YouSaid · the spoken record

Danny Meyer

lines on the record: 115
first: 2023-04-06
most recent: 2023-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You can tell who's bringing the conversation down. There's always someone on every team who's the ain't it bad person. That's not someone we really want in the dugout. I want people who are like, just imagine if we, I want that person. Just imagine if we could do this kind of person. But I didn't study that in Theo except I watched how before Theo Epstein, the most famous general manager, was a guy named Billy Bean, who famously rebuilt the Oakland A's.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was all intuitive to him, and it's the stuff I was looking at on our team. In my business, this is going to sound really trite, but... Our staff, the cooks, and the servers sit down and have what's called family meal before every lunch service and before every dinner service. And it's an opportunity for people to come together, stop. We call it family meal. We are a business, not a family, but you can watch during that time. You can just watch who's bringing motivating thoughts to the table, who's actually bringing outside ideas to the table, who's asking questions”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he looks at me like I'm from Mars and he goes, actually, very politely, he goes, actually neither one of those things. I was absolutely rooting for the Dodgers to win. But not because it would make the cubs look better. It's because if the Dodgers win the World Series, I know that the Cubs have to face them eight times next year during the season. And if they win the World Series, they're going to be like every other team that wins the championship. And they're not going to do the things they need in the offseason to improve their team. And that's going to make them easier for us to compete with next year. And I went, shit, that is such a great lesson because it's like when you think you're doing well or you think you're on top of whatever profession, that's a time you got to break the glass and you got to start over. And that's when I think most of us, and it's not just laziness and it's not just sitting on your laurels. It's you think it's great. The world keeps moving. And if you don't keep moving with it, you will definitely not keep up.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Week after the World Series, Houston won the World Series that year beating the Los Angeles Dodgers. And he was still with the Cubs. The Cubs had lost to the Dodgers in the championship series that year. So the team that the Cubs lost to went on into the World Series and lost to Houston. So I go up to Theo Epstein. I finally get a chance to talk to this guy who I've been learning from afar. And I ask him the stupidest question in the world. And I go, Who are you rooting for? I got to know who are you rooting for in the World Series. Were you rooting for Houston because you felt bad for the city because they just had this hurricane and you wanted to see something nice happen? Were you rooting for the Dodgers because it would make the Cubs look better if the team they lost to went on to become the champion?”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But 100% of those statistics are what's happening on the field, so running, caught stealing, your fielding percentage, your batting percentage, your batting percentage with runners on base, your batting percentage against left handers, right handers on and on and on and on. Half the game of baseball is played while you're sitting on the bench. Your team is in the field. You're on the field. When your team is at bat, you're on the bench. And so the real question is, how do you measure what your impact is on the rest of the team when you're in the dugout? Did you help the rest of your teammates get better? So I've been watching this guy, Theo Epstein, trying to learn from him. And finally, I have the chance to meet him once. And he had given a talk at a conference I attended that was the year that there was a big hurricane in Houston. I want to say it was Hurricane Maria, but I'm probably wrong about that. And this was like,”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Theoepstein is asked by a lot of people basically, what's the secret here? And you got to understand, baseball is a game of statistics. They measure everything. There's statistics I don't even begin to understand.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so Theo Epstein is the youngest general manager in, I think, the history of Major League Baseball. And he was hired at a very, very young age to take over being the general manager of the Boston Red Sox, who had not won anything for decades and decades and decades. And they talked about the Yankee curse or whatever the hell it was, but for whatever reason they couldn't win. He comes, he's the general manager, revamps the team. And of course, they win their first title. I want to say it was in 2004 actually I don't want to say that because if that's the case, it was against my St. Louis Cardinals, but he then went on to go win a couple others for them. And then he leaves to go to the Chicago Cubs. And the Chicago Cubs, guess what? They have not won a World Series forever. He revamps their team. Chicago Cubs win a World Series for the first time in all these years. So now this wonder.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Business, your job is to make the rest of your team better. And your job is to make the rest of your team better whether you're on the field or in the dugout. And I got a quick story that I learned so much from other people. You probably heard of Theo Epstein. In fact, maybe you've even interviewed him at some point.