 Welcome to School of Hustle, the show where we find inspiration and insight from people who are making their own way. I'm Shannon Truax, the VP of Social here at GoDaddy and I absolutely live and breathe the hustle of business. Today I'm thrilled to have Michael Chernow with us. He is the founder of Seymours and co-founder of the Meatball Shop and Wellwell. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. You are arguably succeeding in the most competitive city in the world for food and you've struck dining gold. I'm wondering how do you stay competitive in such a tough market? In the restaurant world, specifically in a market like New York City, most people that dine out have anywhere from three to five restaurants that they go to. It's three to five restaurants that are in their bucket that they think about before they go out to eat. I call it the restaurant cluster. The reason why it's so difficult to succeed in the restaurant industry is because unless you are in many, many, many people's restaurant cluster, you fail because it's not going to be the one and done that come to your restaurant that keep you going. It's the people that come back over and over and over again. When people walk out the door of the restaurant, they should be ready, willing and able and excited to share their experience not only on social media but with their friends because honestly, friends influence friends. Family influences family and if you think about every single guest that walks into the restaurant as a relationship and opportunity, an opportunity to develop a relationship, you'll win. How do you really build your restaurant to do what you said? A, make people loyal but then B, attract new customers as well. What components go into that? Well, obviously, marketing in PR is very important, right? Innovation in marketing are two of the most important pieces of the puzzle as you grow and scale a company. I also think the authenticity in the culture that we've created from the very, very beginning is what sort of is a common thread throughout all the restaurants because myself and my business partner, Daniel Holzman, the Meatball Shop, the two of us are best friends. We grew up together in Manhattan in New York City and we wanted to open up a restaurant for our friends and family and we knew that if we were going to do that, it couldn't be very expensive. The music had to be really, really good. Great people experience is the number one priority for people that down at the Meatball Shop. How do you stay on top of the trends and innovate like that? We don't think about staying with the trend. We think about how can we make sure that our guests have the absolute best time when they're in there. I'm not a great operations guy. I'm not a great finance guy. I'm not a great logistics guy but I am a relationships guy and I'm a people person and so the business of business to me. The business of business is relationships. The foundation of relationships is trust. Well, clearly Meatball Shop is killing it in this city. You're opening your seventh location soon. Actually, the seventh location is down in DC so we're taking the first one out of New York City. Wow. Yeah. It's a big step for the brand. That's enormous. Okay, so what I love about you is that in the middle of doing all of this, you went ahead and founded Seymours. I did. Wow. What has it been like going from conquering meatballs to conquering fish? Seymours was something that I wanted to do probably a year after I opened the Meatball Shop. There was a little bodega right next to the Lower East Side Meatball Shop. I love fish tacos passionately. I do too. And I was sick and tired of hearing that I had to go to Los Angeles or Southern California to get a good fish taco. We're surrounded by water in New York. I grew up fishing and I said, I could do it here. I'm going to do the same thing for fish tacos as I did for meatballs. I'm going to open up a spot that features fish tacos with good energy, great staff, great music, and it's all about the culture. The end of the day at Meatball Shop, what we sell is culture. Awesome food, awesome experience, but really what we sell is culture. When you walk into the doors of a meatball shop, you can grab culture like literally out of the air. That's like what we've done there. And so I applied the exact same principles to Seymours except it's a different cuisine and a different feeling when you walk into the room. Seymours is bright and airy and Meatball Shop is cozy and warm and you nuzzle up to a big bowl of meatballs. And so I took the exact opposite side of the spectrum except I applied the same exact principles from Meatball Shop to Seymours and I just opened up the six Seymours. I love the bright airiness of Seymours as well. It's absolutely gorgeous. And you know, one of the things in New York that I think is one of the most coveted is our weekend brunch. And you've taken that big bright space and you have reimagined brunch by combining two things that you love very much, which are food and fitness. How have you done that? Tell us about how you were thinking about brunch. Sure. So when I launched Seymours, one of the big core tenants or philosophies or core values of the brand was mindfulness, health and wellness. And so what we did when we opened up that restaurant in the orientation, I brought in a meditation specialist. I brought in a Lululemon team to talk to us about mindfulness and taking care of ourselves. And I launched something called FitSquad. And this was launched internally as a company where every single Wednesday morning for the first year that we were open, I would show up to the restaurant at eight o'clock. Everybody was invited. All the staff members were invited. Either I would lead a class, we would go to a fitness studio, I would bring a fitness studio instructor into the restaurant and move the tables and chairs. And we all worked out and trained together. And it's an amazing team building thing. It's awesome to be able to empower the staff and the team to get into fitness because fitness changed my life. And so we did this internally for a long time until enough people would be walking by the restaurant and looking in and being like, are they working out in that restaurant? Are they doing yoga in there? And so we decided that we were going to bring our guests into the fold. And what we do is once a quarter, we partner with a really awesome fitness influencer. We collaborate on our brunch menu based on that person's favorite brunch items. We throw a little Seymour's Twist on it. We invite a bunch of our guests in. They work out with the trainer. We do a training session inside the restaurant. And then it's followed by cocktails, of course, and the brunch menu. I think today's consumer also wants to have that cleaner experience because people are thinking about what they're eating, right? And where are my tacos being sourced from? And this is a constant thing even for