Episode 202: Helping the community by adding value and emptying other things but filling up the important parts with Michael Bascetta of Worksmith
No one's good at everything in a business. In today's Episode, Fiona chats with Michael Bascetta, the Co-CEO and Co-founder of Worksmith. They talk about Michael's journey, his businesses and how he manages to juggle work and being a father of 2 wonderful kids. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
How Michael's businesses started
On Michael's journey as a business owner
How Michael stays organized
On being a parent
On branding
Resources and books that helped Michael
On communication
How to connect with Michael
Michael's advice to business owners
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Julia Ostro – past episode
IG:@MichaelPepi
In terms of organization, the most important thing is understanding where you can add value and where you cannot. I see this a lot with owners and managers to a point as well, where they want to touch everything in the business. No one's good at everything in a business. For me, at the start of opening, maybe my first venue when we only had one, I definitely have the time to be across a lot more. As we grew out of the businesses and now with Worksmith, I've understood that the quickest way to get stressed is to try and have input in everything that happens in the business.
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Welcome to episode 202 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. You are reading an interview with an incredible small business owner, someone I was lucky to have on the podcast. I was taking so many notes, honestly, in this interview and I told him that afterward. There were so many tips, ideas, and ways of thinking that are inspiring. As a fellow small business owner with a very different business to my guest, he has multiple businesses, I found it refreshing to talk to him about his business. He was very open, honest, humble, and genuine. It's my absolute pleasure to have him on the podcast.
Before I get stuck into that great interview, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on a beautiful land on which I do this podcast, meet my guests, I work, I play, I raise my kids. It is the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. They are the traditional owners. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
My guest is Michael Bascetta. He also comes from Melbourne and Wurundjeri land. I met Michael because we were both invited into a focus group for a payment platform. We were on Zoom. It was in the evening. There were four of us as business owners. One of the other business owners laughingly said, “Isn't this therapy that we're all doing tonight?” We talked about why we're in business and how business has changed over time.
I didn't know anything about Michael when he turned up on the call. All I knew is that he was in the restaurant hospitality world. He was absolutely delightful and such a nice guy. The businesses that he's running are in a very stressful, high-pressure environment and yet, he was so willing to chat. He was so willing to be open and vulnerable about his own journey.
We were talking about the business during the pandemic in this focus group that we were invited to do. He was such a nice guy. Afterward, the four of us all said, “We'll stay in touch.” He and I connected again on Instagram and I said, “I'd love to have you on the podcast. You shared so much in that conversation. It would be helpful for my audience.” He was like, “Yes, of course, I'd love to come on,” so he did.
I didn't realize that when we were doing this, he was smack bang in the middle of a huge launch. Even the fact that he said, “I'm going to do it on this date,” and stuck to that regardless of what else was going on, I was like, “This guy is super nice, super legit, and super professional.” He is a wealth of information.
Who am I talking about? I'm talking about Michael Bascetta. He is the Co-CEO and Co-founder of Worksmith, which he gets into in this podcast what exactly is Worksmith. Just that alone would be enough but as a result of Worksmith, he is also looking after Home Grown, Melbourne Cocktail Festival, and Stella Coffee, which are separate brands.
In addition to that, he is Co-owner of Bar Liberty, which is an incredible place, Capitano in Carlton, which is a beautiful restaurant, and Falco Bakery, which if you've not been, you have to go and try their bagels and all their baked goods. It’s so good. If you're not from Melbourne, definitely put these places on destination-to-come to when you come and visit Melbourne because they're absolutely amazing.
Michael runs a lot of stuff. In addition to that, he's also a dad. I asked him about that. He's been interviewed many times, given the kind of restaurants and businesses that he's had for a long time. He said, “People haven't asked me that.” What is interesting is that I don't think there's a woman out there reading this who is a mom and a business owner who does not get asked about the juggle. I thought, “I'm going to ask him. He has two young kids. ‘How does it all work?’”
He has a partner who's also very busy in her own right and doing incredible things. I had to ask him that. In addition to that, we talked about everything from, “How do you not micromanage staff?” He's so young as well. “How did you start this? Did you have heaps of investment? Did you have lots of capital? How have you gone about helping your community?”
As he talks it through, Worksmith is such an incredibly community-driven creation. It is helping other people that potentially others could see as their competitors. He's helping people in hospitality grow their businesses as well. It's that mentality of the quote, “A rising tide raises all boats.” I feel like Michael's essence in him is, “If I grow, you grow. If I can help you not make the same mistakes that I've had or if I can help you have the opportunities that I've been able to have, then I'm all for it.”
