YouSaid · the spoken record

Danny Meyer

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

  1. “I was assistant lunch manager, which meant nothing, which meant I was getting $250 a week to answer reservation lines and set up the reservation book for lunch and be on the front door. Here's the good news. Out of that deal, I figured out in seven months that I love this business. I met the woman who would become my wife. She was a waitress, an actress, and”

    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

  2. “I'll be glad to see if I can get you an interview with that. Would you like that? So I got the interview. The interview pretty much consisted of the owner sitting midway down his bar. I'm at the front door. He waves me down the bar, tells me to stop and stand right in front of him. He looks me up and down from my wallabies up to my Brooks Brothers shirt. And he goes, you'll do. That was my first job interview. I got the job.”

    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

  3. “Connected with one of my best buddies from Trinity College who I used to go out to eat with all the time. He was a fraternity brother. And I said, I got this idea. I'm going to open a restaurant. You be the money guy. I'll be the food guy. What do you think? And he was in a bank training program at that point. And he said, okay, I'll do it. So we enrolled in the New York restaurant school, which was all you had to do was pay your 150 bucks and you got in. And we took a restaurant management class. And he promptly dropped out after two sessions because he made the mistake of telling his parents that he was thinking about leaving banking to go into the restaurant business. Bottom line is he felt so bad about leaving me all alone that he said, look, our bank has one restaurant client, which was a big deal because mostly banks would run the other way if they heard the word restaurant back then.”

    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

  4. “Restaurants, and I said, So, what am I supposed to eat in restaurants the rest of my life? It was so obvious and I yet could not see this. And he said, no, you fool. You should go open a restaurant. It had never dawned on me that that was a valid thing to do Because that's not what you ever heard about in college back then. You didn't hear. Going to open a restaurant. Now, I'm really, really glad that all these years later, being in the food business has become a validated entrepreneurial career choice for people within education. But it wasn't back then, and it's still, I'll cut to the chase, I did take the LSAT the next morning. I'd already paid for it, for God's sakes, never applied to one school. But what I did do is the following Monday morning.”

    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

  5. “And he asked me what was to this day the most impactful question of my whole life, which was one I was not expecting. He said, do you have any idea how long you're going to be dead anyway? And I said, no, I hadn't really thought about that. Why? And he said, I don't know either, but I'll tell you one thing. You're going to be dead a hell of a lot longer than you're going to be alive. Why in the world would you do something that you have no passion around? And I stopped and I said, because I guess I don't know what else I could do. And within a second, he said, You got to be kidding me. All I've heard you talk about your entire life is food.”

    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

  6. “And the night before going to take this test was a Friday night, and I was out to dinner with my aunt and uncle and my grandmother in New York City at an Italian restaurant I still go to called Elios. And I was in a foul, just awful mood because, first of all, I didn't want to take the test, didn't want to be a lawyer. And my table mates were all having a great time eating good pasta drinking lots of wine, and I couldn't do it. At a certain point, my uncle Richard turns to me and he says, what the hell is bothering you anyway? And I said, well, I've got to take my LSAT tomorrow morning. And he said, of course you do. You want to be a lawyer, don't you? And I said, actually, no. And he basically, he wanted to throw his pasta spoon at me at that moment”

    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

  7. “impacting the events of the day. So after I spent a few years being a salesman just to make some money selling electronic tags to stop shoplifters of all things, I said, you know what? That's not what you want to do the rest of your life. It's been good. You made a bunch of commissions and I actually invested all those commissions in that company's stock, which was a good thing. But I said, you got to do something right now. So I did take the LSATs. I decided law degree instead of journalism degree. And first of all, I think anyone who knows me knows I would have made the world's worst lawyer. I don't wake up every morning saying, I'm looking for a fight. I'm looking to prosecute. Kind of the opposite. I think hospitality is the opposite, which is how do we bring people together. But it was on the eve of taking my LSATs. I had taken the Kaplan course, preparing for them and everything, hated every minute of 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

