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The meez Podcast
Josh Sharkey (Entrepreneur, professional chef, and founder/CEO of meez, the culinaryOS for food professionals) interviews world class entrepreneurs in the food space that are shifting the paradigm of how we innovate and operate in our industry.
The meez Podcast
Michael Jacober on Overcoming Grief, Embracing Grit, and Managing Multiple Ventures with Purpose
#88. This week on The meez Podcast, Josh Sharkey sits down with Michael Jacober, the multifaceted entrepreneur behind Blanket and Jacobs Franchise Partners.
In this episode, Michael opens up about his journey, sharing how his diverse background and early experiences with grief have shaped his perspective. He discusses his refusal to let past traumas define him, choosing instead to focus on building meaningful relationships and impactful businesses.
Michael also delves into the origins of his company, Blanket, and how it reflects his commitment to thoughtful design and functionality. You’ll hear how he balances multiple projects simultaneously and the vision behind his new venture, Jacobs Franchise Partners, with his partner Andy Jacobi.
Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or someone seeking inspiration, Michael’s story is a powerful reminder of the strength found in vulnerability and the value of leading with purpose.
Where to find Michael Jacober:
Where to find Blanket:
Where to find Jacobs Franchise Partners:
Where to find host Josh Sharkey:
In this episode, we cover:
(01:47): Coffee, yes or no?
(07:11): Michael's diverse background and experience with grief
(16:32): How Michael refuses to let past traumas shape his identity
(23:52): How Michael and Josh first crossed paths
(26:44): Gladys Caribbean Kitchen
(34:37): The inception of Michael's current company, Blanket
(51:12): Bridging art and commerce
(56:23): How Michael manages multiple projects at once
(1:05:37): Jacobs Franchise Partners
[00:00:00] Michael Jacober:
The best is just perception. Yeah, it's a person, you know, you know, I wanted to make the best, you know Sandwich shop in Crown Heights the best to me had apparently horrible value perception to the people around us And this is around a neighborhood. It was definitely not the best to them having the best product again It's all about others' perceptions and telling a great story can help shape that perception.
[00:00:27] Josh Sharkey:
You're listening to season two of The meez Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals on the show. We're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate.
[00:00:46]
And how they consistently execute at a high level, day after day. And I would really love it if you could drop us a 5 star review. Anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky. Anywhere works, but I really appreciate the support. And as always, I hope you enjoy the show.
[00:01:07] Michael Jacober:
Dude, I got like my pro audio microphone set up.
[00:01:10] Josh Sharkey:
You look set, you look set. All right, well, we're live. So welcome to the darn show, Mr. Mike. You know, I actually have been thinking for like probably a year, why don't Mike and I just, you know, make our bi monthly Meeting a podcast because you know, we're we're talking about so much every time.
[00:01:35]
I mean, hopefully it's nothing that would get us canceled, but You know, I think it would be fun, you know, and people need to hear more from you. I think
[00:01:44] Michael Jacober:
Oh, please I think they do.
[00:01:47] Josh Sharkey:
I think the world really needs to hear more from Mike Jacober Do you have your coffee, by the way? Are you drinking coffee these days?
[00:01:52] Michael Jacober:
So, I think I told you this. I started drinking coffee when my daughter was born, which was six years ago. It lasted three years.
[00:02:01] Josh Sharkey:
Wait, you didn't drink coffee your whole life? I didn't drink coffee my whole life,
[00:02:04] Michael Jacober:
Yeah. I've tried, I've gone through periods where I've tried to do it, and I just have to accept that it's just not for me. Like, if I have a cup of coffee, like a real cup of coffee in the morning, I'll have a tough time sleeping the following night. What? And yeah, people have told me like, well, you just got to fight through it. You're just not, you know, you haven't, your body hasn't acclimated to caffeine. And I, I went for, I'm not exaggerating, I tried, I tried drinking coffee daily for three years and it just.
[00:02:30]
It just didn't work. Wow, I'm so jealous. Incredibly jittery, but my father in law happens to be living my family and I right now and he goes to the gym on a daily basis and he brings me back a decaf. Um, and I've had so I've had this much decaf and I'm like ripping right now. Really? Ripping.
[00:02:53] Josh Sharkey:
I'm so jealous. I wish I didn't need coffee. Um, I do wait like 90 minutes. Uh, after I wake up.
[00:03:00] Michael Jacober:
So you don't just have like the first thing in the morning.
[00:03:01] Josh Sharkey:
I used to and then, you know, I sometimes I don't like learning new information, but Andrew Huberman had this talk about how, uh, you're basically coffee and the, and the caffeine in it is basically just blocking adenosine, uh, or adenosine receptors in your brain.
[00:03:14] Michael Jacober:
Oh yeah. I did. I, I saw a podcast. I think that it just convinces your body.
[00:03:19] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, exactly. And so when you stave it off for like 90 minutes, you sort of, your body has time to sort of release all that adenosine. So you, you don't have that like 3PM. Which you don't have anyways, but like that 3pm, uh, where you get tired again and you need more coffee.
[00:03:32]
Uh, so I've been doing that. I actually do think it, it works. There are some times, I mean you and I both have two kids, there are some times when I'm like, I just need this right now. You know, 5:30 and the kids are screaming, can I just have a cup of coffee? I usually, I usually wait.
[00:03:46] Michael Jacober:
That's how it worked for me. So when my daughter was born, my son was two and a half and he was just, notorious for waking up incredibly early. He would get up at five and be like, like his eyes would open and he was like ready to go.
[00:03:59] Josh Sharkey:
Isn't it crazy how like rip roaring and ready they are to go at like as soon as they would go.
[00:04:02] Michael Jacober:
It's insane. So I've never really been a morning person. My sleep got all fucked up in my twenties when I was a, you know, a touring, touring musician and then working in restaurants. So like, I never, I was never a morning person. And so finally when my daughter was born, it was like, I need to get up. With my son because my wife was you know resting with with our child, you know, I was like, you know, fuck it I'm just gonna try coffee just to see what happens and I was like, holy like holy shit.
Like this is what a drug man.
[00:04:35] Josh Sharkey:
It's like you're like You're awake
[00:04:38] Michael Jacober:
like you have your first sip and you are up and that's that lasted three years
[00:04:44] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's also there's definitely this dopamine feel you get from when you have a cup of coffee It's not just waking up. I mean, it is no doubt a drug. I wish I could stop.
[00:04:54]
I mean, I know I can stop. I went six months, like, back during the bark days. I did like a six month. This was the worst thing I think I've ever done for my body, I think. For six months, I cut out caffeine, sugar, gluten, alcohol, and dairy. For six months. For six months. And, you know, the first month was just horrendous.
[00:05:16]
Yeah. Uh, sugar was the hardest thing for me. And then, and then I felt amazing. And then I slowly was like, okay, let me get back to these things. And then I was never the same again. I was, I had this, I developed a sensitivity to basically all of those things. Now. Oh my god. Like dairy crushes me, gluten crushes me.
[00:05:32]
Caffeine is still like, it's a love hate relationship because it like, it does wake me up, but then I, I get tired or I get like all kinds of other ailments from it. But yeah, I think maybe my body was already sensitive to it and then I got rid of it for six months. But you know, that cleanse was, you know, although I felt great during the cleanse, unless I stayed on it the whole time, which is literally impossible.
[00:05:53]
Who could do that? It just really, it wrecked me. So, um, my CTO, Mary Lee, uh, doesn't drink coffee either, she drinks like, she drinks, sorry Mary Lee, I'm gonna call you out on this, I think she drinks like, like, uh, like, hot chocolate in the morning, which definitely has caffeine in it.
[00:06:11] Michael Jacober:
That is the inner child, just like, finally, allowing it, you know, probably, I'm sure she was like seven, she's like, mom and dad, I'm gonna show you when I'm grown up, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have hot chocolate every day.
