and that's, we can have a podcast about that, but it's really about leveraging Disney's partners, understanding how one can [00:11:00] learn to make a movie, be a DJ, a create something and how to connect people early. This is a really big part of what we did. I am really focused on.
Design as a, as a physical and a virtual and social kind of effort. Right? There's all those parts have to work. Right? Your first experience at Sloan-Kettering is going to be like, oh my God, I just found out I had cancer and you hit Google. That's where it starts. Right? And then you thought what we call Dr.
Google in the healthcare world. And somehow you're going to find yourself to a portal that's called MSK. That portal needs to be part of the experience of the physical place. And then when you bring it, home has to be connected. The same thing happened with cruise ship story. So well, most people buy their tickets for cruise ships, like a year in advance, eight months in advance.
So we know which teenagers are going to be on the cruise ship together a long time before they all get on it. And we have the opportunity to introduce them to each other, through Facebook at that time in my space and be like, why don't you let these kids get to know. So by the time they get on a [00:12:00] ship, they don't spend three days of a seven day cruise being cliquey and hiding in different corners as teenagers do, and actually use that to connect.
So that experience unfolds very fluidly early, right? So we're already like, how did we get to the point where the physical places we are are building our platforms for, for real social experiments or interactions to happen. That's the same, same thing that happened at, uh, MSK,
Dan Ryan: um, Lionel, so these almost like life old, tremendously, incredibly life moments, like you're dealing with life, living, achieving your ultimate.
Self-realization relinquishing all inhibitions dealing with life and death. Um, like how does that inform what your definition of hospitality is in from really Disney cradle to Memorial Sloan Kettering. Great. How do you define hospitality as you've gone through this journey? [00:13:00]
Lionel Ohayon: So, very, very good question.
Um, and I'll start on packing that by saying that I'm born into a hospitality family, not a hospitality family, cause we were in the restaurant hotel business, but because we come from a culture that's foundational on hospitality on, on receiving people, receiving guests on, on doing events. Your home is like a open-armed place to receive people into, to share in community and to be an extension of a community.
And I tell clients so often, like I can Guild your place in gold, But if you don't understand the essence of hospitality, what the triggers are to make people feel comfortable to, or to allow people, those opportunities to. Step through the looking glass and learn something new about themselves, right?
To experience, [00:14:00] color in a way that they haven't because you, are leading, you have an expectation about what the emotional response will be Or what the inputs are of place. That is more about placemaking than about, understanding the way things look and feel. And I think that, hospitality today is critical.
It's an ever-growing important piece of the human interaction that we're all concerned about. Ron, we're all concerned about our kids and, you know, being in front of screen time. And what does that human interaction actually mean? So our job in what we do is to create opportunities and create platforms to enhance that social interaction.
Right? So if it's a dinner table at a restaurant, you know, we talk about that, that space being around a candle, a candle in the middle of your table, This is literally this campfire, right? So that's like one of the spatial elements. One of the qualities of hospitality [00:15:00] is all these spaces around the stable being lit by that central candle or by a light that's reflecting off that plant that's space, a space B is the space that your, your group is sitting in with other groups and those kinds of understanding of the intimacy of those spaces and how they interplay.
And then futsing with them, right? Like actually saying, you know what, I'm going to move these guys into these other people's space, right? Why? Because I want haphazard accountant. Why? Because I want people to meet people and I want them to do it in a way that they don't understand why whenever they go to that place, they meet new people or, or they have to squeeze through a bar or there's enough room to get through without interrupting someone.
Those are parts of like a bigger understanding. I believe that I think a lot of hospitality designers intuitively understand about what kind of interaction you're actually hoping to get as new. And those outcomes are really about, you know, an emotive response. Like some people in some sort of [00:16:00] found, you know, fundamental re memory of that place, where they were.
And one of the things you really want me to say, if you might like my art spaces or hate them, but you're going to remember them. Right. That's what we're kind of striving for.
Dan Ryan: I love the idea of being gathered around a candle because in many of the restaurants and nightclubs that I've been in, that you, that you and I crave have done, it's so intense and life out loud, but there are those moments of warmth and, um, Kind of shared experience and that little candle.
It's interesting. Cause that's so delicate. Um, to me, I always, I would think of hearth and that idea of a feeling and a candle is really just that. And it's interesting, like if you look at it on a scale, you have your, this candle of this really delicate thing, but then like a Disney cruise ship or a nightclub or a STK or something, it's just so crazy loud.
And to find that balance is [00:17:00] pretty amazing. How did you, how did you come to that?
Lionel Ohayon: Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question. I'm like one of those people who was always, you know, asked my third grade teacher and she was like, the line will become an architect. You now it's like, I was always in predispose without choice into this kind of, um, into this craft.
Um, but we certainly certainly have honed those experience of those, those, those talents as a team. Um, and we are very much. A collaborative, it's a team of, you know, some of the team members here, right. A team really, really talented, smart people who, unfortunately, when they work here are forced to show up with ideas, right?
Like this is not my, my little five of ideas. Right? There's like the only thing you have to do here is you have to show up with ideas. Right? Well, our mantra here is you'll never get an a, of your brain getting enough. So if the expectation is that you're coming here [00:18:00] to participate and to test ideas and to fail and to try it again and then figure it out.
