Masters of Scale Live: Danny Meyer with Caffè Panna’s Hallie Meyer

JEFF BERMAN: Welcome to a special edition of Masters of Scale. We recorded this one with a live audience in New York City just this month.

I’m Jeff Berman, your host.

I was so grateful to have hospitality legend Danny Meyer join me on stage for this first in a series of live events presented by Capital One Business.

You probably best know Danny Meyer as the founder of Shake Shack, which now has more than 500 locations in 23 countries around the world. It was just announced that they will be serving their world-famous burgers on Delta Airlines. Danny also leads an ever-growing portfolio of one-of-a-kind restaurants and investments through his Union Square Hospitality Group.

Midway through our conversation, we invited a rising entrepreneur to join us on stage. It’s one who made a lot of sense for this conversation, because it was Danny’s daughter, Hallie Meyer. She’s making her own name in New York City as the founder of Café Panna, a growing ice cream empire of her own.

We kicked off the event with a recording from a story that we did with Danny several years ago, with a live musical score from the artist Margot MacDonald.

DANNY MEYER: I’ll never forget the first time I finally figured out that almost every Roman trattoria has the exact same pastas on the menu, and every one of them is related. There’s the Cacio e Pepe, which is simply spaghetti with pecorino cheese, olive oil, and lots of black pepper. Then, by simply adding guanciale, the bacon that comes from the cheek of the pig, it becomes spaghetti alla Gricia. Or, by adding eggs, that same exact recipe becomes spaghetti alla Carbonara.

If you omit the eggs and add tomato sauce instead, you get spaghetti alla Amatriciana. Four different pastas, all related.

Great Italian cooks really cherish and respect their ingredients. A little olive oil and salt doesn’t provide much disguise if the tomato itself isn’t perfectly sun-ripened or if the basil isn’t fragrant.

One of the things I discovered about myself in Rome that I prize wherever I find it is an Italian word called sprezzatura. Sprezzatura is what happens when the food, the painting, the athletic endeavor, or the architecture comes across as having been effortless.

In other words, you can dig into a bowl of pasta that is so amazing and makes you so happy, and it appears to be effortless — that’s sprezzatura.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing that more is better, but whenever I find myself thinking that way, I try to remind myself of the simple bowls of pasta that I first discovered in Rome. That little things can make all the difference.

Copy LinkThe joy of discovery

BERMAN: Now for him, please. Danny, we were backstage together, watching you, listening to that. What did that bring up for you?

DANNY MEYER: It’s actually bringing up a lump in my throat. Truly, I can’t believe this is happening right now. Can we go on to a different question?

No, I think I’ve just composed myself. But first of all, I recorded that well before the pandemic. In fact, my voice even sounds younger then.

But I think what I was trying to get at is the joy of discovery and how infrequently that happens as you get older. The fact that you get to taste something for the first time, see something for the first time, smell something, experience something for the first time — they’re still out there.

In fact, one of the reasons I love traveling and why I just constantly stay curious is because Audrey and I go to new restaurants all the time, right here in New York or wherever we’re traveling, it’s to get new discoveries.

For me, it’s the greatest joy there is: to learn something new that you never thought of before.

And I’ll just share one other thing, because I know you guys think about entrepreneurialism and innovation all the time. But innovation, for me, is never about inventing something that was never there.

It’s truly about how many of these discoveries I stored in my taste memory, my heart memory, wherever — and then using that file cabinet, pulling out those things, and combining them at the right time in a way that seems fresh, but it really isn’t.

BERMAN: What’s something you’ve discovered or rediscovered recently that’s influencing what you’re doing or how you’re thinking about the world?

DANNY MEYER: I think Audrey and I were recently in Portugal, which I hadn’t been to since I was really, really young.

The joy of going to a country where I don’t know the language — I can speak Italian and French, but I can’t speak Portuguese. Just soaking up different streetscapes, the wine country, a completely different landscape in the Douro Valley — it’s just so exciting.

I just love learning how people live, and I’ve always learned the most by learning how people eat.

Copy LinkThe inspiration for scaling Union Square Hospitality Group

BERMAN: So I want to go back to that trip to Italy at 12, a source of so much inspiration for what you’ve done in your life and career. You’ve talked about your dad having declared bankruptcy a couple of times in your youth. One might imagine that would be daunting, then, for someone to go and be an entrepreneur and build businesses. What do you think got you there to be an entrepreneur?