[00:06:25] Josh Sharkey:
Alright, anyways, we're not gonna talk about my CTO. I wanna talk about how we met. Because, you know, I'm introducing the world to our friendship, but before that, if you don't mind, uh, and we can get as detailed as you want, because you have some, you know, some tough family pasts. Yeah, I was,
[00:06:41] Michael Jacober:
I was thinking I was gonna be pretty open. You know, I've been very guarded for a long time, and I was like, you know what, let's just, uh, let's just go for it. Yeah.
[00:06:51] Josh Sharkey:
You have a pretty varied past and an amazing one. I mean, you're a musician, obviously a chef, all kinds of things. But you're obviously, maybe you could start with, you know, your, your, your personal past, because I think you're, you know, your family, because I think that's, if you haven't talked about it.
[00:07:05]
Yeah, I didn't learn about it till much later on into our friendship and um, obviously it's a it's a big one
[00:07:11] Michael Jacober:
Yeah So I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island Was the middle child of a you know, a middle upper class Jewish family grew up playing a lot of sports Fell in love with cooking or I shouldn't say that I fell in love with the idea of cooking when I was 16 I dated a Portuguese girl in high school.
[00:07:32]
Food was definitely like a big of our of the culture in our house, but neither my parents cooked or they cooked, but they didn't really know how to cook and my first real, uh, experience with like very well executed cuisine was, um, my girlfriend at the time, her cousin was was was a chef and I helped him prepare Thanksgiving day meal and we like we drove to Sid Weiner and Sons in, in, uh, in New Bedford, like picked out all the produce and, uh, And I was 16 years old and this was like, this is a big deal.
[00:08:06]
And I would say that totally changed my life from there on. Like, I was very interested in, in food and cooking.
[00:08:13] Josh Sharkey:
Were you in Providence proper? Like in the city
or yeah,
[00:08:17] Michael Jacober:
The East side, um, East side of Providence. So very close to, to the Brown football stadium was where I was, where my home was. And from there, I, you know, I went off to college.
[00:08:27]
I went to Penn state, I played, I was recruited to play cross lacrosse for the, uh, Penn State Nittany Lions. And, um, that was a really, really exciting, uh, journey for a kid in high school, especially from Rhode Island, where, you know, Not a ton of college lacrosse players are coming out of. So the first summer after my freshman year, I ended up working at a restaurant in Newport, Rhode Island called Clark Cook House.
[00:08:49]
And that was my first introduction to like the theater of, um, of restaurants. There was like four restaurants within this restaurant. There was seven bars and I worked on the, the top floor, which was the, the, you know, the fine dining, fine dining restaurant. And I had to wear like a bow tie and a tuxedo.
[00:09:08]
And, uh, it was. You was front of the house there? I was front of the house, yeah. But I got to like, wait on famous people. I got to pour, you know, bottles of Dom Perignon and Vouv. And it was so exciting. And so from there, I decided this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to continue to pursue this. And so when I got back to college that following year, Penn State has a hospitality school and I enrolled in it and then spent the remainder of my college career kind of learning more and more about hospitality management and spending the summers working in restaurants and It was definitely a love and a passion.
[00:09:41]
Uh, I think what you're referring to is so, so six weeks before my senior year, but, uh, sorry, before my, my graduation date, my senior year and in late March, we had a game against, uh, the Fairfield Stags, I think, Fairfield University. And uh, my parents were supposed to be coming to the game. They were coming back from a vacation in Florida and uh, they were going to stop by, stay college, watch the game.
[00:10:07]
Uh, and then, and then go back, go back to Providence and the plane, uh, unfortunately it, it crashed and my mother, father and younger brother, um, all passed away, uh, on the same day and that definitely, that was a kick to the teeth, uh, you know, just before graduating and I was applying for internships in New York City and was like really excited about, you know, the next, the next chapter of my, uh, of my young adulthood. And, um, Yeah, it definitely
[00:10:37] Josh Sharkey:
So you were 21, 22?
[00:10:40] Michael Jacober:
I was, I was 22. Yeah, I was 22, which was 20 years ago. Uh, I, I, I can't believe it's, you know, this much time has passed. I know. And so that was a pretty big event in my life that really kind of changed, changed my life's course. You know, I, I, uh, I ended up, you know, my parents passed away with my brother.
[00:11:01]
I ended up inheriting, you know, not a tremendous amount of money, but I inherited some money and it definitely got me thinking about, all right. What do I, what would I do differently, like, as opposed to, um, you know, the path that I was currently going down. And, you know, nothing really changed, other than I wanted to maybe pursue, you know, I played music as a child all throughout high school, all throughout college.
[00:11:26]
Great school, college. I was in band. Um, so I decided, you know, I really wanted to focus primarily on, on cooking and music through my twenties. And that's really what launched me moving to France after graduation and originally going to culinary school, which I ended up dropping out of to work in a restaurant in Paris.
[00:11:44]
And I, lived there for a year. Um, and I, you know, recorded music in my tiny little maid's chamber room on the seventh floor of a, uh, of a walk up apartment and worked in a restaurant five days a week, you know, learning French and learning how to cook from there. I moved to New York. Uh, I got a, an externship at Per Se, which was where I met some incredible cooks, um, people who I still am, you know, in awe of today, the cook who I actually, the, The chef de cuisine at the time was Jonathan Benno, who you just, um, uh, I watched that podcast and, uh, when I showed up for my first day of my externship, you know, I could get my way around a kitchen.
[00:12:25]
I was definitely not a ready to work in a three Michelin starred restaurant. It's like as a chef to party and take a station. But he towards the end of the shift, he asked me to come over and introduce myself to him. And, um, uh, he was, he just, he was like, Oh, You're the lacrosse player. I must on my resume have put like Penn State lacrosse.
[00:12:48]
And I was like, yeah. And he said, you got the job. You start tomorrow. Uh, so that was like, that was my first introduction to really high level cooking. I'm sure, you know, you've worked in in these types of restaurants. I had never seen that type of operation. So that was, yeah, that was my gateway into into the New York City restaurant scene from there.
[00:13:08]
You know, uh, Jonathan got me a job working for Marco Canora. Uh, Marco had just opened up NCMA, which, uh, was, it hadn't been reviewed yet. And he was really trying to make that, uh, you know, I think New York Times, three star was really what he was, what he was going for. And that was a great first real line cook job, uh, where, you know, I had my own station.
[00:13:34]
It was, uh, the AM pasta shift. So I got to, you know, learn about. Pasta production and get my absolute ass kicked. It was a union shop, which was What crazy? Yeah, so in the a.m. shift, you know, first of all, I found out like dishwashers were at the time This was a lot of money and dishwashers making like 35 40 bucks an hour And, you know, at 11 o'clock, 30 minutes before lunch would open, they would be taking their cigarette break.
[00:14:02]
They'd have like an hour of And so I'd be like, washing my own pots and pans while also managing all the, the stocks and sauces and, uh, producing pasta. So that was like, that was my first, uh,
[00:14:13] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's interesting that at a union job, they would let you wash the dishes. Typically it's pretty, uh, particular about that.
[00:14:19] Michael Jacober:
So I don't think they would, if they weren't on their break, they wouldn't have let me. What was very clear was that, They weren't gonna help me at all. Yeah, you know, I was doing ten things at once and I asked someone to help me extrude pasta Just like manage the the pasta, you know, so I could cut you know, it wasn't that it didn't have an automatic die cut you know guys said that's sorry.
[00:14:42]
That's out of my jurisdiction So I guess so much for so much for teamwork Season, you know, that was an incredible experience Marco. I still consider like a very strong culinary mentor. From there, I worked, uh, for Anita Lo at Anissa, who was, you know, an incredible, incredibly talented chef. She definitely had a real hold on French.
[00:15:07]
She's Chinese American. So there was always some sort of Chinese flair that was executed incredibly, incredibly well. Yeah, that was a great experience. It was a small restaurant. It was, it was an all female kitchen. Um, I actually worked front of the house. I was a, um, food runner. So, uh, I got to be the liaison between the, uh What year was that?
Must have been 2008. That was 2008. 2008. Yeah. Gotcha.