It even comes across in the fact that he said yes to his podcast, he said yes to this focus group that we were both in. He's very honest. He's very real. That's just who he is. That comes across in his many businesses. We talk about stuff. We talk about, “How do you get out of your own way?” So many other great things. Thank you so much, Michael, for coming on to the podcast. I know that we're going to get so many DMs and emails about this particular one because there are so many insights and good advice. Here it is, my interview with the incredible Michael Bascetta.
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Michael, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much for having me.
You're so welcome. How are you feeling today? Can you let us know where you are meeting us from?
I'm in Worksmith, in Smith Street in Collingwood. It's our co-working space. I’m feeling good. It was day 1 of the 7-day festival that we organized called the Melbourne Cocktail Festival. I always say, getting to this day is the work is done, although there are twenty-plus events ahead of us over the next seven days. There's a fair bit of going out and connecting with all the venues we work with. It's great to get to day one.
Congratulations. Thank you for doing this in the middle of such a busy week. Do you have a favorite cocktail?
That's hard. We have a cocktail company as well so if I didn't say one of those, that wouldn’t be good either. I do like spritzes as a default because I like to lower ABV drinks and a lot of our cocktails in the cocktail company Home Grown of that alc. They're mostly all under sub-10% alcohol. It’s pretty fresh and easygoing. In the same line, my favorite drink is probably beer Garibaldi. I'd say orange juice and Campari, but delicious. It’s the best possible breakfast juice you could imagine. That would probably be my favorite.
Have you heard of a brand called Leone?
No.
One of my clients runs a lovely little bar and they have a beautiful farm. It's like Campari. What's the other one that a lot of people drink that’s Italian?
Aperol.
It's those two mixed. I don't drink alcohol. I'm not your customer sometimes, Michael, but it sounds amazing.
We've got a non-alc cocktail coming out so we're pretty excited about that. That's down your alley.
I'm seeing so much more of that happening at the moment. Speaking of Home Grown, you do so many things. I’m looking forward to hearing how you do all of those things. You have all these businesses, Falco, Bar Liberty, Capitano, Worksmith. There are so many. Can you talk us through briefly how they each started? Did you start one and build on it? How have they all come about?
We started one. My business life is going to split into two. I've got Madewell Group, which is the hospitality venue, Bar Liberty, Capitano, and Falco Bakery. Worksmith on the other is now Worksmith Group, which includes Home Grown Drinks, Melbourne Cocktail Festival, and Stella Coffee under that umbrella. Madewell Group was the first to be formed.
Several years ago, we opened Bar Liberty. The genesis for that was, that I was working at Attica at the time for a number of years in management and the timing was right for me to leave. It wasn't planned at all. My manager at the time, Banjo, was leaving at the same time and our other business partners had found this site around the corner from their current business in Collingwood.
We knew that we wanted to do something wine-focused. That was a lot of fun getting away from the fine dining venues that we'd worked in the past and opening something that was less stuffy and more accessible to people. That's how Bar Liberty was born. Off the back of that, a lot of people think Bar Liberty is a small venue because of the front room. They say it's probably twenty or something people, but it's a bit of a rabbit warren and it's around 100 seat total.
We've been able to build off the back of that business into our second restaurant, which was Capitano in Carlton, and then furthermore to that was bringing together Falco Bakery. We opened Falco Bakery months before COVID hit, so the timing was pretty spot-on, to be honest. Being a bakery during lockdown was a good thing. Whilst other businesses were difficult, we're able to pump a lot of energy into Falco and float us through those periods.
It was during that time when Capitano opened or before we opened Worksmith. That's separate from my business partners in the Madewell Group. It’s with an old school friend called Roscoe. Worksmith initially started as a co-working space for food, beverage, and hospitality industries. To be honest, it was meant to be a little side project for me. I was going to focus on the venues. It was going to be a cool space that we could do monthly industry events in, and that was it.
What we started to see was this incredible community site to be built around our space and we're using it as a great touchpoint for the industry. Our events are well-attended, and then people started approaching us to do lots of different things from advisory in new developments or hospitality venues to new product development. We've got a Drinks Lab at a commercial kitchen as well, so a lot of that R&D opportunities came to us as well.
Things developed further and we decided to start Melbourne Cocktail Festivals. We saw a real need to boost the industry in Melbourne. We felt that whilst we had some great cocktail bars, there wasn't anything that was celebrating these in a collective manner. We're in our third year now in 2022, going into our third festival, and we’re excited about having over 40 venues involved in over twenty events throughout the week.
