When to ignore conventional wisdom, w/Shake Shack's Danny Meyer
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2018
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To revolutionize an industry, you have to cast off received wisdom. Shake Shack’s Danny Meyer knows this well. When he opened his first high-end restaurant in New York, Union Square Cafe, received wisdom told him food was the star attraction. But Danny knew to focus on how customers FEEL. And it’s this feeling – Danny calls it “enlightened hospitality” — that can scale. From his first innovative restaurants to the dramatic scale story of Shake Shack, Danny cast off received wisdom and wrote his own rules. His simple ideas have radical implications for any industry. With a cameo appearance from Rick Barry (retired NBA player).
Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/danny-meyer-when-and-how-to-ignore-conventional-wisdom/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player |
| 0:28.0 | and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:36.0 | I had spent three or four years selling electronics tags to stop shoplifters, |
| 0:41.0 | which was basically my ticket to living in New York and it turned out I was a really |
| 0:45.9 | good salesman. I was completely ignorant to my own burning passion. |
| 0:51.3 | That's Danny Meyer, recounting his former life as a crime fighter of sorts in the rough and tumble of early 80s Gotham. |
| 1:00.0 | And like many troubled heroes, he was haunted by his past and uncertain of his future. |
| 1:07.0 | I decided I should opt towards getting a law degree. |
| 1:12.0 | After months of grueling study, he was finally ready to sit the test that would set him on |
| 1:16.6 | course for a comfortable life in law. |
| 1:19.8 | The night before I took my LSA T's, I had dinner with my aunt and uncle and my grandmother |
| 1:29.4 | at an Italian restaurant here in New York City. I was in a foul mood and my uncle turned to me and he |
| 1:36.6 | said what the hell's eating you anyway and I said well I got to take my L-S-A-T's |
| 1:41.5 | tomorrow and he said well duh you want to be a lawyer of course you're going to take your LSATs and I said something really stupid to him at that point which changed my entire life which was I don't really want to be a lawyer. |
| 1:56.7 | And he got furious with me. |
| 1:59.4 | He said do you not realize that you're going to be dead forever? |
| 2:04.0 | And I said, what do you mean? |
| 2:05.6 | He said, do you not realize that relative to how long you're going to be dead, |
... |
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