[00:15:32] Josh Sharkey:
So, hold on. Mike, if you don't mind, I wanna, I wanna wind back a minute. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And then we're gonna kinda go forward because your, your parents passed away while you were in college. You were pretty young. And then you, you, you said you started thinking about, okay, what would I do with my life, but what was the feeling like and how long did it take to sort of get past the, you know, just the, the grief before you could actually start to move on?
[00:15:52]
I know, I was pretty young when my father passed away. I was like 16. I feel like I was probably, not emotionally equipped enough to actually process it. So I just jumped into drugs and then into, and then into cooking and I never really even, I'm not sure I really processed it. But, um, it was basically like the next day kind of onto, but I'm curious at that age, you're probably more emotionally equipped to deal with it, which means it probably hurt more.
[00:16:15]
But what was that? Like, how long, how long was that period? And was there, I mean, did you go right to thinking about, um, okay, now I need to, I mean, it's tough. You don't have. Any support now your parents are gone like how long did it take you to sort of get through that and I just curious how you, you know,
[00:16:32] Michael Jacober:
You know, this was 20 years ago, so I'll try my best to, to remember. I remember obviously the immediate pain, um, the day that, that I found this out, you know, my uncle called me, I was out to eat with one of my best friends, my co-captain on the team, my brother and I were trying to call. Them and it was going straight to voicemail. We called the FAA. The FAA wasn't really giving us any information There they didn't say that didn't tell us something.
[00:17:06]
I called the airport the airport didn't tell me anything So at that point I knew something was weird. My uncle ended up calling me and letting me know what happened and it was yeah I remember it being I just fell on my knees. Um, it was incredibly painful. Immediately it was like, I don't know, it, I, I just didn't believe it.
[00:17:27]
So we called the airport, and the airport actually let us know that the crash happened two miles from the runway. And so my friend and I immediately drove, actually crashed outside of a, a, uh, a correctional facility that was under construction. Um, so we drove to this. correctional facility, uh, and that's where the plane, um, had rested.
[00:17:46]
And so I remember it being like, it was so surreal. You know, I never saw their bodies, so it never really like, it, it just never felt real. Uh, I know that there was a pretty immediate acceptance. You know, you know, we all talk about the different stages of grief. For me, you know, and I don't think I was ever angry.
[00:18:09]
I think it was pretty immediate. Just, heartbreak and sadness and acceptance. You know, uh, I would say we immediately drove home. Um, I drove home with my brother and my, my, my other brother, my older brother who, who serve, uh, who was not on the plane, uh, and my girlfriend at the time we drove back to Providence and we just, Um, to our house, uh, which was very eerie, you know, they had everything was packed and organized as though they had just, you know, left for, for a vacation for a few weeks.
[00:18:41]
But I do remember my immediate response, kind of after, After the shock was, I don't want this to define me. I don't want this to be something that I use as a crutch. And so I didn't really talk about it. I didn't, I kind of kept, I kept a lot of thoughts and feelings quiet. And I would definitely say I buried a lot.
[00:19:13]
You know, me saying that maybe there was immediate acceptance. Maybe it was just me having some sort of. You know, survival coping mechanism that just didn't allow me to really feel. all the normal grieving emotions. So, yeah, I, I think you ask, like, when did I start to have those feelings of, of, or when did I start to think, like, how am I going to live my life differently?
[00:19:39]
It happened pretty quickly. You know, I went back to school a week after the So I was only home for, for, for six days. Uh, I wanted to be back with My teammates and try to have some sort of normal remainder of my college career, which is only another five weeks or so. And I think doing that, it definitely began this, like, I'm going to survive at all costs type of mentality.
[00:20:10]
Definitely keeping, keeping things to myself and not really. You know, allowing this, this tragedy to, to, to feel sorry for myself. I never wanted to be someone who utilized a, you know, people go through tragedies all the time. And I just didn't want to be the person who made excuses.
[00:20:30] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. It's such a powerful insight that young and it really is. It's tough because there's this balance of a lot of us probably just don't process things. And there are things that we bury and how much of that is actually creative to becoming happier. And, and then how much of it is. The opposite, right, where it's going to start to, you know, bubble up later, I think that insight of, you know, whatever tragedy happens of any kind, not letting it define you is, no matter what, I think it's so important, you know, because you see folks that are still sort of suffering from things 20, 30 years later, and of course, you know, those things are always going to, you know, affect you, but, you know, if you, if you let them define you, then you're not really owning your own, you know, I've seen it a lot and I really, um, I feel for the, for folks that can't do it, but I can't believe you had that insight that early on to know that and to know it right away, you know?
[00:21:21] Michael Jacober:
I think my, my immediate, I shouldn't say, I keep saying my immediate response at some point pretty early on, I started to feel like no one cares. Yeah. And I just kept telling myself like, Everyone is dealing with something, some way, shape, or form. Like, obviously, I went through, I went through a tragedy.
[00:21:45]
People deal with loss, suffer in their own ways. I, yeah, I just had this mantra of like, no one gives a shit. And so, why should I care? Why should I live my life as though, though people do? I think I was probably a little harder on myself and my story than as, you know, a young adult than I needed to be. But that was definitely, I think, a very strong coping mechanism was just telling myself like, life goes on. No one gives a shit. So you gotta move forward.
[00:22:17] Josh Sharkey:
It's such an interesting, uh, premise, cause we, you know, Hannah and I, my, my wife and I, Hannah, you know Hannah, we talk about this a lot, and I, I, you and I are very similar in that, uh, of, you know, what is going to be best for, um, being able to move forward and for survival.
[00:22:30]
And of course there's the opposite end of that spectrum, it's like, hey, are you actually processing these emotions? Are you actually, you know, letting these things Yeah, you know addressing them and you have to do both but you know, I do feel like you know These things will be weights, you know on you If you if you don't figure out a way to to let them go that doesn't dismiss at all like the I mean Especially for what you went to seeing about a pain and how scary that must have been of course knowing you now today You're one of the most smart and sort of ambitious and ingenuity of person people that I know and a lot of that probably is because very early on you had to learn to be autonomous and figure things out on your own and and and you knew that there was really no way to survive other than figuring it Out so it did you know, I'm sure it played a big part in who you are today.
[00:23:21] Michael Jacober:
Yeah, I mean, what's interesting is I definitely identify you as a very similar, in a very similar way, you are, you're, and I think that's one of the reasons why we enjoy talking to each other, you know, every, twice a month, you know, it's one of my favorite things to do.
[00:23:38]
Times of the month when we get to actually catch up with one another and I definitely see a tremendous amount of grit and ingenuity In you and that's I think I don't probably one of the reasons why we're friends.
[00:23:52] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, you know 100 percent man. Well, okay, I will push forward again now because I don't want to we don't need to you know, dive into that for too much too much longer but yeah, you worked in a bunch of incredible restaurants.
[00:24:05]
I met you around to that No, not 2008 like 2009 or 10 You started the grilled cheese truck and then you also started another, another restaurant and we met, I think, because we were both doing pop ups or something from our restaurants at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Is that right? Yeah. Or somewhere around that?
[00:24:24]
I think that's I think I needed like a food truck license or something and I think you like, I think you might have given me a food truck license.
[00:24:32] Michael Jacober:
There's definitely, it's gray, right? My, my, my memory's a little hazy. Yeah, I remember. I remember talking to you for the first time. I can't remember who introduced this.
[00:24:40]
I remember talking on the phone and I think you needed, you needed a license and you also needed panini presses. You need, you needed like some, and I remember like saying I would rent, I'd rent you the truck plus the presses and hearing the, the calculation that you were doing in your head about like, you know, the, the value of you just like buying a couple presses.
[00:25:07]
And then, you know, selling them, uh, on a secondary market. I think ultimately we didn't, we, I don't know if, I don't think we did do a deal, but just hearing how you went through the thought process, like, I, this guy's, this guy's fucking smart, and I, I respect him. And then I think when we really hung out for the first time was when Jake Dixon invited us to be on Fox and Friends with Tucker Carlson and a few other of those other talking heads for the Chelsea Market chili cook off. That's right.
[00:25:40] Josh Sharkey:
That's the first time we met Tucker.
[00:25:43] Michael Jacober:
I think that's the first. Since then, we've, you know, we have, we go to dinner parties once a month.