And I think that like, like SDK is a good example. Like there's like this, we, we, we landed on this idea of this multiplicity of experience, right? You go into this jamming bar, everyone's got a big rambunctious bar right in the middle of it is loud and overwhelming. Right next to it's a little wine bar, kind of like a little cozy spot, right in the front.
There's a bistro in the back. There's what we call the carpet with the big tables and the booths and the big ones and right in the middle of all that, there's a DJ. Right. And that DJ, like when we started it, you know, I can't tell you 20 years on where they're at. But when we started, we were super focused on what music they're applying at, what time, based on what demographic of clientele that we thought we wanted in there and what kind of like energy we were looking for.
So we were solving for, I want to go where that place I go, where there's action of our work. And they go [00:19:00] for a big birthday dinner, where can we go? Just grab a glass of wine, right? And then there's the rooftop and the private rooms. And so you're kind of like creating this machine. That's like your go-to place.
And quite frankly, when we started STK, we had no idea it was going to be a steakhouse. We really design. Not quite finished. It was laid out fully. We completely understood the workings of it. And as we were developing it, what was happening was we were looking for a mixer, like a New York mixer, a circa 2007 or eight or whatever year that was and looked at places like, what are those places that our clients looking for that actually do it well, like people would be on the phone.
Like where do you want to go for dinner? I don't know. Where do you wanna go? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Right. And then people would always land on like five places. Oh, let's go to Tao. You know, like it's fun there. There's, you know, these scene there'll be music, right. It's kind of a catch all.
What are these places all doing really well, that salt for that, we got steak [00:20:00] because during the time that we were developing that, that, um, that concept women were eating the act, this diet, right? So it was the first time that steak and protein was the basis for health. Lots of protein, no carbs. And we said, well, you know, every steak house in the world is kinda like the old boys club.
What, why can't we use this new kind of food trend as a foundation for creating this place where we can reinvent the steakhouse and the new way. But fundamentally those spaces were designed for experiential outcomes, not the fact that it's a steakhouse that we wanted energy off the bar that we want to separate the carpet from the beast row.
And we wanted to have a little tuck away bar. And so I think we've like, we've really gotten, um, I think really skill that like understanding how people use space, how people think about why they should go to a place or what. That's probably a good [00:21:00] example.
Dan Ryan: Wow. Actually, that's totally amazing that it was not a steak place to begin with.
And thank you for giving us some temporal context there. Um, when you talk about that idea of giving the, allowing all of these opportunities to step through the looking glass and have others lose inhibition, if you were to go back through the catalog of all the spaces that you've built and designed, what's, uh, what's your favorite example of actually you being in there and seeing someone lose all inhibition and just have like the time of their life?
Lionel Ohayon: I mean, I know the first time I really, really reacted to it was when we built crowbar. And I think for me, part of that was just this incredible, this incredible journey, right? Like that. You, um, you have an idea, right? And you get the, you, you have this [00:22:00] unique opportunity because of what you do to drop that idea onto paper.
Right. And then get someone to say yes, great idea. Then go through the process of figuring out how to detail it, how to draw it, write it, make sure it's lit and know how the crowd's going to flow through the room. Right. And then to see people in the space, right. Actually using it the way that you thought about when you're sketching it on that, on that trace paper, it's just incredibly rewarding.
Um, professional in a lot of ways, it's like an incredible opportunity to be able to be creative and see those outcomes. And I'll never forget opening weekend, a crowbar being up on the second level and seeing what we call the, uh, the penalty box, which is like a little island on the dance floor. People just kind of.
And we would do these drawings and like a banquette with what we call a jump seat. So there's a spot sit on the back. And then beyond that, there'd be somebody standing on the [00:23:00] back and someone's sitting on the back and someone standing on the seat and people were front and we draw these sections where people at all different levels.
And we're like, yeah, we're creating a mini kind of stadium at each table. Cause this is a kind of, and just seeing like people up dancing on the tables and, and being, and, and, and, and looking at, um, at a Chavon and just being like, you see, that's what we thought was going to happen. Right. And just kind of like vibing each other and being like, this is so fantastic.
So that's, that's like kind of like, you know, less where we were, we were like nightclub, post Giuliani. We happened to be at the right spot at the right time. Uh, and boom, boom, boom. We did like, I don't know, 7, 8, 9 nightclubs in New York between 2001 and 2000. 2008, maybe I know a lot
Dan Ryan: and a lot. And then that's when you have to experiment with getting like Bulletproof Kevlar backed behind the upholstery.
So high heels don't poke through it. All the seating
Lionel Ohayon: are, we, we know all the tricks [00:24:00] and you know, it's interesting because now our work is airports, you know, nightclubs, uh, we're doing stadiums, we're doing, um, you know, cruise ships. Is it like high traffic where like, we got it, we understand how to do high traffic.
And we also understand through night, there's a lot that nightclub, when I did my thesis in architecture school was basically a nightclub. It was a beater because you have to like frame it. And some sort of a, uh, intellectual way, but it's really a nightclub. And I think like when, when I was like, okay, I left architecture school, I started my business right away.
I was like, uh, nightclubs afforded you the opportunity to have license, to be creative, right. Without somebody telling you how it's supposed to be or not, they're like looking for you to be super creative. Right. So it was a natural Spock or someone who's who's professors were like, maybe you should be in film to be like, let's go do that.
