708: Danny Meyer - How You Make People Feel: The Founder of Shake Shack & Union Square Hospitality Group on Culture as Soil, the 49/51 Hiring Formula, and Leading With Generosity

Ryan Hawk (0:01)

Applications are now open for our next Learning Leader Circle. You can go to learningleaderscircle.com to apply. I thought it would be helpful for you to hear from some current members of my Learning Leader Circle. Here they are.

SPEAKER_2 (0:17)

I chose Learning Leader Circle because I wanted to be around really winning professionals, people killing at work, but even better people.

SPEAKER_3 (0:25)

Ryan does such an amazing job of vetting the group. It's all A players. It is all amazing rock star people who want everybody to become their best and just add value to the group.

SPEAKER_4 (0:37)

We have people with agriculture backgrounds. We have people with white collar backgrounds, blue collar backgrounds, people in education.

SPEAKER_5 (0:43)

The totality of the room is very impressive with the amount of knowledge we have to be gained. But when you set down and you break out with five, six, seven people, you can have that intimate, that in-depth conversation that allows you to go a little bit deeper.

SPEAKER_6 (0:55)

We got additional coaches this year.

Ryan Hawk (0:58)

They live their lives according to what they teach.

SPEAKER_6 (1:01)

These guys will all jump in and get you back on course.

Definitely do it. Don't think twice about it. Know that you're going to leave with new relationships, new takeaways to make you better at your job, better as a parent and as a person. So it was just a very intimate, very inclusive environment.

Ryan Hawk (1:26)

To apply for our next Learning Leader Circle, go to learningleadercircle.com.

Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. This one is 11 years in the making. It's the great Danny Meyer, one of the most influential leaders of our generation and the founder of Union Square Hospitality Group. Over the last four decades, he's opened landmark New York restaurants like Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern and Shake Shack. Now, a global brand with 700 locations in 22 countries. He built it all on a single idea he calls enlightened hospitality. The conviction that business like life is all about how you make people feel. He's the author of the classic Setting the Table and his new book is called What Could Possibly Go Right? During our conversation, we discussed the importance of a leader becoming a great writer and speaker. As he says, if you don't have language, you cannot teach. And if you cannot teach, you cannot lead. Then Danny shares what he means by entrepreneurial athleticism and why it's the first thing he looks for when hiring a leader. Then Danny tells the incredible story of how Shake Shack got started as a hot dog stand in an effort to support Madison Square Park. It's so, so good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Danny Meyer.

One of my favorite quotes of all time, business like life is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple and it's that hard. I've repeated that a million times over the years. Where does that come from, Danny?

Danny Meyer (3:37)

Well, when I wrote Setting the Table, it was really to try to teach me. I didn't come up with that one day and say, I've got to write that idea down.

The process of writing for me is what gets things out of my heart and out of my head. When I wrote that one sentence, which is right in the introduction of the book, I said, I don't know if I can do any better than that. It really is why we do what we do. We spend a lot of effort trying to make great food and find wonderful wines to pour for people and design beautiful dining rooms. But at the end of the day, it's the human life that happens within those walls and the relationships that get built and the memories that get created that really make people feel like they're part of that community, like they belong. So that's why I wrote it and I'm sticking to it.

Ryan Hawk (4:26)

Do you remember the moment you wrote it? Because now everyone would say, well, that had to be like AI or something. It's just too good. It's too good. Do you remember after it and thinking like, oh my goodness, this is it?

Danny Meyer (4:36)

Yeah, we barely had the Internet 20 years ago. I'm just kidding about that. We certainly didn't have AI.

One of the things that no one tells you about when you're writing a book is that you don't write the introduction till after you've written the whole book, because you don't really know what you're introducing. At least that's the way I write. I don't really know where a book is going to go. I just start thinking about what ideas mean a lot to me and have meant a lot to me, and then try to make an order out of them and some organization that's going to make it fun for people to flip the pages. And I'm really grateful that happened with Setting the Table. And now I'm excited to get what could possibly go right out into the world.