[00:25:50] Josh Sharkey:
I actually, I did. I think I did. Like one or two other shows with him after that. I forgot about that. Wow. Oh yes, it was the chili. It was the chili cook off, right?
[00:26:01] Michael Jacober:
It was chili cook off at Chelsea Market that Jake, I think. That's right. I Kind of managed. That's right. Um, and Wow, I totally forgot.
[00:26:08]
Yeah, and I think that was kind of the, I remember being in a cab with you on the way home from that, which by the way, it was so early in the morning. Oh yeah, we didn't get to the studio. It's like 4 a. m. when you get to the studio, it's like crazy.
[00:26:20] Josh Sharkey:
Great to eat chili at 5:30 a.m.
[00:26:26] Michael Jacober:
Yeah. But yeah, I remember having a really, like, thoughtful, meaningful conversation with you on the ride home, and then, I remember you dined at Gladdy's, uh, at some point. I think you might have been with, I think you were with Hannah, but I don't Yeah, I was with Hannah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:44] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Well, and for everybody, Gladys is the Caribbean spot that you opened in Crown Heights, which is like the little Caribbean area of Brooklyn. So, let's take a minute, because I want to, I want to, I want to, we talked about this, but I still don't fully understand why a white Jewish guy from Providence was able to open a really dope Caribbean spot in Brooklyn.
[00:27:11]
In Crown Heights, where I'm sure Caribbean folks are going to be very discerning of what you're making, but it was delicious. And like, how did that happen?
[00:27:20] Michael Jacober:
So, it was, it was an accident. I, you know, I had this successful food truck and wanted to grow the business. And so, the natural thing that you did when you had a food truck was you opened a brick and mortar.
[00:27:33]
And so, uh, ended up signing this lease on the corner of Lincoln, Lincoln, uh, Place in Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which is where I just had moved. It was an upcoming neighborhood. There was a lot of gentrification happening. The two existing communities were, uh, a Caribbean, uh, Caribbean population and a Hasidic, uh, Orthodox, uh, uh, Jewish population.
[00:27:57]
That's just some very famous riots that occurred in the, in the 90s, uh, between those two communities. And so, yeah, I was really excited. We had this corner, uh, and we, you know, spent, you know, Spent time building it out and turning it into what, you know, I kind of wanted to have a Caribbean feel to it to pay homage to the neighborhood in terms of the design aesthetic, but we couldn't have opened up the more wrong concept in that location.
[00:28:26]
Uh, the opening chef was a guy named Nick Cortola, who is. Going on to be an incredibly successful, um, Nick is probably the most talented cook that I had ever worked with, um, and another gentleman named Chris Austin, who was the chef of the truck. So the kind of, it was like a three way partnership, and it just, it was my first experience of, you know, really having to manage a PNL, uh, as well as try to manage.
[00:28:57]
The quality of something that we were trying to, you know, we're trying to prove ourselves to the New York culinary scene that we were, we were, we were the real deal. We were going to be, you know, uh, I think what would harm had just opened not to, to Not too before that, we wanted to be the Brooklyn version of, you know, Therese and Carbone and Zelinsky.
[00:29:21] Josh Sharkey:
Zelinsky or is it, what, is it Jeff, what's, what's Zalinek or something, I forget. Yeah, Sorry, I apologize. Nick, Nick, and Nick went on to, so obviously he's a Four Horseman over.
[00:29:29] Michael Jacober:
He went to Four Horseman, yeah. So it all worked out for Nick. But, uh, unfortunately at the time it wasn't working out. And I had to make a very difficult decision.
[00:29:37]
We were losing. Um, we were losing money each month and it wasn't going in the right direction. And so I had a choice. I could have either, you know, shut the restaurant down and try to sell, sell the lease for key money and take pretty, take a pretty substantial loss or flip the concept into something that I thought could work.
[00:29:56]
And I just had a, you know, I was seeing what was going on with the neighborhood. A lot of Caribbean restaurants are being forced out due to rents rising. And then this new gentrifying community wasn't really, you know, Uh, that interested in, in, in that cuisine. So I thought, you know, it could be, it could work if I opened up Caribbean restaurant that was priced neutrally to every other Caribbean restaurant.
[00:30:22]
So we weren't going to be viewed as like us deconstructing Caribbean food and elevating it.
[00:30:27] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:30:28] Michael Jacober:
Uh, I also. Knew that we had a, we had a full bar, so that differentiated us as well. And we were full service. So I think, you know, those kinds of three things I thought wasn't, could be enough to actually have a concept that worked.
[00:30:42]
And so tapped a couple employees who were at the, at the previous version of Gladys to stick around and, and help with, um, help open this new version. And everyone who I, who I asked. Was excited and and wanted to wanted to stick around. And so we closed the restaurant for six weeks. I hired a set designer to come in.
[00:31:03]
Set designers are great. Like they know how to work very quickly with really, really cheap budgets. That's really smart. Yeah, and she and she just like turned it into the set of a great restaurant within Really, within a few weeks, my friend Mateo, who had just started working for me, we flew down to Jamaica.
[00:31:20]
We got set up with a buddy of mine. Well, a buddy of mine had just shot a film in Jamaica. And so he had a network of like handlers that he was really close with. So he set us up with a young guy named Juvie and Juvie drove us around the entire island for almost two weeks. And we just like, We ate in all these obscure places we were in like basements of grandma's homes we were in like roadside so we like really we went deep and what we learned about the fair was that we could replicate it very authentically we had this wood fire grill which was you know unique to a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn a lot of the the jerk was being cooked on on gas and so we thought you know we had an opportunity to really replicate this food in a very authentic way.
[00:32:09]
And yeah, we opened up after closing the first location, the old Gladys into Gladys Caribbean. And from the first day it was just, it was a hit. Definitely garnered, you know, a lot of attention from, from the neighborhood, from the media. Uh, I think that the West Indian African American community just wanted to, they wanted to come just to see if it was real.
[00:32:32]
You know, they heard that there was this white guy cooking Caribbean food. And I was like, actually. In the kitchen cooking, and I think from there it just became a neighborhood restaurant that was truly joining the existing community and the new community moving in, and it was a perfect marriage. It was, I think, the most meaningful experience that, uh, the most meaningful business and the most meaningful experience that I've ever created.
[00:32:55]
And I'm so glad that I was able to do that and do it for the amount of time that I did. Uh, it was
[00:33:01] Josh Sharkey:
And the food was really good. We would go there, we lived nearby and we would go, you know, this is when we lived, well we, even when we lived in Park Slope and then we moved to Prospect Heights, we would hop in there, you know, for drinks and dinner every once in a while.
[00:33:13]
But we would actually get, uh, delivery often. 'cause the jerk chicken travels really well. It travels really well. Yeah. And the fest and even the festivals, the, the corn fritters Yeah. Held up really well. Um, so we would get that all the time. It was delicious.
[00:33:28] Michael Jacober:
Yeah. It was per, it was a perfect restaurant.
[00:33:30] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Now everybody knows about Gladys. It was, yeah. And so we, yeah, we met when you were still with, uh, doing the grilled cheese truck, and then I think you had, um, you were just working on, on Gladys, and this is when I had, uh, Bark Hot Dogs. Yeah, I am pretty sure that you actually gave me, like, a black market food truck license, by the way, because, like, there was no way to get a food truck license.
[00:33:48]
There wasn't any available. Yeah, there was none to buy. Remember? Yeah. Um, there was a food truck or a food cart or a food cart or something like that. Yeah, and you're like here you just got I forget there was something I had to do to get it or something I don't remember what it was and I just didn't do it and I was just like filed it away Anyways, we obviously we stayed we stayed friends and I think we reconnected again Maybe when I was at Aurify or something.
[00:34:13]
I don't I think I don't remember but um, but anyways Here we are. You, you then went on to start the business you still have today, which is Blanket, which we talked about, and um, and now you have a new business. So, maybe if you don't mind, just a little, you know, download for everybody on what is Blanket, why'd you start it, who does it, you know, who does it serve, and then we can talk about your new business. Yeah, sure.