That's a fun stop. And let's go get somewhere where we have real license to build what we want to build. And we've learned a lot from that, firstly, that [00:25:00] we, um, we were really pushing engagement. We were pushing low engagement, uh, journey delight, you know, like how do you design for delight, right? How do you create moments of, of haphazard encounter and non and, and, and, and sort of like stepping across something you wouldn't expect.
All that kind of theatrical kind of like positioning and whatnot has really, I think helped us a lot in these other verticals that we're working in right now,
Dan Ryan: the emotion of delight is such a powerful thing. And I definitely see it in so many of your projects. One of the questions after we were eating dinner in, uh, in Tahoe together, and that I have for you is okay, we've seen for 25 or 30 years, or even longer, this tsunami of aging baby boomers, right.
Who are all in their like seventies plus now they all are going to need healthcare. [00:26:00] Why is it that the, for instance, the work that you've done at, uh, at Kettering that, that. Kind of idea of delivering delight has not transcended more of healthcare, but to me, hospitality and healthcare should go hand in hand, but it, there just seems to be this, this iron curtain separating them.
And it's just having a really hard time coming together. What do you think is holding that
Lionel Ohayon: back? It's funny, you said hospitality and healthcare, but it's hospitality and hospital, right? They're really the same root word. Um, you know, we still feel like, you know, we're working with St. Jude's now, which is fantastic.
And, um, we are in doing another project with Sloan-Kettering and we work with the hospital for special surgery and we have some other hospitals that we're trying to getting it even. And I've been working in a lot for a long time and healthcare, but we [00:27:00] still feel. You know, I feel like there's like this big glass ecosystem and we're standing outside of it, tapping on the glass, right.
It's like, it's a whole world and it's got legacy relationships and it's got, you know, there's a lot of like practical things that the people on boots on the ground need to worry about the people who are actually operating these places. And so I think it's filtering in a very, very slowly, you know, it's like, you're starting to see a big investment in technology and technological innovation in hospitals.
We tried, we tried to, to, to find a, um, like a, an arm chair next to a bed in the patient's room that turned into a sleep. Right. And I literally said at the time I said, I should drop every project I'm doing and just solve for this one.
Dan Ryan: Oh my God. I, we have three kids up at, uh, at St. Luke's, uh, near [00:28:00] Columbus circle.
And I remember that lounge chair that would convert into a little bed. And I just remember waking up in the morning, just so tired and just the greasy, dirty arms. And it was just filthy. Yeah. I had a nice sheet, but these things are just filthy and nasty and not comfortable. What, what's your idea on that one?
Because that thing I spent too many nights in that
Lionel Ohayon: it's crazy. It's just a function of like eyes and attention to detail on these individual pieces that need to be solved. And just for so long, you know what it's like when we get airports, every gate old was just like, let's go put the. Airport and seeds and every gatehold, and we'll warehouse all his furniture.
And, you know, we were like, why don't we monetize the Gable and turn them into like revenue streams for non aeronautical revenue and create like these Follies for guests to like, come and explore the airport a little bit and burn an hour and enjoy it. I think it just says like, it's just like a door has to open the lights, gotta get turned off, [00:29:00] you know?
And I think you're, I think you're going to start seeing a lot more of it. A lot more hospitals are, are. And I think when you talk about the baby boomers and aging, baby boomers have a different psychographic than our parents did when they're that age. Right. They they're young because they're exposed to so much.
There's so much information that I don't think people are aging at the same kind of. You know, like age equals old kind of rate. So the expectation, I think for this generation, that's aging, this to have access to experiences, right? Like we see more and more that what millennials and baby boomers want are not that different.
They're still, they want to travel. They want experiences. They want to be close to, you know, different foods and try new things. So I think it's going to be very, very interesting. It's a great space, by the way, to understand what that kind of like the new housing solution. We're like, neighborhood's gonna look like, you know, for, you know, and ultimately I think good cities have, you know, different [00:30:00] demographics, all living in the same area together.
That's that solves a lot of problems. We used to believe that you take people who need to go to an old age home and push them off far away down some country road down a long driveway. That's really aging go. And then your kids go to some daycare. Brian, what happens to people? You and me, we've got to pay for the, we got paid for the old age home and we got paid for the daycare.
Right. And no is able to be with anybody. And you're like, well, why don't we just pull all these demographics together? Maybe my grandmother could take care of my kids. Right. You know, it's like, so I think there's a lot of thinking going on right now about reinventing that kind of like a system where it takes a village is, is, is a real truism.
Dan Ryan: It's funny, as you're saying all that, I just, the idea of shopping at Costco just came into my head because again, there's this whole cradle to grave and Costco, you can buy diapers and you can buy coffins [00:31:00] and all things in between. So they got you covered. Yeah.
Lionel Ohayon: We actually worked with a company called Doug compass group.
Um, it's a food service company and we're looking at the future of higher education. Cause they're on, they're on university campuses. And when we got to know and we realized that they were like, no, we're in your entire. We're not off, but when you're born, right, we serve period from K to 12 we're universities.