DANNY MEYER: Yeah, I don’t think I ever considered anything other than being an entrepreneur. That was what I grew up with.

I watched my dad doing that, and I loved the creativity aspect of it. I loved that he was a great writer. He always had a fresh idea up his sleeve, and it wasn’t daunting for me to take something that I was obsessively passionate about — going out to restaurants and knowing how I wanted to be treated — and trying to create a restaurant, which became Union Square Cafe, that, if only it existed, would have been my favorite restaurant.

It was really easy for me. In retrospect, it just made complete sense. We didn’t have any restaurants in New York in 1985 like Union Square Cafe. We had really fancy places, and we had a couple of chain places, but we didn’t have a place where you could eat really good food. It didn’t matter whether you were wearing jeans or a coat and tie — they treated you well.

It used to be in New York that the restaurants that treated you the worst were the most popular. Bizarre, but true.

If someone had told me during the first 10 years of my career when I only had one restaurant, that I was going to one day be on a show called Masters of Scale, I would have said, “You’re absolutely insane. I will never, ever open a second restaurant.”

BERMAN: Why not?

DANNY MEYER: Because I didn’t want to end up bankrupt. And I associated both of my dad’s bankruptcies with scaling his business. He did scale his business, and I’m really sad that it wasn’t until after he died at the very young age of 59 that I gave myself permission to realize: I’m not my dad.

And number two, there’s a whole lot of businesses in the history of the world that have scaled and not gone bankrupt.

It really helped me to understand that it wasn’t about scaling — it was about his Achilles’ heel, which was that he didn’t surround himself with enough really talented people who complemented both his strengths and his weaknesses. Instead, he surrounded himself with a lot of people that made him feel somewhat exalted, which is what he needed emotionally.

I made a determination, finally, when I did expand after almost our 10th birthday at Union Square Cafe by opening Gramercy Tavern — which is now 30 years old — that I was going to constantly surround myself with people who could do things better than I could.

And that gets easier and easier as life goes on because one of the really fun things about all these years of growing and doing this is that I feel like it’s my responsibility to constantly take inventory of what I do during the day. Truly, because none of us is ever going to invent more hours in the day.

The real question is: If I am ruthless about saying, “Here is how I’m spending my time,” and I do this about once a quarter — literally with a piece of paper and pencil in my office — invariably, 20% of the things I’m doing are things that someone else on our team could do as well or better than I do it.

Every time I do that, it’s an act of generosity because someone else gets to grow. Every time I don’t do it, it’s an act of selfishness. But I think even more importantly, every time I don’t do it, it’s an act of stupidity because I don’t get to grow.

My license to grow is to increasingly do fewer and fewer and fewer things — but increasingly only those things that uniquely I can do better than anybody else on the team.

BERMAN: I love that insight, and I appreciate that having a team that complemented you — with an E, not an I — allowed you to take the leap. But what got you over the psychological barrier of taking the leap to go and launch Gramercy and have a second restaurant, and then go beyond?

DANNY MEYER: Two things — actually, three things, I’d say. One was a fair amount of therapy. Psychoanalysis. I mean, it was three days a week on the couch, really learning about what was motivating me and what was demotivating me.

BERMAN: Did that start after your dad passed, or did you start that before he passed?

DANNY MEYER: It ramped up, that’s for sure.

And then I’d say the second thing was, I got a knock on the door one day from a guy who was a really good chef. Audrey and I would go to his restaurant called Mondrian — we loved it — and his restaurant had gone out of business.

He knocked on the door — basically, we saw each other at the Aspen Food and Wine Conference. A guy named Tom Colicchio — some of you may know him from Top Chef — and he said, “I want to be your partner. I love Union Square Cafe, and I think we could do something special together.”

That became really the second kind of way that I created a restaurant. With Union Square Cafe, it was: I’ve got this idea that I’m really passionate about, and now I’ve just got to find the right place for it and the right chef for it. With Gramercy Tavern, because of Tom, it was like: I’ve got this chef that I really, really want to work with, and now I’ve got to figure out the right idea and the right place for it.

BERMAN: So it was therapy, it was Tom, and there was a third?

DANNY MEYER: Yeah. Audrey said, “If you don’t open a second restaurant, you’re stupid.”

BERMAN: So marry well.