[00:34:37] Michael Jacober:
So, I had four different things that I was working on. I had two restaurants, uh, I was, uh, managing a couple different construction projects to open up another restaurant. I had purchased, I syndicated a deal to purchase a handful of buildings in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and I had this catering contract at the Brooklyn Children's Museum.
[00:35:00]
I had a bunch of things going on and I was having a really difficult time. I never, you know, worked for a multi unit group so I didn't even know what district manager was. Uh, you know, corporate overhead, man. So I was trying to do this on myself and, uh, I was having a really difficult time managing, you know, food safety and the brand standards that needed to happen over the course of a day, week, month.
[00:35:27]
And the small things are really slipping through the cracks. So I came up with this idea to take pictures of all these examples of work, like create visual examples of work. So like, you know. Here's where the light dimmers are supposed to be. Took a picture of, you know, the levels. Here's where the sound is supposed to be.
[00:35:45]
Here's how full the dish chemicals are supposed to be. And just took pictures of, uh, of, of everything. So no one could really question what, what needed to be done. And I put all those pictures on a Google, you know, Google photos folder. And each day I had each of my managers take pictures to prove that they had done the work.
[00:36:04]
Right. So it was, which, and then I would just sit in front of my computer and just, you know, audit pictures to make sure that things were done. It only took, um, I think one of my bartenders, like two weeks before he tried to like upload an old image, he didn't realize everything was timestamped. So that was a fun conversation.
[00:36:27]
Uh, but yeah, that really helped. Like it, it helped a lot. It created a lot of, you know, Uh, it kept me at ease, uh, making sure that, you know, the gas cocks on the fryer were shut off each night. And I was telling my buddy Josh Stileman, who at the time owned Breeze Brewery, he, I guess at some point was a, was a tech founder and investor.
[00:36:49]
And we were kind of sharing each other's war stories on what we're doing to try to keep our teams on, on task. And I told him about this and he was like, dude, that is. So cool. Like you should, you should think about this. You could talk to this guy. And, uh, I was like, you know, Josh, you're right. I should do that.
[00:37:06]
And so that was sort of like the beginning of maybe I could, you know, turn this into a business. And I met with like, I met with a handful of people and it just, it was the easiest Sort of validation I could get people everyone I would speak to just give me all positive feedback and so much validation You know, I somehow got in touch with sweet green and sweet green was really excited.
[00:37:28]
They were gonna pilot it Tom Click yo, it's like I want to be involved want to be a visor investor And so, you know the first like two months of me really just talking about this idea Was all the validation I needed to really actually start turning it into something You I was young, uh, not that young, but like definitely still young enough to know, uh, to not know what I didn't know.
[00:37:52]
It was a very competitive market that I just didn't really know existed. I, you know, didn't really have a technical co-founder. So we started building with a Vietnamese development team. I just, you know, it come, you, you, you made, I'm sure you made all the same mistakes. Uh, but, you know, I did
believe that this, it was, I was solving a real problem.
[00:38:14]
I knew I was solving my own problem. Question is how many other people were really. Feeling the same pain that I was feeling and so yeah, we, we built enough of a prototype to where I could go out and show people the product and, and talk about it. And I remember meeting with you. You were the one that really, you helped me tremendously.
[00:38:33]
You made an introduction to two of the five guys, uh, Uh, in Manhattan, their district managers and they were critical and help me continue to shape the product and eventually it became, you know, a very powerful ops execution platform basically take, you know, all of your S.O.P.S. All of your, uh, checklists, digitize them.
[00:38:51]
Um, we turn them into really easy to follow forms, put them on schedules, have really simple to follow reporting. Um, and so it basically is a tool that above store managers assign tasks and, and checklists to their team so they can sit back and, and start collecting data in the field and really understand what's happening, uh, at the unit level.
[00:39:11]
So yeah, I've been running that company now for about five years. It definitely, you know, it didn't become this like massive unicorn that, you know, I think I was hoping and inspiring to be, but it's certainly, you know, it's, it's It serves a purpose. It has got some great customers. Uh, it cash flows. Yeah.
[00:39:33]
It's been an incredible opportunity because what really the opportunity was, uh, was to be around and really be around great people and really level up my career. You know, thanks to you, it was introduced to Aurify brands and, or if I, uh, ended up making an investment in, in the company back in 2020.
[00:39:54]
And the most meaningful thing was just Being able to work out of the or if I office and being around incredibly talented people and seeing what high level of multi unit execution looks like and, and, and upping my finance game and, and, and even learning more about technology and operations, I think it's easy, very easy to, to, I wouldn't consider blanket a total failure, but it definitely did not fulfill my dreams.
[00:40:18]
But one thing that it certainly has done, it's been a gateway to expand my network and really, you know. Um, increase my, my overall earning potential and just be around great people. And so the amount that I've learned over the last five years is really the huge win that I've had, uh, within that company.
[00:40:39] Josh Sharkey:
This show is brought to you by, you guessed it, meez. meez helps thousands of restaurants and food service businesses all over the world build profitable menus and scale their business successfully. If you're looking to organize your recipe IP and train your team to put out consistent products every day.
[00:40:56]
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[00:41:15]
And there's a built in database of ingredient yields, prep yields, and unit of measure conversions. for every ingredient, which means you're going to get laser accurate food costs in a fraction of the time. Visit www.getmeez.com. That's G E T M E E Z. com to learn more and check out the show notes moving forward because we're going to be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant meez podcast listeners get a sweet deal on meez.
[00:41:47]
Yeah, man, it's, uh, I mean it is, it is a great product and it's been amazing seeing how you've grown not just the company but yourself Uh, in terms of the, you know, the industry along the way the last, these last four years. It's also incredible how much we don't know when we start a company like that, that, that, that I I see now, which is so interesting, that there's this inherent knowledge that everybody should know, that most people just don't, when you want to start a new, at least technology business, that maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it's every business I guess.
[00:42:24]
I mean look, you know, for both of our companies, and I think, you know, I love meez, I love it more and more every day. And I think I'm, I'm very grateful and blessed that it's, that it's, uh, growing and it's, you know, it's, um, it's becoming, you know, uh, uh, a pretty ubiquitous product. Um, some of that is luck and some of it is like, you know, just pure, pure grit, to your point.
[00:42:45]
And just, you just happen to get, you know, some things, some early things right. But, um, you know, I do think there's, there's these four, maybe like five or six things. that have nothing to do with the idea that you have, or how good it could be, or how good you could be at executing it, that if you don't Consider and work on before you launch, have a significant impact on the, on the downstream, like effect of your, of, of how your business will, will turn out.
[00:43:14]
It doesn't mean that it won't turn out well, but if you do these things as a much better, like likelihood, and, and, None of us know when we start. I don't know why. I mean, I guess once you've done it a couple times, you, you, you then know. Like, what is the one big problem that you're solving, because you can't solve ten of them?
[00:43:29]
How big is that market that you're solving it for? Uh, because it might not be a very big market, and then that's fine too, but then you gotta go, like how you, you know, raise capital changes, how you think about growing the business, and all that stuff changes. Like, what is like a tiny piece of that market that you could just start with, because if you don't know that, then you're gonna blow all your money on trying to serve the home market.
[00:43:49]
And like, the thing I think most people don't think about, I certainly didn't think about, is like, How am I going to acquire these customers? Because that's actually probably more important of a differentiator than your product itself. Because to your point, the blanket was not necessarily novel. You know, lots of other people had like, there's, there's other things out there.
[00:44:09]
But like, most people don't think about like, oh, what's something, what's like a novel way that I could think of to actually like, get distribution or acquire customers. And we never think about that beforehand. But that's like a really, that's a product in itself of how you actually acquire your customers.
[00:44:23]
Most of us don't do enough research on like, What else exists out there? So we have some sort of, you know, baseline. And of course, like, what makes this thing unique? In terms of your mode. Like, all of those things that I, that I just said are all things that most people including me, I don't even like, didn't think about any of that stuff. I'm just like, I love this idea.
[00:44:43] Michael Jacober:
I didn't think about a single one of those things.