We're in your office space. We do like corporate, you know, corporate dining halls and we're in old age homes and they literally span the entire, the entire cycle of life. It's really wild, uh,
Dan Ryan: Lionel one of the things that, one of the many things that struck me in our conversation, um, at T and lake Tahoe, um, going back to this idea of delight, I don't know how many listeners have, um, had a loved one go through chemotherapy, but you're really just sitting there for hours and hours getting a drip.
Right. And you're just sitting there, maybe you're reading, maybe you're just watching TV, but the, I loved [00:32:00] your different approach at Sloan Kettering instead of just being idle, walk us through what the difference was.
Lionel Ohayon: Yeah. So we tried to reframe the brand for them in a way that we can understand how we can change the.
The experience at a, at a foundational level that was super important to us is started like what we learned in the airport. It's like, if you don't solve for the why, then you're not getting to the real answer. We learned that people who are inspired have better outcomes. And we really, we, we, we really clamped on to that, right?
Like people, you know, I remember when my father was sick, I read a book and it was called, I think it was called why me? You know, and, and the whole, the whole idea of the book was like, you got to change the paradigm from why me to try me, Riley, I'm ready for this. I'm going to take this on. And if you can get people to move from that kind of like victim, when you are a victim, you got sort of you finally of cancer with the victim.
And it's very [00:33:00] understandable. I won't feel that way to being empowered to say, try me. I got this, I got my armor on and I'm ready to go. And so we're like, okay, well I'm not a doctor. So we can't do the healing part. Like that's, that's MSK best doctors in the world. You go to that cancer facility and you get the best cancer you can get.
But outside of that, there's a whole, we understand, you know, um, uh, we, we empower, we inspire this kind of like wrapper around it, that everything that I do, that's not the healing part of the actual doctor. Part of it can be a fundamental uptick in the way that people feel so that they get so that they're, they're going to have better outcomes.
So we said, what if the best thing that ever happened to me was that I got cancer. Right. And, you know, it's kind of, I think we've put a sticker on the wall. And one of our sessions said, thank God I have cancer. Right. And we were obviously [00:34:00] being provocative.
Dan Ryan: Uh, walk us through that, like you're saying, oh, I wish I had cancer.
Lionel Ohayon: So we said we are, we had our team at Sloan Kettering in the studio for one of our deep dives. And we'd do these deep dives with our clients to really break open, um, creative thinking. Right. And so they came in the room and said, you know, thank God we have, thank God I have cancer. And, you know, we were making a case that, how did they
Dan Ryan: react to that one?
Your clients walked in
Lionel Ohayon: again, when we say, what's your threshold for pain? They said, Hey, like, all right, so let's talk honestly, right? Like we don't have to, but they got it right. We were like, well, what if, what if this window opens in your life, in the middle of your life? Right. And all of a sudden, like if you're going to, if you have a cancer, the facility we were doing is in PE um, outpatient infusion, [00:35:00] radiation, chemo.
Right. What that means is you're probably signing up. For a year, maybe two years, several times a week, several hours a day. Now the only thing that I can think of that signs you up like that is calling right. It's like enrolling into college. And to your point, the way it is right now, you show up, you sit in the green chair in a fluorescent room with lay in tile and you sit there and you think about your demise, right?
Because it's impossible to think about anything else. So we're like, well, what if this window opened in your life? And what if you took this opportunity for this window that opened in your life to actually reinvent yourself or to create something new or to learn things that you didn't have an opportunity to learn, maybe, you know, write a book.
Maybe you don't learn a new language. Maybe you're going to, maybe you're going to be a Photoshop expert and make a whole photo journal about your life, whatever it is like you have a platform now that allows you for a moment to actually be a [00:36:00] proactive. You know, we say, uh, w w like, like the, uh, we say that you've gotta be, you've gotta be the hero in your own rescue.
You know what I mean? And so, in doing that, we were not being facetious in so much as we're being provocative to ask the question, what could this do? What could this time mean for you? And how can this facility not just be here to put a needle in your arm, but actually. Bringing you to a place that gets you inspired that will then inspire other people who come after you, right.
And leave your story for somebody else so that they feel like they're not out there in the wind by themselves. Someone has been as, before they made it through and I'm going to make it through this thing as well. And so from then forward, every decision we made was about understanding, how do we give people control back to their lives?
Number one, you lose all control of your life, right? You lose you, your calendar, you lose your diet, you lose, everything has changed and you have no control over it. So simple things [00:37:00] like being able to pick a spot to sit, that's not one of the 87 brown chairs in the waiting room, right. Is like, I can go sit over there or I can pick the beyond this war.
And what we did is we use technology to allow us the opportunity to do that stuff. So everybody that's, the only Kettering has a RTLS pin on them, which means it's a real-time location service. So. You know, you and I don't need to sit near, uh, a doctor's clinic door waiting for him to call our name. You could be anywhere in the hospital, enjoying, you know, microbiotic, not microbiotic food, a demonstration, or a lecture, or being on the treadmill or doing yoga or whatever it is.
Cause we've just eliminated waiting rooms. We're like, there's no waiting anymore. Technology solved that when they need me and I'll come find me on the sixth floor, they know exactly where I am in space, and now I can activate those spaces to create engagements. And so we said, what if people came here early, what do people look forward to coming to this place?