Copy LinkHow Danny Meyer decides what to scale

One of the interesting things about your universe is you have restaurants like Manhattan that are one-offs, and I think probably designed to be one-offs. You have restaurants like Daily Provisions that have expanded but are still relatively small. Then you have Shake Shack, which is incredible in scale and still scaling. How do you decide which ones are meant to be what?

DANNY MEYER: Well, that’s a great question that implies that I ever decided Shake Shack was going to be a scaled concept. Because I didn’t. It started as a hot dog cart, and this was the summer of 2001.

We didn’t open a second Shake Shack for five years. So getting back to your question, I had my hand on the emergency brake of scaling forever because of the stuff you asked me about earlier.

The thing that pulled me over the edge to open a second Shake Shack was not anything I ever wanted to do. It was two things. The first one was that the biggest problem we had with that first Shake Shack — way before there were apps on phones where you could cut the line — was people complaining, “I’d go there more often, but the line is too damn long.”

BERMAN: I was one of those people.

DANNY MEYER: Yeah, I remember. We tried everything. We had a Shack Cam so that you could look online in real time and see exactly how long the line was. People actually loved that; they used it.

The second reason was that Randy Garutti, who had become — it was before he was CEO of the company, but he was definitely running the business at that point for us — lived on the Upper West Side. He walked by this space every single day that had been closed for years. It used to be called the Museum Café.

He said, “We’ve got to open a second Shake Shack. It’ll help us cannibalize the lines.”

I said, “All right, if you really think so.”

We spent more money than we ever thought we could building this place. We never thought we would make the money back on the second one. The second one opens. The good news was that the lines were around the block. The bad news was we got robbed on the first night we were open — someone broke into our safe. The better news was that the line at the first Shake Shack didn’t get cannibalized — it got longer. So we said, “Oh, we’ve got a tiger by the tail.”

Most of the restaurants we opened, I call restaurants of terroir. They’re like a single-vineyard wine — they belong where they were planted. Gramercy Tavern — not only did we name it after the neighborhood, but you feel like you’re there. Union Square Cafe — you feel like you’re there. And as you said, Manhattan and The Modern — those are restaurants of terroir. We call those our hardback books.

Daily Provisions is another example. Never intended it to be more than one. Now there will be seven by three weeks from now. So it’s still tiny relative to Shake Shack. But if you find that people have found a place in their heart for something you’re doing, and it’s becoming essential, it’s becoming part of their lives, you don’t have a right to hold it back from people. You don’t have a right to not employ more people. You don’t have a right to not give this gift to communities. But you’ve got to really be clear that they love it. So then you can put it into paperback. And that’s the difference.

Copy LinkMerging ideas to create something new

BERMAN: You have this knack — I mean, let’s be honest — you can see a space, or you can meet a Tom Colicchio, and you see the opportunity. I appreciate almost following the lead of the business, the brand, and the customer. You’re almost following them on the journey, is what I’m hearing you say.

DANNY MEYER: It’s a dialogue. When you start a restaurant — and I assume this is the case for a lot of businesses — you definitely start with a huge amount of belief and passion that your idea is fresh enough that it’s going to solve a problem for somebody that didn’t exist.

I’ve never been excited about doing a replica of something else that I’ve already seen. I like to — we call it — write a new chord with the same existing notes.

In the same way that if you’re a musician, there are only eight notes in the octave plus some majors and minors — no one’s inventing a new note. But that doesn’t mean there cannot be an unlimited number of new songs.

In our case, what I’m always doing — and this gets back to discovery — is I like to take five different experiences that have stayed with me, mostly restaurant experiences, and ask myself, “If you merge those all together, what would you get?”

Copy LinkInside Danny’s investment strategy

BERMAN: One of the other ways that you are achieving scale is through an investment fund. It’s interesting going through your portfolio because you’re in Salt & Straw, the ice cream company; you’re in Pinky Cole’s Slutty Vegan; but you’re also in Clear, the company that helps you get through lines more quickly; and Goldbelly.

How are you deciding where to make investments to help others on their scaling journey?

DANNY MEYER: After Shake Shack had its public offering in 2015, a couple of things happened.

That was another thing I wasn’t all that excited to do, but I’m really glad we did because it was a wealth creator for people. One hundred percent of everyone on our team at that point got a chance to buy stock at the strike price, which was $21.

The first trade happened at $46. People were retiring mortgages and school loans and car payments. We never could have done that on our own.

I said to myself, “This was so great. Could we do it again?”