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, define it as you've now learned how to do the job, but only you can determine if it matters to you to do it as well as it can be done. And you can see it in people. There's so many ways we can all take shortcuts. The obvious things are, did you show up? Did you show up on time? Did you show up shaven if that's what your job is in the dining room, let's say? Did you press your shirt or just take it easy and get that extra third use out of your shirt where you don't really care what it looks like? And you see this in sports all the time. And I think sports has so much to teach us. Number one is I think hospitality is a team sport. We rely on each other. It doesn't matter whether you had a bad night or not. You're not expected to go strike out if you're a baseball player. It doesn't matter whether you woke up on the wrong side of the bed or not. You're not expected to let a ball roll through your legs at shortstop. Well, it's the same thing in my life.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great Olympian, let's say Hussein Bolt, and his leg is outstretched, with the veins popping, trying to get that extra inch or that extra half second off of his time or whatever. Now that guy, he's out there. His primary motivation, he wants to exceed his own personal best. He's competing with himself. So by knowing these questions, this is something that I would absolutely want to add today because I know that I want to be the best and I can't do it by myself. So I got to stock my team with people who look at every day as an opportunity, not for perfection, because I think perfection is stupid. It's impossible. It's a recipe for unhappiness. But I do look for people who look at every day as an opportunity to honor whatever they did yesterday and figure out how to do it a little bit better today. That's the journey of excellence.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was primarily motivated by a love for beating someone else. That felt really good to him. It's not a bad thing or a good thing. It just is what it is. Then you got, imagine this photograph of John McEnroe with his headband on and his long, curly hair yelling at the umpire You've got to be kidding me That man hated to lose. It wasn't so much I'm motivated by who I'm going to beat. It's like I will not be seen losing. The third image I would have would be”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that doesn't necessarily come across, but you're not a competitive, I can tell you that. Then the other three buckets I look for, and this helps me with someone's self-awareness as well, is to understand assuming that you are motivated to be a champion at what you do, what is your primary motivation for wanting to compete to win? And I find there's basically three buckets. Sometimes people have a little bit of each. You know that picture of Muhammad Ali standing triumphantly over Sunny Liston, whose back is on the mat with his fist up in the air. So I can pretty much tell you that Muhammad Ali.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wanting to be a champion, you look at the best athletes in sports. Sure, they have God given physical ability, but they also had to train like crazy. You don't get to be the Kentucky Derby winner without, you got your bloodlines, but you also had to train like crazy. You don't get to be Serena Williams without the bloodlines, but you don't also get to be Serena Williams without working incredibly hard. Or Michael Jordan, whoever it is you want to talk about. So I look for that. I'm really interested to know the motivation behind what makes someone competitive. And I basically have four buckets. First of all, there's a competitive people. They're great people. They just don't wake up every day saying, I got to win. I'm dying to win. Tim Ferris did not get to be Tim Ferris without desiring to be the best. I know that.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's not fun to be on a team where everybody's really bringing their best. And there's a couple people just putting in a C-level effort that doesn't work. And I definitely want empathetic people, people who understand the wake they leave in their path, who care about how they make other people feel just as much as they care how other people feel. And definitely I want self-aware people and I want people with integrity. So 100% of those. The one thing I would add that has really, really come to light for me. I want people who just love to win.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would absolutely look for those things. In fact, I've checked them with myself year after year, and there's not one of them I would take off the list. I want to work with people who are kind people who genuinely are optimistic people. I'm not really excited working with skeptics who just see what could go wrong all the time. You do need to surround yourself with, I'm a cock-eyed optimist. I'm so damn optimist. I basically see the wine glasses half full even before I pull the cork on the bottle, but it's important for me to surround myself with people who at least ask me some tough questions. So I want kind optimists. I definitely want curious people. I don't want know-it-alls. I want learn it-alls. I don't want someone who's already a finished product. It's not fun, especially if you're trying to make your business better every day. I definitely want people who have an excellent work ethic. I don't mean to the point of being sick because we can all push it too far.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's generally something four or five, six months from now. But if this thing were tonight, is this something I would be excited to do or would I roll my eyes and go, oh man, look what I have to do tonight? And so by making it in the very present, that's really helped me a lot with the shoulds. And then I just feel like it's not my obligation to say yes to everybody, but I do care, I genuinely care. If somebody had the courtesy to invite me to do something, they deserve the courtesy of a gracious response. All they're guilty of is saying, I'm interested in you. How bad is that? That's a compliment.