consumers. Absolutely. And so I think you're spot on there. I think it's awesome. As I began to dive deep into the seafood world, I didn't like what I saw. I saw lots of overfishing, lots of unregulation, seafood crisis, right? And I said, man, it could be rough for me to open up a seafood restaurant right now serving traditional seafood. So what I did was I said, unless I only serve seafood, that is sustainable, local, wild, and sustainable. And so that's another layer of love at Seymour's. It's not only a fun environment. We're not only serving super-duper fresh, awesome fish with good making memories there, but it's also fully sustainable, wild, and local. And so you can go to Seymour's and try fish that you've probably never tried before because they all swim local to New York City. And you're never going to find salmon at Seymour's, unfortunately. But you'll find a lot of bluefish, blackfish, tilefish, skate, polychetic, hake, like all fish that I grew up catching that you never see on menus here because there's not a massive market for them. You've clearly had tremendous success in the food scene, but what is that one moment that you would consider your made-it moment? My made-it moment, I'd have to call it the two moments. One was actually the first day of the meatball shop. I'd never opened a business before, and Daniel and I were standing at the back of the restaurant on the Lower East Side, and we had paper up on the windows and we made an agreement that we weren't going to take the paper off the windows until the second we opened up the doors. And we were standing back there, and it was time to open, and the two of us looked at each other, took the paper off the windows, and there was a line from the front of the restaurant about 200 people around the block. And we had no idea that they were out there. And so that was a moment where we both were just like, oh, we've done something special. I'd say the second moment that I would... It was a big moment, it was a big moment. I literally am visualizing that paper coming off and seeing everybody show up for you. It was a moment in my life that I'll never, ever forget. But you had two, and I don't know what's going to happen to me when you say number two. I'm kind of scared, but just try me. The second one is when I come up with the idea for Seymours, I have a number of mentors. But one of my mentors that I looked to first out of the pool, I shared the idea of Seymours with him, and I went to his office, and he has a huge job at a huge company. And I said, hey man, this is what I'm going to do next. And he looked at it, and we spent some time talking about it. He gave it the stamp of approval and said, go ahead kid, go out and do it. And I invited that guy to the opening night of Seymours. And that night, he wrote me an email saying, I cannot believe that you were able to take the vision that you described in my office a year and a half ago to fruition the way you did, I want to leave my job and grow this brand with you. And that for me was like, holy cow, this guy is a real deal, he's built businesses up to a billion dollars. How this is unbelievable. We have a couple of questions from social that we'd love to ask you, and the first comes from Alex. Alex, thank you for this question. Alex is wondering, when you started your business, did you have any help with funding as you were getting up and running? Absolutely. I, you know, I knocked on every single friend and family's door that I could think of and dropped a business plan in front of them. I, of course, put in as much money as I personally had, which was in the meatball shop, not a whole lot because I didn't have any money. And for Seymours, it was a lot of the same meatball shop investors and a few more friends and family. Our next question comes from Hailey, and Hailey is wondering, what part of your job do you love the most? When people ask me what business I'm in, I tell them I'm in the business of making people extraordinarily happy. That is the business I'm in, because if I can't do that, all the other stuff doesn't matter. And so that's what I love most about my job. We have a game that we're going to play with you called Hustle Time. Let's do it. Let's bring out the cards, Jonathan. So the idea with Hustle Time is we want to get personal. Awesome. We want to go deep, and we want to get through as many cards as we can in 60 seconds. And we're going to set a timer. So I'm wondering if you might want to shuffle or cut the cards. Give them a little knock or a... Are we good? I knock them. Okay. So, again, in the spirit of speed, say the first thing that comes to mind, and we'll see how many we can get in 60 seconds, okay? Which would you rather add to your life, time or value? Time. Would you rather never be able to teach a mentor or never be able to learn? Never be able to teach a mentor. You have to lose access forever. Do you pick search engines or social media? Social media. Music or podcast? Podcast. Would you rather never get angry or never be envious? Never be envious. Which Hogwarts house would you be sorted into? No idea. Apple or Android? Apple. Aliens, fact or fiction? Fact. Finish the sentence, when I dance, I look like... John. Top quality you look for at an employee? Smiles. Who is someone that defines successful to you? Vodha. Favorite New York City tourist attraction? Meatball shop. Who is the most successful person you know? My three-year-old son. Which would you rather give up for life, pizza or sandwiches? Sandwiches. Yes or no? Socks with sandals? No. Okay, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Is that good? That's a good one. Is it? That's pretty good. Well, that was fun. Nice job. I appreciate you sharing so much inspiration with us and advice. We appreciate it. There's one more piece of advice that is very important. And this advice is for our ten-year-old resident pug, Noodle. Noodle loves food. Of course. Look at his name. His name is Noodle, which fits right in with the meatball shop. I know. So, Noodle, while he loves food, is not the best chef. I mean, he can't hold a frying pan or a spatula, but he would love to get started. What advice would you have for Noodle and people out there who want to start cooking and just don't know how to begin? Just go for it. Olive oil and salt are the two ingredients that bring flavor out in food. Salt brings out the flavor. The fat from the olive oil makes the flavor real. And so, just get out there, explore, experiment. Don't turn the heat up too high. Don't do that. Don't turn the heat up too high. But literally, if you just season with olive oil and salt on most things, you'll be all right. Promise. Well, that's our show. And you know what? We're bringing you the hustle every week, so please stay tuned. We have our entire playlist on YouTube. There's more on IGTV, always on Facebook. Really keep watching. And Noodle, do you have any last words? Noodle. Nada. No. Noodle's good. Thanks, everybody.