And I realized that I’m not smart enough, and I don’t have enough ideas necessarily, to ever do that again.

So that’s when we came up with the idea of: What if we could identify other entrepreneurs who had fantastic ideas we wish we had come up with, but we just hadn’t?

And who were leading cultures that we would be proud to associate with Union Square Hospitality Group — in terms of being employee-first, caring deeply for the guest experience, caring deeply for their communities and their suppliers, and obviously their investors.

They had to be good businesses.

So we raised a first fund, and then we raised a second fund. We’ve got about 26 investments at this point, and I get a chance to be — I’m not on any one of the boards, which is great — but I’m at meetings three days a week with the investment committee.

I get to be sort of the great uncle. I’m no one’s dad, but I’m sort of like a great uncle.

All the founders know that I’m a phone call away. It’s a good chance for me to share mistakes I’ve learned so that they don’t have to make the same mistakes. They can make new mistakes, but they don’t have to make the same old ones.

BERMAN: When we talk to investors, they’re often talking about betting on the entrepreneur. It just feels like you’ve got a nose for the idea as well. How much of it for you is the person, and how much is the concept?

DANNY MEYER: We’re learning because we look back. I think anyone who’s got a fund, you look back at the good ones you missed, and fortunately, you look back at a lot of the bad ones you’re happy you missed.

I think we probably made more money by not betting on the ones that we’re happy we missed. But I do think that, in general, the leadership is probably even more potent than the idea itself. I think a great leader can pivot and make a decent idea even better. But I’ve never seen a great idea overcome bad leadership.

BERMAN: More with Danny Meyer — and we’ll meet his daughter Hallie to hear how she’s growing her popular NYC ice cream business, Café Panna — in just a minute.

[AD BREAK]

Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on the Masters of Scale YouTube channel.

One of the other ways you’re scaling is by raising a next generation of entrepreneurs. So I’d love to invite your daughter, Hallie, up and join us on stage.

Copy LinkWhat Rome means to Hallie Meyer

HALLIE MEYER: Thanks for having me.

BERMAN: I’m thrilled you’re here, Hallie. Part of your journey involves Rome as well. Can you tell us about what Rome is for you and your journey?

HALLIE MEYER: It’s kind of alarming how similar the journey of inspiration is. Especially since, growing up, I think — and especially since I’ve started my own business — there’s been a lot of kind of tension between, well, are you doing exactly what your dad’s doing? Are you doing something totally different?

It’s a very interesting tension, but there’s no denying that Rome is a huge thing for both of us. It’s just the place that, for me, the story started when I traveled there with my family growing up.

But I think it really solidified when I had an experience in — actually, after the 2016 election, I decided to leave the startup I was working on because it didn’t feel like the right thing to do anymore.

BERMAN: Was it in the food space?

HALLIE MEYER: It was. It was in the food tech space, actually. Yeah, it was a home-cooked meal delivery service, which there are many of now.

But at the time, I said, “You know what? I want to sign up for a year of AmeriCorps service.” That year of service didn’t begin until the following school year.

I was like, “I think I want to open an ice cream business eventually. So I think I should just go to Rome because it’s a place that I’ve loved growing up.”

I found a cooking job at a place called the American Academy in Rome, the Rome Sustainable Food Project, which is still hosting cooks from around the world in this fellowship program.

I made it a goal to eat at at least two gelaterias in Rome every single day.

BERMAN: That’s a great goal.

HALLIE MEYER: And I definitely did at least two.

BERMAN: Good for you!

HALLIE MEYER: And recorded all of the experiences. But all that was with in mind, “How can I put these notes together?”

Copy LinkThe story of Caffè Panna

BERMAN: So tell us about Caffè Panna. And what have you taken from your experience growing up with your dad? And what are you doing differently?

HALLIE MEYER: I’ll start with Caffè Panna. Caffè Panna is an Italian-inspired ice cream store — or business, now, because we have two locations. We make everything in-house. We change the menu daily, which is kind of the most fun part for me.

BERMAN: And that’s based on the ingredients that are available at the market, or?

HALLIE MEYER: That’s based on a lot of inputs, I would say. One is just whim. The next is definitely the ingredients available.

The next is customers sending dozens of emails a week saying, “You really need to do this take on a Swedish dessert I had. It’s banana with meringue and Nutella.” “Got it. Great, we’re going to do that.”