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love when I get a spark of something that I really want to do. But many, many times the invitations come in, I get a lot from politicians. We support this or that. I get a lot from, you know, speaking opportunities, et cetera. And I'm not complaining. I'm very, very fortunate. But if it's a should. I learned this lesson from the restaurateur Jeremy King, who's in London, Great Guy. He said the shoulds are what have gotten me in the most trouble, and I ask myself a simple question If this thing were tonight, I”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What most people do, sadly, is they just delete the invitation, or they just ignore it. And I think it kind of falls into a couple of camps here. So number one is. Is this something I really want to do? Number two, if I really want to do it, can I do it? So that's easy. Look at your calendar. And number three is this something that I feel like I should do. And then of the shoulds, there's another couple buckets, which is that a should because I have to or is it because it should because it's good. I've gotten into most trouble on the shoulds. If I really, really want to do something, like I really wanted to have this conversation with you today. I'm the guy that reached out to you.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That sometimes my mind and my heart are at war with each other. My mind knows I shouldn't do it. My heart really wants to do it. And if that translates to making you or Jeffrey wait too long to get that response, it doesn't really matter what I wrote. So I'm really curious to know when Jeff's invitation came and how many days went by before I...”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd be curious, and you'll probably know I care so much about letting someone know if I do appreciate an invitation, but I just genuinely can't do it. I care that they know that their invitation mattered to me, so much so that I sometimes procrastinate writing that note. And I've learned the hard way.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you know what? I do that almost every day. But I wouldn't do it if it weren't genuine. I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of saying all that stuff if it weren't genuine. You know, I've always loved writing. My dad was an amazing editor. He was actually the managing editor of the newspaper at Princeton, the Daily Princetonian. And he took great pride in marking up anything I ever wrote. And I, you know, I care. I love writing. I love expressing myself. But I also, I think more to your point. It's not the quality of the writing as much as it is the sentiment behind it, which is that it gets back to what we were saying earlier. If somebody cared enough to reach out their hand and say, I want to shake hands with you, that's what that was. Or they reach out to give you a hug. What are you going to do? Just become a tree and not hug them back. And I think that I've learned a very, very important lesson. In fact,”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You wouldn't want that to be the input, Mr. Milton Friedman. You'd want that to be the outcome. And by the way, what's ultimately the best way to have happy employees? Have really happy investors because that's the only way people are going to get promotions and raises. And I've run a business where nobody was getting promotions and raises, and it was not happy. And we had to go out of business when that happened.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Volunteers, which is not in the real sense, you're going to get paid. But if you're working for me, it means you're probably good enough to have gotten another 25 job offers at least. And so as far as I'm concerned, you're volunteering to share your gifts with us. I better give you a higher purpose and reason for wanting to be here. And that's when it became clear to me that our first stakeholder had to be our own employees. And by the way, I look at this, Tim, like it's a virtuous cycle. It's not a totem pole where the employees on the top and the investors on the very bottom. It's a virtuous cycle where one input leads to something even better. So if you want to have really happy customers, they shouldn't be the input. You should have really happy employees, which I think then leads to a greater chance you're going to have really happy customers. If you want to have really happy investors,”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But 100% of the people who reported to me, that job, by the way, I got 214 bucks a week. But 100% of the people who reported to me were volunteers. And most of them were older than I was because I was only 22. And I didn't have any way to motivate them with money. I couldn't give them a raise. Couldn't dock them their pay. So I learned such a crucial lesson, which is that if someone's volunteering, the only way to motivate them is to have a higher purpose. We're all doing this because we agree with this bigger idea. And so basically took that idea to work with me when I first became a restaurateur. And again, everybody's getting paid, but at least half the people were older than I was, and I was learning what it was like to be a leader, to be the boss. And I basically, to this day, treat all of our employees as if they are...”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, exactly that order. It took a long time to figure that out. Every business has those same stakeholders. You get to pick in which order you're going to prioritize them. When I went to college and I took exactly one econ course, econ 101, and of course you learn about Adam Smith, and we studied Milton Friedman, the guy from the University of Chicago, and he was like, take care of the investor and everything else takes care of itself. So I had that voice on my shoulder, but I also, you know, one of the first jobs I had after college, I was the Cook County field coordinator for John Anderson's independent run at the presidency in 1980. Leave it to me to work for the independent guy, not the Republican, not the Democrat.