[00:38:00] But what if they even stayed late? What if they built some of the greatest relations in their lives? Because they weren't sitting beside somebody at a clinic, they were on the fifth floor doing a yoga program or in a library or a book reading club or whatever. And so that starts to sort of unlock a whole possibility.
And really it's just leveraging, um, leveraging the Aqua the understanding of what is curious. And the understanding of how technology can break open some of the processes that were used to,
Dan Ryan: I love the idea of bookends, um, for, to describe things. And, you know, when you, when you say that people would look forward to going to get their treatment, because they could do all these other things and be inspired and be the hero in their own journey.
I look at that one side with my neighbor, Andrew, who he's like, I love this place. I love going there, even though it's for such a dark, like, I don't know, it's such a dark experience dealing with your own mortality. And then I look at the other side where my dad, he was in Florida. He went to [00:39:00] some like cancer center for America in a strip mall that he hated going to, he just absolutely hated.
And so much of healing is, you know, being engaged and understanding the why and, and really. Being inspired. You said those who were inspired have better outcomes and maybe through this whole conversation, um, when you T when I, my question was like what's holding hospitals or healthcare back from helping engage and really heal and create this candle or hearth of warmth of hospitality, maybe it's because, because of those calcified relationships and just the way that they've been doing things forever, and it's a huge industry, maybe they just haven't figured out that what the threshold for pain is, and maybe they haven't, except for the few liters of the St.
Jude's the hospital for special service [00:40:00] services, Memorial Sloan, Kettering, maybe they're approaching or passing their threshold for pain, because I really believe that all good things and all growth comes from pain.
Lionel Ohayon: I agree with that a hundred percent. I think about that now with my three young kids. Um, like how much of a struggle is the right amount of struggles.
So they, you know, they, they understand the value of everything, right? Like they need, you know, I'll tell you a very personal thing. When, when, when I came home from my thesis, I graduated my thesis about out. My father was sick that day. The hospital called said, we have a bed for you. And I was like, what's going on?
I didn't know. Cause they were sheltering the excels in the middle of my architectural thesis and everything. I was like, I'm going to drive them down to the hospital myself. And I parked the car and we, we turned towards the hospital and he stopped and he looked up at the hospital. He was like, uh, I don't know, 5, 6, 7, 10, second pause.
Maybe put his head down. And he [00:41:00] walked in and I was like, oh shit. Right. Like I was like, I saw, I saw exactly. I saw exactly what he had already understood. Right? Like this was, he was like, I'm not coming out of. Right. And there was a, it was just a thing that just like burned a memory in my brain. You know what I mean?
Totally. And I just feel like, you know, I'm Canadian, by the way, I feel like in America, it's the good and bad of the whole healthcare system is, you know, it's super transactional in a lot of ways. It's a business. Right. And I think that that's good for some people in some hospitals, it was really bad for others, but mostly I think once some of these things become more commonplace, everyone's going to have to pick it up because it is business.
And we're going to have to keep up with the ones who are doing well. So the trailblazers like Sloan Kettering, right? St. Jude's obviously incredible facility. These are people [00:42:00] who are. They're they're, they're, they're vested. The people in those organizations are extraordinary. And I do mean this Mo I've never met any organizations in healthcare where I haven't just been blown away by the commitment of people, but this thing has got to move forward because there's so much that is going to is going to change in healthcare.
So much of this is happening at home, right? So much of like the requirement for you as a caregiver to solve it at home. And we have to find a way that, um, that we're able to really take it on at a, at a much deeper level, um, so that people can get through this and you know, like it's not unfortunately good.
There's more people and more hospitals and more need for this stuff. So I I'm super jazzed that we're in the space. And when I hear stories like your neighbor, Andrew, because micelles, right? Because it's the, it's the reason why we do what we do. You know, we wanna, [00:43:00] we want to make change.
Dan Ryan: Yeah, he, that, that connection of when you said that it was a, it was really a lightning bolt and, you know, going onto the, uh, transactional nature of healthcare in America.
And I assume that a lot of places I saw the shocking graph in an article I was reading, uh, within the past couple of weeks where if you know, on the graphic showed the number of physicians was this flat line of along the Y axis of just whatever. And the number of administrators was exponentially grow, uh, exponential growth above that.
And it was almost asymptotic to whatever the, the data of the number of physicians were. And that's just insane. And if you think about creating these spaces and, and these warm areas of healing and inspiration, I mean, people feel more in control of their outcomes. Yeah,
Lionel Ohayon: that's important about that graph.
I'm sorry to interrupt you. The thing that's important about that graph is if you took all those [00:44:00] doctors and this span is across America, where those doctors aren't in, where those hospitals aren't because it's a business, like there's a world deserts with no physicians, right? It's a massive problem.
It's like one of the things that we don't understand about why certain people didn't get vaccinated were like, there are a vast, vast swaths of America where there is no facility to administer a real program. Um, and when you come, that's it, when it comes to like cancer, that's a, that's a real. It's a really find a place to get the proper care.
Dan Ryan: As you were saying that it made me think of Michael J. Fox who just raised a billion dollars for Parkinson's research. And he was in a movie in the eighties called like doc Hollywood. And the big, the big conflict was, he's a big city, he's from Hollywood, but he found love and black life and community in these rural towns, which really are a desert and devoid of healthcare.