I love how you roll this off as if it's no big thing. “We opened this bar and then we opened this, and then we had this and now we have a Drinks Lab.” Drinks Lab, is that almost like chemists in there mixing?
We've got some pretty crazy equipment in there. The idea of Drinks Lab and the commercial kitchen to an extent as well is democratizing the access to that equipment for bartenders or chefs. A lot of the cost of the equipment is high in both the kitchen and the Drinks Lab. A lot of people want to have access to these things but can't afford the upfront cost initially. That's why we built them.
In the Drinks Lab, we've got a rotary evaporator system that does cold distillation. There are only 5 or 6 of them in Australia. It’s pretty ridiculous. Bartenders love flying with pieces of equipment and extracting incredible flavors. You're able to use those in your drinks. Everything from that complex piece of equipment down to a Thermomix, all these things in one spot for an industry to use. We have people that use it for beverage product development.
Off the back of having access to that and amazing people in our community, Home Grown was born in 2021 during the lockdown, as many people started creating things during the lockdown. For us, it was a bit of writing on the wall moment. COVID affected us being a co-working company that focused on the hospitality industry. Two of the worst-hit industries, so we intercept both. We looked, “What are we going to do in the future? What was going to ultimately help more people?”
We split the company into two main areas, one being industry support based and the other one being product-based, products that could scale. The industry support base is the industry membership, which helps venues with buying power and access to great industry events. We've got 60 venues in Melbourne that are on that industry membership and growing. The second piece is the scaling product. There are two things, one is the Stella Coffee and then the other one is Home Grown Drinks.
Home Grown was all about giving venues access to great Australian spritz producers and enabling them to execute cocktails at scale. Cocktail culture has taken off over the last few years in venues that we'd never dream of selling hundreds of cocktails on the weekend. Even pubs or venues are suddenly doing that. Given the staffing crisis that's ongoing, we found ourselves at a point in time when Home Grown made a lot of sense.
This is all massive. I know you've got business partners and you said you started at Attica. Did you come from a family that was restaurant owners? Were they super into food? How did you go from, “Yes, I’ll manage a restaurant,” to, “I’m going to do this, this, and this.”
Do you know the family history of hospitality in the business ownership sense? I get that question a lot. I'm not sure how I've managed to find myself in the position so early. It's an interesting thing. People were talking about how much experience you need to open a business, and what you need in your arsenal of tools to be able to achieve it. I said directly to them, “It's either you're completely ignorant to it all or you're incredibly experienced. Don't be in the middle.”
I was definitely down the ignorant end of town when I opened my first venue. Yes, I've been managing restaurants. Apart from a couple of years on the TAFE course when I was 18 around hospitality, I didn't do any more formal business training at all or wasn't exposed to the operational side of businesses during my management period over the 20 to 25.
That's a big issue in the industry. Managers aren't given oversight of profit and loss sheets or anything deeper than that from the financial side of the business, or legal or whatever else. They're tasked with managing the restaurant and that's it. When you do make that jump, it's like, “I had no idea.” I was lucky I've had a couple of business partners who've been in business before, so that certainly helped, and then a lot of it sinks or swim stuff. I just swam like mad for a little that time.
On the family side, in an Italian family, I had a classic upbringing in the sense of being around a lot of food. We did our annual sauce-making day with family that we do every year. I love that stuff. Now my kids are starting to see that, which is cool. We do sauce every year, we do sausages, and all these traditional things. I grew up around a lot of food. My nana and my mom taught me a lot about cooking.
In the sense of what I thought hospitality was growing up was not so much about hospitality businesses. It was the art of looking after people. When I was probably younger teens, I used to get pretty disgruntled when I was kicked out of my bedroom if cousins stayed over or friends of the family or whatever. Whereas now, I look back on that and think it was always about ensuring that your guests were as comfortable as they can be, everything to how we cook for people and always had people over when I was growing up.
I've always had lots of friends overeating, even at my grandmother's house to the point where a lot of them call her nana as well. It’s funny. I still have great memories of being at house parties as a mid-teenage, 16, 17, and turning up at her house for late-night snacks with my friends. She would be in the freezer getting food out and cooking for us. It’s incredible to experience growing up around food. I always wanted to be a chef from an early age. I'm not sure what happened to us. It happened that I went to the other side of the past and ended up in front of the house rather than the kitchen.