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our employees are like sunflowers, they will turn wherever the sun is. And if I'm spending all of my attention on the weeds, I'm actually pulling the gravitational force that way. My grandmother's lesson was right. If I water the flowers and spend more time with the people who maybe I've taken for granted because they're doing such a great job, they actually crowd out the weeds and the weeds take care of themselves.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Watering bucket with something in it. I have no idea what was in it. And she said, I'm going to teach you how to water the flowers. Because if you really want to get rid of the weeds, the best thing you need to do is water the flowers because the flowers will provide a canopy that will actually prevent the weeds from getting the sunlight that they actually need. So voila, best business lesson ever because I spend the first 10 years of my career Almost exclusively focused on trying to motivate problem employees to be better, like the weeds, right? And what I learned was that”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the summer. And this would always be probably late March, something like that. And, you know, this probably started when I was six years old or something like that. And she gave me my gardening gloves. And she taught me early on to figure out which were the weeds. And I kind of like that scene from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. She was basically having me do all of her free labor, weeding the garden. So I learned to pick all the weeds. So now by the time I'm about nine, I go down there for my annual spring visit. And now it's probably April or May because I would do this as the garden would keep growing. And she said, now I'm going to teach you the real secret to how you have a great garden. So I go for the weeds dutifully. And she said, nope. She takes my hand gently, pulls it off the weeds, and she hands me a water.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I've just learned so many lessons. It's amazing how many life lessons actually apply to learning your business. Another great one that my grandmother taught me. When I was a little kid growing up in St. Louis, my favorite moment was March and April because spring came kind of early to St. Louis. And that's when my grandmother would plant her flower garden. She had an amazing green thumb. Well, keep in mind she lived in an urban apartment building. It was a skyscraper in St. Louis. It's six stories tall. And her apartment building gave her a plot of land in the parking lot that was probably 20 feet long by about four feet wide. And she called it carbon monoxide gardens. And so every spring she would invite me to come help her plant her garden.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Asked for her tomato sauce recipe, and she said, I'll give you the recipe, but I'll tell you one thing right now. It's never going to be any better than the worst ingredients you put into it. And number two, those ingredients themselves won't be any better than how well you treat them after you buy them. You better get the best tomatoes which in New York is like a two month season. It's like August and September. And even if you get the best tomatoes, you better not throw them in the back corner of the walk-in refrigerator and bruise them so that they lose their sugar. Treat them the right way. Well, guess what? Same thing goes for people. You can have the best recipe in the world for how you hire people, but you better pick the best tomatoes. You better treat them the right way if you want the best sauce.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then either if I stay up really late, I read all the after service reports, or I'll do that first thing in the morning to find out, and how did all those experiences go? And I weigh in. And to this day, I'm connecting dots because I care about who our guests are. This one knows that one, seat them near each other. This one has just published a book. Make sure to go buy that book and have it on the Maitre D stand so they can sign it. I care about that stuff as much as I've ever cared about it. But it also means getting to know the community in which you do business because why should your community root for your success if you're not investing in your community? Same thing goes true of our suppliers. Get to know your suppliers. You want the best product. You can't have the best business if you're a raw products are no good. I learned that lesson, by the way, from my grandmother very, very important. I love the cooking in her home. And I'll never forget when I...”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every business is made up of five stakeholders. And so when I say learning the business, it's learning as much as you possibly can about how to motivate all five of your stakeholders to root for your success. That's what you want. And so the best way to motivate all five of those stakeholders to root for your success is to make sure that they believe you're on their side first. So it was learning. Who's our staff? That was our first stakeholder. Who are they? Who are the best staff we could possibly have? Who are our guests? And I mean really learning about them. And to this day, to this very day, I end every single night reading all the reservation reports for all of our restaurants. So I know who's dining in our restaurants tomorrow.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After my dad died, I got some therapy, and first thing I learned was, hey, guess what? You're not your dad. And number two, there's a whole lot of businesses that have expanded, and that wasn't the reason they went bankrupt. In fact, they didn't go bankrupt. But the silver lining was, I really learned my business. I really learned it. That was probably the reason it took us five years to open a second Shake Shack. I didn't want to expand too quickly and I did not want anything bad to happen. But guess what? We learned our business.