Do Cool Sh*t (11 page)

After a couple of days of searching, one of my friends called me back and said that he’d let me use the boardroom at MTV Studios. Thank goodness! I was starting to wonder if I’d have to organize a picnic in Central Park instead. (And while it would have been a free and cool alternative spot, I’d be at the mercy of the weather.)

I put together a personal e-card, the front of which said:

You have been handpicked as one of eighteen people to attend the private “Meeting of the Minds” gathering that will be held at the exclusive MTV Studios. Dinner, drinks, and creative conversation will be included.

Inside the card, I wrote:

Tonight’s discussion topic is one that will engage every one of your senses and may disrupt an entire industry after this night is over.

I am talking about transforming the classic pizza place into a healthy, local, and sustainable eatery, and I am looking to answer some questions that will help give birth to this new idea. You are critical in making this possible.

Please come to this meeting with answers to these questions:

•    What is the most memorable restaurant experience you’ve ever had and why?

•    If you were to come up with a new way to present a well-known product like pizza, what would it look like?

We all share great memories eating a slice of pizza, and I want you to enter this meeting remembering the feelings associated with sharing a pizza pie with your friends and loved ones.

I look forward to receiving your RSVPs by tomorrow end of day. We are looking at Wednesday, June 15, at 7:00 p.m. or Thursday, June 16, at 7:00 p.m. Please include your preferred date.

In (healthy) pizza we trust,

Miki

I hit
SEND
. I repeated this twenty more times by sending personal e-mails to my twenty “top tier” people I wanted to come. I figured that I’d send it to the people I really wanted to come first and then fill in the gaps later.

I sat in front of the computer, reread my message a hundred times (you know you do it too after you create an important message!), and waited. Nothing happened in the first hour. I refreshed my in-box so many times, it was a bit silly (and, yes, slightly obsessive compulsive). I wanted to make sure that the server wasn’t holding messages hostage! Still nothing. So I ordered cheeseless pizza. Obviously.

After the second hour, my mail beeped. I finally had my first message from one of the people I really wanted to come.

“I’d be delighted to! Thank you for thinking of me! I pick Wednesday over Thursday.”

Yes!!!! One down! Then all of a sudden, messages started flooding into my in-box.

“Sounds like fun. I pick Wednesday.”

“I love pizza. Count me in. I prefer Thursday over Wednesday.”

And it went on. By midday the following day, sixteen out of the twenty said yes! I was thrilled.

Do Cool Shit Takeaway

Always remember to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and figure out what would make
you
say yes to something before you approach someone else. Frame the conversation in such a way to see benefit for
them
for attending something for
you
.

For example do not say: “I am excited to invite you to a Meeting of the Minds event with eighteen of the most interesting people in New York City . . . blah blah.”

“I’m excited” still means “me” being excited . . . it must be about
them
. Remember, the invite said:

“
You
have been handpicked as one of eighteen people [make it about them] to attend the private Meeting of the Minds gathering [private is always good] that will be held at the exclusive MTV Studios [exclusive is also good]. Dinner, drinks, and creative conversation will be included [free food is so important].”

If you make it about them and not you, you will have much more success at getting the attendance you want.

After countless hours of planning and preparing, the day finally came. I didn’t expect everyone to show up, but I smiled with gratitude as one by one, my guests strolled in.

I brought in healthy salads, some seasonal appetizers, flatbreads from a high-end pizzeria down the street (for inspiration), and blood orange sorbet with fresh berries and whipped cream for dessert, and I’d placed a big white writing pad up on an easel so that once the ideas started flowing, I could get them down quickly and have something to refer to later.

As everyone milled around before sitting down, they began to introduce themselves to one another. It was great watching them laugh and then pull out their cell phones to exchange their contact info. This was starting out great.

But then, I had a crisis of confidence. I got inside my head and felt myself start to stumble. I had been so excited to get to this moment of gathering industry experts in one room and now that everyone was here, I felt queasy. What if I had trouble leading a productive session? This was my one shot to get important input from these people. Or worse, what if the brainstorming consensus was that my idea sucked?

I took a few minutes for myself to look at my notes, gather my thoughts, and take a few deep breaths to calm down. My cheeks flushed and my heart raced. It was time to start the meeting.

I asked everyone to please take a seat. I thanked them for coming and briefly introduced the concept. My voice shook a bit. Thankfully, I had my cheat sheet, which consisted of my list of questions to ask and my talking points. “This is really important,” I thought. “Just keep going.”

So I did.

First I had everyone go around the room, introduce themselves, and say one line about why they love pizza. That really helped break the ice for everyone, but especially for me, since talking about my love for pizza and food in general was so easy to do!

Once we got in our groove, we went around the room and talked about the questions I had everyone answer from the invitation, and as we went, people threw out ideas. Creative juices naturally began to flow, with eighteen sharp and unique minds connecting and adding additional viewpoints on top of one another’s thoughts. We could have broken the group up into even smaller groups (like we used to do in college), but I liked the fact that everyone in the room could hear what everyone else was saying and could spark more thoughts and ideas faster.

Over the course of five hours (everyone got so into it that they stayed for five hours!), the energy in the room built and built. It was beautiful to watch.