[00:44:46] Josh Sharkey:
No. It's like, I love this idea. I want it. I know that I like me, but I know would like it. And if I build it, you know, those people will use it. I know I'll use it and it's a bad ass product. So I'm going to go do this thing, which that's needed, right? And hopefully, you know, a bunch,
[00:45:02] Michael Jacober:
Otherwise you'd never start. Right.
[00:45:04] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. And, and of course, like it's a huge added value. If you have a lot of debate experience, you know, a lot about that, you know, the customer you're serving. But like, All that other stuff we don't think about, and you need to, you really need to think about all those things before you start.
[00:45:21]
It's funny, I have a few like, third and fourth time founders that over the years have reached out to me, and they're just like grilling me with questions. You know, these are, I remember a couple in particular that had just sort of sold their last company, and they're working on a new project, and um, I gave them, you know, my time, they were sort of, you know, exchanging, you know, information, and they would ask all these questions, because they were looking to get something in the restaurant space.
[00:45:45]
These are really smart questions. You know, they're asking, they're asking so, you know, so many questions about the industry, but the competitive landscape. About, um, pricing, and just a lot of things that, that I could tell now, later on, oh yeah, that's, that's imperative, right? You know, not just the, the idea of, of the product that you think will work well, but all those other things.
[00:46:08]
Not to say, again, not to say that your product couldn't still be great and the company won't be great. But going from zero to one is one thing, and going from one to, you know, one to ten is a whole other, is a whole other thing, and it's a lot easier, I think, if you, if you do those things first. So, we need to do a whole episode of just talking through those, so people just index it to, to think about when they're starting their next idea.
[00:46:31] Michael Jacober:
I agree. I think what gave me, my entrepreneurial experience has been, if I have an idea to do something and I work really hard at it, It's worked. It's worked out. And, I just don't think that works. works forever. And it also doesn't work in every industry. You know, my first business was a lacrosse camp that I started with my friend Chris.
[00:46:56]
And you know, it was great. He was, he was the best lacrosse player in the country. I figured if we attach his name to a camp and we get some sort of mailing lists, we just send out flyers, people showed up and we made, we did great. You know, the first summer we, we, uh, we grossed a hundred grand, you know, running this camp when we were, when I was 20 years old.
[00:47:16]
Wow. This is going to be a, this is going to be a fun entrepreneurial path. You know, the first thing I do really works. And then you end up going into the culinary career, and You know, you learn so much about cooking, but no one, no one teaches you about the business behind a restaurant. None of it. And so you end up, you just follow your, these, the path of all these other chefs and, and by the time you have your own restaurant, like, holy shit, I'm running a business and I have no fucking clue what I'm doing.
[00:47:41]
I never wrote a proforma P&L prior to starting Gladys or the food truck, like, I didn't, I didn't. Do a labor matrix. I didn't do a labor model. No one showed me any of that shit. And, you know, you end up in this business that you, you think, you know, you have all this false sense of confidence because you're like, if I just make this great food, like all of my heroes, people are gonna write about it.
[00:48:02]
People are gonna show up. Sure enough, they fucking don't. And then you're stuck with something that, you know, You don't know what to do. So many, so many restaurants fail just because, just a pure lack of, sure, culinary knowledge, but lack of business knowledge.
[00:48:20] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, or they do show up, by the way.
[00:48:21] Michael Jacober:
Or they do show up, and you still, and you still can't, which is even more frustrating, I'm sure.
[00:48:24] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah. I know, man. It really is. It's tough, because as, as chefs, I mean, I spent, The majority of my career, just as a chef, I never thought at all about, you know, money. It was not even, like, I never thought about, like, how am I going to make more money? It was just like, how do I get better and better at cooking every day?
[00:48:41]
And that's it. I would go to bed and wake up and go to bed and wake up thinking about cooking. And my, it's funny because so much of my entrepreneurial approaches have been just, just make the best product, We opened a hot dog joint. This has to be the best hot dog in the world. You know, like, used the best ingredients, executed perfectly, consistently.
[00:49:03]
And that's how I started, you know, thinking about meez. All I thought was like, this has to be the best restaurant in the world. And I've had to sort of really retrain, like, yes, that's, obviously that's needed, you know, you have to have that, but that's just one part of it, and you have to tell a story, people need to know why, because, you know, a lot of times people, you know, um, they have to get there first, they have to get to the place of like, you know, appreciating it, and you have to be able to tell a story, I mean, of course there's like the unit economics, that's,
[00:49:37] Michael Jacober:
That part I actually think is, it's pretty easy in restaurants.
[00:49:39] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, well, in tech, it's much more difficult, but, you know, in restaurants, at least it's easy to understand the economics, it's not easy to maintain them, but, um, it's easy to know where they are, but like how to operate the right way. Also like lead and manage a team, you know, how to keep people motivated, all those things.
[00:50:00]
So much of that is actually what makes. Great businesses, whether it's a great restaurant, a great tech solution or a great company, that is far more important than just just having a great product. That's sort of great product.
[00:50:12] Michael Jacober:
Yeah, to piggyback off of what you just said that when we use the word the best, right? Like best is just perception. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, you know, I wanted to make the best, you know, sandwich shop in Crown Heights. The best to me had apparently horrible value perception to the people around us in the surrounding neighborhood. It was definitely not the best to them. Having the best product again, it's all about others perceptions and telling a great story can help shape that perception.
[00:50:45]
And that, as you say, is such a critical part of a go to market strategy and so much of a critical part of a successful business is how do you do that? How do you tell that story about why it's the best? And that's why, I don't know, in my career, I feel like I try to remove that, I try to remove that word.
[00:51:03]
Like, I'm not trying to make the best of anything. I'm trying to make something that has great value perception to a lot of people.
[00:51:12] Josh Sharkey:
Even when, when you're considering the best being the best of what you want it to be. Like, you know, I always think of like Rick Rubin, he'll say something like, picture a cabin.
[00:51:24]
Secluded from everybody, no one else is there except you, no one will ever see this cabin except you. Design this thing exactly the way that you would like, with the wood that you want, and the interior, and the doorknobs, and the colors, and the Make it exactly The way that you would want it to be. That's your art, right?
[00:51:41]
Art is exactly what you want it to be. It's the best for you. Even then, right? Because again, it's subjective. That's art, right? And that's beautiful. I love that. That's kind of more where I lean. It's not commerce, right? So even if you make what you believe to be the best sandwich, and you are the proudest of this thing, and you think it's the best, that you, that your representation of you, Right?
[00:52:04]
Or you think this technology is the best representation of what you think, you know, the industry should have or whatever, whatever the, you know, the product or service you have, like, even when you do that, even when you are just, you know, they have, you know, the integrity of the building thing that you believe is the best, not because somebody else is because of you.
[00:52:21]
That's, that's the art piece. The commerce piece is how do you tell the story such that folks understand the value of that, that the understanding can tie the value of that to the cost of that. And then how do you make sure that the human economics work for what you're charging for that? And then how do you scale that?
[00:52:39]
And all those things, that's the commerce. And the beautiful thing I think is when you can actually meld art and commerce. It's, for me, it's one of the most beautiful things in the world. Like, because art in itself is amazing, you know, it's, you know, when you hear like an amazing song or see a piece of artwork or eat some food or whatever the thing is, when you know it's just like the true, like, distillation of this person's, like, soul and what they've built, like, it's amazing.
[00:53:08]
But that thing can't exist for many people, uh, across many sort of, you know, geographies or what have you, unless you can, you know, have some sort of commerce involved most times. And so when you can figure out art commerce, it's just like the most incredible thing. Um, it's actually what drives me, uh, for most of what I do and what we do and meez as well. Like bridging that creativity and profitability, it is so hard, man.
[00:53:34] Michael Jacober:
I think the hardest part is removing yourself from the equation. Right? Yeah. And, and it's, as you said, it's, it's incredibly easy to make decisions for yourself that this feels good to me, feels right to me. But I totally agree. Uh, it, there's, there aren't a ton of people out there who are able to really marry those two things.