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People feel like there has to be a beginning, middle, and an end that all gets resolved within a 30 minute sitcom. And that's just not how life works. And I think that if you can do time paid or not, but really learn what it is you're trying to do and not scratch the surface and move on too quickly, it really pays big dividends. Now, there were reasons it took me 10 years to open a second restaurant. Primary one was I didn't want to go bankrupt. And since I had seen my dad go through two different bankruptcies, one in my teens and one when I was about 20 something. I forget how old I was. And I always associated his bankruptcies with expansion. And I assumed that that was the business thing you wanted to avoid was expansion. And I didn't want to end up like my dad. I just said there's no way I'm ever going to open a second restaurant. I don't want that to happen. The silver lining in that, even though I eventually...”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And today we'll probably open two shake shacks somewhere in the world. If I've learned any one thing is that there's a benefit to being a little bit patient and try to grow where you're planted. And I think that... As life has accelerated for so many reasons, technology being primary amongst those, I think that”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our industry, there's a sense that if you really want to dig your roots and build a career, you should learn from the best. And how do you get your foot in the door with the best so you were willing to work for nothing? The only time I ever had to pay anybody was this cooking teacher in Milan who told me that she was the Julia child of Italy, which she certainly was not the Julia child of Italy. I paid her my money and moved on, but I did many, many stages where I was not paid anything. And as I told you, the one that I did in New York City, I was paid $250 a week, which kind of laughable. That's what a waiter makes in half of a night in New York City these days. So I just think that... It took me 10 years to open a second restaurant.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so all of a sudden, I started to get some opportunities, some really big opportunities like chopping shallots and opening oysters and pulling feathers out of pigeons to prepare them. And here was the big one. I got to cook family meal. That's a big deal to get to cook for all the other cooks. And I was doing some of my family's favorite recipes. I'll never forget when I made barbecue ribs. They didn't even know how to eat these things. Cot delet de porch, you know. It was just a great, great experience. They took me to oyster beds. They took me to chateaus in Bordeaux. They took me to places where they made sausage. They took me on one of my favorite days of my life, a day that the restaurant was closed to go hunting for wild pigeons called Palom. Just a great life experience.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he had two restaurants in Bordeaux. One was called La Reserve. The other restaurant was called Duberne, D-U-B-E-R-N. The day before I got to La Reserve, they had lost their second Michelin star. Now, chefs have actually gone off the deep end for less because Michelin stars were everything for the French. And so I get there and everybody in the kitchen is like completely dejected. And I'm this guy who doesn't know anything about cooking. Who is he and how did he get in our kitchen? And why are they letting him live with the chef? The good news was that after a couple days, a bunch of people in that kitchen left because they did not want their resume to say one star. So they figured if they left with two stars on the resume, they'd be fine.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Food with three ingredients, and that's the genius of Italian cooking. But if you really, really want to learn to cook, you got to go to France. So I said, well, let me do both. So I spent time in Rome, Bologna, Sardinia, Milan. And then my dad did connect me with a restaurateur in Bordeaux named Roland Florent.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, I was in these days, I spent almost all of my time walking around the city looking at menus on restaurants. I memorized every menu. I ate at many of the restaurants. I would go back to Italy many, many times, not just when I was a tour guide working for my dad, but until I was 21 years old, I could travel anywhere Pan Amflew for $44 round trip thanks to my dad's travel business. And so I was constantly going to restaurants and learning and learning and learning. I finally said, I'm going to be a chef. And so my dad was kind of open to it. My mom may be a little bit less so, but I went for it. My dad actually connected me with two of the Relayan Chateau colleagues of his in Bordeaux. He said, look, I know you want to go to Italy, but in Italy, they basically”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was easy at first because I didn't tell them. I kind of sidetracked and sidestepped and I finally at one day got the courage to Say that I wanted to be a chef. They knew I loved to cook. Now you may say, well, how would you get the courage to say you want to be a chef, but not to be a restaurateur? Well, in fact, I thought I did want to be a chef. And I had seen at that point there were a number of really well-educated people who had gone into the culinary profession, and chefs were starting to become kind of well-known. Keep in mind, this was way before the food network. But, you know, you had people like Alice Waters who had gone to Berkeley. You had Jeremiah Tower who had gone to Harvard, Joyce Goldstein on the West Coast, Mark Miller, on and on and on. There's probably like 15 of them. And Wolfgang Puck had become a household name. Paul Prudhom in New Orleans had become a household name. So I finally gathered the courage to say, I think I want to be a chef.