Your nana sounds like a wonderful woman as does your whole family. I had a similar upbringing to my parents. It was always an abundance of food and abundance of wine. Make sure everyone feels loved and looked after when they leave our house. Probably the worst insult you could ever say to my mom is someone was hungry when they left.
It'd be an absolute travesty.
When you said you wanted to be a chef, can I put you on the spot? I asked this of Julia Ostro as well. What is your go-to quick meal? Especially because you have kids. I was saying to her, “Do you ever just eat eggs and toast for dinner?”
You've put me on the spot, especially saying you asked Julia Ostro this.
I’m like, “Do you have eggs and toast for dinner sometimes?” She's like, “No.” I was like, “That's what we have in our house sometimes. That's our go-to, mushrooms or whatever.”
I know she goes to my bakery so I very much appreciate that. I do have egg and toast sometimes. My partner is a chef as well so we've got a lot of food and drink in our house. We do sometimes have to give up when it's been a long day and we've been out and the kids are hungry. You’ve got to do what you have to do.
My quick go-to is sad because it's always pasta. It has to be. It's a three-ingredient pasta. I love it whether it's just olive oil and garlic and a bit of chili. We make enough sauce one day every year till the last of the year. Grabbing a bottle of that sauce and finishing it with some pancetta or something like that. By turning the pan on and then cooking the pasta off, you can have dinner up in fifteen minutes. It's delicious. I could eat that three times a week if I was allowed to.
That's making me think, “Maybe we'll have that for dinner tonight.” You have a great passion for what you do. It's evident in the way that you talk. Of course, it comes across even in the idea of Worksmith and helping other people to not let that passion die. You've got creativity and passion but you also have a million people to manage. You had so many lockdowns. I can't even imagine what it must have been like. You've got different types of businesses as well. It's not like you've got hair salons that are doing the exact same thing. I'm wondering with so much going on, how do you stay organized or even just sane?
If I say sane, people will probably argue that I'm not that sane. It's quite difficult because it's always interchanging. I’m wearing different hats. Looking at the venues, ultimately, they're small businesses. We're opening another Falco Bakery soon and we see that as something we want to grow out further. I see them as my small businesses, albeit there are three of them.
With Worksmith, ultimately, it's a startup. This is a very different mindset in terms of how we get an investment and how we grow the company. Lots of different things under the company are always changing and moving, which is interesting. Whilst full time, I'm generally at Worksmith, and then I have the venues on top of that.
In terms of organization, the most important thing is understanding where you can add value and where you cannot. I see this a lot with owners and managers to a point as well, where they want to touch everything in the business. No one's good at everything in a business. For me, at the start of opening, maybe my first venue when we only had one, I definitely have the time to be across a lot more. As we grew out of the businesses and now with Worksmith, I've understood that the quickest way to get stressed is to try and have input in everything that happens in the business.
Especially with all the things going on in the multiple business owners and great managers, you burn out pretty quickly. For me, it's about separating that out, understanding where you can dive in and add a lot of value, and where you can allow someone else to come in and help you with different parts of the business. Give people around you the trust and ability to do something because you've hired them for a reason and you trusted them at the start. It’s like allowing them to come in a bit deeper into the business and taking over things that perhaps you're not that good at.
Finally, outsourcing. A bit of a revelation for us at Worksmith is getting help in smaller parts of the business that you might not have the resources to hire a full-time person for, but you can get someone in a day a week that can consult for you and they can be a huge stress reliever. Suddenly, you're thinking about bigger picture stuff in the business. That pays dividends over time.
We could have asked you that one question for this podcast and that would have been enough value. I love that idea of, “Where can I add value and where can I not?” It is tempting to be part of every single part. Usually, the fun stuff as well like shoots or branding. You want to be part of that and not necessarily do the tedious stuff that might be the things that get a bigger impact on the business.
I'm lucky that I'm on the side of the business that is the fun stuff. The cocktail festival, branding, and all that stuff are on my part. What people miss out on doing the most, the first thing that falls away when you're too busy is strategy. If you're not setting aside time to do that, then you're always playing catch up and you're always task-oriented rather than strategy-orientated.
More gold. Thank you so much. Speaking about understanding what's valuable or what's important to do, I wanted to ask this. I can say that every single time I'm on anything, I get asked the same question. Women always get asked this. How do you juggle being a parent with the same things? Because you've got so many responsibilities, how does that work?
Thank you for the question because I've been on quite a few podcasts over the last little while and I've never been asked that question. They usually know that I'm a father.
I could go on and on about this.
I get this from a lot of different people, whether it's my own mother or other people in my life who see what I'm doing or the extent of what I'm doing in business. “When are you going to slow down? When are you going to have to do less one day?” It's like, “My week is already full. If I had to do more things, then I need to get better at managing my time.”
A friend of mine who has helped me with these areas in the past said to me, and it clicked when he said, “It's not so much about emptying some buckets or your work, reducing your workload. It's about filling up the other buckets of your life.” That clicked with me because, at the time, I wasn't doing anything that was good for my physical or mental health. I wasn't connecting enough with my friends outside of work.
First and foremost, I wasn't making enough time for my family. These were the early days when my first daughter arrived. Going through the process of COVID lockdowns and things getting harder, certainly not easier, dawned on me. It was now and never to dig into how I was going to improve the classic work-life balance thing. I don't love that phrase, but what I do like is, “What are you doing outside of work to ensure that you're at your peak in whatever you do?”
If I'm not looking after myself mentally or physically, then I can't be there enough for my family because I'll be stressed out and I'll be concerning myself with things in work and outside of work that I shouldn't consume myself with. I’m working on it. I've done a lot of work on it in terms of physical and mental health. Suddenly, I feel so much better at work so I get more done at work and have had the headspace to do so.
This knock-on effect is huge because then when I'm at home, I have that space and I'm able to look at when is it time to work and when is it time to completely switch off, turn on Do Not Disturb, and be there for my partner and two children. Over the last couple of years now, I've been able to do that and see the effect of it. I couldn't have imagined maybe pre-having kids that I'd have the time to be there for bath time and be there for dinner as much as possible.
Now, maybe one night a week I'll miss bath time and I hate myself for it because, for me, that's my favorite part of my day, getting home, having dinner with them, bath time, bedtime because that's where the most connection is made. If you're not there for that, you’re missing such an incredible part of childhood and parenting.
I love the advice that that person gave you about not thinking of it as emptying other things but filling up the important parts.
I'm not about to get out of all my businesses. Even if I decided that right now, it would take so long to do that, number one. Number two, ultimately, it wouldn't make me happy. If I'm not happy in my work life, then I’m probably not going to be happy in my home living off the back of that if I decide to do a job that I'm not happy with. That helps anyone.
I'm like you, I don't believe in the work-life balance but I think of work-life integration. They have to mix that together because they're not separate anymore. It's not like on our Parents’ Day when we got our mobile phone and we could email. You get to do some of the fun stuff like the branding and the creativity part. I'm sure it doesn't feel like this at times, but you seem to keep opening things and they work.
You’ve had things for a long time now, especially in hospitality where things fail quickly often. Not even just the branding but everything that you put out. Say, like Falco Bakery. I was there and it looked beautiful. It's very Instagrammable. The food, the people, everything's lovely. Do you look at trend reports? Do you have a consultant? How do you keep getting it right often?
First of all, I've had plenty of staff, that's for sure. In terms of trends, I don't look at anything on the basis of I'm not going to look at them and then open a concept off the back of looking at trend reports for me. It's being ahead of trends. If you start to respond to those that are reports or things like that, then you already missed the boat in my mind. It's about being connected to the industry.
Honestly, since doing Worksmith, it has been a complete accident in terms of what I get out of it personally and professionally. I’m getting incredible oversight of the industry of what's happening out, what people are doing in the industry, and what concepts are coming up. On the drinks side of things, suddenly people are drinking low and no alcohol. That's growing at an exponential rate. Beers are slowly declining. You learn that through bits and bobs, and then it's affirmed once you read your report. You're like, “That's exactly what I was thinking.” I see the data off the back of it and I’m like, “This is confirmed. What can we do about it? How can we play into it?”
The restaurants in particular, each one of them has that story. When we opened Bar Liberty several years ago, there were only a couple of real mainstay wine bars open in Melbourne at the time and there wasn't any new blood coming through. We love wine that has that background in drinks. We thought if we opened a great wine bar with great music and great people around it, then it would work, and evidently, it did.
Capitano was the same thing but with Italian. It was like, “Let's open it.” When I told people I was opening an Italian restaurant in Carlton, I got laughed at so many times. You would not believe it. We thought it was time for new blood to come into Colton. Since then, there have been two brands that have opened since us, Leonardo's and now Di Stasio in Carlton, both new-wave pizza shops and packed out as away. There's certainly an appetite for that.
Falco was at a time when there were some great small bakeries popping up around different cities that we loved, not just Melbourne. My partner is from London so we’re spending a bit of time over there and seeing what was happening there. Looking at our immediate area on Smith Street, it was like, “You can't get a good loaf of bread here. It's crazy.” There was a tiny piece, and then we opened about the same time 3 or 4 other great bakeries have popped up since. It's about straddling that line of, your hospitality is risky but if you know what's happening in the industry and what consumers are leaning towards, then you got to reduce that risk quite a lot.
I have a question. You have young children, your partner is a chef, and you're in this industry. Who makes the birthday cakes?
Definitely not me. My partner is a pastry chef/baker. I don't think she'll hand over the reins for that for a while to me.
It occurred to me when you were talking about all of this. Going back to this seriousness, birthday cakes are serious these days. I did an episode on branding and how restaurants and bars have to be exceedingly good at this, not just the visual branding but the way the customer service happens. Even down to the toilets that you go into and every single part of it from what you see outside, what you see on social media, how easy it is to book, all of it is so important.
It's so easy to see it in your industry versus some other industries. I'm wondering with the branding specifically, how did that happen for each of them? I know you talked about how you were looking around at what's happening in the industry and that's how you created the concept. Did you work with people? How did you create the whole brand?
This is one of the things I was naïve about. Doing the branding of Bar Liberty, I was like, “Give us a logo and we'll get going and open a restaurant.” I didn't have any understanding of the wider idea of what branding in a restaurant or venue was. You've touched on all of them, everything from when someone looks at your branding on the website to social media to communicating email. Is it easy to book? All these things, you're touching on. When they open the door of the restaurant, what do they see?
Liberty was lo-fi to the point where we spray painted the old sign that was hanging out the front. It was the taco place we took over. We spray painted it because we had a sign coming or was going to be ordered. Everyone kept looking up at the old sign before we opened and thinking it was probably a taco place still. We spray-painted Liberty over the top. That's a placeholder. Let's get the other one printed once we open. We didn't have any money. We were completely broke.
As time went on, it became evident that the spray-painted sign became our brand. Everyone was like, “You can't change it now.” It was written about in every article that came out when we first opened. Guests were starting to hook on to that idea. It's in Fitzroy and it all fits right when you think about it. A lot of people would be like, “This is such a good idea.” I was like, “That was not part of the plan at all.” I touched on that small story because I understand that to be part of our wider brand now. It’s important to find those little nuggets of gold and shine a light on them for people to see.
Off the back of that is we went to Capitano. We did a bit more brand work before opening. Looking at the type of customer that we were trying to attract. We were understanding what we were as a restaurant in terms of what type of pizza and pasta we were going to do and what food it was under that Italian umbrella. Also, coming up with the name of the back of that. With the branding, a lot more work has been done there. You get the same thing with Falco.
It has been an interesting process with Home Grown, our cocktail brand. It's obvious that it's in its name in terms of what we stand for. It's 100% Australian spirits. We have this ethos around putting more Australian spirits into people's hands in our home country. The branding of the back of that was interesting because we had such clarity around what the product was or is and what we stood for. It made the branding process a lot easier than other processes I've been through.
I love that you've taken us through that journey. I'll often talk to people that are like, “I'm going to spend tens of thousands of dollars.” Sometimes I'm like, “Validate the idea first.”
I've seen many people spend a wild amount of money on restaurant branding when they're having their first restaurants. I get why you think you need to do that but it's more about doing some upfront work that won't cost you anything, briefing a designer well, and doing it for a few grand. There’s nothing wrong with it.
There's nothing against branding agencies. Sometimes I don’t know if people haven't even thought about the audience or have they tested anything. It's like, “We're going to go and spend a huge amount of these beautiful visuals.” I'm like, “That's great. If it doesn't work, the website doesn't work.” There are all these other things that go into it. Speaking of that, you talked about going into this when you were 25.
We opened when I was 24.
You said, “One of our business partners had run businesses before.” You wanted to see everything. You hadn't seen past the profit and loss or even that. I'm wondering, have you had mentors, are there particular books, or is there a mantra that you live by that has helped you with all of these businesses?
Not a mentor per se. I've had plenty of people that I've spent small amounts of time with that I have gotten great little nuggets of information and guidance. I wouldn't go as far as to say I've had a mentor, sadly, as much as I'd like one. Books have helped me. On the hospitality side, there were lots of hospitality people, especially in front of the house. There’s a book called Setting the Table by a restaurant called Danny Meyer. He's got Union Square Hospitality Group in the States. He also owns Shake Shack.