Then they feel like they’ve just won the lottery because we made their flavor. That’s the fun of it. It’s like speaking to people in all of their different ice cream languages. A lot of it does have to do with the ingredients that are available. That was how the kitchen ran at the Rome Sustainable Food Project — the menu changed daily. That was fun to take. And at the gelateria I worked at in Rome as well, it was like, every morning you got in, “Okay, what are we making?” So that approach — that’s what keeps me excited. I think it keeps my team pretty excited, too, and it keeps our customers excited.

Now, at this stage, the business is a little over five years old. The Gramercy location opened in 2018, and we opened a much bigger factory in Brooklyn in July. It’s also a storefront, but now we’re producing all the ice cream there, so we’ve got a lot more capacity than we did. We currently sell at those two stores, ship nationwide on Goldbelly, and sell to a growing roster of hand-selected wholesale partners, specialty stores, and restaurants.

Copy LinkHallie’s hesitation around scaling

BERMAN: And what from your dad’s experience has really informed what you’re doing? Both like, “Oh my God, I’m totally doing that,” and, “Oh my God, I’m totally not doing that”?

HALLIE MEYER: Well, definitely hearing this — hearing the last 20 minutes — I’m like, wow, I’m really doing that.

I think one of the things my dad is really good at is he doesn’t give me advice unless I ask for it, which I really appreciate. And usually — you can correct me if you think I’m wrong — but I think usually the thing I come to you for advice on is generally around HR moments and conversations. But I think what I’m hearing a lot of from your story is kind of where I’m at right now, which is a little bit of an instinct to press the brakes on scale.

For me, it comes from just an obsession with the product itself and really, really believing that our success to date has to do with people’s love for the product and the places that they get it, and their memories around that.

Getting any bigger than a certain point could potentially burst the bubble of obsession people have with it. So I’m definitely hearing a lot of that.

BERMAN: How do you know? You’re describing an instinct. Is it instinctual? Is it more analytical? Are there data points you’re looking at, or is this like, “I just feel that we might lose control of the quality of the relationship with the customer”?

HALLIE MEYER: I think it’s definitely feeling, because there’s plenty of data to suggest that people want more of the ice cream in more places. However, I do think — unlike a restaurant — there’s plenty of ice cream companies out there, right?

BERMAN: And there are plenty of restaurants out there.

HALLIE MEYER: Yeah, there’s something different about it. I can’t describe it. But people see this as a product business as opposed to a full-on experience, which is part of what I love about it.

Our interaction with people — the majority of the speaking to their souls we do — can be through the flavor, which I love. That’s what keeps me going.

Of course, we have to have a nice experience at the register. Hopefully, we’re wiping your tables down in the café, and you get your order on time if you order through DoorDash. But it’s so different than putting on a show every single night in a restaurant.

I think that seeing other ice cream businesses’ stories of growth — many of which I love; I love all ice cream, I’m truly obsessed with ice cream, my dad can attest to that, and so can my mom — it’s easy to see where a brand that people adore and consider a personality trait of theirs can become something that is just everyone’s.

BERMAN: Yeah, suddenly.

HALLIE MEYER: So I’m definitely wrestling with that.

BERMAN: Danny, how did you react to your daughter going into a version of the family business?

DANNY MEYER: Well, Hallie spent — I love it. I don’t think we ever said, “Hallie, you should do this,” or, “You should not do that.” Hallie has been cooking her entire life. When I was a kid growing up in St. Louis, instead of doing homework, I would go out and play touch football or street hockey or whatever. Hallie did her homework. And her version of blowing off steam was to go read cookbooks.

Copy LinkChasing perfection

BERMAN: Hallie, what’s success for you in this?

HALLIE MEYER: See, this is the type of question that — you’re just getting at the core of it.

BERMAN: That’s my job.

HALLIE MEYER: I think right now, in this particular moment, especially since it’s just over five years I was the only person that wasn’t an hourly staff member until a year and a half ago.

I have done every single thing in the business, so I see everything through a very operational lens. I’m working my way — trying to work my way — away from that because I know the importance now of taking your “What do you do in a day?” list.

That was the other thing I was like, “Wow, yeah, I guess this is another thing I’ve absorbed.” Really trying to make sure that I’m not doing things I’m not so good at because I can bring the most to the table when I’m doing the things I’m really good at, which for me is the creative side: the menu development side, the recipes, and all of that.