We hashed out a lot of the main ideas:

The name

SLICE: The perfect food
—The best idea to name the restaurant
SLICE
was chosen because we wanted to make our place reminiscent of the classic New York pizza slice. The tagline “the perfect food” highlighted for our consumers what was different about our place. The thought behind the tagline was that if prepared with local and healthful ingredients, a slice of pizza is, in fact,
the perfect food
. It’s tasty and healthy, the perfect balance of carbs, veggies, and protein. (Again, I should remind you that we have since changed the name to
WILD
, after seven years of enjoying the name
SLICE.
We are expanding to Vegas and beyond, and since there were pizza places called “Slice” all over the country, we wanted something more distinctive. Not to mention, we couldn’t outright own the name Slice. Now we’re truly branded.)

The logo concept and the unique way of cutting our slices

In the brainstorm, the best idea came from a simple drawing of a triangle divided into four smaller triangles. The thought here was that we wanted to maintain the integrity of the shape of the classic slice of pizza but, again, offer a unique twist to it. The new and improved way of presenting a slice would be the “diamond cut” of four smaller triangular slices so that it could (a) promote sharing of different flavors among friends and (b) slow down the process of inhaling a slice of pizza, which is what usually happens. By cutting up the pizza into four bite-size pieces, it would allow the brain to catch up to a full stomach and thus not overeat. Also, this triangle design would be a unique logo mark that would be memorable and catchy. (Again, the logo has also since been updated to fit the elevated
WILD
brand.)

The way we were going to design our pizza boxes

One of the ideas that came from this was that the standard pizza box was big, cumbersome, and frustrating to deal with once the pie was done. Also, if there were leftovers, it would be frustrating to try and store the pizza box in the fridge, let alone inside of a recycling garbage can. So we made the box a longer rectangular shape, slimmer to the eye (denoting a “healthier” experience versus a “fatter” pizza box), easy to store in the fridge, and easy to drop in the recycling bin.

The interior design look and feel

The best idea was to go with the brand identity of sustainable and all-natural, reclaimed materials, bamboo wall and flooring (as bamboo is an eco-friendly sustainable material), and to use existing structural walls (like brick walls) to our advantage as design elements.

When you have a roomful of different experts from different industries, everyone has a different way of approaching this business, so all of the different approaches were investigated and fresh ideas came from them. I felt like everyone in the room learned about how other people in other industries deconstructed the same concept and picked up different parts.

Once this meeting was over, I felt like my idea finally had legs. It felt like a real business for the first time.

Do Cool Shit Takeaway

At the brainstorming session, you must have as many questions on your list answered and get as detailed as you can within each section while you have the group of experts in the room together. The more you can keep people on track to answer your questions in as much detail as possible, the more you will get out of it. You may have to be kind of a (polite) hard-ass to keep everyone focused, but this is your one shot to pump the experts for knowledge, and you have to make the most of it.

STEP 3:
Shadow someone who is successfully doing what I want to be doing (or something similar) to make sure I know what I’m getting myself into.

Sometimes, you’ll have to rely on distant or tenuous connections in order to get things done. Case in point: my sister’s boyfriend’s sister was really good friends with the wife of one of the most successful restaurateurs in New York City: Rich Wolf. (Did you follow that? Yeah, me neither.) He owned the hugely popular restaurant Tao in Midtown. If there was one person I wanted to follow, it was
him
. He ran the restaurant scene in New York and was known to be one of the best.

One evening when I knew Rich was going to be at his restaurant (sister’s boyfriend’s sister told me), I decided to go and pay him a visit and see if I could convince him to let me follow him around for a month or so and observe and help him operate his business.

As I got to Tao, and walked past the iconic giant Buddha statue in the middle of the dining room, I said a little prayer to him to give me the strength to approach Rich with confidence.

I scanned the room and spotted the booth where Rich was sitting. I had googled him earlier in the evening, so I knew what he looked like. He was with his wife and four guests. He didn’t know who I was, and I hadn’t called ahead to schedule this meeting. I was going to have to create the opportunity myself. I watched them for a while and waited for the most opportune moment to go over. I knew that there was generally a lull immediately after the waiter takes a table’s order. That was my moment.

I took a deep breath and walked up to their table. I introduced myself first to Rich’s wife, since she was the person with whom I had my Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon–style connection. I said, “Hi! I know your friend Lisa! She told me how amazing you are and I just really wanted to meet you!” She was gracious and seemed excited to meet me as well. Basically, she couldn’t deny me even if she wanted to. I let peer pressure work in my favor.

After a few words were exchanged, she introduced me to her husband. I told him how much I loved Tao and how proud I was of him. (I often find myself saying things like “I’m proud of you.” It implies familial bond, like a proud parent or proud child.)

I told him that I had heard about the new small-plates restaurant that he was opening called Stanton Social in the Lower East Side and that I knew he was probably incredibly busy dealing with all of his current restaurants
and
with opening the new place. I briefly explained to him about my own business plan and asked if I could help him out for a little while for free and in return, I’d get to see what the day-to-day was like in the restaurant business. It would be win-win and definitely MB.

I think he probably felt a bit on-the-spot with his wife and friends right there watching, but regardless, he agreed! Yes! I was so excited! I got his phone number and business card, thanked his wife again, and walked out of there as fast as I could, before he could change his mind.

Knowing the importance of acting fast and seizing the opportunity when it arises, the very next day I called him and he said I should meet him the following day at his new restaurant location. The next day, he still remembered me (thank G), so I spent the next month following him around when he had meetings he thought were valuable for me to see (team management meetings, architect meetings, chef tastings, design meetings, construction meetings). He was very generous with his time and was patient with me. I will forever be grateful to him.