[00:53:54]
And the ones that do, You know, hats off to them. It's, it's incredibly, it's incredibly inspirational to see it happen.
[00:54:02] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I think that's actually, it's funny, I'm just thinking about this now, that's part of the, one of the biggest difference between the art of cooking, uh, within the confines of a, confines of a restaurant, and then the art of like, you know, music or painting or something, is that like, if you make that piece of music that is like, the essence of you and your soul and like, it's everything that you want it to be and it can be incredible and then it will just become a hit, right?
[00:54:28]
Or not, right? And it's sort of binary, right? It either is or isn't. People, there's a group of people that like it or don't like it. Yes, of course, there's like, you know, you can have marketing and distribution to make sure more people hear it. Right. But that's, that's basically it. Then you're just kind of done.
[00:54:43]
Now it's just, it's up to the, the whims of like, you know, who's ever going to market it and distribute it and things like that. It's not the same in a restaurant because, you know, you have to produce it every night. You have to figure out how to make sure it's the same every night. Yep. It would be like if they had to sing the same song every single day, the same way, and people expect it the same way. In the same medium.
[00:55:07] Michael Jacober:
Every time you hear it on the radio, it would have to be a live performance.
[00:55:11] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah. And that's a rush. Like singing a live piece of music that you created the same exact way every single time with the same. You know, uh, bass and treble and the same, you know, reverb and say all those things exactly the same every time someone's like, Hey, wait a second.
[00:55:30]
Last time there was more bass and now there isn't, you know, and because it's, you know, like that's okay in music if they hear it one time and it's like, oh, there's a, there's a remix or something like that, not in a restaurant. It's like, hey, wait a second, you know, this was like pretty acidic last time.
[00:55:43]
That balance was great. And now it's like, there's no acid. What happened? You know, you can't do that.
[00:55:48] Michael Jacober:
Yeah.
[00:55:49] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. All right. Anyway, that was sort of a rant, but, um, well, you know what, you know what I want to talk about actually? Yeah. Because you, you were mentioning, you know, you have these investment properties, and you know, as I've gotten to know you, you have a lot of things that you do.
[00:56:03]
I don't know how you do all of them. I mean, you, you're running a lot of companies, starting more companies. We gotta talk about the new company that you're starting now, where you started. Before we get into that company, like, how do you block off And compartmentalize the time that you spend on all the different projects that you're working on.
I really, I don't know how you do it, man.
[00:56:23] Michael Jacober:
Yeah, I think the most challenging thing is, uh, context. Constant context switching. And that's an exhausting part about, I think, being an entrepreneur that is doing a lot of different things. I think what makes it easier for me is that everything I do has to do with food.
[00:56:43]
There's all different types of business, businesses that I'm involved in, but each one is touching the food business in some way, shape or form. I joke with, with people that, you know, if it's hit a restaurant, I've probably, I've been in that business, uh, probably failed at it at some point, and maybe you've had some successes.
[00:57:02]
Yeah, I think that's one thing that sort of helps the context stay relatively managed, uh, is that it all, it all does have to do, to do, to do with food. So, you know, anything revolving real estate, It's either triple net leases or it's mixed use properties that somehow have some sort of food and beverage establishment associated to it.
[00:57:23]
If it's, you know, I just finished up, you know, uh, some contract work I did for a frozen food CPG business where I was able to kind of come in, right size it. Hire a new CEO, uh, you know, all in all it took about a year, but that was a really complicated operation that needed a lot of, a lot of work, and, you know, I, I, not too dissimilar from anyone else, I use timeboxing, um, and during those, you know, when I'm in those, those incremental states of, uh, of being within a specific timebox, you just block everything else out.
It can be
[00:57:57] Josh Sharkey:
So, meaning like, like every day there's X amount of time allocated to that business, or A couple times a or, or, or that project.
[00:58:02] Michael Jacober:
Correct. Yeah. Yeah. It can be. I have partners on deals that I, you know, I apologize to you . I, I am sure it can be somewhat infuriating where, you know, I'm not responding to certain things for it's hours, not days.
[00:58:16]
But yeah, I would say that's the biggest challenge is really trying to be disciplined enough to where, when someone, you know, everything's urgent. Right. But when someone is coming at me with an urgent issue, just sort of. Make sure that I'm not switching context again, because that's really the most challenging thing is once you're out of a specific context, getting into another one, um, there's a lot of brain damage in doing so.
[00:58:41]
Yeah, I'd say that's when, when there's six different projects going on, um, with six different companies, that's, uh, and each of them needs an equal amount of your time. That's when you really can get burned out. Um, and so what, what just happened?
[00:58:56] Josh Sharkey:
So when you, when you have like multiple projects at once, which you can always have. Yeah. So like, let's just say you're in time box for project day. Yeah. And that project, I'm just going to make some assumptions here from. 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. you're on project day and that's it. How do you block out the rest of the other projects? You just, you know, self police to say, I'm not going to respond to any emails from other projects.
[00:59:20] Josh Sharkey:
I'm not going to, you know, step aside. I'm not going to take calls. And you just make sure you're self policing yourself to, to block out all the other.
[00:59:27] Michael Jacober:
It's generally shorter increments of time. I always leave myself Like 15 to 20 minutes outside of a specific time block or carryover. Cause if I am in a flow state for a specific project that I'm working on, I don't want to break that flow because I do know it's going to take me, you know, another 15 to 20 minutes to get into flow on another project.
[00:59:48]
Um, so I will leave. Bleed room in between each slot, so shorter increments, uh, you know, yeah, the shortest would be 30 minutes. The longest would be 90 minutes. Yeah, I will very rarely go for like a four or five hour block on a specific thing.
[01:00:06] Josh Sharkey:
So in a given day, will you have like 30 minutes on project day break, 90 minutes on project B break, you know, 45 minutes on project C. Is that kind of how your calendar looks? I want to see your calendar.
[01:00:23] Michael Jacober:
It's a proprietary calendar. I look at my, my, my tasks for the day. I prioritize them based on, uh, how urgent they are.
[01:00:34] Josh Sharkey:
Where do you keep your tasks at?
[01:00:35] Michael Jacober:
Uh, I use, I like Asana. Um, yeah. Yeah, that's what I use for my, I, we use, I was using ClickUp for, uh, One company that I was helping out, I didn't make that decision, it was a project that, the product that I already had, I used Jira, the Atlassian suite of tools for a blanket, and then anything personal, or if there isn't a project management tool for a new business that I'm working on, I really try to push Asana, it's just super simple.
[01:01:01] Josh Sharkey:
You know when I moved to, about three months ago, because I used Asana forever as well, I was on Asana for like six years, I'm obsessed with Coda. Coda. I don't, I mean, I haven't heard of Coda. Oh my god. It's kind of like Notion. Yeah. But it also is like a sign up, but it's also like, uh, Google Docs and, and it's also, it's all very like, uh, code and formula based.
[01:01:24]
And you can basically do anything you want. And so I tie in calendars, I tie in all kinds of data from outside, uh, places. And I have my entire, like, professional and personal things on there, so I'm tracking my, like, I mean, right now I've been this major, like, protein, muscle building stage, like, every day I'm tracking protein intake and exercises, but I'm also tracking, like, I have this, a master button that is called Brain Dump, because I've always wanted, whenever I'm doing anything, I'll have an idea, or, uh, I'll have a, a, a, a reminder, I have to remember to do something, or, or, I have, like, Uh, marketing, you know, thought, or a product thought, or somebody I want to, um, send a note to, and anything.
[01:02:06]
And there are all these different buckets of things. Yeah. And, I basically just press this brain dump button, it's on my, it's on my home screen on my phone, and I can just say whatever I, whatever I'm thinking, and then I choose what it is, and then it goes to that respective place. And they get prioritized, they get reminders about them.
[01:02:25]
And like I have one place for where everything goes. If it's a task, if it's a project, if it's part of an MIT, if it's part of my, you know, just a thought that I have about something. And there's all these automations and rules you can create as well. It's been a game changer, man. Um, it does require like, You know, understanding formulas and then, and then some code if you want to get deeper, but um, killer.