This was the first time it all came together after a few years in hospitality already and someone recommended me to read this. It dawned on me as to why I was in hospitality, to begin with. How do you look after people? The people's experiences are not just about the food and drink you put in their hands but it's about how you make them feel, how to manage staff effectively, and how to lead more so than managed. That was a bit of a revelation for me when I read that.
One is Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, which lots of people have out there. Probably a lot of your readers have read or heard of Eckhart Tolle. For me, this affects lots of different parts of my life but in business, in particular. It's understanding that the world doesn't have to always be this tension between your life and what you deemed to be a reward at the end of it. It's more about understanding what your day-to-day is and focusing on the now. That's something that I have struggled with and going to continue to struggle with.
I struggle to celebrate the wins as I’m going along because there's always that bigger mountain to climb. That's a good thing sometimes because it's meant that I've done what I've done. It doesn't allow you to settle for a moment and be proud of what you've done. I've learned and continue to learn how important that is. It’s not only for yourself but it’s for your family and your teams as well. It’s not that I stopped the team from celebrating by any stretch of the imagination but they see that I don't celebrate as much. That's not a good thing. For me, that book cemented the fact that, at the end of the day, we're here doing something that we believe to be great so we should celebrate that every day.
Thank you for saying that. Many people need that reminder. I've worked with thousands of small business owners now. The number of times that I've said to them, “That’s amazing. How did you celebrate that?” They're like, “I haven't done anything yet.” It'll be huge things sometimes. Small things, maybe a media article that they wanted to get.
The bigger thing is like, “We launched into the US and it's done more than we thought it would do.” It's like, “Wow.” People don't. We keep moving the goalposts every time. It’s like, “We did this but let's do that now.” On the more practical side of things as well, are there any apps or tools you use? Are you all on Slack or WhatsApp? How do you all communicate?
Slack is our communication channel of choice. We use Asana for our project management. We’ve used that over the last couple of years. That's been a huge help. We got so much going on. Having a spot to put everything has been great from a project management side and working across lots of different projects. It definitely helped. They're the main two that we live in, to be honest.
Whilst I say that they've been really important, I can't say how important it is to get on the bloody phone sometimes and chat to people directly. Slack has this way of taking the tone out of it completely. They point out things the wrong way. Sometimes it’s better to get on the phone rather than Slack or email. Communicating with people directly can ultimately save you more time than you think it will.
Sometimes people think, “I'll fire all this information off.” You're like, “That was taken the wrong way.” It’s like, “If you had a two-minute conversation on the phone, you would have got that across. Now you're backtracking.” I love all the platforms and apps. There's something to be said about pretty old-school communication.
They have this thing that every time you send an email, expect up to five back. If you do Inbox Zero, you're like, “Yay.” You're getting thousands back because you've shut these things off as opposed to picking up the phone, getting it sorted, and it's done.
There are no emails.
I could imagine you have a long list of answers to this next question. I would love to know, what are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
I struggle to be proud of things. That sucks on my side. Bill Gates said, “You'd be upset what you could do in a year but you'd be surprised what you do in ten years.” I butchered that but that's the crux of what he said. For me, what I and my business partners have done in six years, I'm proud of. Especially going through COVID and coming out the other side stronger is probably what I'm most proud of.
Also, in those six years, you've also had two children.
That's been interesting. That opening week was the week that my first daughter was born.
We don't like to do things in halves.
It was bad timing on the work part. I have a lot of friends that are like, “I'm not quite ready to have kids.” I’m like, “You are never ready. Trust me. You’re just going to do it if you want to do it.”
I could not agree more. If people have been reading this and maybe they're in the hospitality industry or maybe they're completely inspired by what you said and they have a different industry, where can they connect with you? Also, what is next for you? It sounds like you've got so much stuff going on.
I’m on LinkedIn, Michael Bascetta. My Instagram is @MichaelPepi. You can search Worksmisth or Home Grown Drinks and see what we're up to over there. What's next? We're in this amazing time period where Home Grown has this great opportunity to work with a lot of great venues in Australia and abroad. You’ll certainly see a lot more Australian cocktails getting around through Home Grown Drinks, which we're excited about. Also, more Falco Bakeries, which will be great in a few new neighborhoods in Melbourne.
I'm going to put you on the spot with one last question. As someone who's in Melbourne and has the experience the last few years, if somebody in the hospitality industry, events-based, wedding cakes, or anything that's been completely butchered by the pandemic and the lockdowns is reading this, what would be your advice because you've lived through it?
Believe in yourself enough to do whatever you do and keep doing it. It's not simple. To be honest, it's pretty hard. We've got a lot of noise in our lives. Everyone has a crazy amount of noise in our lives and none of us can focus well. When you've got all these external things affecting you, whether it's a pandemic or getting 1,000 emails in your inbox, try and step away from all that for a moment and then understand, are you happy with what you're doing and can you imagine yourself doing anything else? If you can't imagine yourself doing anything else, you're doing the right thing.
A perfect way to wrap this up. Thank you so much for your time, especially on such a busy week. I imagine most of your weeks are busy. Good luck with the rest of the week.
No worries at all. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Thanks, Michael.
Thank you.
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What an awesome guy. Honestly, such a lovely person doing so many different things. Somehow, there is also calmness and confidence in there, which is lovely to see, hear, and interact with. Thank you again, Michael, for coming on to the podcast. I would love to know what most resonated with you. There were so many things that I was writing notes on. The two that stood out for me were the ideas with the community. How can we help our community?
Especially as we start a business, sometimes we can see everyone in our industry or our sector as a competitor. It’s like, “I need to get my elbows out, hustle, and shove.” Instead of saying, “This is part of my community.” That whole idea that I said at the start about the rising tide lifts all boats. Michael is an example of doing that well. I love that idea that he talks about. How can we help? I love it so much.
Sometimes I get messages from people that are in all sorts of horrible business challenges or situations. My first thought is often, “How can I help? How can I fix this? How can I help you?” The world would be such a better place if we all had that as an initial reaction. I have my own share of comparisonitis and I'm sure that Michael has had that from time to time. If we can push past that and then get curious as to, how can I help? How can I lift up my community? Imagine what an incredible place the world would be.
One of the biggest things that stood out for me and something that I've talked to a number of friends, clients, and family about since this podcast with Michael is when he talked about, where can I add value and where can I not? That was in relation to managing staff and bringing staff on and growing your business and not needing to be part of every single meeting, every single idea, and every single decision.
I love that he said that he doesn't want to micromanage people. Also, he doesn't have the time to be involved in every single decision. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to grow all these different businesses that he grows. I love that he, firstly, said, “I need to think where can I add value. If I'm hiring people that are experts in this particular field, I'm not necessarily adding value by just having my opinion heard. I want to let those people do their job and do it well.”
I love that he said, “Where can I add value? If I can add value, awesome. I'll be there. If I can't and I'm being there for the sake of ego or for the sake of knowing what's going on at every single level, it's not adding value to them.” It's also not adding value to his life. I thought that was awesome. I'm adding three. Usually, I say two. The other thing that I loved was he talked about this mindset of not having to empty out, not having to get rid of things in our life. When you're busy and you've got a lot on, he was saying that it can be easy to go, “What can I cut? What needs to be cut?” Rather than thinking, “What can I fill up on?” By doing so, these other things will naturally be decreased.
He talked about making sure that he's home in time for the bath and the bed. As a mom of two wonderful boys, I know that feeling myself. I love doing that. Sometimes, it can be a complete headache, especially if everyone's having a tantrum including myself. I also love that part. I love snuggling and doing the bedtime routine. I love those little conversations that you hear when your kids are getting ready to go to bed. I love the peacefulness that comes at the end of the day.
I love his idea that if he wants to be home for those things because that's what fills up his buckets, then these other things will have to be somewhat changed or somebody else will have to do them or delegate, automate, or eliminate that sort of thing. There were so many ideas. I'm going back to read this episode probably a few times.
Thank you again, Michael Bascetta for coming on. If you are keen to connect with Michael, we will list all of the many places from Worksmith, Falco, Capitano, Bar Liberty, Home Grown, and Stella Coffee. You'll be able to find that over at MyDailyBusinessCoach.com/podcast/202. This is episode 202. Thank you again, Michael, for coming on. If you found this useful, I'm sure that Michael would love you to get in touch with him. You can also send me a DM, @MyDailyBusinessCoach.
Find Michael over on Instagram, he's @MichaelPepi. Also, when you go to his Instagram, you'll see on his bio all the links to all the other Instagrams of the businesses that he looks after. I would love to hear from you and I'm sure that Michael would as well. If you did enjoy this and you found it useful, we would love it so much if you could take two seconds and leave a review. It helps other small business owners find this podcast, learn, and get these insights and tips from people like Michael as well. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time.