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The real trick was that I would pick my, since I was largely cold calling people, or often cold calling people, I would actually make my own schedule for where I was going to go that day based on a restaurant that I wanted to try in that particular borough or neighborhood of New York. And I would organize my day around my lunch. I even organized it around some guy who would bring in lobsters in Brooklyn at exactly two in the afternoon, and I'd go get his lobsters and bring him home to cook. But in a weird way, I was developing two careers at the same time without even thinking about it.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been something that I teach our teams even in the restaurant business. We call it A, B, C, D, so you can ABCD, always be collecting dots so you can always be connecting dots. And I learned early on that people will take exactly as much interest in you as they believe you're taking in them, no more and no less. And so I don't want to give away all my trade secrets here, Tim, but I've listened to your show for a long time, but I listened to a couple more segments much more recently because I really want to understand more about what makes UTI tick. I don't look at it as gaming the system. I think it's genuinely being curious and being interested. And so if you're looking for one tip, it's curiosity. And I throw in one other thing.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the first thing is keep in mind this was before we had the internet, but I would still do a lot of research and I would still learn as much as I could possibly learn, not only about the business that I was trying to sell, but the person who I'd be meeting with. And what I came to learn very, very quickly in the New York retail world, and keep in mind, I was primarily selling to retailers because that's who had the shoplifting issues, is that many, many, many of them were either related to each other. There was a huge Syrian Jew population. That was not the only population, but I started to develop a sense for the family trees of either real families or relationships. And I got to know who knew who. And I would take that as far as I could possibly take it. So I learned early on something that has”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just loved it. So I just think that I'm cut out to do this and the fact that I happen to love food and wine as much as I do has certainly helped a lot”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Body language, moods, etc. And it's not that I didn't have a sense of myself. I wasn't like Zeleg or a chameleon changing who I was, but I knew what people needed. And, you know, kind of a blessing to have found a career where that is a really useful thing to be able to do. And as I said, even before going into the restaurant business for three years, I was the top salesman in this company as a young 20-year-old selling against hardened salesmen from around the country. I loved it. I loved like getting into my little blue rabbit and traveling to the worst neighborhoods in New York where there was the worst amount of shoplifting and meeting these people, these shopkeepers who own drugstores, bookstores, clothing stores, fur stores, supermarkets, and learning to speak their language and making the sound.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was probably in five different schools growing up in St. Louis. So there was a nursery school. Then there was a public school. Then we moved. So there was another public school. Then I went to an all-boys school because I wanted to play football on their team. And then 10th grade came and I wanted to go to school with girls. So I went to a co-ed school after that. So that was five schools. And then by the time I was 18, now I'm going to college. So now I'm in six schools by the time I'm 18, you got to learn a lot of social cues along the way. And I just found that I was really good at Kind of understanding what made people tick and a really good observer of”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The only reason we ever met is on the first night that I was at Trinity College there was a pickup softball game and there weren't enough baseball gloves to go around. And so I lent my glove and I went up to this guy and accused him of stealing my baseball glove. And somehow we became friends after that. So all these moments that didn't have to happen and that it happens in life every day. And you just got to pay attention and just be grateful if you're fortunate enough to have a good choice based on stuff that never should have happened in the first place.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Happen. And the only reason the Trinity happened is that when my dad's business was in Rome, his travel business, he met Trinity College's lawyer at dinner one night, and the lawyer said, hey, your son should consider Trinity College, which none of us had ever heard of. So all that stuff. And then, by the way, this friend of mine who introduced me to his restaurant client.”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, she left on day two to go get an acting job, and I couldn't stop thinking about having just seen her for one second. I met the neighborhood in which Union Square Cafe and Grammarcy Tavern and so many of our restaurants have been. And I met my career. And that was a major, major pivot point. But it just shows you so many things in life are those moments. I mean, the fact that none of this ever would have happened if I had not gone to Trinity College, for example, because that's where I met my friend. And I was over three. I was such a screw up in high school. I applied to only three colleges. I was rejected from two and waitlisted at Trinity. And I had to get down on my hands and knees and write the best letter of my life to get off the waitlist at Trinity. So first of all, that had to”
2023-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #665: Danny Meyer, Founder of Shake Shack — How to Win, The Art of The Graceful “No,” Overcoming Setbacks, The 6 Traits of Exceptional People, The 4 Quadrants of Performance, Lessons from Hospitality Excellence, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT