Chef Marcus Samuelsson on the ingredients for success

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet, when it comes to their own wealth, most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them. Creative Planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof. Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com/masters of scale.
Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. The speaker lineup for Masters of Scale Summit 2026 is coming together and I'm thrilled to share some of the absolutely iconic speakers we're going to have. The incredible Kara Swisher, Danny Meyer, Anjali Sood from Tubi, Cloudflare's Matthew Prince, Adam Grant, our very own Reid Hoffman, and some folks you might be less familiar with but who, well, they're going to blow your minds. It's this October 20th to 22nd in San Francisco. Our theme, our agency now could not be more timely. Applications are open but spots are limited. Apply at mastersofscale.com/apply25.
That's mastersofscale.com/apply25.

**Jay Punjabi** (1:46)
One of the dishes that is so dear to me, it's something that I loved growing up, is a dish called Sai Bhaji, a spinach and lentil stew that has 10 other vegetables that have been pureed and delicately weaved into the stew. So you get this complex amalgam of flavors.

**Reid Hoffman** (2:06)
That's Jay Punjabi. He's a co-founder and head of television at WaitWhat, the company that produces Masters of Scale.
The dish he's talking about sounds delicious, but for him, there's a deeper meaning to it than simple comfort food.

**Jay Punjabi** (2:22)
When my father was just eight years old, he was in a refugee camp in Bombay after the partition of India and Pakistan. He would go out and seek this dish in the home of people in the refugee camp, because it became a thing that connected him to the home that he had left and the world that he was familiar with.

**Reid Hoffman** (2:52)
That was just one of the many personal stories Jay heard for the first time thanks to an informal experiment he undertook when visiting family in India.

**Jay Punjabi** (3:01)
I only get a chance to go once a year for about 10 days, and I was searching for a way to connect deeply with them while we're there.
So I came up with this adventure. I identified 21 of our favorite home cooked meals growing up. Over the course of 7 days, we cooked all 21 of them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My parents, my entire family, my brother, everyone was in the kitchen together. It was complete anarchy and chaos. We started to share stories about our lives, and I started to hear things about my family that I'd never heard before. And it connected me with them in a way in which I could never imagine.
And that time ended up becoming sacred.

**Reid Hoffman** (4:00)
On returning home to New York, Jay couldn't stop thinking about how sharing those 21 meals with his family had opened a wellspring of unexpected stories. Jay's colleagues at WaitWhat were also enthralled. So they decided to dedicate an episode of the WaitWhat podcast, Meditative Story, to Jay's project.
The episode, titled 21 Meals, struck a chord with thousands of listeners.

**Jay Punjabi** (4:28)
The response was unbelievable. Countless people sharing how my experience resembled theirs, and how the story had opened up a dialogue between them and their family.
It was more than just a story, it felt like a movement. When you start to hear from other people about how they're moved, you almost let go of your own ego, and you kind of understand that storytelling and connecting with people, it's kind of a service. As you bring your story to life, and you share it, it's really no longer your own. You're a spark and a catalyst for someone else to bring their own experience to life. Once you see its impact, you start to realize, it's not about you. It's about what you share and what that opens up for someone else and where they go and where they take it. And it continues to ripple out there into the world.
We're excited to see where we can take this next.

**Reid Hoffman** (5:42)
For Jay, uncovering the stories of his family opened an exciting new area of exploration. One that inspired others to delve in their own stories and share them. It's a lesson every leader should bear in mind. Because the best way to invite people into the story of your product is to give them a platform to share their own stories.