It’s really not managing managers, which I have done for four years, but, God, I’m really excited to have someone who’s good at doing that now. I think that’s a little bit in my way of saying, “Well, what’s the next step?” But what success for me looks like is that the product is perfect, and that everyone who buys it is just obsessed with it.

And we’re there right now. So I think that’s the fear. It’s like, well, what happens if you do more? But more specifically, now that we have the Brooklyn location up and running, it’s starting to be able to say yes to more wholesale partners. A lot of people want it — small stores want to stock the product, some bigger stores too, and some that I’m wondering, “Does this work? Does this not work?”

But I think it’s pressing the gas on wholesale out of this location and not pressing the gas on more scoop shops.

BERMAN: Before we get to a final few lightning round questions that we do, Danny, I remember I’ve heard you talk about not pursuing perfection. When you hear Hallie say, “The product is perfect,” what’s your reaction?

DANNY MEYER: I don’t like the word “perfect.”

HALLIE MEYER: I don’t think it’s perfect. I just think it’s so great and fun and — it’s, you know —

BERMAN: Why don’t you like it?

DANNY MEYER: I think perfection is a recipe for unhappiness. I really do. So, yeah, I’m really all about pursuing excellence. For me, the way I describe it is, no, you can have all the perfection you want. I definitely don’t have any of it, so I won’t have it because I can’t. But what I love is the journey of excellence, which is this kind of balance between honoring the work you did yesterday — flawed though it was, because we’re all human — but honoring it.

No one woke up this morning saying, “I really want to suck today,” right? Everybody gave it their best, even if it wasn’t a great day. But honor it, and then figure out, how could we do it a little bit better tomorrow?

Copy LinkThe power of hospitality

BERMAN: It’s a phenomenal segue to — you’re both known for incredible customer service and hospitality. What’s either a non-obvious component to that for you or a non-obvious source of why you’ve become so great at that?

HALLIE MEYER: Especially in the ice cream world, where people have really, really strong emotional attachments to their specific order that they placed, or the fact that their flavor is not back.

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is just how much you can make someone’s day if you remember the flavor they like. You shoot them an email the week you’re launching something like it, and they just — it’s that type of thing. It’s like the fact that their whole day can be made by their local ice cream shop remembering that they like a flavor called Galaxy that has pink frosting in it, you know?

BERMAN: Which sounds awesome. Danny, how about you?

DANNY MEYER: I think about it a lot. I spent a lot of time as a salesman when I was first living in New York, and I would drive around the city. We didn’t have the internet, but wherever I picked to eat lunch by myself was the highlight of my day. I was nosing out places to eat, discovering new places.

In all the corners of the city, I often found that solo diners were not treated very well. When I traveled solo to London or to France, a lot of times they would look down their nose because you were just one. A big part of my motivation for hospitality is how I wanted to be treated.

Copy LinkAdvice from Danny & Hallie

BERMAN: Well, I don’t know about you, I’m super hungry now, so let’s leave with this. Danny, you said you don’t offer Hallie advice unless she asks for it. I’m asking you, on behalf of everyone here, listening and watching, for one piece of advice from each of you. Hallie, do you want to start?

HALLIE MEYER: No, absolutely not.

DANNY MEYER: I think if you’re an entrepreneur, I would say, try to grow where you’re planted before you just propagate.

I like scaling. I’ve learned to scale. I enjoy it because I like seeing people on our team get to grow. But I think it was a great — whatever emotional reasons I didn’t grow for 10 years — the gift to me was that I planted roots.

We know this from grapevines: the deeper those roots dig into the soil, the more flavor the resulting wine will end up having. So, try to grow where you’re planted a little bit before you scale.

HALLIE MEYER: I think that’s very much what’s probably on my mind and driving the slowness. The one piece of advice I have isn’t even from me. It’s from Stephen Sondheim, which I love because of my grandmother and both of my parents.

It’s a quote from Sunday in the Park with George, which is about an artist. It definitely has to do with doing things at your own pace and not letting external forces push you to move at any different pace.

And it’s, “Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.”

BERMAN: Beautiful. Danny, Hallie, thank you so much for bringing Masters of Scale live.

“Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.” Wise words shared by Hallie Meyer and so many insightful lessons from both her and her father, Danny, in our conversation.

This was just the first in our Masters of Scale live show series. We may be coming to a city near you soon, and we’d love to have you join us.

Please go to mastersofscale.com/live to learn more.

I’m Jeff Berman — thank you for listening.