  8. “It could have been Watergate, it could have been Vietnam. And the dinner table was where our family, we could agree on what we wanted to eat. And that was kind of about it. The food was the comfort. And as a middle child, I was the one who wanted to make everybody feel good and bring everybody together and keep the family together. On the other hand, as much as my dad and I were best pals, played a lot of sports together, we cooked together all the time. It was the time I spent with my mom hanging out watching the news every night that I found most interesting. So I knew I loved what we used to call current events. It just was taken by it. And so after I graduated with my polygree, I was either going to be interested in going into politics because what else do you do with that kind of degree? Or maybe I was going to go into journalism. I just liked either writing about or”

    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

  9. “With a poly side degree, and the reason that I did study political science is as a child of pretty much the 1970s, middle child of three in the middlemost state in the country, Missouri, Republican dad, Democratic mom. Every night at the dinner table there was a quote-unquote discussion about politics.”

    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

  10. “Example, I'm the absolute world's worst sleeper on airplanes. I've got the window open. It's almost as if I'm afraid I'm going to miss one of the clouds outside the window if I don't keep paying attention.”

    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

  11. “I think underneath it, I'm a little bit of a control freak. And I realize that there's this great expression my grandfather taught me many times, which is man plans and God laughs. So as much as you think that you're planning for success or planning for the stuff that's going to work out. The world usually has another idea for you. So, on the other hand, look, if we're driving, I like to be behind the wheel. It's my wiring. So I never mind not knowing where the story is going to end, but I like to have some, at least it may be a false sense, but I like to have some sense that at least I had some say in the matter. So, I mean, I'll be flying on an airplane, and it's not that I need to get in the cockpit with a pilot.”

    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

  12. “Little kid with a pig underneath it and made these stickers for bottles of wine that everybody was drinking that night. And it was such a damn good logo that when it was time to open a new restaurant, I couldn't come up with a better name or logo. So we ended up naming a restaurant Myolino after this whole experience. So you can call me Little Pig or Little Meyer. I'll answer to either one.”

    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

  13. “These really good restaurants, and I'd end up with 25,000 Lira in my pocket afterwards. Well, so one of the restaurants, which was called La Taverna Da Giovanni, Started calling me my arena, Lil Meyer, because they knew it was my dad's company. And I thought that was kind of cute. And somehow over the course of that summer, without my inexperienced ear really picking it up, my arena, little Meyer, had somehow changed to Maolino, which means little pig. And the reason they did that, and the joke was on me, but every single time I went to this restaurant, my favorite thing to order was the Milino, the roast suckling pig. And so fast forward many, many years later on my 50th birthday, my wife, Audrey, she knows I hate surprises, so the party was not a surprise. But what was a surprise to me is that she had co-created a logo for my birthday, which was Mileino. And she had my picture as a...”

    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

  14. “They were pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, because keep in mind, they were all airline employees. I'd pick them up at the Rome Airport, collect all their luggage, get them on the tour bus. I'd get on the microphone as a 20-year-old, tell them all about what the next three days were going to be like. Here's how you got to hold your purse so you don't get it stolen by someone on a motorcycle. Here's what you should or should, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I was supposed to be taking these tours to all the typical places like the cameo factories and the Vatican Museum, all the stuff that was on their itinerary. But instead, I was looking at this as an opportunity to get an education in food. So I kept going to these Trottorias. I found three different Trotorias that would actually pay me a thousand lira per head of every guest I brought in. So I'd go get free food at”

    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

  15. “I think I was about 20 years old. I got to work for my dad who was in the travel business and he was selling these group tours to airline employees in their families. It was this crazy idea he had that he had this niche market and he was going to aggregate all of the benefits and discounts that you would get as an airline employee and package them all together to create these tours. And so by the time my brother sister and I each turned 20, we were each invited by my dad to go work as a tour guide in the city of our choice. And my sister had picked Denmark, Copenhagen. I picked Rome, my brother would later pick Paris. So I'm in Rome. And this was one of the most pivotal parts of my entire life experience that would probably direct where I ended up in my career. And so I was the guy that would wake up every single morning early, go pick up these cranky.”

    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