Lionel Ohayon: That's a problem.
Dan Ryan: So [00:45:00] thinking about where we are and all the things, all the things that you're doing in the projects you're working on, and it's really exciting stuff. I mean, it's really incredible and inspiring. Um, what's keeping you up at night.
Lionel Ohayon: What's keeping me up at night as America, honestly. I mean, I look at my wife is American.
I'm just like, what? Where is this going? Yeah. Um, the, the, I have three young kids, two, four, and six. I dunno, it's I just don't understand. There's no scenario in my brain that says that this just kind of fizzles out and everyone hugs it out and says it wasn't that crazy. Right. Just does not feel like, um, I don't think, you know, the education, the opportunity for education, um, this kind of toxic conversation that won't go away, the, this kind of insane manufactured wealth that you're seeing all around.
[00:46:00] You know, I don't want to get too dark, but it's what keeps me up at night. I don't understand neighborhoods. You know, I, you know, I'm in Miami now and 50% of the population of Miami is food insecure. They don't know where all their meals are coming for in a given week 50%. Right. And you have this incredible, incredible affluence on this one end.
And then this. It's very, very it's. It's just it's it's it concerns me because as we are today and hopefully this'll break, I just don't see a path or I don't, I don't see it kind of like evolving into something, um, positive.
Dan Ryan: I think, you know, as you're saying, and you struck me when you said people who were inspired have better outcomes, I feel like we're just missing that level of inspiration and shared sense of community right now.
And it's really heartbreaking.
Lionel Ohayon: Yeah. It's really heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking that even through January six and everything else, it's still everything polarized. There's [00:47:00] a pandemic polarizes. Everything can be polarized. Um, I don't know. I don't know how it breaks. I'd love to be part of that fix. Like, I'd love to figure out how to be part of the conversation that, that, that makes that go away and somewhere, or just solved in some way.
Dan Ryan: I think so much of that polarization too, is backward looking. It's not forward-looking I, I keep talking about this star Trek future, and I just don't know how we get there. I feel like the work you're doing in airports and hospitals are really a part of that puzzle. And I think it's about reducing anxiety and, and inspiring.
Well,
Lionel Ohayon: I think to, to, to that point to people listening and people in the hospitality world, like the physical engagements that we have, the opportunity to participate in are incredibly important. Right? They're so important for reasons that us growing up can't even imagine like kids don't get it. Have a much harder [00:48:00] time interacting with other kids because they're spending so much time doing digitally that, that human interaction is not native to that.
Right. Like we used to joke before we got married, after I got married Tinder and all these kinds of like dating apps came out, I was like, ah, that's like cheating. Right? Like that's so easy. You got to swipe left, right? Yeah. Meet me at four. O'clock meet me in the middle of the night. Like, it's crazy.
Sounds exhausting. But you know, like there's this, like there's real opportunity to like profoundly enhance our world. You know, there is something that I saw on 60 minutes this week about deep fakes. I don't know if you saw that segment, but they're freaky. They're freaky. And, but what they can do is I started to think that the internet will consume itself in a way that the deep fakes on, you know, actual visual banks and voicemails.
We are so real and we're, so it's [00:49:00] still nascent still early, early a moment in the development of how good those will get might just make everybody completely distrust. Anything that is not purely physical. They'll be like, Nope, don't believe that until get in the room. Let's talk it through. Other than that, I don't know who I'm talking to.
I don't know if this is real or not real. So if the deep fakes become so real, then we've kind of solved a big part of the problem. Cause you, cause you, you, you need to hope that everybody will then be like the only way I'm going to believe this to be true is to actually see you in a physical world again.
And that's what sort will like let that whole kind of this kind of pressure between our physical and digital realities, right? Uh, fall apart and we're, we're, we're deep into understanding what the metaverse is and how to metaverse as part of our design cycle and all that kind of stuff. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty on top of trying to figure all that stuff
Dan Ryan: out.
It's interesting. You bring that up too. I'm on the advisory board of this. It's called the hotel of [00:50:00] tomorrow and we can talk about it offline, but part of it, there's a whole, um, virtual reality component to it. So all of the advisors and sponsors got these Oculus headsets and I just got mine the other day and it was the first time I've ever actually used it.
And it is just insane. And it's so nascent right now, but that idea of the metaverse is really freaky. And I, I, I'm more hopeful than. The idea of these deep fakes will help the internet and distrust and the polarization kind of eat itself because I don't want to go to that place of ready player. One where no one wants to leave, you know, or Wally, or that it's very dystopic future.
Like I love the crucible of the spaces that we're a part of that promote these collisions of people. And I, I do not want to lose that,
Lionel Ohayon: then you're going to have to fight for it. And I think that as a Canadian looking in, I've always been like [00:51:00] fascinated with America. I've been fascinated with the experiment that is America.
I don't think Americans understand that this is just a big experiment, right? I can. And I think that that's why these are one of the things like this kind of free reign on the internet to do whatever and say whatever is, is an assault on what the ideal is for what this can be and should be. And I don't think people get that should be part of it.
It's like, what is the vision? What does the inspired vision? And sometimes, you know, I it's, I can is just, you know, a border away and people are in Canada is a better place and this, that, and the other, but there's something elemental about this kind of idea of America that you have to fight for it. You actually have to really be like, no, I'm not just going to be passive, not going to sit in a camp and will not listen to the other side.
You gotta fight for it. And I think it's the same thing about the world you want your kids to live in. And it's like inside the four walls of your home is where it starts. Now I'm in a group of, uh, professionals [00:52:00] in Miami and, you know, we get together and talk about business issues and personal issues who two of the guys have 11 year old and eight year old kids.
And they're just the conversation that they're dealing with in front of mine that they want table and the fraternity environment of safe voices as it was about their kids. Getting all screwed up because of their time on the screen. Right. And you're like, well, yeah, I've been fighting that right now.
There's like a certain point where, you know, there's a tipping point where we are, they're going to get ahold of it. If not,
Dan Ryan: I started rewatching. Yeah. When you say that this idea of America as an idea and an experiment, it truly is. And I started rewatching, Ken burns, civil war documentary, which was 20 plus years old.
And in it, um, he, at the very beginning, he li he does, he reads this quote of Lincoln, where he basically says like the largest armies of Europe and Asia would not never be able to drink from the Ohio river or something like that. [00:53:00] And, um, because we have. Massive bodies of water. And we have Canada and Mexico like friendly neighbors.
They would never do it. The death of America will be a suicide or come from within and he fought for it. He fought for it in a major way and to keep that experiment going. And I just, I, I don't know. I just hope we don't get there, but now I can't even think about that to think about the
Lionel Ohayon: dark dark. Well, I
Dan Ryan: think it's something important to think about because if you think about like, when you say you have to fight for it, I guess in a way I am fighting for like, I'm helping build these communities, right.
I'm helping to build these, um, collision points, I'm help or gathering places. I'm helping to get the story of what you're doing. And other, um, designers and architects and business leaders and entrepreneurs are doing. So, you know, hopefully we can all create this future. Like I love building communities.
I'm involved in a lot of different, [00:54:00] um, elements that, that do that, that foster this with mostly with entrepreneurs. Cause like we're used to creating something out of nothing and I feel. This is my own little way of doing that.
Lionel Ohayon: That's all by the way, it kudos. And I do agree with you. And I think it's, it's just, there's like this idea.
I remember when Merlin president Bush, the second one after nine 11 had this kind of civic commitment. And he was trying to like, um, it was post nine 11, and he was trying to promote this, you know, community involvement that, that was part of the program of building America, again, of all the presidents in the world that you wouldn't expect.
Right. It was kind of like. You know, I think a Christian, Christian faith kind of like idea that you can give back. And like maybe there was a way that college kids could like have that as part of their experience of going through, because all these things need to be reinvented. [00:55:00] Like, but like pandemic, this taught us more than anything.
Like is school, you know, 10 months, a year, should kids be in school nine to five or whatever those parts are. And then like, what does it actually mean? You don't do, you don't do like a civic duty. There's no civic duty in America. There's no responsibility you see in the pandemic right now. People like I'm not wearing masks for you.
Like there's no sense that you have to do anything. It's all personal. And I think it's just, it's like this kind of like boil the ocean one cup at a time. Like everyone's got to do that Bart. And I think Lauren and I, we just have to point away to have a conversation. Like there's gotta be a conversation that.
You start there. We can't get through that. Right? Like if Congress can actually have a conversation who I think
Dan Ryan: it's it's conversation, it's creating moments of inspiration through mentorship, through communities, through anything that fosters human connection [00:56:00] and share inspiration. So going from the dark, like what's keeping us up at night to like, what's, what's exciting.
You most about the future Lionel
Lionel Ohayon: when kids, um, now I think look, there is an incredible, there's incredible opportunity to build this world in a way that is much, much more accessible for more people than ever before. And to identify it in a, in a way that right now we have this kind of identity politics, and you have a lot of questions about, um, who has rights to be, however they want to be.
And, you know, we all obviously support everyone's desire to be what they want be. But I think it's still a kind of in its early phase. Like I want to, I want to make sure that transgender is not discriminated against. And I think [00:57:00] that that's exactly where we need to be in this point in the evolution of mankind.
But I think it's going to be all, I think we have an opportunity for people to be a lot more once that's accepted, but we get through all that. If we ever do, imagine what you can do in a future where in a metaverse you can present yourself as anything. You want to be the sense of reinvention, the sense of like opportunity, the sense of like taking risks, right.
That you then can not necessarily have to wear your. Your armor, which is your daily kind of scan on you and go and present yourself with bigger out and the meritocracy kind of manner. Who's actually got the chops and brings something to the table. So I see like this kind of like opportunity for a cross-pollinization of ideas across pollinization of cultures to bring a much, much better kind of world.
That's sort of like richer and more dynamic. You know, some people see that as like a homogenization of all [00:58:00] things. I don't see it that way. And I, again, like to talk about the Canadian American experience in Canada, we it's like a mosaic, right? We think of Canada as the mosaic people, no one says I'm an Italian Canadian.
They just say I'm Italian. Right. And America, you're an Italian American, a Polish American. So everyone holds on to their cultural piece. And somehow it all kind of like fits together and a kind of like, uh, a quilt kind of matter. And I think here this, country's fighting this idea of like immigration and, you know, all these, all these sort of silly parts that it's going to break through.
And you're going to see this country that continues to sort of like effervesce with new ideas and you new kind of typologies innovations. And I really do think that technology is going to break through that. Cause in some way, it's going to put a mask in front of everybody and then unmask the whole thing.
Do you know what I mean? And I do believe in America, like more than any other place in the world, it's just like this kind of like [00:59:00] with everything that's going on. So is a spirit when you spirit for invention spirit for trying new ideas, spirit for failure, right. It really is an unbelievable place. And, and that's what keeps it kind of, you know, moving forward.
I actually. Um, I'm very bullish about it. I was very afraid of technology until I start to think about it in a way that, um, I was afraid of technology because I had kids and then you're just like, oh my God, what's going to be on my kids and all these kinds of questions. And then I was encouraged by, because I really do think about it as a means to an end.
Right. I think that that's our opportunity to sort of like continue to create a better place, a better world, more opportunity. I also think that kids' brains are evolving quicker than our generation. Like there, my daughter is doing math and she's six. She's doing things I was doing in third grade. And it's probably cause they expect her to be coding.
You know, when she's eight, you know what I mean? And some kids are coding at six, so it's like we're continuing to [01:00:00] serve evolving and, and seeing new opportunities open up with. Uh, just amazing generation thinkers. Yeah. I
Dan Ryan: think with all of the gender, um, arguments around gender that are happening right now and identification, it really all boils down to this idea of Liberty and justice for all.
And I feel like we're like that it's that pain, right? The thresh hold for pain, for others who are calcified, they don't want to change it. They're really, they're, they're feeling stung, but I'm saying we need to have these arguments. Diversity is Canada's strength, it's America's strength. And when we get to that point of balancing out, you know, Liberty and justice for all, and the good, the welfare promoting for the good welfare of, of all of us, I think that, you know, we're in the midst of this argument and.
Gender is kind of really leading the way through there. And it's, I don't know. It's exciting to see it's changing language languages. Always [01:01:00] everyone thinks that, oh, language is Mali it's it's CA it's. This is the way it is, but it's always changing. And I dunno, it's exciting to be a part of it and see it all happen.
And, you know, have my daughter yelled at me when I say the wrong thing, but you know, it's all, it's all part of it. I know, I know. And I was like, well, teach me. So, you know, just keep an open mind. Don't yell at me. And it's all good, um, lineup. When you go back to the, the Lionel of finishing up your thesis of the nightclub and knowing everything that you know now, and kind of where you're going and where you're inspired and how you're making all these changes and helping people identify their threshold for pain, what do you go back to that line?
I'll just finish the thesis. W what advice do you give your younger.
Lionel Ohayon: So just an interesting note on that is my thesis. If you boil it down to one sentence was called well, in one sentence, it was called where we live, where we work, where we play. And it was what is the effect of the virtual world [01:02:00] on our real world?
Well, here I am, uh, 94, the guy graduate 94, however long ago, that was, I'm still practicing my thesis. I'm still talking about the physical and digital intersections of our world. So number one, if you're a student, cheers, your thesis wisely, make sure it's something that you're passionate about, because if you're lucky, you'll be studying your thesis for the rest of your life, right.
Setting you up for the foundation of the body of your work. Right. And if you're going to be a creative, secondly, um, the most important thing you'll ever design is your own path, right? There's no, no path out there. It's not like there's like I'll get in and I'll make my way. I'll work up. There is a, it's a, it's a, you got to trailblaze exactly where you think you want to go.
And every decision you make along the way is a part of a story that is you. Right? And so often now I just think kids make bad, bad decisions. Not because they happen to [01:03:00] be leaving. I crave or we encourage people to go chase their dreams. It's more just like, you have to understand that you're crafting your story and you're crafting the body of work that will be here.
Right. And I think right now, like just commitment, like people don't get that. They don't understand what you can dream out of a moment and when to call it over and to move on to the next one. And so I think it's super, super important, you know, and not, and not to be linear. It's not a linear thing. It's like tacking up wind on a sailboat.
You gotta tack tack, tack to get your direction. Not just going to point cell, what up when you get there. And I just really believe that. More kids could spend more time thinking about what that password would be without worrying about what the ultimate destination was.
Dan Ryan: I would even say there is no ultimate destination.
Cause whenever you think you've gotten there, there's somewhere else to go on our journey and our path. I liked the idea of that path. Uh, Hey lineup. So how can people [01:04:00] find you and find I crave?
Lionel Ohayon: Well, you can, uh, you can find that's a good question. How do you find me? Well, you find me at Ikea, which is www I craved.com.
And if you need to email me online a lot, I crave.com. So that's easy enough.
Dan Ryan: Wonderful. And we'll also put your LinkedIn and Twitter up on the show notes as well. Um, Hey lineup, this has been freaking amazing. I knew this would be an amazing conversation from when we sat down next to each other, randomly at dinner and Tahoe.
I just want to say thank you so much.
Lionel Ohayon: Thank you, my friend, it's been great. I appreciate you taking the time.
Dan Ryan: Um, my pleasure. And I've also want to thank our listeners. If this talk has evolved your idea on delivering or defining what hospitality is, uh, please share it with someone else. Send it to a friend.
Thank you everyone. We'll catch you next time.
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