[01:02:47] Michael Jacober:
I'll check it out. And when you're, when you're having a brain dump, are you using, is that an audio brain dump or are you typing?
[01:02:54] Josh Sharkey:
Depends. Sometimes it's audio, sometimes it's, sometimes I'm typing. You know, for me, I want to make sure that I can account for any situation that I'm in. Cause I'm always, you know, You'd probably say, well, my brain is always on, you know, so I'm always thinking about things and I'll write something in Apple notes, I'll write it down in a post it, I'll write it down, you know, I used to write it down in Asana or I'd write it down in Google Doc or I'm in a meeting and I put it here.
[01:03:20]
Now, like, everything, all my direct reports, they're our meetings are in Coda. If I put an action item down, it goes to my board. It goes to my, if I put a thought down, if I, if I put it, I thought it anywhere and it's related to CS, it will go there as well. And it also helps my, my assistant to sort of like organize my life as well.
[01:03:38]
So if I have a book idea, I put it in there and then I, when someone asked me like for recommendations of books, I can just go to my list of all the books I've, uh, I either have read or want to read. There's AI that summarizes each one and has the author, and then I just sort of read a filter and I send them a list of, like, here's the, here's a list of books on, you know, whatever, on starting a business or on, you know, uh, category creation or something.
[01:04:02]
So I, I love it, man. I got, I got obsessed, like, you know, a few months ago. Now I'm, like, geeking out on it, but. That said, I, you know, even with all of that, it's still, for me, like, I can't do multiple, it's hard for me to do, like, you know, multiple projects at once. I, I just, um, I mean, I know you say you time block, but I guess maybe it's just part of, like, who you are that you're able to You know, confine your time compartmentalize that way because it just seems like it just seems very difficult to be able to do that in reality and practice. I understand the idea of blocking, but you have to be pretty diligent about saying, Okay, now I'm not doing that anymore.
[01:04:42] Michael Jacober:
You do. You have to be disciplined. You have to be willing to put something down without being finished and having trust within yourself that, you know, you are going to get back to that thing and actually get it across the finish line.
[01:04:53]
It also just kind of helps my brain function. I've, I've gone through periods in the past where I am focused on one thing and one thing alone. And I've just found that's not my highest performing. Those are not been my highest performing moments. And so constantly having some sort of balance between something that's exercising one part of my brain with another, you know, with another product that's going to start to push, you know, another part of my brain, uh, seems to be synergistic. You know, they, they both sort of help each other.
[01:05:22] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
[01:05:23] Michael Jacober:
Yeah,
[01:05:23] Josh Sharkey:
That makes a ton of sense.
[01:05:25] Michael Jacober:
At least that's what I think. Who knows?
[01:05:28] Josh Sharkey:
I mean, you could also just be running away from your, you know, from your emotions. That's what everybody tells me, so.
[01:05:37]
Which is, you know. All right. I want to make sure that you talk about your new business because, uh, you and your buddy Andy. Uh, launched it and you announced it, so I want to make sure you announce it here and then we're going to do this again. I would love to. We'll keep doing this, um, because we've already gone over a bunch.
[01:05:52]
I'm sure you get back, you have to get back to work. But let's talk about what the new business is.
[01:05:57] Michael Jacober:
Yeah, absolutely. So, the new business is called Jacob's Franchise Partners. My partner Andy Jacoby, uh, and I met, I don't know, three or four years ago at a restaurant finance development conference. Um, we hit it off, mostly because, Our last names are so similar to one another, uh, that that we figured at some point we had to go into business.
[01:06:17]
So, uh, no, but in all seriousness, we met at RFDC. We somehow rekindled a friendship when I was looking at a deal in Chicago. Before I go more to that, I'll kind of talk about. The why behind the company, you know, being around blanket and for the past five years and working out of the or if I office has definitely opened my eyes to all different types of restaurant operations.
[01:06:43]
So many of the clients that we service with blanket are multi unit, multi unit concepts. Ones that seem to be the most successful are the simplest ones and the ones that have the largest amount of operational oversight, which happens to be these tier one franchises. Getting deeper into my career, now I'm in my 40s, I don't have the same risk of failure.
[01:07:09]
profile that I did when I was in my twenties and thirties and, uh, seeing how efficient these businesses are, how well run they are, and that there is like a true playbook of success with these tier one brands. We define tier one brands by, you know, a specific national ad fund size, certain amount of stores in the ground, certain average unit price.
[01:07:32]
Volume in sales and development economics, really strong development economics, meaning if it costs you X amount of dollars to to build a new location, you're, you know, as far as the the franchise is called your documents, say, on average, you should be making this much. We like to be at around, uh, a 33 percent yield cost on development, which basically means three year payback.
[01:07:54]
So with the, when those, you know, there's really not too many of them. We've identified, you know, five or six brands that we, we are actively hunting. I sort of made the decision about a little over a year ago that I wanted to start hunting within the franchise space, mostly because, you know, look, I was pretty banged up, you know, Blanket didn't really turn out to be this, you know, massive business that I was kind of hoping it to be.
[01:08:17]
And I'm, I'm around a lot of people within this franchise sector that have done incredibly well, uh, and I can just wrap my head around why they're doing incredibly well. There's a playbook, you know, you have so much support from the franchisor in terms of marketing, in terms of, uh, advertising, in terms of real estate selection.
[01:08:34]
In terms of operations, it's really just up to you as the operator of these franchises to inspire your teams, inspire people, and to execute on a day to day basis. And I just have a lot of confidence in myself that there's a lot of things that I'm not good at. I think I'm, you know, not the most talented marketer.
[01:08:51]
I think I, uh, have really not done an incredible job and in many areas of, uh, of starting businesses. One thing that I do have a ton of confidence in is my ability to execute a plan. Be able to execute an operation when there's a road map for success. And it's really just about effort. I'd like to bet on myself that I can be, I can be successful.
[01:09:14]
And so within this restaurant franchise space, it's, you know, it's a, it's a sector that I know incredibly well. It's an operation that I've That I can really understand and wrap my head around. I can look at a restaurant PNL and know pretty quickly where there's opportunities. And so there was, when I was thinking about the next thing, this was like, obviously at the top of the list, I was looking at a deal in Chicago and he happened to just recently moved to Chicago.
[01:09:40]
Um, we started working on this deal together and before we knew it, we kind of recognized that we have a very, We have very complimentary skill sets. You know, those two deals in Chicago didn't, you know, they unfortunately didn't work out. But what did work out was the creation of a new partnership. And so, yeah, we've been hunting now for deals within this category.
[01:09:59]
We just became a franchisee of, of Jersey Mike's, which we're incredibly excited about. And there's, uh, two brand, two other brands that we're hoping to have some deals done within the next, I would say four to six months. Yeah, uh, definitely exciting time, you know, looking forward to, uh, what hopefully is a fruitful 2025.
[01:10:18] Josh Sharkey:
That's awesome, man. I'm, I love that you two started that. I wish that I had a last name as similar to, you could, to, to yours. You could join. You could join. To be able to join because I'm, I'm jealous. But when we meet again, we're going to talk more about, about this business. I did want to say, by the way, like you said, you know, Blanket is not exactly what you, You know, had planned, but it's still an incredible tool and it's being used by a lot of folks and it's still and will continue to be.
[01:10:43]
So it may not be growing the way that, you know, other maybe venture, you know, um, businesses that grow, but it's, it will keep growing because I think it is a really incredible tool. Oh, I appreciate that. And, and kudos to that. But yeah, next round we will talk more about, uh, this business and maybe we can bring on Andy as well.
[01:11:00]
I haven't seen him in a long time. Awesome. All right, man. Well. This is great. I, by the way, I cancelled, I cancelled our, we actually had our bi weekly today, it's Thursday, and I cancelled it. I hope that's okay, because I assumed this counted, so. This, this counts, I think. Okay, good. Um, alright, well, until two weeks from now.
[01:11:19]
Alright, man. I'll see you, man. Thanks for tuning into the Mee's Podcast. The music from this show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z. com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros, and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
[01:11:44]
Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.